Page 96 of Ahelno
I reached out to other cities and asked if they also had cases of Jetabi plague. Some did not respond at all, so I instructed the computer to send out my message to offworlders in those cities and to enact the inoculation protocols there. Those where I did get a response, I let know that the plague was spreading and they needed to vaccinate their citizens as soon as possible and prepare for a pandemic.
Most believed me. Some, infuriatingly, did not. I didn’t waste my time trying to convince them. They’d figure it out soon enough.
I wanted to work on another block of the city, but I was fielding frantic calls left and right. There was no emergencyresponse team. There was just…me.
It was baffling, really. The Ptexari and offworlders had access to the exact same information I did through the Network. They just seemed to want reassurance about what to do.
They had brilliant ideas. One offworlder wanted to light up all the comms panels outside the dwelling doors red. Then switch them to green when he left, so other volunteers would know that room was clear without having to check their wristbands. Was that ok? Of course it was, I told him. What a great idea. I sent an update to all the volunteers, letting them know it was his idea, and I encouraged them to do the same.
The mayor of an unaffected town wanted to create a hotline for people to report sickness to track the spread of the disease. Go for it, I encouraged him. One governor was concerned he wasn’t getting a response from a local military base and wanted to send inoculated volunteers there. Brilliant, I said.
They didn’t need me. But for some reason, they wanted my approval before they implemented any of their plans. They wanted a sounding board, a cheerleader, a commiserator, a director, a friend. I did the best I could. I was playing the part of a leader. It was the greatest acting role of my fledgling career.
Somehow, I, Andie Rivers, a twenty-four-year-old aspiring Broadway actress, singer, and/or dancer, had become the leader of an entire planet.
The next sixty hours were grueling. Within about four hours, most of the palace members had awakened and taken their first ouerbxo tablet. I instructed the replicators to create more at the prescribed hour with new instructions for patients.
Selica returned in the early morning hours, utterly exhausted. Neither of us slept that first night, and we ended up crashing midway through the next day. I had to turn my messaging off with an autoresponder. I slept for about three hours, then I was at it again.
The royal family started to look a lot better by the second dose of ouerbxo, but they were still weak. I put Selica in charge of restorative brews and foods for the replicators to produce as soon as they were able to eat and drink.
The volunteers worked their hearts out. Hour after hour, they went door to door, delivering life-saving medicine to the Ptexari. We formed a community of our own through the messaging on the comms panels. By the second day, though, things took a turn. Volunteers started reporting the first deaths. There weren’t enough offworlders to get through the city in time. The elderly and children were particularly vulnerable. The children hit everyone the hardest.
We changed the color of the comms panel on a door to black when a death was reported, so we could send coroners when this was over. That was a phase I wasn’t sure I’d be able to handle.
Four days later, I was slumped over a desk, drool pooling under my cheek, when I was shaken gently awake. I was in Dakleth’s arms, and he was carrying me to his bedroom. “Oh!” I said. “I’m so sorry, I fell asleep.”
“Shhhh, mate, you have been working nonstop for days, it appears,” he said. “You need rest. Real rest.” He laid me gently on the bed and pulled up the covers. “Sleep, my brave one,” he said. “We will take it from here.”
I could cry from exhaustion. Grateful, I rolled over and knew no more.
Dakleth
I was in awe of my mate. She had singlehandedly saved the entire Ptexari population from near extinction.
“You wouldn’t believe it, Your Majesty,” Selica rambled at my father. “She knew just what to do. She figured out from the computer what was wrong and how to fix it, and made all these instructions, and recruited offworlder volunteers because she knew we couldn’t catch it, and divided up the city and had them go door to door and administer medication, and everyone would have DIED.” She waved her tentacles in agitation.
“I did my part, I did your highness. I was one of them that did the injections, but I tell you, it’s her that thought of everything and got everyone to do it. And handled all the communications, and logistics, and I don’t even know what else. Never seen anything like it, have I.”
I had not either. You would have thought Andie had a degree in epidemiology or military operations with the way she handled everything. How did she do it?
On the one hand, it was the worst disaster in recent history. Best estimate, about two percent of the entire Ptexari population had died. Nearly nine million. And it was anticipated we’d lose another six million this week. The models were showing we would probably lose about six percent of the population over the next few weeks before the plague was completely arrested.
But if we hadn’t had Andie? We would have probably lost nearly three hundred twenty-five million. We would have been thrown into a full-scale economic meltdown. And given that the entire royal family was also sick? A political breakdown as well. We would have been vulnerable toattacks not just from rival Ptexari dynasties but from offworld invaders. Our entire social system would have collapsed.
She saved us. She saved us all. I wondered if anyone outside this room realized that.
Andie
Recovery was slow. I was grateful that everything wasn’t on my shoulders anymore. One week, and I had basically crumbled. I couldn’t imagine being ruler of an entire planet. It made me scared for the future. What happened when King Akapa passed the torch to Dakleth? What would my responsibilities be? I did my best during the plague crisis, but I couldn’t imagine being under that type of pressure all the time. I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
We were having lunch in the receiving room. It had been two weeks since the plague, and it had slowed. There were only a few hundred deaths reported today. Any death was awful, but there were hundreds of thousands those first days. It still made me sick to think about it.
“This plague has brought many things to light,” King Akapa said to Dakleth and Kashtinela. They nodded in agreement. He turned to Kashtinela. “We should talk about your mating. I want you to choose someone soon. We need to secure the line.”
“We have talked about this, Father. I do not wish to leave Ptekennan,” she scowled into her bowl.
“The best candidates are from Gildnaria and Xochipto. There would be many advantages,” the King continued.
