Sorry for posting this one so late. I was tired, and lazy. But it was done on time - I updated my word count last night on NaNo.com. =P

Word Count: 36,698

I watched, the next day through the window into the surgical room, the doctors slice Victor open and examine his insides. One shook his head; another made a face of disgust. I looked at the body, whose chest was completely exposed, and saw what they were gawking at – a complete coating of white surrounding all of his vital organs. They were trying to brush it aside, to clean it up, to do something about it, but all completely in vain. The bacteria refused to move, as though they’d fused to wherever they rested. I believe that the surgeons gave up that day because they couldn’t figure out why he was still alive. There was no residue inside him that might have resembled a pile of empty, cytoplasm-less bacteria. There was nothing; no evidence to suggest that he should be alive. That theory did fit, though, because he was dead.

After just half an hour they wanted to seal him back up and declare it a lost cause, that under these circumstances Victor would never awaken, but I begged to differ. I suggested that they do this every day until he woke up.

They told me that they could not leave him open unless there was a secure, sterile environment in which he could be kept for a specific amount of days. If no results came from two days of observing Victor, then he would be closed up and declared dead for good.

I was about to give up on finding a sterile environment to stick him in, but I remembered that only yesterday I’d locked myself and the warehouse worker in a room that was supposedly sterile. I’d have the surgeons check out the room and make sure that it was safe to keep Victor in, and with a few modifications and some hefty rubber sealant on the edge of the door, the room was prepared for Victor to enter.

They also replaced the bed inside the room with a cadaver table taken from the morgue. The aluminum top was sterilized with the rest of the room. For all metal surfaces they used an effective method of plasma sterilization with KIAPS robots, special plasma-wielding robots that had been in production for fifteen or so years, and since then had become very customizable. A KIAPS robot could come in any shape or form – in essence, they were the new housekeepers and cleaners. The robots would shock anything to death with their powerful plasma electrodes as they moved around, effectively sterilizing any surface in their path. First used by NASA to sterilize recently landed space shuttles as a poor attempt to avoid alien bacterial invasion, the KIAPS Is A Plasma Squeegee project took off as a versatile way to quickly sterilize any surface.

Unfortunately, it had yet to appear in a form that could sterilize humans. There was one very sick boy on the news that had a special treatment tested on him – plasma-based, so he was being electrocuted in a sense. In any case, that boy was sterilized afterwards, but he had become too clean. Foreign bacteria invaded his body and killed him not long after. But turning down the power of these devices doesn’t help – it stops sterilization altogether. You might as well not have done anything at all if you’re going to cut the voltage to the device!

But I digress. The KIAPS robots worked wonderfully to sterilize Victor’s humble apartment. He was placed, chest still wide open, into the room, after being “sterilized” with heat. Victor would not wake up for three more days. During those three days I would visit him, and monitor the white bacteria covering his organs. In order to enter the room I had to wear the most ridiculous yellow biohazard suit. I swear – anybody who was not a doctor would have thought I was from poison control to shut down the building and declare it unfit for inhabitance. I would use this suit and its finger-grips to hold surgical instruments and probe Victor’s body. Up close, the bacteria were not a smooth coating of white. They were a complex web – akin to cobwebs, or the strange spider web mash-ups people string around their homes come Halloween.

Within that network I hoped to see where the three different – or rather, two different – types of bacteria resided. What they did and why they did it. That would never come to light, no matter how much I examined his body and no matter how many tissue samples I took from his chest and organs. Nothing explained the differences between the two, causing me endless frustrations. At times I wished to rip the yellow suit off of me and expose myself completely to these bacteria – to eat them in order to get them off of Victor, or some drastic, incredibly insane action. I knew that it would never help, but they were so much of a problem that I would go to any lengths to fix Victor, if I had the courage and the heart to do it.

I didn’t want to hurt or even kill Victor. I knew he was dead, but I also knew he would awaken soon. On the second day, I noticed something peculiar – there were fewer bacteria in his body. I could see splotches of red scattered about, his organs either breaking through the plane of white or the white plane melting away like the calm after a snow storm. Likewise, his cheeks became rosier, his body as a whole seemed to be restoring itself. The web of choking bacteria was waning, and it was because they were giving their life to him. After sustaining his body for so long, living off of him and giving life to him, they had done enough to give it all back. I was witnessing the miracle of birth, but through entirely different means. Life was not being given anew – it was being renewed. Victor had once come out of a womb, but now it were not forces outside of his body feeding him and giving him life. It was entirely internal.

By the third day many of the bacteria had disappeared, leaving no residue, but allowing me to see completely past the white layer and to his internal organs. I called the surgeons over at this moment, and one asked me “what the hell” I did to get rid of all the infestation. I told him that all I did was watch them, take a few samples, but never interfered with the process the bacteria were undergoing, obviously a special process that only initiated after a certain time period. Nobody understood; to them, the man was dead. Once you’re dead, you’re gone. There’s no escaping that fact. But what if there was? I pleaded to them – this man is alive. The infestation looks to be gone. Leave him alone. He’ll wake up soon. All heard in vain.

