Anatomy of an Invasion

Chapter 4 – Lilli and the Worms

Cassie and Julie arrived at 8:30 am Monday morning, on the dot, Cassie eager to meet Eve, and both of them eager to start their new job.

Eve was already inside the meeting room, waiting for them both, all set up with her slim notebook and a projector.

The projector was displaying a picture of Johns Hopkins university.

"Cassie, Julie.

"Good morning, girls.

"This official part won't take very long."

Eve presented an NDA to each of them, and watched in silence as Cassie and Julie read every word.

They were both surprised at the strength of the language in the documents.

They were not allowed to talk about the nature of their work to anyone outside the company.

While they could use their research for their theses, they also had to give up all the intellectual property generated from their work, and would be required to vet all external disclosures with Eve before anything could be released to the public.

They would be working for TAUPAN, a company set up as a joint venture between Johns Hopkins University, Lennox Hospital, and the National University of Australia.

In truth, they soon realised that they were temporarily selling the use of their brains to Eve, so that she could use their skills, and pillage their good ideas, and possess them at her leisure.

However, the money, and the opportunity to work with the black thread-worms, was impossible for either of them to resist.

Eve witnessed their signatures and transferred the forms to her briefcase.

"My first presentation today will show you what you will

officially

be doing for TAUPAN, Pty. Ltd.

Julie thought,

Strange choice of words

,and exchanged a look with Cassie.

"As you know," Eve continued, "Johns Hopkins University has an very close relationship with Johns Hopkins Hospital.

"We have made great strides in recent years with a promising new treatment for cancer."

Eve showed several photographs of generic-looking images of a hospital ward: doctors; nurses; pale, wan-looking women, and a room containing a machine, with an articulated arm, and an orange metal sphere on the end.

"This is our pride and joy. We call it a

smart source

, and it combines an autonomous ultrasound scanner with several directional gamma-ray sources. It is able to target tumours smaller than one millimetre in size, and hardly damages the surrounding tissue.

"We have commissioned a clinic with such a machine here, in Canberra. We have built the new Lennox Hospital specifically for this purpose. We have full testing approval from your Therapeutic Goods Administration, and have already started to provide palliative care to terminal patients with inoperable tumours.

"I must say, the regulatory environment in Australia is vastly more amenable to experimental techniques than in the USA, where it can take years to get approval, even to treat such terminal cases.

"We are not allowed to say that the new treatment is a

cure

, but we are allowed to hope that we shall see remarkable results.

"Julie, you will be

officially

assisting Stefan develop image-processing software to find tumours with the Taubett instrument, to drive the gamma ray source.

"Cassie, you will

officially

be interviewing patients about their feelings about the treatment, and the comfort levels of the dosimetry."

The rest of the presentation was full of details, about radiation doses and the history of radiotherapy, but Cassie found it very boring.

She felt a little disappointed, actually. This wasn't what she expected to be doing, at all.

Where were the worms?

As Eve came to the end of her presentation, her demeanour changed, becoming unusually serious.

She walked around the room closing the blinds. Finally, she closed the door, locked it with a key, and returned to her laptop.

"I apologise, girls. My first presentation was necessary, but it was merely a cover for the work we really want you to do, which I think you will find far more interesting, and far more rewarding. Stefan and his colleagues, in any case, are quite capable of doing the programming to interface the Taubett scanner to the gamma-ray source without any further assistance."

Eve entered a long password into her laptop, and a new presentation appeared on the screen.

The first image was of a large worm, grey with black stripes, oozed onto the side of a large Pyrex beaker.

"This, my girls, is your first image of Mary's worm."

Cassie was glad that there were only three people in the room, and she was safely seated behind a desk.

She spread her legs a little.

This was what she had come for.

Eve's next slide showed a young woman, smiling at the camera, and dressed neatly in a cardigan and a skirt. She was a brunette, with long, straight, hair, and she stood relaxed and comfortable in herself.

Despite the dowdy clothes, Cassie thought the fluffy angora of the cardigan showed her assets to good advantage.

