Two days later, Jason reaches the halfway mark! Huzzah! Now we get to the super-actionny part, which may begin soon… or may wait… depending on how I decide to let it roll. ;)

Word Count: 50,151

At home, I sat under the painting once again, waiting for my delivery the next day. I thought that I could sleep under that painting as well, but I could not. I couldn’t sleep sitting up.

I was in a field. The same field I had been in once before, where my inquisitive face had appeared in the sky. It was still there – but now the sky was a giant mirror. It showed my inner emotions, and there was the face. It was the face that only Edward could have initiated, but I knew Edward was long gone. All I wanted was to leave the field, and not be chased by the mirror wherever I went. I didn’t want anybody to see my reflection – especially myself. As I ran away from the field, the ground became damp. Mud felt like quicksand, and I couldn’t move. I just wanted to get away from myself, but it seemed that even in my dreams I couldn’t escape who I was. There they were in front of me, like a swarm of wasps: the bacteria. They were using their wing-like flagellums to fly towards me. One of them, larger than all of the rest, flew in front of the swarm. It began devouring me, as I stood stuck in the mud. I attempted to resist and wriggle free, but I still couldn’t move. In my dream, the mud must have been as tough as concrete.

I woke very early the next day, not because of the nightmare but because I was feeling dreadfully ill. I convinced myself that it was all in my head, and went to sleep once more. I awoke next only with the ring of the doorbell. I knew that it was my special package from the warehouse worker. When I opened the door, his smiling face brought me out of the nightmare I was stuck in. Perhaps this wouldn’t be as bad as I thought it would be – perhaps I’d enjoy the job, enjoy the rest of my life, and be proud when the cure finally rolled around.

“’Ere’s the address o’ da place.” He handed me a small slip of paper. There was clearly more than just the address written upon it. “Use it ta get there, and once you ‘ave make sure to call Dr. Doradwe. He’ll be wantin’ ta hear from ya. In the meantime, I’ll be at my house, countin’ the dollars I got fer deliverin’ this to ya. Dr. Doradwe sure is generous with his bills, he is. Anyways, you’ll have plane tickets comin’ in da mail later today. Pick ‘em up and make sure you get goin’ to the address as soon as possible.” The man laughed and pulled what looked like a large wad of money from his pocket. It was money, and he was intent on ruffling through it in front of me, and using his thumbs to flip through the folds of money. He stuffed it back into the pocket of the jacket he was wearing, and bid me goodbye. I knew I’d probably never see him again, because after looking at the address I realized just how far removed from where I currently was I would be by the day next. It was in the United Kingdom – so very far away from my United States home. Then again, nothing was ever very far removed with the technology of the age. I felt a greater loss of location than friendship.

The note, besides the address, said that I would be expected to enter the building at 7:00 in the afternoon, no later. I was free to enter Pharand, Inc. earlier if I desired. Included as well as a pre-written letter addressed to whoever took the job – clearly they’d been searching for quite a while, and I was the only man to ever accept the job, probably because I’d been the only man to have experience treating Athan’s Disease. But would I be able to get there by seven at night? No matter, I thought, I have plane tickets coming in the mail. I waited nearby my front door, hoping that the mailman would come by early just to give me the plane tickets. Furthermore, I did not know when the flight was – and wasn’t anxious to pack. I was hoping that the flight wasn’t going to be soon from then, but I should have known that if I was going to get there by nightfall the next day I’d have to leave late that night. If I wanted to get there early, I should have started packing.

I didn’t have much to take, so I waited until the last minute. Procrastination felt good for once. It relieved a lot of stress. I was a bit confused and hoping that this whole job thing would turn out fine for me in the end. What would I tell the owner of the hospital? Would he really follow through reopening the place? If everybody was still dead, it would be silly to do it. I assumed he planned to keep the place shut down for good instead of taking the risk of infecting more citizens. I doubted that anybody in that hospital had woken yet. They would remain there for a month, I told myself. The disease has probably gotten stronger if it’s spreading so fast, I thought. It will keep them dead longer, I thought.

