More than Human: The Mensa Contagion

By Steven M. Moore

The novel begins with a strange invasion: a probe carrying a benign ET virus lands in South Africa, and the contagion soon spreads worldwide, creating homo sapiens 2.0. In the second part, the new humans become motivated to establish a Mars colony, which leads to first contact. In the background, a shadowy group, promoting xenophobic fear, works against the ETs and those new humans who embrace them. This saga takes the reader from a paranoid Earth to the far reaches of the solar system as the author plots a new and peculiar future for human beings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steven M. Moore
• Release date: Jul 18, 2015
• ISBN: 9781772420197

Steven M. Moore

If you’re reading this, thank you. Not many people find me...or recognize me as an author of many genre fiction novels. Maybe it’s because my name is too common—I thought once about using a pen name...and probably should have. Maybe it’s because I don’t get many reviews. (It's not hard to write one once you've read one of my books: just say what you like and dislike in a few lines, and why.) I know you have many good books and good authors to choose from, so I’m honored and humbled that you are considering or have read some of mine.You’re here on Smashwords because you love to read. Me too. Okay, maybe you’re here to give someone the gift of an entertaining book—that’s fine too. I love to tell stories, so either way, you’ll be purchasing some exciting fiction, each book unique and full of action and interesting characters, scenes, and themes. Some are national, others international, and some are mixed; some are in the mystery/suspense/thriller category, others sci-fi, and some are mixed-genre. There are new ones and there are evergreen ones, books that are as fresh and current as the day I wrote them. (You should always peruse an author's entire oeuvre. I find many interesting books to read that way.)I started telling stories at an early age, making my own comic books before I started school and writing my first novel the summer I turned thirteen—little of those early efforts remain (did I hear a collective sigh of relief?). I collected what-ifs and plots, character descriptions, possible settings, and snippets of dialogue for years while living in Colombia and different parts of the U.S. (I was born in California and eventually settled on the East Coast after that sojourn in South America). I also saw a bit of the world and experienced other cultures at scientific events and conferences and with travel in general, always mindful of what should be important to every fiction writer—the human condition. Fiction can’t come alive—not even sci-fi—without people (they might be ET people in the case of sci-fi, of course).I started publishing what I'd written in 2006—short stories, novellas, and novels—we’d become empty-nesters and I was still in my old day-job at the time. Now I’m a full-time writer. My wife and I moved from Boston to the NYC area a while back, so both cities can be found in some novels, along with many others in the U.S. and abroad.You can find more information about me at my website: https://stevenmmoore.com. I’m also on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/authorStevenMMoore; and Twitter @StevenMMoore4.I give away my short fiction; so does my collaborator A. B. Carolan who writes sci-fi mysteries for young adults. See my blog categories "Steve's Shorts," "ABC Shorts," and the list of free PDF downloads on my web page "Free Stuff & Contests" at my website (that list includes my free course "Writing Fiction" that will be of interest mainly to writers).I don't give away my novels. All my ebooks are reasonably priced and can be found here at Smashwords, including those I've published with Black Opal Books (The Last Humans) and Penmore Press (Rembrandt's Angel and Son of Thunder). I don't control either prices or sales on those books, so you can thank those traditional publishers for also providing quality entertainment for a reasonable price. That's why you won't find many sales of my books either. They're now reserved for my email newsletter subscribers. (If you want to subscribe, query me using [e-mail].)My mantra has always been the following: If I can entertain at least one reader with each story, that story is a success. But maybe I can do better than that? After all, you found me!Around the world and to the stars! In libris libertas!

Book preview

Human beings lived in tribes during thousands of years of prehistory and parts of recorded history. They were stable units for the most part, although territorial. Violent confrontations would often occur when one tribe tried to move into the territory of another. Dolphins, orcas, and other sea mammals live in social units called pods. They avoid the negatives and enjoy the positives of tribal structure.

—B. J. Chattopadhyay, in Human Social Structure after the Contagion (Interplanetary Publishers, 2351)

Chapter One

John F. Kennedy Airport, New York City…present day

Pedro Vargas worked half-asleep that morning. He’d lost time because he’d forgotten his pass and had to sign in at security for a temp. Breakfast at an airport kiosk left a bad taste the swill they called coffee couldn’t dispel—it couldn’t eliminate mental cobwebs left by insomnia either. The young airline worker snapped on his rubber gloves and mask and grimaced. Earning a living is hell. He knew the alternative would be worse, of course.

