Part Three: The First Big Loss
"Akemashite o-medetou gozaimasu!" It was once again New Year's Day, and we celebrated as well as we could, exchanging greetings and giving both Sakura and Chisame otoshidama.
Once the formalities were completed, I sat down to read my usual Internet news feeds, curious as to whether anything was different. When I saw a story on the local news' website that hadn't been there the first time through the time loop, I groaned - if I had bothered to keep up with the news instead of spending New Year's Eve with the ladies, we could have done something about the situation when the asteroid hit, instead of waiting for six hours to react. Once the army called to request our help in controlling the plague outbreak, I apologized to Sakura; she wouldn't get to watch herself on stage after all.
It was a nasty plague, judging from the symptoms described to us when the army brought us to the scene. Infected people - there were only a few dozen so far, but the plague vector was pointing at a large city - were exhibiting a red glow over their entire bodies, and those who had been infected for more than an hour were attacking other people without provocation. Worse, the plague's incubation time was nearly zero.
"That's impossible," commented Yomiko.
"I know," I replied. "But it's happening. There's more than meets the eye here... I just wish I knew what was behind this."
We were brought as close to the meteor's landing crater as the army would allow anyone to get; normal HazMat and NBC procedures had proven ineffective.
"Which means I'm useless here," sighed Yomiko. "If a normal breathing-mask filter is useless, an improvised paper filter won't help either."
We all turned to Sakura.
She didn't say anything; she just got the steely look in her eye that she does whenever she's completely serious about a battle, invoked her staff, and pulled out the Shield card.
I put my hand on her shoulder before she could invoke the card. Surprised, she looked up at me.
"Don't over-exert yourself, Sakura-chan," I told her. "You're going to have to keep the effect going for as long as possible, maybe for days or weeks."
"I understand." Sakura invoked the card, and a bubble of translucent force covered the plague site as she collapsed into my arms.
As two corpsmen helped Sakura to a cot, I turned to the others. "Now what?" After a minute had passed without anybody replying, we all knew that we were at a loss.
The next few days were brutal. Yomiko and I waited on Sakura hand-and-foot so she could devote as much of her energy as possible to keeping the Shield in place. Meanwhile, Chisame was practically starving herself while organizing all of the data the doctors were collecting and running computer searches for any medical information that was even tangentally connected to the plague. She didn't find very much.
Five days in, Chisame gave us our first good news. By hacking into the World Community Grid and using their distributed network to analyze the collected data, she'd discovered an electrum alloy would block the spread of the plague. It took three days, and most of the Mint's stockpiles of gold and silver, to coat a containment building's walls with the required alloy. Once that was done and drywall was placed over the electrum to prevent damage to it, Sakura extended the Shield to include the building and Yomiko used some paper to herd all of the victims into it.
Then the army asked me whether the Shield would contain a fuel-air explosion.
"I doubt it," was my reply. "But even if it could, would that do anything? The plague arrived on a meteorite, so it survived re-entry. I doubt that a FAE would be hot enough to destroy it."
The captain in charge of the containment force used a few words that I won't report in a family publication, then he got his frustration under control. "Well, then what can we do about the contaminated area?"
"Extreme cold might immobilize the virus," I guessed. "Sakura has the ability to Freeze things; I just hope she has enough life force to maintain both a Freeze and a Shield at the same time."
"Let me help," volunteered Chisame. "Sakura-chan invoked my pactio before she raised the Shield because I thought I might need to use it. And I did. But one of the things a pactio does is share energy between the two people involved. If she draws on my life force, she might have enough."
"Are you sure you want to do this, Chisame-san?"
"I'm sure, Rob-san. You don't have any special abilities, but you're still trying to help out any way you can. How can I do any less?"
Oh, dear; I'd shamed her into helping. But I couldn't do anything about that except fail to notice it. "Don't kill yourself, Chiu-chan."
"I won't," she answered, just before giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. Then she sat beside Sakura and slumped over. An hour later, the army was using remote-controlled bulldozers to scrape near-absolute-zero frozen soil off of the contaminated zone and stockpiling it in the containment building.
Once that was finished, Sakura shrunk the Shield until it was completely inside the containment building, then we closed and locked the doors. Only then did she let the Shield drop.
