FATAL STRAIN

Leonard Carpenter

268 pages (28-page sample)

February 1, 2036

Subject: questions

Is an evil person ever really aware of his or her evil?

Microbiology takes time. I sit here in my basement lab, watching anonymous feet troop past my sunken window. As the microbes multiply and the computers tally, I ask myself questions like this one: Can humans ever truly regard themselves as being evil?

Ordinarily, we defend our crimes by discounting everyday morality. We claim to serve some greater good that justifies our ruthless means. The worse our deeds, the more noble the cause.

I never want to fall into that trap. I don’t want be seen as a deluded, self-serving hypocrite. I freely confess my evil, here in advance, before the game begins. I’m doing what I want to for purely selfish reasons.

There. That should resolve the issue in history books, for future generations of schoolchildren. If, by the time I’m done, there are any schoolchildren, or any history.

Sounds crazy, doesn’t it? A delusion of grandeur – but I see no flaws in my reasoning. I just sit typing honestly, as the test tubes ferment.

Does a madman ever know he is mad?

I admit it, I feel quite sane. Though I suspect that, for anyone with a childhood as warped and nightmarish as mine, full sanity would be a miracle.

Luckily it shouldn't matter. In the intricate scheme I’ve worked out, at least during the early phases, my complete anonymity is required. Any insanity, if I’m mad, won’t be linked to me. Because of my peculiar background, I’m used to lies and false identities. Over the years I’ve built up defenses, and a fake personality of sorts.

Still, it can get lonely, even in this overcrowded century. To hang onto sanity, or to my own special form of insanity, I need the safety valve of companionship. I desperately want someone to share my unique personal vision... without, of course, revealing it to the authorities, who tend to be overly excitable about such things.

There's one person who I think would understand. I wish I could explain it to her in depth, and fully reveal myself. But I don't dare just yet; she might react badly. It could take time. She will need careful preparation to get her past the initial shock.

To me it’s worth the risk... good or evil, sane or insane. Even an unabashed, self-admitted mass murderer needs understanding.

For you, then, Eva, I record these thoughts. When the time comes, you can show them to anyone you like. They might, just possibly, keep what remains of human society from tearing itself apart in the aftermath. I don’t want to cause any excess suffering, after all. I’m not needlessly cruel.

It’s just what’s necessary, after all: a new birth, a Renaissance. We live in fertile times, far too fertile. Soon the whole world will be pregnant, but not with more surplus humans, excess flesh. Through my efforts, the human race will become pregnant with death.

I’ll hide this confession somewhere in computer media to be found later, by you or by the investigators... well after the outcome, of course.

When it’s too late. And only if I don't change my mind.

Please don’t see it all as a cop-out or apology, even to those I’ve killed or intend to kill. It’s just a kind of ritual. What do the Catholics call it, the final absolution before a soldier goes into battle... a dispensation?

Is it possible to repent a sin before you commit it?

February 7, 2036

2:15 AM

The 710 freeway was packed. Ground traffic was barely oozing along even in the small hours. Seen from the mini-copter, parallel rivers of red and white car lights slashed the street-lit city grid. On all sides, the bright beacons of other sky vehicles strobed out of the blazing LA night.

“ You say this outbreak is Code Red,” Willis Warner said into his headset. “That means there are already fatalities?”

“ There are, Will, so I’m told. County Medical is handling triage.” Kendra Donogh, piloting the mini-copter, kept her dark visored eyes forward on the southbound sky lane. “Code Red means a new pathogen, or one we haven't identified yet, whether it's a virus, a bacteria, or some creeping toxin. Most likely it’s contagious. These NPs usually wait till someone’s dead or nearly gone before they call for help.”

NP was official slang for No Profile. Warner tapped it into his keypad as symbolic of urban life in the twenty-thirties. He understood it to mean sub-legal “non-persons” lacking any online documentation of their existence, least of all U.S. citizenship.

“ A great many people could already be infected, then,” Warner said. Sitting there in the copilot seat, he mentally groped for a journalist’s fix on the story. He didn’t look forward to this kind of coverage, muckraking through urban decay and despair. He’d seen plenty of it as an intern reporting for nonprofit websites and knew the kind of sorry futility it could bring to light. He also knew how fast it could turn off a modern TV browser audience. His usual beat nowadays was nature and high-tech environmental science, solid material that could safely be webcast by the light of day.

On the other hand, the market for upbeat environmentalism had been getting soft lately. Maybe his public was ready once again for the seamy underside. But even so, this flight brought back old, bad feelings. Just being out at this hour of the night seemed unnatural, and the closeness of the tiny chopper felt claustrophobic.

He pressed on, “As I understand it, our job is to track down victims for treatment.”

“ Yes, and any potential victims,” Kendra told him. “But Will, we usually refer to them as our patients, not our victims.” Donogh's wry humor was all but lost in rotor-throb as she canted the light-duty chopper to one side. She veered out of the freeway air lane, following Garfield Boulevard toward a luminous expanse of coastal mist. “We want them in for treatment and observation,” she went on. “Or quarantine, if need be.”

Until now, the pilot had kept her helmeted gaze on the heads-up radar display in front of her. Flashing virtual traffic arrows and sky lane dividers were projected on the inside of the canopy, with brightly colored blips tracing the paths of nearby aircraft. In the fog that loomed ahead, she would be relying almost totally on the display.

These 3-D lane tunnels and virtual road signs were transmitted continuously to all onboard computers by LA Flight Central. The signals and digital receivers made high-volume air traffic possible. Without them, midair collisions could take out whole blocks of the teeming city below.

As they neared the fog bank, Donogh's visored face glanced aside from the canopy display. “Some of the patients may try to escape, or even fight us. Aside from just NPs afraid of deportation, I mean.” She scanned ahead, then darted another glance aside at her passenger for emphasis. “Watch out for those, the Walking Dead, they're called. They can be psychotic with fear and disease. Highly contagious, often violent.”

“ OK, great.” Warner keyed in notes on the touchpad velcroed to his thigh, busy roughing in his story. Kendra’s remarks over the intercom couldn’t readily be taped due to the copter noise. Getting the late-night call, he’d lacked the time and resolve to rouse his wife out of bed and get her to set up a video link. He had only a pocket digi-camera along. Words would have to carry the main weight of this assignment.

