Chapter 3: Out of the Blue

“Karl, Myra has come home, and she wants to talk to you.” May, my ex-wife Myra’s mother, excitedly told me when I answered the phone.

At first I didn’t even connect what she was talking about. I mean Myra had walked out on us ... all of us, when James was 6. Hell that was over 13 years ago, she would be almost 40 now. After all she had done to us why would she return now I had to ask myself when all the parts of the scrambled puzzle my mind was working on finally fitted together.

“Why would I want to talk to Myra now May?” I couldn’t keep the disgusted irony out of my voice.

“You have to talk to her Karl ... she’s dying.” May told me and sobbed.

“So?” I was determined to stay hard and not listen to anything they had to say.

“You have to let her explain what happened Karl.” May told me.

“What’s there to explain May? She walked out on us, end of story.” I told her once again.

“It’s not that simple Karl and you need to hear her out.” May started and Ralph took over the phone from there.

“You need to know what they did to my little girl Karl. Get over here now!” Ralph shouted into the phone at me.

“Ok, Ok, I’ll come damn it.” I shouted back and hung up the phone.

An hour latter I was at Myra’s parents home. I don’t know what I expected to find there, but it surly wasn’t the frail old faded worn-out woman in the clear plastic oxygen tent they lead me to. I had married Myra at 19, when she was a wild and young thing, and she had left me and James 6 years latter when she was 25, at her physical peak I thought.

Myra was one of the most beautiful women I have ever met. Think Monica Anna Maria Bellucci the Italian actress and fashion model that was a Bond girl in Spectre. Myra was 5’ 7, 38-25-36, at about 135 pounds back then. She had been a flawless olive skinned Italian beauty, beautiful face, healthy dark brown almost black hair, dark brown eyes, and a great body. The woman in the tent, if it was Myra, was only 39 year’s old, but she looked ancient. Honestly she looked like one of the witch hags form a bad MacBeth play with her long unkempt pure white hair splayed around the pillow.

“What’s wrong with her?” I demanded of May and Ralph Bellucci, her parents, when I saw her like that.

“You know Danny, the Smith’s boy, our cousins.” Ralph started off. “Well he was going to medical school out there at UCLA. Well he got to going with a girl that was involved in Doctors Without Borders, DWB. Their mission statement is, “to provide impartial medical relief to the victims of war, disease, and natural or man-made disaster, without regard to race, religion, or political affiliation.” Anyway they, him and his fiancé wound up down in Mexico, well Baja really. Anyway they wound up doing charity work for Doctors Without Borders, DWB, at Tijuana, Mexico. While he was going through the terminal patients wards at Hospital General Tijuana he came across Myra. At first he couldn’t believe it was her, she was just listed as a unknown female indigent Jane Doe on the hospitals records. He couldn’t find a match when he had a buddy run her prints through the National Crime Information Center (NCIC). Then he remembered when we all had ourselves typed and tested for donating bone marrow that time. He contacted the Be The Match Registry as a part of DWB and bingo it was your ex-wife sure enough. DWB pulled some strings and got her temporary American ID and transported her across the country to our home here in Atlanta, Georgia.” Ralph stopped and the room went quite.

“What’s wrong with her Ralph?” I asked.

“The Docs say her immune system is attacking her own body. None of the immune-suppressing drugs we have available have done anything to stop it.” Ralph gave me the bad news.

“You say you ran her through the National Crime Information Center, NCIC?” I asked again.

“Yes, and she’s not listed as missing either. Oh yes, I did find out one other interesting thing Karl. Four years ago her new husband, Phillip Conway, quietly divorced her and remarried a piece that was almost underage jail bait. I know this because of the Internet chatter about it when I googled Phillip Conway on the net. Danny will be back in a little while and he can give you the details on the disease. Let her sleep for now.” Ralph told me and turned toward the kitchen for a coffee.

