Herd Immunity

Amid the dire Covid warnings, one crucial fact has been largely ignored: Cases are down 77% over the past six weeks. If a medication slashed cases by 77%, we’d call it a miracle pill. Why is the number of cases plummeting much faster than experts predicted?

In large part because natural immunity from prior infection is far more common than can be measured by testing. Testing has been capturing only from 10% to 25% of infections, depending on when during the pandemic someone got the virus. Applying a time-weighted case capture average of 1 in 6.5 to the cumulative 28 million confirmed cases would mean about 55% of Americans have natural immunity.

Now add people getting vaccinated. As of this week, 15% of Americans have received the vaccine, and the figure is rising fast. Former Food and Drug Commissioner Scott Gottlieb estimates 250 million doses will have been delivered to some 150 million people by the end of March.

There is reason to think the country is racing toward an extremely low level of infection. As more people have been infected, most of whom have mild or no symptoms, there are fewer Americans left to be infected. At the current trajectory, I expect Covid will be mostly gone by April, allowing Americans to resume normal life.

Antibody studies almost certainly underestimate natural immunity. Antibody testing doesn’t capture antigen-specific T-cells, which develop “memory” once they are activated by the virus. Survivors of the 1918 Spanish flu were found in 2008—90 years later—to have memory cells still able to produce neutralizing antibodies.

Researchers at Sweden’s Karolinska Institute found that the percentage of people mounting a T-cell response after mild or asymptomatic Covid-19 infection consistently exceeded the percentage with detectable antibodies. T-cell immunity was even present in people who were exposed to infected family members but never developed symptoms. A group of U.K. scientists in September pointed out that the medical community may be under-appreciating the prevalence of immunity from activated T-cells.

Covid-19 deaths in the U.S. would also suggest much broader immunity than recognized. About 1 in 600 Americans has died of Covid-19, which translates to a population fatality rate of about 0.15%. The Covid-19 infection fatality rate is about 0.23%. These numbers indicate that roughly two-thirds of the U.S. population has had the infection.

In my own conversations with medical experts, I have noticed that they too often dismiss natural immunity, arguing that we don’t have data. The data certainly doesn’t fit the classic randomized-controlled-trial model of the old-guard medical establishment. There’s no control group. But the observational data is compelling.

I have argued for months that we could save more American lives if those with prior Covid-19 infection forgo vaccines until all vulnerable seniors get their first dose. Several studies demonstrate that natural immunity should protect those who had Covid-19 until more vaccines are available. Half my friends in the medical community told me: Good idea. The other half said there isn’t enough data on natural immunity, despite the fact that reinfections have occurred in less than 1% of people—and when they do occur, the cases are mild.

But the consistent and rapid decline in daily cases since Jan. 8 can be explained only by natural immunity. Behavior didn’t suddenly improve over the holidays; Americans traveled more over Christmas than they had since March. Vaccines also don’t explain the steep decline in January. Vaccination rates were low and they take weeks to kick in.

My prediction that Covid-19 will be mostly gone by April is based on laboratory data, mathematical data, published literature and conversations with experts. But it’s also based on direct observation of how hard testing has been to get, especially for the poor. If you live in a wealthy community where worried people are vigilant about getting tested, you might think that most infections are captured by testing. But if you have seen the many barriers to testing for low-income Americans, you might think that very few infections have been captured at testing centers. Keep in mind that most infections are asymptomatic, which still triggers natural immunity.

Many experts, along with politicians and journalists, are afraid to talk about herd immunity. The term has political overtones because some suggested the U.S. simply let Covid rip to achieve herd immunity. That was a reckless idea. But herd immunity is the inevitable result of viral spread and vaccination. When the chain of virus transmission has been broken in multiple places, it’s harder for it to spread—and that includes the new strains.

Herd immunity has been well-documented in the Brazilian city of Manaus, where researchers in the Lancet reported the prevalence of prior Covid-19 infection to be 76%, resulting in a significant slowing of the infection. Doctors are watching a new strain that threatens to evade prior immunity. But countries where new variants have emerged, such as the U.K., South Africa and Brazil, are also seeing significant declines in daily new cases. The risk of new variants mutating around the prior vaccinated or natural immunity should be a reminder that Covid-19 will persist for decades after the pandemic is over. It should also instill a sense of urgency to develop, authorize and administer a vaccine targeted to new variants.

Some medical experts privately agreed with my prediction that there may be very little Covid-19 by April but suggested that I not to talk publicly about herd immunity because people might become complacent and fail to take precautions or might decline the vaccine. But scientists shouldn’t try to manipulate the public by hiding the truth. As we encourage everyone to get a vaccine, we also need to reopen schools and society to limit the damage of closures and prolonged isolation. Contingency planning for an open economy by April can deliver hope to those in despair and to those who have made large personal sacrifices.

Dr. Makary is a professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine and Bloomberg School of Public Health, chief medical adviser to Sesame Care, and author of “The Price We Pay.”

Inoculation, Not Vaccination

A scientific experiment turns all the kryptonite on Earth to iron, as Clark Kent moves from newspaper to television journalism.

vaccination (n.)

1800, used by British physician Edward Jenner (1749-1823) for the technique he publicized of preventing smallpox by injecting people with the similar but much milder cowpox virus (variolae vaccinae), from vaccine (adj.) "pertaining to cows, from cows" (1798), from Latin vaccinus "from cows," from vacca "cow," a word of uncertain origin. 

A mild case of cowpox rendered one immune thereafter to smallpox. 

"The use of the term for diseases other than smallpox is due to Pasteur" [OED].

 

The earlier 18c. method of smallpox protection in England was by a kind of inoculation called  variolation (from variola, the medical Latin word for "smallpox"). 

There are two forms of smallpox: a minor one that killed 2% or less of the people who got it, and a virulent form that had about a 30% mortality rate and typically left survivors with severe scarring and often blinded them. 

Those who got the minor form were noted to be immune thereafter to the worse. 

Doctors would deliberately infect healthy young patients with a local dose of the minor smallpox, usually resulting in a mild case of it at worst, to render them immune to the more deadly form. 

Jenner's method was safer, as it involved no smallpox exposure.