The night before his girlfriend had been insatiable, their kid had awoken several times screaming, and he had insomnia caused by the kid and indigestion from undercooked empanadas she’d whipped up between feeding the brat and her TV reality show. She was a good cook but didn’t worry about hygienic fine points or careful food selection. She’s not back in her home country, he thought, where beef is free range, hormone free, and grass fed. God knows what gringo beef has in it! He didn’t want to think about what happened in U.S. slaughterhouses. It was enough to turn a macho guy like him into a vegetarian.

He shuffled along the 747’s aisles like a zombie, stuffing refuse into garbage bags—floor, seats, and seatbacks contributed a wide variety of gunk and junk, some of it even sticking to his rubber gloves. He couldn’t believe someone had stuffed a dirty diaper into the seatback pocket. He wasn’t prissy, but some passengers were worse than pigs. Maybe the kid pooped just before landing, he thought, looking for an explanation. He generally cut people some slack, but he also believed they would be a lot more considerate if they had to clean up their own messes.

The amount of waste and garbage always depended on the length of flight. This one originated in Johannesburg with a stopover in San Juan. Two legs—enough time for human beings crammed into a sardine tin to turn it into a flying pigsty.

It was his job to coordinate the cleaning. After his initial inspection and at his signal, a platoon of workers would board the bird and try to make it acceptable for human habitation again. Never pristine, but acceptable. The airline didn’t and wouldn’t pay them enough to make it pristine.

It was hard work, but it beat toiling at some fast food joint in both pay and benefits. Sometimes a coworker would offer a sip from a flask or a hit on a joint. Once he had even scored with la Lolita from the donut stand, a twenty-two-year-old nympho who looked fifteen except for her huge tits and wide hips. With his sitting on a toilet in the women’s bathroom, she had been some dulce de jovencita. He felt no guilt—she wanted it so badly. And he aimed to please. Same thing with that SAS flight attendant. What was her name? Hedwig. Geez, the tits on that Nordic goddess beat Lolita’s! She rode him like a rodeo star, though, hoisting her undies and mounting him right there in a first class seat.

He smiled and began to hum a ranchero. He had good luck with women. Maybe it was a cultural thing, but he preferred to think it was his handsome body-build. It helped that he worked out. He also jogged. He was going to be in the New York Marathon but needed to go to Philly because Mamacita became sick. He loved the old woman and hated his father who left them years ago. He wasn’t going to be a father like that to his son. He’d do Little League and PTA—the whole nine yards. Marriage? Now that’s another issue.

He saw the man dozing in a back row. Diablos! Has he been here all night? Vargas knew the plane landed the night before. They had ordered it cleaned today to prepare for the next flight. The backlog for maintenance and cleaning was always stretched to the limit with all the mergers and cutbacks. The airline could skimp on cleaning—just a quick once-over for big planes, for example—or do it with care if the layover was long enough, assuming there were enough cleaning crews that otherwise would be idle. But, after a long flight, any plane reeked like a porta-john on a hot day in Juarez and produced enough garbage to dismay even a weekend environmentalist.

Hey, buddy, wake up! Didn’t they do a walk-through? Rise and shine, as they say. This bird landed long ago. I need to clean this row too, so move it.

The jerk didn’t respond. Geez, I’d like to be able to sleep that well. He pushed the passenger on the shoulder. Not too hard. You never know when a shithead sleeping off the booze will go berserk on you. But the passenger slumped over. A bubbling green sludge started to flow from his mouth and nostrils. Pedro noticed it staining the seat cushion under him too. Mierda!

The gunk’s consistency and odor made the expletive all the more appropriate. He backed away fast. He knew the passenger was dead. He’d seen plenty of dead bodies in Mexico, often bloated with maggots crawling from bullet holes in the corpse. In Manhattan, he had once worked in a hamburger joint grinding dead meat. That’s what this guy is—dead and spoiled meat. Not fit for dog food.

The dead meat didn’t bother him. It was the green sludge. It looked alive.

***

Dr. Christine Walker watched CDC experts work on the body. Some details were obscured by reflections from the heavy glass separating them from the quarantine room, but she saw enough to be glad she was isolated from the body. Let Feds take care of it. That’s why they’re paid the big bucks!

Even so, the weak reflection of her face in the imperfect mirror formed by the window was evidence for an already long day of intense worry and exhausting bureaucracy. Now she felt older than her years. She had hoped this day would never come.

They’d had some scares at the height of the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. This looked like it could be worse. She shrugged. It’s what she’d trained for, and that training was her choice, no one else’s.

Her ebony skin glistened even in the coolness of the AC, but the twinkle was gone from her expressive eyes. She had her father’s broad pugilistic nose and her mother’s kinky hair. She couldn’t help thinking of them far away in Atlanta. Would this contagion reach that far? She shuddered.

