Transmission

0in;">The cherry glowed brightly again. Kellen knew it was a joint, and she envied the smoker. Random testing had convinced her that her degree and its delivery of a decently-moneyed job were more important than the occasional pot party. Dismayed, she wondered where all of her gleeful rebellion had gone, and sighed. Some days she’d just love to relax in a roomful of haze. Framed in a bay window, she watched the distant ember. Those days were gone. “Up past my bedtime” she murmured to herself.

0in;">

0in;">While Kellen was hunched over saliva samples the next day at work, the unknown smoker, Jeremy Bendis was checking his bathroom mirror repeatedly. He looked, rubbed his eyes, looked again, and kept it up for most of the morning. There were spots on his irises. Around the fifth time he checked he noticed that each spot had a counterpart on the other eye. Thinking he was imagining that they hadn’t been there all along, he left for class.

0in;">

0in;">“Jer! Wait up!” Missy didn’t need him to wait. She walked fast. Catching up to him and hardly out of breath she related to him the events of the party after he left early. “Soooo, Danny and I are kind of like an item now…” her eyes slid over to him, searching for signs of disapproval. Jeremy was the kind of friend who could be counted on to disapprove of a bad partner and while Missy liked Danny- a lot- she would consider whatever Jeremy had to say. When he didn’t say anything Missy felt a little nervous.

0in;">

0in;">“Jeremy? You think I’m wrong on this?” Missy elbowed him in the arm.

0in;">

0in;">“Uh, yes. Yes I mean I approve. Danny’s a really nice guy and I’m glad you hooked up.” He was instantly sincere. Missy relaxed.

0in;">

0in;">“Distracted much?”

0in;">

0in;">“Sorry, musta smoked too much last night. I think I’m still high.” Palm smoothed hair.

0in;">

0in;">“Lunkhead. You need to stop that, it’s a bad habit. You better not flunk out on me. I’ll see you later.” His eyes followed her for a few moments as she stepped into the building where her classes were and disappeared down the hall. Shaking his head, Jeremy departed in the direction of his own class. He could be paranoid some other time.

0in;">

0in;">After class, in the local coffee shop Jeremy asked Missy to check his eyes.

0in;">

0in;">“I mean, does it look like it’s new?”

0in;">

0in;">“Jer, I’m pretty sure you’ve always had those. Maybe you never noticed.” He relaxed. Missy would notice. She’d known him long enough. Mind at ease, Jeremy sipped his latte.

0in;">

0in;">Not very far away, in her cubicle Kellen ate a tuna salad sandwich and drank a soda. She wasn’t so diet-conscious that she couldn’t enjoy some gratuitous sugar now and then. It was about the only thing she enjoyed unless her relentless pursuit of work and her studies could be called enjoyment. She liked her vocation, but she needed a vacation. She made a note to look around some travel sites.

0in;">

0in;">

0in;">“Ma! Mom! Come look at this!” The spots had fine arcs between them. Two days later and Missy had been wrong. Those things hadn’t always been there. Marla stepped into the bathroom door, sensing a note of panic in her son’s voice.

0in;">

0in;">“What’s wrong?”

0in;">

0in;">“Mom- look.” He advanced on his mother, holding an eye open with his fingers. “Something’s wrong with my eyes.” She searched the whites for redness and then zeroed in on the hazel irises. Something was there. She leaned closer and squinted, knitted her brows.

0in;">

0in;">“What is that?” A tiny worry niggled at her, one that probably didn’t mean anything. She’d ask the other mothers later.

0in;">

0in;">“I don’t know. It started the other day. I thought maybe the spots had already been there but then this happened.” He carefully left out the detail about the weed that he thought might be the cause of this. What the hell kind of stuff was that anyway? Maybe Missy was right.

0in;">

0in;">After Jeremy had gone to bed, Marla logged into the Mothers site. It was very private, members-only, to discourage curiosity seekers from dropping in. It had been a while and though Marla didn’t care for the crazy rantings of some of the mothers there were some friends she’d felt guilty about not speaking to in a while. It would be nice to catch up. At the same time she hit up a search engine searching for eye spots. Around the same time she was loading the Mothers chat applet she was discovering a lot of pictures of insects with what looked like eyes on their wings. She turned her attention to the chat.

