Much to my frustration, Yuta couldn’t recall any details about how he came to the future. It seemed I’d have to plumb deeper into his memories to learn what had happened. I planned to ask him in short shrift, once we finished breaking the ice.

At the moment, we sat on the floor, right beside the Sandwich Buddy. Our backs were up against the wall of my mental facsimile of the hallway where Yuta’s ghost had appeared to me. I sat with my legs folded against me; Yuta sat to my left, cross-legged. To my right, sat Andalon, who was busy greedily stuffing her face with the finest chocolate chip cookies my memories could make.

After I disappeared the Rocky Snow’s wrapper, Yuta sighed and let his head hang down. Even though I couldn’t quite see it, somehow, I knew that he was trying to hide his tears.

“Though I doubt it’s much consolation to either of us,” he began, “I wish to give my deepest, heartfelt thanks to you, Dr. Howle, for letting me see my daughter smile before I died.”

He looked at me after wiping the tears from his eyes.

“I understand the terror this plague has brought you, and the intolerable impotence you feel it has trapped you in,” he said, “but,” he exhaled, “you should not condemn yourself. I cannot emphasize this enough.”

Crossing his arms, he looked at our surroundings. Even here, in this mere hallway, the future shone through. It shone through in the consoles glowing on the walls beside the doors of rooms. It shone through the plastic quarantine tunnels, and the fluorescent lights overhead, and the emergency wound epoxy dispensers mounted on the walls in the middle, and the shape of the benches and the pastel paintings and weird paper sculptures on the walls.

“Not even in my wildest dreams would I have imagined this future” Yuta said, “let alone its accomplishments.” He looked up at the ceiling. “I’d suffered darkpox before. I was afflicted by it during the Seasweep campaign, in combat against the rebels. I was one of the few members of my platoon to survive. Only one trueblood Munine among us survived, the rest were half-breeds like myself, or trueblood Costranaks.” He looked down. “People would say not even the Daikenja, or the greatest of the barashai could conquer darkpox. And yet you, you ordinary men, have conquered it with,” he glanced at me, “what did you call it, again?”

“An inoculation,” I said.

“Might I ask how it functions?”

At first, I thought the answer would be an explanation of why I couldn’t tell him—because he wouldn’t understand—but, after a moment’s thought, I realized… no, he could understand it.

Memorized factoids from my med school days rose to the surface of my thoughts. I could almost feel myself fingering through them, searching for the right ones.

There.

The first darkpox vaccine had been an inactivated vaccine. It had been just over two-hundred years since its discovery. And though you might not think it at first glance, Yuta’s day and age had all the technology and skill they would have needed to produce it. All they lacked were the insights and know-how that would have told them how to put it all together. Sure, they wouldn’t be able to mass produce it at first, but, then again, we hadn’t, either.

“Have you ever stared at water in a puddle formed by rain?” I asked.

“I believe so,” Yuta said. The confusion on his face spoke volumes.

“Perhaps, if you looked closely,” I continued, “you might have seen tiny, tiny things swirling about in the water. Those are animals, very, very tiny animals. If you polished a glass lens and positioned it properly, you could magnify them, making them appear larger than they actually are, and, if you did, you’d discover that—”

—But I stopped, noticing the look on Yuta’s face. It wasn’t one of confusion or disbelief, but shock. It was the kind of look I’d have on my face if I’d gone to work, only to discover I’d forgotten my console at home.

“Why didn’t I think of that…?” he said, leaning his head back against the wall.

“What do you mean?” I asked. Out of politeness’ sake, I’d avoided immersing myself in his memories, so all this was new to me.

“I am quite familiar with lenses and magnification,” he explained. “I have much experience with using them to view objects at a great distance. With a few modifications, I could have done as you suggested and magnified the contents of the puddle. It simply never occurred to me to do so.” He cleared his throat and shook his head. “Forgive me, I interrupted.” He bowed his head. “Please, continue.”

“As I was saying, the world is populated by countless minute organisms, creatures far too small to be seen by the unaided eye. They are everywhere, from the dust in the air to the rock deep below. They live on our skin and crawl inside our bodies. Yeast, for example, for fermenting alcohol. It might look like an inanimate substance, but it isn’t. Yeast is composed of millions and billions of tiny organisms—relatives of mushrooms, in fact.”

Yuta stared at me. “Incredible…”

Andalon watched all this with the utmost interest.

“Humanity’s discovery of microbes like these, as we call them, led to many significant changes and advancements, though none as profound as the revolutionary new approaches it brought to medical science.” I looked him in the eyes. “Tell me, what do you think causes darkpox?”

His answer surprised me.

“I do not know,” he said. “I have heard many explanations, but none of them have ever satisfied me. The least discreditable one, I suppose, would be the claim that it was due to miasmas—vapors of decay coming off of putrefying matter.”

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This got me curious. “Why is that the least discreditable explanation?” I asked.

“The common folk claim the plague is the work of devils or evil spirits. I have yet to see anything supposedly worked by malevolent spirits that did not have a purely rational explanation. For physicians that dispute the miasma theory, they say the disease is brought on by an imbalance of bodily fluids or vital energy, but neither of those explanations make any sense. How could an imbalance spread? Everywhere we look, nature pulls the world toward balance. Fires clear overcrowded forests. Storms come and go. The moon ever follows its appointed paths and cycles.”

“But why miasma?” I asked.

“Because miasma can spread. The plague reaches a population, it infects them, and then their bodies spread the disease wherever they go. Quarantines would not work, otherwise.”

I nodded. “You’re surprisingly close to the truth,” I said.

“What is the truth?”

“Contagious disease is a kind of invasion, no more, no less. Many microbes perform vital functions. They help break down rotting matter; they help cattle digest grass; they even make alcohol for us, as well as other substances and drugs. But,” I sighed, “not all microbes are so friendly. Some are dangerous. Some are predators.”

