Ficbits - The Backstory of the Backstory
Apr. 17th, 2011 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
windlionI drew diagrams, people. I could probably write the protocol with a bit (a lot) more research. And it's aaaaaaall in there, sort of. I'm also totally bullshitting the names, because Onuris gets a much cooler moniker later on that fits my naming scheme (which is actually kind of apropos of nothing, but it sounds cool.) The other character was initially named by someone else, and I forget what his full name was supposed to be, so I am just grasping at straws completely.
The stack of documents awaiting his signature was thick enough to make him stop and look at it twice, involuntarily taking a deep breath in dismay. The guy in the cubicle next to him leaned back to peer around the barrier, completely defeating the point of the privacy barriers.
“You okay over there?”
Onuris looked away from the many large words in small print to meet concerned brown eyes. The stranger was a few years older than him; early twenties, probably, fair-skinned, unremarkable brown hair and thick-framed glasses. American grad student, he pegged automatically.
“Fine.” He wasn't much of a conversationalist, but the open friendliness prompted him to be at least polite, shrugging his shoulder at the stack. “It's just . . . a lot.”
“A loooot of legalese- doesn't really mean that much when you get down to it.” The stranger scooted in his chair, turning to lean over the back to address Onuris. “You were in all the informational meetings, right? I think I remember seeing you around for the aptitude tests at least.”
Onuris nodded, scrutinizing the older boy for a moment. He didn't look familiar- but he had been more worried about his own performance and paying attention so he wouldn't miss anything. /I'm . . . not completely fluent yet./ He had been glad the last tests were mostly multiple choice; written exams in English would have been difficult to pass in the time limit. The initial tests in Cairo had been multilingual- and there wasn't any language necessary for the fitness tests.
“If they asked you in to sign the papers at the same time, I bet we'll be in the same group,” the American rattled on cheerfully. He leaned forward to extend a hand, “Harold Breckenbauer. My friends call me Hal.”
Onuris turned enough to shake his hand stiffly. “Onuris ibn al Abbas.”
“Nice to meet you, Onuris.” Hal didn't mangle his name too badly, holding his gaze and grip steady until Onuris relaxed a little. /He gets it- and he's not going to make a big deal out of it. Good./ So besides being gregarious, Hal was smart- good with people, at least, in a way that Onuris knew he very much wasn't.
Hal leaned back into his own cubicle for a moment, producing his own stack of papers to flip through. “I've got a head-start on you, I think- and so far there's nothing in there that they didn't go over already. And trust me, I'm reading it! Political science major, communications minor- I'm not about to sign something without knowing what's in it.”
Onuris cast a quick glance back at the human resources desk behind him; no one in the office seemed to mind their chatting in the lobby, and there was no one else waiting to be handed their packets to sign off on. He looked back to the young man, tilting his head slightly. “If you already have your degree. . . ?”
“Why am I signing up for this?” Hal grinned, waving the folder of paper at him. “This? This is my grad school. This is my getting a job in the diplomatic corp without being elbow-deep in debt first. This is /connections./ And maybe, if I'm really lucky, this is me getting to be one of the first people in negotiations offworld.”
/He's . . . very sure./ Onuris's gaze flinched back to his own contract for a moment, silent.
“Hey- you know I've got to be five years older than you. At least.” Hal reached over to squeeze his shoulder gently. “I've got a pretty good idea where I'm going at 25. You've made it through the tests, the eliminations- you know what this is all about already. You sure about it?”
It wasn't as if they hadn't made the risks clear. If it failed, there was every risk of death. If it succeeded- and there was a very, very small probability of success- then they'd become something completely different. He'd already faced death before in the outbreak; he'd survived. That didn't faze him. But his options. . . /Work in a factory. Join the military, get killed for no good reason. Immigrate, join the military, go to university, much the same. Find my brother, apologize, beg him to pay for my education or to set me up with a reasonable job./
Or sign up for a study, with an internship program that promised a degree and employment. And likely only a 20% chance of any change for good or ill.
He turned back and picked up his pen, scratching the first signature of many. “This is my independence.”
Hal waited for him; they turned in their contracts together.