He was wheeled out of the room, allowing all of the bacteria that had been inside him to escape into the open air. What idiots!

Then I did the craziest stunt I’d ever pulled – I walked up to the surgeon in charge of pushing the cart, shoved him aside, and stole the cadaver table from him. I wheeled it into a nearby room and locked the room, hoping they couldn’t coerce a janitor to give them a key. Luckily, they never did, but I held my body against the door, completely restless. Victor’s body was too precious to lose to a burial pit, and I knew from the look in his eyes that he was bound to get up soon.

Luckily, I was right.

His body convulsed, probably the same way it had when he’d died, but now the process was happening in reverse, as though he were choking up water after a severe diving accident.

I opened the door. “Guys, come back! He’s waking up!” I shouted, pleading for the surgeons’ return. They heard my cry and came running back, with cries of “I don’t believe this,” and “You’d better be telling the truth.”

When they saw his body, they nearly fainted – as I had when I saw Kasten’s dead body. Everything was happening in reverse now that he was waking up. Finding somebody alive and well caused fainting, while death had caused it before. Why should it ever be a surprise to find somebody alive? It should be a joy – those surgeons should have been happy for the man, but they ridiculed his existence by being afraid of it.

They stole him from me and brought him into the operating room, where they managed to close his chest before he woke. Three hours after that, his body convulsed some more and he woke up coughing, crying for help, claiming to be in “extreme pain.” We all told him what had happened – it was becoming standard procedure for me and the surgeons, although they had no idea what was really going, they chimed in every now and then to give some constructive advice and support to Victor, who after our pep talk was too afraid to go back to work on any corpses. Nobody wanted to believe that they had died back then. Life was so simple; our biggest problem was one or two people waking up, and mysteriously appearing slides in our back pockets.

“If this was from that Evans guy, then you can bet your ass I’m going after him,” Victor told me. “He and I will have a nice little talk about how he murdered me.”

“Victor,” I began informally, “you can’t punish a patient for getting you sick anymore than you can punish a friend for passing on their cold to you. Now, I think the best thing to do is keep the entire issue locked away in a happy little box. We’ll see how this thing rolls out; if it turns into an epidemic then we’ve got bigger things to worry about. If not, then I’d like to stamp out what remains before we go complaining to people about spreading it. There aren’t any symptoms or relapses as far as I know, so you should be fine.”

“If you say so, but I’d better be alright. You’re the doctor here. I’m just a pathologist.” He looked at me sternly, without flinching, undermining my authority as a doctor completely. I was intimidated by the prospect of having Victor as a patient. Now I was watching after four people who were incredibly sick, and I knew not how to cure any of them. Worst of all, they were showing no symptoms after waking up, making it hard to diagnose anything without waiting several days’ time to see if they were still infected.

Oddly enough, as these thoughts ran through my head the phone in the room rang. “Hello,” the receptionist said in a surprisingly deep male voice. “May I speak with Dr. Hemmings, please?”

“This is,” I responded. “What do you need? Is one of my patients in trouble?”

“No, sir. One of your former patients called, Shane Evans his name was? I think that’s what he told me. He said to call him right away, so if you want I can connect you to him through this phone. He gave me a number. Want me to transfer you to him?”

“Sure thing. I’m sick of dialing numbers nowadays,” I said. In our area, phone numbers had been increased by another three digits to compensate for the growing population. The population was increasing at an alarming rate – not just in our area but around the world. Population control was a popular debate topic for the upcoming presidential elections of the United States. I was unsure, back then, if I would vote.

Shane was now on the line, speaking to me. “Ethan, I need you to come over and look at me. I know it’s odd to actually ask you to make a house call, but I could pay you if you like. It’s the strangest thing, and I think it might be related to my sickness.” His voice was filled with urgency. Would he die again if I didn’t rush over to his house at that moment? Was he feeling woozy, lightheaded, consumed by death?

“How soon do you want me there?” I asked, rushing my voice.

“As soon as you can come,” he said. But his voice was not rushed as mine was. How was it that of all people, he was the one who was calm? He was the one who had died! It wasn’t me who had kicked the bucket; I had nothing to be afraid of. Shane’s urgent call was the chance to find the first case of a relapse, but it was not a relapse that I found when I visited his house later that day. “I can get there at about six thirty. The one at night,” I said lightheartedly, “not the one in the morning.” Shane agreed to this time and said a farewell. We both hung up at the same time.

Shane told me later that his wife approached him immediately after the call wondering what he was talking about, and why he needed to call me. His wife hadn’t noticed a thing about him. It wasn’t noticeable to the untrained eye, but when I examined his face I could clearly see what he was describing.

