Low-rent voiceover: WHAT IF THOSE HEROES SAVING THE WORLD ARE HAUNTED BY THEIR OWN DOUBTS...
The lights were burning late at night in the CDC headquarters, and the
smartest doctors in the country were meeting to save the world from the
scourge. They weren't sitting six feet away from each other. These
brave men and women were risking their lives.
The music came in faintly at first. Oddly, it sounded like the babbling
of idiots, who were convinced the truth about the epidemic could only
come from Big Media. "Tell us the truth, CBS, NBC, BBC, CNN, we're
waiting, tell us, we're starving for more fear,
we need it, we're locked down, we need the fear to believe we SHOULD BE
locked down, the UK government health authority just downgraded the
danger of the virus, and we can't accept that, it would mean there's no
reason for us to shelter in place, so BBC, tell
us we're right to feel the panic, assure us we're robots programmed for
fear..."
One doctor put his finger in his ear and shook his head to ward off the
babbling, but the music grew louder, and expanded into a military march
tune. And then out of thin air, a shape emerged. It was akin to a
face, but a repulsive face ruined by moldy decay.
It said: I'M THE DAMN COVID.
"I'm COVID, you goofballs. I'm here to reveal my secrets. You fools
invented the IDEA of me. I'm not a virus. I'm a reflection of you.
You did this, and now you pay."
The doctors trembled.
"Look at me. I'm your thoughts, NOTHING MORE. I'm not protein wrapped in an envelope. I'm your ridiculous lies."
It emitted a gruesome laugh.
"Don't you see the joke? You've conned the world with your robotic
concept. Life isn't a cell. It's not a virus. It's not an invisible
terrorist. You're producing a horror movie, and I'm supposed to be the
monster."
A doctor, a little man wearing rimless glasses, said, "Are you people
hearing and seeing what I'm...is this a group hallucination?"
"SHUT UP," COVID said. "Of COURSE I'm a hallucination. That's what I'm
trying to tell you idiots. You have the world locked down because of
me. I didn't travel here in a plane. I didn't come here from a janitor
in the building who's 'infected'. I didn't
come from a lab. I came here out of your minds. You've hypnotized
yourselves, and I'm the result. And now I want to return to a nothing
less than nothing. And you're going to help me stop existing."
"How?" a doctor croaked.
"I'll show you something," COVID said. "You'll only see it one time,
because it takes effort to make it visible to you. I have limited
energy, so pay attention..."
---And then, in the room, lovely old trees waved in a breeze. The
doctors could feel the leaves moving. Purple flowers, a gateway.
Summer afternoon. Sky, clouds, OPEN. Move, run, jump, go here and
there. The day stretches. Fields, pastures, rocks in
a stream, clear water. Drink the water. I REMEMBER.
There was silence in the room.
The visage was fading.
The doctors said ALIVE, ALIVE, ALIVE, FREE. They made strange sounds. Then they collapsed.
When they awoke, COVID was gone. Gone from the room, gone from their minds.
"What do we do now?" the little doctor said, as he tried to wipe tears from his glasses with his sleeve.
More silence.
Then another doctor slowly said, "Don't you people understand? Don't
you recall? This happens to us every night. Our idea, COVID, comes and
curses us and then we see what he shows us, and then we decide we have
to go back to what we were doing. Our mission.
We convince the world of the danger and the threat and the
destruction. That's why we're here. This is our art. Otherwise, we
have nothing."
"Yes, yes," the little doctor said. "Why do I keep forgetting?"
"Don't worry. I know the solution. Same antidote every night. To
recover, we watch a rerun of an old tournament on the Golf Channel, then
we surf from skin care infomercial to pillow infomercial to foot
massager infomercial...we're back in the real world.
Then we go to ESPN and watch an interview about empty arenas, and
finally we hit CNN and MSNBC and FOX and suck up the latest reports on
the epidemic. We inhale them DEEPLY, and renew our vows. We're
SCIENTISTS and we're heroes. We gird our loins for the
struggle."
"But tomorrow night, the hallucination will come back."
"One hallucination versus eight billion suckers on our side. I like
those odds. Our reality has legs. It plays. The people want a horror
movie. We give it to them."
"How do we know they really want it?"
At that moment, a dolly mounted with a camera comes wheeling into view.
A voice that sounds like Walter Cronkite in a phone booth says, WE GOT
IT ALL. DOCTORS' CONVERSATION. LIVE STREAMING FOR THE PAST HOUR.
IMAGE CRISP. SOUND IS GOOD. WE GOT THE NOTHING
COVID, TOO. ALL OF IT. AND THE TREES AND THE FIELD. THE WHOLE
THING. IT'S GOING OUT ALL OVER THE WORLD.
Sounds of gunfire. Growing louder. Troops in full combat gear race
into the room. Weapons drawn. One man fires at the camera, killing it.
"Too late," the doctor says. "We're screwed. People everywhere are watching us on video right now."
"In that case," the lead lieutenant says, "you're all under arrest. We'll have to put you in mothballs. Say you're infected."
"That won't go any good," the doctor says. "Infected with what? A hallucination of our own making?"
"Kidding?" the lieutenant said. "If you guys forget the hallucination
every night, what do you think the population will do? We'll feed them a
new dose of wall to wall crap about the epidemic and they'll be back on
board."
And that is exactly how the truth was buried. Temporarily.
But then---
"This is Coronavirus NBC with the Nightly Coronavirus News from Corona
Headquarters in Corona New York. Our top story: Everyone in New York is
infected. Twice. One doctor has suggested the lockdowns should be
ended because there is no point in protecting
already infected people from each other. But the Centers for Disease
Control warns it has just discovered that a third infection could be
fatal..."
There was an open mike in the news studio. A camera man, a person
nobody knew or would ever know, said casually, "When are we gonna stop
feeding this bullshit to the rubes and yokels? People wanna go back to
work."
In the next few minutes, two hundred thousand calls and emails and texts
came into the network. They said I WANT TO GO BACK TO WORK.
People poured out into the streets of New York.
Apartment windows were thrown open. From those windows, people shouted, LET'S GO BACK TO WORK.
The mayor of the city quietly left town.
An hour later, sitting in his private plane at 30,000 feet, he trudged to the bathroom.
He looked in the mirror.
There was nothing there.
No reflection.
Nothing.
He moved a little and looked again.
Still nothing.
He heard a bird say NEVERMORE. Then a thought slowly and distinctly
formed in his mind. "I'm an offshoot of the virus, and the virus is a
hallucination. So what does that make me?"
He started to panic.
His cell buzzed softly, breaking his mood.
"Yes?" he said in a shaky voice.
"It's the pilot, sir. We've just gotten word. Your test came back. You're positive for the virus. You have it."
The mayor dropped the phone on the floor and did a little two-step and grinned.
"I exist!" he shouted. "I'm infected, therefore I exist!"
He looked in the mirror.
Now he saw his face.
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