The Beginning of the End: Part 2

This post is a continuation of my story, The Beginning of the End. To read Part 1, click here.

Image source

“Me? Babe, I’m a twenty-two year old with no money, no home, and until last week, no job. How exactly do you expect me to get rid of this pandemic for you?”

“Scientists have traced the origins of the virus to Wuhan, to a certain virology institute in the city. Can you guess which one I’m talking about?”

“No, no, no,” I shook my head resolutely as soon as it dawned on me. “Tomorrow’s just my first day there; I can’t do something stupid to jeopardise my career immediately. And what if this is all some scam to ruin the institue? It was fine when you were just telling this elaborate tale, but now you want me to put my job at risk-”

“On the street perpendicular to this one is a bungalow with a shingled blue roof. Inside it sleeps my past self, myself from your timeline. I can take you there right away, or you can visit tomorrow before work, and see her for yourself. Furthermore, I’m willing to wait here for you until tomorrow evening; you can even tie me up to ensure that I don’t leave. Is that proof enough that this isn’t a scam?”

“I suppose,” I grumbled, “but I’m still not agreeing to anything until you clarify what you want me to do and how it’ll ‘change the course of destiny’ or whatever. Oh, and how I can carry it out without, you know, losing the one lifeline I’ve been granted through this job.”

“When you arrive at the institue tomorrow, you will be shown to a desk in a hall of shared cubicles on the second floor. At the end of the hall is an elevator. At 1 o’clock, most of the staff on your floor will begin eating their lunch, some using the elevator to visit friends on other levels. This is when you can go up to the fifth floor. Upon exiting the elevator, you will see ahead of you a long, narrow corridor. Put on a pair of gloves. The second door on the right leads to a room containing the earliest form of the SARS-CoV-2 in a glass dome. The panel beneath this dome has a series of buttons. All you have to do is press the one labelled “contain”. When it asks you to enter a password, type in the code 1-3-a-c. This will seal the container and make it impenetrable. Anyone who tries to open it won’t succeed without damaging its contents in the process. Basically, it’ll be impossible for the virus to escape into the outside world. Once you’ve guaranteed this, get back to work and keep your head down. You can report to me at the end of the workday.”

“I need some time to think about it,” I murmured. “This is all just… too much handle.”

“Perhaps this will give you some incentive to save the entire human race.” She replied contemptuously, plucking a fat wad of bills from her pocket. “300, 000 dollars. You won’t have to worry about finances for a while.”

I contemplated the money, nearly convinced. “I have one last question.”

“Go on,” she exhaled.

“In the future, where am I? Do you know me? Am I happy?”

“You’re in Beijing. You’ve got a stable career, a golden retriever, a broad circle of friends. But, no, I wouldn’t say you’re happy. You see, your mother passed away during the second COVID wave, and you haven’t been truly happy since.”

...

“Good morning!” I called to my new neighbour, Mrs Zhang, as I skipped out onto the street, cup of coffee in hand, for a breath of crisp, wintry air.

It had been a week since Diya’s visit, and my life had taken a dramatic turn for the better. 300, 000 USD was more than triple my total debt, which I had already begun to pay off; in small increments, so as to not raise suspicion. I’d moved out of the cramped one-bedroom and into a nicer place uptown with a lounge and an open kitchen and a balcony chockfull of flowers and herbs. My personality had transformed, too, after completing my mission. Once consumed with self-doubt and regret, I’d learnt to be proud, to love myself wholly and deeply. I mean, which other person could boast that they had, almost single-handedly, saved the world? I looked with excitement towards the future I had safeguarded.

I lifted the coffee to my lips, ready to taste the rich bitterness of the bean blended with the creamy sweetness of the milk. As the liquid flowed into my mouth and down my throat, though, it was flavourless. I frowned, sniffing at the rim of the cup; I could hardly detect a scent, either. Hardly had I swallowed a second sip when the first fit of coughs began.

Oh, Diya, I thought to myself, as a ripple of dread washed over me, you didn’t think to take a COVID test before meeting me, did you?

The heroes who had arrived from the future, in a blaze of glory, to deliver the human race from the pandemic, had only brought it to us sooner. They say you meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it. They’re right.

The Beginning of the End

“Remember: if you need anything, I’m just a phone call away!”

With that, the decrepit old landlady shuffled away, leaving me alone in the austere apartment I would call home for the foreseeable future. I collapsed onto a rickety, three-legged stool - the only piece of furniture in the vicinity - only for it to promptly give way, sending me toppling to the ground in a jumble of gangly limbs and cacophonous swearing. God, did I miss London.

I’d spent the four happiest years of my life studying virology at the Imperial College of London, expecting to stay and teach the same to fellow microbiology enthusiasts someday. Unfortunately, beating hundreds of my exam-acing, interview-nailing peers to a teaching post was easier said than done. Two weeks after my Visa expired, in September 2019, I arrived in Wuhan, homeless, unemployed and mourning for a version of me that had never existed, and now, never would.