“And darkpox… it is one of these… microbes?”

“Yes.” I nodded, glancing at Andalon.

This is true of the fungus, too, you know, I thought-said.

“To some microbes,” I continued, “our bodies are warm, safe places, filled with nourishment. So, they have learned to enter our bodies, where they then thrive, but at our expense. Over countless generations, microbes have honed their ability to spread from one person to another, by breath, by blood, by spit, by waste—even by sex. It’s like rats fouling up a fresh grain harvest. The damage they cause results in the symptoms of disease, as do the battles that our bodies fight against them. We recover from a contagious illness if and when our bodies’ defenses rout the minuscule invaders. Otherwise, our bodies are overrun, and we die.”

“You are talking about disease as if it was war,” Yuta said.

“It is war!” I said.

Andalon nodded vigorously, clenching her fists with determination.

“Our bodies make soldiers that fight to protect us. They come from the marrow of our leg bones, and from the thymus, an organ in our necks.”

Yuta glanced down at his chest.

“One of our biggest advancements came from when we observed that some microbes make poisons they use to kill microbes that might compete with them for food and shelter. Some of these poisons turn out to harm certain kinds of microbes, but not us, so we use the helpful microbes to produce their antibiotics, which we use on the harmful microbes when they attack us. These kill the invaders, or stop the invaders from being able to feed, or reproduce, which allows the body to deal with them on its own.”

“Is that what you did for us?” he asked.

I shook my head. “No, not all microbes are susceptible to chemicals in this way. For some, like the ones that cause darkpox, you do not defeat them by poisoning them, but by using a substance that trains the body to fight against the invaders before they arrive, greatly reducing the damage caused when the patient is infected. Sometimes, won’t even get sick in the first place!”

Yuta narrowed his eyes. “Does this have something to do with the fact that anyone who survives darkpox cannot contract the illness again?”

I nodded. “That, and chickens.”

I flexed my eyebrows mischievously.

Yuta furrowed his lips at me. Meanwhile, I tapped into a memory of a documentary I’d seen that had demonstrated the process step by step.

“Chickens fall victim to darkpox,” I said, “but they cannot spread it through their breath. To infect a chicken, take the blood of a man or animal who has darkpox, or who recently died of it and feed it to the bird, or expose it to a cut on the bird’s body. Once the chicken dies, its skin will be covered in sores. Cut out the bird’s spleen, grind it into a paste, thinly smear that paste across a clean piece of paper, and then leave it out to dry for ten days. Rub a needle on the paste, and then poke it into a person’s shoulder, deep enough to draw blood. Make sure to wipe the injection site with alcohol first; it needs to be clean.”

“Then what?” he asked.

“Wait three days,” I said. “Then, the person will be completely immune to darkpox.”

Yuta stared at me in shock. “It can’t be that simple…” he whispered.

“And yet, it is.” I smiled.

It was nice to talk about a disease we could actually treat, for once.

“The spleen is, in many ways, like the body’s cesspit. This is true of all animals with bones. The organism—the virus—which causes darkpox accumulates in the chicken’s spleen in high concentration. When you leave the paste out to dry in the sun, the virus is weakened and killed. Sunlight bleaches everything. It weakens microbes in just the same way that it strips dyes from fabric. In this deactivated state, the virus is incapable of causing life-threatening illness, so, by using the metal needle to introduce the dead viruses to a patient’s body, you give the body an opportunity to familiarize itself with the enemy, and to train itself to recognize and destroy the virus the next time it sees it. Part of the reason why darkpox is so deadly is because, when it infects us, our bodies are duped by its disguises and trickery. But, once we’ve been infected, our bodies learn all of the virus’ tricks, and—”

“—That’s why those who recover are immune…” Yuta whispered, his face blanching. “Once the body knows the enemy, it can root it out and defeat it with ease.” Chuckling, he shook his head in astonishment. “It is a strategy worthy of General Yashimoto himself.”

He looked me in the eyes. “I must know how… what did you call it again?”

“A vaccine,” I said.

He nodded. “I must know how the vaccine was discovered.”

Again, that piqued my curiosity.

“Do you mind if I ask why?” I asked.

“Do you mind if I say yes?” he said.

He smirked at me!

Flustered, I scratched my head. “It’s just…” I sighed. “You’re not at all how I expected you to be.”

“What were you expecting?” he asked. The question seemed to amuse him.

“Well,” I said, “the Munine of your era that were here in Trenton weren’t exactly well-known for their open-mindedness. Or their restraint.”

“That they were not,” Yuta said, with a nod, “and, for that matter, neither am I—at least when it comes to restraint.”

“Well, you certainly seem very restrained to me,” I said.

Yuta shook his head. “Dr. Howle, you come from a boisterous, noisy world. To you, a pond would seem calm, even if it was abuzz with mosquitos and koi. If I seem calm to you, it’s probably only because I’m dead.” His face twitched. “I…” he sighed, “I’m past all concerns now, just like the blighted era from which I came.”

For the record, on a hunch, I’d refrained from telling Yuta about the knights, and that last remark of his only confirmed that that was probably for the best.

The man had been through a lot, and—like most of the ghosts I’d encountered—he didn’t seem to recall events immediately before his death. That was a small mercy for the spirits, I suppose. I usually didn’t broach the subject of their death until after I’d broken the ice with them. One’s death wasn’t the sort of thing to be discussed lightly.

That being said…

“Again,” I said, “one of the things I specialize in is in providing counsel to people like yourself who are dealing with grief and trauma. If you ever need someone to talk to, I’d be more than happy to oblige.”

“I’d rather hear about the discovery of that vaccine. That sounds like quite the tale.”