She needed a good run. Jogging relaxed her and helped her focus. She was a bit ungainly when she ran but didn’t much care. She had never worried much about what people thought of her, and she never stopped caring about helping people. It was her whole life.

She wasn’t religious like her parents. She had seen enough to know human beings create their own hells to torment other human beings. Her parents had grown past needing her to believe in divine intervention; she had grown past any need for their approval. Still, she was happy they were proud of her many accomplishments. Maybe they recognize my obsession to help people contributes more than most religious people can muster.

Looks like his insides were partially liquefied, said Dr. Paul Hazelton, an older doctor from CDC who stood beside her. That’s not good.

She nodded her agreement. Hazelton was intense and seemed like a caring person too. He was tan, but black hair, piercing blue eyes, strong chin and rugged body made him even more attractive. He had just enough gray around the ears, and a bit of gray stubble now from long hours they’d spent on the case, to make him look like an old movie star. An escapee from a soap opera about hospital life? Or, maybe this is a nightmare I’m in?

A new and more virulent version of Ebola or Marburg? said Christine.

Hazelton, who, like Walker, was a specialist in infectious diseases, shook his head in the negative. I don’t think so. If it is, it’s a significant mutation. Right now, I’d say this is something new. We’ve quarantined plane and flight crew, but passengers have scattered. We’ll have to find them, but I’m afraid this will spread, even if it isn’t airborne.

Considering when the bird landed, thousands have already been exposed, she said. This is one of my nightmares: a killer pandemic spreading like wildfire where there is no vaccine or antidote. She maintained a stoic face, but felt fear. Are more people going to contract this and die?

I had the same cheery thoughts, said Hazelton. We’ve also clamped down on media releases and informed the National Security Advisor.

That seems a bit over the top. This doesn’t look like a terrorist attack. But she was remembering a book by Tom Clancy—thriller fiction, but what was going on behind the glass was grim reality.

It will be if this gets loose in the general population. I don’t care where it came from.

I interviewed the man who discovered the body. He said the sludge looked alive. Care to comment?

"Now, that is over the top. Sure, stuff flows from every orifice. It’s viscous and it moves like old, dirty oil from a lube job. That doesn’t mean it’s alive. It looks more like some of those health shakes some people drink, in fact."

Christine never found those appealing either. Turns black as tar after a while, she said. Maybe it doesn’t like oxygen?

Whatever it is, it might require an anaerobic environment. That would work for us in containing it. Could be bacterial or viral. We’re running tests.

You’ll soon know then. Will tests tell us how contagious it is?

Hazelton shrugged. Depends. We’re watching Pedro Vargas closely, but we’re missing some passengers who were sitting near the deceased. Maybe they were in contact with the green ooze without realizing it. We’d like to observe them too.

Didn’t they do a walk-through?

The crew’s supposed to do that right after arrival. Vargas does one before bringing his cleaning crew aboard. One flight attendant said the victim told her he was waiting for the aisle to clear. It was a full flight. She forgot about him. And they delayed cleaning to the morning when Mr. Vargas discovered the deceased.

It might not have made any difference. I guess I can go home, right?

You and your people did a good job, Christine. Sorry to stomp on your flowerbed, but thanks for calling us. This is important, but it’s our responsibility now, and I’m not happy about it. He smiled at her. Try to rest. I’ll give you a synopsis from Atlanta after we have some results.

She nodded and started winding her way out of the university hospital.

Chapter Two

Johannesburg, South Africa…present day

Dr. Hans Nylander presented trajectory data to the group of scientists and students. The meteor had fallen just northeast of Johannesburg and Pretoria, a near miss, considering the vastness of the solar system and space beyond.

He was a corpulent man with a large torso and short legs. His disheveled shock of graying hair and rosy cheeks indicated Dutch ancestry, but his mother had been British. He hitched up his pants out of habit—his wide, old-fashioned suspenders now compensated for the waistline and hips he had lost along with his youth. A wide tie hung loose and askew in keeping with rolled-up sleeves. This was an informal working session of scientists and students, not a business meeting at some financial institution downtown. And I’d never be in such a meeting, thank the Good Lord.

He had a captive audience because students occupied many of the chairs. He was making his presentation during the regularly scheduled time for their graduate seminar. The audience wasn’t exclusive to his university either, but its members all had ties to working groups at the South African Astronomical Observatory (SAAO). It was often a raucous group, more like a debating society, but today they were hanging on every word.

He wasn’t the most senior or most famous researcher in that room, but he was the one with enough energy to organize the seminar every week, complete with coffee and snacks like bagels, sweet rolls, or other pastries that served as breakfast for people who often worked through the night. Many would go home and sleep after the seminar. Maybe not today?