Entries related to vaccination

vaccinate

vaccine

variola

VISION

"The historian must understand that visionaries are neither impostors nor lunatics. It is one thing to say that the figure Joan recognized as St Catherine was not really St Catherine, but the dramatization by Joan's imagination of that pressure upon her of the driving force that is behind evolution which I have just called the evolutionary appetite. It is quite another to class her visions with the vision of two moons seen by a drunken person, or with Brocken spectres, echoes and the like.

Saint Catherine's instructions were far too cogent for that; and the simplest French peasant who believes in apparitions of celestial personages to favored mortals is nearer to the scientific truth about Joan than the Rationalist and Materialist historians and essayists who feel obliged to set down a girl who saw saints and heard them talking to her as either crazy or mendacious. If Joan was mad, all Christendom was mad too; for people who believe devoutly in the existence of celestial personages are every whit as mad in that sense as the people who think they see them. 

Luther, when he threw his inkhorn at the devil, was no more mad than any other Augustinian monk: he had a more vivid imagination, and had perhaps eaten and slept less: that was all.

THE MERE ICONOGRAPHY DOES NOT MATTER

All the popular religions in the world are made apprehensible by an array of legendary personages, with an Almighty Father, and sometimes a mother and divine child, as the central figures. 

These are presented to the mind's eye in childhood; and the result is a hallucination which persists strongly throughout life when it has been well impressed. 

Thus all the thinking of the hallucinated adult about the fountain of inspiration which is continually flowing in the universe, or about the promptings of virtue and the revulsions of shame: in short, about aspiration and conscience, both of which forces are matters of fact more obvious than electro-magnetism, is thinking in terms of the celestial vision. 

And when in the case of exceptionally imaginative persons, especially those practising certain appropriate austerities, the hallucination extends from the mind's eye to the body's, the visionary sees Krishna or the Buddha or the Blessed Virgin or St Catherine as the case may be.

THE MODERN EDUCATION WHICH JOAN ESCAPED

It is important to everyone nowadays to understand this, because modern science is making short work of the hallucinations without regard to the vital importance of the things they symbolize. 

If Joan were reborn today she would be sent, first to a convent school in which she would be mildly taught to connect inspiration and conscience with St Catherine and St Michael exactly as she was in the fifteenth century, and then finished up with a very energetic training in the gospel of Saints Louis Pasteur and Paul Bert, who would tell her (possibly in visions but more probably in pamphlets) not to be a superstitious little fool, and to empty out St Catherine and the rest of the Catholic hagiology as an obsolete iconography of exploded myths. 

It would be rubbed into her that Galileo was a martyr, and his persecutors incorrigible ignoramuses, and that St Teresa's hormones had gone astray and left her incurably hyperpituitary or hyperadrenal or hysteroid or epileptoid or anything but asteroid. 

She would have been convinced by precept and experiment that baptism and receiving the body of her Lord were contemptible superstitions, and that vaccination and vivisection were enlightened practices. 

Behind her new Saints Louis and Paul there would be not only Science purifying Religion and being purified by it, but hypochondria, melancholia, cowardice, stupidity, cruelty, muckraking curiosity, knowledge without wisdom, and everything that the eternal soul in Nature loathes, instead of the virtues of which St Catherine was the figure head. 

As to the new rites, which would be the saner Joan? the one who carried little children to be baptized of water and the spirit, or the one who sent the police to force their parents to have the most villainous racial poison we know thrust into their veins? the one who told them the story of the angel and Mary, or the one who questioned them as to their experiences of the Edipus complex? the one to whom the consecrated wafer was the very body of the virtue that was her salvation, or the one who looked forward to a precise and convenient regulation of her health and her desires by a nicely calculated diet of thyroid extract, adrenalin, thymin, pituitrin, and insulin, with pick-me-ups of hormone stimulants, the blood being first carefully fortified with antibodies against all possible infections by inoculations of infected bacteria and serum from infected animals, and against old age by surgical extirpation of the reproductive ducts or weekly doses of monkey gland?

Maintain Propriety

FROM THE DE-BRIEFING OF RAKO BEY, LEADER OF THE VOLUNTEER FORCE TO QUELLEZA, TAKEN 10 OCTOBER   

Q. And what led you to the house in the first place? 

A. Nothing, sir. Grodd was related to the blind man who lived there, but then he is related to most of the village. Nothing led us there, Colonel. It was Fate. 

Q. Maintain propriety.

Vlora shuddered. The room seemed colder. Who would have the need or even think of the need to conceal the telltale vaccination other than a formidable enemy agent on a mission of power and unthinkable menace? 

Vlora brooded on the blind man’s eerie report and the perfectly flawed Albanian dentistry; on the strangled dog in the wood and the spectral, unsettling Selca Decani. 

If the Prisoner wasn’t a foreign agent, Vlora concluded, then he must be a devil. “Or both,” he murmured. 

He’d once heard of such a legendary agent from Hell. That night Vlora slept with the demons. Then events took a turn that was wholly confounding. 

Early on the morning of April 3rd, cutting short his visit to an ailing father, there returned to Tirana from Beijing at Vlora’s urgent and imperative summons, a tall, gaunt Chinese Army medical officer, Major Liu Ng Tsu, a drug-hypnosis interrogation expert assigned as an adviser to Central Security. 

On the third and the fourth, Vlora briefed him and allowed him to study the written record. 

On the fifth there was action. The Prisoner, kept sleepless for thirty-six hours and deprived of water for twenty-four, was placed on his back atop a gurney cart, strapped down with leather restraints, and wheeled to a narrow, white-tiled room. 

Immaculately clean and brightly lit by surgical spotlights affixed to the ceiling, this was the so-called “Magic Room.” 

 

Here tricks could be played on top of tricks. First Sodium Pentothal was injected. 

 

After that the hypnosis began and the illusions: “Your hand is beginning to feel very warm,” recalcitrant subjects had often been told; this to convince them they had entered the hypnotic state and that further attempts at resistance were useless, when in fact the subject’s hand was responding to the current from a hidden diathermy machine. 

 

Or concealed holographic projectors were invoked: 

“Do you see the solid wall there in front of you?” 

 

“Yes.”

“Look through it. You’ll see roses that are floating in midair.” 