0in;">

0in;"><Chocolateer> Wow look who it is! Long time no see Marla.

0in;"><w@bigail> I AM SERIOUS U GUYS ALL KNOW ITS TIME

0in;"><Mars> Hey hey everyone. Pleasantries all around.

0in;"><w@bigail> MARS IS UR SON JERMY SICK?

0in;"><w@bigail> IF NOT HE WILL BE SOON

0in;"><Mars> What’s w@b going on about now?

0in;"><Chocolateer> Enough with the caps already.

0in;"><Chocolateer> Probably about how she wants a big fat /ignore LOL.

0in;"><Chocolateer> How are you Mars? It’s been a while.

0in;"><w@bigail> mars u can’t say i didn’t warn u

0in;">***w@bigail has QUIT***

0in;">

0in;">In a while it was almost like old times. Lurkers joined in the conversation and everyone got caught up on what was new. It was nice, but Marla had things on her mind. The comments Abby had made in the chat piqued her curiosity. Was something wrong with Nina?

0in;">

0in;"><Mars> Is Nina alright? What set w@b off like that?

0in;"><pandoras_socks> nobody really knows. she just started going off about it being time the other day. since then she’s only gotten worse. i don’t know what’s wrong with nina if anything really is. you know how w@b gets when she thinks about things too much.

0in;"><Chocolateer> Supposedly something “unearthly” is wrong with Nina’s eyes.

0in;">

0in;">A chill came over her belly so suddenly that she almost gagged.

0in;">

0in;"><Mars> Did she say what was wrong with them?

0in;"><Chocolateer> Get this. “Spots.” She fusses over that girl so much she probably knows the second a split end forms.

0in;"><Mazy> Yeah “Nina we have to get you to the salon right away!” hahaha

0in;"><Chocolateer> LOL I told her to go to the eye doctor. I should have said the head doctor. She doesn’t want to get on with her life even after all these years.

0in;"><Mazy> You were being too nice to her Choc. She does need to get over it.

0in;">

0in;">The room felt like it was tilted. Too hot. It was spinning slowly around Marla. Now she felt unsure whether she was thinking clearly. Had those spots been there all along? Maybe the color was simply defined more? She was sure they were new, of course she was, she’d just looked at them. But if only Abby…Crazy Abby was thinking about this maybe she was just panicking over nothing. The other mothers didn’t mention anything.

0in;">

0in;"><Chocolateer> Mars? Don’t worry about w@b. She just wants attention. She hasn’t changed since you left.

0in;"><Mars> Choc, pm?

0in;">

0in;">In the private message window Marla told Chocolateer about Jeremy’s eyes.

0in;">

0in;"><Chocolateer> Oh dear. You’re sure these are new?

0in;"><Mars> Yes. I’m not crazy, and maybe w@b isn’t either at least about this.

0in;"><Chocolateer> For now let’s keep this between ourselves. It could be anything. Have you taken Jeremy to the eye doctor? Let’s not get all worked up over nothing. We all agreed that “end of the world” stuff is nonsense. Let’s not have everyone worrying about their kids.

0in;"><Mars> We’re going in the morning before he has class. I’m not just being paranoid here. And I’m not thinking about the end of the world. Just, what if it’s some “trait” that some or all of the kids will develop? I mean it’s not like we can pretend our kids are just like everyone else’s.

0in;"><Chocolateer> The kids ARE just like everyone else’s. You were there. You got tested, Jeremy got tested. The kids are fine. They’re not magically just going to get something wrong with them. Look, go to the eye doctor. Take a break from work, send Jeremy away for a week, and relax. Get back in the studio.

0in;"><Mars> I’m not. I’m just a little freaked out. You’re not thinking I’ve lost it are you? I’m calming down, I promise.

0in;"><Chocolateer> Nobody thinks you’re turning into w@b. Let me know what you find out, OK? It’s probably nothing.

0in;"><Mars> sighs

0in;"><Mars> You’re probably right. Thanks Kate.

0in;">

0in;">Mars left the chat room and Marla went to bed.