"We're done for today," I told the army. "They're exhausted." Both Sakura and Chisame were fast asleep.
The next day, Chisame formalized her hack of the World Community Grid to make the plague research an official project. That was all we could do; none of us had any healing abilities, or medical knowledge beyond first aid.
Epilogue
We returned home in silence. With the exception of Yomiko, none of us were used to not being able to complete a mission we'd been given, and the experience wasn't pleasant. And Yomiko was quiet at the best of times.
"Now what?" asked Chisame.
"Now..." I hesitated. "Now you go back to where you came from. I'm sorry."
"I understand," she sighed as she swallowed one of her youth-potion pills. "I want to go home, but Negi-sensei and the others might need me to do their thinking for them."
"Take this pack, at least." I offered her the backpack she'd used during the rafting trip, already packed with the spare battery packs for her laptop PC, the solar power charger, some tinned food, and a can opener. "It might come in handy."
She smiled. (Once again, I reminded myself that she's underage.) "Thanks," she replied as she and the pack faded out of existence.
I turned to Sakura. "Do you think Kero-chan would like to see how famous he is here?" I asked as I passed the Kero-chan plushie to her.
"Is this for him?"
"It's for you, but I hope you'll share it with him," I replied. "Thank you for all the hard work," I added as she and the plushie disappeared.
That left Yomiko. "I don't suppose I could convince you to stay...?"
She actually thought about it. "No," she finally answered, "or at least, not yet." She gestured to the pile of books. "But if you hang onto those for me, I'll read them next time..." And then she faded away.
For a moment, I felt lonely. Then I remembered that there was a whole real world outside my front door...
The World Community Grid is a real organization, which uses software similiar to that of SETI@Home to research medical and climate problems. I think trying to cure cancer, AIDS, hepatitis C, West Nile encephalitis, and Yellow fever is somewhat more worthwhile than looking for extraterrestrial life that we couldn't talk with even if we did find it...
-Rob Kelk
"Actually, my goal is to write neat stories. The money just makes it possible for me to write them faster and then buy neat toys."
Ryk E. Spoor, 7 November 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
"Akemashite o-medetou gozaimasu!" It was once again New Year's Day, and we celebrated as well as we could, exchanging greetings and giving both Sakura and Chisame otoshidama.
Once the formalities were completed, I sat down to read my usual Internet news feeds, curious as to whether anything was different. When I saw a story on the local news' website that hadn't been there the first time through the time loop, I groaned - if I had bothered to keep up with the news instead of spending New Year's Eve with the ladies, we could have done something about the situation when the asteroid hit, instead of waiting for six hours to react. Once the army called to request our help in controlling the plague outbreak, I apologized to Sakura; she wouldn't get to watch herself on stage after all.
It was a nasty plague, judging from the symptoms described to us when the army brought us to the scene. Infected people - there were only a few dozen so far, but the plague vector was pointing at a large city - were exhibiting a red glow over their entire bodies, and those who had been infected for more than an hour were attacking other people without provocation. Worse, the plague's incubation time was nearly zero.
"That's impossible," commented Yomiko.
"I know," I replied. "But it's happening. There's more than meets the eye here... I just wish I knew what was behind this."
We were brought as close to the meteor's landing crater as the army would allow anyone to get; normal HazMat and NBC procedures had proven ineffective.
"Which means I'm useless here," sighed Yomiko. "If a normal breathing-mask filter is useless, an improvised paper filter won't help either."
We all turned to Sakura.
She didn't say anything; she just got the steely look in her eye that she does whenever she's completely serious about a battle, invoked her staff, and pulled out the Shield card.
I put my hand on her shoulder before she could invoke the card. Surprised, she looked up at me.
"Don't over-exert yourself, Sakura-chan," I told her. "You're going to have to keep the effect going for as long as possible, maybe for days or weeks."
"I understand." Sakura invoked the card, and a bubble of translucent force covered the plague site as she collapsed into my arms.
As two corpsmen helped Sakura to a cot, I turned to the others. "Now what?" After a minute had passed without anybody replying, we all knew that we were at a loss.
