Case File 21 - Part 2 of 3
When There Should Have Been Apple Pie
Here we join our favourite space-station-based detectives in Part 2 as they investigate something strange on a near by colony. If you’ve just joined in, head here for Part 1.
Part 2
After leaving Ned, Dr. Vega and I went through the complicated decontamination process her people set up. Once relieved of our suits, I followed Vega into her lab. She gave Ned’s blood samples to an assistant before continuing on to check on some equipment, as though I was an invisible shadow.
My blood started to boil as I stood in the centre of the space. I put my hands on my hips and glared at the back of Dr. Vega’s head. She continued to ignore me, so I surveyed the room.
The mobile lab bustled with people in lab coats and goggles. Everyone appeared hard at work peering at the readouts before them. As I glanced at their screens, it became immediately clear that I had no idea what any of it meant. Then I saw the video feed from the daycare. In the glitchy black and white image, there was Ned, still sitting in the same chair but now bent over with his head in his hands. Even though he regularly annoyed the crap out of me, I had to do something for my partner.
“How long until he becomes a zombie like the others?” I asked, breaking the concentration in the room.
“Huh?” Vega replied as all her technician’s heads swivelled my direction just like the colonists had.
“How long until Detective Diamond becomes like the colonists?” I pointed at the screen showing my partner.
“We haven’t finished analyzing the data.” She turned back to the screen before her.
“Has anyone looked at the dome’s video feeds?” I demanded in a tone that couldn’t be ignored.
Dr. Vega didn’t even bother glancing my way. “I don’t see how they are relevant.”
Heat rose in my face. I couldn’t just stand idly by and wait. Clenching my hands into fists at my side, I vowed to do something—I owed Ned that much.
“We could use the footage to figure out when people began acting strange.” Why didn’t a room full of eggheads start with the basics? “Build a timeline.”
“Go ahead.” Vega still didn’t look my way. Part of me wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake sense into her. “Morris, set the detective up.”
A young man in a pristine white lab coat and glossy black hair waved me over to his screen. I walked over.
“Which feed do you want to look at?” Morris asked as he switched a series of complex plots over to a simple video feed.
“Do you have one of the pond?” I crossed my arms over my chest and watched him work. A moment later an overhead view of the orchard appeared mid screen, with the pond at its centre.
“This is right now,” he said.
All the colonists were standing, naked, in the pond—just like I had seen in real life, a few moments ago.
“Okay, run it backwards and speed it up.”
He did as I asked. The infected colonists started moving backwards, still milling about as though hanging out in the pond was the only activity they needed to do. Eventually, backwards-moving colonists disappeared out of the frame until a single woman stood in the pond.
“Stop here.” The frame froze the dark-haired woman in the centre of the screen. “Who’s that?”
Morris looked up at me. “Do you think she’s our patient zero?”
“She was the first one there.”
“Let me run our facial recognition algorithm.”
“Bingo!” Dr. Vega shouted from the other side of the room. We all turned to look at her. “We’ve got it. The sample from Detective Diamond has shown us the infection is a fungus, one that normally infects ants.”
Morris’ face lit up. “Ooooo, is that the one that drives the ants up to a high place then a mushroom bursts out of their heads?” His enthusiasm for the concept disturbed me.
“That one’s an exact match.” Vega crossed her arms with a smirk.
“It can be cured before a mushroom bursts out of anyone’s head, right?” I asked. The room fell silent, and no one would make eye contact with me.
“Without knowing the source…” Vega’s words drop off. She inhaled so deeply, I could see her shoulders rise. “We need a sample of the spores produced by the flowering stage.”
“We can’t just wait here until someone’s head explodes!” I glanced over to the screen showing Ned, then to the colonists milling around the pond. “There has to be another way.”
“Maisy Newport,” Morris said as he stood from the workstation running the facial recognition AI.
“Patient zero?” I went over to his side.
“She was the first to arrive at the pond.”
