Jenner lead us to the big room from yesterday and turned on one of the computers.
"Give me playback of TS-19"
"Playback of TS-19" the disembodied Vi lit up a wall-sized screen in front, with what I assume is a video.
"Few people ever got a chance to see this. Very few" Jenner waited for the screen to finish loading everything.
"Is that a brain?" Carl asked as soon as the screen finished loading up the images.
"An extraordinary one" Jenner replied.
I'll say, that brains lit up like Temple Square on New Year's Eve.
"Not that it matters in the end..." Jenner trailed off, turning his attention back to the screen.
I studied the screen, skimming the text on the edges. I've always had a disturbingly steep learning curve; or so my high school teachers told me.
I'm not so sure their opinions can be trusted though. We didn't interact one-on-one much.
"Take us in for EIV" Jenner directed.
I pulled myself up onto one of the desks, so I could sit for awhile. If I don't, I might wind up on the floor. Again.
"Enhanced Internal view" Vi zoomed in on the brain, taking the camera angle to the side before zooming all the way in on the brain stem, down to the microscopic level where synapses were firing like bullets.
Damn, that's a beautiful brain.
"What're those lights?" Shane asked
Seriously? Did you not pass high school biology?
"It's a person's life" Jenner answered. Very philosophical, props man.
"Experiences, memories. It's everything. Somewhere in all that organic wiring, all those ripples of light...is you. The thing that makes you unique...and human." Jenner talks like a professor, lecturing. He's not a half bad public speaker, and I wouldn't mind so much any other day but my head's killing me.
"You don't make sense? Ever?" Daryl shifted next to me.
"Those are synapses." Jenner's tone was a little degrading. Classic for a "nerd" when talking to someone they think is beneath their intelligence.
"Electric impulses in the brain that carry all the messages. They determine everything a person says, does, or thinks. From the moment of birth...to the moment of death."
"Death?" Rick moved forward. "That's what this is. A vigil?"
"Yes" Jenner seems to only be half paying attention."Or ra— rather, the playback of the vigil"
What's going on with him? I don't think he drank as much as...some, of us.
"This person died?" Andrea stepped forward, eyes fixed on the screen. "Who?"
"Test subject 19" Jenner answered. I glanced sideways at him, something about the way he answered that, feels a little odd.
"Someone who was bitten, and infected...and volunteered to have us, record the process..."
Did he know this person?
"Vi, scan forward to the first event" Jenner instructed.
"Scanning to first event " Vi sped along until the screen changed and most of the brain stem was turning black. Little tingles of red running along the dark branches.
"What is that?" Glenn took the words right outta my head
"It invades the brain like meningitis" Jenner gestured at the screen.
The person started to have -what looks to me like- a seizure.
"The adrenal glands hemorrhage. The brain goes into shutdown and then the, major organs." Jenner explained.
The person went still as all light faded from the brain, even the red ones from that black tree pattern in the brain stem. It seriously looks like ivy growing around and suffocating trees.
"Then death." Jenner looked down
"Everything you ever were, or ever will be...gone"
I didn't hear what Sophia said, but it was something about Jim. I glanced at the others, and both Andrea and Jacqui had tears running down their cheeks.
Jenner looked at Andrea when she inhaled, sniffling, and took a step back.
"She lost somebody two days ago, her…sister." Lori clarified for him.
"I lost somebody too, I know how devastating it is" Jenner sympathized.
Who hasn't lost someone nowadays? Hard to imagine anyone out there who hasn't lost someone they cared about.
I glanced at my hands, before looking at Daryl. His arms are crossed over his chest, eyes trained on his boots. He's gotta be thinking about Merle.
"Scan to the second event" Jenner pulled the attention of the room to the screen once again.
"Scanning to second event" Vi scanned forward just as before to the 'second event'.
"The resurrection times vary wildly. We have reports of it happening in as little as 3 minutes. The longest we heard of was 8 hours. In the case of this patient it was, 2 hours, 1 minute...7 seconds..."
