Plague Doctor

Other than some devices, the temporary lab shared no resemblance with the lab in his illusion but the moment Gu Jun stepped into the room, illusions raged at him like a suppressed flow breaking through a dam. The feeling started the moment he arrived at Jiang Xin Hospital. The various scenes he encountered tore at his heart, this was different from the chaos which he witnessed during the Malformed Banyan Disease and Nightmare Illness incidents.

The hospital was filled to the brim with patients. When officials in protective gear appeared, patients, who could still move, latched onto them pleading for help. That made movement through the hospital incredibly difficult. Between the coughs, some pleaded for mercy, while others cursed them for their incompetence, for allowing the innocent citizens to wait and die… Some of the staff were still working at their posts while others had already abandoned all hope, waiting for death to arrive. Coughing, crying, cursing and pleading, it was a requiem that could collapse the strongest mind.

“Move away, please move away.” The Action Department members had to wave the guns to clear a path. Gu Jun remained silent as he waded through the crowd. Even after he entered the lab, he did not utter a word to Uncle Dan. He reached the microscope and placed his rifle on the table. He looked into the petri dish and saw the greyish-white bacterial clusters… The illusion grew stronger. Gu Jun leaned closer and the moment he saw the mutated bacteria, the splitting headache suddenly intensified. The world was twisting, wiggling along with the many tentacles…

“It’s too slow, the germination rate is still too slow and the immunization is not good enough. If it can be neutralized by illotycin, then everything will be meaningless.”

“Not good enough! It has to be impervious to existing antibiotic, that is our only goal.”

“We’re getting close…”

Gu Jun could hear a male voice speaking English. It sounded like the voice was speaking at different points in time. Was it during the process of creating this strain of bacteria? Suddenly his vision was pulled away from the microscope and the images around him changed. The familiar headache confirmed that this was not a recorded illusion but one that he had triggered… He once again returned to that lab but this time it looked well kept, and the bloody message was missing from the wall. Centrifuge, calorstat, working table, all the devices were arranged neatly. People in dark airtight suits operated on something. Gu Jun could not see their faces through the helmet but there appeared to be people from all races and they conversed in English. Suddenly someone cried out in excitement, “Yes, it has gained immunization against illotycin!”

“Yes, we have succeeded!”

“Dear God, this is wonderful.”

The illusion flickered. The members stood in a single file and the leader in the same dark gear stood before them. The figure held a petri dish with the cultivated bacteria and announced camly, “This thing will leave a large gash on the world, but this is the dawn of a new era!”

‘So these are the culprits…’ Gu Jun wanted to take a good look at them but he was losing his focus fast. The pain intensified, it did not look like any of them had wilted faces… Gu Jun considered this before. The epidemic this time did not come from an unknown pathology like the Malformed Banyan Disease but was a mutation of a known bacterial strain. There was no sign of any spell or ritual, one only needed some brilliant and wicked minds to accomplish something like this. To mutate a bacterial strain, reliance on normal cultists was not enough, one had to have the cooperation of experts with medical and biological background. ‘Were these people part of the Afterlife Cult… Or they were just working with them?’

“The dawn of a new era,” The claim made by the figure kept repeating in Gu Jun’s mind, “But this is the dawn of a new era…”

He wanted to take another gander at the picture on the lab table, it was something he had been meaning to do last time but the illusion halted too suddenly. Gu Jun shook his head and took a deep breath. He was annoyed at himself for not taking the chance to glance at the picture. ‘Regardless of who they are, they are of the same opinion shared by that wilted old man, they probably found each other through this shared perspective. They want to create pestilence and through it design a new world…’

Using pestilence as a means of natural selection was extreme and sounded ludicrous but the philosophy had its followers. This argument had been around for decades. Gu Jun thought back to what the wilted old man had said, uncooked meat, black plague, small pox… Black plague, black plague… the most discussed pestilence in human history was the black plague that swept the European continent, its aftereffect could be felt for centuries until the industrial age.

There had been numerous researches on the positive influence of Black Plague on Europe and the world at large in terms of medical history, history, economy and sociology. Many theories that derived from these researches contradicted each other. The academia tried to put a halt to such research but they always managed to return.

“Ah Jun, are you alright?” Uncle Dan asked. After a few thoughts, Gu Jun told them, “Uncle Dan, try to come up with the antibiotic immediately, I have a call to make.” He walked to the side with his phone and called the command central at headquarters. Once the call was connected, he said, “Command central, please help me research the parties and academia who believe that the Black Plague has positive impact on the advancement of Europe, I believe among them, we will find the organization who has collaborated with Lai Sheng Company to come up with this pathogen. Pay close attention to any organization who has any connection to the belief that the Black Plague is the dawn of a new era.”

“Copy that.” The command central replied. At the same time, Uncle Dan and his team started to work on the bacterial antibiotic immunization resistance experiment. They were not testing for the effectiveness of the drug but were conducting tests to see which of the drugs had the strongest resistance against the bacteria. The tested ‘drugs’ were the items brought over by Gu Jun, the same samples were given to the research teams on the ships as well. They were the dust scrapped from the scale as well as the pills ‘given by Atal’. The pills were actually the only two medicine that Gu Jun had ever received from the system. One was the ‘brain stem targeting medicine’ and the other was ‘human anti-inflammation medicine’.

Even though Phecda had looked through his stuff after his ‘death’, his stuff was put away without much fuss since nothing caught Phecda’s eyes. They were just returned to him a few days ago. They included the two boxes of ‘sleeping pills’. Who would have thought they would end up as testing drugs!? Gu Jun naturally had more faith in the anti-inflammation medicine, after all, penicillin and illotycin are both anti-inflammatory drugs. They are not hard to manufacture but are extremely important. Matching drugs to the illness was very important in clinical treatment. Even though this was just a reward from a normal mission, it could end up saving lives. However, the problem was the medical lexicon of the foreign civilization might be completely different from human civilization, ‘anti-inflammation’ might mean something totally different over there.

The medicine was in gel capsules that contained chemical dust. This meant that if it was proven to be effective, the molecular component could be studied immediately and then replicated…

“Try this one first!” Gu Jun pointed at the drug. Then he continued to ruminate over what the old man had said, it felt like something was whispering into his ear, ‘You are unwilling to face the truth due to your sense of morality… the historical truth belongs to those willing to accept the truth… This pestilence shall be a great milestone in human history…’

Uncle Dan and the rest continued with their experiments using both dilution and diffusion methods.

Gu Jun decided to put his thoughts away and joined the rest to help when his phone rang. It was a call from the command central. He answered it, “Ah Jun, it’s me, Xue Ba. The statement you gave is a direct copy of a claim given by the English economist, Robert Rodgers in 1909. Robert’s father, Roald Rodgers, a famed economist, and historicist was the biggest proponent of this philosophy in the 19th century.”