"This is Mary," Eve said,

"Mary was the first human host of the black thread-worms in the latest outbreak in North America, six years ago. She was unlucky enough to be close by when the craft which brought them to Earth landed.

"Mary is now back living with her room-mate, Jasmine. She has been completely cured, and the worm you see here is dead.

"I have so much to show you today, but I have to emphasise that all of what you are about to see

must

remain confidential. Six years ago, the Earth was rapidly falling under the influence of an alien invader. Almost nobody knows, or at least believes, this fact, and we would like to keep it that way. Despite appearances, these aliens are possessed of astonishing intelligence. They are not a foe to be underestimated."

Eve put up a slide of a crash site. The pair's first impressions were of any an horrendous aeroplane crash, with burnt wreckage strewn over blackened earth, but, as Cassie and Julie examined the details, they saw that the pieces of the craft were quite round, and compartmentalised, and like nothing they had seen on Earth before.

The craft had portholes, which looked very dark in the slide, but also seats which looked very much like those from the first-class compartment in an aeroplane.

"As you can see," Eve said, "there are several interesting details in this image."

Then, a little sourly, "Firstly, as you can see, the US air force can destroy any small target with pinpoint precision. Who knows what we could have discovered if the craft was not pulverised shortly after it landed?

"Secondly, notice the dark glass of the portholes. These are made of polymer glass. It was the investigation of the destroyed spacecraft which led to its fabrication on Earth, so the craft was not totally wasted.

"Thirdly, note the seats. They have clearly been designed for passengers who are somewhat human in form. No bodies were recovered from the landing site, only dead worms.

"It is clear that there are still many mysteries surrounding the worm's latest invasion attempt. By accepting your role, you have already committed to keeping the nature of your work, and ours, a secret.

"Please try to learn all the details you can about the cancer radiotherapy treatment.

"There are those whose job it is to probe our research, and we do not want every Tom, Dick and Harry knowing the true nature of what we do. Some of our methods might seem controversial, or even dangerous, to those not in full possession of the facts."

Eve moved on to a slide showing a camp, much like the ones set up after Katrina, containing hundreds of FEMA trailers.

"After the invasion was halted, there were thousands of women who had been infected. It is only through the intervention of Johns Hopkins Hospital that their lives were spared, but the USA's security apparatus is capricious, and the final outcome is still uncertain. All of the women who were infected have been imprisoned in a camp outside Nevada, and their current prospects for release are slim.

"Please, Julie. Please, Cassie. Remember how important your silence is to us, and do not jump to any hasty conclusions. What I am to show you in the next few weeks might disturb you.

"We hold the lives of all of these women in trust. If any of us make the slightest mistake, their lives may be forfeit."

She showed three slides in quick succession, without lingering.

Each showed a scene of horror, dozens of bodies twisted in death.

"Remember Jonestown. Remember Waco. Remember Bhopal."

Eve paused a little to let the ramifications of this statement sink in.

The screen now showed a table with a list of a dozen or so locations from around the world, and a date, and a number of fatalities. Most were in the dozens, but there were some in the hundreds, and one in the thousands.

"This," said Eve, "is not the first time the Earth has been attacked. Each time, the invaders get closer to their goal. If all we do is fight, and kill, and burn, then it has become clear that the worms will eventually prevail.

"It is time for an entirely new approach.

"If you have any concerns about your work, or ours, then I beg of you to come and see me before you consult anyone else, whether they are in the University, or the police, or the government.

"I am more committed, and more capable, than anyone else in Australia to manage the risk posed by the worms."

With a click, Eve moved onto the next slide.

A video started, obviously taken with a high definition camera, showing a pair of naked women on a bare double mattress, their heads tilted back in a silent scream.

Their crotches were connected by a skein of black threads, which pulsed, occasionally whipping around.

"These women are completely controlled by the alien intelligence of the worms. These black threads are used for communication, and their victims are forced to join together at least once a day.

