Convention - Ch. 6 Decomposition Infirmary

Diary Excerpt

“The viciousness of human nature should not have been in the realm I was involved in, but what was happening before my eyes discourages me.”

Belita wasn’t walking fast.

After emerging from the field, she took a short break and put on a simple pair of high heels. She walked on the hard concrete with her short feminine stride, the sound of her pointed heels echoing in the narrow passageway.

She led me from George’s underground farm straight into this narrow passage full of moisture and musty smell, we continued for at least half an hour. I felt a sense of déjà vu, and the experience I had with Mo Xiao in the library a few days ago came to my mind. The woman in front of me was indeed similar in temperament to Mo Xiao, but reason told me that she was not the Director, and I needed to watch out for her.

“Speaking of which, I don’t know your name yet.” Suddenly, she began to strike up a conversation with me.

“Last time we met, I remember telling you my name, didn’t I. Isn’t ‘courtesy’ an old saying in your neck of the woods?”
(TLN: neck of the woods means a particular area or locality.)

In the darkness, Belita turned her head towards me, and I, who was preoccupied with what was at my feet, didn’t have much of a mind to care about her question, and just reflexively blurted out two words from my mouth.

“Huang Yuan.”

“It sounds quite handsome.”

Listening to her reply, I seemed to see her shrugging in the darkness.

“Is it the Huang Yuan of wilderness?”

“Yeah,” I responded casually.

“It doesn’t suit you.” I could hear her make a slight snorting sound through her nose. Although I couldn’t see her figure in the darkness, I could imagine that if I took another step forward, I would bump into her old coat.

I stopped in my tracks, but she seemed to be able to see me in the darkness, and grabbed my right hand with precision, running her bandaged fingers back and forth along my meridians as if she was playing with a prized treasure.

“Your thin arms and legs resemble nothing to the wilderness, at most a small lawn.”

“That’s true, but the name is ……”

I was going to say that the name was granted by my parents, but I stopped midway through. What kind of idea did my parents …… have in mind when they give me this name? I don’t know, but if I see them, I will ask for clarification.

“Does this name have any special meaning?”

In the darkness, Belita’s words came again.

“No…… no, it’s nothing special. By the way, what country are you from?”

“Me? Sort of an Italian, I guess.”

“Oh, Italian? Did you used to live in Rome?”

“Is Rome the only place in Italy in your mind?” Belita gently grabbed my ear and shook it. “There are many other cities in Italy that are great.”

“Is… is that so? But, no matter what country you’re in, surely the capital is the most prosperous, right?”

“Oh, then you are wrong, from the time Rome tumbled to now, Milan’s economy is above Rome.”

Her voice revealed a slight sense of pride.

“To this day as well.”

“I don’t know about that, but I’d quite like to see the Duomo Cathedral.”

“Oh, that’s a shame.” There was a change in Beretta’s expression.

“Speaking of which, do you know why Italy has given birth to the largest number of artistic masterpieces in Europe?”

“Because of the Renaissance?”

Belita was not satisfied with this answer, so she ignored my answer and continued.

“There was a time when Italy was always divided, there were countries everywhere, there were capitals everywhere, the people of each country created magnificent buildings, great works of art, they built beautiful parks and sang about their achievements …… they believed that by doing so they were manifesting their glory, and thought that was the best, but no one thought that the imperial capital they had worked so hard to build, in the end, was just a slightly larger local metropolis, right ……”

Belita said and paused.

“Yes, it’s like Venice, can you imagine? Just nearly a century, the unbeatable and majestic capital has been reduced to an insignificant port city. What else can people do? Having lost their ambition, people can only lament the impermanence of the years.”

Here, once again, Belita’s high heels echoed in the taut space, and she moved her feet once again.

I followed Belita’s footsteps for some time, and after passing a corner, I finally saw a little red light flickering in the darkness not far away, like a fishing fire at night.

Belita stepped forward and did something in front of the red light for a moment, only to hear an ear-piercing electronic sound in the wall, and the red light suddenly turned green.

“Ready?”

I saw, in the faint glow, a small smile seem to spread across the corners of her mouth.

The electronic door opened somewhat abrasively to the not-so-crisp sound of a crunching door.

Compared with the darkness outside, the light in this room is not much better. On the empty ceiling, a few old tungsten light bulbs make up the lighting here. The pervasive smell of dampness and mildew filled the confined space, and the place exuded an unhealthy aura and a decadent atmosphere.

Belita stepped forward, tilted her head back, and collapsed into an office chair, which spun and rattled the scattered metal cans on the floor. I picked up one from the floor and curiously surveyed the can. Judging from the weight, the can didn’t seem to be made of the usual aluminum, and it smelled strongly of fermentation inside.

“Beer?”

