Spring 2022.
The grandkids have just left for Manchester. We'd put some irradiated food, water, tea, coffee and a kettle in the greenhouse for them while we stayed mainly in the house. We talked via our Ring Intercom and Skype. We'll let the sun and an extra UVC light decontam the greenhouse for a day or two before we go in with SCBA to finish off, pick up the paper plates and cups and put them in the incinerator.
Outside in the street six or seven young Antivaxer people are defying the 5 metre rule and jostle each other on their way down to the Covid 21 Club Speakeasy bar. My phone beeps its Covid alert warning. I get it out and open the screen. Three arrows! Three of them have fake Chinese testers! Not only that, two of them are carrying, infected with, the 21 virus! If it was up to me, I'd let them get on with their herd immunity thing.
My catapult and taser are close to hand. However, the app has alerted someone else. A Police Drone buzzes overhead and two Covans appear. Suited occupants jump out. The AV youngsters scatter. Too late, they go down in a muddle of fired CO2 capture nets. Soporific darts are fired into their legs. The vans close up. Hydraulic lifting arms reach out and swing the netted captives into a separate compartment of each van. The team leader salutes me and they leave. I am awarded a month's supply of bread, milk, wine and beer for my civic duty: Tradeable on Gumtree, Covebook or the Splitter App but I won't. My phone is secure with its Cov.UK app for now but I know the AV are looking for me.
Autumn 2025
2020 changed the world. A virus changed the world. People said it was silly, 'it's only the flu', but it did change. Four working class lads from Liverpool changed the world. Silly but it did. A bitter and twisted unitesticular Austrian changed the world. Not so silly, but the people who said the war will be over by Christmas did; feel silly.
The Corona food, drink and Amazebay delivery van arrives. My 7G blacktooth system detects it, autoqueries its credentials and health certificate and opens my covreceptacle to receive the delivery. Robotic arms grasp the box and place it inside the receptacle. The driverless van awaits the test procedure's green light, then leaves. As a precaution the receptacle fills with a mist of atomised 70 proof alcohol. A blue glow of UVC light runs for 5 minutes. Three Croatian domestic staff wheel out a trolley. Two to handle it, a third to guard them. There are still desperate hungry Antivaxers following the Corona vans. My guards are armed with repeater Tasers and Diazepam guns with enough gas to render a Greta mob indifferent.
Silly precautions because, you see, I'm immune and I employ people who are AB, antibodied, but they can still be infectious and it's a capital offence to infect someone. AVs, ABs, and Gretas. What a world!
I own Corona PLC. I am very rich and very lucky. My name is Sergei Coventry. I changed my surname because the first syllable now strikes fear into people's minds; and that amused me. Croatians? A Croat business friend once said the English can be good friends, but never employ a friend. Curious? You should be. but how to keep an idiot in suspense? Tell you later.
iii. 2025 Sergei's Ranch. Corona HQ.
An electric helicopter approaches. A little unsteady, it weaves erratically in the air and descends in a jerky fashion. The sole occupant, the pilot, manages to attain a hover at a metre above the chamomile lawn then drops with a stomach lurching crunch to the ground.
The gardener, doubling as marshaller today, looks on in disgust at the damage the skids have made. He waits until the blades stop then warily approaches.
A pale Richard Branson gets out, beads of fear sweat on his brow visible even from my balcony viewpoint. The gardener steps back gesturing to the pilot to mask up and points to the portable decontam station erected for his arrival.
Branson doesn't wear his trademark white suits here anymore since one visit, when my mischievous staff included purple dye in the alco-mist tunnel. Today he wears a navy suit. I can imagine the staff are hissing with dismay at the lost opportunity to mix in something white. That's the trouble with me having some ex-Virgin staff. He truly lost his virginity; but not in a nice way.
He steps through the final archway. Three greens. He's more humble these days. I gave him his island back. The NHS Party chairman revoked his knighthood but he's a clever cove and I needed a clever man to get Corona going.
