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He was leaning over an unconscious woht into her eye I had actually only seen this man in person once--every other time it was on television or on a book jacket The neat white beard, the glasses down on his nose And here he was, standing in front of reen jumpsuit, but in the same style of three-piece suit I’d seen hi it looked like he hadn’t slept in a decade

He glanced up at me expectantly and said, "What did you find out?"

"I’m … totally lost here, doctor My oes back to earlier today I re I re up over at the asyluot there I had no idea you were here and I have no "

Marconi turned his back on his patient to give me his full attention "They wiped your memory?"

"I … I don’t know You think they can do that? Just pick a specific bunch of memories and erase it like files on a hard drive?"

"Oh, I’ safely I also do not believe these s"

"Youtheain?"

"Your friend John called ot your lady friend clear of the danger I flen and offered avesuch You see, by then, aed that revealed to the public that this in fact was not a conventional disease outbreak or bioweapon attack The word ‘zoh in the operation was very happy to fan those fla"

I did not

"When the decision was made to pull the containment staff from quarantine last week, I volunteered to stay behind because otherwise the detained would be left without ht you just had a doctorate in … ghosts or so ht because patients that have reported here with seely minor symptoms have turned out to in fact be infected with the parasite"

"Holy shit Really?"

Marconi nodded to a row of large clear plastic pitchers sitting on a nearby cart, and I recoiled to the point of nearly falling down Each pitcher contained a spider Two of theer than rowth in between One of the big ones was badly da

Calmly he said, "They’re quite dead"

"You can see thereat concentration I do not have your gift, but I know soh I should say, and I hope you will not take offense, that I would not accept your ‘gift’ if you offered it towith a bottle of Glenfiddich"

"And you kno to kill these fuckers, right?" I held up the now-eht with me "You came up with the, uh, mouthwash? The poison? So you’re close"

"Close to what? A cure? It is no great feat to kill a parasite in a way that also brutally kills the host No, I am not close to a ‘cure’ for what the parasite does to the human body, in that what it does is rebuild the body fro we know about hu to perfect a way to detect infection"

"I still don’t understand how this works I ht up to people’s faces and they couldn’t see thee with your body in a way that soh to--"

"David, how can you of all people still be surprised when our eyes fail us? The human eye has to be one of the cruelest tricks nature ever pulled We can see a tiny, cone-shaped area of light right in front of our faces, restricted to a very narrow band of the electronetic spectrum We can’t see around walls, we can’t see heat or cold, we can’t see electricity or radio signals, we can’t see at a distance It is a sense so liht as well not have it, yet we have evolved to depend so heavily on it as a species that all other perception has atrophied We have wound up with the utterly , it doesn’t exist Virtually all of civilization’s failures can be traced back to that one ominous sentence: ‘I’ll believe it when I see it’ We can’t even convince the public that global warerous Why? Because carbon dioxide happens to be invisible"

"But … we just have to figure out how to detect the? Once we can detect them, we can kill them"

"In answer to that, I need only to offer tords: Plasmodium falciparum"

"Do I even want to knohat that is?"

"Exactly It’s a monster that has slain several billion of your fellow man, and you don’t even know its name It’s the microscopic parasite that causes malaria Nearly half of all human deaths in recorded history have been caused by this invisible assassin One could ument that Plasmodium falciparum is the dominant life form on the planet, and that huround Yet, until very, very recently we had no idea what it was We blaods, we prayed and performed ceremonies and ritually murdered those we believed were responsible And meanwhile we died And died, and died Yet, to this day, you could have Plasht now, and you wouldn’t know Because after all, if you can’t see it, surely it can’t hurt you"

Marconi strode out of the room and said, "Follow me" He walked me down the hall and showed me where six rooms were occupied with a total of nine unconscious patients "Our ‘flu’ patients Started showing up forty-eight hours ago with uncontrollable diarrhea I have a feeling if we still had power to the MRI, we’d find so on inside Or maybe not Maybe you have to wait until transformation for that"

"Jesus Christ, they’re infected?"

"This is what I wanted to tell you about Several of them passed your mouth inspection upon arrival It turns out, there is more than one way for the parasite to enter the body"