The next few days were brutal. Yomiko and I waited on Sakura hand-and-foot so she could devote as much of her energy as possible to keeping the Shield in place. Meanwhile, Chisame was practically starving herself while organizing all of the data the doctors were collecting and running computer searches for any medical information that was even tangentally connected to the plague. She didn't find very much.
Five days in, Chisame gave us our first good news. By hacking into the World Community Grid and using their distributed network to analyze the collected data, she'd discovered an electrum alloy would block the spread of the plague. It took three days, and most of the Mint's stockpiles of gold and silver, to coat a containment building's walls with the required alloy. Once that was done and drywall was placed over the electrum to prevent damage to it, Sakura extended the Shield to include the building and Yomiko used some paper to herd all of the victims into it.
Then the army asked me whether the Shield would contain a fuel-air explosion.
"I doubt it," was my reply. "But even if it could, would that do anything? The plague arrived on a meteorite, so it survived re-entry. I doubt that a FAE would be hot enough to destroy it."
The captain in charge of the containment force used a few words that I won't report in a family publication, then he got his frustration under control. "Well, then what can we do about the contaminated area?"
"Extreme cold might immobilize the virus," I guessed. "Sakura has the ability to Freeze things; I just hope she has enough life force to maintain both a Freeze and a Shield at the same time."
"Let me help," volunteered Chisame. "Sakura-chan invoked my pactio before she raised the Shield because I thought I might need to use it. And I did. But one of the things a pactio does is share energy between the two people involved. If she draws on my life force, she might have enough."
"Are you sure you want to do this, Chisame-san?"
"I'm sure, Rob-san. You don't have any special abilities, but you're still trying to help out any way you can. How can I do any less?"
Oh, dear; I'd shamed her into helping. But I couldn't do anything about that except fail to notice it. "Don't kill yourself, Chiu-chan."
"I won't," she answered, just before giving me a quick kiss on the cheek. Then she sat beside Sakura and slumped over. An hour later, the army was using remote-controlled bulldozers to scrape near-absolute-zero frozen soil off of the contaminated zone and stockpiling it in the containment building.
Once that was finished, Sakura shrunk the Shield until it was completely inside the containment building, then we closed and locked the doors. Only then did she let the Shield drop.
"We're done for today," I told the army. "They're exhausted." Both Sakura and Chisame were fast asleep.
The next day, Chisame formalized her hack of the World Community Grid to make the plague research an official project. That was all we could do; none of us had any healing abilities, or medical knowledge beyond first aid.
Epilogue
We returned home in silence. With the exception of Yomiko, none of us were used to not being able to complete a mission we'd been given, and the experience wasn't pleasant. And Yomiko was quiet at the best of times.
"Now what?" asked Chisame.
"Now..." I hesitated. "Now you go back to where you came from. I'm sorry."
"I understand," she sighed as she swallowed one of her youth-potion pills. "I want to go home, but Negi-sensei and the others might need me to do their thinking for them."
"Take this pack, at least." I offered her the backpack she'd used during the rafting trip, already packed with the spare battery packs for her laptop PC, the solar power charger, some tinned food, and a can opener. "It might come in handy."
She smiled. (Once again, I reminded myself that she's underage.) "Thanks," she replied as she and the pack faded out of existence.
I turned to Sakura. "Do you think Kero-chan would like to see how famous he is here?" I asked as I passed the Kero-chan plushie to her.
"Is this for him?"
"It's for you, but I hope you'll share it with him," I replied. "Thank you for all the hard work," I added as she and the plushie disappeared.
That left Yomiko. "I don't suppose I could convince you to stay...?"
She actually thought about it. "No," she finally answered, "or at least, not yet." She gestured to the pile of books. "But if you hang onto those for me, I'll read them next time..." And then she faded away.
For a moment, I felt lonely. Then I remembered that there was a whole real world outside my front door...
The World Community Grid is a real organization, which uses software similiar to that of SETI@Home to research medical and climate problems. I think trying to cure cancer, AIDS, hepatitis C, West Nile encephalitis, and Yellow fever is somewhat more worthwhile than looking for extraterrestrial life that we couldn't talk with even if we did find it...
-Rob Kelk
"Actually, my goal is to write neat stories. The money just makes it possible for me to write them faster and then buy neat toys."
Ryk E. Spoor, 7 November 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012