Joan grabbed her phone frantically and answered it before the end of the first ring. "Hello!" "Joan!? How are you?" It was Reid's voice, which made her feel both concerned and relieved. "Well, Dr. Owen, I'll feel much better once we've got this situation in Section 29 contained. Where are we with this whole thing? Can you please finally explain why our samples were taken?"
"Well, Joan, I'm so very sick to be saying this, but it looks like we may actually have a degradation situation on our hands." Joan felt the blood drain from her face. A real one. Shit. That's bad for humankind. "The problem is, we have to see how far-reaching it is. We need time to learn if this is an anomalous batch or if there are other degraded samples along the supply chain. We're undertaking that process right now."
"Okay, so you need time and I need an explanation that I can share, so maybe we can help each other out. Where are we with an official explanation for the removal of our samples?", she asked Reid. "Well, that's just it, Joan," Reid said, her voice dripping with insincere concern, "We need you to convince your group that the samples were taken due to anomalies, to study and analyse, and that this is normal and in no way concerning. We need to make sure that they don't know about actual degradation concerns such that they may alert anyone who can alert the media feeds. We need more than seven days to get our report ready to disseminate on this one." Silence on the other end of the phone. Reid was testing Joan. She decided that she'd rather draw her own line, then join forces with whatever this was, that was going on in the top Science Councils. Guerrilla warfare and backroom politics was her mother's scene, and Joan always hated both.
"But, Dr. Owen, seven days is what is afforded to us by the Media Circle Mandate, to get any and all significant changes, discoveries, or information of public interest out to the global population." More silence. "You're right, Joan, and I know the Science Councils are doing their utmost to meet that expectation. I'm confident they'll do it too, so not to worry. Just so we know the scope of those who may have heard about the sample degradation reason for removal of the samples, is it only Dr. Piper?" Joan knew she failed the test and now the Council wants to understand their options. Shivers ran down her spine. Through long-term exposure to Dylan Dwyer's anti-cure efforts, and her observations of questionable outcomes for some people involved, Joan knew that there are those within the NWG who aren't above breaking their own mandates. Shit. Staying out of it has likely landed me in the thick of it, Joan thought to herself. "I'm sorry, Reid, but word got out much faster than I expected. I know that the news has been shared within and beyond our research group." Not true, but this lie was Joan's insurance that they can't easily clean-up this spill with the simple removal of her and Dany from the equation. Taking out the whole research group and then their friends and families, couldn't be explained away or overlooked.
The silence on the other end of the line persisted this time. "Hello?", Joan prompted. "Sorry, Joan, yes okay, I understand. Thanks for keeping us in the loop over there in 29. We'll be back in touch soon. Thanks for your patience." Reid Owen was done with Joan, and this time Joan was relieved.
Joan had already put feelers out to her closer-knit friends on or near the Science Councils and they all agreed that if there was a legitimate degradation concern, then there would be murmurings, if not frantic calls, to solidify and initiate a Plan B for keeping the planet populated while humanity gets either a stronghold on cloning the genetic material, or can implement the cure and have new genetic material in about thirteen years. 'So why the hell are they telling me this?' Joan unintentionally kept repeating in her head.
She's heard the same rumours as everyone else she knows, about there being not just an Anti-Cure hue within the Science Councils, but an actual vibrant "underground" initiative, backed 'they' claim, by scientific research. She suddenly became acutely concerned that the Anti-Cure factions within the Science Councils have been successful at garnering power by infiltrating the leading decision makers. The removal of a few trouble makers who like to stir-up problems, social issues and/or media attention to deflate the public's confidence in the NWG's utopia-generating guidance, was reasonable corruption in Joan's eyes. Not the ones who just try to ensure that the public is well-informed and the government is accountable, but the ones who look for stories and sin where there aren't any. There's reasonable corruption and then there's lying to the entire human population about The Cure having been found, in order to withhold the vowed return of human males to the planet. For some, these two are no different. For Joan, they're worlds apart, and she would have no part of this corrupt lie of omission.
YOU ARE READING
Silos of Man
General FictionWithin a futuristic utopia, brought about by a species-threatening plague, two doctoral students struggle with the truth that corruption is both human and insidious, and if it is to be rooted out and destroyed, then they must be willing to risk not...
