The Wyrms of &alon

Ideas rarely gave their enemies quarter. Lassedicy took no prisoners—nor, for that matter, did healthcare policy. And though the many variations of my religion had a rich array of beliefs, “Live and let live” was generally not among them.

A long time ago, a wise man asked a question, and, ever since, all the sensitive, thoughtful people in the world stayed up at night, worrying about it.

Most people believed that God’s will was both good and just. The great plan of creation, all the details; the laws of nature and nature’s God. All were good and just.

But… why?

Was God, by definition, good? Or was goodness, by definition, any act of the divine will? If God was defined as good, then God was predicated on goodness, and thus, goodness was greater than God. But if goodness was defined as all that God did and willed, then goodness had no inherent value, for there was nothing to stop God from implementing a double standard. God could choose—and many would contend that the Angel already had chosen—to declare murder good and just if it pleased God to do so.

My Sessions School teachers tried to dismiss my concerns by telling me that goodness and justice were inherent to divine nature, but that wasn’t a solution. The problem wasn’t the nature of the Godhead, it was the nature of goodness. Either goodness and justice are absolute, objective standards that not even God can change, or they are relative and mutable, dependent only on God’s whimsy.

I had to give the EDs credit, though: they didn’t try to straddle the dilemma’s horn. From what I’d read of their beliefs, nothing had any meaning or significance outside of the Angel and His will. Two plus two was four only because the Moonlight Queen deemed it so. A simple change to the tablets of truth, and two plus two could be whatever She desired.

There was a name for such a world-view: might makes right. Even if we wished it to be otherwise—and I certainly did—virtue was a function of authority. The rules, in practice, were whatever the strongest deemed them to be.

Focus!

At this point, I might as well have made this physical check-up a three-way therapy session—four way, if Andalon decided to join.

I cleared my throat.

“Paul, we need to talk about your symptoms. Ultimately, that is the reason why you’re here.”

I looked at Nina. “Nina… earlier, you said your brother had fallen and had gone all chabita. My Maikokan is pretty rusty,” I said—which was true, because I didn’t know a word of it; I’d taken Costranak as my foreign language in high school. “What did you mean by that, precisely?” I added.

Ordinarily, I’d have needed to double check my shorthand to pick out something so specific from a lengthy conversation. But I had no difficulty here. It was as if I could see every word of the exchange in my mind’s eye, all at once.

Honestly, I could have just come straight out and told the boy his diagnosis, but, for difficult news, my preference was to approach it as gently as I could.

“After he fell down,” Nina said, “he twitched and foamed like a salted snail. He tensed his arms like this.” Clenching her fists, Nina laid her arms parallel to her sides, twisting them so that the undersides faced outwards. “He foamed at the mouth. His legs trembled. I thought he was going to die!”

She shook her head.

“We didn’t know what to do, so we carried him into the car and I drove him all the way here. Every second I wasn’t looking at the road, I had my eyes on him. He suddenly came out of it while I was waiting for the light to change, I nearly got in a car accident!” She tugged on her beaded locks. “You know, I had to fight with him just to get him to come out of the car and see a doctor.” Nina sighed. “I’m tired of fighting, Doctor.”

“From the sound of it,” I said, “I’d say your brother had a grand mal seizure.” I turned to Paul. “Has anyone in your family ever had a seizure before? Is there any history of epilepsy?”

“No, never,” Paul said, and then immediately turned his attention back to that hand of his.

My own case of Nalfar’s syndrome began only after I’d passed out while in the throes of the unusually intense panic attack that struck me because of the incident with Merritt. Earlier last night, while eating, I’d gone over the data that had been collected from me while I had been in that unconscious state. As far as I could tell, all my brainwaves and neuromuscular activity were consistent with a grand mal seizure. And then, there was the fact that Kurt had had a seizure on his first night at WeElMed.

The correlation was too obvious to be non-causative, and with the lacework now added to the mix, it even came with a light-show in tow.

“Paul… why do you keep looking at your hand?” I asked.

Remembering both my own experience, and what Merritt had said, I figured that if the grand mal seizure was a precursor for the Nalfar’s syndrome symptoms which were currently the defining feature of a Type Two NFP-20 infection.

That, the powers, the hallucinations, and the transformations.

For once, the young convert didn’t seem to know how to respond, so I did it for him. “Let me guess,” I said, “your hand feels dead. It’s no longer alive. It’s rotting, and the rot is spreading up your arm like the frostbite that you’re now certain awaits you in Hell.”