“Hey, Ris!” Hal pulled away from the wall in the beige hallway where he'd been waiting. He looked annoyingly awake for the hour.
“Good morning.” Onuris tried to keep his yawn to himself and failed. They'd all been rounded up at 5:30, turned over their personal affects to the lockers, then one by one chased into the showers for sanitization and handed sterile scrubs with their ID on the other side. It wasn't much to look at; a plastic card on a bead chain that he threw around his neck as he was obviously intended to.
“Not a morning person, huh?” At least Hal attempted to sound sympathetic; he got a disgruntled look from under wet bangs for his trouble.
/Too early./ Hal had to have been waiting for awhile; he was amongst the first group through the showers, where Onuris was at the end. Evidently Hal had scouted the way to the waiting room; he led the way around the corners without looking at the signs. They were group four out of five for this facility, apparently.
The plastic chairs lining the walls of the waiting room were mostly full of likewise sleepy, damp and scrub-clad fellow test subjects. Hal gestured for Onuris to take his pick; he settled them in the corner across from the entrance, at the opposite end of the room from the solid blank door he guessed they'd be going through later. He'd known it'd be sterile, but it was almost oppressive. /Like the airport but worse./ Three more people trickled in behind them, then there was a snick as the doors were locked.
/6 a.m./ A crackling on the loudspeaker overhead stopped the few conversations that were underway; there wasn't much energy to be had this early in the morning.
“Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. Thanks for coming out on time and keeping us on schedule. We're going to try to keep it that way- so that means you all have to do your part to keep us on track. If you could look at your ID cards, please. . .”
There was a quiet shuffling as everyone reached for their ID- some of the earlier arrivals scrambled to pick them up off the floor or out of pockets. Onuris flipped his over to look at it. His face, a string of numbers, today's date, a bar code, and an array of boxes.
“You might notice that your name isn't on there. That's for your privacy, and for the integrity of the experiment. You'll each have been issued an ID number. The first four digits are for identifying the experiment and location number. The fifth and sixth are your experiment cohort- that's designating the rooms you're in now. The seventh and eighth are what you're going to pay attention to now: that's the order you're going to be processed in from one to twenty. Please make sure you know the order in your room so we can proceed smoothly. We'll be making another announcement fifteen minutes in advance so you can line up and be ready. That means 11:45, people.”
A murmur immediately broke out through the room; Onuris frowned at his number- 19. Hal beside him held up his to compare; 5. /Early and late – no wonder he went through earlier than me./
“Please also notice that you've all got photo identification right next to that number- that's so no one gets any bright ideas and tries to change numbers. This is a double-blind experiment, as we've told you. No one administering the injections knows what's in them; they're only labeled by your individual ID numbers, and everything has to match to proceed. We appreciate your cooperation in keeping everything moving smoothly.”
The speaker paused a moment, letting that sink in before concluding, “You have five and a half hours ahead of you; as you know, you can't eat, but water and facilities are provided for each room. Please relax, enjoy the provided entertainment, and help us prepare for a smooth and orderly experiment. Thank you very much for participating today, ladies and gentlemen. It means more than you know.”
The overhead clicked off. Onuris let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding. /No turning back now./ Placebo, test or other had already been decided for them well ahead of time. Hal grinned at him, “Here we go.”
A few seats down, a blond grumbled, “Shit, I'm eleven. Smack in the middle. I wanted to get it over with.”
“You kidding me? I'd rather go last. Who'd want to be first?”
“Nah, dude. Middle is good, middle is fine- you're not the first one through but you're not dying of anticipation, either.”
A twenty-something black man near the door stood, whistling at the group for attention. Onuris vaguely recalled his name as Jamal; one of the Americans. “Heads up, everybody. You heard the man; we need to count off and get ourselves figured out so we're not the only fuckwits holding up the line. Remember who's in front of you and we can line up later. Sooner that's out of the way, the sooner we can settle in for the haul. So. . .” He looked around the room expectantly before declaring, “One.” He sat down again.
Onuris nodded slightly in appreciation, /I don't know if they planned it that way, but it's good to have a leader go first. He won't flinch./ The count proceeded around the room, not quite in the order they'd seated themselves but identical, in retrospect, to the order they'd been sent through the showers. Number twenty was a short-haired military type Onuris remembered from the bench test trials. He nodded at Onuris in acknowledgment as he stood last, steely eyed and unshaken. He wouldn't shirk from nerves, either, he thought.
