Carola Dibbell - The Only Ones

“I’m not doing it, Henry.”

“Seal test, something like that. Bro! Don’t turn it off!” I could hear them bumping around and knocking things around. “Bro, stop. You’ll crash it.”

The lights went off. Then on. These guys.

Finally, I had it. “Seal Room test,” I call out from the sofa. I think they could hear from there.

I heard nothing for a minute but the rain. Then I saw them in that Box Room doorway, both of them a mess, because nobody but me had any sleep. They looked at me, then each other, like, bro, I thought I heard the sofa talk.

So I say back to them, “Seal Room test. S-E-A-L.”

Then they’re like, dude. It did. The sofa talked.

“Like the animal?” Henry asked.

“Like the goddamn room.”

They’re like, bro! The sofa cursed!

So I just said, “It is for Hygiene. You got to seal the room real tight, so the Tech is safe. But it is more like a bubble. You got to sealatch out for the neck of the infrastructureof9H the bubble too.” Then I go, “That I heard.”

Finally Rauden came up to me and by now he is so tired he is shuffling in those stupid sandals. “I? Look at me. I’m going to ask you something, and you are not going to tell me you don’t know. Have you done this test?”

Whatever. I did this test.

vi

So this part is about the Seal Room test.

“Where would I even find the equipment?” That’s Rauden, giving everybody a hard time.

“You know the little bubble they blow up for quarantine, if they don’t got a regular quarantine to seal you in?” They both stare at me for a minute. They are still getting used to me talking.

Finally Henry just laughed, and Rauden says, “Where would I fucking find one of those?”

Henry goes, “Middletown General. My pal Morty Moon has access.”

“I’m not working with fucking Morty Moon.”

Henry rolled his eyes at me.

“And the pathogens?” goes Rauden. “Where am I going to find pathogens serious enough to be worth our while? If I even agree to run this test?”

I go, “The shed?”

Henry laughs again.

Henry and I check out the shed. It finally stopped raining. He could wheel his chair across these big flat stones in back, if I help. The shed is smelly and dark, but he found the old freezer unit and pulled out some cryoPaks. “Hmm, what’s the expiration date on product like this?” He reads off a label. “Pneumonic plague.”

I said, “I been exposed to it.”

He whistles. “Whoa. You are lucky to be alive.”

Whatever. “It is airborne though. That is hard to control.” I thought a minute. “I think they got a kit for this that is Hygienic for the Tech. It comes with the mask and all the rigging.”

Henry thought about it. “I’ll see what Morty Moon thinks.”

When we get back inside, Rauden is already drunk. “I’m not doing this!”

I tell Henry, “Get the kit with a lock file that says what went in and out of her. If they are doing it for medical, it is Proof.”

“Why else would they goddamn do it?” Rauden said from the Box Room.

I’m like, oh! The Box Room talks.

Between you and me, I’m not telling the Box Room why they would. He already had too much trouble with it. They do it for sport sometimes. Expose her to serious pathogens like pneumonic. Get drunk and place bets on how long she will stay alive. Sometimes they will use a filovirus like Ebola — that’s easy to find. The pay is very good.

Henry goes to Middletown in his special van and when he comes back with the stuff, he brings me to the shed and shows me the kit. It looks ok to me. I help him put the bubble in there. We pump it up and get the seal ready. Henry rigged up a monitor and I dragged the cable inside to the Box Room.

“You could fix it to work express,” I told Henry. “Forty-eight hours. Five days is better though.” Five days for the test, plus a few before and after — I could be staying here another week for sure, maybe more. “You got to leave meals and Beverage sobbing and sobbingup g the screenaccine Syndrome for the Subject. Sometimes they put a TV in.” In my dreams. “Five days, open the door. You could run her blood and urine tests before you let her out, if you like to be totally safe. She could even do the cleanup, for a Bonus.”

Rauden just got drunk and said, “I’m not doing this.” When he looked over the pathogen listing, he kept saying, “Dear God,” but he cleaned himself up, had coffee, and seems pretty sober when it’s time to start. He told Henry, “Nobody’s on the fucking grounds but the Subject and me when I do this. If you’re within five miles of this fucking test, you won’t have to worry about the risk. Because I’ll shoot you, myself! ”

Ok. I’m in the bubble in the shed. It is a little cold but there is a heater, though not inside the bubble. A heater could melt the bubble. Rauden and me check the rigging for the IV and the mask. He goes back inside to check did the monitor work. I gave him thumbs up. The monitor worked. I put on the mask.

“Do you feel anything?”

The catheter.

He came back to fix it, then sealed the bubble. There is a light inside the shed but it is still pretty dark. The heater is ok.

Rauden’s saying something in the monitor. I pointed to my ear. No sound. When he fixed the mic, I told him, “I did this before.”

So here we go.

He took one of those noisy breaths and pulled the lever for intravenous. I almost couldn’t get him to pull the airborne one.

The bad part of this Seal Room test is he is so afraid I’m dying here, he keeps waking me up. “I! You ok? Do you feel anything?”

I feel like I woke up. Man! Ok, I’m up. I take out a Breakfast Pak.

“I! Hello?” He’s waving at me in the monitor. “When the surgeon died at New Life, was it from a test like this?”

This guy. Now I’m in one place and cannot move, and would you believe he’s running intake again. I said I didn’t know. Man!

“I still don’t see how New Life made the contact. Hello?”

When does this guy sleep? I said, “The broker makes the contact when she is too old to pass.” The Breakfast Pak is hard to open. “Then you get her tested.”

“Too old to pass for what?”

I mix it with water from a jug.

“Cures? Virgin Cures?”

Oh, man. Who’s he been talking to? He been doing research. I drank my Breakfast Pak and said I didn’t know.

Besides Paks, I have MREs, PBJs, IVs, no TV, but I have old cartoon tapes.

“I heard about virgin Cures. Some evil broker has a stable of little girls he rents to end-stage sickos who think if they have sex with a virgin they won’t die.”

“Unprotected sex,” I tell him. I’m watching a cartoon. “And she is not a virgin. That I heard.” I watch the cartoon to the end. “She just got to look so young she fools the client. And even if he figures it out, what is he, going to call a cop?”

Rauden goes, “Dear God.” This is what I mean about intake. Get over it, dude.

I told him, “If she is old enough to start the Curse, you could even time it around that. You got to pull out the hairs though. to find a working Board leave lie downon”

“You’re telling me they time the sex around her periods, so the client thinks he broke her hymen? And she’s what, twelve, thirteen years old?”

I said I didn’t know.

It could be eleven.

He’s out of the monitor. I don’t know where he went.

When I woke up next time, he’s saying, “And when the bus stopped in Kissena, but it wasn’t a regular Stop, were you the only one? I mean, on the bus?”

So he figured it out. That’s his problem. From now on I just said I didn’t know. Between you and me, it wasn’t even a regular bus.