 

These were the games. When they were done, methamphetamine was injected to create an irresistible, driving urge to pour out speech, ideas, and memories, giving the subject no time to think; and then there sometimes came forth, at the end of it all, a bruised and slurry thing called Truth. 

“Come, begin! What’s the problem?” 

 

Exhausted and driven, impatient, consumed, Vlora glared in consternation at Tsu, who was standing across from him at the gurney. Leaning down to inject the Pentothal, he had inexplicably hesitated: the syringe held poised in midair, he stood motionless, studying the Prisoner’s face. 

 

Vlora looked worried. “What is it?

“What’s wrong?” 

Tsu shook his head, remained still, then said, “Nothing.” 

He bent lower and administered the injection. 

“For a moment I thought I might have seen this man before.” 

A polygraph expert shuffled into the room. Short and middle-aged with close-set eyes, he wore a threadbare suit several sizes too large so that the trousers bagged in folds at his feet. 

“I’m here,” he muttered sourly in greeting. 

 

Pulled away from his breakfast, sullen and begrudging, he noisily unfolded a metal table and chair and banged each of them down near the head of the gurney. After setting his polygraph machine on the table, he wired the Prisoner to the device, then settled into the chair looking wounded and abused. Snuffling, he slipped on his earphones and nodded, as he murmured in a tone of patient suffering, “I’m ready.” 

 

“If you will help us just a little, you may drink this.” Tsu held a frost-covered glass of iced water to the Prisoner’s cheek. 

“Fresh water from a spring,” he told the Prisoner amiably. “If you obey my next command you may drink it. All right? Nothing onerous. Just open your eyes.” 

 

Vlora shook his head. “This will not work,” he said. “It won’t work.” 

 

Staring intently at the Prisoner’s face, an incredible and chilling suspicion had just occurred to him concerning the enigma’s identity. The Prisoner opened his eyes. Vlora took a quick step back from the gurney. Propping up the Prisoner’s head with his hand, Tsu held the water to his lips with the other. “Just a sip or two for now,” he cautioned gently. 

 

Then he made a quiet promise: “More later.” 

The Prisoner spoke. He said, “Thank you.” 

Startled, Vlora flinched while Tsu met his look of amazement with a smile. 

 

And so began the series of steps and events that would lead to the belief that the Prisoner had weakened, an impression that would finally come to be viewed, when the annals of the “Magic Room” were completed, as surely its most incredible and lethal illusion. 

 

All of the early moves were routine: the lights were dimmed down to a ghostly murk, the usual “road hypnosis” begun: the application of a steady, repetitive rhythm, in this instance an illuminated metronome blade which the Prisoner watched as it tocked back and forth. 

 

Such had always been shown to be highly effective against the desire not to be hypnotized and to retain one’s alertness of will. Then the favorite tricks of the room were invoked, and when persuaded that the spell had at last taken hold, Tsu followed by injecting the methamphetamine in a larger than usual dosage — 6.4 milligrams per kilogram of body weight — needed for introverted neurotics. 

 

And then, in an ordinary, nondescript voice, and with flawless inflection of the language of the north, the Prisoner not only spoke but also answered all queries. It might have been better for his captors had he not. 

 

Under questioning, the Prisoner repeated his claim to be Selca Decani, the peddler of cheese and the lover of Morna Altamori, explaining that, in fact, he had never died but had simply vanished, fled away to the West, the reports of his death a deliberate fiction contrived to protect Decani’s family from certain harassment by The State. His return to Albania had been prompted by his fear of the imminent death of his ailing mother. 

 

This, fundamentally, was Story Number One. There were others. Enemy agents of the deadlier class had been known to use drugs and hypnosis defensively with nefarious “pentothal blocks” so that the subject, under torture or if questioned by this method, would repeat a hypnotically programmed recitation. 

 

In the event that his questioners probed even deeper by attacking the block with more drugs and hypnosis, underneath the first story they might turn up a second, which, just as the first, had been scripted and implanted. 

 

A third such block had been found, it was rumored, in a rare if not mythical number of cases. Thus everything seemed to be running to form, every paranoid fear and suspicion confirmed when, under much deeper interrogation, the Prisoner’s story drastically changed. While retaining the carpentry of the first it differed in subtle but significant ways. 

 

This time the Prisoner admitted that Selca Decani indeed was dead, and that he himself was named Sabri Melcani and had years ago fled to Yugoslavia, and from there moved on to Greece, to escape a murder charge that had arisen from his actions in the course of pursuing a blood feud: hearing that the man he thought he’d killed had recovered and was happily walking the earth, Melcani felt compelled — “by the sting of conscience,” he said — to return and try again. 

 

This, in essence, was Story Number Two which, if left at that, might not have proved so upsetting, except that there were also Story Three, Story Four, and Story Five, while Story Six, to the fury and utter consternation of all, was a faithful repetition of Story Number One, thus announcing — provided the Prisoner could live through the added injections of the dangerous drugs — the prospect of an endless and fruitless cycle. 

 

Which was not, as it happened, the most appalling thing at all. This honor was reserved for the polygraph machine. It corroborated all of the Prisoner’s stories. 

 

At this juncture it was difficult to know where to turn, and so the natural direction, by default, and to the immense relief of anyone harboring a longing for the familiar, was directly and immediately into chaos as, desperate, Vlora embraced a new tactic that was neither in his nature nor his power to control. From beginning to end the scenario was Tsu’s. It began very calmly. In fact, rather pleasantly. 

 

The Prisoner was taken to comfortable quarters where, after receiving medical attention, for seven days he was able to bathe, given food and drink and clean clothes, and was permitted to sleep in a downy bed undisturbed until he naturally awakened. In the meantime, Major Tsu had given strict instructions that no one in contact with the Prisoner was ever to speak while in his presence, either to him or to anyone else. On day eight, a Monday, action resumed. The Prisoner was escorted by four armed guards to the room with the T-shaped table where Vlora alone sat waiting for him. The black velvet drapes had been drawn aside from the great high windows along the east wall so that sunlight shattered down in smoky columns, trapping particles of dust and fear in their swirl. 

