dog_eat_dog | IC Inbox

The walls getting breached - does that have something to do with the cordyceps thing?

Yeah. Surviving cities are quarantine zones. In theory, infection doesn't get in. You're American, yeah?

Yeah. From Pennsylvania.

Alright, well, I'm in Boston. The military is responsible for maintaining the walls in quarantined cities, as well as... well, pretty much everything. They're the only government left, so they run the place. It's the same in most cities, as far as I know. But Pittsburgh, now Pittsburgh is different –– the military got driven out five years ago, and the people took the city back for themselves. Haven't heard anything for a while, but maybe they're still going, maybe not. They might have been entirely overrun by infection.

Jesus.

Harry'd heard of it. He said it was a fungal infection? I tried looking it up, but--

[She pauses, embarrassed, but then powers through it.]

I couldn't figure out how to spell it.

Cordyceps. C-o-r-d-y-c-e-p-s. It’s around in your time, too, it just only effects ants and plants and that. But someday it will mutate and maybe spread to people. And when it does, it hijacks the host’s body and sets about trying to spread, so the infected are violent.

And don’t worry. If it wasn’t relevant to my daily life, I wouldn’t know how to spell it either.

What makes you think it'll happen on my world the way it happened on yours?

[Her tone here isn't derisive or dismissive, just curious.]

Because it was nothing we did. It was just nature, like hurricanes or asteroids or the flu. Could be now, could be ten years from now, or fifty. These things mutate all the time. I don't know. What about SARS, or Swine Flu, or that African one? Those all happened when I was a kid, and they weren't even as bad as cordyceps.

Anybody working on a cure?

There have been a lot of attempts. I...

[ She pauses. Is there any sense keeping it a secret? ]

I might have found it. Or part of it, anyway.

Well, a part's a start, right?

Yeah. It's in my partner's hands now.

And you trust them, right?

I do, but without me riding his ass... I don't know. He's tetchy. Men, you know?

[Wryly:]

Yeah, I know.

Just mad no matter what.

And thinking he knows better than everybody?

Absolutely. He listens eventually but to get there it's a whole lot of "no" and "listen here" and "Tess" -- acts like I've lost my fucking mind at least once a day. You have one of those?

Not in a while. A couple people here were like that, for me.

Do you miss them?

Yeah, I do. Because I think hearing opinions I don't agree with is a good thing, and I think sharing mine with people who don't agree with me is, too.

Yeah, that’s probably useful. I always kinda liked the pushback.

If it's just because they're a know-it-all, though, that's annoying. So-- it depends, I guess.

You miss your partner?

I don’t let those types tell me anything. Waste of my time.

[ Good question, though. ]

Yeah. Normally he’d be the one taking care of me through something like that.

I'm sorry. That's tough.

(no subject)

dog_eat_dog - 2020-05-21 03:41 (UTC) - Expand