Insidious Silent Infiltrator
Insidious Silent Infiltrator
A Science Fiction Horror Story
Copyright © 2019 by Kyle Robertson. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in retrieval systems, or transmitted by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recorded or otherwise without written permission from the publisher.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown, living or dead to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
Published by PIMI eBooks
www.pimiebooks.com
“We make up horrors to help us cope with the real ones.”
Stephen King
Dedicated to my high school buddy, Clay Johnson
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Why I wrote this book: I’ve done many science fiction stories designed to allow you to escape the real world while injecting ‘real world’ subtext into the tales. It was a sneaky way to slip in poignant timely issues in a fantastical setting.
For this book, I wanted to take a vacation from leaving a message in my madness. I wanted to scare you.
I don’t frighten too easily. I guess I get that from my parents. As people were going into cardiac arrest while watching The Exorcist, my parents were laughing at that crazy little girl.
When I was younger and didn’t know about special effects, Rob Bottin scared me stupid with his project, The Thing. Yes, it was gory, but the one thing which kept me up that night was John Carpenter’s paranoia plotline.
I want to give you that same feeling I had in this story. I just hope I can do Mister Carpenter proud.
Why should you read this book: This book will delve into the unknown and how frightened any rational person should be while navigating the uncharted territory. This book will acknowledge pioneers such as Lewis & Clark, George Washington Carver, Albert Einstein, Maria Sklodowska-Curie, and Alexander Gram Bell. Any exploration or inventions are dangerous tasks, but if it wasn’t for These innovators, we wouldn’t have the normal creature comforts of cell phones, digital media, knowing small amounts of mass are equivalent to huge amounts of energy (E=mc2). peanut butter, the west coast, the respect for radiation, or even the internet
Contents
Chapter One: My First Official Assignment
Chapter Two: Inaccurate Coordinates
Chapter Three: A Quick Fix Behind Enemy Lines
Chapter Four: Something Got Onboard!
Chapter Five: A Very Surprising Turn of Events
Chapter Six: If You Think This is Bad, it Gets Much Worse
Chapter Seven: The Torn Rebellion
Chapter Eight: Showdown in Cellblock Alpha
Chapter Nine: The Sinister Revelation
Chapter Ten: In Space, The Phrase a Brand New Day is a Relative Term
Chapter Eleven: Changing of the Guard
The Light at the End of the Dark Tunnel
Do Me A Favor:
About the Author
Chapter One: My First Official Assignment
“Why isn’t this working?!” Devin Deveraux grumbled to herself as she peered into the quantum projectorscope. “These fields should stabilize individually!”
“What’s drowning your cat this time, Devin?” Trembold Nash, her medical assistant asked in exasperation.
“This antibody is doing that Heisenburg uncertainty principle quantum dimensional wave-virtual-particle area swapping thing again. It can’t charge it to full capacity if it doesn’t stay stabilized in this dimensional gravity stasis! Sometimes I hate the quantum realm!”
“If it wasn’t for the quantum scientific theory, your experiment would never have existed. You have to take the good with the bad and weigh them. If the good has more gravitas than the bad, fix the bad,” he said.
“What do you think I’ve been trying to do for the past three weeks? Saying what to do is easy, Trem. Doing what you just said is ‘string theory mastery’ difficult.”
“You’re the most knowledgeable bio-quantum physicist medical doctor I or anybody in this Neptune medical facility knows,” he said. “That’s the main reason you were transferred from teaching at the medical micro coefficient theoretical university on Earth. There’s a reason you accepted the change from climbing the Swiss Alps to looking at this dark mountainous terrain you could never scale because of severely negative Celcius degree temperatures and no mountain-climbing spacesuit ever being invented to overcome the gravity constant of this planet. You’re the smart go-getter, Devin. I don’t doubt you. You have to stop doubting yourself. If you can’t beat this, it can’t be beaten. You’re too determined to put the word ‘can’t’ in your vocabulary. What're three weeks when you’re about to eclipse scientific theory because your peers are reviewing your new work with the scientific theory stemmed from your old work which changes the peer falsification curriculum? My kids are going to read your work and never know how painstaking those words were to produce. I know you can do this, but even you need to relax. Take a break and get back to it tomorrow. Relaxation can give you some new eyes. Unwinding your tightened mind is integral to producing new ideas. You’re so tight, your brain is getting fused and galvanized.”
Devin hadn’t relaxed ever since she was transferred many years ago. Her husband Ron let her do her thing and never complained. They really needed to go out that night. He needed a break and his wife as well.
“Okay, Trem, you’ve convinced me. I’ll go out dancing with Ron tonight. He needs a warm wife on this frigid planet,”
“When was the last time you went out with Ron? If you kept him in the background any longer, I was about to ask him out,” Trembold joked.
“Hey, you’re married to Gary and I wouldn’t ask him out. Both our husbands would like neither of us, stop playing,” she joked back. “I think it’s about time we stop going through the motions and really have some Neptune fun. I’m going to initiate him into the two-point eight billion-mile high club tonight.”
