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--FROM DON’T GO OUT ALONE, BY SIMONE KIMBERLEY, PUBLISHED 2006 BY LIGHTHOUSE PRESS CURRENTLY OUT OF PRINT

You knohat I find really interesting about the people ant to ask about the "consequences" of what they consider to be"No thank you, Doctor, I’d rather be on insulin and taking inefficientwith the possible side effects of increasingly ineffective antibiotics than have so inside me" They’re never the ones who refuse the irounds

No, the people who say the Sy are always the ones whose implants are securely in place and wouldn’t be iulations They’re the ones with dependable iene hypothesis was always an interesting theory held at bay by their physicians and theirto lose The people with everything to lose, the ones whose lives have been transforenesis? They’re the ones who stand up and say "No" when legislation is proposed that would oing

They’re the ones this is all for

--FROM "KING OF THE WORMS," AN INTERVIEW WITH DR STEVEN BANKS, CO-FOUNDER OF SYMBOGEN ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN ROLLING STONE, FEBRUARY 2027

Chapter 16

SEPTEMBER 2027

So is different

I a here is supposed to change; change is the antithesis of the dark Change is forever, it cannot be undone Even if things are returned to their original state, they will still have been changed They will still rereat destroyer

But whatever has changed, it is not soed at all There is no point to holding on, and e; memory is for another tio and letis safe, and everything is war is always and forever accompanied by the sound of drums

The sound…

The sound of drums

But hadn’t the druht that, it became true The drums stopped, the red turned to black, and the war ure out where I was

All I found wassense of dread

The dread intensified when I tried to sit up and discovered that I was strapped to the unfamiliar surface beneath me I froze, suddenly, horribly convinced I’d been hallucinating when I heard the sleepwalkers sayingmy own conversion, that was all, and the syllables that sounded like my naed ears asthat washot tears rise burning to my eyes The sound wasn’t a ined Besides, argued a s to the sleepwalking sickness, I wouldn’t be here to worry about it, noould I? Sally Mitchell would be gone, replaced by a confused tapeworm in a body it didn’t understand or kno to operate

At so up alone in the dark, I’d stopped questioning what Dr Cale had explained to me It made too much sense when I held it up to the situation Frankly, it was the only thing that er Anyone with a Syer, to theut, intensified by the ongoing knowledge that I was strapped down If I threw up, I was going to be lying in it until soht have a tapewor to put aside

There was another thought beneath that It was even worse than the idea of the siege I buried itto dwell on the more understandable horror And I did understand what Dr Cale was clai she, Dr Banks, and Dr Jablonsky had done I wasn’t a doctor, and I wasn’t a scientist, but I wasn’t stupid, and I learn quickly So I understood, even if there was no way I could have re-created her work, or even explained the fine nuance to someone who hadn’t been present for her explanation It wasn’t until the containment ward at USAMRIID that I started to fully believe her, and to accept what her actions meant

My throat was dry At least the roo, and no distant sound of drums I licked my lips to moisten them, and said, "H-hello? This is Sally Mitchell I’m not sick Please, is anyone there? Please, can you coet up I’h I tried to count how many times I’d used the word "please," how h It didn’t seeh "I’m not sick," I whispered, just once iven can have so increased salivation and sensitivity to light," said ly fa from somewhere inside the room--but that wasn’t possible He was a quietin the absolute silence that had greeted me when I first woke up