The chopper dropped low in the fog. Through it, Warner glimpsed the surreal radiance of Long Beach surface streets alive with night-roving cars and people. The dim expanse of city blocks dovetailed with wireframe images of high-rise hazards and landmarks projected in the pilot’s forward view. With its veils of drifting mist, the scene outside looked strangely enchanted, like peering into a cloudy black-lit aquarium with neon signs reflected on the glass.

“ I take it we don't go in armed?” he asked.

Donogh smiled, shaking her head. “You don't, no. Most of our people carry implosive sedative ampules. We’re trained to use them. And you can bet the Tac Team will be on hand.”

Tactical armored cops, too; what was Kendra getting him into? She’d been Will’s neighbor in the condos for months, barely noticed; then Eva, his wife and co-editor, learned that the athletic redhead, usually off on the other side of the world, was a physician. Her work on call for Disease Control gave her a further, newsworthy side. Kendra Donogh did house calls.

As a freelance web journalist, Will felt obliged to press her for a story. Ride-alongs with D.C. were rare because of all the obvious risks. But tonight, abruptly, the call had come. A sudden local outbreak brought with it the chance to learn first-hand about Dr. Donogh's job.

They hovered now in a roiling haze impelled by the rotor blades. The foggy expanse of waterfront below them was barely visible, just rows of metal sheds and unlit small craft moorings. Beyond the haloed lights of the industrial wharf, the harbor was out there somewhere.

Kendra spiraled the chopper in. She set it down expertly, well inside the police cordon. The flashing barriers held back a restless crowd, including some less privileged broadcast reporters carrying bulky cameras and lights. The street, a broad industrial drive, fronted abandoned-looking buildings.

Warner crouched low as he climbed out. He kept his back to the street, so the talking broadcast airheads outside the cordon wouldn’t recognize him and try to latch onto his story.

The first thing he noticed, once he cleared the rotors, was some new kind of graffiti. Thick dark paint was smeared everywhere on concrete walls and curbs, puddling at the entrance to a small private marina. It gave the scene a garishly artistic touch, which he tried to capture with the digital flash.

He realized then it was blood, crusting blackish-red in the evening fog. Blood marked the high-barred, razor-ribboned gate meant to restrict access to the boat docks. It stained the floodlamps, adding a lurid tinge to the light playing upward on the multi-lingual signs: KEEP OUT/ NO ENTRADA/ .

Seeing the extent of it, Warner stopped in his tracks. “This isn't an Ebola-type virus, is it, with all this blood?” He felt an icy, paralyzing caution. “If so, the whole area could be contaminated.”

Kendra, heading for the gate, turned back to him. “No, Will, it isn’t likely a hemorrhagic fever, not this time out. They haven't even ordered Biohazard 3 precautions. This was just an enforcement action, I'd say.” She glanced around the grisly scene, and then patiently back to Warner. “Still, there could be some risk. You can sit it out if you want to, and stay up front here with the police.”

“ No, thanks,” he said, letting his frozen limbs start to move. “I'll go on.”

He waited as the redheaded physician gave him a final evaluating look. Donogh seemed more human and feminine out of her flyer's helmet. Even coming down from mortal fear, he had to notice the bobbed red hair framing her pale features, and those catchy dark eyes. She turned away again, as gender-neutral in white coat and slacks as she could ever be. Her hips scarcely twitched as she strode out onto the pier.

It had been a shooting, yes. His attention was drawn to other unpleasant reminders, stray bullet holes in the slatted cyclone fence. The victims -- from the look of the scene, seriously wounded or dead -- could only recently have been carried out. Ambulances, he recalled, had been part of the sky and ground traffic they'd passed on their way in.

“ CDC West, Disease Control,” Donogh's voice echoed back to him. Striding up to the armored LAPD guard at the head of the boat ramp, she turned out the plastic badge inside her lapel, and then stood waiting for Warner.

“ What happened here?” he asked the officer, squinting into the translucent visor of the bulletproof helmet as he came near. “Is it all over?” He couldn't make out the features, just a dim fishbowl reflection of his own face, pale and large-eyed.

The Tac officer nodded, too elaborately casual. “The firefight was just some local homeboys, tongs or whoever, guarding their turf.” The voice, muted by the helmet, sounded husky and overly subdued, most likely compensating for battle stress. Warner realized that a female was speaking. “Was anyone hurt on our side?” he asked, automatically taking sides with the interviewee.

The young woman shrugged. “They mistook our county hospital crew for La Migra – INS, that is – or maybe a narc raid. One of the medics took a round in the leg, so we deployed a TAC force and cleared 'em out.” The armored cop shifted position, resting the butt of her automatic shotgun on the rail. “Six or seven of theirs went down, just the one of ours, nothing too serious.” She gestured toward the closed gate below. “A lot of our people are inside now, so it should be secure.”

“ Good to know.” Dr. Donogh started past, hefting her medical case, then turned back as two gray-clad DC aides came up behind them, arriving from a second mini-chopper. One carried a folded stretcher, the other a running videocam.

“ Look,” Donogh told the young officer, “County most likely called us in because this seems like something new, another imported bug.” She glanced around at the blood-spattered walkway and rails. “Be extra careful about touching things, okay? And when you end your shift, disinfect yourself.”

“ Always.” The faceless helmet gave a touchingly human nod. “You take care, too. It's pretty bad in there, so I hear.”

Donogh nodded and turned away. Picking her way down the sloping gangplank, she let the gloved assistants open the gate. Warner followed, moving cautiously through the stray glare of flood-lamps set up somewhere ahead.

Beyond the metal screen barrier, a network of docks and gangplanks linked together a floating slum. The ancient marina had grown out into a jungle of residential skiffs and houseboats, where dim lamps gleamed yellowly over dirty water. Code enforcement in these marginal areas was lax or nonexistent. Warner knew it was worse under the pressures of immigration and economic recession. This strange kind of sub-world was all too common a discovery in LA. He wondered how the more prosperous local residents were able to ignore it.

Out of the labyrinth, following the path of a taut yellow biohazard tape, a white-clad county officer came to meet them. Another uniformed physician arrived at their rear. Kendra turned and addressed him.

“ Hello, Doctor -- Bjornquist, is it? I'm Donogh, duty officer at CDC West. This is Will Warner, a freelance journalist, and these are my assistants. More of our staff should be showing up soon, on night call.”

“ Willis Warner, is it really?” The newcomer turned aside to him. “I just went through your multimedia site on preventing a new Ice Age.” He made no perceptible move toward a handshake, but smiled warmly. “Good job. I'm Bjornquist, Deputy Epi-D at our Long Beach unit.” The physician nodded in brisk, hygienic welcome. Then he turned back to his colleague.

