Sholene cautiously stepped into the canoe and panicked as it suddenly rolled to one side. Darnell instructed her to keep her body low, grab the gunwales, and carefully sit down. She settled onto the front bench, and the boat stabilized, leaving her cramped and uncomfortable. But she no longer felt as though the canoe was going to tip.
The boat rocked again as her companion climbed aboard and dropped his heavy backpack between them. This time the craft did not seem to tilt quite as precipitously as it did upon her entry. Sholene could swim and wore a life vest, but had no desire to fall into the murky Genesee River water.
The young woman quickly forgot about her cramped position as they pushed off and began paddling up-river. At first, she focused on her companion’s instructions on how to hold the paddle, draw it back, and feather it as she brought it forward. After mastering this skill, her attention shifted to gazing ahead as they slid along the river surface.
Trees lined the banks, right down to the water’s edge. Soft city noises murmured in the distance, but the only nearby sounds were their paddles’ splashes and occasional bird calls. Sholene almost felt as though she was flying as they glided over the water with nothing but the tranquil surroundings and the tip of the canoe’s bow visible.
They seemed to be speeding over the river, but Sholene put more effort into her paddling after glancing at the shore. They were moving quickly relative to the water but were making little headway against the land as they paddled upstream. Her arms ached by the time they turned into the intersecting waterway Darnell called the Barge Canal.
Darnell noticed Sholene pause and rub her shoulder and offered to power the craft alone on the current-free canal. He suggested that carefully turning around to face him and stretching her long legs might be more comfortable. Sholene accepted both his offers, nestled her paddle in the boat, and cautiously turned around. She moved slowly, keeping her body weight low, but they still almost tipped over twice. They were so focused on her transition that they bumped into the shore as she successfully ensconced herself.
Sholene leaned back and enjoyed the sunshine on her face as they slowly drifted along the canal. She sat listening to the splish-splash of Darnell’s paddle while trying to identify the summer’s aromas. The fish-tainted, earthy smell of the canal’s water was everywhere, but she could also detect the trees’ and bushes’ woody scent. Sholene’s best description of that aroma was merely green.
She felt a chill as a shadow passed over her and looked up to see they were under a railroad bridge. Sholene shifted her gaze to her companion, who was rhythmically propelling their craft forward.
Darnell noticed her and said, “We’re going to turn around before we get to that lock up ahead. Then we’re heading back across the river to my favorite spot.”
Sholene asked, “Do you need me to help row?” She hoped his answer would be no.
Darnell laughed and replied, “This is paddling, not rowing. Just stay where you are. I haven’t seen you this relaxed since we met, and I don’t want to risk tipping the boat. Besides, your spindly little arms didn’t help much on the way here.
Sholene dipped her hand into the water and splashed him. She should be insulted, but she knew he was right. She stared at the powerful dark-skinned man smiling at her and grinned. She couldn’t remember feeling this good in years.
Twenty minutes later, they floated down the canal on the other side of the river. Darnell was panting in the back after his fight to prevent their canoe from drifting downstream during their crossing. He flashed her a grin and said, “See, I told you I could do it myself.”
They silently coasted for a few minutes while Darnell caught his breath. Sholene used the time to look around and froze when she saw what was ahead. The largest bird she had ever seen was standing on a tree branch arcing toward the water. The gray bird stood nearly a meter tall with long legs and a curving neck. Darnell followed her startled gaze and whispered that the bird was called a Great Blue Heron. The two people silently gazed at the great bird until it flew off when their boat drifted too close. Sholene had never seen anything like this. The bird had a nearly two-meter wingspan, and its wingtips almost touched the mirror-like water as it launched into flight.
Darnell smiled and suggested they find his spot and have some lunch. A motorboat was plying down the canal, and he didn’t want to be too close when its wake passed their tiny craft. Darnell quickly paddled them onto a tributary on the right, called Red Creek. He guided them down the winding, natural waterway past a golf course and parkland until fallen tree blocked their passage.
Sholene excitedly asked whether they could go under the tree. But Darnell replied that, while that was possible, the stream continued to narrow with more trees blocking the route. Furthermore, they would increasingly find themselves in people’s back yards, which he did not enjoy.
Instead, Darnell opened his backpack and began extracting their lunch. He also removed his life jacket and suggested she do the same. He noted that life jackets were much more useful as seat cushions in quiet waters like this. Sholene took his advice and heartily agreed.
