Chapter 13 -- Resignation
Eve called a meeting the next morning in the seminar room at Biological Sciences.
All the staff were there, and the students, including Gabby, Stefan, Cassie and Julie, and, from Lennox Hospital, Anjolie, Jane and Doctor Kelly.
Some of the cured women were there too, the Landers twins Sophie and Jessica amongst them, and their father John.
The door was closed, and locked, and the blinds were drawn.
The excitement in the room was palpable.
Everyone knew that Eve would be telling them something momentous, and genuine.
"Good morning, team.
"I am very glad to say that all of you have been making excellent progress on the difficult goals I have set for you all. I know that I am a hard taskmaster, but every single one of you, through your professionalism and hard work, has produced amazing results.
"Today I will be showing you the fruits of the research program."
Eve commenced a presentation showing the work of every person in that room, and it soon became clear that she was abreast of all of the technical issues.
She showed the Taubett scans, and the quality of the raw images, and an architectural diagram of the scanning system and the image management software, and complimented each of the programming staff individually for the quality of their work.
She gave an overview of the FDA's approval process, and described how Stefan's work on secure kernels would provide a great deal of trust in the results from the Taubett scanner, which of course were to be used to verify women that were free of any worm infection.
She showed Julie's visualisations of infected, clean and cured tissue, showing that a previous worm infection could be readily diagnosed in a cured woman, but that there was no evidence of any continuing infection.
Gabby's nose ring appeared, yet again, and Julie looked at Gabby for her reaction. Her body was more than naked in its clean, worm-free detail, but Gabby looked only pleased that her image had been selected, showing no modesty whatsoever.
Julie was secretly pleased to see Gabby's image yet again, as it was this image that had quashed her suspicions that the worms had infected the researchers in their first few weeks at the hospital. She knew now that it was only Cassie who had let the worms infect her.
Cassie caught Julie's eye, and raised an eyebrow in a cynical query.
Can you believe this?
She seemed to be saying.
Julie wasn't quite sure of the point that Cassie was trying to make, and shrugged her shoulders in bewilderment. She'd have to ask Cassie later what she had meant.
Eve next showed Anjolie's antibody test for worm proteins, and Anjolie nodded in happiness as Eve described its merits.
Julie was grateful that Anjolie had very much turned around since that night when Julie thought that she'd given the whole game away. Julie and Anjolie had been meeting up for coffee or lunch a couple of times a week now, and Julie felt that they were becoming firm friends.
Anjolie was a smart woman
, Julie thought,
she must have realised the disaster that would have resulted from blowing the whistle.
Eve next held up a small jar of Gabby's deactivated worm venom, and told how it could allow clean people to work together with the infected without any risk of being taken. She also showed a list of the ingredients of the cream, and a table of refractive indices, and described how closely they had to match, and how well Gabby had succeeded.
Refractive indices?
Julie thought to herself.
Why would Cassie have to match the refractive indices? It would make the processed venom appear uniform,and make it impossible to distinguish the individual constituents. Why would Gabby do that?
Eve next showed a table with the results of Cassie's written and oral tests, which showed a clear distinction between clean women and infected women, and showed no measurable differences between the cured and the clean.
Eve also showed Julie's method for adding a a watermark to the statistics, to make any cheating obvious.
But no cheating had been detected.
These results had been obtained without cheating.
The cured women were not distinguishable from normal women with a personality test.
She thanked the Landers twins for their support of the cured women after treatment. It was difficult for some of them to return to their families, especially for those that had long ago resigned themselves to dying. Picking up the pieces of their lives had been hard.
"The results are excellent, team. Every single person has obtained the result I had hoped for, and Lennox Hospital will be a model example of a new form of treatment which will transform the world. All that remains for us to do is to write up the studies and submit them to journals for publication, and to draft some patents so we can get started in commercialising this work.
"We've already had a great deal of success working in a team environment at the hospital to get the initial Taubett scans ready for processing.
"I suggest that we try this approach again, as some of us have more experience of the publication process than others. If we all work together and help each other, I believe that we can submit eight papers to the appropriate journals in a month.
"The doctors and nurses under Doctor Kelly will be working with you, and will be writing up the results of their clinical trials. Their results, of course, have also been excellent.
"If you all give up your personal lives for just a few weeks, I reckon that we can crack it.
"Are you all agreed?"
Julie found herself nodding, but a part of herself did not know why.