Hal seemed to echo his thoughts; he elbowed Onuris gently as conversation started back up in a strong murmur across the room, “Strong anchors, huh?”
“I suppose.” He blinked as he realized Hal meant him, too. “Not necessarily.”
“I think it's smart. They've been running us through the bench mark tests together all week, and they've had psych profiles of us for at least half a year. They can see the group dynamics and they've planned accordingly. Put the strong personalities at the beginning and end, and put the nervous ones in the middle.” Hal grinned wryly, “I can't say I'd want your spot. I'd be all nerves if I had to wait in here alone.”
“Not that long. It's just an injection- it should go quickly.”
“Like the line at a vaccination clinic? God, I hope we're faster than that, even. I usually get stuck behind the guy who forgot his forms.” Hal rubbed his arms as if in anticipation of the shot- or perhaps he was just cold. The scrubs were short sleeved, and there wasn't much warm about the room they were in.
Plastic chairs, steel tables, monitors set high in the corners- nothing that couldn't be sterilized before they came and after they left. Hal followed his gaze around the room, ignoring the group that congregated to try and find a sports game on one of the TVs.
“It's very . . . prison chic, isn't it?”
“Something like that.” It wasn't that different from the hospitals he'd seen before. Not pleasant memories, but familiar, none the less. /Except they have a lot bigger budget here. They have much better facilities in this country, and this is a well-known global company./ He could ignore the memories; the outbreak was years behind him, now. The sterilization and decontamination regimes were actually reassuring, in a way. /They're being careful./
“At least we're not in orange. Green, I can live with.” Hal yawned, pushing his glasses back up his nose. “We've got a good wait ahead of us. I'm planning on napping.”
Onuris glanced sideways at him, studying the bags under his eyes. “Did you sleep at all?”
“Eh, I got a few hours.”
Knowing Hal, that wasn't from anxiety. Oh. “You spoke with your family?”
“All last night.” Hal grimaced a little, giving a sheepish shrug, “My mom is never going to forgive me for this one, but I think my girlfriend will let me live it down. Eventually. She's more annoyed I can't talk to her for a month. Dad said good luck.”
“Good. They'll be waiting to hear from you.”
Hal knew better than to ask about his family; Onuris was close-mouthed every time the subject came up. Close-mouthed, period. /I still don't know why he chose to talk to me, anyways./ It wasn't as if there weren't other people to talk to; after their first meeting in the lobby, they'd been run through decontamination and preparation bench tests for the past week with the rest of their 20 member group. He gathered there were nine more groups, five of which were female; this one was all male, between 18 and 28, healthy and fit. Other than that, they were a mix of interests: military, scientific, technical, political. Half were American, half were foreign, and a variety of ethnic groups were represented. Aside from knowing that they'd somehow all passed the criteria, Onuris wasn't sure what they all had in common.
Except they'd all taken the offer.
Onuris settled in, chest resting against his chest over folded arms. He hadn't had much more sleep than Hal, really- something shifted restlessly in his chest and kept him staring at the hotel ceiling until he couldn't remember to watch the clock any more. Whatever it was had stilled; now was just the calm before the storm, patience reestablished now that he was here. /Like getting to the gate at the airport in Cairo./ There was nothing to do now but wait.
Hal huffed a soft laugh at him as his eyes closed. “You're too cool, Ris. Sleep while you can. Big day ahead of us, after all.”
“Ladies and gentlemen, it is now 11:45, and this is your fifteen minute notice. We hope you've had a restful morning. Please use the time now to do what you need to do, straighten yourself out and line up in the order indicated by your ID tags. Remember, those are the last two numbers of your ID, from one to twenty. As you are called, you will leave by the waiting room one at a time from the door labeled exit A, proceed across the hallway to the examination room labeled by your group number, and from there across the next hallway to the holding room also indicated by your group number. We're aware you're going to be crowded and hungry for awhile; just stick with us until everyone's through and you'll be seeing your lunch soon.”
