Pathogen

I'm not a fan of shopping carts. They're a cumbersome, noisy way to carry things, but they do give me something to lean on and a feeling of purpose as I'm shopping. It's a weekly chore, and a ritual walk down memory lane. Take olives, for example. You were a conoisseur of olives, eyes closed you could tell a Kalamata from a Koroneiki...

"Good morning, sir. Anything I can help you with?" a grocery store stocker asks me, with only a hint of suspicion. It isn't an idle question. Under Emergency Decision Directive 462 of 2036, all "persons employed in direct contact with the public" were deputised agents of the Centers for Disease Control. I am being scrutinized.

Look sane. Look calm, I tell myself.

"Nope, just browsing olives," I smile. Sanely, if such is possible.

"Try the brown ones, they're good with feta," she replies, with just a hint of a wink. Inside my head, you're rolling your eyes.

"Thanks." I don't try the brown ones (they're crap) but instead make my way down the aisle marked "Ethnic Foods". You used to be amused by this area you once referred to as the "Ghetto". All the Jewish food and German food and Indian food reserved in their own special aisle, safely cordoned off from Spam and orange juice and potatoes.

"But potatoes are an Irish food, aren't they?" you'd say mockingly. "Shouldn't they be here too?"

"Along with the whiskey," I say out loud. Oops. Sane people don't talk to themselves. I quickly grab the first thing I can find (a box of microwavable goat curry, I think) and stuff it into my cart. Nothing says crazy and confused like talking to onself and pushing an empty cart around the store for half an hour. I suppose I shouldn't be terribly worried, all these new CDC deputies did receive proper training and were hopefully able to distinguish true Paraloia infectees from the rest of us daft, mildy crazy people out in the world. Hell, how could anyone be truly sane these days - everyone had lost someone, or many someones. Three hundred million dead worldwide, fifty million here in the U.S. alone. All from a prion tinier than the tiniest virus.

I turn my mind to something else, anything else, and keep walking. I wonder, as I stroll past the bread, how many times you stood here, deciding between seven-grain and whole-wheat-with-oats. I feel close to you right now, knowing that I'm occupying the same spot you once did. I catch a whiff of your perfume from somewhere in my memory. There is bread in my basket now, as if some part of me is making me do all the normal tasks that I can't deal with at the moment. Survival mechanism, perhaps? We do now live in an age when crazy is fatal.

They call it the "Punch". It's the quick shot in the arm one is given upon suspicion of carrying the Paraloia prion. It's a powerful paralytic agent, administered as soon as possible to stop the carrier from breathing - Paraloia (or, the Crazies, as it is often called) is extremely contagious. The victim is then bagged and sent away for inceneration, the ashes sealed in a chamber deep within the earth's crust. Somewhere in that process, they die.

You were one of the first victims. You walked in front of a car. Just left your desk in the middle of work and walked right into traffic.

I head towards the liquor aisle, looking for something to get me through the rest of the day. I pick up a bottle of cheap wine and head towards the vegetables.

"Two-buck chuck? Seriously? Honestly, if you're going to drink, at least get something good. Live a little," you mock at me.

"Well, its not like I'm exactly rolling in it anymore. Gets hard on only one income," I say, this time to myself, and pat myself on the back for my prudence. There are now three items in my cart - I'm making progress on my shopping list and still appear to be deliberate and clear headed to the spies and cameras all about me. Confusion is a big giveaway that one is infected, and the CDC takes no chances. I wasn't kidding when I said this disease was highly contagious. Houston, Texas, Bangor, Maine, and Santa Fe, New Mexico are inhabited now only by ghosts and will remain that way for centuries.

"I'm sorry," you say in the back of my head.

"Not your fault," I say, deliberately.

"Are we arguing in public again? You know, I really don't like it when we do that. And yeah, it is my fault."

"Don't say that, don't even begin to say that," I mutter under my breath, hoping you'll be quiet for just a moment. Hoping I can stop thinking about the journal I found months after your death...

I walk about for a bit, unable to remember what exactly I came into this store for in the first place. There was a list, I'm sure, but it's long gone. I left it back in the spice aisle, where the cinnamon and the sage conspired together to smell just like you. I head back there, aware that I am truly being watched. Hell of a time to be thinking about you, when for so long I had ignored so much that had should have been obvious. You were sick, dear, but not with Paraloia.

"You read it, didn't you?" you say. Yeah, I had. After much debate, and almost tossing the damn thing into the fire, I read it. I read of your long descent into madness, hidden in the pages of your notebook and behind the smiling face you always presented to the world. Schizophrenia ran in your family, but you'd sworn you'd dodged that bullet. You hadn't, and when people - people we knew and loved - started going mad and dying all around us, you...simply checked out yourself. You couldn't help it. But I could have stopped it, had I known. Had I not dismissed a thousand little signals telling me that something was amiss. Had I just...

I need to go. I've been wondering through this store with the same three things in my cart for the better part of an hour. I'm sure you think I'm crazy, too, and maybe I am.

"Um, sir, are you ok?"

"Just a bit of a cold. Going to check out now and get some rest."

"You do that," the store manager says, keeping his distance.

I head towards the check out lane. Inside, you're scolding my lack of discretion.

"I CAN'T DO THIS ANYMORE!" I scream, inside my head, or out, I'm uncertain. I'm not even certain that I care.

Mothers in line with me are walking away with their children. I'm being stared at from a thousand different directions. I think I'm done for.

"Sir, please step away from the cart."

"But I CAN'T."

It's the small things that kill us. Whether it's random stray proteins that barely qualify as life, or memories, or guilt. The small things.

"Punch him," a voice says, and I feel a dull thud hit my arm. Not as painful as I had expected.

I let go of the shopping cart and fall to the ground, growing colder as the full impact of the drugs takes hold of my system. I don't know what will happen exactly from here on out, but either way, I know one thing.

I won't be carrying you with me any more.