He greets me. ‘Sir Guy!’ We don't shake hands. That nonsense soon went out of fashion. He looks out the balcony window with hatred at his high-tech nemesis on the lawn. My rules; if you can afford one you must drive it yourself. Cars are about but you risk biofuel molotov cocktails from the Gretas.
The staff still haven't told him I am only Sergei - Ser for short. I grew up being called Ser by Mum and Dad. Why change the habit of a lifetime?
I don't enforce the rule with spaceships though. He is getting on a bit.
***
Gone viral
iv. 2025
AV HQ.
In the old community room upstairs in one of the many deserted pubs two trestle tables are set out to face each other. 5 metres apart. A hand sanitiser, pen, paper and a plastic water bottle sits on each. A chair. Screens behind each. Hand drawn arrows point to exits.
Behind one screen Marlin, AV leader, waits with two of his lieutenants.
‘Report then.’
‘ We've diverted the drones and the CovPol to the other side of town, Martin.’ said one. ‘Er... Marlin.’
‘The Gretas are hiding round the corner with their bikes, waiting for our signal.’
‘Bikes? What sort? Harleys?’
‘Push bikes.’
‘Push bikes?!
‘Yep, they said their skateboards are too noisy.’
‘Get them in. Just four up here. One at the table. Feed the others.’
***
Cov HQ
I try to help. I send out disarmed Corona vans with food and medicine. Bottled water. They don't trust me. They think the cartons are booby trapped or drugged.
The regular Corona vans are protected with a high voltage discharge. They are unpainted. Any unauthorised approach and the van's recorded message warns whoever. If persistent a siren sounds, if any hands touch then a non-lethal blue spark will strike; enough to make hair stand on end. And a bit of scorching; but not too bad.
***
The Greta spokesperson was a young woman, skinny, distrustful and grubby.
‘What then?’ she said, pushing aside the sanitiser with disdain.
Marlin looked her over. Dirty fingernails bitten short. Wild shifty eyes, she almost snarled. He looked in vain for any hint of sexuality.
Marlin kept his people clean. He skirmished them through closed down hotels. His techy boys got the hot water on; he made them shave. Anyone who didn't comply was tied up and left out for the CovPatrol. Most complied. Very clean and clean shaven they were too.
‘You're a rabble, a dirty mess. How can we ever seek justice with vagabonds and vagrants roving like scum around the back streets? Pre Cov people would cross the road to avoid you.'
‘And?’
‘I want you to buck up. This can't go on. When did you last sit down at a table to eat?’
‘Go on.’
‘I'm surrendering people. They'll say they've had enough and want back in.’
‘They'll be vaxed, chipped. They'll truth ray 'em.’
‘Small price. We get people on the inside. Besides truth rays are a propaganda myth. I want two or three gretas to do the same. You got your green planet. I don't even know why you exist. Talk to your people, come up with ideas. Meet again in a week. I'll have a barber and a hairdresser here. The paper in front of you. A place you can get a shower... ‘
*** Cov HQ.
‘They'll soon come in when winter sets in,’ Boris told me once. That was three winters ago.
It can't go on. They must come in. The ABs won't go out until they do. After the Second wave they had to be bribed to go to work.
Boris is still P.M. He jumped ship to the NHS Party; before he was pushed.
It's not quite 1984 but it's still a scared world. Corbyn got exactly what he wanted, a Soviet Britain but he never thought this was the best way to go about it.
I press the Intercom.
‘Yes?’
‘ I need to talk to Marlin, see how he's getting on...’
***
https://www.thoughtco.com/typhoid-mary-1779179
v. 2025. An English city.
A drone drops a disguised mobile phone on a flat roofed high rise. Lights are turned on in a coded sequence in a civic controlled high rise nearby. Marlin sees the signal. He has eighteen hours to reach the phone before it self-combusts.
***
Lessons learnt. Corona viruses have been with us a long time. The common cold is a coronavirus. Coronaviruses are zoonotic, they cross species. Covid 19 is an RNA strand with a fatty lipid layer which preserves it outside of its host. It does not seek to kill its host, it just uses the host cells to multiply, to reproduce itself. A virus can be many times smaller than a bacterium; viewable only by electron microscope. A simple cloth mask deters its movement no more than a tennis net slows a jet of water from a hosepipe.
