General Kuskaya presided over a solemn meeting of the international team leaders at the base’s council rooms.
“What a disaster!”, he exclaimed as he opened the session. “In fact, what an expensive disaster”.
“We must try again”, Kostkri advised.
“The same thing would happen again”, said Brigmore.
“We must do something. These pathogens will soon hit the surface of the Earth”, said Gilson.
“Have you done any thinking as to what alternative plan we might put into operation?”, Kuskaya asked Brigmore.
“Yes”.
“Professor Brigmore, will you please take the platform?”
Brigmore went to the front of the room and stood on the dais.
“Colleagues”, Brigmore began. “Dr. Kostkri advised us a moment ago to proceed with another HGR and I replied that it would be to no avail as it would be overtaken by the same disaster. However, our colleague is right and I propose the same again ….but…. with this important modification: Feodora II’s brain will be constructed with the strands of the space bacteria built into her synthetic neurons. This should give her immunity to the bacteria. However, we must work fast. Professor Gilson, how long would it take you and your team to construct a brain with implanted bacterial strands?”
Gilson turned to Trevor Casper. After a few minutes of muffled consultation, Gilson answered Brigmore’s question.
“We would need at least a week, provided no further complications arise in the process”.
That night Brigmore sat ashen faced in front of his television. It was reported that 300 people in the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido had contracted some sort of mysterious illness which, according to medical authorities, which seemed like a virulent form of influenza. Brigmore switched off his television set and sat with his head between his hands. He switched on his mobile phone and requested his senior colleagues to come to his apartment.
“Do you know what this means?”, he asked his colleagues.
All looked at each other in amazement.
“It means”, continued Brigmore, that the first pathogenic patch has hit the Earth. “I’m going to call the Prime Minister right away”.
Brigmore had been given a hotline to the PM prior to his departure for Russia . He had been given strict instructions to use it only in cases of dire emergency. Here now was a dire emergency.
“Good evening Prime Minister, William Brigmore here”.
“Hello Professor Brigmore”.
“Prime Minister, I take it you’ve heard the news from Japan ”.
“Yes indeed Professor.”
“This is only a foretaste of what is to come. What has just fallen on Hokkaido is merely the advance guard of the main pathogenic formations. In order to help us to proceed with our work, I would like you to put into motion some vital operations”.
“What exactly do you propose Professor?”
“I would like both hemispheres of the sky constantly scoured and the reports sent to me for analysis. Perhaps you could convey this plan to your American, Australian and New Zealand counterparts. I want spectroscopic analysis of the pathogenic formations and I want to know their height from the Earth’s surface and their speed of descent. May I also request that you instruct the Meteorological Office to send me on a constant basis wind and air movements around the world. This way I can predict patterns of pathogenic fall out. If we have some idea as to where the danger zones are most likely to be, evacuation plans can be put into operation by national governments.”
“How about Feodora Mark II?”
“She should be ready in a few days. However it may take some time to develop a vaccine because of the complex DNA structure of this bacteria. Until then, other forms of precaution ought to be taken.”
“Could you give me some sort of rough estimate concerning the length of time it might take before the genetic code is cracked and a vaccine developed?”
“That’s hard to say Prime Minister, but I hope no longer than two weeks”.
On his way to the laboratory the following morning, Brigmore saw the rotund figure of General Kuskaya coming towards him.
“Hey, ya see this from the internet news”, bawled out Kuskaya, laughing and guffawing as he handed Brigmore the printout. “The Hokkaido folks claim to have seen a UFO just before the epidemic broke out. Ho Ho Ho, it looks like yer leetle green men have come Professor Brigmore. Leetle green men spreading the leetle green bugs. Hoo Hoo it’s all nonsense ya know Professor. Common sense Professor, common sense” said Kuskaya tapping the side of his nose with his index finger, “ and that’s what all you scientific and academic folks just don’t have enough of”.
“F*****g ignorant buffoon”, said Brigmore to himself.
“How is the new HGR coming along?” Brigmore asked Casper .