Trembold smiled.
“Go home, Devin, relax in your own way.
The next morning, Devin came in with an excited look on her face. Trembold saw her enthusiasm.
“Where’s that sitting ‘intense face’ you always wear? Did you get some last night?”
“Shut up, Trem. Your relaxation method worked,” she said. “As Ron and I were relaxing in bed after dancing, he told me about his day and how his students became rowdy. His kids had unbridled energy and wanted to go to the school’s planetarium to watch Jupiter’s irregular eclipses with Io. It was lightyear wormhole travel and dark matter substance singularity day, so he had to calm them down. He put them to sleep, Trem! That killed the rowdy behavior and focused them so they could sit and learn after they woke up!” She was excited, but Trembold was lost.
“ So, he calmed down six-year-olds, minor elation. What does that have to do with antibody dimensional field swapping?”
“Think about it, Trem. He slowed them down to a halt by shutting off their motors. When your motor is shut down, you can’t walk out the door to go to the planetarium. My antibody’s movements are propelled with an organic Flagellar motor. If I take away the keys, the antibody can’t start. I just have to find the key to its thirty different protein parts of the motor on a quantum scale. The motor is severely microscopic. You could fit eight million of them within the widt
h of a human hair. We have our work cut out for us today”
“I can’t do that level of meticulousness; quantum’s your thing.” Trembold protested.
“I know your specialty is dimension physics; that's the reason I picked you. Your job is to create a dimensional barrier field I can wrap around my antibody. You’re the backup to my backup, Trem. I’d never tell you to do what you can’t do. When you mess it up, we would both be pissed,” she said.
“Fine, give me the static dimensional size schematic model, so I can form-fit the field. You don’t want your antibody performing ‘frumpy’. Eventually, your superiors have to see this and you want your experiment to look sleek and neat.”
“My antibody blocks xenomorphic viruses on a quantum scale, Trem. You don’t have to give it ‘diva’ status to do its job,” she said.
“This stems from my work as well. I’m making your antibody an alien virus femme fetale.”
“An antibody has no gender designation, but I know you. Call it your ‘lady assassin’ for all I care. Just make the field isolation work.”
Trembold smiled.
“Doing it with style, Devin. You’ll appreciate me when your superiors see your antibody looking ‘fierce’ on the runway.”
She smiled at him and got back to work in slaying her behemoth dragon.
Devin was trying to stabilize her experiment before she tried it on her test primates. Being on Neptune gave her a very limited supply of Bonobo apes, so she couldn’t waste them. She was locking the Flagellar motors of her antibodies when Ron came into the facility.
“I’m on lunch, Devs, but I couldn’t wait to tell you about your good news!”
“Hi, Ron. They let teachers in here without students I see,” she kissed him. “What good news and why would you know before me? Are we going to the Decahedron Ten Shades Resort?!” She got excited.
“Better, Medical Officer of the Fulgur Percutiens battlecruiser.” He kept grinning.
“The what?”
“Fulgur Percutiens is Latin for Lightning Strike. You’re going to be on a ship, Sweetie!”
“Stop playing, there is no Fulgur Percutiens battlecruiser on Neptune.”
“Not yet, silly. They took me from my class to ask me about you. The Celestial Consortium isn’t interested in you unless they want to classify you with a top-secret clearance. You know they’ll visit your friends, family, co-workers, former teachers and professors on Neptune and Earth! What have you done to get them to notice you for the prime medical officer to a battlecruiser they haven't built yet?”
This was what she was aiming to accomplish ever since she aced her first MCAT exam. To be the chief medical officer on a battlecruiser to aid the crew. She had almost hit her target.
“I guess my superiors read my digi-log about my xenomorph virus blocker! I’m nowhere near completion of the first trial, so why alert the consortium of my experiment?”
“They said you’re the only person using the vital approach of stopping an alien virus, that’s why,” Ron said. “Rumor has it the Codexanths were a peaceful species until they began to conquer every habitable planet in their sector and began to mindlessly ram the trans-sector wormhole to try for our galaxy. The wormhole was the Milky Way’s express to our celestial home. Our military upgraded the wormhole to destroy any hostile xenomorph entering it but you know how effective that protocol can ‘not’ be. Their lunacy has been hypothesized as an alien virus turning them mindlessly violent. I’m speculating if your space-rabies vaccine can block and cure their mindless siege, you may be able to stop this craziness. You’re creating the golden goose. Devs and it wasn’t just your looks this time,” Ron kept smiling.
“Oh please, as if my ‘looks’ could do anything to anybody.”
“If beauty could be measured in nanoseconds, Dear, You’d be an eon,” Ron continued.
“Were you a dairy farmer back on Earth before you became a teacher?” Trembold asked Ron. “Because if you were, that’ll explain that cheesy compliment.”
