rumors are going around the community chat today. apparently, doc wendell and his crew of merry doctors are about to start enlisting couriers for some mystery project. nobody can really agree on what the lucky few are going to be doing. jeb is saying they need a repair crew for the three food centers in our block, people who are equipped to move around and learn new tasks on the fly. ali heard from someone that Operation Preparation is back on the table, that the government finally found a planet that can suit human life, and couriers are the only people they can guarantee aren’t carriers. tommy says he thinks they’re getting ready for downsizing, and the selection is to see who gets to move into some new facility while the rest of us lose our jobs. elle messaged me something privately. she said she made a delivery to a doctor the other day. doctors are about the only people who will stop and talk to you most of the time, probably because they spend every day of their lives “treating” Grey-4 patients, which really means putting them in a room with a thick, soundproofed glass wall, and determining the most humane way to kill them without touching them. it’s pretty terrible. the bright side, though, is that doctors know what Grey-4 looks like, and they know couriers don’t have it. apparently, the doctor she talked to had a story. i’m recounting this with a pretty healthy amount of separation from the source, so don’t take it as gospel. the truth, as elle told it, is that doc wendell thinks he’s found a cure. supposedly, he finally isolated the Grey-4 virus, and did some mixing of whatever chemicals he’s hiding in his lab, and found out that there’s actually a pretty cheap way to kill it completely that nobody’s ever tried before. i don’t know if i believe elle. it seems like a really convenient story, like maybe the kind of story a doctor would make up, like maybe the kind of doctor whose only contact with the outside world since the outbreak started has been as an executioner, the kind of doctor who’s looking for a low-stakes way to live out a fantasy world where the answer is right there in front of them, the kind of doctor who knows a courier like elle isn’t gonna tell anyone important. she’s not lying to me, i know that, but i also know she’s a very easy person to lie to. she told me that if there’s a cure, they’re going to need a way to distribute it. that’s where the couriers come in, she said, we’re going to be the ones who distribute the cure, we’re going to save the world from Grey-4 and maybe then all our friends and families and loved ones will somehow not have died in vain, somehow dying sick in your own bed, overheating and suffocating and starving all at once, will actually have been some brave sacrifice, and we will be the ones to make good on that sacrifice. i asked her why she didn’t say anything in the community chat. she told me she didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up, in case it isn’t true. i asked her why she told me. here is, verbatim, the saddest message i’ve ever received:





ELLE(003): I don’t really think you have a lot of hopes left.