“Oh that’s the easy part, but Gilson says that getting the bacterial strands into the neural and synaptic material is proving to be tricky”.
“Tricky but not impossible”, commented Kostkri.
“How much longer?”, sighed Brigmore.
“In a few more days Professor – that should be all”.
“Sorry if I sound impatient Dr. Kostkri, but time is really now the essence”.
Three days later, Feodora II was ready to be sent into orbit. That was the good news. The bad news was that all 300 people on Hokkaido who had contracted the bug had died. Two more pathogenic patches hit the Earth – one in southern Greenland and the other in central Argentina . Hundreds of people became infected and little hope was held out for their recovery.
“I really don’t want to sound like that idiot Kuskaya”, Kostkri said to Brigmore, “but in both Greenland and in the Argentine, reports of UFO sightings were reported from the infected areas just before the first influenza type symptoms appeared.”
Brigmore took a deep breath and became thoughtful for a moment. Eventually he found his voice: “if Kuskaya had told me this in his usual mocking and contemptuous ways, I would have simply dismissed it. I am not a believer in UFOs and ‘leetle green men’, but there does seem to be something of a pattern emerging here. This is something which is worthy of a bit of investigation.”
Brigmore was soon on the ‘phone to the Ministry of Defence in London .
“Minister, could you possibly ask your Greenland and Argentine counterparts if their respective military picked up any unusual or unauthorised air activity in their infected zones?”
The Minister assured Brigmore that he would co-operate and hoped that his counterparts would too. Two hours later, the British Minister of Defence informed Brigmore that nothing had been discovered in the airspace above the infected zones that would in any way have indicated any sort of intrusion.
“Minister. I know this sounds somewhat silly, but I would like to investigate the UFO reports in more detail. Could you possibly arrange for me to interview by video satellite conference with instant translation facilities, anyone from Greenland or Argentina who saw the UFOs.”
“Are you seriously suggesting that aliens are responsible for all of this, Professor?”
“I am not Minister, but this UFO phenomena may perhaps be connected to the disease”.
Manuel Bernardos was a very sick man. He was only 26 years old but had perhaps only a week to live. Nevertheless, he was one of the few who were willing enough and strong enough to take part in the video interview. Brigmore commenced the interview by thanking the young man for his co-operation.
“Tell me, Manuel. What exactly did you see?”
“I saw what looked like a ball of light hovering about in the air”.
“Could you describe its structure? Was it metallic? Did it have anything which looked like engines?”
“No - just a round luminous ball”.
“Did it come lower down. If so did you notice any detail?”
“It descended to around 1,000 feet but it never was anything more than a ball of light”.
“I see. So no detail was revealed”.
“My girlfriend told me that she had looked at the object through high powered binoculars, but it revealed nothing. It was just a ball of light.”
“How long did it remain in the sky?”
“For about two minutes.”
“And where did it go?”
“Well – eh nowhere. It just disappeared – just like that”.
The following day Brigmore told Kostkri about the interviews he had conducted with two Argentinians and three Greenlanders.
“There’s a clear and consistent pattern emerging Dr. Kostkri”.
“What have you noticed?”
“The UFOs have no structure and no detail. They are seen for only around one to three minutes and then just quite literally disappear into thin air.”
“I don’t see where all of this is leading us?”
“My calculations based upon wind movements, air speed, the data sent by optical and radio astronomical observatories and satellite surveillance indicate that a pathogenic patch will hit the west coast of north America – probably in the Oregon/Washington states region in two days time. I have asked the British Minister of Defence to contact his American counterpart. I have told him that I want any aerial phenomena seen in the region to be photographed and given spectroscopic and radio telescopic analysis. And I want to see the results immediately”.
Three days later Brigmore had the data on his desk. He picked up his phone and asked General Kuskaya to call a meeting of the base’s top brass. Brigmore told his assembled colleagues all about the UFO sightings, the satellite interviews he conducted with disease victims and his requests for detailed analyses and observations of the so-called UFOs.
“Well colleagues”, commenced Brigmore. “I can tell you what the UFOs are”.