“Hi, Trembold, bitchy as ever I see,” Ron greeted Trembold.
“You know me Ron, Queen Bitch in the medical department.”
“Leave him alone, Trem. He thinks I’m pretty.”
“Check your shoelaces, Devin. You keep tripping and falling… for everything.”
“Yep, Ron. He’s as bitchy as ever.”
“Well, this bitch is shielding your antibody to help you get your medical status on a battlecruiser they’re building right now; respect the skills,” Trembold said.
“Do you think they’ll put me on the ship?” she asked Trembold.
“If I have anything to do about it and they haven’t even interviewed me yet, you’re going to be the head medical officer on the Fulgur Percutiens, honey” Trembold assured her.
Your medical assistant is outrageously snarky, Devs, but he really likes you,” Ron said. “I have to get back, lunchtime is almost over. We can celebrate later tonight, Baby. Gotta go.”
“I’ll see you tonight, Ron. I have to get back to my whetstone to make my xenomorph virus nullifying sword razor-sharp.”
It took months for Devin to get her sword to slice through extruded steel like warm butter without leaving any shavings on the blade. She had to make it an expulsion cure as well as a blocker. She thought she was just making a shield, but if any human or allied alien was already infected, it had to try to cure them. Since she didn’t know the origins of any xenomorphic virus phylogeny, she had to treat them like the ancient common cold conundrum. Her antivirus cures the overall symptoms and lets the body expel the weakened foreign body with the immunity mechanic. This wasn’t a hominid-based organic virus, it was other-earthly. The only similarity was the carbon-based primordial integer which would aid all victims.
Trembold walked in with a cage full of mice. He had to test his shielding.
“Hi, Devin. This shield’s casing is killing the antibody and if it doesn’t do it in isolation, it dies in the bloodstream due to warmth. I’ve tried a steroidal component, hydrocortisone, and peroxide. One overinflated it, one muffled the intensity to non-protection and the last mimicked acid. I’m trying one more thing. What are you calling your virus vaccine with a blocker?”
“I’m naming it after my first mentor, Doctor Rejoarin.”
“Did the doctor inspire you?”
“She was the only one who thought I could do any complex quantum formulas, so yea. She put me on the right track.”
Trembold looked into the projectorscope and his barrier was working. He took out a tiny white mouse and passed the osmosis shaft over it to widen its skin pours for transfer. He also did 2 more mice.
“Give it seventy-two hours after administration and I might have the precursor protection base to your blocker. How does Saline Rejoarin sound?”
“You now just used saline? Why didn’t you start with the obvious first?” she asked.
“We aren’t just doctors, Devin, we’re cosmic explorers as well. Again to clarify. I began with Hydrocortisone, then I went with a steroidal base, then peroxide. Those didn’t work. We’re dealing with a xenomorphic virus killer made to disrupt a microscopic symbiote from an entirely different galactically chemical origin. I didn’t know if the normal would even work. I tried everything biologically within carbon-biological reason. If I never tried, I would never know.”
“You go out of your way to be anal, don’t you?” she asked.
“I’m not anal, I’m through, That’s the main reason you picked me. I’m as ‘anal’ as you are.” Trembold fused the antibody with the dimensional shield. He looked in the projectorscope and saw the stability. He mass-produced the solution and passed it into his 3 mice. He put them in a radiation cage, turned it on, and set the timer.
“How long will you subject them to the radiation?” Devin
asked.
“Seventy-two hours, If their hair isn’t falling out with legions, or profuse vomiting with death, I think we’ll be golden enough to try it on your Bonobos in three days.”
“We may just have this close to a xenomorphic virus cure blocker. Has the consortium interviewed you yet?” she asked.
“Like I wouldn’t tell you if they did. You know I would wake you from sleep if they interviewed me late at night. They’re probably interviewing your teachers on Earth. My opinion of you will be biased and is probably a very low priority. They’ll probably get to me after the Lightning Strike is built. I’m probably Ron’s bookend. Have some patience, Devin. You’re in the hypothesis experimental stage now. You have some time,” Trembold told her.
“These time trials will take three more months,” she said.
“Do you know how long it takes to engineer a ceramadiniun defense hull? They’re probably on their fourth tensile strength fuse-forge right now and with the volatility of the extrusion process, it’s expected. They're not building a medical junk drop disposal transport here.”
“You’re a dimensional microbiologist, how do you know anything about shipbuilding?” she asked.
“My brother is a starcraft vessel foreman. He bored me with schematics and his art for years. His ramblings sunk in,” Trembold said. “Out of all my medical study, I remember what I didn’t need to know. Its sort of funny repetition of what you don’t study can beat your studying.”
Devin understood. Her sister was a fashion consultant for the Xeres species and cobaphlanges were something she didn’t need to know, but she even knew the attitudes of the Xeres vendors.
“Okay, in three days we’ll know if they’ve acquired a radiation antigen…”