0in;">

0in;">At the eye doctor Jeremy reluctantly confessed his smoking habit to his mother and the doctor, genuinely concerned. He was relieved and chagrined to know “marijuana can’t do this to your eyes.” Marla wished desperately that it had been the pot, because the doctor also said he didn’t know what could do that to your eyes.

0in;">

0in;">“Aside from patterned contact lenses, which you obviously aren’t using, I don’t really know. Keep an eye on it and I’ll do some research. I’ll call you if I find something out, and you call me if it changes, okay?” In the car on the way to lunch Marla told Jeremy that when they got home he was turning over his stash. Maybe she’d keep it for her week off.

0in;">

0in;">Kellen wasn’t going to have a vacation any time soon. She was too busy processing bloodwork. The fabled “ring-eyed kids” were being tested for something or other. She wasn’t sure what, because as far as she had heard there wasn’t anything wrong with them except now they had eye tattoos or something. Kids would do anything to be different, she concluded as she inserted vials into the centrifuge. Maybe they were all in a secret club together, kids who thought their mothers were, well, Mothers. That whole thing was weird and she was really too young to have remembered much about it at the time. That’s what the internet is for. When she got home she would check it out.

0in;">

0in;"><Chocolateer> Benji’s got them, Mars. We went to lunch and he was wearing sunglasses. I had to make him take them off. He was hiding them.

0in;"><Mars> sighs

0in;"><Chocolateer> What do you think could be happening?

0in;"><Mars> I don’t know but it’s scary.

0in;">

0in;">Stretched out on her bed, Kellen opened her laptop and searched “Mother Incident”. She ran across the name of a band, a few songs with the same moniker, and some very kooky pages dealing with UFO’s and supernatural phenomena. She fell back on the most and least reliable source, a wiki.

0in;">

0in;">This particular page was full of information. Within two minutes she had the general information down. Twenty years ago women around the world all got pregnant at once. The cases were all startlingly similar. Each woman had been an artist of some sort and had been commissioned by a man of indeterminate nationality to “chronicle her time.” Of the women who had accepted this commission, a number had become sexually involved with their patrons and became pregnant within a month of one another. Each woman had been told near the end of her pregnancy that she was “giving birth to the end of the world” and the men had taken their chronicles and left. One woman committed suicide, saying she wasn’t going to be responsible for destroying the world.

0in;">

0in;">In the pre-internet days, most of these women were unable to connect with each other but over time a “Mother” movement had grown, though it seemed mostly underground and/or suspect. How could anyone be sure someone else was a Mother? Apparently the kids all turned out to be perfectly normal so in the end it looked like a weird case of mass hysteria, online-style. Still, it was interesting that each of the Mothers was an artist or documenter of some sort. “Hm,” Kellen mumbled around a mouthful of candy.

0in;">

0in;">Bloodwork was getting exciting. This is what she signed up for. The kids were sick. Flulike symptoms and general malaise. When she’d had time to, she’d caught the latest news from her rss feeds, carefully ignoring the huge pileup of old alerts. The ring-eyed kids were having their 15 minutes and the Mother Incident was news again. Blogs, video sites, and general connectedness had afforded Kellen a fresh look at the old stories. It wasn’t any kind of tattoo or contact lens. All the ring-eyed patients were confirmed to be children of the Mothers. Fuzzy webcam images and spuriously-lit clips of young adults flooded the web, eventually capturing the attention of mainstream media outlets which provided better quality images and properly-lit video clips. By then, though, Kellen was too busy to pay much attention.

0in;">

0in;">“Mutants? Aliens? Who ARE the ring-eyed children?” Walter had snuck up on her, intoning the latest scandal-rag headline. Walter’s khakis were, as always, strangely unrumpled and simultaneously uncreased. She wondered how he did it.

0in;">

0in;">“What’s the latest in Scandaland Walt?” Pausing her paperwork.

0in;">

0in;">“Seems the Mothers have a lot of explaining to do. Most of the kids had no idea it was their mothers.” He shook his head. “I guess they didn’t want to seem crazy.”