An infected person can cough out a cloud of millions of them. The general medical consensus is that some people react to the viral invasion worse than others and overreaction by our immune system becomes the problem. Youngsters are not as sensitive with their undeveloped immune systems. Some folk of any age have efficient immune systems. Think hay fever as a lesser example of oversensitivity. You know the rest.
The Covid 21 that followed just after the C 19 dust settled was a far more virulent strain. We'd had the practise run. We were ready. Ready to dive for cover. C 19 was an extended bank holiday with nice weather in comparison. No prompting this time. We dived for cover. So did the already weakened world economy. C 20? God knows; ask an epidemiologist.
***
Covid 19 made my fortune. Not the fortune of money but the fortune of power. I learnt long ago that rich people don't need money. Why else were they billionaires? They couldn't give a billion people a dollar each. The crazy lefties didn't want rich people to have Ferraris and Rolls Royces. They never considered sharing out a billion pounds between a million poor people would mean the poor got a £1000 each. Some UK poor got more than that in benefits. Or, give 100,000 people £10,000. Like £10k's gonna last long. But if that billionaire opens a profitable factory and employs a hundred people on £15-20k every year, he makes even more in profits, eventually gets his money back and a hundred people have a job. For years. Some even climb up the ranks and do well.
Maybe a shit job but they had the chance of listening at school maybe? I didn't but, when I grew up, I did. When you pay someone say, with a debit card, you give them some numbers. That's all. There's no gold standard. It's up to you to replace them. He or she did.
I'm off to meet Marlin. He's managed to retrieve the phone unnoticed. Marlin's job is to get me a few hundred people I can give a job; get rid of silly ideas like equality and human rights.
Jump into a hungry lion's cage, go swimming with Great White sharks and when it all goes wrong try and protest your human rights.
‘Kindly undress and reveal your soft underbelly,’ said the hungry lion. Never.
‘Neoprene and rubber? Ugh!' said the shark. Not.
These kids. They've stuck out three winters. Chased, harrassed by drones and private police forces, soldiers, regular police. The ones that survived must be pretty feisty. Among them is the future, not the dozy folk watching reruns of Eastenders and Corrie, cowering in their biospheres.
A CovPatrol van arrives. I suit up in a uniform PPE suit and mask. I mingle with the Cov Patrol. Anyone watching won't notice an extra crew member. We set off to catch Marlin. If we can't get him alone he won't like the leg dart much but great rewards are worth the odd sore leg.
Gone viral.
vi.
‘Thanks for stopping that trooper darting my leg.’
‘They'd got the others dazed and netted, you were lucky. Those weren't your usual lads?’
‘Training run. I want the experienced ones safe. I can say I got away in the confusion.’
The Covan comes to an abrupt halt. The hull clangs with hard missiles. The speaker hums. ‘Gretas. Crossbows again.’
The Covan sets off again bumping over rough ground.
‘We lost them. They're like acrobats on those bikes.’
I look askance at Marlin. ‘Bikes?’
‘Bikes. They've got a leader as well. We meet a junior with a microphone and a recorder. They daren't carry phones.’
‘Shouldn't you come in now?’
‘What do I do for adrenalin? This is quite a crack. They follow me but the luckier I am the more suspicious they get. I'm never ill; all of them go down with it more than once. They wonder about me. Why I don't.’
‘You won't. Not with my antibodies in you. You're probably due a booster come to think of it.’
‘I have bad dreams about it. Whatever you've got running round inside me.’
‘Hmmm. They bled me dry back in 2020. Couldn't synthesize it. One of the boffins was ahead of the game. Took me on one side. We set up a company. Money was no object then to get a vaccine. We transfused animals. Your lot and the Gretas would riot if they knew. It wasn't nice. Those incinerators smell vile.’
‘Which animals?’
‘There's a question. Maybe one day. Many many animals don't get 'flu. The Chinese bats weren't exactly dropping out of the sky were they?’
‘So that's how you built Corona up.’