 

The Prisoner was placed near the bottom of the table by two of the guards, all of whom then exited the room and left him standing alone at the bottom of the T with his head bowed down and his hands held clasped in front of him as if gripped by invisible manacles. Music played softly through speakers in the walls and all the windows stood open so that one could hear traffic from the street far below. Now and then a child’s shout or silly laugh floated up. 

 

“So here we are,” began Vlora in an ordinary way. “New surroundings are refreshing at times, a great tonic; they can pry us from our ruts, our fixed habits of thinking. By the way, do sit down if you like. Please be comfortable. Really. Never mind, then. Just as you wish. 

 

Incidentally, is the music to your liking? We can change it. Should I change it? It is Strauss. Very well, then, we shall leave it. 

 

In the meantime, let me tell you what is happening here. 

First, we thank you for those fascinating stories that you told us. 

 

I myself am a lover and avid admirer of any great work of the imagination. I’ve translated many of them into Albanian: Shakespeare’s Macbeth, and his Hamlet and Othello. Also Lady Inger of Ostrat by Ibsen. Don Quixote. 

Do you find that surprising? Yes, I did the work personally, it was when I was a teacher at college. They awarded me the “Partisan Star.” 

Well, never mind. I’ve been garrulous. 

Why is it that we always feel this gnawing necessity to justify ourselves to every stranger that we meet? 

Do you know what I’m talking about? Perhaps not. 

 

Well, that’s enough of that now. Back to business. Listen here, I want to tell you what we’ve come to. All right? We want to have a new relationship with you. The old one, you’ll admit, was unrewarding.” 

 

Vlora gestured down the length of the table to a tan wicker basket that was crammed with fresh fruit. “Incidentally, try an apricot,” he offered. “They’re in season.” 

 

Into the room now strode three torturers, all brutes of powerful build, including “Laugher,” who led them in. He was gripping a briefcase made of shining blue leather and the arm of a club-footed ten-year-old boy who was dressed in the olive drab denim of a prisoner. The boy’s hands had been tied in front of him and his arms were trussed to his sides. 

 

Arriving at a point that was midway along the table, Vlora’s son pushed the boy forward until he was captured, wincing and blinking, in a column of sunlight. 

 

“Well now, yes, we’re all here,” began Vlora. “Very well, then, let’s not waste any time. This boy is a Gypsy, deformed from birth. In addition to the problem with his foot he has a paralyzed arm, the left, which is numb and completely insensitive to pain. He is also retarded, a mental defective, as well as being dumb and unable to speak. 

 

He murdered his parents in their sleep, an understandable action but not his prerogative. One could argue he is better off dead. But we aren’t going to kill him. No, not for us to judge. 

 

We may not do anything at all to him, in fact. 

It’s really all up to you.” 

 

At a signal from Vlora, “Laugher” lifted the briefcase onto the table, snapped its locks, and withdrew from it a clear and colorless plastic bag at whose bottom was a drawstring made of leather. 

 

The boy’s eyes widened with fear and bewilderment as the bag was slipped over his head. Vlora glanced at his watch as if checking the time until his next appointment. 

 

“Suffocation is a horrible death,” he said casually. “Worse yet is to die in this manner many times; in fact over and over again without limit. Until you reveal your True Name and your mission, plus the data that is needed to verify both, we intend to repeatedly bring this boy to the brink of death by suffocation. His fate is in your hands. But do not feel any pressure. By all means, take your time. As I said to you before, you have suffered enough.” 

 

One torturer tightened the drawstring and knotted it. Another put his arms around the boy and held him still, so that he stayed within the compass of the column of light as he wildly thrashed, his eyes bulging in terror and his mouth gaping open in a soundless shriek while through the speakers rasped the lilts of The Blue Danube. 

 

“This is truly regrettable,” Vlora uttered sadly. “Yes, it is. It truly is. But the danger to thousands outweighs the pain of one.” 

 

He stood up, walked over to a door, and pulled it open. 

 

“Come!” he commanded into the shadows of a dimly lit ante-room, summoning Major Tsu and the creaking old doctor with the black valise. The doctor moved quickly to the nearest corner, while Tsu took Vlora’s seat at the table. “Major Tsu will take my place from here out,” announced Vlora. He was staring at the Prisoner with fatherly patience. 

 

“You have clearly grown too used to me. Yes. Much too comfortable. That’s very clear. Major Tsu will resharpen your interest. In the meantime, do not think that this boy is an actor. He is not. Should you doubt that, I now give you proof.” 

 

With a lift of his chin Vlora gestured toward the boy, and instantly “Laugher” plucked a knife from his pocket, unclasped it, and sliced off the screaming boy’s little finger, lazily tossing it onto the table in front of the Prisoner. 

 

It landed by the basket of fruit. 

 

The Interrogator glared at his son with fury. “Damn you!” he flung at him, seething. “Damn you!” 

 

Against his orders that the finger be cut from the boy’s numb hand, Vlora’s son had cut the finger from the hand that had feeling. Vlora turned and strode angrily out of the chamber, fleetingly assailed, as he was from time to time, by a stabbing flash of doubt that surcease from pain for thousands could ever be purchased with the torment of one. Vlora’s habit was to bludgeon and strangle such thoughts. This time he did not. 

 

What happened after that would be carefully analyzed but never quite understood; after all, the incontestable facts were so few: As he exited, Vlora had been hastily saluted by the two armed guards who were posted at the door. From there he had proceeded directly to his office, passing many other guards in the halls along the way. 

 

But after thirty-seven minutes Vlora suddenly decided to terminate Tsu’s experiment and, bursting from his office in search of a quarrel, he strode rapidly back to the questioning room. 

 

The two armed guards were not at their posts. 

 

Vlora found them inside, both of them stripped of their uniform and weapons. They were unconscious, concussed and drugged with hypnotics that had come from the doctor’s medical bag, while the old man himself, although not touched, had apparently suffered a fatal heart attack, and inasmuch as the boy was discovered alive, this meant that the number of those who had been killed totaled only four, not five as originally thought, and included a torturer who had died from a powerful blow with the heel of a hand that had instantaneously crushed his windpipe, and another whose spine had been broken by a single smash to the nape of his neck, while the back of Tsu’s skull had cracked wide open from the force of his body being slammed against a wall. 