0in;">

0in;">“So these kids all have moms that did this chronicle thing? And now they’re sick. Maybe all the vanishing dads had a bad gene.” What had happened to all the dads anyway? Kellen didn’t want to ask that one out loud.

0in;">

0in;">“The weird thing is all of them were the same. Guys of indeterminate age and indeterminate accent, indeterminate ethnicity and apparently now indeterminate species.” The last bit was said with a bit of a snort. “I think a lot of ladies got down with some crazy drugs and this is what happened to their kids. There’s probably a lesson in this somewhere.”

0in;">

0in;">“Yeah, use a condom.” Kellen half-smiled as Walter sauntered off chuckling.

0in;">

0in;">The eye doctor couldn’t find anything after weeks of research and polling colleagues. He learned he wasn’t the only one with such patients and that Jeremy Bendis wasn’t his only such patient. Unable to find any answer, doctors and patients had been hammering search engines for information which was regrettably in short supply. He added the information he had to several sites both for doctors and for patients. No, they definitely were not contact lenses. No, it also was not any sort of eyeball tattoo. Heaven knows something like that would hurt and get infected and whatever else and that would be a mess. After he’d finished posting he browsed for images. The photos could not do justice to the real thing. It was spectacular, and it invited the viewer to stare and stare. He’d gotten lost in them, watching the patterns develop and then even after they stopped. He looked at all the photos he could. It seemed he couldn’t help himself.

0in;">

0in;">Walter wasn’t gone for long. Within a half hour he’d come back with disturbing news. “Thirteen nurses have reported developing flecks of dark color in their eyes.”

0in;">

0in;">“Nurses? You mean like they caught this from the kids? That’s kind of weird don’t you think? Are they sick?”

0in;">

0in;">“They’re fine. But supposedly so were the kids when they were getting these spots.”

0in;">

0in;">Marla paced her bedroom. A swath of tamped-down carpet was visible around her bed, to the window, to the bathroom door. She pushed back her bangs and looked again. She did have them.

0in;">

0in;"><Mars> Guys, I’m getting the spots. Today I noticed they are a little more defined.

0in;"><Chocolateer> My grandchildren are getting them. Maybe it’s just us. Maybe they’re coming from us and we’re passing it down. The twins are so much like Benji, maybe that gene came from him too.

0in;"><pandoras_socks> lacey has the flu. her eyes haven’t changed any more though. I think they’re done. how’s Jeremy?

0in;"><Mars> He’s got the flu too.

0in;"><Dobby> Marcy is sick too. As a dog. You think it’s connected?

0in;"><w@bigail> ITS ALL CONNECTED AND NO1 BELIEVED ME

0in;"><Chocolateer> Please, with the caps.

0in;"><Mars> Does anyone else have them?

0in;"><w@bigail> i do. almost a whole ring now. u will all have them 2 and then we will get sick.

0in;"><Chocolateer> I can’t believe I’m asking this but, w@bs, what do you think is going to happen next?

0in;"><Dobby> Oh Choc don’t encourage her!

0in;"><w@bigail> u kno. end of the world.

0in;"><pandoras_socks> you had to ask.

0in;">

0in;">The kids were entering hospitals at an alarming rate. Kellen spent nights sitting up analyzing blood samples while Marla sat up nights watching her son grow pale and weak. Her eyes nearly mirrored the intricate rings in his own, and even as she looked at him now she found herself caught up in the way her gaze naturally followed the twisting, looping works of the rings. As a cosmetic device it certainly worked. When she’d first seen the fully developed patterns in her son’s eyes she’d felt something. A fleeting but very strong sense of familiarity. Surely it was nothing but at the same time she couldn’t help looking every chance she got, trying to figure out why she felt it meant something to her.

0in;">

0in;">The eye doctor felt the same thing. Surveying the umpteenth patient of the day with a beautiful and frightening ocular adornment he couldn’t help notice that even through their minor variations, all of these rings seemed like he knew them. Some of the eyes were red and bleary, some poorly disguised with contact lenses. Most of his patients were college students who felt invincible and their increasingly worried parents. He couldn’t shake the feeling and, on his break, checked his own rings and wondered if his patients simply reminded him of himself.