But they say that when one door closes, another opens, and it wasn’t long before I came across an advertisement for an entry-level position at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Sure, it was a far cry from a professorial career in a prestigious foreign university, but as long as it paid the bills and kept me from starvation, it’d have to do for now. With that in mind, I rose, intending to head straight to bed; I didn’t want to sleepwalk through my very first day of work.

Apparently some supreme being had it out for me and had decided to add a lack of sleep to my already lengthy list of vexations, though, because soon as I began to drift off, I was roused again by the ear-splitting shriek of a decades-old doorbell.

Rubbing sleep from my eyes, I opened the door to a petite figure wrapped in an ankle-length overcoat, a nondescript baseball cap tilted over their eyes.

“Uh… who are you?” I asked, too perplexed to bother with politeness. Their reply came in the form of an identity card, extended towards me in a gloved hand. Scanning through it, I had barely discerned their name and address when something strange caught my eye: a minuscule inscription in the top right corner of the card, claiming that it had been printed in 2025, or six years from today.

“Well, this is clearly fake,” I said, tossing it back to the intruder. I turned, and made to shut the door, when they finally spoke.

“Please let me in.” Their voice was soft yet steady. “I’ll explain everything as soon as you do so.”

“And I’ll do so as soon as you tell me whom you really are.”

The stranger sighed frustratedly, then plunged their hand back into the depths of their coat, only this time, drawing out a syringe. Before I could dodge, or snatch the instrument from them, or even holler for help, I felt a sharp sting on my upper arm. A moment of realisation, a bleat of alarm, a wave of numbness, and everything went black.

...

I came to in my living room, my hands and legs tied together with thick, unyielding ropes of twine. I tried to scream, but my exclamation was muffled into a mere whisper by the surgical mask covering my mouth.

“Relax.” I lifted my eyes to my captor, who was now pacing back and forth before me. “I’m not going to harm you in any way. I would release you, if I wasn’t sure you would try to escape or attack me immediately.”

“What do you want?” I groaned, though it came out sounding more like “waf joo oo wam?”

Somehow, they seemed to comprehend my words, because they responded simply, “to speak to you.”

With that, they shrugged off their coat to reveal an equally nondescript t-shirt and trousers, and crouched in front of me, resting their chin on their right palm. “First things first, let me introduce myself. I am, in fact, the Diya Khanna from the ID card I showed you. Another truth, though perhaps a less believable one, is that I live in the year 2025.”

I rolled my eyes and scoffed, no longer afraid of this stranger in my flat; after all, if she were planning to hurt me, wouldn’t she have done so by now? Besides, realising that she was a woman, a young, Asian one at that, provided some comfort to my disoriented mind.

“Look,” she exclaimed frustratedly, once again revealing the impatient nature beneath her otherwise detached demeanour, “I know that this is difficult to digest. I know that. But you have to open your mind and listen to me, because frankly, you don’t have any other option.”

Taking a deep breath, she continued, “time travel technology, an idea you’ve probably only been exposed to in works of fiction, has existed in the hands of the USA’s government since the early 2000s. While state scientists had run contained, risk-free tests with it, they agreed never to attempt to alter the past, fearing a major ripple effect that could turn the entire world on its head. In 2024, though, something happened that caused them to rethink this decision. Something so deadly that it ruined economies, overturned governments, annihilated entire populations. Something so terrible that any change in it, no matter how unexpected, could only be for the better. The seventh worldwide wave of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

...

“And that last vaccine, the one produced in 2022, that didn’t work either?”

“Technically, it worked, but only against the Omicron variant. The virus just mutated again and overcame it by the end of the year.”

As Diya narrated the horrors to come in the following six years, with sprinklings of statistics and spoonfuls of scientific evidence, I found myself trusting her against my own will. Eventually, she had loosened my mask, allowing me to voice my questions, which she answered as effortlessly as a practised virologist describing the basic structure of a cell.

She revealed how a virus had spread across China in December 2019, and reached every nook and cranny of the globe in mere months’ time. How it came in waves, tricking people into thinking it was gone during low tide and then returning during high tide to drown unsuspecting divers. How every precaution, every defence, every cure failed in the face of this mystifyingly murderous phenomenon. How the USA, after losing a tenth of its population, was forced to resort to means it had hoped never to even consider.

She showed me the letter she had received in mid-March in 2025, inviting her to a dinner party with a hand-picked collection of politicians, scholars and virologists, an NDA attached to the sheet. There, in a soundproof, windowless room in the White House’s West Wing, she had been covertly enlisted to join the force that would change the course of fate forever.

“But how does telling me all of this help?” I inquired, curious to finally hear how I’d gotten involved in this imbroglio.

“Well, before we arrived here, each of the nine travellers had a mission to fulfil. Mine was to find the person who could prevent this entire pandemic from occurring by a single action. And that person is you.”

Part 2 will be up on Friday, 7th January. Meanwhile, don't hesitate to leave a comment with your predictions on what happens next!