Part 23 - May 21 - Campus Athletic Center

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Carl, Frank, and Sam entered the athletic complex. Frank led them to the sports center’s medical facilities, where they found Amy and Geoff bent over one of the athletes laid out on a table. The young man’s body was rapidly twitching in continuous spasms.

Geoff had just attempted to remove the implanted modem from the athlete’s brain. Immediately, the subject went into violent convulsions. Amy was near panic, trying to hold the young man steady on the table while Geoff probed deeper under his scalp, attempting to remove the transmitter. The spasms abruptly stopped. Geoff and Amy maintained their hold on the young man, waiting to see what would happen next.

“Did it work?” Amy gasped.

Geoff stepped back a bit, then reached out a shaking hand to check the young man’s pulse. “He’s dead,” Geoff moaned. He turned to the wall and leaned over, placing his hands on his knees. Sam thought he was going to throw up. “I killed him,” Geoff sobbed.

Sam stepped over to the table and put her fingers to the young man’s jugular vein—nothing. “Alright, step by step, what did you do?” Sam calmly asked.

Geoff’s voice rose in panic. “All I did was remove the receiving linkage. As soon as I disconnected it, he started to go into spasms. So, I tried to disconnect the router. That’s all I did. It should have worked.”

“Alright, calm down,” Sam said gently. “I agree, your procedure seems like a sound enough plan. So, let’s think this through. I have placed transmitters in animals to collect information. Our transmitters are receiving data. But the receiving linkage makes it possible for us to access the information we receive, and the receiving linkage is tied into our neural functions.” She paused and let Geoff think about it. “It would seem reasonable that if you cut off the incoming signal or disrupt the access to that signal, it should not affect the neurological body functions—unless something else is going on.”

“I should have removed the receiver first,” Geoff moaned. He looked up at Sam. “I should have waited for you.”

Sam shook her head. “I may have tried the same thing you just did. There is something else going on here.” They all looked at the young man lying on the table.

“What was his name?” Carl asked.

“Henry,” Amy whispered. “He seemed to be in the most distress, so we decided to try to help him first. A lot of help we were.”

Sam frowned. “It could have been that Henry had something else going on and what you did had nothing to do with his death. Let’s find someone who is not in as much distress.”

Geoff shook his head. “No, I’m not killing another person,” he choked.

“Look, Geoff, you’re right about one thing—if we can’t disconnect these people, they will die. You, at least, are giving them a chance. We could just walk away and let them die like that.” She motioned to the people laid out on the gym mats in the adjoining room. “Geoff, if we can find a way to disconnect just one of these people, we might be able to help others.”

He stepped back, shaking his head. “I can’t do this,” he choked.

“You don’t have to. I’ll perform the next procedure. I’m not pre-med, but I have worked with implants in my test subjects,” Sam stated calmly. She turned to Frank and Carl. “Help me move another person in here.”

They moved another person onto the table. Using a scanner, Sam located the transmitter and steeled herself to remove the device.

Geoff stood next to her and showed Sam how to use the scanner to locate the embedded instrument’s connective wiring that linked the electronics to the brain’s function centers.

“All right, you hold the scanner where I can monitor the screen, and I’ll disconnect the receiver,” Sam told him. As she disconnected the router, the young woman’s eyes stopped twitching. Sam had noticed that many of the victims had some form of spasmodic movement—their arms or legs would twitch, or their eyes would twitch as if viewing a flicker on a monitor. Some victims had total spasms throughout their entire bodies. This young woman’s eye spasms had stopped, but she did not show any other signs of responding.

Sam spoke gently to the young woman, and she turned her face slightly, her eyes focusing on Sam in response to her voice. “What’s her name?” Sam asked the two med students.

“Janet,” Geoff said. “Her name is Janet.”

“Janet, can you hear me?” Sam spoke to the woman. Her eyes focused on Sam. The young woman’s expression was still vacant, and other than following Sam’s voice, there was no other response.

Amy brought a water bottle and lifted the young woman up to a sitting position. “Here, Janet, have a drink of water.” Amy held the bottle up to Janet’s lips. She took a small drink of water. They all held their breath as she swallowed. Amy and Sam encouraged her to take another drink. She responded to their voices with that blank stare, but she at least responded. Amy instructed her to take another drink of water, and she was able to take one sip.