Dr. Vega came over and stood beside us. “It looks like she got there an hour before the sensors picked up the pathogen and called us.”
I looked at the time stamp. Maisy arrived at the pond roughly eight hours ago. “Can you show me Maisy now?”
The image flipped back to the current view. Morris zoomed into where Maisy stood in the dead centre of the pond. She wasn’t moving. I bit my lip, half expecting a mushroom to burst out of her head.
“And now all the colonists are infected?” I asked.
“It looks like everyone in the apple orchard dome has been.” Morris looked at his screen for a moment. “Wait… one colonist isn’t there.”
“Who?” I asked as I leaned forward to see over his shoulder.
“David Newport is missing. Maisy’s ten-year-old son.” Morris studied his readouts then pointed to a map on the screen. “And there he is. In the family dwelling. Unit 21C.”
“So everyone, except David, has been driven to the pond.” I pulled myself up straight and faced Dr. Vega. “I’ll go talk to the boy.”
Dr. Vega shrugged. “I don’t know if he’ll be able to help, but do what you like, we’re busy here.” She strode off to talk to a group of her staff.
Beside me Morris unwrapped a candy and popped it in his mouth before he noticed me watching. “Want to try a Space Chew? It’s their new flavour.” He raised the package towards me.
“Sure,” I said before taking the entire roll of candy. I turned and left.
After stashing the Space Chew candy in an outside pocket of my hazmat suit, I put it on. I ventured out past the decontamination station, through an airlock and into the orchard dome. In the centre of the trees, I could just make out the colonists standing around the pond. How much time did they have? I bit my lip and turned towards the residential area.
Even though I felt guilty about it, I skipped past the building housing Ned—to save him, I needed to hunt down answers, not join his pity party. But how much time did he have until he turned into a zombie like the rest? I swallowed and tried not to think too hard about it.
Behind the daycare and at the end of a row of townhomes sat unit 21C. Exotic pathogens aside, it looked like a nice place to raise a family. I knocked on the front door—I needed the boy to open up to me, and I didn’t want to scare him off by barging in.
A few moments later, the door slid open a hand’s width. A gas mask covered face at the height of my elbow looked out.
“David?” I asked crouching down to look the boy in the eye through my own face mask. “I’m Detective Ruben.”
“Am I in trouble?” He didn’t open the door any further. As he spoke, his mask fogged up, obscuring his face.
“No, I just want to ask you a few questions.”
“That’s detective code for I’m in trouble,” he said. “I’ve seen the shows.”
“How about you just call me Flo and I promise you aren’t in trouble. I just want to help your mom and the others that live in this dome. Can you help me help them?” I put on the same indulgent smile I had used on my boys when they were David’s age, and hoped he could see it through our masks.
He paused for a moment as though in deep thought. “Okay.” he said, just as I started debating pushing my way in. The boy nodded and backed away.
The door slid fully open, and I stepped inside. Suppressing my feeling of guilt around walking into this boy’s home wearing boots, I followed him into the open plan living/dining room and kitchen. Knick-knacks, ornate boxes, strange vases, and other stuff cluttered every horizontal surface. A three-panelled display that could only be a science fair project sat on the dining room table. It appeared to be the only recent addition to the mess.
A moving painting of elephants hanging on the far wall drew my attention and I walked closer to watch the huge beasts interact around a muddy pond. On a shelf below the painting sat an elephant tusk, I’d seen one before back on the station. As I reach out to touch it (with my gloved hand), David interrupted me.
“Mom just brought that back from the station,” he said pointing at the tusk. “I’m not supposed to touch items from her collection.”
“Does she bring stuff back from Indigo Station often?” I asked while wondering where the line was between collection and horde.
“Yeah. I asked her to bring me back a cat, but she said they don’t exist anymore.” He let out a long sigh. “She brought me an ant farm instead.”
“So, you aren’t a fan of ants?” I resumed snooping around.