This elongated shape did look like something unique to canned alcohol, but without any oxidative coloring, and any brand or logo on it. The entire can was made with the poor quality of a black workshop product, and just a few connected ovals drawn with a yellow marker, which meant wheat.

“Wanna drink?” Belita saw me holding an empty can for a while, and she seems to feel that did not do her duties as a host. She did not wait for me to answer, and take out another can of wine, and tossed it to me.

I took a look, my can has a black marker drawn with a few circles. It seems like it’s filled with wine.

I do not drink much, but after I just walked for so long, I have long been thirsty. Besides, the wine felt like it was frozen, and the wine didn’t have as much bitterness as beer, so I had no reason to refuse such a drink in this hot and humid place.

Through the faint light overhead, I could see the attractive color of the aluminum can, the wine had little bubbles, the liquid was a bit cloudy as if the blood had just flowed out of the body, it seemed to be brewed in a rather primitive way, which did not match the can at all.

Just as I was about to take a drink, my hand suddenly stopped. For some reason, I instinctively felt that I can’t drink the can.

I slowly put the jar down at a loss and looked over at Belita, only to see her taking out a square metallic colored block from the drawer, throwing it into the jar, and gulping it down. She drank for about twenty seconds without even taking a breath.

“Burp~.”

After burping, she tossed the jar to the side casually.

At this point, her face was already flushed with a blush, by just a can of beer. It seems that her alcohol consumption does not seem to be in proportion to the cans here.

Happily sitting on a chair and stretching, but she seemed to remember something else, bending down and stretching to pick up the can she just threw away, and then reverse it and shake out the metal she just threw in.

“Oops, almost lost this.”

“What’s that?” I asked curiously as I stared at her hand, it looks like a somewhat mottled metal block. The first thing that came to mind was a stainless steel ice cube, but the wine itself was cold enough, there was no need to put it in, right?

“Do you want one too?” She said shaking the dull metal in her hand, “I think you have it in that can, I just had to add it for heavier tastes.”

“So what exactly is it?”

“Lead.”

“Lead?”

“That’s right, lead inhibits wine spoilage and also makes it a little smoother and also adds sweetness. Sugar is not easy to get these days, so you’ll just have to settle for it.”

“Wai…wait, I do know that lead and heated alcohol can react to produce lead sugar, but you have a beer, right? Do you put lead in your beer? Beer is not sweet in the first place! No, that’s not the point, putting lead in wine, aren’t you afraid of lead poisoning?”

“Afraid?”

Her slightly drunken eyes suddenly faltered, and for a moment I felt emotions flowing from her eyes that had never been revealed in the few short minutes I had spent with her.

“Afraid ……huh?”

She repeated, in her very deep and tired voice. The word ‘afraid’ was pronounced very heavily, as if she was trying to chew it up and swallow it down.

“What do you know?”

Her faltering lasted only a few seconds before she returned to her previous disheveled as if she was indifferent to everything.

“If it was the original me, not to mention adding lead, I wouldn’t even drink. Not only would I not drink it, but I would also advise you not to drink it, much less give you alcohol in this place.”

She said, standing up from her chair, snatching the can with the wine from my hand, resting it back on her desk, and sitting down again.

“As a doctor, I know much better than you do what bad habits are.”

“Then why do you ……”

“Have you forgotten the purpose of this trip? I told you that at the beginning, didn’t I.”

Belita interrupted by raising her voice without changing her face.

“It just so happens that the time is almost up, so let’s show you.” She suddenly took out a pocket watch from the pocket of her coat, looked at it, and added. “Take a look at the decomposition of the living experiments.”

Living decomposition? I couldn’t help but mutter in my heart. Although I had heard of these kinds of experiments, it must have been uncomfortable to watch a living animal decompose for the first time with my own eyes.

With that, she led me into a small door at the back of the room and continued deeper into the shadows, sometimes through winding corridors, sometimes through closed iron doors.

Tick-tock, tick-tock sounds echoed in the dark corridor, she would occasionally stop and look at the pocket watch in her hand to confirm the time and move on.

Eventually, after a corner, we came to a laboratory, brick-thick Plexiglas divides the laboratory into a narrow unit, inhabited by dying ……. people.
(TLN: Plexiglas is a solid transparent plastic made of polymethyl methacrylate.)
“What you said, the living body is ……” the question in my mind came out.

“That’s right, decomposers.” Belita turned to me, orange hair brushing her cheeks, making those cloudy eyes even more appalling, “That’s the one over there, the one who will die.”

Without further ado, Belita approached the isolation room, and the man, as if sensing Belita, slowly climbed to his feet. The disease called decomposition had almost eaten away at his body.
(TLN: MC doesn’t know what it is called at the moment, but mentioned here.)