“Well that's reassuring.” Hal stretched as everyone shuffled to their feet or something resembling attention. “I could use lunch.”
Onuris followed suit, shaking bangs out of his eyes. He'd woken a few hours ago feeling rested; it'd been just restless small talk and music since then. Some had seemed happier than others as the clock counted closer to noon, but there was no doubt they were all anticipating their release.
Noticing the action, Hal reached up to ruffle his hair, laughing, “That's the real reason why you went this way and not the military, isn't it? You never told me why you wear it long.”
Onuris automatically smacked the offending hand away, reflexes built up by years of brotherly noogies. He straightened his hair-tie, shooting Hal an annoyed look. “You remind me of my brother.”
. . . Which was actually the answer to the question, not that he cared to think about it much. Ziyadh had grown his hair out in his teens, too. As a child, he'd always wanted to do what his brother did- ten years older than him, so much more mature and outgoing.
“Hey, someone has to tease you out of your shell.” Hal shrugged easily, obviously pleased to have gotten that bit of information out of him.
“Hnn. We'd better line up.”
Hal clapped his shoulder reassuringly, “Less than 20% chance of anything, remember? We'll be fine. I'll see you on the other side.” He joined the shuffling towards the front, and then- it was time. The doors unlocked and a scrubs-clad nurse stood holding a tablet and gesturing.
“Number one, please.”
It was almost anti-climactic. Barely a minute went by between numbers being called forward, and the line was orderly. Conversation was nonexistent; only a few anxious words muttered through the middle. Onuris took his turn at the doorway as the room emptied, then was waved on. It seemed like the waiting room doors all opened at the same time; he saw several others crossing the long hallway as he did.
The examination room doors were literally directly before them; five steps in and the next door sealed behind him. /Air pressure difference?/ He didn't have long to think about it; the examination room was far smaller than the waiting room, much like a doctor's examination room with a raised, paper covered bench and a waiting masked, gloved, shielded researcher. She'd evidently just shucked an outer layer of nitrile gloves and was pulling on a new set as he entered.
“ID card and have a seat, please.”
Doing as he was told, he presented it obligingly for her to scan. She read off, “Confirming 2-001-04-19, thank you.”
She let the ID card fall back against his chest, reaching for a small vial from an almost empty holding tray on a counter beside the table. The side had a similar label on it; she repeated the scanning procedure. “Confirmed with 2-001-04-19. Matched and good to go.”
Obviously it was a familiar routine by now to sterilize his upper arm, load a sterile syringe from the vial, inject him, then swiftly dispose of both syringe and vial in the appropriate marked biohazard containers. He barely noticed when she swabbed off the injection site, then quickly applied a bandaid over it.
“You're all set. Just don't itch at it and follow the observer's directions.”
Somewhat dazed with the speed, Onuris made his way across another identical hallway into a room that looked somewhat larger than the initial waiting rooms had. /Not exactly parallel construction, then-/ This one looked more like a hostel than a hospital; five sets of bunk beds arranged across an aisle from another with no room for personal belongings. Another masked-and-gloved researcher stood at the door, waving him in.
“Have a seat; we'll have directions for you when everyone's in.”
Hal waved at him from a nearby bunk, thankfully one set nearest a corner wall. “I saved you a bunk.”
“Thanks.” Onuris caught himself about to rub at his arm and lowered his hand instead, glancing down the line. Everyone seemed . . . well, not exactly relaxed, but the tension had broken.
Hal laughed a little at his expression, “Not exactly what I was expecting, either, but I don't know why I would have thought it'd be anything different. This reminds me a lot of summer camp.”
Their last group member came through the door shortly after, looking startled to enter the room as well. The researcher gestured for him to take a seat, then stood in the center of the room and clapped gloved hands for attention.
“All right, you've all been walked through the experiment and how it works already. This is the wait-and-see stage. You've all received your injections; for seven days from the time the last person was injected, we're counting you all potentially infected and potentially contagious. You're supposed to be infected equally- you guys know that. We're not supposed to be infected, so we're going to be taking all precautions handling you and anything that comes into contact with you.”