It was quite a fireworks display, said Oscar Mbadinuju, one of his best students. I was having a smoke and saw it. Do we have an idea how big?

Nylander smiled at Oscar. He had made adjustments to his tobacco habit, acquired at age twelve, exchanging cigarettes for a pipe. He now was more man than boy and sported a modest Afro and goatee, but he still was the same shy and intelligent kid his wife had loved.

Not a bad football player either. Two days ago, Nylander had watched Oscar score the winning goal in a friendly match between physical scientists and social scientists. The latter had the better team skills, but the former had Oscar. It would have been more of a rout except for the social scientists’ goalie who had impressive reach and leaping abilities. Wonder how good Oscar would be if he stopped smoking altogether?

Not until they search the area, said Nylander, following Oscar’s segue. From the fireworks display, as you so colorfully put it, I’d guess it’s bigger than the one in Russia. It sounded like fifty fighters breaking the sound barrier at the same time—and that was only the audio. His cell phone rang. Excuse me. He took the phone from his pocket, checked the caller, and accepted the call.

The group watched, most knowing he would only take the call if it was important. He sensed all eyes studying him; he knew they were reading his facial expressions. Science was still a human pursuit. In the middle of the conversation, he pulled out a chair and collapsed into it. He turned white and his bushy gray eyebrows danced a jig below his wrinkled brow. When he slapped the clamshell shut, he stood and turned to the group. His voice came out as a raspy whisper.

It’s artificial! As far as they can tell, the original object was a huge, heavy, and thick spherical shell, much of the latter burning off in reentry ablation. Now it seems to be empty. The military has cordoned off the site. I need to get out there.

He dashed from the conference room, leaving the others alarmed and confused.

***

It took him nearly three hours as he fought first through city and then highway traffic between the two cities—three hours for 135 kilometers. He followed highway N12 and turned north toward the Ezemvelo Nature Reserve. His patience had worn thin by the time he arrived. His car looked like it had survived a dust storm. Nylander smiled. At least the old vehicle’s a uniform color now.

Soldiers at the roadblock stopped him. He showed his credentials.

I’m connected with the university, as you can see.

Yes, Professor, I can read, said the soldier in charge.

He was smiling. Nylander knew he looked a bit disheveled. Hell, I’m exhausted. He was functioning on a high-octane adrenalin and caffeine mixture.

My orders are to let no one in. I’ve already turned back reporters and photographers. You’re my first scientist. I don’t have a Nobel prize to award you for that, though.

Nylander ignored the man’s feeble attempt at parody. I’m not moving. I won’t turn back. Call your CO and let me talk to him.

The black face broke into a smile. Nylander was reminded of Oscar. He knew what the soldier would say. He was only doing his duty.

He said, ‘No one enters, no exceptions.’ I know what ‘no exceptions’ means, Professor. Please don’t insist or I’ll have to arrest you.

The scientist gauged the soldier’s expression. He’s polite but means business. How do I approach this?

You have no jurisdiction.

The Ministry has declared this to be a critical event. We’re in lockdown.

Yeah, whatever that means, said Nylander with a growl. Let me call the Minister.

The soldier raised his eyebrows. Nylander found his cell phone. He had the Minister on speed dial. Fifteen minutes later another soldier accompanied him in his car as they sped toward the crash site.

His patience hadn’t improved, but he had apologized to the first soldier for going over his head. He wouldn’t want to be stationed out here in this heat.

Chapter Three

Washington D.C….present day

Patience Matthews, Director of National Intelligence, was happy they’d dimmed the lights in the conference room. She didn’t want to see the President or Vice-President’s faces when she showed her slides. She also didn’t want them to see her worried face. Let them do the fucking worrying. I’m only the messenger. She thought of the cliché and smiled. They always blamed the messenger!

She’d been working for hours. She had already conferred with State about a new maneuver by the Russians who were still justifying their presence in Ukraine and denying they were arming rebels. She had conferred with the President too; they had just OK’d another drone attack in Yemen, a country now in civil war. Other hours were spent going over CIA intel and domestic terrorism reports from the DHS and FBI. Now she had this meeting to contend with—not a bad thing per se, except for some SOBs present.

She too needed a run. She could often be seen on the Mall, in skimpy shorts and bikini bra in summer, the shorts more for freeing her long legs than showing them off, and in sweats in winter when it wasn’t icy. She always carried creds and cell phone—no telling when an emergency would occur somewhere in the world—but she let the Secret Service agents carry the heat. She knew enough about self-defense and how to shoot—she had grown up in Detroit and worked on