Darnell had shopped this morning while Sholene showered. She felt clean and refreshed when he returned with the food, which included wine, bread, diced vegetables, fruit, and something called hummus. Sholene was unsure of the hummus, but her eyes flew open with wonder when he slid a broccoli floret covered with the creamy, chickpea puree into her mouth.
They spent nearly an hour feeding each other grapes, blackberries, cantaloupe, and pieces of pita or crisp vegetables dipped in hummus. Darnell almost tipped the boat in his struggle to uncork the wine, but they survived the near-disaster and sipped the refreshing beverage from plastic cups.
They rarely spoke other than when Sholene asked Darnell to identify a new bird flitting past. They spotted chickadees, sparrows, bluejays, a brilliant-red cardinal, and two tiny yellow birds Darnell called goldfinches. Sholene felt at peace. She was unsure whether her emotional state was due to the wine, or finally getting some food in her belly, or the serene, natural setting. She felt as though she had drifted into a different world. Somehow, this moment seemed real, while all of yesterday’s failures, troubles, and worries were little more than a bad dream.
Darnell intended to inquire about her secret mission to show how her story couldn’t be right. He couldn’t bring himself to broach the subject, however. She appeared to be happy and content, as was he. Perhaps just spending some quiet time away from stress would be as helpful to her. Besides, watching her lick off the hummus slopped on her fingers and sipping wine in the dappled sunlight made him feel good. Darnell started to sense feelings he hadn’t experienced for over a year, and he didn’t want to spoil the moment.
Sholene, noticed him staring at her licking her fingers and was immediately embarrassed. She then decided that she didn’t care, sucked the last bit off, and said, “So, you wanted to know about me and my mission?”
“Well, yes, I would like to know more about what upended my weekend, if you don’t mind. I don’t want to ruin our picnic, though.”
Sholene sighed. She knew she wasn’t supposed to share her mission details, but it didn’t matter. Humanity was doomed, and the Agency would fire her and possibly imprison her when she returned home anyway. Somehow that didn’t bother her as much as it should. This wine was outstanding.
“I’ll tell you what I know, but, as I explained, they didn’t brief me on the mission until yesterday. You know, I never expected to visit America. It is far more beautiful than I had ever imagined.”
Darnell beamed. He suspected that she was foreign and probably Swedish with her slender figure, blue eyes, and straight blonde hair.
He said, “Well, you speak very well. I can’t detect much of an accent at all.”
“Thank you. I have been fascinated by your culture all my life and learned English in school. I watched every American recording I could find to practice mimicking your tone, inflection, and words. That is one of the primary reasons I am here.
“You see, I’m a junior analyst for the Agency. I sit, largely ignored, in a small cubical in the basement of the building. I went through their boot camp, but I’m not supposed to be out in the field. To be honest, I’m sure they hired me to fill a quota.”
Sholene’s face darkened, and Darnell regretted agreeing to this conversation. However, she cheered up and continued a moment later.
“My people have been visiting you for over eighty years now. Our field observers gather information and feed it to analysts like me to sift through back home.”
Darnell exclaimed, “Wait! Are you saying you’re a spy?”
Sholene laughed. The man’s sudden reaction had nearly caused her to drop her wine.
“No, we aren’t looking for military secrets or defense weaknesses. At least, I don’t think we are. Our field researchers are anthropologists and sociologists who are supposed to observe your culture and behavior to understand you better.”
“Why don’t you just grab a flight and book a vacation?”
“It isn’t that simple for us. My government is quite secretive, and there are all sorts of regulations and restrictions. You just have to accept that we aren’t allowed to vacation here.
“The problem is that one group of field researchers decided to do more than observe. They chose to interact with some people here and manipulate them into a sinister plan.”
Darnell groaned, “Do you mean their plan to wipe out the world with a killer virus? Why couldn’t they just release it themselves?”
“Well, they needed to release it in a densely populated area and could not do that themselves. While I might not have much of an accent, these researchers struggled to speak any English. They needed local assistance.”
Sholene’s fantastical story hadn’t broken yet but seemed to be about to collapse if Darnell could push just a little further.
“Wow, convincing some locals to destroy the world sounds like a big challenge. How did they manage that?”
Sholene held out her now-empty cup for a refill and explained, “Oh, it was surprisingly easy for them with their psychological backgrounds. They found a group of disaffected, middle-aged men in a somewhat remote location. These men were financially struggling and felt abandoned by their government and their society. The media fawned over injustices to other people but ignored their problems. The government provided generous handouts to the very agricultural conglomerates poised to acquire their family farms should they miss a mortgage payment. Even their churches seemed to ignore them while sponsoring missions to help farmers in far-away countries.