He shrugged. “They’re okay. It’s just that mom...” He slumped down onto the couch and caved in on himself. “I can’t hide it anymore, it’s me who should be in trouble.”
I sat beside him. “Why do you say that?”
“It’s all my fault.” David took off his gas mask before I could stop him.
“Put it back on.” I grabbed the mask out of his hands and started orientating the straps above his head.
He stood and faced me. With a sniff, he wiped a tear from his eye.
“There’s a pathogen, clearly this gas mask is keeping you safe, you need to put it back on right now.”
He shook his head. “I wasn’t wearing it before... when mom started acting strange.”
Still holding the mask, I lowered my hands down to my lap. “When did your mom start acting strange?”
“When she opened the lid to my cricket colony,” he said as he wiped another tear away. “She had been so proud of me.”
“Was it the science fair project?” I pointed to where it sat on the kitchen table.
He nodded. “I won first place. I get to go to the station for system finals.”
“Can I look at the project?”
David wrapped his arms around himself and said nothing. Taking that for consent, I put his mask down and went over to his project.
“Transferring O. unilateralis fungal parasite between species,” I read the title aloud. “This sounds awfully technical, can you explain what you did?”
He shrugged. “The ants my mom brought me were infected with a fungus that turned them into zombies. I transferred that fungus to the crickets.”
Studying the hand drawn and colourful boards, I stood before the science fair project as though it was an alter. This had to be it! Could a fungus that jumped from ants to crickets, jump to us? Why didn’t it infect David?
David sat and opened a roll of candy. As he chewed, he explained in detail about the fungus and what it did to ants and now to crickets.
“Flo,” said Ned over my in-ear comms device. I could hear he was chewing something—probably more Space Chews. He had devoured at least one whole package on the shuttle ride down here.
“Hey, buddy. How are you doing?” I winced at my over-the-top tone of concern. Not once had I ever called him ‘buddy’. Thankfully, Ned didn’t call me out on it.
“I feel the same,” he said, and I felt myself relax just a little bit. “Just wondering how things are going. I’m getting kinda bored.”
“Well, I’ve checked out David’s science fair project.”
“A science fair project… how does that fit?”
I could picture Ned pulling his eyebrows together as he tried to puzzle out what I was talking about. Being as brief as possible, I explained the project to Ned. Once done, I glanced over to the boy. He was already half-way through his pack of candy. At the rate people devoured this candy, I regretted not buying shares of Space Chew.
“Hey David, how long did it take from when your mom was exposed to your project until she started acting weird,” I asked leaving the comms link to Ned open.
He shrugged. “I don’t know, twenty minutes or so.”
“Twenty minutes?” I heard Ned spring to his feet. “Hell, I’ve been here over two hours and still feel like myself.”
“So both you and David appear immune.” I studied the boy. What did the two of them have in common? I crossed my arms over my chest while staring at the science fair project.
“Maybe, David isn’t infected because he’s spent time working with the ants and crickets,” suggested Ned. “Developed some kind of fungal-immunity.”
“Are you naturally anti-fungal?” I asked.
“No idea,” he said and we all fell silent. Ned left the line open and I heard the sound of him unwrapping more candy then putting it in his mouth.
As I watched David do the same thing a connection hits me. “Ned how much candy have you had?”
“My husband gave me five packages,” Ned said. “He thinks the new flavour is going to run out quickly and he wanted to make sure I had a good supply.”
“The Rainbow Starfield flavour?” I asked.
David perked up and held up the glittery package of his Space Chews. “I love that flavour. My mom brought back a box of it from her last trip to the station.”
“What if the candy is rendering you both immune?” I asked pulling out the roll of candy I’d stashed in my pocket. I ran my fingers along the glittery rainbows on a silver backing. Was it even possible that something in the candy could be responsible? Hoping she wouldn’t laugh at my theory, I called Dr. Vega.
To be continued…
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