I was fortunate enough to eat an early dinner underneath my painting at home, in my kitchen, with a real stainless steel fork and knife. I was tired of using plastic utensils to eat inside the hospital, or running out before falling asleep at the microscope to get takeout. It wasn’t how I liked to live, and it brought me the utmost joy to eat at home once again. The only object that seemed out of place was the painting; it looked now ominous and disturbing. The man looked down from his desk at me, once again accusing me of some great and heinous crime. What was the crime? I couldn’t make it out – I was a proper citizen; I didn’t even do drugs. Never smoked, hardly drank. What could this silly painting hold against me? Sure, I wasn’t made of acrylic resin as it was, but I was sure by that time we’d all learned not to judge people by their skin.

I threw my dirty dishes into the sink, vowing to wash them later, but knowing I’d never get to it. Where were my keys? I couldn’t find them. I searched everywhere, and found them in my pocket. I didn’t remember putting them into my pocket.

And that was where the slide had gone. Did I really put my keys into my pocket? I hadn’t – I’d left them on the countertop about three meters from the kitchen table, on top of some forms that I’d neglected to fill out for the last week or so. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a small black figure rush by. I turned, and saw nothing. I ignored what I assumed was simply a fly or moth that had zipped past my peripheral field of vision. My car had finished warming up; it was so dark outside that I could only make out the car through the light that shone on the inside. I opened the door – click – and switched the lights from “off” to “auto” – click – then left my home to arrive at the Evans’s.

I arrived sooner than I thought, and rang his doorbell, expecting there to be something drastically wrong with him, something worth looking at. When he opened the door, I saw nothing spectacular. It was normal Shane Evans, at his best.

“You don’t see anything yet,” he told me, knowing I was curious what was wrong with him. “But that’s exactly what’s wrong. Come here. I’ve got a photo to show you.” He led me into his house, into the basement, where he kept all of his old photo albums and even a few recent shots of himself. “I document my life in photographs. I have pictured from back when I want still breaking my arms and legs. I treasure the moments where I can look back on those photos and notice how different I’ve become, and revel in the fact that I still have the same heart.” It was a different side of Evans that I’d never seen before; I was beginning to like it. “You said just a second ago that you didn’t see anything wrong with me. Look again, and closer. Tell me what you see in my face.”

“Nothing,” I said. “You face looks just like it did last time I saw you.”
“Exactly!” he yelped. “My face hasn’t changed. Hold on while I find that photo I wanted to show you. Wait here.” He walked deeper into the basement. I saw him grab a photo album that, among all the rest, looked fairly new. He brought it back to me and flipped through the pages. They were all recent photos. One was dated five months before now, and seemed to be the most recent. It was a standard front view of his face, poised in front of the open sky, where a plane was flying overhead. The jet stream of the plane cut through the tip of his head, slicing it off. He took that photo out of the album, and then flipped to the very back of the book. There he pulled out a photo he’d take only three days prior to our meeting. “Please compare these two photos. I tried to make them as similar as possible as soon as I suspected something was wrong.”

“Shane, you look just fine in both of these photos. Why, you look great in both.” I didn’t understand what he was trying to tell me, but I would soon!

“Try and spot a difference between the two faces,” he urged.

I searched for five or so minutes and found not a single difference between the faces. They were literally identical. It was like somebody had taken his face from five months ago and plastered it to this new photograph. I still didn’t understand. Didn’t that mean he was simply in good health? No; he meant another message entirely. He meant that the photos were too identical, that something was wrong with him looking exactly the same. “You’re still infected,” I said. “Are the bacteria doing this, you think?”

“Hemmings, I’ve got no clue. You’re the doctor.”

“If you’re not aging, I’d say that’s good. Astounding, and maybe even a bit preposterous, but it can’t be bad.”

“I think it’s bad,” he remarked. “I haven’t changed since the day I exited that blasted hospital! I haven’t grown or shrank, I’ve eaten less, and my hair has not grown. My body is exactly as it was when I left that hospital, Hemmings. But look at Noah any day; she’s different! She changes.”

I couldn’t deny it; the photos were too similar. “I think we shouldn’t jump to conclusions. You’ve got good company; several others fell ill with the same disease over these many months. I’ve gotten the chance of a lifetime to explore these bacteria and—”

“Well, explore faster. I’m getting worried, and your other patients should be worried, too. Now, I’ve got no evidence besides the photographs, but I think we can settle on the fact that this disease is so strange that it could happen. That’s why I’ve got no trouble believing it.”

“I’ve got a bit of trouble believing it.” I don’t know why I did – I’d seen four men wake up from death. Now I couldn’t bring myself to believe that they’d never go back to it. “But I’ll advise my patients and ask them to monitor their own appearances. Have you experienced any other strange symptoms?” I asked.

“I’ve been eating less. I’m rarely hungry, but I don’t lose weight. It’s winter, but I haven’t gotten sick – not even a cold.”

“I don’t think that last one counts. You’ve got a pretty damn good immune system. But please explain more.” I was hoping for answers. Anything.