“These men wanted fair and balanced assistance and felt they deserved respect. They had worked hard for decades, yet people treated them like failures. These people wanted to know why they were abandoned. They believed their lives should have more meaning than merely growing produce for wealthy people in far-away cities.
“The researchers presented themselves as messengers from God. They convinced these men that Judgement Day was coming and that God chose them to wield his hammer.”
Darnell did not doubt that people fit this description but doubted that even they would agree to disperse a virus that would wipe out humanity.
He complained, “I don’t get it. How could they convince anyone to start a pandemic willingly?”
Sholene replied, “It took over a year, but it wasn’t too tricky. Imagine a handful of people who look like me, mysteriously appearing dressed in long, white robes. They covered their pale skin with luminescent body makeup and utilized mild, hallucinatory drugs to complete the illusion. The researchers struggled with the local language but conveyed that they were angels.
“These so-called angels claimed that the virus would kill the unworthy, sicken those who could be redeemed, and not affect the pure-of-heart. They demonstrated it by spraying their small congregation with a form of influenza. Most of the men became ill, and one died. The angels claimed that the survivors were redeemed sinners now purged of their sinful acts. The men fully believed these angels and shared stories among themselves about their former colleague’s suspected transgressions.
“Then, last night, the angels returned to deliver God’s Hammer. The radicals had packaged the lethal virus for dispersal rather than storage, probably in a gaseous form. It might take a week to degrade in this state, but the plan would be to disperse it as quickly as possible in a heavily populated area. The researchers required darkness and a remote setting to hand off the weapon, but would expect their conspirators to deploy it by morning.”
Darnell was feeling uncomfortable. His guest’s story still sounded plausible, albeit unlikely. He decided to press on the only weakness he could detect.
“Listen, even if they succeeded, this virus wouldn’t wipe out humanity. I have a medical background and can assure you that we will survive as a species, even if it causes a pandemic. We’ll self-isolate, develop immunities, and eventually come up with treatments and vaccines.”
Sholene’s eyes welled with tears as she softly said, “No, you won’t. There won’t be time.”
They silently floated on the creek for several minutes, while Darnell’s mind raced. He knew that no virus could wipe out everyone but didn’t know how to press Sholene harder for her to understand. Sholene seemed lost in her thoughts as she studied a butterfly who had landed on her wine cup’s rim.
“You won’t have time to save yourselves. This disease is a weaponized, multiphasic virus designed to be highly-contagious with 99.9% fatalities.”
Darnell gasped. He wasn’t sure what a multiphasic virus was, but he said, “That just isn’t possible. We don’t have the technology to do that.”
“You’re right. You don’t, but we do. However, you do have the technology to do part of it. Viruses rapidly mutate, so scientists selectively bred a common coronavirus to increase its R0 value and its resilience to macrophage digestion. The process took over a decade but produced a virus that human white blood cells have difficulty removing with an R0 of thirty. Their technique was not much different than how you breed dogs and cats; just on a fast-paced, microscopic scale.”
Sholene looked pained as she spat out her last sentence, and Darnell also felt a sick ache in his gut. She was right. A virus with a 30 R0 would be unstoppable, and the development process she described wasn’t entirely implausible.
“You are correct that these scientists used advanced genetic engineering to make the virus lethal. They based their work upon a technique developed to cause white blood cells to target cancer cells. I don’t understand the science, but a macrophage’s attempts to digest the virus trigger a transformation within the virus. They cause it to secrete a chemical that damages the macrophage’s ability to differentiate cells. Thus, the virus creates killer white blood cells that eat everything they see, including the host’s healthy cells.”
Darnell stared at her in disbelief. “So, the virus creates zombie white blood cells? It causes people’s immune systems to eat them alive?”
“Yeah, and the body keeps creating more white blood cells to fight off the infection. This method of death is horrible, but it doesn’t take long.”
They stared into each other’s eyes for several long moments before Sholene turned away and said, “And, I’m sure that the virus was released this morning. There is nothing we can do about it.”
Darnell was concerned. She had unexpectedly, well-considered explanations. He finally asked, “But why would they choose Rochester?”
Sholene admitted, “I don’t know. They would have had three dispersal criteria. They would want a crowded area to infect as many people as possible. They needed a confined space where people remained for an extended time to increase its potency. And they would want to infect multiple international travelers for simultaneous breakouts around the world.
