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07:00
Humberto stood outside the meet spot hoping he was at the wrong address. In fact, he went around the block several times looking in vain for a pleasant, antiseptic modern building. Unfortunately, he kept returning to the address specified as the meet spot. The building he stood before looked like it was slowly melting in on itself. Humberto counted four stories, but it seemed much shorter. From the front, it appeared to have sprouted bushy eyebrows; at both corners, the top portion of the building was pushed out. The center of the building, from roof to sidewalk, sagged inward like it had just sucked on some sour candy.
As Humberto approached the front of the crumbling brownstone, he could smell the odor of decay before he even touched the grayish rectangles he assumed had once been doors. He donned gloves he planned on incinerating as soon as was clear of this nightmare of a building and pulled open one of the grayish doors. He heard a high- pitched scream, let out one of his own, and released the door. As the door closed, another cry came, and he realized it was the old, rusty door hinges shrieking. Only slightly reassured, he giggled nervously, opened the door again, and entered the building.
As much as he hated the outdoors, Humberto wished he was outside now, which scared him to the core. A man in a suit, in a hue somewhere between beige and gray, who was even more nondescript than Humberto, met him in the lobby and asked if he wanted to go get some coffee. After his first impression of Mold Central, Humberto almost grabbed Mr. Nondescript and told him that he was buying until he realized this was the passphrase. He then blurted out his response, “No thanks, I had a latte on the way over.”
God, why did this seem so incredibly moronic instead of thrilling? Here he was, meeting at a clandestine place with unknown people, hearing passphrases and giving counter phrases. Yet instead of having the time of his life, all he could think of was how silly a way this was for grown people to act, and maybe they should really go have coffee somewhere. While all this was traveling through Humberto’s head, Mr. Nondescript was being leading him upstairs. Of course upstairs, this thing couldn’t be held on the ground floor, thought Humberto, and why should we take the elevator when we can enjoy inhaling all this delightful dust and mold.
With every step, a cloud of dust blew up toward Humberto’s face. He tried to hold his breath while climbing the stairs to avoid breathing in the filth, mold, and oh my God possibly asbestos. OK, Humberto, get a grip, asbestos isn’t found in carpeting. Asbestos is found in ceilings and walls. He glanced upward and saw pieces of the ceiling hanging above his head; the stairwell’s walls were covered with flaking hideous purple and orange wallpaper. Humberto stopped and peered closer at the wallpaper. “Are those cupids or flying pigs? God this is like something out of a nightmare,” he muttered.
“Did you have a question?” Nondescript man asked.
“Er, I take it the elevator is out of order?” gasped Humberto, unable to hold his breath any longer. He paused in the middle of the staircase and tried to take in the smallest breaths possible to avoid contamination from the mold filled air or the flaking wallpaper,
Mr. Nondescript stopped several steps ahead of Humberto and turned to him, “Limited electricity in the building, just for our purposes upstairs. In fact, it’s scheduled for implosion soon. Better get moving. The boss is a stickler for time.”
At the fourth floor, Mr. Nondescript heard a rattling, wheezing sound coming from behind him. Curious, I didn’t think the HVAC was operational, he thought, turning to spot the source of the noise. “Oh it's you, I thought the heating system had just turned on.”
Humberto had dropped his iPad, taken off his jacket, and was wheezing while grasping both sides of the doorway to keep from falling over.
“Oh, God, this is awful. I didn’t realize how out of shape I was. I think I’m having a stroke or possibly a heart attack.”
“No you’re not, and even if you are, we don’t have time for it. Now get a move on. We are pressed for time.”
“Okay, Okay, you don’t have to get all snotty. I’m better now. Are we done with the stairs now?”
Yes, go through the door at the end of the hall. I hope you have some good news on that iPad of yours.”
Humberto had planned on replying with a witty comeback, but there was something in Mr. Nondescript’s expressionless face that frightened Humberto, and the witticism died in his throat. He instead turned away from strange ‘n scary man, headed down the hall, reaching the door that once led to a tax assessor’s office. The faded letters on the door read, “ax ass so s,” which gave Humberto the nervous giggles at a highly inopportune moment. He tried to turn the giggles into a coughing fit, but ended up in a choking fit. He opened the door and stumbled into the office spasming and sputtering. When that diminished down to a few snorts Humberto was able to contain himself and observe his surroundings.
“Ahh, circa 1985, bargain basement government décor, how lovely,” he said out loud as he walked around the office. He saw two black, cushioned chairs with overly large buttons that looked like they might stab the unwary in the bottom upon sitting. The chairs had chrome legs curved under the seat, an edgy modern design back in 1985. The chairs faced a white, snap it together desk that looked like it also came from the Reagan era. “Yes, you can’t have the chrome without the matching white tables. Nineteen eighty-five the era of Logan’s Run furniture,” Humberto said to the room. At least he thought he was alone.
