Philip Palmer - Debatable Space

But slowly, the truth dawned: the work we did was largely futile. Our “new communities” were glorified refugee camps, and had the pernicious side effect of making native Africans dependent on Western i.e. white largesse. Our grand economic schemes kept foundering because of the appalling corruption of everyone, high and low, important and inconsequential. And appalling illnesses continued to sweep away entire generations – as HIV/AIDS was cured, it was replaced with contagious osteoporosis, and that in turn was replaced by the deadliest disease of all, the Immuno-Suppressant Plague that killed literally tens upon tens of millions of Africans in the most appalling manner possible.

And so for a while, I became bitter and frustrated. I surrendered to the belief that the entire continent was doomed, cursed by God.

But then I thought a little harder. I began to ask myself some fundamental questions. Such as, why are things so very bad here? And how come everyone is corrupt? And why the hell, in an era where the majority of people are much healthier than ever before, is this one continent literally plagued? Because, bizarrely, the Immuno-Suppressant Plague killed only black Africans living in Africa below the age of eighteen. How weird was that?

So I researched more widely. I read novels and newspapers. I listened to pop records. I quizzed my staff when they were off duty, and drunk. I began going into bars, picking up men, flirting with them, and then asking them about politics. I got groped, a lot, and several times got myself in very delicate and dangerous situations. And I started to get a whiff of something very, very bad indeed.

I started going to the hospitals, talking to the Plague victims. One time I spent a week with a fourteen-year-old girl called Annie who had the Plague. I watched as she literally lost all her skin. It fell off her in thick sheets. This was the way the disease worked – it made the body’s skin allergic to the body’s flesh. Then later I sang her lullabies, and told her stories in her native dialect. I drifted off to sleep for a while, and when I woke, I stared with horror. A fly was crawling over her skinless face, its tiny wretched feet touching her exposed blood vessels and ligaments. I was too frightened to swat it, in case I hurt the child; so I had to watch until it crawled, finally, on to the pillow. Then I crushed it in my hand.

For twelve long hours I watched her die, and blessed her soul as it parted from her body. And I thought; this cannot be natural.

So I analysed her blood works, carefully read the toxicology reports, and surfed websites on my laptop. And after months of intensive private research, I was sure of my ground. Finally, I knew the truth.

The IS Plague was not in fact a natural mutation, it was lab-generated. Furthermore, it was patented. I hacked into an entire directory in the US Patents website where under the innocuous title New Millennial Infective Agents I found patents for genetic creations which included the Plague and a wide variety of biological weapons sufficient to end all life on Earth.

The patents were made out to a wide variety of companies – RGM, Intolam, Ryacino, Cortexo – but further web investigation revealed that all these companies were satellite companies of one big US biochemical company, Future Dreams.

And this uber-company turned out to be the sole manufacturer and copyright owner of the drugs which were halting the spread of the IS Plague. The girl lying on the bed, groaning and wailing in despair, was hooked up to a drip feeding her morphine and immuno-boosters made and sold by Future Dreams. Her antibody-stimulating medication was a product of Future Dreams ingenuity. My charity was spending massively in attempts to alleviate the plague – in Europe alone, we raised €9 billion to “save Africa from this deadly scourge”. This money didn’t go to Africans to spend or eat, it wasn’t used to buy land or equipment, it was spent on expensive medication to save African children from a disease bioengineered and patented by the same company that made the medicines we bought at such vast expense.

Was this, I wondered, some strange mischance? A weird coincidence?

Or was it entirely deliberate? Would an American corporation blight and poison an entire continent in order to boost profits by then selling palliatives and antidotes? Poison the patient, then charge the patient for the taxi which takes them to hospital…

I went to a bar to let these findings seep in. I spent several hours talking to a barfly, and a female barkeep. And finally, feeling drunk and sorry for myself, I floated my paranoid theory about the American drugs companies – that they had deliberately infected Africa with the Plague. The barkeep, Emilia, laughed. The barfly, Prakash, looked sad. Both agreed it was possible. Maybe, just possible.

We had another drink.

And another drink.

And after a while, and after a lot of digressive rambling anecdotes, they admitted that what I had said was true. And everyone knew that it was true… The poisoned knew they were being poisoned. But they understood also that if they complained, no one would listen.

Africa was dying. A hundred thousand children a week were shedding their skins. Ninety per cent died; the rest were hospitalised for life. The antidotes and vaccines were now being distributed, at vast expense; but the wastage of life was appalling. Soon, Africa would have lost a large part of a whole generation of children. It was becoming a continent of ageing men and women who worked three or four or five jobs a week to buy the drugs to lessen the pain of their dying infants and teenagers. The rumours about what was happening were widespread, though entirely underground. And as a result, cynicism was universal. Despair, alcoholism and drug abuse were the national status quo.

But no one hated the American companies. No one tried to stop what was happening. An entire continent cheerfully accepted its doom. Life was regarded as a sick punishment dreamed up by a hate-filled God.

My African girl died in the hospital in blinding agony, and was never ever granted an insight into what life could really be like. She missed fun, life, love, babies, everything.

I got angry. I went home and raged to Peter’s nannies. And I drifted off to sleep with Peter cradled next to me, lulled by the sound of the nanny sleeping in the neighbouring bed (conveniently placed for her nightly feeds.) And as I tried to sleep, I wept, and my tears woke my baby. And he cried. And I suckled him with my dry breasts, first one, then the other, neither yielding milk, until his crying became too intense, and the nanny gently prised him off me.

Then the next morning, as I was brushing my hair, I felt a hot flush on my cheek. A handful of hair came away in my hands. My cheeks were burning now, and so I looked at myself in the mirror. I was clinically livid, a red swelling balloon. As I watched, my forehead rippled, I was seized by a terrible terrible itch. When I gently touched my face with the tip of my finger, the entire top layer of face skin peeled away in a single piece. I could see my veins now, my skinless face was a red raw horror, my eyeballs throbbed huge.

I managed to call the hospital before the flesh peeled off my fingers too. An ambulance arrived, two hours later, and I was helped stumbling into the back. The skin of my fingertips was left behind on the door of the ambulance. A tube was inserted in my throat, and for a moment I felt my tongue was going to fall off.

The ride was bumpy, and terrifying. I was choking, forced to breathe through a tube. I was convinced I was dying. I couldn’t believe my bad luck. After cheating death once, I had run out of credit and I was going to die in appalling agony.

At the hospital, I was put in a sealed oxygen tent, to keep out contamination from the outside world. The rest of my skin peeled off me in thick sheets, apart from a few patches on my back and the inside of my arms. Doctors came by, stared in at me in horror, then left muttering. I was alone with my thoughts. And I realised what was happening.