The Mind Virus

Chapter 14 - Part 2

Ford looked over him suspiciously before glancing up and down the dirt road. "Come in," he finally said, ushering Terry into the house before pushing the door closed.

"Nice house," Terry said as he took in the view. It was quaint. It looked very dated, but that only made it cozier in his eyes.

"Thanks. I'd offer to make you a drink, but..." Ford lifted his disabled hands.

"That's fine. Don't worry about it."

"So what do you know? And how do you know anything? We've been digging into this for quite a while at the police, and no one has come up with anything."

"That's because you have inside men at the police that are actively preventing anything useful from being upturned. Well, that and the fact that this is unlike anything that anyone has ever seen before."

"Oh? How so?"

"It's a weapon."

"A weapon?"

"Yes, and in the form of a picture."

"Now you're just fucking with me."

"I'm not. I've seen it with my own eyes, and furthermore, I've been infected by it."

"Infected? By a picture?"

"It's some sort of neurological weapon. It's been explained to me, but I won't pretend to understand fully how it works. I can't. It seems to reprogram a person's brain in the same way that a computer virus changes code in a computer."

"OK, this is fucking ridiculous. Who put you up to this?"

"No, listen to me. It infects your memories. Whenever you think about something after you've been infected, it taints that memory in a way that whenever you think of it again, it wells you up with negative emotions. It keeps on doing this until every memory you have is contaminated. Once you reach that stage, it saps your will to live... somehow. I'm not exactly clear on that point entirely, but everyone that's been infected by the weapon has ended up taking their own lives. It's damn easy to get infected too. All you have to do is look at that picture of the hideous-looking lighthouse on the edge of the cliff."

"Wha–" Ford couldn't even finish his word. The color drained from his face in a heartbeat.

"Have you seen it?" Terry asked.

"Yeah, I have. It was – I was at the home of the last person to commit suicide. There was a laminated picture of a lighthouse in her diary. I wondered why she'd had that. Seemed a bit random, really."

"And you actually looked at it?"

"Yes, but does that mean – oh God."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Ford. There's no good way to tell you this, but it sounds like you're infected. Have you noticed any of the symptoms I mentioned?"

"Yeah, I just thought that – I don't know what I thought. This is too much. I'd crack open a beer if I had functioning hands."

"Would you like me to..." Terry gestured toward the fridge.

"If you don't mind. Get one for yourself too."

He did so. The cold beer went down well.

"So how do I get cured?" Ford eventually asked.

"Oh, right. Uhh, bad news there."

"Don't tell me that you don't have a cure."

"No one has a cure. Believe me, I've dug."

"Speaking of which, you never did say how you came to know all this information."

"Simply put, I asked."

"Just like that?"

"It helped that I had access to the phone and email address of an insider at the organization."

"The organization? What are they? Military? Intelligence? Private company?"

"I wish I knew."

"With respect, you don't seem to know much."

Terry was a bit taken aback. "I know a hell of a lot more than you do, and I'm here trying to help you out. Hopefully together, we can come up with a cure for both of us."

"You've been infected too?"

"Yes. I took a job. I needed the money. All I had to do was filter through some mail. How was I to know that the guy whose mail I was looking through was a potential target for whoever had stolen the weapon?"

"And by 'the weapon,' you mean the lighthouse picture?"

"Yes."

"This is getting really hard to wrap my head around. A part of me is hoping that you're just fucking with me, but the thing is, I haven't really told anyone about how I've been feeling lately." Ford laughed a pained laugh. "You have no idea just how much I wish this was all an elaborate prank."

"I'm sorry, sir, it's not."