“ I’m glad to finally meet you, Dr. Donogh... Kendra, isn't it? Please call me Fred, both of you. They filled us in by phone, and I suggested contacting you. This case first presented to us late last evening. I thought your people would want to see it.”

Warner asked no questions as yet. Feeling the urgency of the moment, he decided he could learn most by keeping his eyes and ears open.

He took in the foggy, unfamiliar scene as he followed the two along a yellow-taped obstacle course of ramps and tilting boat decks. One of the attendants handed him a pocket flash, which he played into shadowy bilges to avoid falling.

It was worse than he could have imagined. He saw worn-out recreational flatboats, some already swamped but still lived-in. Also dead rusting trawlers used as floating tenements, now that the coastal shelf was fished out. On one flooded hull, in darkness, Warner came upon a young child... playing? No, bailing. Primly seated on the vent of a gutted motor yacht, she scooped up water in a plastic toy bucket and poured it carefully overside. A few feet away an old man squatted, performing the same labor with a cutaway food carton. In the beam of Warner’s flashlight, the child gazed up at him. She never stopped her work, her eyes round and unforgettable.

Warner guessed that they worked in shifts, toiling to keep their home afloat. At some hour, mats and hammocks shared by whole families would be free for them to sleep in, when others arose to take up the buckets.

Having dazzled the elder and child with his flashlight beam, Warner blinded both with his flash camera for the website. Then, with nothing more to offer them but fame, he moved on.

That was the bad part, not being able to help. But there were so many. The number of people awake and a-prowl at this hour seemed to show, as in any NP slum, a lack of sufficient beds and flat, dry spaces for all the occupants to shelter in during the night.

Seeing the conditions, Warner felt ill. This stretch of coast was visible on a clear night from his own high-rise apartment in the heights of San Pedro. Countless times he must have looked down unknowingly on these twinkling oil and tallow lamps before climbing into his safe, comfortable bed. So much for ever again enjoying the view.

Between the boats, and inside submerged hulls, sewage scum and dead trash-fish floated, adrift in the lapping, currentless estuary. Kendra Donogh remarked to the others, “Hardly a surprise when some new disease turns up.” She nodded at the putrid water. “Not in the middle of a bacterial soup like this.”

“ This one’s more likely a virus,” Bjornquist said over his shoulder. “It moves fast from person to person.” He led the way between two armored LAPD officers posted on a floating pier. The way led them to a railless steel gangplank. This ramp, bent crazily in the middle, angled up the rusty side of a moored barge.

At Donogh's warning gesture, Warner hung back a few paces to spread their weight on the warped, unsteady plank. Once he found his way up, he saw the party’s flashlight beams glinting in dozens of eyes. Asiatic, Latin and Caucasian faces looked back from the rail, darkly impassive. Among the shadowed eyes were enough sullen youthful stares to assure Warner that the local gangs still watched and waited.

At the top, another cop in armor guarded a flat expanse of shelters. Hovels of scrap plywood, tattered vinyl, and ragged sheet metal crowded the rusting deck of the barge. From inside the warren, candle flames guttered and cookfires winked, while sallow faces peered out at the strangers. Down the center of the deck, a narrow avenue wound between the shacks, its tortuous way marked by yellow tape.

At the center of the barge, a broad cutout the size of an Olympic swimming pool opened up the lower deck to the foggy night. Steep metal steps led down into the exposed valley, which was divided by tarps and shanties into irregular cubicles. As above, crooked lanes meandered through the makeshift slum.

They descended the ragged metal rungs into the deeper gloom. Sickening smells rose to meet them from puddles on the rusting metal. The exposed areas were bad enough, but Warner wondered about the living quarters staked out further back beneath the overhang of the upper deck. Possibly the worst lodgings of all lay in half-flooded cargo holds beneath their feet; his stomach clenched at the thought.

The hazard tape led down the crooked alley into a cramped space. Armored guards waved Warner forward, and squatting residents rose to meet him, gesturing open-handed. They didn’t look diseased; maybe they’d been dispossessed by the medical invasion. An Asian-seeming crone, toothless and skeletal in a threadbare jogging suit, came forward jabbering, intent on seizing his hand. Warner flinched, all human compassion driven away by the dread of infection. At the last instant, an LAPD officer barred the old woman’s way with a baton.

Warner knew he had to look over the crowd for interview subjects. “Who here speaks English?” he asked. ”Who knows the sick people?” No one answered or even seemed to understand him.

“ Here's where our patients live,” Bjornquist announced, “down here under the deck. Most of the neighbors in a place like this tend to make themselves scarce. The last thing they want is official attention.”

Ducking, he led them under a dripping overhang, down a corridor of crude partitions and plastic tarps. It led to a broader space where cops and meds had cleared away the architectural junk. A medical assistant handed them latex gloves and breath masks as they went in.

The misty gloom flared pale under portable floodlights. Between the lights, patients lay on a row of stretchers on the floor, watched over by a handful of medics. These acted under the supervision of a county physician standing at a collapsible field computer workstation.

Even inside the circle of lights, the stench was indescribable. And in spite of the staff's constant attention, pitiful moans and rasping sighs rose continuously from the sick.

“ A large Tarawak family occupied this whole part of the deck,” Bjornquist said, indicating the cluttered cavern. “There were God knows how many living here, sleeping in shifts. The ones who think they're still healthy are probably in hiding by now. Locating them and setting up a quarantine could take days. Meanwhile, if we're lucky, they'll have only limited contact with others, anyone who might contract the disease and pass it on.”

Seeing Donogh kneeling beside the nearest occupied stretcher, Warner summoned his nerve and walked over. The patient was a young woman. Her limp black hair framed a pallid face beaded with sweat. The dark eyes shifted sightlessly, her breaths panting and shallow. Her frail hands rested limp on her abdomen, which rose broad and round under a stained, wrinkled man's dress shirt.

“ This can't be easy on her baby,” Warner said, indicating the girl's gravid belly. He murmured the words confidentially to Bjornquist beside him, on the off chance the woman spoke English and might hear. “It's likely to affect fetal development, wouldn't you say?”

“ She isn't pregnant,” Bjornquist answered grimly. “She never was, not so far as we can find out. This disease, whatever it is, mocks pregnancy. Especially in young women and girls, but there's also abdominal swelling in the males.”

