Carter Kaplan, "Patient Zero," Emanations: Second Sight

Carter Kaplan the Younger
Mountain State University
Beckley, West Virginia

The photo above is of my friend Carter Kaplan when he was elsewhere than where he now is, and both younger and smaller, as you can unclearly see. I'm currently reading his story "Patient Zero," in Emanations: Second Sight, which you can find at Amazon and search inside of. But here's a sample already:

Tower agents Bronson Bodine, Vitaly Yurchenko and Nabnak Tornasuk walked upside-down across the roof. Terrorists, perhaps? Quaint notion. To those drawing their life breath from the miasma of global espionage, they were something far more sinister. They crept along the wall, away from the roofs of the press boxes where they had been hiding since the afternoon. Bronson Bodine led the way, and as he moved forward, kicking his elaborate boots into the ceiling, he represented a kind of alternative Great Announcer commenting on their surroundings, now describing the chemistry of fuel mixtures, then speculating upon the identity of the Great Announcer, then explaining -- rather dryly and with that characteristic touch of winsome Bodine irony -- that the Silverdome was roofed-over with a flexible polymer derived from a quality GMO corn product formulated by the technology-of-tomorrow. Like their spirits, the roof floated on the air pressure inside the great arena. His friends grunted unevenly at his witticisms, their attention focused on their inverted situation and their walking gear. Barbed spikes mounted on the agents’ boots poked in and out of the fabric as they marched across the floor of the inverted world. They controlled the spikes with rubber squeeze bulbs hanging from the sleeves of their camouflage jumpsuits. Earlier they had taken ZR-7-12, a compound that lowered their blood pressure to prevent inversion narcosis and unconsciousness. Unfortunately, it also elevated the propensity of the human brain to construe allegorical associations -- not so much hallucinations as ideas, which are even worse because their reality is based on thought itself.

Something like science fiction, this passage from near the beginning would be clearer in its context, but just to help clarify, the three agents are on a mission to rescue their friend Eddie Allan, who has been tortured and is on display below so that the crowd can watch him die as the official Great Announcer relates those tortuous events taking place in the Silverdome.

Will our incipient heroes succeed in their rescue mission? Purchase the anthology and find out . . .