However, a figure was standing very quietly along the wall by the door when Humberto made his grand entrance. The figure now clapped softly, “Yes I would generally agree with you, but the government didn’t have to purchase this lovely ensemble,” and waved his hand in the direction of the white and black office suite “It came with the office. The tax assessor, or if you like the ‘ax ass so s’ purchased it for himself. Since it suits our needs for today, we cleaned it up and here it is in all its glory. Amazingly it seems to be nearly indestructible. Too bad they couldn’t come up with something aesthetically pleasing that lasted forever instead of this eyesore.”
“Ahh! Where did you come from?” screeched Humberto.
“I was watching your remarkable entrance from the door. You just failed to see me.”
Humberto regained his composure as the figure walked behind the white snap it together desk and motioned for him to sit in the Logan’s Run chair.
As Humberto sat and powered up his iPad, he snuck a glance at the man behind the desk. He was one of those men who could range in age from 30-45. He was either young or kept very fit, with a lean whippet runner’s physique and a thin, predatory foxy face to match. The man was dressed in what looked like a navy blue Armani suit, a navy shirt, and dark gray tie with tiny little dots or squares or something on it. But the most astonishing thing about him was his eyes. Men never notice people eyes, and especially not other man’s eyes, but Humberto noticed these eyes. They beamed out of this guy’s head like lasers or something. I never knew people had silver eyes, outside of books, but, geez, these are like a hypnotist’s eyes or something.
“So what do you have for me?”
Humberto jumped slightly, “Um, er, yes, well, it’s not good. As you can see, before the formula, the world population was around seven billion 242 million or so people. And looking at the average number of deaths on a random day before the formula, the number would total approximately 71,500 deaths with 173,400 births taking place at the same time and a population growth of 101,900.
This equals one birth every eight seconds, one death every 13 seconds with a net gain of one person every 13 seconds. Here are the top 10 countries with highest populations.” He now showed the boss the screen of his iPad, which read:
China 1, 393,631,584 India,1,267,118,225, USA,322,536,044, Indonesia, 252,757,499, Brazil, 202,002,663, Pakistan,185,077,245, Nigeria,178,425,122
Bangladesh, 158,476,938, Russia, 142,474,404, Japan,127,002,462
“Now, unfortunately for us, and I guess humanity in general, the countries’ with the highest population also mirror the countries’ highest in fruit production. As you can see, China and India produce the most fruit, with Brazil coming in third and the U.S in fourth. Of all the ingredients for an anti-aging serum, it had to be fruit in the most fruitful countries in the world, ha! Sorry. Looking back four years, at the year’s halfway point, in June, there were approximately 27,438, 500 deaths from natural to unnatural causes. Now fast-forward to this year with the formula out there. Let’s estimate generously, and say that 50% of the population shouldn’t be alive due to the formula. That gives us 13,719,250 people that are around that probably shouldn’t be. They should’ve died in the usual ways, war, famine, accidents, murder or just old age, but are still here due to the formula. Now speed forward another six months and, 14 million more people, or possibly even greater numbers than that if the formula can be processed faster or with man-made products, we are talking...”
“Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.”
“Huh?”
“You may know it as Blade Runner.”
“Oh, the Harrison Ford movie. Yes, that was a dark and dismal take on the future. Oh, I get it,” Humberto said.
“The rest of the data is here, I see food, water, housing issues, possibilities of initial losses due to fighting over the product. And the cartels may branch out into this new line of revenue. ‘The curiosity of newly found lifespan.’ What does this mean?”
“Well, people, some people, have found that they aren’t as easily injured as they used to be depending on the formula they have taken, and have become overly bold and taken unnecessary risks.”
“Example?”
“For one, bar wages have increased in brutality and inanity, which has in turn decreased the lifespan of those at the shallower end of the gene pool.”
“You can call an idiot an idiot, and just say that some assholes in a bar are shooting and stabbing each other until one of them goes too far and kills the other one.”
“Yes, that about sums it up.”
“Anything else?”
“People have realized their threshold, so to speak. Wars are longer and noisier. Then there’s the suicide group, those who took the formula and then realized they weren’t fond of living in the first place. They realized extending their life didn’t put any more money in the bank or give them any more friends. Once they realized they have been given more time to be miserable, good night, and lights out. Between the suicides, the moron effect, bar bets, gangs, and mafia types trying to muscle in on the action and bumping each other off in the process, deaths helped us for a while but then tapered off, we are left with lots of births and very few deaths. There was also the initial impact when the ingredients were broadcast to the world. On a positive note, it’s a good thing our government got a handle on it right away and prevented mass hysteria and casualties like the rest of the world.”