On impulse, Sam instructed the woman, “Take two drinks of water, Janet.” The young woman took two sips. Everyone looked at each other and back to the woman in stunned confusion. “Take three drinks of water,” Sam instructed her this time, and again the woman did exactly as she was told. “Stand up,” Sam stated, and Janet robotically stood up.

The group stood silently and looked at each other, absorbing the situation.

“What is happening here?” Amy asked quietly.

“I really do not know,” Sam said slowly, as she stared at the young woman. “We don’t know what caused this network event in the first place. It’s possible that whatever caused the WWN to crash damaged everyone’s brains who were online, or that having been in this state of stasis for so long has damaged their brains.”

“Janet, can you tell me your last name?” Sam asked.

The woman stared at Sam with a blank look and no other response. “Janet, walk to the chair and sit down,” Sam ordered.

Janet jerkily walked to the chair and stood. Sam repeated the “sit down” command, and the woman turned slightly and sat woodenly.

Sam looked to Amy. “Get some food, and let’s see if she’ll eat.”

Amy came back with a sandwich and another water bottle. She sat down with Janet and urged her to drink and take a bite, then instructed her to chew and swallow. Amy had to repeat each command step by step—take a bite, chew, swallow—every time. Each action—drink, eat, sit, stand—had to be delivered one command at a time. Janet would respond, but someone had to direct her to perform each action.

Geoff looked and said, “Great, she’s a frigging robot. She’d be better off dead.”

Sam turned to the pre-med student. “Would she? We have no idea what quality of life she will have, but she will live. She may just need more time to recover. But at least we have a starting point. Geoff, you were correct this morning when you said if we do nothing, they will all die—and we don’t have much time to act. If we do nothing, all those people out there are going to die, and soon. Carl and I found several people today who have already died in town.” She watched the young man as he absorbed what she was telling him. “Let’s see if we can find out just how much neural function Janet has. Then see if we can try something else.” Geoff nodded, and Sam handed him the neural scanner. “You know how to use this thing better than I do—what is happening in this woman’s brain?”

Sam watched as Geoff started to use the scanner and reviewed the readouts. She had planned to tear this kid a new one, but now she found she had to give him support—just one more scared kid who needed his self-confidence boosted.

Geoff watched the readouts, then stopped the scan and pointed at the screen. “There—a burnt-out A-3 link that might be causing this zombie state. Maybe.”

“Can you do anything about it?” Sam asked.

“A new link could be inserted. I just don’t know for sure,” Geoff answered.

“Okay, go over the scan one more time,” Sam gently urged.

They all waited while Sam, Geoff, and Amy went through the scanning process again. They found a second burnt-out link. They showed Frank and Carl the readouts and explained how each link connected major areas of the brain, and how the links were fused and interrupting the independent functions of those areas. They decided that if they reinserted new links, Janet might gain back her higher brain function.

“So, what will you need to be able to implant the new link?” Sam asked.

Amy thought. “We need a hospital,” she said. “We don’t have that kind of equipment or the facilities here to perform that procedure. In a hospital, it’s as simple as an office visit—not much different than getting your ears pierced. But we don’t have any of that kind of equipment here.”

Carl stepped forward. “So, let’s get Janet and all of you up to the hospital and see what can be done.”

Sam nodded. “I think that’s the only chance any of these people have. Carl, could you go get that old bus of yours and drive us to the hospital?” she asked.

“Yeah, I can get you to the hospital, but I’ll need to refuel the ole girl, or that’ll be the last trip any of us make with her,” Carl answered. “Since the majority of cars are now run on solar power, fossil fuel just isn’t that readily available anymore. I’m tapping the big industrial tank of diesel at the railway depot that they kept on hand for some of the old construction machines. Frank and I have discussed the possibility of trying to bypass the auto controls to get some of the solar cars to run manually, but until we have time to figure that out, I’m counting every gallon of the diesel we have left.”

Carl left the athletic center to get the bus to take them all to Elmwood and the hospital there. Meanwhile, Frank decided to go back up to ask Nancy and Helen for another priority list of supplies they might need and let them know what they planned, while Sam, Amy, and Geoff prepared to take Janet to the hospital.