I was right. No one bothers to remember details that specific about someone they weren't close to.
I watched as little red lights began sparking in the center of the dark root lookin' part and spread outward until the body started moving again.
"It restarts the brain?" Lori asked incredulously.
"No, just the brain stem." Jenner answered, before realizing most here didn't know what that meant.
"Basically it gets them up, and moving."
"But they're not alive?" Rick asked almost like a statement.
"You tell me" Jenner motioned to the screen, moving behind Rick like a teacher asking a student to show the class how to solve the problem on the board.
"It's nothin' like before" Rick shook his head. "Most of that brain is dark"
"Dark, lifeless, dead" Thank you for those wonderful synonyms, Jenner.
"The frontal lobes, the neocortex— the human part, that doesn't come back. The you part."
Most of that sentence was gibberish to everyone save for me here, doc. Thank God my science lab partner was a human physiology nut.
Come to think of it, she may have actually worked here. In school she never shut up about her dream job, to work at the CDC. I never doubted she would either, she was possibly the smartest person I've ever met. Science— viruses and the like in particular, were her thing.
"Just a shell...driven by, mindless instinct."
Something appeared at the top corner of the video and for a second I thought it was something popping up before there was a bright flash on screen and a path carved through the middle of the brain like the Grand Canyon.
"God, what was that?" Carol asked.
It's pretty obvious what that was, hun.
"He shot his patient in the head" Andrea answered. "Didn't you?"
"Vi, power down the main screen and the work stations" Jenner walked around from the front row of computers to the middle row.
"You have no idea what it is, do you?" Andrea moved next to Rick, turning towards Jenner with an almost accusing tone.
"It could be microbial, viral, parasitic, fungal."
You're killin' me here doc. You sound like your spitballing. At best. If you don't know, say so. I'd rather that than listen to you lie to me— to us.
"Or the wrath of God?" Jacqui proposed.
"There is that" Jenner's eyes directed to the floor once again. I've seen him do that a lot in the short time we've been here. I know depression when I see it. And I'm gonna take a wild guess, it has something to do with that person he lost.
"Somebody must know something. Somebody, somewhere" Andrea insisted.
I glanced at Daryl and moved closer to the group with him, leaning on another desk next to Carol and Sophia.
"There are others, right?" Carol asked. "Other facilities"
"There may be some" Jenner turned but he doesn't sound hopeful. "People like me"
"But you don't know, how can you not know?" Rick's frustration reared.
"Everything went down. Communications, directives, all of it. I've been in the dark for almost a month." Jenner answered almost timidly.
He was alone all this time?
Seeing the virus kill that person like this is strange but it's not sad to me. Just pictures on a screen, but seeing the virus restart the brain stem, that was something.
It looked like a dead tree, catching fire but never becoming anything more than embers.
"So it's not just here? There's nothing left anywhere. Nothing. That's what you're really saying right?" Andrea pressed.
Jenner stayed silent, looking very uncomfortable but from the look on his face, he knows the answer to that question. Just not willing to provide it. But his reluctance to answer, is answer enough.
"Jesus" Jacqui breathed.
"Man, I'm gonna get shit-faced drunk…again" Daryl walked past me, rubbing his eyes with his palms until he leaned against one of the other computers just as I have.
"Dr. Jenner I know this has been taxing for you, and I hate to ask one more question…but, that clock." Dale walked past me and Daryl pointing; drawing our attention to a red digital clock on the far wall.
Has that always been there?
"It's counting down. What happens at zero?" Dale gave Jenner that gaze he does when he wants a straight answer.
"The…basement generators— they run out of fuel." Jenner headed for the door, the second he'd answered.
"And then?" Rick asked but Jenner didn't even look at him.
Oh that does not inspire confidence. I've got a bad feeling about this.
Generators without fuel means no power. So what's so bad about having no power? Does that mean we'll be stuck down here? Will the doors and things not open if there's no power?
We could be...trapped, down here.