But I didn’t expect anything near to what the news was telling me at that time. I always have my laptop open with various online news sites on the display, actively updating and aggregating in a single window. Now I was seeing more news crop up – but not just any news. Headlines such as “HALF OF SMALL NEW MEXICO VILLIAGE DEAD” and “BUSINESS SHUT DOWN DUE TO WORKERS’ DEATHS” flooded the screen, and I couldn’t help but click them and see where they led. Sure enough, the articles referred to a strange weariness, followed by unconsciousness and finally death. Nobody could identify a cause, but noted that some of the people had bits of “white thread” around them. I knew it was the bacteria at work. Throughout the day, news flooded in. It was magnificent – I knew how highly appreciated a cure would be now. I might even be secured for life.

Finally, the mail came.

I rushed to the mailbox and ripped open the single letter that lay inside without walking back to my house first. The plane ticket was within – the flight was at 9:00, and the airport was located in the nearby city, as I already knew. I had just a few hours to finish packing and prepare myself to leave my home. I didn’t know how long I would be gone, so I packed all of my essentials. Including the painting that hung in my kitchen.

The suitcases were set aside like the bodies at the hospital. They simply lay there, filled with junk and stuff, waiting for someone to pick them up and wheel them away to a better place – whether it be a plane or an incinerator. The hours passed by. I expected a call from Doradwe, or a notice from the warehouse worker. Something to bid me a second farewell, and reassure me that was I was doing was the right choice. If I didn’t get this magical affirmation, I wouldn’t feel secure about what I was doing. Unfortunately, such an affirmation never came. I left anyway, slightly ambivalent about my decision. When 7:00 came, two hours before my flight and the time I had chosen to dispatch myself from my home I stepped out the door with my luggage and never looked back.

The car driven by the taxi driver I’d hired clicked all the way to the airport, as though to mock me for attempting to leave. He drove me all the way to the airport with this clicking noise, not knowing what it was or where it came from, and I putting that strange singular raised eyebrow on my face as it clicked, and clicked, and clicked. When he was able at last to turn off the car I rejoiced, and relaxed for a minute before parking and leaving the car where it was. I hoped that I would never have to see that car again. I didn’t plan to hire the same man when I returned to the states after this adventure.

The airport was busy as ever. I dodged my way through the tourists and world travelers to check in. With my luggage gone, I felt much lighter – but far more worried. What if my possessions didn’t make it onto the plane? I would be utterly lost. I only had a single carryon bag, and in it was basically only my laptop, because I was quite sure I didn’t need anything else during the ride to England. The device was thin, light, and could contain all the data I ever needed. Those who needed desktops those days were the power users, those who had more data than us normal users could harbor in a lifetime. It was an unimaginable amount of space that came inside a desktop computer – whether one built it by himself or bought it pre-made – and the five exabytes of storage on my laptop was all I’d ever need.

I waded through the airport, waiting for my flight to be finished with its boarding preparations. I didn’t feel like sitting down – I was much too excited, and jittery. I also felt completely wide awake, as though I had had a large bug of coffee not two seconds ago. 9:00 was fast approaching, and I was not yet prepared to sleep during the flight. I wanted to begin researching now. My carry-on bag was no longer a laptop holding apparatus, but a portable laboratory. I would research on the plane – yes! Even though the flight would be shorter than it had been in previous years due to aeronautic advancements, all I wanted to do was spend hours in a laboratory working on the perfect serum to cure Athan’s Disease. It was a task that I was not afraid to undertake for the rest of my life if necessary. I would work, and work, until finally that glorious day came – and then I would hold the cure up high above my head and shout, “I am victorious! Nobody will ever die at Athan’s hands again!”