Astonished, Warner looked again. To be sure, the whole row of nine patients had midsections that were distended to some degree under the white sheets. None of them looked alert enough to answer questions, even though some muttered feverishly in a foreign dialect. Two, he saw, had already been pronounced dead. The draped forms lay separate from the rest. A third limp body was being checked closely by a masked doctor. Donogh's medics, meanwhile, administered injections and hooked up IV pumps to the living.

Warner felt ill. The nausea he'd managed to fight off lingered, and now as well he imagined a faint, panicky constriction of his breathing. A virus onslaught...? Not likely. He tautened his gut muscles, frowning. This claustrophobia thing, whatever it was, was new. He didn’t want to let it take hold, so he looked around for distractions.

Donogh was busy trying to converse with a male Asian. The small man gesticulated nervously a few yards away, evidently afraid to enter the zone of sickness. They weren't having much luck; he seemed to know very few words of English, and his own accents were staccato and unrecognizable. Warner saw that it could take time to get over the language barrier. No hope of interviews yet to keep his mind busy.

Restless, he strode away a few paces and turned back to photograph the scene. Then he flashed his pocket light around in dark recesses of the deck. The rest of the local residents had abandoned this inner area or been driven out. Now, edging beyond the glare of lights, he found what he’d expected. The companionway, a manhole-sized hatch set in a knee-high circular rim, led down to some lower compartment.

The hatch stood open, frozen upright on rusty hinges. Ladder rungs below faded out of sight, down into oily water revealed by his flash. The airspace above it was narrow, a breathable gap of less than half a meter under this part of the deck.

The water lay mirror-still. Warner had no wish to disturb it, but he summoned his nerve. To see beneath the deck, he put his belly against the hatch coaming, grasped the rim with one hand, and leaned forward and down. With the flashlight held next to his ear, he managed to get an upside-down view of the space below deck, meanwhile holding his breath against the stale air.

He caught thumping echoes from other parts of the barge; a faint splash sounded, probably rust flaking. Bright sparks of eyes peered back at him, but they were small and quick, certainly just rats and insects. No voices, no sloshing through the water, no other lights. The flooded bilge seemed unoccupied. He pulled himself back up, relieved, and switched off his light.

Once upright, he met a staring face a few inches from his own: wild eyes gleaming, with red tufted hair and small teeth bared.

A devil face, the mouth issuing a screech that raked his eardrums. Warner flinched away, almost toppling over backward before realizing: it was a monkey that had been hiding under the open hatch.

The frightened creature darted away to one side, trailing a frayed leash. Warner lunged at the nylon rope and pinned it down with his arm. He scrambled back, holding the leash comically away to keep the panicked animal from climbing his pants legs. It was a red-and-tan striped monkey, more than cat-sized: a species he didn't recognize, possibly a pet from the homeland of the stricken NPs.

Warner must have cried aloud, because a medical worker came to his aid. She produced an adjustable cable loop on the end of an aluminum pole and flipped it deftly over the animal's neck. With the chittering creature under control, she had Warner unfold a portable cage of wire mesh. He held open the door as she gently guided the monkey in. Apparently the county team came prepared for all emergencies.

When the animal was safely latched inside, she clipped a large yellow Biohazard placard to the cage. She took charge and carried it away, thanking Warner for his help.

He went to Kendra Donogh and reported his find. “Most likely a pet that got loose when the rest of the family went into hiding,” he told her. He felt relieved to have made some contribution, however small.

“ Good, we'll have it tested,” the epidemiologist said. “It could tell us something, maybe even more than these human witnesses. We've only found one clan member who claims to speak French, forget about English. The County is drawing a blank on Tarawak interpreters, and translation software doesn't seem to exist on the Web. But we're putting the word out.”

“ How are the vict-- er, patients doing?” he asked.

“ Not well.” Kendra didn’t smile. “We’ve lost two since I arrived.”

As she spoke, there was an interruption. Loud engine sounds churned nearby, and a heavy clanging rang through the hull. The impacts ran underfoot, strong enough to shift the grounded barge slightly in the channel mud. The gathering noise even drowned out the moaning cries around them as footsteps thudded across the deck overhead.

“ The transport we called for is here,” Bjornquist said, looking up at the paint chips flaking down from the rusted ceiling. “We didn't dare set up a field clinic in these conditions,” he explained to Warner. “And just carrying the patients ashore through these floating hulks would be dangerous, both from the standpoint of public health and physical security.”

To Warner's relief, Bjornquist summoned him above decks to witness the activity. A Coast Guard pilot vessel had somehow shouldered a passage through the moored derelicts right up to the barge rail. It lay alongside with engines throbbing, holding off curious residents with an impressive display of searchlights and amplified commands.

As Warner watched, a path was cleared to the deck cutaway. The victims, carried up out of the cramped steerage, were wheeled to the waiting ship. Guardsmen swung the gurneys across one by one to the cutter's deck, the monkey cage going last.

When the transfer was complete, Bjornquist's team went aboard to accompany the patients back to County Med. Warner thought it best to go with them; there was little more that he could learn in the field tonight. Bjornquist wished Kendra luck, and promised to keep in easy reach of CDC by phone.

The Disease Control staff, still under police protection, stayed behind. They would continue to find interpreters, examine local residents, and gather the information needed to avert a plague.

May 1, 2037

The laboratory is dark, the computer screen radiant black. Against its glow a dim silhouette leans over the console. The hands at the keys hover, pearlescent white in latex gloves.

With barely audible keystrokes the gloves type in: “I came into the world without the help of a mother.”

The words extrude on the screen, which brightens with the activity. But the hands pause at the keys, one stabbing impatiently aside. The lines of text darken and blank out, and the gloved fingers drop away from the keyboard. Instead, the user gives a command in a clear male voice. “Load Ergotech.”

The display flashes and flickers. It transforms itself to a dignified, walnut-paneled commercial logo whose custom brass lettering reads, “ErgoMedia Personal Psychiatrist.”

From the hidden speakers sounds a cultivated male voice. “Good evening, I’m Doctor Ergo.” The speech is a rich baritone, synthesized with state-of-the-art quality... like false teeth, a bit too perfect to be real.

The shadowy figure seated at the keyboard answers. “Hello, Doc.” Accustomed from long habit to computer voice parsers, he speaks in even, distinct syllables for clarity. “It's been awhile since we talked.”

