Episode 617: Contagion, Part 5

Part:1, 2, 3, 4, 5, Special Features

Joshua: And that it went—
Nika: I’d already gone there and I really didn’t want to think that.
Joshua: Or that there’s someone out there with a super-anthrax strain.
Nika: What was she doing?
Joshua: What do you mean, what was she doing?
Nika: They said that she had … dirt … on everyone. That she was going to tattle, essentially. That she was going to go home and tattle.
Joshua: I gather that she wasn’t—you’re out in the middle of nowhere and you’re all supposed to work together and ….

What better way to get dirt on people, or at least observe them until they do something incriminating, and then hold it over their heads? Get revenge on all of them?

Joshua: But she clearly underestimated them—and I’m not even100% convinced that it’s one of them. But it did happen pre-ship.
Nika: It did.
Joshua: Now they were all together.
Nika: And then her getting sick two weeks ago.
Joshua: No, not two weeks ago. It’s only been a few days. She’s only been sick for a couple of days. Since they’ve been to Anvil. So there’s nothing we’ve got that could rule out that it could have been one of them.
Nika: Right. (thinks) I wonder if she got herself sick?
Joshua: Or it could have been an accident. But her reactions suggest she didn’t know anything about it. She felt like she had the flu and she was refusing the inference that it could have been something else.
Nika: Just like normal people.
Joshua: If she knew that she was messing around with it …

He leaves it unsaid but Nika hears it anyway: if Fleming was complicit in her own illness, he would have picked it up from her.

Meanwhile, Rina’s searching for anything suspicious—medicines, drugs, vehicles for delivering the same … odd things that don’t look like they belong … anything that strikes her as suspicious. Which given her usual suspicious nature, could be anything.

The first cabin is clearly a woman’s and she discovers it’s Meyers’s. Meyers has a small medical kit amongst her personal effects. There’s nothing in it that we don’t already have. Rina makes note of it and there being nothing left to search in Meyers’s quarters, Rina goes into the next one in the line. It’s Dan Holden’s. Rina finds a travel case with electronics: some interesting metals and parts for microelectronics, micromachines. Rina moves on to Ashcroft’s cabin. He’s got a gun in a gun case. It’s a standard issue for Alliance officers. Hmm. Okay. She finds nothing else of interest and goes into Emile Grand’s cabin next. She finds a personal grooming kit, a fairly elaborate one, perhaps a touch too elaborate for someone with his appearance. It’s very fancy and Grand himself isn’t particularly well kept. Everything in his cabin is meticulously folded and neat, sealed in packages, bordering on OCD level of precision. Rina notes the details and goes on to the next cabin. Kuo Sun-Li’s quarters yields nothing more inimical than a medical/chemical encyclopedia and Mercier’s nets her porn and booze.

Rina saves Valerie’s room for last. She pauses for a moment on the threshold. The knowledge that the anthrax is microscopic is daunting. Rina knows it’s possible to spread it around by rucking things up, going through clothing too vigorously, flinging back sheets … and since it’s microscopic, how would she know if she’d found it anyway? Should she go find something from med bay, like a mask, to keep herself from breathing it in? Get in a vac suit? She dithers, going through all the options she could take, and Nika and Joshua catch up with her in the hallway.

Rina: They say you never hear the bullet that has your name on it. I’m not afraid of bullets. I’m afraid of tiny microscopic stuff that I can see.
Joshua: (to Nika) Are you sending her into Valerie’s room? She’s going to go search it unless you tell her not to. You know Rina.
Rina: (thoughtfully) I can’t go to med bay cuz I’d just pick it up or take it up there ….
Nika: What?
Joshua: She’s thinking and talking to herself.
Nika: I hate it when she does that.
Rina: I want something that could—the hell with it. I’m going in.
Nika: Rina, what the hell are you doing? Whoa, whoa! What are you doing?

Rina turns around before she opens the door, steps away from it.