I awoke from the daydream just in time to board the plane. It was crowded, and clearly Doradwe had spared all expenses to transport me to Pharand in England. The plane was coach-only, the seats were small and cramped, and I was seated next to two men who were so large that they should have had rows to themselves. I was suffocating being next to them. Luckily, when the plane took off, I was able to move seats and inhabit a more hospitable location. I pulled the tray out of the back of the seat and tore out the laptop, writing down some notes before nodding off to sleep. An alarm awoke me, in time to let me know that I had to complete some notes I’d never finished preparing before I arrived in England. It was an outline – an outline of all the research I’d done so far and all the people I’d met along the way that aided me in learning more about Athan’s Disease and the related bacteria. I wanted to give it to the project heads at Pharand to show them that I really knew what I was talking about – even if I didn’t actually know that much about stopping this disease. It was then that I caught, out of the corner of my eye, an icon jumping up and down on the bottom of the screen. It was my news aggregator.

There was a headline in my area. “HOSPITAL COLLAPSES, OWNER SAYS NOBODY INJURED.” That was MY hospital, where I worked not too long ago! It had completely collapsed, entirely destroyed. This had happened earlier in the day. How had I not known about it? I was furious at myself for not knowing. And I was on a plane – I couldn’t go back to make sure all those people inside were okay! My heart told me that they might have survived the building’s collapse, but my gut told me that every one of them was dead. Not Athan’s Disease dead, but formally, completely dead – they would never resurface into this world again. I choked on my own saliva, waking several people up. With glaring looks I walked to the bathroom, still coughing. When I reached the bathroom, I silenced myself and looked at my reflection in the mirror. My eyebrow was completely off of my face now. I looked like a Picasso masterpiece.

I spent half an hour in that room simply staring at my face, searching for something inside myself that would make the event any less painful. The article had continued to read that the owner had told the media that nobody was in the building when the collapse occurred. Not only was this incorrect, it was a downright lie. And all those people who had relatives both working and admitted into the hospital would go looking. When they found out – and I hoped that they never did find out – they would run up to the bodies and caress them as though they were still alive. But they were not alive. Every one of them was dead! Dead for good and never returning! They would caress these dead bodies and pray that such a cruel God did not spawn our holy Earth.

Finally I pulled myself away from the mirror, not being able to stand the sit of my face any longer. However, I walked slowly back to my seat, the entire weight of my body feeling ten times as heavy upon my feet. I allowed myself to rest further once safely in my seat. The laptop was shut and put to sleep – it snored quietly enough to allow me to nod off for the remaining hours of the flight.

I was in the mud again, but now it was drying, hardening into many faces. They were the many faces of myself, fossilized in the mud and muck. I walked through them, trying to step in between the faces to escape the valley of dirt, but it continued on forever. A magical staircase came down from the sky. I had to make a choice: either wade through my own face, or climb up and face the mirror. I chose the mirror sky, and began to climb the staircase. Along the way the airs themselves became mirrored, and all I saw walking up to the sky was myself. I was everywhere, and there was no escape – not even in a bathroom.

                As I moved closer to the sky, it became colder, which was strange to me not knowing that I was dreaming. Finally, it was so cold that I could not move. I was permanently frozen on my way to the sky. I remained frozen like that until the flight ended, and a nearby passenger woke me up. Suddenly the icy world warmed around me, and I was awake in England, more specifically a London airport. But that was only the beginning of my journey to Pharand. Pharand was a strange company – after asking around, I learned that it was located on the west side of England, in an area where little people live at all. I could understand why they chose their location, but that meant there were many miles for me to drive before I would get anywhere. I found a taxi that would take me to the Eastern England, and was told it could be a few hours before I arrived at my destination city.

I was still frozen, but it became warmer as time passed by. I melted free and saw my face in the sky. Skillfully, I took a piece of glass from the mirrored steps and threw it at the sky, destroying the mirror once and for all. The shards of the sky fell down to Earth, piercing my faces down below. I felt the pain in those faces, although looking at them was painful enough. Now it stung – each and every glass shard that fell onto a face stung a part of me deep inside my heart. Yet I continued moving up the steps, determined to easily escape the valley of muck. At the top of the steps were two torches: one colored green and another colored white. I lit them both, and watched the green flame burn the color of leaves, and the white flame burn the color of death. I took the white torch, thinking it would be brighter. I did not know that death could burn so bright – it blinded me, and I fell off of the steps and down into the valley.

