Monica stood at the head of a laboratory looking like a TA from the business school who'd been tasked to sub for Gen Chem. Hunched into his oversized sweatshirt like a hood-savvy Leatherback, Viral watched her from the edge of a black, wood lacquered table. Monica spoke about guidelines -- no food, no cell phones. That’s right; the squat looking rent-a-cop who had been guarding the door to the lab when Viral and Monica had rolled up from the stairwell confiscated Viral’s Galaxy S10 before allowing him to enter. To add insult to larceny the portly popo hadn’t even bothered to wipe his hands on a napkin before pawing at Viral’s screen. It was with a seething, helpless rage that he watched Officer Chub-a-lub’s schmear-crusted finger pads pull a streak of cream cheese from his 10-megapixel selfie cam to his ultrasonic print scanner.
As he listened to Monica’s voice drone through what she called housekeeping, he recalled that without a phone he hadn’t felt so naked since singing karaoke hammered in front of a room full of musical theater majors at Lron’s “Suddenly Sondheim” party. Viral tried his best to hold on to the ends of Monica’s words and pull himself to the next like a hyper-focused spider-monkey brachiating through the trees. His eyes were watering. My God; was this what it was like to pay attention before smartphones? Viral started to understand why Gen X had grown up to become sour Libertarians.
“...ich is why we gathered you all here today,” Monica was saying. Viral had managed to worm his way into the center of a sentence without losing his way. Monica continued: “You’re criminals, and we own your asses. Sure, some of you may not have done anything wrong, technically, but you don’t have to be de Toqueville to know that that don’t matter. As of now you are a person of interest to the state. Again, you are NOT under arrest, but we do have the authority to hold you for up to two weeks without providing cause. If you don’t like it, too bad. You can thank your daddy Hussein Obama for re-upping the Patriot Act.”
There was a cough at the back of the lab that sounded like a chortle. From his seat Viral turned and saw three men the size of tree trunks leaning against a countertop -- arms crossed, chins raised, necks nonexistent. One of them wore sunglasses. His brown uniform wasn’t like the ill-fitting suits the Feds wore. Viral thought he looked like Highway Patrol.
Viral stole a glance at the group assembled at his table and the one to his right. All in all there were twelve of them. Monica was up front calling them her Disciples.
"I'm gonna wrap this up with some words from one of my idols, legendary boxing corner-man Teddy Atlas,” Monica said. “Recently, at a corporate McDonald’s retreat he spoke to middle management gearing up to sell burgers during what we got coming down the pike. I forget exactly what Teddy said, but it was inspirational, and it ended with the words, let's fight. Or something kinda…' Viral couldn't believe it. The inside of his ears hurt from listening. He’d lost feeling in his coccyx. He couldn't remember the last time he'd watched someone’s lips move so much without taking a break to check his phone. Finally, Monica was getting to the good part, the part where she would tell him and the 11 others sitting at the tables what the F was going on...
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"I don't know what you may have heard about this Chinese disease that's been happening in a place called Wuhan -- out in China -- but the Chinese --"
Monica was really harping on the Chinese-ness of this thing, Viral thought.
"--There's a chance it could be visiting us, from China, for a spell."
Among the Disciples, Viral counted three Asians. Four if he included the other South Asian cat like him, but there were three among them who’d popularly be classified in America as East Asian, or as Viral’s world history teacher, Mr. Kratz had called them in the 5th grade -- Mongolentils. Two of the Asians didn’t look amused by Monica’s casual racism. The third kept smiling, taking notes with different colored gel pens.
A girl who looked about two years older than Viral raised her hand. Her hoodie was black and she had the sleeves rolled up. Her hair was a mix of green and blue, and she had more earrings than a Claire's kiosk at the mall. She had a tattoo of a Slim Jim on her forearm.
Monica nodded at the girl, and the girl said, “Is this the bug that the President keeps downplaying, calling it the flu?” Monica nodded toward the back of the room then folded the paper she held into thirds. Viral heard Slim Jim Sally say, “Get your hands off me! What do you think--”
Then there was a chopping sound, a thwack, and the chair she’d been sitting on toppled over. The girl was quiet now, and Highway Patrolman was pulling her from under the shoulders through a pair of double doors at the back of the lab. Officer Chub-a-lub hurried across the tile floor from the entrance where he sat on a stool. He hauled his tuckus toting a woven, plastic basket that held the phones they’d all been forced to check. From the way he sped-walk, Viral could tell he was self-conscious about the ream of keys hanging from his belt loop which jingled like the bell on the collar of a horny house cat.
Monica clapped her hands. The heads of all those still seated at the paint-chipped tables that had been carved with block letters by apathetic Bethany college alumni snapped one-eighty back to the front of the class. Monica smiled, her red lips stark against her effervescent teeth -- that canine still broken, which Viral was starting to think she wasn’t even trying to hide.
“Now, who’s ready for an icebreaker?” she asked.
The room was silent but for a fan blowing in the HVAC and the sound of duct tape wrapping a body in the hall.