 

The other torturer, “Laugher,” Vlora’s son, greeted death without a noticeable change of expression except for his eyes, in which frozen forever was a faint odd glimmer of something that no one could properly identify, but more than anything resembled surprise. 

 

His neck had been broken. 

 

The two guards who survived could tell their questioners little. On hearing a “scratching sound” on the door, one said, he had entered the chamber alone, caught a glimpse of the Prisoner for “only a flash” before feeling his hands around his throat and being rendered immediately unconscious by “something, some pressure that he put on my nerves.” The other guard, who’d gone into the chamber moments later, related an identical encounter, as did four other guards on other floors. 

 

As to why the Prisoner had spared their lives, they could offer no opinion, nor could anyone else. There were searches, questionings, crime team reports, but in the end they illuminated nothing, and as night and whispers and paranoid terrors filled the mazes of The State Security Building, no heart there beat regularly. 

 

The Prisoner had escaped. 

 

Three days later, on the evening of Sunday, 17 May, and beginning at precisely forty minutes after sundown, seven young men came together in a straw-strewn barn in the high craggy village of Domni, just as they had gathered every Sunday before at precisely this time for hopeless months. 

 

Rough-hewn peasants in their early twenties, they spoke little and in guarded whispers lest the dreaded Sigurimi discover their presence. 

 

When they first began to meet they were excited by their mission, at their breath-holding peril in these secret watches, but the hammer of time had blunted their edge and they felt only tedium now, the grip of habit, as they huddled in darkness on the earthen barn floor and waited for a man who never came. “And so what do you think?” The husky whisper pierced the silence. 

 

“Do you think he’s been captured?” continued the speaker, a brawny smith from the village of Drishti. “Is he dead?” 

 

“I am happy to find you all well.” 

 

The men were startled. The voice was unfamiliar. Not one of theirs. They scrambled to their feet with sudden fear. This someone in the darkness, this stranger: Who was he? Where had he come from? They had seen and heard nothing: No creak of a door. No movement. No step. 

 

The young smith from Drishti recovered his poise. “God may have brought you here,” he ventured in a quietly probing, hopeful voice. 

He felt the pulsing of a vein in his temple as he added the words that could trigger The Password: “Tell us, did you come by the road less traveled?”

The Prisoner stepped forward and uttered the countersign: “‘All of creation waits with longing.’ ” 

 

The smith took in a quick little breath of realization. “The Bishop! It’s you! You have come!” 

 

The next moment the young men were kneeling all in a row on the earthen barn floor with their heads bowed down while the Prisoner moved swiftly and silently forward and, cupping his hands atop the head of the smith, began to recite with urgent speed a Catholic formula of prayer: “‘We ask you, All-Powerful Father . . .” he began.

The ritual completed in less than a minute, the Prisoner moved to the next of the men, laying on his hands and repeating the prayer until, by the end of the seventh repetition, his rich, firm voice had begun to quaver and his hands, lacking fingernails, to tremble, as he sank to his knees and wept convulsively while the newly made priests looked on. 

 

Standing, breathing above his desk in the haunted darkness of his office, Vlora inhaled the ghosts of flowers, withered and dry and dead in their glass; heard the crisp, rough click of the metal switch as he turned on the crooknecked khaki lamp and held under its beam the puzzling object, the mysterious token, whole and unmarked, found crammed into the mouth of his murdered son. It was a golden-skinned apricot. 

 

“Dimiter,” Vlora murmured numbly. It was the name of the agent from Hell. Would the code of the bessa take him even that far? 

The Prisoner stepped forward and uttered the countersign: “‘All of creation waits with longing.’ ” 

The smith took in a quick little breath of realization. “The Bishop! It’s you! You have come!”

Monkey Brains

MAN LOOKING AT GRAPH: 

There's a contaminant in The System!

(Cancer Man looks at the graph in HORROR --)

Cigarette-Smoking Man : 

Mulder has The Vaccine!

If it fooled you, it will fool The Cybermen. 

They're robots, but they've got Monkey Brains. 

You can always fool a Monkey Brain with a little bit of Theatre.

Let’s go in there and give Them something They cannot digest. 

Something They cannot process. 

Something So Toxic, 

So Dangerous, So Powerful.. 

That it Will Breed, 

and 

Destroy Them UTTERLY.

Not Destroy Them – turn Them into Us. 

Because That’s What We Want. 

We want everybody to be cool. 

We don’t want to go in and think: 

“That guy over there’s gonna kill me; that guy hates me; that guy’s got some fucking weird agenda.”

Don’t we just wanna talk? And let it all go, and just say: 

“Hey, I’m interested in you; 

What have you got to tell me?”

That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it? 

We communicate; 

We join up; 

We make networks; 

We make things happen.

And there are Some People in The World 

Who Don’t Wanna Do That.

So let Us infect Them.

Infect Them to the point where They become Us.

Where there’s nothing left in This World, but Us.

And then some kid’ll come up and fuck that as well.

And that’ll be exactly what we need at the time.

And that’s me finished, so thank you very much.

SCENE 20 

HOSPITAL

FROHIKE: 

What are you doing?

LANGLY: 

Reading his chart.

FROHIKE: 

Put it down.

LANGLY: 

I'll put it down when I'm ready.

BYERS: 

I think he's coming out of it.

LANGLY: 

He's coming to.

(The screen now shows a close-up view of our boys, The Lone Gunmen, as they hover over Mulder's hospital bed. Mulder is being fed oxygen through a tube in his nose, his head wrapped in bandages.)

FROHIKE: 

Hey, Mulder? Mulder?

MULDER: 

Oh my God. 

Cowardly Lion, Scarecrow, Toto!

Frohike's not pleased with the joke, 

but at least his friend is all right. 

Mulder tries to sit up and winces in pain, holding his head.

MULDER: 

What am I doing here?

BYERS: 

The bullet grazed your brow and (by itself?) your temporal plate.

LANGLY: 

A few centimeters to the left and we'd all be playing harps right now.

FROHIKE: 

You've been unconscious since they brought you in.

MULDER: 

(shooting up in the bed) 

Where's Scully?!

BYERS: 

We put together you called 911. 

That call must have been intercepted.

FROHIKE: 

Scully had a reaction to an Africanized honeybee 

we found in your hall.

Frohike holds up a vial containing the bee.