I landed in a pile of glass and mud. I picked myself up, wiping the blood off of me as though it didn’t bother me at all, when in reality is was horribly painful. I finally gave in and screamed – and I wonder now if the taxi driver heard me screaming – and collapsed to the ground. I didn’t get up. I simply lay there, waiting for death’s flame to consume me.

“I’m sorry,” I said to the sky. “I shouldn’t have broken you; I shouldn’t have picked the wrong torch… I should have let all those faces live.”

“Wake up,” the voice of the taxi driver said. I’d been as still as a cadaver, but not as silent as one. “We’re ‘ere. Y’don’t want to be caught up with me runnin’ back to grand old London, do you? Come, come. Wake yourself up and be gone. It’s almost seven o’clock – didn’t you say you ‘ad to be somewhere?” He shook me with his right hand, and I picked myself up. I didn’t want to open the door. I didn’t have to; I found out – he did it for me, seeing how tired I was. “Should I wheel you to Pharand as well?” he said jokingly.

“That won’t be necessary, I think I can make it,” I responded, stretching all the corners of my body and waking myself up so that I could push myself to be at the building in a timely manner. I wondered where that imaginary cup of coffee had gone to, because I desperately needed it. I pretended to drink cups upon cups of coffee as I walked towards the large building in the middle of nowhere that was Pharand. It was clearly visible, because the land was so stark and empty. I could hear the taxi wheeling away behind me. When I turned around, it was not within sight, only within sound. That’s how empty the land was – you could hear a car making noise from miles away. Pharand itself made no noise. It was silent. Nothing moved in or out of the square, bleach-white stone building. After five minutes of walking, I approached the entrance, located in front of the very full parking lot, which was in turn located next to a very small, very empty road. Pharand seemed to be the only life around. It was the only organized structure in this part of England as far as I could see – other than that there was plenty of grass and a lot of sky. I was slightly afraid of the sky, and was still busy apologizing to it, so I didn’t glance for too long lest it become angry with me.

The entrance was made of glass. It was a single door – the only important single door I’d ever seen – and was frosted, so one could not see directly through it without standing close and pretending to focus his vision for a while. After trying this many times and failing, I worked up the nerve to open the door. “Room 202,” I said out loud to myself. “I suppose I’ll go there, since I’ve come this far.” The steps inside were also bleach-white and very steeply designed. It was a workout to go up those steps, and a test of my power to me it to 202, which was not on the second floor, but the tenth. It worked backwards – the first floor was the top floor, and the bottom floor was floor number eleven. It felt topsy-turvy, but I wasn’t going to complain to the architect for designing an upside down building, or to the painter for agreeing with the number system when he painted the numbers on each floor.

And then there it was: Room 202 of Pharand, Inc. In this room I would find my destiny as a doctor, and as a person. In this room I would meet the colleagues I would probably share several years working with. At least, that’s what I was thinking when I walked through the second-most important single door I’d ever seen.

“There he is!” said an Indian-looking man in a white coat, with an accent not to match. “There’s our man of the hour. Dr. Hemmings, my name is Dr. Afalsi. I’m very happy to finally meet you. We’ll be working together to cure this disease. Well, not precisely in that manner. I’ll be here, but you’ll be all over the place. You’ll find out soon enough. I think you’re going to enjoy your work, because right now we have the cure almost completely ready. It will be up to you to finalize it and test it on select animals. But I won’t spoil all the fun for you so soon – please, sit down. Let’s talk and get to know each other. I’m sure that’s what you really wanted to do anyway, right?”

Even though it wasn’t, it was a warmer welcoming than I expected. Just like that, I became a member of the Pharand crew of scientists and chemists. I began the next step of my journey into the mysteries of Athan’s Disease, not knowing what horrors it could cause beyond the inside of the body, and not imagining half of the worst that could come of this dreadful infection.