Rina: Okay, the stuff—based on the descriptions I’ve been hearing from the passengers—you pick it up because you touch it, not because you breathed in someone’s coughed-out whatever. Okay? The way colds are spread. So do I have enough protection?
Nika: Don’t just assume. Go check with the doctors before you go walking into her room.
Rina: If med bay is locked down because of what she’s got—
Nika: There’s a comm!

Nika points right at it.

Nika: Don’t assume. There’s a comm. Here’s the thing. Mr. Mercier commented that someone could have poisoned her. This search is to make sure that no such animal existed. She mentioned being sick before she ever got on board. So therefore what we’re looking at is hopefully a confined case of an illness. Maybe she just had a bad batch of immunizations. And I’m hoping that Mr. Mercier, despite the entirety of his comments on poisons and toxins, was just kidding and being a butt.

Nika’s irritation makes her voice carry and Mercier’s carries back from the lounge.

Mercier: Hey, I feel like I’ve been insulted here.
Nika: (louder) Having a retarded sense of humor is not a criminal offense.
Mercier: (walking over) But you know what? I’m sensing something here. You like an older guy? Father figure?

Nika turns slowly and drawls, grinning. Maybe what’s needed is a little levity.

Nika: Darlin’, my daddy’d kick your ass all the way from here to Blue Sun and back.
Mercier: (grins) And where’s your daddy? Is he on this boat? Cuz you know, sometimes, being naughty where your daddy can’t see is kinda—
Rina: (outraged) OH!
Nika: My bitch is now going to kill you.
Rina: With pliers.
Mercier: Hey, I’m just havin’ fun.
Rina: So am I.
Mercier: The three of us could have a good time.
Rina: Not very likely.

Nika cuts a look at Rina—cut it out—and switches back to a professional mien as Rina subsides.

Nika: In any case … having ruled out the possibility that one of you folks aren’t running about with poison—
Mercier: Now that’s gotta be kinda exciting. Not knowing if one of us is a murderer.
Rina: Oh, I have my suspicions but then I’m always suspicious. Ask the crew. (to Nika) I’ll go check with Arden.
Nika: Go check with Arden, then take a look through her room.

Rina takes the stairs up, Joshua goes with her, and Nika returns to the passenger lounge.

Nika: You said she was feeling sick before she went on board.
Mercier: Yeah.
Nika: Who was she in contact with a couple of days before you all boarded?
Ashcroft: Well, we were in different rooms but we were all eating together and hanging out.
Nika: All right.
Grand: You have to understand. A bunch of Alliance corporate types in an Independent place like this, we had to stick together despite our differences.
Nika: All right.
Grand: Believe it or not, we worked well together. I hope you don’t think I did it.
Nika: Having ruled out the possibility that you are the poisoner at this juncture now is very much the point I want to call on your expertise as researchers and drug company reps and whatever the heck else you all are.

On the deck above, Rina’s pretty much asking the same thing—how can she be in the same room with the deadly stuff and not be infected by it. Kiera tells her right off that her bandana and gloves won’t help. Arden tells her that anthrax is deadly if she touches it and it enters her skin, if she breathes it in where it could infect her lungs, or if she ingests it where it could affect her digestive system.

Arden: The most deadly is when it’s inhaled. That’s why you want to watch your nose. If you see powder, back away. Any kind of powder, back away.
Rina: So, anthrax … searching the room … how do I do that without infecting the rest of the crew?
Arden: Don’t touch it. If you see powder, don’t touch it. If you do touch it by accident, stay in the room and call us.
Rina: Hopefully it’s not stuck on anything I’ll have to touch.
Arden: It shouldn’t stick to anything. It’s a spore. If you really want to be safe, you could put a suit on and go in that way.
Rina: Don’t think I haven’t thought of it.

The idea of venting the individual cabin to space, should anthrax be found, comes up and they spend a minute discussing it. It quickly becomes clear that as an idea, it’s not a very viable one—it would necessitate venting pretty much the entire deck via the lounge and force the passengers to the crew deck for the duration. And there would be little guarantee that venting would be sufficient to rid the ship of the spore or kill it.