"It looks terribly painful, doesn't it? Just imagine what those poor women are experiencing."

Eve caught Cassie's eye, and shook her head, just a little, but enough to prevent Cassie from bursting out with a comment.

The next video was taken in a department store, and showed a matronly woman looking at a rack of frilly cotton blouses in one corner of the store, then looking behind to attract the attention of a shop assistant.

One responded immediately. She was dark and willowy, with long, black hair which hung to her waist. She moved quickly behind the customer, far too close for politeness.

Cassie and Julie didn't see it the first time, but Eve replayed it so they could see. A black whip-like thread appeared from beneath the assistant's denim skirt. It shot in directly under the customer's blouse, whereupon the assistant reached her arms around the customer to hold her up.

The reason for this became apparent when the customer's head tilted back, and she lost control of her legs, spreading them wide and quaking.

The assistant gently led the customer over to the change-rooms, where the camera could not follow. The time-stamp on the video skipped forward by ten minutes, and the two women reappeared, both happy and smiling.

"Many of the female customers of that shopping mall were captured by the worms in a similar way within a couple of days. Fortunately, this invasion was stemmed quickly, and it was possible to save all of the infected women.

"My kid sister, Lilli, was in that mall. She's a lot younger than me; she was only 18 when she was infected. She managed to get out before the FBI moved in. She was on the run for weeks, travelling up and down the country. I have no idea how many others she infected, and nor does she.

"I'm proud to say that she's clean now, and has been for several years.

"You have to understand that we came very close to losing the Earth this time.

"There were two breakthroughs which halted the worms' progress, both of them discovered at Johns Hopkins university.

"Firstly, we discovered that the worms' anatomy is highly visible to a back-scatter X-ray machine at an energy of 250keV. Even when embedded within a woman, a worm can easily be detected.

"The TSA soon began to provision such machines at every transit point in the USA, and later deployed thousands of mobile scanners for random inspections.

"Everyone has come to believe that these machines are an expensive and wasteful example of security theatre, and that all TSA agents are minimum-wage grunts with no useful skills.

"This idea is encouraged by the authorities, but it could not be farther from the truth.

"On the contrary, the widely-derided TSA program was the first initiative which was able to turn the tide against the worms."

The next slide was one of those standard back-scatter nudie-shots, showing an attractive female body standing with legs akimbo.

"Everyone knows that TSA agents are looking at images similar to these at every airport in the States.

"But sometimes they see an image like this."

The slide after that was similar, except that this woman had a bright, glowing blob shining from the apex of her legs.

Cassie thought that the second image was far more beautiful than the first.

"The new back-scatter X-ray machines are calibrated to 250keV, and can detect worms at a distance of ten metres. An estimated 99.9% of infected women were rounded up in little more than ten months after the introduction of the scanners.

"Some women managed to evade the scanners, but a highly-trained TSA agent can detect a worm-infested woman by the feel of her engorged labia, and her unusually prominent, and sensitive, breasts.

"Men were only utilised as carriers, and, in this wave of the invasion, men were not directly controlled by the worms.

"All the infected women were rounded up, as were all of the the men who had been identified as carriers, and sent to FEMA camps in Nevada

"The mass imprisonment of these people is still not common knowledge, and I am only privy to this fact owing to the importance of Johns Hopkins in stemming the invasion.

"Initial attempts to remove worms from the captured women were not very successful. Some of them were returned to society, and tailed. There were still many hidden sources of infection, and other infected women would deliberately target those who had been victims before."

Cassie again wanted to speak, and raised her hand to ask a question, but Eve once again deflected her with a small shake of her head.

"At a point six months after the invasion had commenced, Johns Hopkins University made a breakthrough. We found a way to both cure the infection, and also to prevent re-infection.

"We developed a vaccine which induces the human body to reject the worms.

"The existence of this vaccine has probably saved the lives of all the infected women who had already been captured."

Eve showed a video of a young woman in her hospital bed, her legs up in stirrups, struggling and shouting. Two nurses held her down, while a third had to find a vein in her arm. The needle slid in, and the nursed depressed the plunger, slowly.

