Entry No. 1.1
Buzz… buzz… buzz…
Fiona Burke surfaces from a chaotic dream into a dense mental fog, the sun already leaking beneath the heavy drapes. For the second morning in a row, she’s nursing a piercing headache from too much red wine. That, and the heartburn, might explain why last night’s writing spree feels like a blur.
Her face, creased from hours wedged under a pillow without moving, stays perfectly still as she thinks:
I can’t really have done that, can I?
That’s when her crummy old mobile starts buzzing on the dresser, spinning in circles like a child’s toy. Her “smart” phone had to be surrendered to her former employer—the Centers for Disease Control. She senses this isn’t the first call of the morning. Probably that’s what dragged her back from the dead.
What she does remember is being abruptly sacked from the CDC—fired out of the blue from her senior post in Fort Collins. That was two days ago. But did she really retaliate against the administration after getting the boot? The hoax research paper she’d threatened to upload to bioRxiv—a public bioscience site for new findings—will have landed like a Molotov cocktail.
Her actual research, carried out with a handful of other fellow exiles, had been branded “woke” and “contrary to the administration’s priorities.” Why? Because it examined sex differences in waterborne disease outcomes. Burke, a native Brit, couldn’t stomach the madness of it all—and chose to go out swinging.
At least, she thinks she did.
But God, she hopes not.
Losing a coveted federal job is bad enough. Does she really want to lose her visa too—shipped back to Britain like some second-rate spy?
Her preposterous little preprint had been, she has to admit, inspired—attributing the rise of the MAGA movement to a mind-altering parasite:
“Neuropathogenic Propensity in American Far-Right Populations: A Parasitic Hypothesis”
The more she wrote, the more the idea seemed to take on a life of its own, infecting her mind. She vaguely remembers running the numbers late into the night, laughing and drinking in a delirium of self-indulgent glory—until her CDC portal access was abruptly cut off.
How bloody efficient US.gov is when acting out of spite.
The mobile stops buzzing. 06:05 blinks on the digital clock. Fiona has a not-so-funny feeling the call was to tell her exactly what she doesn’t want to know. It’s after 8 a.m. in D.C. Could the hoax of a parasite epidemic really have spread that fast?
The phone starts buzzing again—a confirmation of urgency. Either her mother’s put dish soap in the dishwasher again, or Fiona’s kicked a nest of vipers.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake!” she mutters, getting up. “Can’t you lot tell when someone’s taking the piss?”
She shuffles across the carpet in her nightdress, grabs the phone, and jumps back into bed. Now her head throbs like one of those “thumpers” the Fremen used to attract the giant sandworms on Arrakis.
“Pauline?” she answers from under the cover of darkness, already thinking how much she’ll miss having her own PA—especially one as sharp and unflappable as Pauline. Daughter of a single father in the diamond trade who was almost certainly also a spy, Pauline knows enough about everything to be dangerous. They’ve been together six years. Worth her weight in gold. Or, being realistic, silver.
“I don’t know what you were thinking,” says Pauline, out of breath, “but listen to me very carefully, young lady.”
“What are you—”
“Listen!” barks Pauline. “The lobby downstairs is packed with journalists and an angry mob. I’ve activated the camera on your Tesla—it’s where you left it in the underground parking ten stories below. Several ICE agents are presently huddled in front of it. They look like they’re waiting for the go to raid your apartment, and for clarification on whether to take you alive.”
Fiona sits up. “You can’t be serious.”
“You bet I am. If you don’t want to spend the next six months on some detention island no one’s ever heard of, you need to move—now.”
“Is this for real? Maybe you better give me the safe word.”
“Yossarian.”
“Damn it, you are serious. Fuck!”
“Pack everything you can in one small bag. You have five minutes. Don’t take your kettle.”
“Five minutes? To pack everything?”
“You’re not coming back.”
“That sounds ominous.” A Bob Dylan lyric weaves its way through her mind… “… whatever you wish to keep, you better grab it fast.”
“When you leave the apartment,” Pauline continues, “take the elevator. When it opens, two masked men and a woman in black will come forward and apprehend you. Don’t panic. They’re ours, not ICE. They’ll get you past the Feds and safely out of there.”
“Who the hell is ‘we’?”
“I don’t know. They just showed up at my office this morning. Said you were just made public enemy number one. That you were doxed by some administration insider named Laura Doomer.
“But…”
“This is serious, Fiona. You just told the world that the MAGA-sphere is a bunch of parasite zombies. What’d you expect would happen? I know you watched Zombieland.”
“I said that?”
“According to CNN.”
“Tell me it’s all a dream.”
“More like a nightmare. The president says he isn’t afraid of your worm, but went ahead anyway and named you a wanted felon on Truth Social. Your face is everywhere, and I’m afraid the photo isn’t very flattering. Also, NPR has booked you for this morning. Just after seven o’clock, our time. Happy now? It’s what you always wanted.”
“NPR? Bloody hell, I was only joking!”
“I know that, but trust me, nobody else does.”
Why is she even surprised? This administration has the sense of humor of a malignant melanoma.
She hangs up.
Five minutes to pack for the apocalypse.
Entry No. 2
After taking a second to recover from the news that her life is all but over, Fiona throws on yesterday’s outfit, grabs the small duffel she takes to the gym, and dumps its contents all over the bathroom floor. Making a hundred impossible decisions a second, she sprints from room to room, balancing the functional against the valuable, the timeless against the absurd.
Will the laptop fit? she wonders. No way anyone’s laying hands on that thing—it has all the revisions to the scandalous paper she uploaded, not to mention all her best recipes.
On she goes, nearly falling on her arse after slipping on one of the lipstick tubes rolling around on the bathroom floor: wallet, makeup, toothbrush, antacids, prescription meds.
She wonders if maybe a handbag could pass as a carry-on. Then come a few lightweight outfits, tracksuit bottoms and top, a fistful of jewelry, passport, phone charger, headphones, a hat, trainers—and, last but not least, her Bassett’s Liquorice Allsorts.
Left behind is nearly everything: her umbrella, two dozen pairs of shoes, a Prada bag, two delightful Leslie Jorgensen paintings, and her cherished—and frankly underinsured—Royal Doulton Bunnykins figurines.
“Oh dear,” she mutters, no time for even a tear. Knowing she’s forgotten something hugely important, but no idea what, she grabs an apple out of the fruit bowl and turns her back on the well-ordered past.
Hands on her knees, she takes a deep breath and says a silent goodbye. She steps out the door into the not-so-great unknown.
No one is there. She’s disoriented by the unnatural quiet and what it foretells. The building’s zoned access control has held. Or…? Maybe this is just some going-away prank orchestrated by Pauline?
That would explain everything.
She presses the elevator button.
Ding. The doors open.
Despite knowing what Pauline had warned her to expect, the sight still knocks the stuffing out of her. She suppresses a scream as three figures in black surge forward like time bandits. One grabs her bag—the laptop sticking out—and stuffs it into their own duffel. Naturally, it’s black.
The other two seize her by the arms, practically lifting her petite frame off the ground. For a moment, it feels like she’s the intruder.
“Very sorry, doc, but this is for your own good,” one of them says.
Fiona spots the stun gun, and her immediate thought is, it’s a trap. But before she can wrench free, there’s a crack, like a fly hitting a bug zapper.
A jolt. A full-body ignition. Nothing.