Chapter 3: Community
Imported from SF2 with no description.
Chapter 3: Community
Perspective: Eddie
The bus stop stank. More than usual, I mean. My heightened sense of smell wasn’t helping.
It was the first time I had been out in public in awhile. Security measures at the lab had relaxed a bit since the protesters had cleared out. The bus I was waiting for was supposed to arrive in another ten minutes and, sitting there waiting, I again noted how odd it was that I could hear cars coming from more than 400 feet away. What I heard next was not a car, but rather a person approaching from down the street.
It was a teenager, probably in his late teens, with dark hair and green eyes, which I could see clearly even down at the end of the block. His eyes widened briefly when he saw me and then quickly glanced away. I was used to this, people reacting to my general appearance as if they’d just found out I was homosexual; either being repulsed, concerned, far too happy and over-supportive, or just uncomfortable and awkward. This guy seemed to mostly be the latter, but then teens were usually uncomfortable and awkward anyway.
He sat on the edge of the bench, as far from me as possible in classic "I’m socially awkward" fashion. Even without looking at him, I could hear the kid turning to glance at me every so often, though I couldn’t see his face and thus I wasn’t sure if this was out of disgust or intrigue. I checked the time, but it had only been about a minute. The bus wouldn’t be here any time soon.
"You should take a picture, it’ll last longer." I sighed after the tenth time he turned his head.
"Sorry, I just… I’m kind of jealous."
I raised an eyebrow, looking at him. I reminded myself not to jump to conclusions; he wasn’t necessarily a furry, this jealousy could be founded solely on the fact that transformed anthros sported inhuman abilities and instincts. This fact had caused quite a stir in the job market, with anthros being far more suited for certain jobs than humans.
"You’re jealous?" I said. "What, because I have heightened senses, or…"
"Well, sure, that’s part of it…" the kid said, not meeting my eye line. His meaning was conveyed well enough in the tone of his voice.
Both of my eyebrows went up this time.
"You’re… part of the fandom?" I asked. "A furry?"
"Yeah." he said, glancing at me for a fraction of a second.
Interesting… I’d heard so many reports of voluntary infection I had just assumed that anyone nearby who might have wanted to be transformed would have caught the virus already. I hadn’t expected any member of the fandom would have been left out in the whole state of Virginia, certainly not here in Arlington, where the virus had started.
"Where are you headed?" I asked, making small talk.
"School." he answered. "You?"
"Work." I sighed. "I’m a virologist."
"You work at the lab?" he asked. "I mean… the lab? The DARPA building?"
"Where the first outbreak occurred, yes." I sighed. "They only recently started letting me go out in public again. I used to have to be escorted into work, if you can believe it."
"Really?" he asked. "Because of the protesters? They thought someone would try to threaten you because—"
"Because the virus came from where I work, yes." I said, nodding. He raised an eyebrow.
"Should you be… telling me all of this?" he asked.
"Probably not," I said, "but at this point I’m just about out of fucks to give."
"Right." he chuckled. "I feel like that’s kind of going around."
There was a silence between us.
"So if you were to find a cure for the virus," he said tentatively, "and you found a way to make it so no one else could get infected, then those who still wanted to be… changed… could do so safely?"
"It would be within their right." I said, nodding. "If the virus didn’t present a threat to anyone else around them, and assuming they accepted the risks, then yes. I’m also hoping we’ll be able to at least reduce the lethality, or find a way to make the transformation smoother for those that want it. We’re… actually looking for test subjects to help in that regard."
The kid’s eyebrows went up and he seemed to consider this for a moment. He exhaled deeply and fixed his gaze on the pavement.
"I doubt I’d be able to go anywhere near that lab without my mother having a heart attack. Unless I was joining a protest."
"Your… mother was one of the protesters?" I asked.
"Probably." he sighed. "I mean I never saw her carry home a sign or anything, but she could have been up there screaming her head off with the rest of them. She’s good at that."
"Well, if you do know anyone who you think could help…" I said. "you know where to find us."
He turned back to me and something shimmered in his eyes.
"You know, I might, actually." he said, pulling out his phone. He tapped around the screen quickly, eyes darting back and forth, then turned and showed me the screen. "There’s this subreddit—kind of an online community—called r/inhumans, people who haven’t been infected by the virus, but want to be."