Click, the pocket watch closed ……

In a trance, what seemed like a silky transparent substance distorted the space in the cell and swept unhindered through the body of the nameless man who penetrated it.

Suddenly, he began to scratch himself with his right hand, blood began to spill out from the surface of the body. The original gray bandage became scarlet. Once the blood came in contact with the air each blood cell becomes hotter and hotter, turning instantly into scattered black particles.

The left hand, like a withered branch, cut against the glass wall beside him, making an unbearable sound. The skin on the back of the hand began to peel off like scales, turning into a black particle; flickering electrons from the inactive muscles, and constantly annihilated in the air, the muscles have shrunken arm instantly turned into white bone.

Under the mosquito-like black particles, the cranial cavity gradually emerged, as if it were a picture in a biological anatomy textbook. At the same time, every blood vessel distributed on the brain swelled violently, as if the atoms constituting them repelled each other, uniformly diverged, and began to go their separate ways.

Where the black particles were clustered, the decomposition speed gradually accelerated, and the head gathered more and more black particles. Due to the loss of muscles in the limbs, that person’s body appeared extremely distorted, and the water in the abdominal cavity flowed out through the torn clothes and bandages as if it were a deflated balloon. As the black particles escaped, the tattered bandages began to wrinkle, and the man in front of him completely lost his human form.

It’s like a painting with an invisible hand erasing the layers layer by layer, not forgetting to brush away the rubber scraps from the manuscript paper at the end.

In the blink of an eye, the man was no longer writhing, the label called ‘life’ was removed from him, and all that remained was proof that he had existed — the broken scarlet bandage.

I was dumbfounded by the sight before me, what a cruel disease.

“Why didn’t you end his life in a humane way earlier!?” I yelled toward Belita.

“Because he didn’t want to become fertilizer for the farm.”

Lifeless words ran out from her mouth.

I suddenly remembered that when Mo Xiao and I were ambushed by the people of the Eternal Undead at the very beginning, I had seen broken bandages and those unknown black mists myself many times during the tour of the underground farm.

“Could it be that all the people here, have this disease?”

“Yes, except for ……”

“Why the hell is this! Where’s the doctor!?” I interrupted Belita.

“You’re thinking ‘how can a disease with such symptoms exist’, right? That’s what I thought when I first saw this disease.”

She said, reaching into the pocket of her jacket, fumbling for a moment, pulling out a crumpled cigarette, neatly straightening it, and pinching off the filter.

“About five years ago, I forget the exact coordinates, anyway, not far from where we are now, something fell from the sky, a meteorite? An alien? Or something else incredible. Then a plague began to spread around the world, centered on this fall site, with symptoms as you can see, so people named it decomposition. At that time, I was still very naive about wanting to cure this disease.”

She held the cigarette in her mouth and continued somewhat vaguely.

“Which means there is no cure for this disease, is there?”

“There are many diseases on this planet that have no cure, only remission, but decomposition is obviously not like them.”

“So the government is not doing anything about it? Like a UN medical organization, a humane relief agency, or something like that.” I suddenly thought of this and asked her about it.

Hearing this, she burst out laughing at once.

“Haha …… Humanitarian aid? It seems you really don’t know anything, didn’t you come with that woman Mo Xiao? She didn’t tell you anything?”

“Sorry, my knowledge of the world is only up to 2020, but do you know Mo Xiao too?” I thought about it and spoke. “The Director doesn’t seem to have told me anything about that either.”

“Heh, she’s still the same as always.” Belita took a deep puff of the cigarette in her hand, seemingly remembering something, “In 2030, for some reason unknown to all of us, the heads of the countries formed a coalition government and invited the world’s top scientists in various fields to focus on cutting-edge scientific research. She and I used to be colleagues, apart of the Blood Research Institute under the coalition government, but the two of us didn’t get along, nobody gets along with her, to be exact.”

“And then what happened?”

“Later …… there was no later, and it does no good to worship too many gods in one temple.”

Halfway through the conversation, she suddenly fell into silence. I was about to ask a question, but she interrupted.

“By the way, Huang Yuan, a word of caution, don’t get too close to the Mo family, no matter who it is. Don’t go question with what they do either, it causes trouble.” Belita suddenly said with a serious face.

“Eh, alright.”

This topic changed very abruptly, I immediately did not have time to think carefully, only then her words should be.

“Huang Yuan, the Easterners believe in karma. I always thought that was nonsense, but now, I am convinced.”

Suddenly, she paused, her feet stomped on the ground and slid in front of me in her office chair.

“Can …… I see your right hand again?”