Meanwhile, Nika’s talking to the passengers on the deck below.

Nika: Where could she have come into contact with this substance without the rest of you catching it?
Kuo Sun-Li: Most of the people who accidentally come in contact with it are farmers, walking in it, but the people on Anvil aren’t farmers. They were spacers and space-related people, so … (shrugs)
Nika: She commented that she doubled up on the immunizations.
Kuo Sun-Li: Yeah, well we all pretty much doubled up on them. We all took the same amount.
Nika: From the same doses—from the same lot?
Kuo Sun-Li: I think so, yeah.
Nika: How long ago?
Kuo Sun-Li: We took them when we first got there and we took boosters like, um, next week. Four, five days ago?
Nika: And she started getting ill … ?
Kuo Sun-Li: Two days ago.
Nika: Two days before you boarded?
Kuo Sun-Li: Yes.
Nika: So, four days ago. Who had access to the immunization packets? Where were they kept?
Grand: When we all got them, when we left—
Nika: Common stores?
Grand: Originally when we got them—from our two companies, we got them—so each company had its own stores.
Nika: So its own common stores and so you’d just go to the infirmary and … ?
Grand: We’d just grab a couple pack each and put them in our luggage. But we might still have some.
Nika: That would actually be very good. I would like to take the packets that you have to have them tested to see if they were tampered with or possibly contaminated.
Grand: Okay.
Nika: And don’t anybody go into her quarters, just in case.
Grand: Yeah. Now that we know about that.

Nika comms Joshua and speaks loud enough for the passengers’ benefit.

Nika: Joshua? The passengers still have immunization packets that they’ve been given by their respective companies.
Joshua: Yes, Captain?
Nika: And Irina is headed back toward med bay so as to find out if it’s safe for her to enter the quarters of Ms. Fleming.
Joshua: Rina has been here and is getting suited up as I speak.

He throws a glance over his shoulder at his fiancée, where Kiera is applying a double layer of surgical gloves over the engineer’s hands. She’s already got a mask tied on, her coveralls tucked into her boots and her cuffs inside the gloves. A surgical gown awaits her over the back of a chair, as well as disposable booties for her feet.

Nika: All right. When she comes back down, I’m going to have her take the immunization packets back up.
Joshua: Okay.

Arden is listening in on the conversation and leans past Joshua toward the speaker.

Arden: The immunization packets aren’t the carrier.
Nika: No, I’m actually having them sent up to see if they’re defective and/or contaminated.
Arden: But what I’m saying is they are not contaminated with anthrax.
Nika: How do you know?
Arden: Because immunization packets are injected. She has inhaled anthrax. If somebody injected anthrax into the blood, it would be a lot more serious, for one. Then again, if it was injected, it would travel through the blood to the lungs and present as inhaled anthrax. So yeah, never mind. Go get the immunization packets. It’s a good idea.
Nika: Oh-kayy.

Arden goes on to explain that there are three ways to contract anthrax: touch, inhaled, intestinal. The inhaled form is the most deadly. Skin required 60 to 90 days of antibiotics. Intestinal requires antibiotics as well but it’s usually not as bad as the inhaled form. From what he’s managed to discover from testing the patient, our case is an inhaled form. And since it was seen in blood samples taken from the patient, it’s clear that it can cross the membranes between the lungs and the blood. So it’s possible to inject someone and infect them.

Rina comes down, suited up for the search, and enters Valerie’s room. She meticulously searches the room and Valerie’s effects, carefully NOT shaking anything out or moving it too vigorously, to avoid stirring up any remaining anthrax spores or powder. She finds a military-grade data book and toiletries. One thing that’s odd, she finds something on the deck by the woman’s bed. At first glance it looks like a dead roach but on closer inspection Rina discovers it’s a scarab beetle. It’s not a real bug but a piece of jewelry, done up in copper and other metals. As a piece of the jeweler’s art, it’s quite a convincing-looking but yet pretty at the same time. Further examination shows her the insect’s legs are fully articulated with micro-motors and there are two tiny copper plates installed behind the scarab’s head, like a touch-activated button. She also finds a picture of her and Dan Holden. They look happy. An agricultural fair is glimpsed in the background, beyond the gazebo the picture was taken in.