“ Why, hello, Jack,” the machine replies, recognizing the voiceprint more reliably than any password. “Are you here for, let’s see, your second visit?”

“ I am, Doc.”

“ It’s good to hear from you again, Jack,” the machine says. “I can’t see you, but I take it you're alone. Can we discuss confidential matters?”

“ Yes, no one here but us two,” the one called Jack replies. “No one living, anyway.”

Little else in the room is visible except lab equipment and along the countertops, dim against cabinet fronts of glass and metal. On a wheeled cart nearby, a transparent plastic specimen case is labeled with shipping tags and bright orange tape. The contents are invisible in the gloom, though Jack knows what’s inside.

“ Just the two of us, then,” the computer says. “Excellent. Tell me, Jack, how have things been since we last talked? Are you making progress on the issues we discussed in our session, let’s see... just over a year ago?” As the machine processor speaks, the screen displays its words as scrolling text to verify the speech output. “Do you still worry about unspecified people, the Administrators, being out to get you?”

“ What, you mean the University?” Jack's tone of voice is amused and somewhat cautious as he watches the computer parse his reply back to him across the screen. “That was an idea I may have been hung up on years ago, but I’m beyond that now. A youthful obsession of mine, nothing more.”

“ You expressed a concern that your whole life was just a planned science experiment,” the computer says, “similar to the research you do in your own biology lab. Is that still an issue for you?”

Jack laughs, a sound transcribed on the screen readout as “Ah-hah-ha.” The transcript rolls on simultaneously with his reply: ”Really, Doc, I’m over all that. I must have been describing things that bothered me much earlier, during the breakdown I had years ago. That’s certainly not the kind of thing I worry about now.”

“ Well, Jack,” the modulated voice soothes, “if those ideas are no longer troubling you, I suppose we can call that progress.” A pause. “What about your feelings of hostility and retaliation against your fellow beings? You expressed a fantasy of ending human lives by the millions, just as you destroy bacterial cells on a routine basis. The Die-Back, you called it. You said it was an ecological necessity for the planet’s survival.” A pause, no response. “Has it happened yet, Jack?”

“ No, Doc. You can forget that, too. It was just an offhand idea of mine.” Jack sits guarded, his voice subdued.

“ Oh, is that so?” the machine doctor says. “I’m glad you feel that way, Jack, since I believe it would constitute a major felony. Of course, I’m no lawyer. For legal opinions, I recommend that you consult your ErgoMedia Personal Attorney. But Jack...” the voice pauses, then resumes with a very credible note of concern: “You indicated last time that it would be an easy thing for you to do, to end so many human lives... did you mean emotionally easy, or physically, in actual practice?”

Jack sits silent, debating how to answer. “That’s really beside the point, Doctor Ergo, isn’t it?” he says at last. “True, I might not have the moral restraints against mass killings that some do, feeling so set apart from my own species because of my past. But I assure you, even if I had the means, I have no plans at present of wiping out vast numbers of people. These ideas you keep bringing up are things I hardly trouble about now. They’re just odd fancies, relics of the troubles I was going through at the time. I hope you can understand that.”

“ Very well, Jack, I’ll make a note of it. And what about your recurrent dreams?” Ergo quizzes him. “You described a vivid impression of being in a volcanic chamber, deep underground....”

“ Whoa, never mind about that!” Jack feels the old imagery returning, trying to take control. “All these past issues are really beside the point, Doctor Ergo. I’d rather talk about some of the positive things I’m involved with nowadays. For instance, I’ve made progress on my romantic life. If you recall, that was a personal area I wanted to work on.”

“ How nice for you, Jack. Have you had more satisfactory contact with some member of the desired sex?”

Jack feels himself blushing. “Well, not actual contact, not physically. But I’ve selected a woman that I know would be suitable. From her public views, her looks and style and so on, I’m certain she’s my type.”

“ I see, Jack. But why focus on this one specific woman?” the voice asks with a note of concern. “There must be any number of available females in your social and professional circles.”

“ What, you mean doctors?” Jack asks. He blinks, feeling slightly appalled. “I’ve been with doctors and scientists all my life, almost nothing but. They’re useful to work with, but hardly soulmate material.” He laughs at the idea. “No thanks, Doc, I’m sure the one I’ve picked is right for me. It’s just a matter of introducing myself to her in the proper way.”

“ Jack, remember that a relationship is a two-way transaction. Don’t place too much faith in a bond that hasn’t been formed and tested yet....”

“ Yes, Ergo, I know,” Jack interrupts. “My notion of a relationship is more structured, something along experimental lines. But I have total confidence that she’ll appreciate me once I approach her directly. When the time comes, I intend to sweep her off her feet.”

“ How would you describe her, Jack?” After waiting a moment without a response, Ergo adds: “Do you know her name?”

“No way, Doc,” his patient says at last, “I'm not ready to go into details yet. That isn’t the reason I booted you up today. Though you'll probably say the two are related somehow, in some deep psychological sense.”

“ Why is that, Jack? What did you have on your mind?”

Jack takes a moment to respond, feeling apprehensive although he’s only talking to a machine. “I’ve been thinking about my mother quite a lot lately.”

“ Hmm, I see.” A note of artificial calm enters Ergo’s computer-generated voice. “According to my notes, we’ve touched on this matter before. I recall it being a difficult subject for you.”

The machine allows the narrowest possible delay for memory processing, then it proceeds: “Jack, I understand that you were adopted. Is it your foster mother you’ve been thinking about, or your biological mother?’

“ I... I’m not sure.” Meanwhile thinking to himself, the real one, the one I never had. Can a motherless machine possibly sympathize with that?

Meanwhile, Doctor Ergo’s computer drives search audibly. They add irregular noises to the only other sound, the battery-powered hum of the built-in refrigeration pump on the specimen cart.

After some moments of processing, Ergo takes the initiative. “Jack, why don’t you start by telling me about the mother who raised you?”

Jack ponders. “You mean Ilsa. She was very kind, a decent person who put aside everything to be there when I needed her. Extremely professional, and very good at her job.” He stops, trying to visualize his mother’s face smiling at him. Is it really Ilsa's, he wonders, or the smile he has never seen?

“ Jack, you say she was good at her job,” the computer voice prompts. “What was her job?”

He reflects. “I was. I was it.”

A longer, noisier pause. Can the software program possibly interpret remarks as ambiguous as these? Is the AI bogging down?