Writing journal papers was extremely boring, she knew that.
But the prospect of spending weeks at the hospital, giving up her personal life for weeks, with only her work colleagues to keep her company, suddenly sounded very attractive.
A vague recollection flitted through her mind; of Gabby, and a body riddled with old worm-trails.
But no, not Gabby. It must have been Cassie.
Flashes of pleasure, and devotion, and control.
She could be that woman, the worms giving her a reason, stronger than life, to exist.
It was hot.
Julie looked around the room. Everyone was trapped in the same fantasy of domination.
***
Walking home, Cassie and Julie held hands.
But they did not talk.
Julie's head was full of image processing algorithms, and LaTeX commands, and lists of journals, and the foibles of the reviewers she would have to get her paper past. Her worm trail detection was a great result, there was no denying, but her work had only just begun.
Cassie's head was full of statistical arguments, the snippets of interesting ideas which would have to mask the essential impossibility of her result. She hoped that Eve and her contacts would be able to shepherd her paper through the "anonymous" peer review process.
They allowed themselves a moment of levity, as they stood naked in Cassie's bathroom, cleaning their teeth in front of the mirror, showing themselves making rabid, frothing toothpaste mouths at each other.
When Cassie attacked Julie's neck, they were quickly covered in smears of toothpaste. They had no choice but to hop in the shower together. They scrubbed each other down with the loofah, which gave some relief to their tired, tense muscles, and they dried and tickled each other with fun and laughter.
But by the time they made it to bed, they were thinking of their papers again.
Cassie wrapped Julie in her arms, and Julie felt contentment descend over her, like a soft, warm blanket.
It was too obvious.
Julie couldn't stand it any more.
They were in love, and happy.
But she still knew that something was wrong.
"Cassie," Julie said, "I'm being manipulated. Somehow, we're being manipulated. How does Eve do it? I feel like my life's not my own any more. What is she doing?"
Cassie turned over to face Julie, and smiled.
"It's okay," Cassie said. "She's okay. We're only busy for a few weeks. It'll be fun."
"How does it feel to be a cured woman, Cassie?" Julie said. "Do you feel different from the way you used to feel?"
"Julie, I couldn't be happier. I've got everything I ever wanted in my life. I think I should feel let down, as there's nothing to chase any more, but I'm only feeling total contentment.
"What I want, and what the worms want, it's not so very different. I just want to live my life in good company, loving, and learning, and helping the world become a nicer place. I don't need to be controlled.
"I like what I do.
"I feel like I'm in love all the time now, I'm loving everyone, I'm loving everything. For the first time in my life, I'm truly happy. I'm sure you've noticed. It's like walking around all day on a cloud of horny pleasure.
"Wouldn't you like that Julie? Wouldn't you like to have pleasure on tap, to be sipped whenever you need it? Getting to concentrate on the good things in life, not the bad, every day a new adventure? It's heaven, Julie, heaven."
Julie was surprised.
Cassie had put her finger on it.
It was like a revelation.
"But Cassie," said Julie, "that's exactly how I
do
feel.
"Whenever I'm around you, that's
exactly
how I feel!"
Julie finally felt that she could verbalise what had been bothering her.
"I've never been host-form, but I'm being manipulated, I know it. But how, Cassie? How?
"Maybe
you
are controlling my emotions, Cassie. I know I love you," Julie said, "I've finally worked out that I've always loved you, I know that now, but that part of my life has only worked properly since you got back from hospital. It's almost like you have fixed me, have helped me express my love for you as it should be expressed. How do I know what's real? How do I know I still have my free will? What about you? Are you still Cassie?"
Cassie looked kindly upon Julie, not offended in the slightest, and shook her head.
"Don't over-analyse it," said Cassie, "just enjoy what we have.
"What is free will, anyway? The universe is not deterministic. There isn't a God, and our actions are not just random. There is no space in between these positions, and no way out of the paradox.
"You just have to think about it in a different way.
"The importance in free will is the knowledge that your decisions matter, that you can make a difference in the world by choosing your actions. If you choose correctly, the world will be a better place. If you choose wrongly, you know that you will hurt people, which can only hurt yourself, and your spirit.
"That's what being an adult is all about.
"None of that has changed, Julie. I'm still alive, I'm still thinking, I'm still making choices. I'm still making a difference. The time I spent in the hospital, being host-form, hasn't really changed any of that.