“A healthy immune system defends the body against disease and infection Karl, but if the immune system malfunctions it can mistakenly attack healthy cells, tissues, and organs. This is called autoimmune disease, AID, these attacks can affect any part of the body, weakening body functions, and can even turn life-threatening. That’s what is happening to Myra right now.” Danny started his explanation.

“What happened, did Myra get breast implants or something Danny?” I sneered at Danny, and yes I knew I was acting like an complete asshole, but I was still going to remain hard and cold, she had hurt me deeply years ago.

“No Mister Baron your wife has hundreds of tiny titanium nitrite and gold microchips in her head. Historically speaking, digital computers of today evolved from the von Neumann model. It is composed of three specific components, or subsystems, a CPU, central processing unit, memory, and input/output interfaces. It operates via the execution of explicit instructions via access to memory by a number of processors. On the other hand, neural networks are based on efforts to model information processing on living biological systems. Unlike the von Neumann model, neural network computing doesn’t separate memory from processing.”

“A biological neural network is composed of groups of chemically connected or functionally associated neurons. A single neuron may be connected to many other neurons and the total number of neurons and connections in a network may be extensive. Connections, called synapses, are usually formed from axons to dendrites, though dendrodendritic synapses and other connections are possible. Apart from the electrical signaling, there are other forms of signaling that arise from neurotransmitter diffusion. But some people are convinced it’s all electrical signals.”

“These microchips that are in Myra’s head, each one no bigger than a grain of sand, are spaced all around her brain at every critical part and junction it seems. Every individual one of these devilish devices is wirelessly programmable to deliver a electrical pulse on command. Sure it’s a minuscule electrical pulse true, but it is large enough to override the brain’s own natural electrical pulses Karl.”

“Once the subject’s brain is mapped out by the external super computer they evidently have, whoever the hell THEY are, they now know exactly which button to push to get the desired result they want, ha, ha. We figure the subject ... the slave, Myra, wore a small box, the receiving unit on her body and the ... the ... Master had a ... a ... remote control.” Danny paused at that point to let that sink in.

“I guess that would be Zebra Laboratory Technologies Corporation, ZLTC, and that bastard Phillip Conway, her big shot company husband Danny.” I told him.

“Well anyway when her immune system started breaking down they just dumped her across the border in Mexico without any identification on her.” Danny told me.

“That would make sense Danny, their headquarters’ was in Yuma, Arizona, and they lived in the exclusive Pfeifer Estates there. Los Algodones, Mexico is right next door. There’s a lot of whorehouses and human trafficking going on over there on the Mexican side of the border because of the Air Force base and top secret experimental proving grounds there. A lot of horny GI’s and mad scientist types looking for something to screw. Myra was one beautiful woman back then.” I explained to him what my own research years ago had turned up about Yuma and the surrounding area. Well that plus my own time at MCRD, San Diego, and Tijuana.

“Well anyway they must have dumped her off over the border we figure. Somehow from there she got to Mexicali, and from Mexicali over to Tijuana Hospital General. Anyway that’s where I found her Karl.” Danny finished.

“And how do you know about these titanium nitrite and gold microchip things Danny?” I asked.

“Auto immune disease, AID, is no different than any other disease Karl. Sure we have immunosuppressive drugs to fight it ... well at least to delay it, but the first step is to look for what is causing the infection. In this case we narrowed it down to her brain pretty fast, and used CT and MRI to detect them. The CT, computed tomography, scan which uses X-rays is faster, but it didn’t pick them up, but the slower MRI, magnetic resonance imaging, scan with the dye picked them up fine.” Danny paused and I broke in.

“Then you can remove them right?” I questioned him, excited that there might be hope for Myra yet.

“Frankly Karl we haven’t got a clue how they got them in there without causing massive brain damage in the first place. It should have been impossible we all agree. We would have to physically operate on her, remove whole sections of her skull to get at the brain tissue itself underneath to get at them. Then remember they’re the size of a grain of sand. The operation would leave her a vegetable in the end. A perfect example of the operation was a success, but the patient died on the operating table.” With that said, Danny finished up and allowed me to visit my dying ex-wife.