MULDER: 

I've got to get to her.

(Mulder attempts to stand up, is woozy and staggers a bit before sitting right back down. His door opens and Skinner walks in, going quickly to the staggering Mulder and helping to hold him up before he falls on his butt.)

SKINNER: 

Mulder, easy, easy. Look, you're staying right here.

MULDER: 

You don't understand, 

This goes all the way back to Dallas.

SKINNER: 

Tell me where she is, I'll find her.

MULDER: 

I don't know where she is! 

But I can think of someone who might.

SKINNER: 

You leave here unprotected, how far will you get? 

How far will they let you get? 

Because they'll know the minute you walk out of here!

LANGLY: 

What can we do?

(Mulder half-looks around at Langly, thinks a minute then formulates a plan.)

MULDER: 

You can strip Byers naked!

BYERS: 

What?!

Mulder reassures him they haven't slipped into a gizzie-penned fanfic! 

[An old atxf newsgroup joke! ]

MULDER: 

I need your clothes.

Mulder begins to tenderly remove his head bandage, 

wincing again. 

Next we see Langly, Frohike, and Mulder, disguised as Byers, exit the room. 

The guard outside the room looks in and sees "Mulder" 

lying on the hospital bed and Skinner pacing beside him talking into his cell phone. 

The three men walk down a hallway, Mulder's suit just a teeny bit too small for him and he picks up his cell phone.

MULDER: 

(into phone) 

It’s Mulder.

Langly closes the exit door behind Mulder. 

Next we see Mulder running down a nighttime street, 

ditching his jacket as he runs. 

The scene changes to an alleyway as Kurtzweil walks along, 

his senses alert to any footsteps behind him. 

He goes to open what we assume is the alleyway door to Casey's Bar 

and is shocked to be confronted by .... 

The Well-Manicured Man!

SCENE 21 

CASEY'S BAR

WMM: 

Dr. Kurtzweil, isn't it? 

Dr. Alvin Kurtzweil?

Kurtzweil backs away, turns around and begins walking quickly down the alley. 

A black car pulls into the other end of the alley, trapping him. 

The Driver gets out, Kurtzweil stares in shock and concern 

and we cut to inside Casey's Bar as Mulder bursts in the door. 

He looks around the bar for Kurtzweil, but doesn't see him. 

Mulder leaves through the back door, entering the alleyway. 

He sees WMM and His Driver slamming the trunk of their car closed. 

WMM turns to face Mulder.

WMM: 

Mr. Mulder.

MULDER: 

What happened to Kurtzweil?

WMM: 

He's come and gone.

MULDER: 

I want to know where Scully is.

WMM: 

holds up a small pouch 

The Location of Agent Scully 

and 

The Means to Save Her Life. 

(gesturing to the car) 

Please....

Mulder contemplates this offer for a minute, 

then figuring he has nothing more to lose, 

he walks to the car as he and WMM 

never take their eyes off each other. 

They each open their own doors and enter the car. 

It takes off immediately. 

As they cruise past The White House, 

WMM hands Mulder The Pouch.

SCENE 22 

INSIDE WMM'S CAR

MULDER: 

What is it?

As WMM speaks, Mulder opens the pouch 

and pulls out a small bottle of green liquid 

and a piece of paper with this written on it :

South 83 Deg Lat 

East 63 Deg Long

WMM: 

A Weak Vaccine against 

The Virus Agent Scully has been infected with. 

It must be administered within 96 hours. 

That leaves you little time to reach those coordinates.

MULDER: 

You're lying.

WMM: 

No. Though I have no means to prove otherwise. 

The Virus is extra-terrestrial. 

We know very little about it except that it was 

The Original Inhabitant of This Planet.

MULDER: 

(unbelieving) 

A Virus...

WMM: 

What is A Virus, but A Colonising Force 

that cannot be defeated? 

Living in A Cave, underground, 

until it mutates ... and attacks.

MULDER: 

This is what you've been conspiring to conceal? 

A Disease?

WMM: 

No. For God's sake, you've got it all backwards! 

AIDS, the Ebola virus, 

on an evolutionary scale they are newborns. 

This Virus Walked The Planet 

long before The Dinosaurs.

MULDER: 

(smiling in disbelief) 

What do you mean 'walked'?

WMM: 

Your Aliens, Agent Mulder. 

Your Little Green Men 

arrived here millions of years ago. 

Those that didn't leave have been lying dormant underground since The Last Ice Age 

in the form of An Evolved Pathogen, 

waiting to be reconstituted by The Alien Race 

when it comes to colonize the planet -- 

Using Us as Hosts.

 Against this we have no defense, 

nothing but a weak vaccine. 

Do you see why it was kept secret? 

Why even The Best Men, 

Men like Your Father, 

could not let The Truth be known. 

Until Dallas we believed The Virus 

would simply control us, 

that mass infection would make Us 

A Slave Race. 

Imagine our surprise 

when They began to gestate. 

My Group has been working cooperatively 

with The Alien Colonists, 

facilitating programs 

like the one you saw, 

to give us access to The Virus 

in The Hope that we might 

be able to secretly develop A Cure.

MULDER: 

To save your own asses.

Well-Manicured Man : 

Survival is The Ultimate Ideology. 

Your Father wisely refused to believe this.

MULDER: 

But He Sacrificed My Sister. 

He let Them take Samantha.

Well-Manicured Man : 

Without a Vaccination, the only True Survivors of The Viral Holocaust will be those immune to it - 

Human-Alien Clones. 

He allowed Your Sister to be abducted, 

to be taken to a cloning program, 

For One Reason...

MULDER: 

So She Would Survive. 

As a Genetic Hybrid.

Well-Manicured Man : 

Your Father chose 

Hope over Selfishness.

 

Hope in the only Future he had, 

His Children.

His Hope for You was that you would uncover 

The Truth about The Project. 

That you would stop it, 

that you would 

Fight The Future.

Mulder lets it all sink in. 

The Driver's eyes look at him 

through the rear-view mirror. 

Darn good driver 

if he ain't watching The Road!

MULDER: 

Why are you telling me this?

Well-Manicured Man : 

For The Sake of My Own Children. 

Once it's learned what I have told you, 

My Life Will Be Over.