Kuskaya’s reaction to this was to start sniggering and giggling like a little girl. This served to very much rile Brigmore.
“I wish that bloody nincompoop would either take what I am saying seriously or get out of this room”, thought Brigmore as he gritted his teeth strenuously trying not to lose his cool and put his thoughts into audible words.
“Ah! At last the leetle green men appear, eh Professor Brigmore?”, Kuskaya sneered.
Brigmore could no longer contain himself.
“General Kuskaya. Would you please be so kind as not to interrupt my discourse and presume on what I am to say?”, said Brigmore angrily. “I have not mentioned anything about little green men nor do I have any intention of doing so.”
Kuskaya was completely unshaken by Brigmore’s angry outburst. He just lowered his head and continued his giggling and sniggering.
Brigmore continued with his explanation: “I have analysed the data sent in from Oregon . The spectroscopic lines clearly show that the UFOs are concentrations of bacteria. Somehow the bacteria are attracted to each other when they reach the troposphere. They congregate into dense oval or circular shaped patterns before breaking up and spreading over the region onto which they fall”.
Brigmore, using power –point display, went on to explain in more detail how he had come to this somewhat controversial conclusion.
“Professor Brigmore, could you possibly tell us exactly how the bacteria are attracted to each other? What precisely is the mechanism? And why should the attraction only take place in the troposphere? Why not at some other atmospheric level?”, were the questions fired at Brigmore by his colleagues.
“I really have no idea at this stage. Until more work is done, I can only hypothesise as to what the mechanism may be”.
“May we know then precisely what your hypothesis is?”, Kenning asked.
“Before I postulate my hypothesis, I would like to convey to you another piece of evidence which would associate the UFOs with aggregate bacterial combinations. I have conducted some historical research which shows that prior to influenza type epidemics in the 20th century and so far in this one, UFO sighting were reported over the areas which were infected. So there does seem to be an historical as well as a contemporary pattern to all of this?”
Brigmore’s colleagues threw bewildered glances at each other.
“Now regarding my hypothesis concerning the attraction mechanism in the bacteria”, continued Brigmore, “my postulation is this: there are essentially two types of bacteria with different DNA base pairs. It is a case of opposites attract. The attraction process begins as the bacteria or viruses – whatever the case may happen to be at any one specific instance – enter the Earth’s exosphere. The attraction process becomes progressively stronger under the force of gravity as the pathogens continue their decent through the atmospheric layers until they reach their maximum concentration in either the lower stratosphere or upper troposphere. The concentrations then attain the critical mass which causes their break-up and dispersal.”
Walter Gilson slowly rose to his feet. “Professor Brigmore, may I point out to you that no such an attraction mechanism of the kind you suggest is known to biological science”.
“I am aware of that Professor Gilson. I have already admitted that this explanation is still purely at the speculative level. However, in a short time I may have some additional material which, although may not provide incontrovertible proof that these UFOs are bacterial concentrations, will nevertheless lend weight to the hypothesis”.
“One thing I’d like to point out”, interjected Alan Cowner, “your interviewees claimed to have seen only balls of light but nothing in the way of details which would indicate a flying machine – engines, wings, portholes, doors, landing gear and such like. Yet many of the sightings over the past century have involved detailed descriptions of these objects. In fact, some people even claim to have been abducted by the saucers’ occupants”.
“My research indicates that most of these types of sighting have been proven to have been hoaxes. With regard to the situation we are currently confronted with, they do not correspond to pathogenic outbreaks. Only when the ‘UFO’ is nebulous and structureless and displaying no detail do we see any correlation with the UFO phenomenon and the epidemics.”
At this point in the proceedings, Kuskaya became more giggly than ever. Between his giggle fits he managed to blurt out “are we finished or are we still waiting for the leetle green men tee hee hee hee heeeee!”
“Just one thing I’d like to ask please Mr. Chairman: could Professor Brigmore be more specific about the additional material he intends to present to us, material which he says might lend weight to his theory about the nature of so-called UFOs?”.
“That would be premature at this stage” was all Brigmore’s reply.