Parasite (Parasitology, #1)(36)
There are times when I truly regret not remembering my childhood and the normal human socialization that I have to assume came with it. There are other times when I am frankly glad to be free of all the baggage. Everybody pees, especially when they’re ordered to do so by lab techs.
As soon as the cup was full to the line on the side, I capped it firmly and placed it in the small alcove designed for that specific purpose. Apparently, urine was viewed as so powerful that it could even contaminate shelves through plastic if not properly contained. Once that was safely done, I washed and sanitized my hands before knocking on the bathroom door. “You can let me out now,” I said. “I’m done.”
“Are you quite sure?” asked Sherman. I was relieved to hear the teasing note in his voice. I was forgiven for pushing him before. “Maybe you’re still intending to have yourself an extracurricular widdle.”
“Widdle?” I asked, laughing. “Oh, you so made that one up.”
“Don’t test me,” he recommended, and opened the bathroom door. As in Dr. Lo’s lab, the technician had vanished. Sherman saw me looking around for him and clapped a hand down on my shoulder. “Paul couldn’t abide your radiance, my dear. He fled before he could be blinded.”
I sighed. “The new guys still think I’m a freak of nature, huh?”
“To be charitable, Sal, you are a freak of nature. You survived the unsurvivable, you recovered from the unrecoverable, and you fall asleep when you’re having blood drawn. People who don’t know you like the rest of us do just don’t have a frame of reference for you, that’s all. And they have work to do. Your appearance is good for hours of overtime.”
“Shouldn’t that come with a little light conversation?”
“You’ve come a long way in your understanding of human nature,” said Sherman. “You’ve farther yet to travel. Including, if my memory serves me right, down the hall to the radiology lab. Let’s fill you up with delicious barium, shall we?”
“You’re so good to me,” I said sourly, and followed him back into the hall. Just another day at SymboGen, where there’s no test too small, or too invasive, to run on a captive audience.
Extreme precautions are required when attempting to raise D. symbogenesis outside its natural human host. Modern Intestinal Bodyguards? never exist outside the digestive systems of the people who willingly ingest them in pill form. Consequentially, they have been keyed to respond to specific environmental cues, and will only develop properly when those cues are present in their environment.
This makes D. symbogenesis both easy to control and difficult to study, due to the worm’s tendency to die as soon as it is removed from the biological safety of its human host…
—FROM “THE DEVELOPMENT AND LIFE CYCLE OF DIPHYLLOBOTHRIUM SYMBOGENESIS,” ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE STANFORD SCIENCE REVIEW, JUNE 2017.
In an ironic side effect of the Intestinal Bodyguard? being used for so much day-to-day medical care, people became very cautious about antiparasitic drugs. Several otherwise popular medicines were removed from the market once it became clear that they could damage the implants, and even casual drug users tended to steer clear of things that could harm their resident worms. No one wanted to kill the goose that laid the golden eggs. People were even more reluctant to kill the worm that kept them healthy.
—FROM SELLING THE UNSELLABLE: AMERICAN ADVERTISING THROUGH THE YEARS, BY MORGAN DEMPSEY, PUBLISHED 2026.
CHAPTER 7
AUGUST 2027
Sherman passed me off to Chave, who dragged me to the accounting department to be grilled about my receipts, which looked exactly like every other batch of receipts I’d ever brought in for them to review. Medications, vitamins, physical therapy sessions, the usual. The only thing that actually should have caught their attention was the bill for a new grain heating pad—technically a “household item,” and thus a questionable expense—but they waved it off without comment, choosing to focus instead on the number of times I’d been to see the chiropractor since my last visit.
Eventually, they freed me back into the halls of SymboGen, and Chave delivered me back to Sherman, who was flirting with a receptionist I didn’t recognize. The receptionist pouted when Chave called Sherman away, but hid the expression quickly. Smart. I wouldn’t have wanted to attract Chave’s attention when I didn’t have to.
“She’s all yours,” said Chave, waving me toward Sherman. “Get her an ultrasound and make sure she’s in the cafeteria at one. Beyond that, I don’t care what you do.” Then she turned and stalked away.
Sherman watched her leave, waiting until she was out of earshot before sighing longingly. “That, my darling Sal, is a woman who needs an infusion of fun in her life. Possibly accompanied by a pitcher or two of strawberry mojitos.” He clucked his tongue. “Anyone that tightly wound is going to be a tornado when they finally let go. Imagine being the lucky bloke—or bird—on the receiving end of that storm warning.”
“I think we have very different ideas of what makes a fun evening,” I said.
“Probably so,” Sherman agreed, and turned to lead me back toward the elevator. “Have a good day so far?”
“No worse than usual, and I guess I’ll call that a win.” I sighed. “I just keep reminding myself that I don’t have to do this again for six months. It helps me get through the day.”