WMM looks ahead, possibly at The Driver. 

Mulder looks at The Driver.

MULDER: 

Where's Dr. Kurtzweil? 

(no response) 

I'd like to get out of the car now. 

(to The Driver)

 Stop The Car!

WMM: 

Driver. 

The Car pulls to a stop in yet another alleyway.

The Men I Work With 

will stop at nothing to clear the way 

for what They believe 

is Their stake in The Inevitable Future.

 

I was ordered to kill Dr. Kurtzweil, 

as I was ordered to kill you.

Suddenly, WMM grabs a gun (from his lap?) 

and shoots The Driver in the back of the head, BLAMMO! Mulder recoils.

MULDER:

Ow!

WMM: 

Trust No-One, Mr. Mulder.

WMM opens his own door and exits, holding the door open.

WMM: 

Get out of the car.

MULDER: 

Why? The upholstery is already ruined.

WMM: 

Get out of the car! 

(Mulder scoots over to WMM's door and exits the car.) 

You have precious little time. 

(Mulder slams the door shut angrily.) 

What I've given you 

The Alien Colonists don't yet know exists. 

The Vaccine you hold 

is The Only Defense against The Virus. 

Its introduction into An Alien Environment 

may have The Power to destroy 

the delicate plans 

we have so assiduously protected 

for the last 50 years!

MULDER: 

What do you mean, "may" have?

WMM: 

Find Agent Scully. 

Only then will you realise 

The Scope and Grandeur 

of The Project. 

Go. Go now!

WMM points his gun in Mulder's face. 

Mulder starts to walk away, 

WMM opens his door again, a rat scuttles past, 

WMM reenters the limo, closes The Door 

and it explodes, knocking Mulder off his feet. 

He sits on the ground watching the flames burn, 

then pulls out The Pouch and checks to see that the bottle is still intact. 

It is. He puts it back in the pouch, gets up and after one last look at the burning car, begins to run for His Life.

SCENE 23 

WILKES LAND, ANTARCTICA 

48 HOURS LATER

Through the vast whiteness of the snow-covered land we see a small black dot. It's Mulder driving a Sno-Cat. He wipes away the condensation forming on the inside of his window and squints his eyes to see where he's going. The camera shows his vehicle leaving tracks in the virgin snow. He whacks his gas gauge and it keeps flipping back to empty. He checks the coordinates again, stops the Sno-Cat and holds up a hand-held thingy which tells him he's at the exact place he's supposed to be. He looks out the window at a hillside, sighs and we next see him struggling up the hill. He reaches the top, slips a little, then hunkers down and looks at a base of some kind in the distance. He whips out a pair of binoculars and looks through to see more Sno-Cats lined up, one of them moving. It stops, he adjusts the power to see closer and spots Cancer Man in the vehicle. He puts the binoculars away and starts to walk towards the base. It soon turns into a jog as he gets closer, but he suddenly falls through the ice as it collapses beneath his feet. He falls quite a way through a snowy tunnel, then lands in an icy crevice. 

He takes a minute to catch his breath, stands up slowly 

and peers down a hole leading off from the crevice, 

steam rising from it. 

He positions himself so he can crawl down this hole 

and turns around at the end so he drops feet-first onto a huge metallic structure. 

It's a type of hallway and on either side of him are containers of some sort. 

He whips out his flashlight to investigate further. 

Wiping the snow away from one of the containers, a cryopod, he spots a prehistoric man encased in ice.

Meanwhile, back on the surface, a Sno-Cat drives up, 

Cancer Man seated inside, and it stops. 

Cancer Man looks at Mulder's abandoned Sno-Cat 

and takes a slow puff of his ciggie.

Back under the ice, Mulder finds stacks and stacks of these coffin-like cryopods, piled row upon row. He walks further into the structure and finds an area opened up, somewhat like a hospital's operating theatre. He stands in the middle and looks in awe at the huge structure before his eyes. Hundreds, more than likely thousands of these rows stand before him. Where to begin looking for Scully? 

A movement catches his eye near the bottom of the rows. 

A rack of these cryopods are moving as if on a conveyer belt. 

He looks through his binoculars, but I can't tell you what he sees, it's very vague! 

Must have seen something though as he springs into action. 

He begins to maneuver his way down to the moving cryopods, 

hanging by his hands, his feet dangling over The Edge.

Suddenly, he loses his grip and shouts ...

MULDER: 

Oh, shit!

... as he begins to fall helplessly. 

He falls down the side of a wall, sliding out of control until he lands harshly on a ledge, hanging by one hand as he teeters over the edge. A bottomless well of metal lies below, the belly of the beast-ship. Using his legs and feet to anchor himself, he makes his way around the edge-corner and ends up sitting, catching his breath. The flashlight in use again, he slides gently over a huge cylinder, landing on a walkway. At the end, he finds an empty cryopod ... containing Scully's clothes and her cross necklace. He grips the necklace in one hand and sets off determined to find her. He comes upon a rack of the cryopods, shining his flashlight from one to another, a frozen face in each caught by his beams. The eyes on each one are open in shock, their mouths held open by a tube, a picture of silent horror. Finally, the flashlight lands on his quarry .... Scully! Using his hand and then the butt of his flashlight, he begins to hammer at the ice keeping her captive.

(Back above the ice, we see a Sno-Cat driving, then we cut to somewhere else inside the base, a flurry of activity as soldiers scurry about and Cancer Man barks instructions.)

CSM: 

Secure the station! 

I want everyone else down below! 

If you're not armed, arm yourselves! 

We have a breach!

(Cut back to Mulder who has now hauled off a piece of a nearby cryopod and is pounding on the ice as he desperately tries to save her from her ice-coffin.)

(Cut to Cancer Man hustling his men down some ladders.)

CSM: 

Let's go, let's go!

(Back to Mulder as he finally breaks through the ice releasing an ocean of goo which encased her naked body. He pulls away the few remaining shards of ice and stares at her face. Is he too late? Mulder unwraps the bottle of vaccine and fills the needle. He injects the vaccine into Scully and it's effect is immediate. Within the tube connected to her mouth a liquid appears to retreat from her body, the tube begins to shrivel and die.)

MULDER: 

Scully?