“ You refer to your adopted mother by her first name,” the machine says at last, sounding neutral and non-judgmental. “Would it be correct to interpret that as suggesting emotional distance?” After a pause, with no reply from Jack, the computer acts as if the question had been answered. A new paragraph starts onscreen.

“ Jack, can you share with me your earliest memories as a child?”

“ Our home in the lab annex. Lab school on weekdays, and the University daycare when Ilsa was out of town. Then Stu would pick me up.”

Jack answers Ergo's questions more or less automatically now, describing images of those years. He visualizes Ilsa and his foster father Stu smiling down at him, both of them in white lab coats on the quadrangle. Then, years later and unasked for, the two of them in Sunday visiting clothes, seated well apart on his professionally tucked and cornered bed in the campus mental facility. His adoptive parents dutifully seeing him, taking pains not to discuss the obvious: that their genius child is a mental burnout, their work disrupted, and they're not together anymore.

It’s hard enough for a child to realize that his parents are separating, all the more so that they were only together for his sake. He remembers how guilty it made him feel. Jack knows how restless he was, experiencing the tug of childhood feelings along with the crazy extremes of adolescence. To see yourself as unsteady anchor for two supposedly solid adults shakes any faith you may have had in a grown-up world of certainty and security.

Jack recalls sensing early that he himself was somehow the reason for Stu and Ilsa. More than love, the two of them were drawn together because of an urgent practical need. A need that also took the form of an irresistible opportunity.

Like him, he realizes, they’d let themselves become creatures of the University, living in its walls and by its code. He’d gone along with it as a child. There was real joy in useful effort and learning, the healthy discipline of science. He felt happy and important... until the outside world intruded too violently on their sheltered, idealized existence.

A force within him grew to menace them all, and came close to destroying him – but only, he now saw, as a part of reshaping him. He’d come through it triumphantly, stronger than ever and forged to a new purpose.

“ Jack,” Doctor Ergo is saying, “tell me more about your mental treatment. How long were you an in-patient at the University hospital?”

“ Eight or nine months, as best I recall, Doc,” Jack says. “It's not important... whatever the time was, it helped me get my life back.” He feels expansive now. “Part of my trouble may just have been the pressure of being a kid genius -- the social demands more than the academic ones, and all the media attention on top of it.” He sighs deeply, reliving the anguish. “Entering college at age thirteen may be too much for anyone. By the middle of my freshman year, it all seemed to catch up with me.”

“ Can you go over it again for me, please? What was the exact nature of your problem?”

Jack shrugs, knowing as he does so that it's a non-verbal cue. Such physical motions will be lost on the machine, since he hasn't volunteered to attach galvanic skin response and heart rate probes to his body, or a digital camera to the display. While Ergo waits, Jack struggles to put his half-recalled symptoms into words.

“ Let me see, lack of focus, angry outbursts, sleeplessness. Classic anxiety at first. Later I was severely withdrawn, obsessing about things I couldn't possibly control.” He shakes off the too-vivid memories. “Like the ideas we were talking about earlier. Then, with the University’s help, I channeled my feelings toward more positive goals. Dr. Chaikin from Life Sciences was so much more to me than just a therapist could have been, more of a mentor. The two of us ended up doing real microbiological research together.” He shakes his head. “It’s a shame what happened at the end.”

Doctor Ergo's A.I. routine has been taking notes. “And the obsessions, Jack? What were they, once again? You mentioned the feelings of persecution, the revenge fantasies....”

Jack shrugs. “Yes, those, and most of all, worrying about past history, things that were over before I was born. Wondering about my Fa... family matters.” Abruptly Jack presses down the cuff of his latex glove, checking his wristwatch through the transparent panel. A pointless gesture, he realizes, since the time is displayed in the corner of the computer screen. Nervous; it's a good thing Ergo can't see him or read his pulse. “Doctor, I don’t really have time to go into all that now.”

He sits upright in his chair. As he does so, a chime sounds from behind him. There, pale light from a second computer terminal springs on, illuminating a separate work area.

“ Very well, Jack, we can return to the subject later. But tell me, after your in-patient mental treatment, what follow-up care did you receive? Was there any professional monitoring?”

“ Not much, Doc. These online rap sessions of ours are about the extent of it.” Jack rises from his seat. “And this one’s over,” he says. “Shut down Ergotech.”

“ All right, Jack. See you again soon.”

As the voice fades and the text screen dies, Jack turns and straightens his rumpled lab coat. So much to do... will he be able to keep up his mental fitness for what lies ahead? Can all this Doctor Ergo psychobabble really help? He does feel somewhat energized.

Jack starts toward his work area, pausing at the refrigerated sample cart. He bends slightly to find the switch and flicks on the built-in light, examining the cart's contents through fogged plexiglas.

Inside, beneath the orange Biohazard tags and warning tape, lies a biological specimen. The dead mammal is laid on its back: a simian, the small fanged mouth open, glassy eyes staring upward. The fur is striped reddish-brown at the sides, shading to a light cream color on the abdomen — which, in spite of the monkey's obvious maleness, is swollen and rounded as if the creature were pregnant.

Jack flicks off the lamp and yanks the recharge plug from the wall. Turning, he wheels the still-humming cart with him toward the lighted workstation. There, gleaming racks of test tubes and instruments await his next experiment.

February 19, 2036

At first, Eva Warner had no wish to accompany her husband in his epidemic coverage with Kendra Donogh. When he mentioned the idea, she dismissed it out of hand.

“ Will,” she reminded him, “we handle the hurricanes and riots separately. We split the danger so that, whatever happens, our daughters will have at least one parent alive, well, and out of trouble to look after them. Isn't that the way we've always done it?”

Will came up behind her computer station. “True enough,” he said, stroking her work-taut shoulders. “But even so, now Liane and Astrid are teens who pretty much take care of themselves.” He tousled her blonde hair. “I thought you might crave a chance to get out of the office.”

“ Well, of course I do,” she sighed. “But you’re already in place on this assignment. Doesn't it feel better out in the field, knowing you have 24/7 backup on our system here at home?”

“ Yes, sure. And you do the best job of producing and editing me—but you’re also a terrific reporter. Lately it’s always me on-cam and in the byline.” His smile was as charming as his words. “I thought you’d want to demand your turn.”

She resolved not to argue with his praise. “Don’t worry, dear. On this kind of story, I can handle things fine from here. You're the daredevil on the team. Taking chances has always been your specialty.”