He paused to look around the room, making sure everyone was following. “We don't know who's a control and who's not. Maybe this whole location is the control, maybe it's not. Maybe you're mixed. We won't know, and that's the point. So we act like you're all infectious and we follow protocol. Right now, you're all in the observation phase- in other words, we're watching and waiting to see if you show any reactions. If you start feeling ill, off, weird or anything at all, you sing out for whoever is closest and we'll take care of you. If you're showing reactions, we'll isolate you on another level. You only stay put here as long as you show no reactions at all. At the end of the week, if you're still here and show no reactions, we'll run an immunoassay to see if you've reacted at all to the vector virus and have the right anti-bodies. If you're clean, then you get a free pass and we thank you for participating in our week of sleep away camp.
“We're going to try to make your stay as pleasant as possible- you'll have your run of the dorms, rec room and cafeteria. The cafe and rec room are mixed gender, but the dorms and lavatories are single gender only. Behave, guys- you don't want my boss coming after you. Because we don't want to storm them all at once, we're releasing you guys in fifteen minute intervals to go down to the cafe. Group one goes first, so you've got . . . an hour to wait. Remember, nobody pulls off their bandages until it's been six hours, and you don't rub at the site until it's healed. We don't want to spread anything.”
Onuris traded a look with Hal; nothing they hadn't known was coming, but experiencing it was something completely different from hearing it in a hotel conference hall. Prosaic as always, Hal shrugged, sitting cross-legged on the bunk. He held up the deck of cards left sitting on the pillow with a wry grin, “At least we've got food coming and better entertainment. Gin rummy?”
By the time they reached the cafeteria, there were already rumors of someone reacting from one of the earlier groups. Rumors were easy to laugh off; they had a headache, maybe it was just low blood sugar. Someone else couldn't keep their lunch down an hour later; possibly food poisoning on the bland cafeteria food. Both were whisked away- upstairs, the researchers told them politely, to isolation hospital rooms.
Onuris woke in the middle of the night to hushed voices, one moaning and another soothing before the bright light of the hall scythed across the room. The door closed and left quiet dark behind it. In the morning, three of the twenty beds would be empty in room four. He had the unshakeable suspicion they were not the control group.
That second day, everyone seemed to have come to the same conclusion- a quarter of the bunks were empty up and down the hall. There was an odd creeping tension in the air as they waited to see who would be the next to fall. Volunteering to have alien DNA grafted into your own was one thing. Waiting to see if it took was obviously something else.
“Flu-like symptoms, they said. Headaches, fever, vomiting, the usual.” Hal wasn't fazed. “We're supposed to get sick- and either something happens from it, or it doesn't. It's like a more adventurous version of my yearly influenza shot.”
Onuris cast him a skeptical look over his breakfast tray at that.
“Okay, so usually it doesn't carry a minor chance of successful bioengineering, but it always makes me sick for a day. But it's that or spend a week throwing up my shoes when, not if, I get it later. That's why I always get my vaccines, even the weird ones.” Hal picked at his not-quite eggs without enthusiasm. “Eh. Bad topic for breakfast.”
“You look pale.” Onuris frowned at his older friend. Hal wasn't as energetic as he normally was by a long shot. /His eyes look . . . off. Glassy?/
Hal pushed away his barely touched tray, grimacing as he set down his fork. “Not that hungry, really. Kept waking up last night. . . it was so loud. Maybe I just need to go back to bed for a bit.”
“Maybe.” Onuris wasn't convinced, but he turned in both their trays so Hal wouldn't try to leave without him. He'd keep an eye on him.
An hour later, Hal wouldn't respond to his name, writhing in obvious distress about something he couldn't communicate. Gripping his friend's shoulder, he could feel the heat pouring off of him. /Delirious./ Onuris hadn't felt his heart sink through his feet that way since he'd seen his father collapse.
The nearest researcher came running before he could even shout.
Hal wasn't the first one to be whisked away that day, just the one in the worst shape. Even worse, the way he went down looked . . . familiar. Onuris didn't want to recognize it, but the thought wouldn't go away. /Like the outbreak./
Like the virus that depopulated half of Northern Africa five years ago.
And this is just the set up before I totally whallop the ever-loving crap out of them. Poor boys. (If you're a main character, the smaller the odds, the greater the chances they apply to you. Be genre-savvy!)