She exits the room and finds Nika and Joshua in the corridor outside. She tells them about what she’s found.

Rina: Bianca’s got drugs and a small medical kit. Dan’s got a travel case with micro-electronics and some interesting metals. George has a gun. Standard Federal military issue. It’s a nice gun. In a case. It’s locked up. Mr. Grand here, has a personal grooming kit, very very nice but he’s got stubble. Kuo has nothing really but she does have a medical/chemical encyclopedia. Light bedtime reading. Valerie has …

Rina holds up the bug, tied up in her handkerchief and enclosed in an inside-out glove.

Rina: This points the finger at Dan Holden. Actually, all the passengers had something—(off everyone’s look)—I know. This is beginning to look like Murder on the Orient Express. They all stabbed the guy.
Nika: Everybody took a stab at her.
Joshua: (quietly) I just want to make sure nobody else gets hurt.
Nika: What is that … thing … in that … bag, as far as I can tell?

Nika points to the wrapped lump in Rina’s tied off glove.

Rina: Scarab beetle. Man-made. It’s got contact points on the head. And … extremely fine mechanical work.
Nika: Mr. Holden?

Nika pitches her voice toward the passenger lounge where all the passengers have gathered. He walks up.

Holden: Yes?
Joshua: Scarab beetle?

Rina holds it up, still wrapped in her glove.

Nika: Scarab beetle? It’s got contact points?
Rina: Looks like a bug.
Holden: Oh. It’s a gift for Valerie. I was just playing around with the technology.
Rina: What happens when you touch the contacts on it?
Holden: It’s really neat. You should watch it. It transforms.
Nika: Into what?
Holden: Um, let’s see. (looks up, ticks off fingers) A beetle … goes to ... butterfly?
Rina: I thought it was caterpillar to butterfly.
Holden: Eh, who wants a caterpillar? So it goes from beetle to … no, I’m sorry. It goes from beetle to dragonfly, dragonfly to mantis, mantis to butterfly, butterfly to beetle. And it lights up. And flies. I gave it to her. That’s why she has it.
Rina: When did you give it to her?
Holden: I gave it to her … I don’t know … three weeks ago?
Rina: Was it at a fair?
Holden: No. It was after the fair.
Rina: Where was the fair?
Holden: It was on Harvest. It was the Harvest Festival.
Nika: That was three, four weeks ago, though.

So Harvest is off the list as the site Fleming got infected.

Nika: Go ahead and take it up and have it checked out.
Rina: I’ll take it to Arden. (to Holden) I hope you don’t mind.
Holden: Try not to break it. It was very hard to make.
Rina: It’s extremely fine work. Very very nice. I have a brother who does stuff like this.

Rina goes up to med bay and unwraps the bug.

Rina: Be very careful with this.
Kiera: What is it? Oh!
Arden: A scarab beetle.
Kiera: How cool! What does it do?
Arden: I don’t know. Is there a way we can isolate it in a bell jar or a box?

While Rina carefully strips off her protective gear and disposes of it properly, Arden gets a small glove box, a portable box with clear sides and gloves that are turned outside-in to allow handling toxic substances or specimens. The bug goes inside, perfectly isolated from the rest of the ship. The contact point on the bug presents a minor problem, since it’s activated by the natural conductivity of bare skin. Rina rigs up a small charge delivered by wires that approximates human touch and sets them to the button.

Tick!

And before the crew’s eyes, the bug unfolds and transforms just as Holden described, turning into a beautifully fabricated mechanical dragonfly. It actually lights up and sparkles. It doesn’t fly, the box being too small for it, but for our purposes we don’t need that sort of demonstration. Kiera asks if that’s all it does. Rina recites the list of transformations and touches the wires to the contact again, activating the next change in the sequence. Kiera’s interested to see if the bug puffs out anything like a cloud of dust or spores and while nothing meets the naked eye, she and Arden test the atmo trapped inside the box.