0in;">

0in;">Kellen hadn’t been home in days. She had no idea what was growing in her refrigerator but she did know that no single microbe was making these people ill. After countless tests of every bodily fluid and excretion they could think of, the only thing Kellen’s superiors knew was that a virus appeared inside the body literally from nowhere. No agent of transmission could be identified or isolated. The rings were an early symptom of infection, if it could be called that. The kids were all critically ill and increasingly so were their families and friends. Doctors and nurses were calling in to work with head and body aches, enervation and nausea. Walter had gone out to help at a hospital, dressed in the finest biohazard gear that could be purchased. With so many people sick and the vector still unknown, money was not an object. Nonessential personnel had been sent home weeks ago and would be recalled to work when necessary and/or possible. Support staff was bare-bones. Even the cafeteria staff were mostly absent.

0in;">

0in;">The phone. “This is Kellen.”

0in;">

0in;">“It’s Walt. I can’t come back in. I’ve got them. The spots.” Oh God.

0in;">

0in;">“Walt, no. You can’t. You’ve been suited up tight haven’t you?” She felt desperate and for the first time really scared. Walter could be abrasive and sometimes preachy but he was a nice guy and he lived to mentor promising researchers.

0in;">

0in;">“Sorry Kel, I won’t be back in. You’re going to be cut off soon.”

0in;">

0in;">“What do you mean cut off? The line?” Annoyance seemed like a good way to replace her worry.

0in;">

0in;">“From everyone. I know you’re drowning in blood there but everyone’s sick and we can’t risk the last well people getting sick. Has anything popped up yet?”

0in;">

0in;">“Nothing. Same as before. Similar viruses but different in each person. It’s like the body manufactures them itself. I heard that some people aren’t getting them.”

0in;">

0in;">“Some people who?”

0in;">

0in;">“One of the blogs I read is written by a girl whose sister is blind. The sister isn’t sick at all. Wish we had her blood here to see if there is some reason why.”

0in;">

0in;">“The blind? That’s odd. Maybe they don’t get out much. Bump into things, you know.” Typical Walter, all heart.

0in;">

0in;">“Maybe someone should check into it? I know I’m just a lab rat but-“

0in;">

0in;">“Not just a lab rat, but we’re looking at everything. You’ll get to make theories one of these days. Keep looking at the blood. Try to find something. I’m counting on you. When this is all over I’m going to write you a glowing performance review.” Well, that soothed the sting a little, but the slight was unmistakable.

0in;">

0in;">Marla’s phone rang.

0in;">

0in;">“Hello?” Her voice was uncharacteristically soft, scratchy. She had Jeremy’s flu. She looked at the clock, hoping she could feel better in enough time to go see her boy.

0in;">

0in;">“Mars. It’s Kate.” She sounded, if possible, worse than Marla did.

0in;">

0in;">It was foolish at this point to ask how she was doing. Marla waited, listening to the breath hitching wheezily on the other end of the call.

0in;">

0in;">“Benji…the twins. My babies are gone, Marla. All my babies are gone. Nina’s dead, Abby…nobody can find her.”

0in;">

0in;">“What about Dora?” She asked even though she didn’t want to.

0in;">

0in;">“She was admitted to the hospital yesterday. It doesn’t look good for her.”

0in;">

0in;">Marla sighed. “Abby was right. How could this be anything but the end of the world?”

0in;">

0in;">Nobody else was using the couch in the lab’s break room, so it and the immediate area surrounding it became Kellen’s home away from home. She spent most of her time wearing scrubs and booties, sending test results out on the same carousel the samples came into. The samples didn’t come so much these days though and sometimes the results sat for a while. The tv in the break room was old and didn’t get cable, so she didn’t know whether regular shows were still going on but it seemed on the channels she had, the news was on all the time. The news anchors were ashen, though, and weren’t looking so well. The woman could barely sit up straight and the delivery of both was nearly a monotone. All the news, all the time, was about the ring flu. The kids were dead. Their parents were dead. Doctors and nurses were dead and dying and the hospitals were like the morgue waiting list by now.

