Chapter 5: Reel

Hefmire’s Case Notes, 04/09/2011:

“We tend to picture alien threats as having thought-processes that we cannot reconcile to our own, effectively generating a cultural breach that cannot be crossed between a hostile, superior threat and ourselves. In reality, meeting a new alien culture should not be any different from going to a part of our own Earth where they do things differently. Patient Zero, however, came alarmingly close to our fears of an unbreachable gap...”

Beach reclined in the back of Sashman’s car as the two of them were driven to a nearby hotel, the opening of the director’s latest film having gone with a bang. She filled up most of the available space, the buffet having made its impact on her figure.

“So...” Sashman said thoughtfully. “If it’s not a rude question, sweetie- how do you eat like that?”

“Like what?” Beach asked, wiping her mouth on the back of her hand, and then seeming to realise what he getting at. “Oh, the quantities? I just can’t help myself... not that I have a problem eating that much.”

“Well, that’s good,” Sashman replied. “Because tomorrow, I wanted to begin filming for The Woman Who Ate the World, and I’m going to need to record you eating- ideally as you have been doing this evening so that we can actually SEE you putting on weight.”

Beach grinned. “I don’t think that will be a problem.” It was late by this point, and the moonlight illuminated her face, turning its beauty into something cold and mysterious.

“In fact,” Sashman said, “we start filming tonight. I’ve got a camera in the boot- I used to work without a proper crew all the time back in the early days- all we need is to order out an open air buffet from room service and film in the moonlight... yes, with the overlay of the right atmospheric music we’ll turn it into something strange and haunting, like a dream that you can’t quite grasp the meaning of...”

Beach let the director carry on in this increasingly infused manner for some time, the workings of her mind concealed beneath the strange gorgeousness of her face.

***

“Doctor Hefmire,” General Awn was explaining, “your involvement with the Egress case is significant because of her metabolism. You put her extraordinary appetite and rapid weight gain down a genetic aberration at the time, something unlikely but, shall we say... natural?”

“Yes. I did,” confirmed Hefmire, leaning his underwhelming frame back in the chair provided for him and eyeing Awn with some suspicion. “Are you implying that it was not natural?”

“That is precisely what I am implying, yes,” Awn said, pleased that the doctor had grasped the general idea so rapidly. “In fact, we have been tracking the progress of these apparent genetic anomalies for some years. We know very little about the medical science behind them- that’s where you come in- but we know that if you plot, geographically, the instances of this anomaly, that you find that there is a distinct epicentre, with an alarmingly high concentration of cases occurring on an oil rig in the Pacific ocean.”

“That seems... unlikely,” offered Hefmire.

“It would be, if the anomaly was passed on genetically. If it was an illness that originated there, however, then it would be perfectly reasonable to suppose an epicentre with a number of disparate nationalities working on it that would explain the wide geographical spread of the illness across the huge area it has affected.”

“Well, if you’re worried about an infection...” Hefmire began.

“We already know that it is not overly virulent- in fact, it does not seem capable of transmitting itself more than a couple of times, from the primary host (any oil rig worker) to another human being, who has a weaker strain, to another, who has yet a weaker strain than that... and then that’s it. The fact is, however, that the anomaly did not originate in anything of this Earth. The rig is built precisely over the crash-point for, well, SOMETHING! We don’t know what though, since it crashed there a thousand years ago and has been dormant ever since. Suffice it to say, however, oil-drilling recently unearthed a woman. A living woman buried in the sediment and stone of the seabed these past thousand years- biologically young and obviously in some form of natural stasis...”

“And you believe this woman to be...”

“Yes. Patient Zero. The source of the anomaly.”

“So what do you want from me?”

“We can provide you with tissue samples from some of those who exhibited the anomaly. We need you to use your medical judgement and tell us the answer to one very simple question...” Awn leaned forward, preparing to underscore his point. “Is Patient Zero dangerous?”

***

Beach gorged herself, as she had been directed, with total abandon as the moon shone through the slowly shifting clouds and the camera rolled. She tipped back her head, letting enormous handfuls of food fall into her mouth, while just as much else spilled over the contours of her naked body- she had to be naked: Sashman had decided that B-movie-style alien women intent on devouring the planet would probably not have arrived on Earth with clothes very high up the list of their priorities. She sucked entire platters dry while the hotel staff- roped into serving as extras and dressed in the manner of men being mind-controlled by a powerful alien lifeform (namely, inexplicably scantily)- constantly reloaded the table. The entire thing was filmed as one contiuous shot lasting a full five minutes, in which Beach, in her guise as Earth’s greatest and sexiest threat, added a full 150lb to her already massively engorged frame.

“And... cut,” whispered Sashman, as she swallowed the last of what was on offer, raised her head to the sky and let out the mandatory cruel laugh of so many B-movie villains.

***

Somewhere in the easily-distracted, disco-lit halls of his psyche, Jaff knew that something was very badly wrong about their new star. She and the role she was to play seemed to him to be dangerously interchangeable and, while he could not imagine that it was possible for her obvious love of food to evolve into a desire to consume the entirety of the planet, her appetite worried him. Had anybody thought to ask him the day before meeting her if it was possible for a human to engulf so much food in a single sitting that they actually gained anything upwards of 50lbs from that one repast, then he would have said that no, no it wasn’t. Now he had met someone who could do just that, and it scared him on some instinctive level. Jaff was not the brightest man in the world, but the fear he felt, though slight, was insistent. It was, however, less insistent than the thing that had sustained his career and which Sashman had taken great pains to hammer home: when you were making a film, the show must go on.