The problem is, the plague keeps mutating, something on the order of the common cold, which makes it hard to narrow down a serum that will constantly protect someone.
Its turns out that I have job security. Not that I'd rather be doing something else like writing science fiction, but this plague is about as real as it gets.
Now I'm feeling manic. I feel like taking the autopilot off, drinking beer, reading a book, and writing one, all at the same time. I feel starved for input. Its like the ship is traveling way too slow for me. What should be a relaxing cruise has now suddenly become a frustrating venture in slo-mo. I can't stand it. I get up, shake my hands in the air and yell "oh my god, I'm manic."
If I had a million credits in my account I would be off spending it. There is very little on board this ship I can take out my mania on except the exercise room, the autopilot, and this journal.
I give up on the autopilot idea because thats a good way to get lost and killed by suffocation. So I head down to the exercise room, set the walking machnine for medium, and start walking fast.
In the mean time, on the way to the exercise room, I grabbed one of my favorite brews, "Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy." I unscrew the cap and start imbibing it quickly. I nearly choke myself on the first gulp. Slow down, I tell myself. Let the lemonade flavor satisfy you.
Suddenly, I realize a millionn different thoughts are related to another million different thoughts. There is no escaping the nexus of connections. Yes, my mind is racing ahead relating my dead goldfish with dead goldfish everywhere else. Even though this was a childhood experience with my first fish-pet, somehow its connected to the capacitor bank of the ion drive.
I drink carefully but faster. I'm no longer trying to choke myself with the beverage. I have to write this out longhand, though it irks me how slow that is, when I will eventually have to slam it in via the keyboard.
Where am I going with this? The brakes of reason try to shut down my rapidly flowing thoughts. We.., you see theres this plague going on, and no one is quite sure where it started. Finger pointing between government labs took place a long time ago, one Earth year and a half. So without a pinpoint on a map, medical science was forced to track the spread of the disease instead of following its sources. Because of airplanes, the sources branched out from airports. Becuase of buses, the sources branched out from bus terminals. People in their cars transmitted the disease. Truckers moved the disease with their routes. In the end, control came from the transport vehicles operators dying. There soon was a shortage of pilots, truckers, and bus drivers. Individual car owners died too, which stopped the spread.
People were dying in the streets, the restaurants, shopping malls, anywhere there was public contact. It was hard at first to isolate the plague since a small minority of survivors were immune to it and were carriers. TO BE CONTINUED
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