New Cago was not a very cultured metropolis before the epi & pan demic. Kids were shoving things up their noses or in their veins. It made sense that there was no room for something for the mind to synthesize.
Then the libraries were closed. So most people read their cereal box for entertainment. But Lily kept a lovely assortment of classical and tasteful books.
Her favorite subject was horticulture.
I could read it and be out like a light at the end of a shift.
But after she died, I started noticing her hand writing and circles in the margins.
Hard not to notice what she had been researching before the wild fire epidemic.
Lil, this is bizarre- the night after you died circles started to appear in red.
One of her notes, ” good if given early but a little too much and they won’t wake up – ever.”
Another had lines through it and question marks. “I know this should work but I’m not seeing the results…” and another comment “why is this only working on a few people????”
And another one that rose the hairs on my back it read more like a sci-fi. “Subject should have demonstrated signs of immunity. I inoculated myself at the same time. If my research is correct, he will start to exhibit…”
“Oh Lil. OH LIL!!!” I took my head and my hands wondering again if her research was the cause of her death.
“Death” some days it sounded so peaceful.
“Sam. Sam.” I heard a pounding on the steel grate of the door.
“Yeah coming. Hey Peely.” Here was the one good kid in the neighborhood.
“This is for you.”The errand boy that we were both so fond of handed me a box. Our eyes looked at each other then at the brown square.
I opened the box. It was that hat with rounded corners. “I’ve been looking at this for months.” The card underneath was in her handwriting.
“Peel, ya know what I hate most about this town?”
“Yeah Sam, I know. It’s so damned lonely.”
“and unpredictable.” My head felt like a pinball machine with the silver ball hitting every bumper and bell possible.
I looked in the envelope flap and saw the four names with the same prefix: R-A-T.
‘And that’s where we will start at cleaning up this mess Lil.’
Okay you caught me chasing a pandemic. I’m blogging about elderly issues, but sometimes I get sidetracked.
Reading is important for the elderly. One 90 year old (with Alzheimers) is reading one of his many favorites: a biography about Einstein. The only thing I can understand is the title and the pictures.
Keeping the mind engaged through reading and even the visuals in books is important. We can create new pathways even in an old brain.
How do you keep your mind active???
I’m revamping a Noir crime series I wrote in 2013. The story centered around crime in a metropolis called New Cago but the main antagonist was a deadly disease ( pandemic) lurking in dark corners. If you like Noir and you have time to read come back for more in the days to come. The stories do stand alone so they can be read in any order.
penned in moon dust 