(As he goes to touch the now dead tube and pull it from Scully's mouth, a violent shaking takes over the ship, a reaction to the vaccine's unwanted intrusion.)

(Cut to Cancer Man in a room full of equipment and monitors. A man is seated in front of a monitor showing a graph of some kind.)

MAN LOOKING AT GRAPH: 

There's a contaminant in The System!

(Cancer Man looks at the graph in shock.)

CSM: 

Mulder has the vaccine!

(Back to Mulder. The cryopod hallway he's in begins to fill with steam as it shoots out from the floor and ceiling. Mulder turns back to Scully and sees her move. He grabs the tube and begins to drag it out of her throat. Once it's all removed, and it's a long sucker, so it takes a sec or two, Mulder stares at her, waiting for a sign of some kind.)

MULDER: 

Breathe! 

Scully, can you breathe?!

(Scully begins to cough, spitting out what's left of the slimy goo. Finally she starts breathing on her own, gasping for each sweet taste of oxygen. She tries to speak and barely manages a weak ..)

SCULLY: 

Cold ... I'm cold.

MULDER: 

I'm going to get you out of there.

(He starts to whack away at the ice with a metallic cylinder next to him, probably shaken loose by the rocking and rolling the ship is still experiencing.)

(Cut to the graph/monitor room, sparks flying from various machines as the men are tossed like ragdolls. It's time to give up the ship, boys.)

CSM: 

Abandon your posts! Evacuate!

(Cancer Man walks towards one of the ladders the men are now scrambling down. Another man stops and says ..)

MAN:

What's happened?!

CSM: 

It's all gone to hell!

MAN: 

But, what about Mulder?!

CSM: 

He'll never make it!

Cut back to Mulder as he gently lifts a naked Scully out of the cryopod, her body glistening with goo, and lays her down on the floor. Next we see him carrying her. She's now wearing some of Mulder's clothing, right down to a pair of boots, don't ask me where THEY came from! He reaches the bottom of a metallic shaft, sunlight beaming down upon them.)

(Cut to outside as an alarm sounds and men race out from the domes, running for the various Sno-Cats. Cancer Man gets into one, his mouth dangling open in shock as it "all falls apart". The vehicles drive off.)

(Back to Mulder and Scully as he drags her up a ladder. Far below them, the defrosting has begun and water drips down the walls.)

(From above, we see the Sno-Cats leaving, one passing within inches of the top of a shaft leading to our heroes.)

(Cut to inside where Mulder and Scully have found a momentary resting place. Scully is coughing and weak. Mulder urges her on.)

MULDER: 

We gotta keep moving. Come on!

SCULLY: 

I can't.

MULDER: 

Yeah, you can.

(Mulder picks her up and carries her in a fireman's lift, over his shoulders. He walks down a row of crypods, all ominously dripping with water from the defrosting ice. He spots a vent.)

MULDER: 

Scully, reach up and grab that vent!

(Suddenly, he spots movement in one of the pods. The creatures within have begun to stir. The vaccine has affected the whole structure, as the bodies were all obviously attached to the one creature.)

MULDER: 

Scully, grab the vent! (no response) 

Scully?

(He looks at her face on his shoulder, she's passed out. Mulder slides her off his shoulders, placing her on the floor and checks for a pulse. The creatures nearby, still encased in the swiftly melting ice are now violently thrashing about and emitting their high-pitched screams. With one eye on the creatures and one eye on Scully, Mulder begins performing a mean version of CPR.)

MULDER: 

Please, breathe. Breathe ... breathe .... BREATHE!

(Scully begins to cough and splutter as she regains consciousness.)

MULDER: 

Breathe in, breathe in, breathe!

(She begins to try and speak, he has to place his ear almost on her mouth to hear.)

SCULLY: 

I had you big time.

(She smiles at him. No time for jokes, Scully, the aliens are coming! As Mulder pulls her to her feet, the ice-encased cryopods around them start to crack open as the creatures within begin to break free. He holds her up to the vent above her.)

MULDER: 

Grab the vent. 

Pull! PULL!

(Scully grabs the vent and pulls herself up. Mulder starts to climb up. One of the aliens breaks the pod and reaches out with its hand for Mulder. It grabs Mulder's leg. Scully stops and turns his head.)

SCULLY: 

Mulder!

MULDER: 

Keep moving, Scully!

(Mulder kicks it away and pulls himself up. They both climb through the tunnel, Mulder yelling encouragement from behind.)

MULDER: 

Go! Go! Come on!

(He keeps checking behind him as the alien screams continue, looking for any which may be chasing them. The light at the end of the proverbial tunnel gets brighter as they climb on.)

MULDER: 

Almost there, keep going!

(They pull themselves up to where Mulder first stopped after he fell through the ice, a slight turn in the vent. Just as Mulder clears the turn, an alien lashes out from behind but is cut off by the twist in the tunnel. They step over the part where Mulder first fell all the way down and make their way out the hole he originally made. Scully falls onto the snow, exhausted and Mulder perches next to her on one knee. He hears a sound and looks around for the origin. It's the ice ... it's cracking under their feet! He grabs Scully and throws one of her arms over his shoulder as they begin to run away. He stops for some ungodly reason and looks back seeing vents of steam starting to shoot out of the ice. They begin to run again as the ice begins cracking and falling away causing a huge crater to form. Suddenly the crater overtakes them and they disappear into the hole, but next we see them shoot into the air and slide off of the surface of the rising ship. They land on the edge of the crater. Mulder watches the spaceship as it flies overhead, his face glows with a heart-melting grin of childlike wonder and awe. Scully's face is turned towards the snow, too tired to move, as Mulder says, almost along with the audience ...)

MULDER: 

Scully, ya gotta see this! Scully!

(It's quiet, it's barely a mutter above a whisper, but we hear ...)

SCULLY: 

I see it.

(Spent from exhaustion, Mulder drops his head into the snow. Scully, finding the strength God gave 20 hearty men, scoots her body over to cover him from the freezing cold. She lifts his into her arms and cradles him as the camera pans back to show two lone figures perched alone on the edge of the bottomless crater left by the departing spaceship. Cut to Washington and don't start with me on how they got out of the Antarctic, there was extra gas can in the Sno-Cat, I don't know!)