How the carniphages had gotten loose in the environment was still a mystery. Some claimed FIVE’S Population Control Service had released them on purpose, to slow the growth of the unemployable class.
“FIVE” stood for the five global conglomerates who, after the big shakedowns of the nineties, had by treaty divided up the rights to exploit the remaining resources of the earth. Those four capital letters were stitched in crimson above the breast pocket of Dr. Huth’s lab coat.
In the boardrooms of the globals, Huth was a very important man, considered a genius comparable to, if not surpassing, Newton, Einstein and Watson and Crick. As director of the Totality Concept, he had shifted the focus of its most advanced research program from time trawling—the dragging of objects or persons from the past or future to the present—to the creation of a passageway between parallel universes. Using Operation Chronos technology as a foundation, he had succeeded in establishing a corridor between nearly identical alternate existences, between his Earth and another, which had come to be known as Shadow World.
After sending robot drones, then a human exploration team through the passage, Dr. Huth had discovered that the event horizons of the twinned Earths had permanently diverged on January 20,2001, when an all-out nuclear exchange had devastated Shadow World. Though its human population had been nearly wiped out, the catastrophe had left many of its natural resources intact. Which presented a simple, elegant solution to his own Earth’s problems: colonize Shadow World, relieve the population pressure by moving selected, qualified people to the new resources. It was nothing less than a second chance for the human race.
Unappreciated in some quarters.
Under a hail of rocks and burning trash, the tall, lanky scientist strained to keep moving forward with his burden. Perhaps the Gloomtowners had correctly concluded that they wouldn’t be invited to partake of Shadow World’s salvation. Perhaps that was the reason for this horrible mistreatment. If so, it was typically selfish and shortsighted of them.
Then Huth caught a glimpse of a grimy video billboard suspended from the ceiling, and the live picture of himself that was being projected to the crowds. When he saw what he was towing through the streets, he froze in disbelief.
It was a guided missile more than one hundred feet long.
The startling image reminded him of a vid he’d seen as a graduate student. It had shown a single ant struggling to carry an impossibly huge beetle carcass back to the nest. That vid had to have been at least twenty-five years old when he’d viewed it; the last ant and beetle had long since departed this reality.
As Dr. Huth stood there immobilized, gasping for breath, some of the mob dipped into the latrine buckets they’d brought along and splattered him with handfuls of bloody excrement—evidence of yet another failure of science to solve the global food crisis.
The ingenious whitecoats of FIVE had genetically tailored a bacterium whose internal processes could turn igneous rock into something edible. But when the pseudo-fast-food product was consumed regularly, its mineral components built up in the human body, giving rise to a range of alarming physical symptoms, including bloody stools and psychopathic behavior. Despite the known side effects, FIVE dispensed Beefie Cheesies and Tater Cheesies by the truckload to placate the Gloomtowners. The discarded plastifoil wrappers swirled ankle deep around the feet of the mob.
A fresh hail of stones cut Dr. Huth’s cheeks, forehead, and neck. He knew he had to keep moving or be stoned to death. His long legs quaking from the effort, he broke the missile’s inertia, but managed just a few more steps before collapsing under the weight of the nose cone, which pinned him to the street, crushing the air from his lungs and making him pass out.
Merciful oblivion lasted only a heartbeat.
Dr. Huth awoke with a gasp, his burden gone. He flew upward in a metal mesh cage, his wrists shackled together with two feet of chain. Looking up from his manacles, he realized he hadn’t completely escaped the missile. It now stood upright, its riveted skin gliding past him in a white blur as the elevator rose.