Paul nodded shakily.

“You’re displaying a Type Two case of NFP-20 infection,” I said. “And it’s only going to get worse.”

Nina rose from her seat. “No… no…” The plastic turquoise beads soughed and clinked in her hair. She stared at me. Her soul glowed in her eyes, pleading at me through her gaze.

Watching Lopé's transformations play out before my eyes upset me on a level much too personal for a working professional. That it involved siblings just made the parallels that much more difficult to ignore. When Dana had started manifesting her mania and her paranoid delusions, it was like she’d become another person, as if some crazy lady (maybe a kaokui-oni?) had crept into the house in the middle of the night, locked Dana in the basement, and slid on my sister’s skin. I hated the idea of a person losing touch with who they were, and I hated myself for blaming Dana for losing herself when I should have known better.

It wasn’t her fault.

And, likewise, it wasn’t Lopé's fault that he had become Paul, nor was it Paul’s fault, either. As much as it upset me to see Nina grieving the brother Paul had taken from her, I would be committing malpractice if I denied that the Paul Lopé had become didn’t seem to be genuinely happy—genuinely at peace. As much as I wanted that I could reunite Nina with her brother, as long as he posed no threat to others or to himself, I had no right to destroy the person Lopé had become. It wasn’t our place to tear people down for not having the kind of happiness we wanted them to have.

I suppose, in a way, I envied him.

I envied his completeness and his conviction.

“What does this mean, Doctor?” Nina asked. “Is he going to die?”

“Nina…” I looked her straight in the eyes, “what do you think it means?” I asked, as gently as I could. “He’s infected, yes—maybe even in more ways than one.”

The boy looked at me with curiosity.

My words sparkled in Nina’s hazel-green eyes.

“What do you imagine happening next?” I added.

“You’ll…” She paused, daring to smile even as she cried. “It’ll be like the doctor shows on the télos. You’ll put him in a room, and me and the rest of the family will visit. We’ll spend half of every day haunting this hospital.” She shook her head. “God… I don’t know what will happen, but… I’ll be there for him, every step of the way. I’m not giving up on him.”

Oh God…. Don’t cry. Don’t cry…

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” I said.

I couldn’t maintain eye-contact, no matter how much I tried.

“As of this morning, Director Harold Hobwell”—I made sure to give her his full name—“ordered that all Type Two NFP-20 patients are to be sequestered. No visits allowed. There’s to be no contact of any kind. Besides, like I said, it’s safer for you to stay away from here.”

Nina cried. For her, it must have been like losing her brother all over again. I wanted to reach out and hug her, but I’d already gotten too close to her too many times. I didn’t want to risk infecting her, certainly not when there was a chance she might have been blessed by the Angel with supernatural powers.

It was so strange. In another life, she could have been my daughter.

“I’d…” I sighed, “I’d like to think the world would be a better place if I got to make the rules,” I said. “But I don’t, so… I guess we’ll never know. I’m sorry.” I smiled sadly. “Nina, you need to be strong now. Just by staying by your brother’s side for as long as you have, you’ve already proven you’re far stronger than most people.” I nodded.

“Paul,” I said, turning to look at the boy-transformee.

“Yes, sir?”

“Do you love your sister?” I asked. “And I don’t mean in the grand philosophical sense. I mean the simple, selfishishly selfless way where you just want her to be happy and not feel any discomfort, stress, or pain.”

He looked Nina in the eyes. “Yes, sir.” He nodded.

And Nina wept.

I stood up from my stool. “C’mon, Nina,” I said, “let’s get you out of here.”

Hobbling her face back together, Nina got up from the yellow, globular chair. I led her over to the door, which I held open for her.

As she stepped into the hallway, she stopped, turned around, and whispered to me.

“Promise me you’ll try to help him, Dr. Howle. I want my brother back. Please. At least let me have that.”

One of the sad truths of the world was that wanting to help people was a handicap. For one thing, it made a person susceptible to all sorts of temptations.

“I promise,” I said. “I’ll try to the best of my abilities.”

The words came out of me like a knee reflex. They didn’t take Nina’s pain away, but at the very least, they made her smile. And as she ran off down the hall, I pulled out my console and tapped the WeElMed app icon and summoned the orderlies who would wheel Paul off to Room 268.