“My best guess is that they released it on an international flight, but Rochester isn’t an international hub. I don’t understand why they didn’t select a city like New York.”
Darnell had an idea. He started answering slowly but sped up as his thought took form while he spoke.
“They didn’t release it on an airplane. There is far too much security at an airport to sneak a gas canister onto a plane. They released it on a train. And that’s why they selected Rochester! Every day, a train, filled with hundreds of people, travels to the international hub called New York City! A train is an enclosed environment with recirculating air, where people remain for many hours. And security is much lighter at train stations than airports. Sholene, we looked in the wrong place!”
Darnell felt nauseous. His attempts to break her story had backfired. Her tale still sounded incredible, but he began feeling an unnerving twinge of doubt of whether it was all a fantasy.
They packed up their lunches and paddled back to the dock. Sholene’s tale momentarily dimmed her mood, but she was soon back to smiling at every sight they passed. Darnell, however, felt far less cheerful than he did on the journey out.
After docking and paying for the canoe rental, Sholene wanted to walk farther down the park’s trail along the river. Darnell’s arms ached from the paddling, and he was still depressed, but she grabbed his hand, smiled at him, and batted her eyes. He couldn’t refuse.
She soon dropped his hand and skipped ahead. Darnell trotted to catch up, and his mood lifted as they strolled down the trail. She would point at every new object, plant, animal, or bug she saw, as though she was a small child. Darnell would laugh and name them when he was able. She kept apologizing that many of these either didn’t exist or were extremely rare, back home.
She added that this was one of the reasons those psychopaths created the virus. They, justifiably, blamed human overpopulation and environmental destruction for climate change and extinctions. However, their solution was to reduce that population forcibly, with an engineered disease.
Darnell said, “I tried to classify your species, and I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area, and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed, and the only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You’re a plague, and we are the cure.”
He grinned as he said this with an odd, contrived accent, but Sholene was shocked. She exclaimed in horror, “What did you say!?”
“What? That’s that famous quote by Agent Smith in the movie, The Matrix. Surely you remember that scene. I’ve watched it so often that I’ve nearly memorized the script.”
Sholene suspiciously answered, “No, I have never heard of that movie.”
Darnell laughed, “Well, I know what we’re doing tonight. Netflix and chill.”
Then a mortified expression washed over his face as Sholene backed away.
“I mean, we’re ordering pizza and watching the movie. Heck, we don’t need Netflix at all. I have the trilogy on DVD.”
Darnell angrily thought, “Stupid, stupid, stupid. Don’t try to be cool, man. You’re too out of practice.” Then he remembered he had never been in practice. He had met Sarah in his sophomore year of college and never dated anyone else again. He prayed he hadn’t ruined his chances with Sholene. Then, his mind raced with thirty different thoughts as awareness grew of his desire for this woman he had just met.
They continued for several more minutes like this. Sholene raced back and forth, excitedly pointing out a new leaf shape or a bee, while Darnell remained lost in thought. Suddenly, a bicyclist came speeding by and nearly hit Sholene.
Darnell saw the bike approaching and grabbed his new friend to pull her aside quickly. He felt her trembling in his arms as the biker yelled to stay on their side of the path. Darnell explained that pedestrians and bikers shared the trail by traveling in their assigned lanes. Sholene apologized for not realizing what the painted yellow line meant on the path.
Darnell said, “It’s no big deal. Don’t worry about it. People make this mistake all the time,” as he soothed her in his arms.
Sholene calmed down after a few minutes but decided it was time to go back. Darnell felt a guilty thankfulness about the incident as they walked the entire way home with their arms around each other.
Later that evening, Sholene laid on the couch, recounting the day in her mind. They had returned home, eaten a delicious, veggie pizza, slipped into their scrub “jammies,” and began watching The Matrix. Sholene had difficulty understanding what was happening, and Darnell had finally stopped trying to explain it.
Sholene was snuggled in his arms as she laid on top of him while he stroked her hair. Well, he had been stroking her hair. He stopped a while ago, and his slow, regular breathing indicated that he was probably asleep. She hadn’t cared, though, and wished this moment could last forever, as she nestled into his arms and felt his warmth around her. She had just watched Agent Smith deliver his infamous virus monologue, and the movie bored her. Besides, she had to pee and should go to bed. Sholene carefully extricated herself from Darnell’s arms without waking him and studied him after standing. She was amazed at how she had forgotten what he was for the past hour, while her head rested on his chest. Even now, she no longer felt her earlier revulsion when she looked at him. Sholene almost wished she could stay.