There was dead silence as the Boss stared at Humberto with those weird, silvery eyes. “Is that supposed to be funny?”
“Umm, well, I guess it’s one of those things that sounds better in one’s head than it does...”
Boss man leaned back in his chair and roared with laughter. “Did you hear that, Joe? It’s a good thing our government got a handle on it right away. You, you are all right, Fuego.”
“Yes, that first month was quite interesting. Who knew working in a supermarket would suddenly become the most dangerous job on the planet? God, that month or so made the Battle of Berlin look like a tea party.”
Humberto remembered that time. It was as if those Purge movies had come to life. The price of all produce of any kind went sky high. Before armed guards were stationed at grocery and drug stores, people were literally driving into the stores and grabbing any and all fruit and vegetables. Didn’t matter if it was on the list of ingredients or not. For some reason, one image stuck in Humberto’s mind. He remembered watching the news, and seeing footage of a mob overturning a refrigerated truck, and pulling the poor driver out, and ransacksing the trailer. On the trailer’s side, there had been a happy looking farmer with a bushel basket in his arms its contents overflowing, presumably onto his shoes. The last image Humberto remembered seeing before the news anchor told viewers the rest of the footage could not be shown due to its extremely graphic nature, was the mob scattered when the not so happy truck driver calmly fired a sawed-off shotgun into the mob of fruit felons.
“Where are the suggestions?” the Boss now asked Humberto.
“Last section. That’s not really my area, but you did ask for my input. Now if you follow any of these, they did not come from me, I want no part of anything that my team suggested.”
“No problem I wasn’t planning on giving you credit for any of this anyway. As far as anyone knows, this meeting never took place, and you never saw me or this place.” With that, he downloaded the information from Humberto’s iPad onto a thumb drive and hit a button on his phone.
Mr. Nondescript returned with a small pail of water and stood by the gleaming white desk.
“I hope there’s nothing important on this iPad,” said the Boss.
“Well, only the information we just discussed and some notes from a few other projects.”
“I hope you backed them up,” the Boss said, and handed the iPad to Mr. Non-Descript.
As Humberto watched, Mr. Nondescript, pried open the iPad with a screwdriver and removed what looked like a CD or DVD, (but Humberto knew was called a “platter,” and was the guts of his iPad.) Mr. Nondescript then took a couple of discs from his pocket and placed the platter from the iPad between the discs.
“Uh, what are those? What are you doing with those watch battery looking things?” Humberto asked.
“Simply degaussing the platters. Just takes a moment.”
Humberto was so fascinated by the whole process he forgot the guy standing in front of him was destroying his nearly brand new iPad.
The Boss shot Mr. Nondescript a meaningful look and tapped his watch. From his pocket, Mr. Nondescript removed what looked like a small file or cordless toothbrush. Man, the guy, had a whole hardware store in his pocket, Humberto thought. Mr. Nondescript then turned on the tool and touched the toothbrush to the platter. A sander! The guy’s sanding my platter! Oh dear Lord, that sounds like bad dialogue from some horribly written porn. That was like Humberto’s whole life, horribly written porn but with hardly any pornographic moments to speak of.
The Boss then stood up, motioned toward the door with his hand, and said, “Shall we? Time is of the essence.”
As Humberto left the room, he could’ve sworn he heard a splash as though a smallish object had just fallen into water.
The Boss lagged behind Humberto for a second to talk into a speaker on his desk. “Well ladies and gentlemen, there you have our partial take on the situation. I will send you his recommendations as well as my own. I hope to hear from the rest of you, and look forward to your input as well since globally we are all in this together.” Murmurs could be heard coming from the box. “I will field any questions in two hours’ time.” With that he, clicked off the speaker and followed Humberto out of the room.
Humberto stopped to catch his breath at the corner of Moldy Street and Run down Avenue, but Mr. Nondescript urged him to continue to the next block where he had been told to park his car. When they reached the lobby of the building, there was no sign of the Boss.
Once safely inside his car, Humberto began to feel himself again. He rolled down his window and felt confident enough to ask Mr. Nondescript when the next meeting would be and if it would again be at this lovely, five-star accommodation.
“We’ll be in touch, keep your cell phone with you at all times. Very doubtful we’ll use the vacant lot as a meet place again.”
“Vacant lot? What do you mean va..?”
But Humberto never finished his sentence for he was interrupted by a massive whumping sound, followed by a wave of dust. When he looked in his rearview mirror, the meet place was no more. Wow, that was amazing, he thought, followed by, the mold is now loose and headed this way. Humberto created his own dust, heading back to the relative safety of his office at seven miles over the speed limit, which was quite reckless for Humberto.