"Yeah, I know what a subreddit is." I chuckled.
"Right." he said, smiling. "There are still millions of people out there who want this, who want to help. And a lot of them are smarter than I am."
I paused as something occurred to me: Reaching out to a community of people who were smarter than me? That could work.
"That’s… interesting…" I said, peering at his phone as he held it out. "And ‘shadow313’ is your username, I’m assuming?"
The guy nodded, slipping his phone back into his pocket.
"My actual name is Daniel." he said, smiling.
"I’m Eddie." I said.
I looked up as I realized I’d been distracted enough that I hadn’t even heard the bus approaching.
"Well, I’m off." I sighed, standing. "Nice to meet you, Daniel."
"Likewise." he said.
I had the bus to myself and it provided time to consider the idea of an online community, not just for contacting potential testers for when we had a viable second strain, but also to help create it. As far along as we were, there was still months of progress to be made on finishing the full virus. It would almost certainly be illegal, contacting others for help in completing a virus we fully intended to release into the general public, but then most of the things involving this virus were illegal. We’d lied to the military about our intentions for it, after all, and our progress on the vaccine was the only thing keeping us out of a federal prison.
It took all day to summon up the courage, but eventually I did pitch the idea to my coworkers.
"Are you kidding me?" Jason huffed. "We don’t want to give the US government more of a reason to distrust us! How are we supposed to set up this theoretical online community, anyway?"
I was about to answer before he frantically signaled me to shut up and scribbled something down on a piece of paper, then held it up.
"THEY MIGHT BE LISTENING" it read.
"Eddie, there aren’t any bugs in the lab." Jess sighed. "If there were, Eddie and I would know."
"HOW?" he asked, still using the sign.
"A fox can pick up the sound of a watch ticking from fifty yards." I said. "That includes high frequency electronic devices—we know the distinct sound of pretty much every piece of equipment in this place. If there was something in here that wasn’t before, we’d know."
"Fine." he sighed, setting down the sign.
"Also you realize if they can bug the place to listen in, they’d also set up cameras?" Jess pointed out. "Thus making your sign superfluous?"
Jason crossed his arms and seemed to consider this, then muttered "Shit." under his breath.
"As for how we’ll set it up," I said. "I thought about that. Tyler could do it."
"Tyler Dayton? The cyber-crimes guy?" Jason scoffed.
"Dalton." Jess corrected. "His last name is Dalton."
"Right, so we just pack up and move?" Jason said.
"We could." I said. "We’ve all got friends in the military who might be able to help us out. Tyler among them."
"Ed, are you actually considering this?" Jason asked.
"I’m more than considering it." I said. "I think it might be our only chance to finish the true strain before we get hauled off to jail."
"So we just pack up and go on the run?" Jason asked. "We just live the rest of our lives like this?"
"It would be a small price to pay for achieving what we’d always planned for the virus." I said.
"Jess?" Jason said. "What do you think?"
"We messed up the first time." Jess said. "If we have a chance to do this and do it right, I say we take it."
"Good." Jason said. We looked at him. "I just wanted to make sure you all agreed before I got on board with this plan. I’ll call Tyler."
We spent the better part of that night making our plan, reaching out to friends and family in the government and the military who could help. We would pack up and move everything we could out to a warehouse in Atlantic City, set up a makeshift lab there, and once we were sure the government couldn’t track us down and we had settled in, we would launch our website on a deep web server, where only those who knew the URL could get there.
"What should we call it? Our website?" Jason asked. "I mean, if we’re really setting this whole thing up."
"It should be something simple, something that gets our goal across." I said.
"Why not… Second Strain?" Jess proposed. I looked at her. "Like the first strain of this virus was deadly and notorious, sure, but we’re making another that should fix everything. It gets the point across and, you know, maybe even conveys a bit of an optimistic message."
"It does have a nice ring to it." I said.
"That’ll be great, to have a way to contact others for help, not just in completing the virus, but to gather testers for clinical trials when we do eventually complete it." Jason said.
"Mm-hm." Jess said with a nod. I sat back, thinking to my conversation with the friendly stranger at the bus stop earlier that day. I leaned forward and opened the Reddit app on my phone, starting a private chat between myself and u/shadow313.
"About that…" I said. "There’s one more person I’m thinking about bringing along on this venture of ours…"