Candee glanced up into her father’s face and gave him an adoring look.
Jonathan averted his eyes. He thought he might puke. These people belonged in a zoo.
“We’ve missed you at the house,” Candee’s mother, Joy, said. “Why don’t you come over tonight. Us adults will be having a get-together, but it doesn’t mean you two youths can’t spend some quality time together.”
“Yes, well, that sounds great,” Jonathan said. He felt a mild degree of panic since Joy had moved to his side, hemming him in against the shelving. Candee and Stan were blocking his way forward.
“Can we count on you?” Joy asked.
Jonathan let his eyes streak past Candee’s face. She was still smiling that same smile, and Jonathan realized what it was that was abnormal about it. It was fake. It was the kind of smile people made when they tell themselves to smile. It wasn’t a reflection of inner emotion.
“I got a lot of homework tonight,” Jonathan said. He started to back up his shopping cart.
Joy gazed into Jonathan’s cart. “You certainly are a busy little shopper. Are you having a meeting at your house as well? Perhaps we should all come over there.”
“No, no,” Jonathan said nervously. “Nobody’s coming over. Nothing like that at all. I’m just picking up some TV munchies.” Jonathan wondered if these people somehow knew about their little group.
Another glance at their fake smiles gave Jonathan a shiver of fear and propelled him to “make tracks.” Abruptly he yanked his cart backward, turned it around, yelled that he had to be going, and rapidly headed toward the check-out lanes. As he walked he could feel the Taylor family’s eyes on his back.
“This is the street,” Pitt said. He was directing Nancy to his cousin’s apartment where they’d all agreed to meet once again. Sheila was in the backseat of the minivan clutching a sheaf of papers.
It was already dark and the streetlamps were lit. As they approached the proper garden apartment complex, Nancy slowed.
“Seems to be a lot of people out tonight,” Nancy said.
“You’re right,” Pitt said. “Looks like noontime in the city center rather than evening in the suburbs.”
“I can understand the ones with dogs,” Sheila said. “But what are these other people doing? Are they just walking aimlessly?”
“It’s weird,” Pitt admitted. “No one seems to be talking to anyone, yet they are all smiling.”
“So they are,” Sheila said.
“What should I do?” Nancy asked. They were almost to their destination.
“Drive around the block,” Sheila suggested. “Let’s see if they notice us.”
Nancy took the suggestion. As they came back to where they’d started, none of the many pedestrians appeared to look in their direction.
“Let’s go in,” Sheila said.
Nancy parked. They all alighted quickly. Pitt let the women go ahead. By the time he got to the common entry door, the women were already heading up the interior stairway. Pitt looked back out to the street. He’d had the distinct feeling as he’d come up the path that he was being watched, but as he scanned the area, none of the people were looking in his direction.
Cassy opened the door in response to Pitt’s knock. Pitt’s face brightened. He was relieved to see her. “How’d the trip go?” he asked.
“Not so good,” Cassy admitted.
“Did you see Beau?”
“Yes, I saw him,” Cassy said. “But I’d rather not talk about it now.”
“Okay,” Pitt said supportively. He was concerned. He could tell Cassy was truly troubled. He followed her into the living room.
“I’m glad you all are finally here,” Eugene said. His blue chambray shirt was open at the neck and his knitted tie was loosened. His dark eyes darted from person to person. He was wired: a far cry from his bored condescension the evening before.
Sitting around the coffee table were Jesse, Nancy, and Sheila. On the table was the Tupperware container with the two black discs along with an assortment of potato chips from Jonathan’s shopping foray. Jonathan was at the window intermittently peeking out. Pitt and Cassy took chairs.
“You know there’s a shitload of people wandering around outside,” Jonathan said.
“Jonathan, watch your language,” Nancy scolded.
“We saw them,” Sheila said. “They ignored us.”
“Can I have everyone’s attention,” Eugene said. “I’ve had an interesting day to say the least. Carl and I threw everything we had at this black disc. It is incredibly hard.”
“Who’s Carl?” Sheila asked.
“My Ph.D. assistant,” Eugene said.
“I thought we agreed to keep all this among ourselves,” Sheila said. “At least until we know what we’re dealing with.”
“Carl’s fine,” Eugene said. “But you’re right. Maybe I should have been working by myself. I have to admit I was skeptical about all this, but I’m not now.”
“What did you find?” Sheila asked.
“The disc is not made of any natural material,” Eugene said. “It’s a polymer of sorts. Actually more like a ceramic, but not a true ceramic because there’s a metallic component.”
“It’s even got diamond in it,” Jesse said.
Eugene nodded. “Diamond, silicon, and a type of metal that we have yet to identify.”
“What are you saying?” Cassy asked.
“We’re saying that it’s made of a substance that our current capabilities could not possibly duplicate.”
“So say it in English,” Jonathan voiced. “It’s extraterrestrial, that’s what it is.”
The reality of the confirmation stunned everyone, even though everyone except Eugene had expected as much.
“Well, we’ve made some progress today as well,” Sheila said. She looked at Nancy.
“We’ve tentatively located a virus,” Nancy said.
“An alien virus?” Eugene asked, turning pale.
“Yes and no,” Sheila said.
“Come on!” Eugene complained. “Stop teasing us. What are you suggesting?”
“From my initial investigations,” Nancy said, “and I have to emphasize initial, there is a virus involved, but it hasn’t come in these black discs. At least not now. The virus has been here a long time: a long, long time, because it’s in every organism I tested today. My guess is that it is in every earthly organism with a genome large enough to house it.”
“So it didn’t come in these little spaceships?” Jonathan asked. He sounded disappointed.
“If it’s not a virus, what’s in the infectious fluid?” Eugene asked.
“It’s a protein,” Nancy said. “Something like a prion. You know, like what causes Mad Cow disease. But not exactly the same because this protein reacts with the viral DNA. In fact that’s how I found the virus so easily. I used the protein as a probe.”
“What we think is the protein unmasks the virus,” Sheila said.
“So the flulike syndrome is the body reacting with this protein,” Eugene said.
“That’s my guess,” Nancy said. “The protein is antigenic and causes a kind of overcharged immunological insult. That’s why the lymphokines are produced in such abundance, and it’s the lymphokines that are actually responsible for the symptoms.”
“Once unmasked what is this virus doing?” Eugene asked.
“That’s a question that’s going to take some work,” Nancy admitted. “But our impression is that unlike a normal virus which only takes over a single cell, this virus is capable of taking over an entire organism, particularly the brain. So just calling it a virus is misleading. Pitt had a good, suggestion. He called it a mega-virus.”
Pitt blushed. “It just came to me,” he explained.
“This mega-virus has apparently been around way before humans evolved,” Sheila said. “Nancy found it in a highly conserved segment of DNA.”