After the Truth (Book One)

Nine

'After the shit we've had to put up with on this trip, I had better get upgraded to first class,' Evelyn said as we entered the terminal building at LAX three days later, having finally been released from the confines of the airbase.

I agreed with her, and wondered if I could pull the same trick. Not only had we dealt with the deaths of seven children and their teacher, we had caused serious strains in the relationship between the US health authorities and the WHO. Our isolation and effective quarantine when there was no identified threat was escalated up to the WHO Director-General himself, and subsequently to the US Secretary of State. The quarantine of Edward and his fellow students had caused a media stir too, especially with several of the parents talking to lawyers about suing the government.

The blame game was happening and the consensus was developing that Special Agent Williams and Assistant Director Fallows had over reacted. It was being ignored that what they had encountered was nothing like anyone had experienced before.

It is only now I realise that as Evelyn and I prepared to fly back to Geneva we knew then everything there was to know about what had killed all those victims.

We just didn't realise we were dealing with a pathogen no one has seen the like of before. And we had been exposed to it the same way so many others were, and so many more will be. This pathogen was not airborne, or waterborne or residing in contaminated soil. This pathogen could be spread at the speed of light and jump continents in microseconds. Compared with what was to come, it was at that time relatively dormant. However it was just waiting to be spread via the billions of communications connections spanning the globe.

Humans had only just built the communications and transmission infrastructure that would allow this new danger to spread so quickly and so far. The Internet was one of the most significant achievements in human history and now, at that very moment lying and waiting in one tiny corner, was the danger waiting to kill so many.

Am I becoming too dramatic? Should I speak of this tomorrow, or should I be more logical and scientific.

Technically, I suppose, the Word is not the pathogen. Our laxity with the truth is the pathogen. So, in essence, the disease had already spread across the world. The Word is merely the trigger to "switch" the pathogen of lies into a deadly disease.

There will be those tomorrow listening to me speak who have made their decision that I am wrong. They will not believe the danger that faces us all. They will continue to say what I and others have tried to prove and demonstrate is nothing but an elaborate plot against their own beliefs, or culture, or country or freedoms. No matter what we say, they will hear us only as fake information and news.

That day in LAX, compared with what was in my future, I was as innocent a child as Edward and his friends had been.

Is this another theme I should raise in my speech? As an entire race we have to mature. Perhaps what is happening is the end of the humanity's childhood. How often as children are we told to "tell the truth"?

Evelyn and I fumbled our way through the airport crowds, heading for the Lufthansa check-in desks. There was a queue and I and Evelyn waited patiently for our turns. When we got near the front of the queue Evelyn asked if I had learnt enough from her methods to have the confidence to get an upgrade too. She told me that on our last few trips she had gotten lonely in first-class. Provocatively she brushed her thigh against my leg and told me it would be easier to get into the mile high club in first class during a night flight. I ignored her innuendo and pointed out a desk that had become vacant.

It will always be one of my greatest regrets I did not act that day in LAX.

I can also clearly see now the junction in time and space that my lack of action was a moment of life and death that day.

I told Evelyn I was too honest to attempt what she tried. Her loneliness would have to be the price to pay for her dishonesty. She shrugged off my comments, telling me the loneliness was worth a wide seat and lots of leg room.

Just as Evelyn headed for the empty check-in desk, the one next to it became vacant too. I handed over my passport and ticket and listened into Evelyn's coercive attempt with the young man checking her ticket and luggage. She was using the same lie she had tried in Rio:

'I work for the World Health Organisation and have just spent the several days tending to a young boy with a very rare medical condition. I am exhausted and desperate to get some sleep on the flight if at all possible.'

The man behind the desk smiled politely and began to type at his computer.

I was impressed that this time there was a grain of truth to her lie. However, a grain is not enough to turn a lie into the truth.

To push her point, Evelyn pushed her lie: 'It has been so long since I have been home I want to make sure I have the energy to play with my children.'

It was the gasp from the check-in attendant that made me turn to look.

I have seen the eyes of many corpses. When the life has gone from someone's body their eyes are frozen in time, showing their last view of the world.

As Evelyn slipped to the ground, her eyes stayed focused on me the whole way down. However they were frozen in death as soon as she began to fall. Evelyn was dead before she hit the terminal floor, but she had known enough that it was coming and turned to me. I was the last thing she saw in this world.

It is the memory of her lifeless stare that keeps me fighting. Her death and the thousands since then cannot be in vain. What I realised in that moment cannot be ignored, or undone. We have to face up to what is before us.

If not, Evelyn and all ofus will die for nothing.