She asked me in a tiny voice like a self-question. I raised my right hand, looked at my five fingers, and reached out to her with slight hesitation. And she took it with her right hand, which was wrapped in bandages. Knowing that the bandage she was wrapped in also had black particles like that underneath, the hand seemed to feel different to the touch. It was cold and uncomfortably soft as if it would deform with the slightest pressure.

“It’s been three years since I’ve seen my right hand.”

She said while stroking my hand like a precious treasure.

“The location of all decomposition patients is random, and I started with my right hand.”

I seemed to see a few drops of tears fall onto her glasses.

“There’s no reason? Even if it’s a terminal disease, there should always be a reason for the onset.”

“Maybe there is, but I can’t find it, and all the so-called medical doctors can’t do anything about it.”

“All the medical doctors can’t do anything?” This statement was rather subtle, and I frowned and asked my question.

Belita’s hand that was holding mine tensed violently, but after a moment, she raised her head, powerlessness, and helplessness against fate written all over her face.

“Because this disease has nothing to do with pathology, but with physics.”

She said slowly.

“The particles that make up the human body no longer remain close together for unrecognizable reasons, and I can only explain it to you in this way. If you want to hear a more professional explanation and description, then I may not be able to do so, because I am not a physicist.”

After the words, she fell silent, and the hand holding my right hand no longer had strength.

I pulled my right hand out of hers. Complicated feelings filled my mind and made me tremble all around. Was it fear? I was indeed afraid. I was afraid of losing my right hand. I use it to wash, to eat, to draw with. Without my right hand …… at this moment I couldn’t sympathize more with the woman in front of me.

“Now, do you know how rich you are?”

“Yeah.”

Belita asked me a question, and I immediately returned the affirmative.

“I’m not telling you what I want you to do, I just want you to understand one thing. Everyone alive here is unfortunate, and maybe someday in the future, you will also feel that your life is full of misfortune, but I hope you will remember what I told you at this time and be brave enough to accept your misfortune.”

She said to me in a serious tone, as if she could see that I would go astray, and advised me bitterly. Immediately afterward, she stood up, smiled at me, and touched my head like a mother who calls her child to come to dinner after she has reprimanded him.

As if, my parents had touched me like this, I can’t recall, but I always felt my body remembered the touch of being touched. My body, which had been tense with frustration and surprise, unconsciously relaxed.

Suddenly, there was an urgent knocking sound outside the laboratory door.

It sounded urgent as if it was going to break the door, and Belita walked towards the door and opened it with one hand.

“Doctor! My father, he’s sick again!”

“What? It wasn’t only three days ago ……”

Belita’s face suddenly turned ugly, but as before, her shaken feelings only flowed for a moment, and then she returned to a calm and serious expression.

“Take the patient to the treatment room.”

She said in a commanding tone, and the authoritative tone of her voice seemed to reassure the person who had run in panicked and unpredictable, so she hastily yelled backward, “Get my father in here,” while making way.

I took two or three steps backward and looked at two large men squeezed in the narrow doorway, with a thin figure in the middle of the two. The thin guy was draped in a black cloth, just like the pilgrims who died outside, but had lost his human form. …… To be precise, only half a human form. He was like a corpse with half of his body cut off. Black fog flows one by one from under his piece of cloth outward, soon floods the floor.

Belita walked quickly to the plexiglass and pressed a switch. I realized that there was a heavy iron door next to the glass wall, the white paint on it almost blended with the color of the wall.

Belita went into the glass room, put the patient on the bed, adjusted the instruments, walked quickly out of the room, carefully closed the door, and tinkered with the desk.

Through the glass, I saw that the patient’s body was still slowly disappearing, and a black fog filled that room, paste on the glass, gradually making it difficult to see what was going on in it. Just in that pile of rudimentary instruments, there were two very appalling-looking, electrode-like things sticking into the patient’s body under the operation of the mechanical arm, and with a spasm in the patient’s body, the whole glass window was completely enveloped by the black fog.

Belita hurried up and pulled me away, then gestured for me to stand at the other end of the room. She returned to her desk and hit the return on the keyboard.

“Don’t press it!”

Without any reason, I subconsciously shouted.

But it was too late, the sound of the keyboard echoed in my head, then a wail of pain resounded violently throughout the room, mixed with the crackling of electricity, shaking my eardrums and causing the old glass to tremble uncontrollably along with it. I can not imagine what is happening on the other side of the black fog, only to see the glass pasted with the black fog was slapped with palm prints remaining.

Although each palm print lasted less than a second before it was wiped away by the tumbling black fog, the death-like slapping never stopped. It looked like someone was burning to death and struggling to survive.

“Bang–”

Another loud bang, a little crack appears on the glass suddenly. Belita, who’s standing in the forefront, took two steps back and said to me.

“The glass …… is not going to hold.”

(TLN: If you see a mistake, please comment on it. I would gladly fix them. Thank you.)