Connected Infection

34. Gobi - Chapter 20.3

'Okay, just shut up, and kiss me.'

Simon retreated until his back hit the wall. 'Listen, I think you've got the wrong idea...' he began.

'I thought I told you to shut up?' she said, closing the distance so the fly had to move from between them to hover overhead.

'Anna, wait,' he stammered.

She laughed.

'No,' he said more firmly. 'At least, not until you tell me what's going on.'

Anna shrugged. 'An evil and unknowable menace threatens the world. Who will stop it? Who can stop it? Only one woman, a woman of hidden talents and resourcefulness, a wily, courageous, sexual...'

'Whoa,' Simon said. 'That's not quite what I meant.'

Anna sighed. 'Fine. I guess I was bored. We fought long and hard to get this project running. There were many fears: of blowing a crater in the desert, irradiating half of Asia, creating strange matter capable of consuming the planet, causing a vacuum transition that would destroy the universe. Silly fears, really. But we fought hard, and three years ago, GASP finally came online. But now? Now that it's here?' She sighed again. 'I mean, it's all very well living on a scientific and technological frontier, but when the day-to-day reality is stacks of paperwork – and I mean stacks, because we aren't a hundred percent digital here – and repetitive results with long-winded analyses, excessive number-crunching and watching of screens, waiting for an alarm to go off which might mean something has finally happened – only for you to discover that the implications of the results won't make any difference to the world for years and years, and that you'll have to spend all the meantime riding back and forth in automated cars through an alternately freezing and boiling wasteland, where the only forms of entertainment are getting blind drunk or scrabbling around in the dirt for largely unidentifiable parts of long-dead creatures – when the weather permits – while longingly waiting for the one or two trips to wherever you'd rather be that you can scrape together from your meagre holiday allowance, then - as I'm sure you can imagine - a few days of fighting zombies, blowing things up, and saving the world starts to sound quite appealing. To be honest, I'm surprised I didn't think of it earlier.'

Simon stared at her.

'So that's what I'm going to do,' she added, gesturing at the thing she was making on the desk. 'Save the world.'

Simon opened and closed his mouth a couple of times, then decided to ignore everything she'd just said, and asked her what the device was instead.

'I can't tell you,' she said, nodding up at the fly hovering above them.

'I see,' Simon said, failing to understand at all.

'So. Are you going to kiss me now?'

'What?'

'You're really starting to bore me, you know.'

'Anna...'

'No more questions, okay? You're confusing me, and that tongue could be used for other things...'

Simon held up his hands. 'Okay. No more questions,' he said quickly. 'But will you just tell me how all this started? Just your side of the story?'

'There'll be plenty of time for all that afterward.'

'Afterward? After what?'

'After I've saved the day.'

'What if you can't?' Simon asked her. 'What if you die? Somebody should know what happened here.'

Anna laughed loudly. 'I'm not going to die.'

'You might. There are hordes of Infected out there, holding off the entire Mongolian army. There are exploding flies, microwave weapons...'