Malik always appreciated the Virginia-Highland area, with the older homes and tree-lined streets. It was an active area, with a few strips of shops and restaurants. When he was younger, his dad used to bring him here for festivals with live music and artists. It was odd to be this deep in the neighborhood so late at night. He wasn’t used to seeing it so quiet.
“So…” Magaly’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “How do you know Ronnie?”
“He and Callie used to kind of date,” Malik said.
Magaly laughed. “How can two people kind of date?”
Malik was silent, thinking about how to respond. “Can I ask you something?”
“Answering a question with a question?”
“No, I’ll answer, but I just want to know something first.”
“Ooookaaaay,” Magaly said, eyeing him.
“Why didn’t you leave back there? I mean, those guys were after me, not you,” Malik said. “You could be home by now, out of this mess.”
“Oh,” Magaly’s expression lightened, “because I like you. And I don’t trust those Biotech tracers. I never have. Call me paranoid, but I probably got it from my dad. Once ConBullish…”
“ConBullish?” Malik said.
“Oh, sorry, I know you worked for them and everything, but that’s what my dad called them.”
“Why did he call them that?”
“My dad swore up and down that they were just a bunch of con artists.”
“Is that so?”
“Yeah. Did I ever tell you that my aunt was an architect?” Magaly asked.
“I didn’t know that,” he replied.
“She had this incredible imagination. She saw things in a different way than everyone else.”
“Did she design anything here?”
“More so overseas. She designed all sorts of things. She and my uncle had a business together and were inseparable. But there was an accident, a long time ago now, and my uncle went into a deep coma. My aunt didn’t handle it well. Most people thought she lost her mind, but my dad knew that she just needed to find a way to get her mind back by focusing on creating. My aunt ended up seeking professional help at a Confidence Biotech psychiatric center, but instead of getting better, she rapidly declined. She lost her ability to communicate with people. Before long, she was just sitting there in a chair all day in front of a screen. Dad always believed that they did something to her, but he could never prove it.
“Once Confidence Biotech took over the contact tracing business, staffed a bunch of questionable ex-cops, and went from simply tracking people to aggressively quarantining them, Dad felt vindicated. That’s another reason I stuck around; I don’t trust them. I figured you might need a witness. But, it was mainly because I like you.”
“Cool,” Malik said. “Thank you.” Malik stared down at the street, trying to hide his smile.
“Cool, thank you.” Magaly used a deep voice, mocking Malik. “A girl tells you that she likes you, and that’s all you can say.”
“I—I like you too.”
“That’s better,” Magaly said.
“This is kind of my first real date,” Malik said.
“I know.” Magaly smiled. “Why is that, though? I figured all the girls were after you in school.”
“Me?” Malik said, surprised. “Why?”
“You were always smart, kind, and not too hard on the eyes either.”
“I could say the same about you.”
“Well, this isn’t my first date though.” Magaly gently nudged him with her shoulder as they walked in stride. “I haven’t forgotten. What’s up with you and Ronnie?”
“I have only had two good friends my entire life,” Malik said, “not including my parents: Callie and Ronnie. Ronnie came around because he really liked Callie, and Callie and I were always together, so he got two for the price of one.”
“That seems like a pretty small circle. Why is that?” Magaly asked.
“I don’t have an online presence, which means I grew up pretty sheltered, I guess.”
“That’s right,” Magaly said. “I was going to ask you about that. I tried to look you up, but I could never find a profile or anything.”
“Callie didn’t either. It was great having Ronnie around because we caught a glimpse of everything through him,” Malik said.
“Did your parents have the same opinions of social media as my dad?” Magaly asked. “He tried to convince me to get rid of my accounts. Although he never succeeded, I did limit my presence on social media.”
“Sort of,” Malik said as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Can I tell you a secret?”
Magaly stopped and searched his face, which made Malik’s heart beat faster. “Malik, anything you tell me will always remain between us.”
Malik nodded. “Here goes,” he whispered. “I’ve never been sick before. Like ever.”
“Never?” Magaly said.
“Nope.” The two began walking again.
“You mean, you’ve never caught a serious illness.”
“I’ve never even had a stuffy nose,” Malik said.
“Wow, lucky you,” Magaly said.
“Lucky-ish,” Malik said. “I’m an ASIM.”
“Are you asymptomatic, or do you have immunity?”
“The latter,” Malik said.
“I have so many questions,” Magaly said. “Umm… How did you find out that you could never get sick?”
“It started when I was in daycare, so maybe around two or three years old. Every kid in the daycare caught the virus, but I always tested negative. My pediatricians couldn’t explain what happened. They said that I was lucky. My parents were worried that the government would come and take me away for tests or something. They decided to pull me out of daycare until I was old enough for kindergarten. That’s when I met Callie. We hit it off because we both loved exploring nature and learning about creatures. We became best friends. Although we shared a passion for nature, we were opposites in health. She would get sick all the time; like her nose never stopped running.” Malik laughed, thinking back to his friend’s ever-present tissues. “When I never caught any of her colds, especially after spending so much time together, that’s when my parents became suspicious.”