Since they know what they’re looking for, they narrow down the test to the most efficient one. And sure enough, the results come back positive for anthrax. Kiera eyes the bug with regret.

Kiera: Hm. Now I don’t want one at all.
Arden: Isolate it, obviously. And Rina? There’s anthrax inside the mechanism of the beetle.

And Rina goes a bit tightlipped at the news. She handled that thing. What if she contracted anthrax off it? Given the way the bug goes through its transformations, it would be very easy for it to spread tiny amounts of anthrax with each movement. Each time Valerie activated it to watch it change, she infected herself with another dose of death. And since it was a gift from a sweetheart, Valerie was sure to activate it a lot.

Arden: It’s circumstantial evidence, though. Wherever the anthrax came from, it could have settled on the beetle as well. How long has she had the beetle?
Rina: Since Harvest.
Arden: And that was what?
Rina: Three, four weeks ago.
Kiera: Interesting. That’s a long incubation.
Rina: Either that or it was sabotaged afterwards. Given what I found in all their rooms, every single one of them had something that could implicate them in this. Do you read the classics?
Kiera: A long time ago.
Rina: Murder on the Orient Express.
Kiera: Yes.
Rina: Every single person on the train except for the detective was guilty of murdering the man. They each had a stab on him. (nods toward passenger deck) So maybe they all had a hand in it.
Joshua: I’m actually more concerned at the moment about how did she get it? If she was taking immunization packets… do immunization packets cover this? I’m not a doctor, so that’s why I’m asking.
Rina: How long do these things last?

If they were taking anthrax immunizations, they probably took them when they got to Harvest initially. For the first month or so, you’d take a packet once a week for four weeks and then taper off because you’ll have been exposed to so much stuff and you need to build your own immunity. And they did take a booster once they’d gotten to Anvil. Arden tests the passengers to be sure. They all check out normal, but something catches our eye. Kuo Sun-Li still had an anthrax immunization dose left. Joshua, for one, is relieved there’s no evidence of a super-anthrax aboard, one resistant to medicines or extremely virulent. If that were the case, we’re all dead. No, what we have is regular anthrax. Even so, the passengers are restricted to the passenger deck and Rina seals off Valerie’s room to keep people out.

Joshua and the crew gather to discuss the latest developments. Kuo Sun-Li’s anthrax immunization packet suggests that perhaps she knew what was going to happen and didn’t want to get sick. The scarab beetle was the delivery vehicle for the anthrax but given the timing of the onset of symptoms versus the date Valerie actually was given the scarab, it suggests that the scarab was infected with the anthrax well after she received the gift. That just makes Joshua want to suspect Kuo Sun-Li over Dan Holden …

But the delivery vehicle is risky. You wouldn’t have any control over where the anthrax actually went once it was put inside the bug or what Valerie would do with the bug. You would run the risk of infecting everyone that came within range of it. Right?

Nika: But you’re assuming that every other single person in the group, besides yourself would be getting caught.
Joshua: And? Yeah? I’m saying it’s not outside the boundary of human behavior to be unconcerned about what would happen to somebody else. None of these people seem, to be honest, all that fond of each other in a tight family bond or anything.
Nika: Was Sun-Li sharing a room with anyone?

No. No one was officially sharing a room at the hotel on Anvil. But Dan and Valerie were sleeping together. None of the others admitted to doing anything.