0in;">

0in;">She couldn’t stay here much longer either. She was going stir crazy from being isolated and the cafeteria had stopped making and bringing food. She was surviving on whatever hadn’t gone bad in the vending machines. Her badge had magically gotten unlimited credits and there was an entire wall of mostly unhealthy food in varying states of preservation. Even though she was used to spending most of her time alone, Kellen had become abominably lonely. Walter was the closest thing she had to a best friend lately and he was sick. She crossed over to a window and stood on a chair to see outside through the small aperture. Couldn’t even open it to get fresh air. Nothing was outside. Just the mostly empty expanse of parking lot and the distant road visible between breaks in the trees. She hadn’t seen any cars on it in a while. There wasn’t any bloodwork coming in now. The few people still in the building sent instant messages to one another about where food and beverage caches could be found, how to operate the laundry, and where the key was to the janitorial supply closet so more toilet paper could be gotten.

0in;">

0in;">Kellen left the window and paced the floor, eyed the machines. She was tired of cheese puffs. Her stomach was in knots. She wanted a steak sandwich. Where in the world would she ever get a steak sandwich? The realization finally hit her. In the quiet break room with its staticky tv Kellen broke down and cried. She would never probably have a steak sandwich again. Or get a glowing review from Walter. Or get another job or smoke another joint or any number of things. The world was dying and she felt in some way responsible because she had run out of tests to do just like every person at every other lab in the world and there was no answer. For a while she sat on the couch with her knees drawn up and close to her chest, arms wrapped around, and her head down. Not like someone was going to show up and see her, and so what if they did? She’d literally spent more than six weeks holed up in a small section of a building, increasingly and finally absolutely alone. Eventually she cried herself to sleep.

0in;">

0in;">Marla lay in her bed, beautiful eyes fixed on the ceiling. Nobody had been able to come see about her and she’d expired alone. Her boy had died weeks before and she hadn’t been able to ease his suffering nor had anyone been able to ease hers. It was over now, as was the suffering of all the Mothers’ children and most of the Mothers themselves.

0in;">

0in;">“Kellen” She jolted awake, surprised at hearing a human voice in her space. It was Walter.

0in;">

0in;">“Walt! Oh man shouldn’t you be in the hospital or something?” He looked ashen and very ill. He had sunglasses on. “Sit down, Walt. Come on. Where’s your suit?”

0in;">

0in;">“Kellen I think we figured out the vector. It’s not a germ.” He paused to catch his breath, his now-bony frame plopping into a chair. Absurdly he was wearing a lab jacket which seemed several sizes too large and khakis but this time they were rumpled and stained. “It’s eye contact, Kel.”

0in;">

0in;">“It’s…what?” She glanced at the dark glasses. “Eye contact? How can that spread a disease?”

0in;">

0in;">“The ring is an instruction. You can’t help but study it and you, you feel like you know it. It tells your body to make you sick.”

0in;">

0in;">“I don’t understand. I saw pictures and-“

0in;">

0in;">“Not very good ones, I assume. Inside of us all there are the remains of diseases that have become part of our genetic makeup. This instruction wakes them up. Or makes up a new one. It’s like a recipe, Kel.” A recipe for what, she wondered in the face of the clear answer.

0in;">

0in;">“So everyone’s-“

0in;">

0in;">“Dead. Yes. You were right about the blind. They don’t have it. Neither do tiny pockets of remote or secluded people. Everyone else is fading fast. Humanity is fading fast. Oh Kellen, who would think it would end like this?” Tears were trickling down from under the glasses. Walter turned his head to wipe them so he didn’t expose her. It seemed important to try to save at least one person in the face of the failure to save anyone else. He rose unsteadily.

0in;">

0in;">“Walt, what are we going to do? We need a plan.” Kellen shook her head as if she were refusing the enormity of it all. What were they going to do? What did you do when the end of your species was near? She felt weak, her knees wanted to buckle but she was already sitting. She kicked her feet as if backpedaling through time.

0in;">

0in;">“I came here with a plan.” His hands had been in his pockets and when he withdrew them Kellen thought how absurd it was that he’d carried around tiny waterguns with him. Just as she was about to ask him what he was going to do with them he sprayed her in the eyes.