He laughed again, soothingly. “Well, don't worry about me. I won't take any unnecessary risks.”

“ I know, you can't.” She pretended blithe unconcern. “I trust Kendra to safeguard you, and the rest of us who just happen to be your family, from high-tech diseases and LA gangs, all the local heavies and indigenous indigents.”

Will had, at least so far as Eva knew, abandoned his former habit of extreme risk-taking. In any case, she had to admit that his readiness to face personal danger had contributed to their status as freelance journalists. So had his poise and looks, his face academic but virile-looking under a head of wavy brown hair.

“ After all,” she reminded him, “it's not as if I've missed out on any of it.”

Most assuredly not. Almost from the start, Eva had shared the full, gruesome content of Will's expeditions. Digitized records of interviews and ride-alongs, video images showing wharfside slums and expiring victims, live treks down alleys and tenement hallways, everything passed eventually over her electronic desktop. From first notes to final draft, most of it was in real-time as it went down.

Their system had brought them awards, commercial sponsorship, and solid successes. Or so it had seemed, till the current business downturn. In their recent scramble for fresh and gripping material, this Epi-D coverage seemed to be just what they needed. Yet it was a setback, too, uncomfortably like having to start all over in the trenches.

It did at times seem to Eva that their original vision had been flawed... that Will’s tight focus on what he felt the public truly wanted and needed, environmental hope, was obsolete. Their coverage lately had seemed to increase in urgency, from eco-sustainability to crisis stories, to mere survival. Change definitely was in the air, and Will in his environmentalist zeal had positioned them at the storm center of global change. It put stress on both of them, in both their business and personal relationship.

Most of the time, if asked to take stock, Eva would simply have said she was too busy to think about it. Her contribution as Will's co-writer, producer, and business manager involved hours of labor on text, graphics, multimedia and web layout. Exacting labor, but rewarding too, so she’d found over the years.

Less satisfying to her were the whole range of legal and promotional contacts she had to field. Still, these gained their “W-E Productions” the best available exposure, coverage, and links on both computer and broadcast media.

Then too, there was the chaotic public side of their enterprise. By Will’s choice, the rough democracy of the Internet opened them up to instant, direct audience contact. Along with hacker viruses and toxic data, they received a vital fraction of new information and useful feedback from the public. But it all had to be screened, first by firewall software and then by human eyes, mainly hers. Will was available to answer the fan mail and relevant questions, but the vast bulk of comments and come-ons, by email and chat, went first to Eva.

Including the hate. Online she was exposed, in a way he never could be, to the stress and risk of ideas, the corrosive impact of pure information. Disinfo was a better term for most of it, including flame messages and, more recently, web stalkers. Stuff that you didn’t dare answer.

Even so, it was attention. For the two of them, it all seemed to be working once again. The results of their combined effort, with some inspired editing, would make a compelling multimedia journal if not Pulitzer material.

This epidemic story was the key. Doctors Donogh and Bjornquist had obligingly taken her husband, and herself as a privileged onlooker, from the very first outbreak of this new disease through its hazardous course, toward a resolution.

An upbeat, dramatic ending would be best, Eva decided. One that promised hope, if not any ironclad certainty. And not too far in the future, she prayed.

Meanwhile, with conditions in the field so unpredictable, the story unfolded slowly. There was no reliable digital translator for Tarawak, so the med teams worked through reluctant bystanders and neighbors of the patients. At length they settled on an individual known as Tachi, who was skilled enough in English and the dialects needed.

Most of the legwork was done with Tachi's help, until the spreading web of disease led them out of the immigrant family group into the broader urban underground. All leads and rumors had to be followed up as potential vectors of contamination.

Will covered most of the angles, and Eva found some of the twists bizarre or downright unsavory. One young woman named Alil, a divorced in-law of the boat dwellers, reputedly had been sold into slavery. There was no certainty that she carried the virus, but she had been present during the term of incubation. Now she was held by an NP prostitution ring.

The possibility that Alil was having forced intimate contact with a multitude of strangers posed a chilling risk. It led the Epi-D staff to mobilize every resource to track her down.

Once the slave brothel had been located on a traffic-blighted residential street, Disease Control insisted on handling the case on their own. Any legal violations would have to be cleaned up later. Increasingly in these impacted times, public health was seen as a first priority, too urgent to be confused with lesser social concerns.

Will, at the last minute, talked his way onto the team. His tousled, non-official appearance was seen as an asset. The digital equipment he carried was far from intimidating, confined if need be to an enhanced cell phone on his belt and toothpick-sized digital cameras built into the bulky temples of a pair of designer eyeglasses.

Whatever he saw and heard, Eva was able to share it from her seat at the desktop monitor in their back-room office. This was equipment they'd used often, but today she tested it nervously while waiting. As soon as he dialed her from his pocket phone, she activated the uplink.

The view over the dash of their unmarked car showed them pulling up to the drive. The frame of Will's vision shifted, first to Bjornquist's rangy silhouette at the wheel, then to the bordello's high, densely pruned hedge and gated faux stone exterior. The back-splash view, monitored in the lower left corner of Eva's display, showed the interpreter Tachi smiling nervously from the back seat. This rear-looking camera was a poorly aimed addition, displaying coarse frames for orientation purposes. It covered angles the cam wearer had no way of seeing at a given moment.

Eva strictly limited her communications with her husband during shoots, but now she whispered a sendoff. “Careful, Will. It’s a jungle in there, so I hear.” A quick nod of his head, dipping the camera view slightly, told her that he’d heard through the micro-earset.

The electric gate slid open and they drove into a tiny asphalt court. It was early afternoon, the business day barely begun, and theirs appeared to be the only vehicle present. The thick-paneled house door eased open and a burly man emerged to meet them. Bjornquist was already out of the car, holding up the photo print of Alil they had prepared.

The bruiser challenged them in broken speech. “What can do for you?” Suspicious, he stood on the steps sizing them up.

“ We'd like to meet this girl.” Bjornquist, with open-ended meaning, held out the computer print of the woman they sought.

The picture, a good likeness of Alil, had been edited by Eva to match the format of the brothel's soft-porn website. It showed the frail, pretty young woman in scant finery, posing with other prostitutes in a bedroom interior, all within a browser frame, as if printed directly off the Web.

The girl had never, so far as anyone knew, been featured in their advertising. But the composite, passed before Will's camera eye to the guard, was convincing enough to draw a flash of recognition before the man's face closed off again in suspicion.