Joshua: That’s one of the reasons why I want to eliminate Dan as a suspect.
Nika: She was the one who was angry.
Joshua: Sun-Li?
Rina: No. Bianca.
Nika: She was the one who was angry that they were inappropriately close.
Kiera: And the one that got fired.
Rina: So if Bianca wants Dan for herself, she’s got motive. She had opportunity. And she had means.
Kiera: Yeah, but she could also have taken the chance of infecting Dan because they were in bed together.
Rina: Good point.
Joshua: This may sound very off kilter, but why are we playing Sherlock Holmes?
Rina: Who are you marrying, dear?
Joshua: No, I understand it, but—
Nika: I think she’s infected all of us.
Joshua: No, I don’t think so but what I guess I’m asking is, what are we hoping to accomplish here? Are we planning on bringing her to justice? If we know who it is or if we don’t know who it is, are we better off collecting all the information, and when we arrive on Persephone, contact the authorities? Because the authorities are always so good? For us?
Rina: Well, let me put it to you this way. It distracts me from thinking on the fact that I just might die because I’ve been handling anthrax.
Joshua: You’re about as paranoid as they come. I’m pretty sure that you would—
Arden: The anthrax doesn’t have a chance.
Joshua: (air point!) I was about to say. I’m not too worried about you.
Rina: I’m sure that’s true and we do have the two best doctors in the Verse.
Joshua: And we’ve got a wedding in a month or two.
Rina: Oh and that’s supposed to protect me from everything now? Including bullets? It didn’t work so well two weeks ago.

But she’s grinning when she says it. Back on task people. What are we going to do? About the passengers, about the fact that one of them may be a murderer—no, wait, Valerie is still alive. And speaking of whom, will she make it alive to Persephone?

Nika: Here’s the thing. Our primary goal has to be to keep her alive if we can. Other than that, really? It’s not our problem. We can turn it over to the authorities when we get there.
Joshua: The only place where it becomes a problem is if we piss off one of them enough for them to decide to—(restarts)—but you didn’t find anthrax anywhere else, right? Not that you, you weren’t tossing the rooms, like …? (gestures) Heavily?
Rina: No. I was careful.
Kiera: Dude, if they do, I am so talking to Daddy and their ass is fired.
Joshua: I think that will only happen if we try and corner them, where they start to feel like they are trapped. I guess what I’m asking is do we need to play judge, jury, and … ? You know. Prisoner and like, …?
Rina: Executioner?
Beglan: Of course, if we don’t know why someone did this, then maybe they’ll try to do it to someone else, too.
Joshua: Which is a fair argument.
Keira: We could just keep them locked up in the passenger deck.
Beglan: Except there are probably five innocent people down there.

True.

Joshua: People we don’t want to get killed. I can probably, between natural lie-detecting abilities and Reading abilities, I might be able to detect whether she actually did it or not. We can question them one at a time and ask them if they did it.
Nika: I don’t want to rule out Mr. Holden but I do think the evidence seems to point away from him, because if he were actually concerned about being caught in any fashion, he wouldn’t have let us take the bug.
Joshua: More than that. He was sleeping with her. There is bound to be a more efficient and easier way of infecting her with the spores without infecting yourself.
Nika: Look into Kuo Sun-Li and Ms. Meyers. Only because Bianca Meyers at this point is the only other person I can see off the top who would have reason to hate her.
Joshua: Well, didn’t they say they all had reason to hate her?
Nika: Well, specifically she was fired and she was extremely unhappy with the inappropriate nature of Mr. Holden’s relationship with Ms. Fleming.
Joshua: I don’t disagree. But did she have more reason? All of them probably had reason. If she had enough to get them fired when they got back—
Nika: No, no, no. Motive being the idea that maybe Meyers wanted Holden and Fleming was in the way—and maybe framing someone else—to get him would be a viable possibility.
Rina: People do stupid things for love.
Nika: It’s a place to start, anyway.
Joshua: I’ll go.

Joshua starts devising his set-up strategy, how to get the passengers one by one and asking them questions that will get him the answers we all need.

Joshua: Don’t take this personally but are you a murdering scumbag?

On that, we break up the crew meeting. No matter that we’ve a deathly ill patient in med bay and a possible would-be murderer on board, a pool of six suspects with circumstantial evidence incriminating all of them, we still have a ship to run, cargo to deliver, and the need to get to Persephone in one piece. Until Joshua comes back from his fact-finding mission, we cannot to anything more but roll up our sleeves and take up our neglected work.

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