After the injection, the infected woman appeared to calm down, and became groggy, perhaps even lapsing into unconsciousness.

One of the nurses moved down below and held a hand underneath the infected woman's pussy, her labia still red and engorged. Eve skipped forward a few minutes, to a point where the woman's vagina began to pulse and push something out.

A worm soon dropped out into the nurses hand, and she held it up triumphantly.

It was quite dead.

"Johns Hopkins has engineered a vaccine against the worm. It directs the body's immune system to make antibodies, and the worm's fast metabolism, combined with its intimate connection to the patient's bloodstream, mean that these antibodies work with astonishing speed.

"The host's blood within the worm begins to clot within minutes of the injection, whereupon the worm withdraws all of its feeding tubes and nerve fibres from the victim. It soon dies with massive damage to its internal structure.

"Aside from killing the worm, the vaccine also grants immunity to the host, so they cannot be re-infected. We don't know how long this immunity lasts for, but we haven't yet had a single re-infection.

"Sadly, the vaccine is somewhat poisonous to uninfected women, and does not cause any useful immune response unless a worm is present. The reactive agent is concentrated by the worms, which allows strong doses to be used in infected women.

"Once the US government began to mass-produce the vaccine, the invasion collapsed. It was game-over for the worms.

"Julie, the true purpose of your program of research is to investigate the anatomy of women who have previously been infected. Your visualisations of tapeworm infections are impressive, and very informative. If one can reliably detect women who have previously been infected by worms, then governments around the world would breathe a little easier, and there would be a good case for releasing all the prisoners from the camps.

"Currently, governments cannot take the risk of releasing the cured women, as they have no way of knowing if they can be trusted, and have no way of keeping tabs on them if they were to slip away and change their identity.

"While you have been away, we have shifted the Taubett interferometer from Physical Sciences to Lennox Hospital. We shall eventually be using it it with our radiotherapy unit, but in the meantime we shall use it to scan some Australian women, who, of course, will be uninfected.

"Your role, Julie, will be to create imaging software to detect the trails left by the nerve filaments connecting a worm to the woman's spine.

"Your software must reliably find these trails, and report them with absolute accuracy.

"Of course, there are no infected women in Australia, and no cured women, either, so you will have to start work with scans of clean Australian women. The Taubett machine at Johns Hopkins in the States will be operational very soon, so we soon hope to have some genuine data of infected women for you to use for further development.

"Julie, your software could mean freedom for these women."

Eve closed down her machine, and unlocked the door.

"That's all there is today, my girls. Cassie, I need to talk to you about the ethical disclosure forms we've developed for your interviews.

"Julie, you may go."

***

After Julie had left the room, Eve locked the door again, and seated herself next to Cassie.

Eve sat a little closer than Cassie would have expected.

"Cassie, while I know that you are now officially working for the hospital, I want you to know that your role in this project is extremely important, perhaps even more important than Julie's.

"Do you have any questions about my presentation?"

Cassie nodded.

"Actually," said Cassie, "I do. I just want to check up on a few things. You did seem a bit loose with the facts. As I understand them, anyway."

Eve agreed.

"Yes, Cassie, but I think you understand how public relations works these days. A few white lies make the truth more palatable, don't they?

"Did you want to point out anything in particular?"

Cassie continued.

"The video of those women in the mall. Your sister was taken, just like that, wasn't she? You must have talked to her. It wasn't painful like you said, was it?"

Eve smiled,

"No, Cassie, she said it wasn't painful. It was the most pleasurable experience of her life. The worms look after their hosts. The most successful parasites know how to keep you on their side, I can assure you of that."

"So," Cassie said, "it sounds to me as if those women who had their worms forcibly removed, they just went straight back to find someone to infect them again, didn't they?"

"Of course, Cassie, these women were fully convinced that the worms were benevolent masters. They wanted to give their lives to them, and enjoy the privileges of service, if you will."