“What made them worried about the government finding out?” Magaly asked.
“Probably similar to your dad, the aggressive quarantining that was happening. And there were the rumors that the government was considering allowing trials around antibodies in the blood plasma of kids.”
“I remember that,” Magaly said. “That was freaky.”
“Yeah, and my dad took it to an extreme. Our entire family deleted all of our social media accounts. Say goodbye to the connected world. Although to be fair, I was young, so I didn’t care. It only mattered later when I got to middle school.”
“What was Callie’s reason?” Magaly asked.
Malik swallowed. “When we were maybe nine or ten, she found out that she caught a mutated version of the virus. Dr. Patel had never seen it before. No one had. She had to go into an intense quarantine. It was wild,” Malik said. “I remember when she got home, her room was like a literal bubble. Completely enclosed in plastic, and it was airtight. She had to wear these special masks to ensure that it didn’t spread. Fortunately, I couldn’t get sick, so it was perfect. Her parents moved their family next to us, and we spent our childhood exploring the woods near our house.”
“Wow, did it stay that way for her?”
“As we got older, she still had to be more cautious than most, and of course, wear her mask. But she didn’t require the full quarantine or sterile environment. It was her long-haul symptoms that were the biggest problem,” Malik replied. “Seeing Callie like that got me interested in working at Confidence Biotech. They were supposed to be on the cutting edge of virology. I had been working on this idea that I believed could help cure the virus. Well, if not cure it, at least it would ease some of the severe symptoms.”
“What was the idea?” Magaly said. “Is this what you’ve been researching at Dr. Patel’s office too?”
“You’re going to think I’m crazy,” he said.
Magaly stepped in front of him and put her hand on his shoulder, stopping him in the middle of the sidewalk. “That word gets thrown around way too much.” She put her hand down. “Now, try me.”
Malik nodded slightly. “I think that the secret is in the trees.”
“Go on,” Magaly said, strolling again as she listened.
“As I said, Callie and I spent most of our time exploring nature. Almost all we did was roam around the woods, looking for trees that we could climb and spend all day in. Since we were the only ones around, Callie didn’t have to wear a mask, and she felt great. By middle school we were reading books about trees, how they communicate with each other and support one another. They are stronger in clusters, so if one tree sends out a distress signal through the root system, other trees will send it nutrients. We also read that trees can emit aerosols that other creatures pick up on. If there’s an invasive species, for instance, a tree can project a mist that attracts a predator of that species.”
“That’s incredible,” Magaly said.
“Right? Well, we got even more invested when one of our favorite climbing trees had a terrible beetle infestation. We thought that it was going to need to be cut down. Our parents paid for the best arborists, but all of them said that there were too many and that the tree would inevitably die. The trees’ natural defenses were too weakened.
“So sad.”
“We were devastated. But then one day I had to clear out the attic at my grandma’s house, and I found some old journals. There were notes about various plants and trees. I remember seeing her talk to the trees when I was a kid. I always thought that it was part of her medical condition. But according to her notes, she believed that they heard and responded to her in their way. Callie and I started researching that theory and found out that trees do respond to sounds and vibrations. If a tree hears the sounds of a threatening caterpillar that eats its leaves, it will release oil that the bug doesn’t like to deter it. From what the arborists said, we figured that the tree was now too overwhelmed to do this by itself. So then we thought, what if we could find a way to trigger this tree and surrounding trees to emit an aerosol to attract the right predator? Maybe we just needed to find the right sound. I developed a computer code to play and record sounds at an infinite number of frequencies. We would spend every free moment by that tree, just playing different sounds, and waiting to see if something would happen. Then one day, sure enough, woodpeckers came and ate the larvae.”
“Are you serious?” Magaly said.
“We were so excited.” Malik felt his cheeks hurting from smiling. He hadn’t talked about his history and details of this work with anyone since Callie. “It gets better. That journal I found was just the beginning. My grandma had all sorts of notebooks that my mom was going to donate to Georgia Tech. We weren’t sure where they came from, and much of them I didn’t understand, but they had a lot of interesting theories and thoughts in there related to nature. You want to hear something cool?” Malik paused, looking at Magaly’s face.
“What’s cooler than what you’ve just told me?” she asked.
“Did you know that the willow tree releases a natural painkiller into some water supplies?”
“Yes actually, the bark has a substance that converts into salicylic acid,” Magaly said.
“Right, a natural remedy for pain relief and inflammation,” Malik said. “We knew that we could get the medicine from the bark, but we wanted to see if there was another way to receive the dosage. I can’t tell you how much time we spent under a willow tree, just playing different sounds.”
“Did it work?” Magaly asked.
“Yes, to an extent,” Malik said. “Certain sounds produced different aerosols that we were able to capture. We had Callie’s aunt test them in her lab, and they did contain traces of salicylic acid. But we got small amounts at a time, with a ton of trial and error. That’s why I wanted to do well at Confidence Biotech. I just knew that if I had their resources, we might discover something big.”
“Why didn’t you take Roy up on his offer to return then?”
“Because—” Malik stopped and looked around. “Wait, we passed the doctor’s house. It’s back there.”