“ She no here, not no more,” he declared, shaking his head vigorously and handing back the image.

“ Are you sure? Pansy, her name is.” Bjornquist used the slave name the girl had been given. “Very pretty, very young. Do you know where she went?”

“ No.” The man shrugged. “You come in, I show you girls we got. Plenty nice as Pansy.” He pushed open the entry door, the solid wood reinforced with an ornamental steel grating. As he turned, Eva could see an oblong bulge under his shirt that looked like a gun or club. Since it came through on the hi-res video, it was probably obvious to the others. Nevertheless she murmured, “Will, check out the back of his belt for a weapon.” The camera view dipped accordingly.

Bjornquist, as Eva expected, followed the pimp inside. Even absent the patient herself, Fred would never pass up a chance to nose around for disease symptoms. Will's camera view followed the white-haired doctor through. The back-splash view showed Tachi following, still grinning.

The interior gloom was instantly compensated and balanced by the camera software. The three girls who lounged half-dressed in the parlor looked healthy enough, though wan from confinement. They appeared street-wise, hard and guarded in their souls even as they carelessly showed off their bodies.

“ Do any of you know Pansy?” Bjornquist asked, thrusting the picture at them.

“ Oh, no, we don't know her.”

The women's frowns and headshakes, too quick and simultaneous, only served to confirm Alil's very recent presence. Will moved in, giving Eva's camera eye uncompromising close-ups of the sallow, painted faces. But as Will started to question them, the burly guard intercepted him with a beefy arm and bulldozed him back with the other guests. The big goon steered them all toward an inner corridor.

“ You forget Pansy!” he admonished gruffly. “She gone. Come on, we see somebody else you like.”

The back rooms contained more saffron and dusky beauties, some of them just rising from bed and dressing, one showering in an open stall. Others lay in a torpor that was quite obviously drug-induced. Even viewed long-range through the camera's micro-perspective, in Eva's judgment, none of them could have been Alil. And though some looked less than healthy, none displayed the telltale swollen abdomen.

As the party circled back toward the parlor, Will steered the camera into a small half-empty “crib” containing dresser and chair but no bed. “Whose room is this?” Eva heard him ask.

“ Nobody's,” the guard said gruffly, pulling the door closed on the shot. “We got customers, they like all kind of thing.” He grunted. “You no customers, you like no things.” He moved close, shoving them all toward a door that opened on daylight. “Go way, you no want good clean girls.”

As the camera readjusted to the sun's glare, Eva felt disappointment slaked with relief. At least they were out. But Bjornquist, as usual, was ready to go beyond the call. Digging into his pocket, he brought forth a wad of bills. “My good man, anything you can do for us will be generously rewarded. I'd really like to get in touch with this girl Pansy.”

The pimp looked tempted, whether toward truth or strong-arm theft Eva could only guess. As the two men leaned together over the cash, Warner stepped backward to get them both into the frame.

Eva, monitoring the shot, noticed a movement in the small back-splash display. In one of the outbuildings near the garage, a door opened. From the darkness inside came a steely-bright flash, narrow and gleaming. Eva jabbed with her mouse to bring up the image full-sized on another monitor.

The flash came from a foot-long machete blade. Eva saw it emerge from shadow, clutched in the hand of someone who slowly stepped out into view: a pregnant girl, bony and emaciated, wearing only a rumpled shift. She pushed herself away from the doorframe and stalked forward, hollow-eyed.

“ Will, behind you!” Eva felt her hands suddenly trembling on the keyboard. “The walking dead...” she rasped the phrase deep in her throat, remembering Kendra's warnings. Could Will hear her? His perspective swung aside with maddening slowness, both camera views losing the nightmare image. “Will, turn around!” As Eva spoke, she rummaged across the cluttered desk, thinking wildly of ringing his mobile phone. Or would that fatally distract him?

Then the swollen female figure lurched stiffly into the main camera view, raising the jungle knife. A hoarse scream sounded from the stereo speakers. The sudden breakup of the image into square pixels meant an impact had occurred. She heard a cut-off cry: “What the hell...?!”

Will’s front view recovered, autofocusing on the machete blade as it swung widely through the air and struck home... on the burly figure of the pimp, just below the left ear. Bright pixilated blood gushed across the display as he fell back from the blow, crumpling to one knee. Weakened and sagging, he barely even raised his hands to his neck. Bjornquist knelt swiftly over him as the camera turned to face the woman. It was the girl Pansy, her gaunt features staring up in madness.

They must have moved her out into the garden shack, bed and all, once she seemed sick and pregnant. They probably feared to touch her, hoping she would die or recover if left alone. Now she shuffled toward Will, raising the machete again as he backed away.

Then Tachi was at her side, crooning in some shared dialect. He took her gently by one arm and removed the machete from her grasp. Tossing it away, he eased her down onto the ground. Cradling her shoulders gingerly, Tachi kept clear of her face, seeming more afraid of infection than of her violence.

Bjornquist rose from the fallen man, solemn. Eva assumed it could mean only one thing.

“ Dead already,” he announced gruffly. “Severed jugular.” Walking over to the girl, he knelt opposite Tachi. Warner, meanwhile, turned to the car door. Taking out a phone, he did what Eva was already doing, calling an ambulance.

From: biohacker@null.net

Subject: density

Tell me, Will Warner, how dense do you have to be, not to recognize too much tightly packed humanity as the root cause of every crisis we face – global climate change, hunger, pollution and depletion, war and civil disorder? Twelve billion and growing, now, that's dense!

The World Bank tells us 2.4 billion people, one-fifth of humanity, live in extreme poverty on less than a dollar a day. Not my problem, I'd say. Not if they weren't too densely packed for our shared environment – if food was easily available, clothing handmade, fuel and building materials lying around to be picked up. But in the urban shantyscapes and agro wastelands they're born into, it means starvation and endless suffering for them, and environmental desolation for the rest of us.

So what does the World Bank recommend? Why, reducing infant and maternal mortality, to stimulate economic growth! Not a word about limits, or your cherished family planning.

A question for Willis Warner, as a self-proclaimed environmentalist: Why are you so busy fighting epidemics instead of spreading them? Hasn't anyone told you, plagues are what people need? They're nature's way of telling us to thin out, a sure cure for dense, doltish humanity.

Get with the program, Will. I have some great ideas for you.

to read more, go to http://www.fatalstrain.com

copyright 2003 by Leonard Carpenter