Earth – the world of The Misplaced Dungeon.

{Timeline: September / October 2018 – MD from Ch. 26 through to 41}

Ginny was manning the reception desk of the emergency department of the North Hawaii Community Hospital when Don Smith arrived. Ginny recognised the small man in the ill fitting clothes was close to a breakdown.

It soon was clear that Mr Smith was suffering from delusions and obviously in need of help, she directed him to the waiting room with assurances that a doctor would soon be with him.

Not long after Mr Smith had been moved into a room for observation and treatment Charles van Dorn arrived with a similar complaint, Ginny maintained her best professional attitude when the tall slender woman in too small male attire babbled of blue screens, voices in her head and as to how he was growing breasts.

Dr Kajioka was astounded, two patients complaining of identical hallucinations would have been strange enough as they apparently didn’t know each other but both were indubitably undergoing extensive morphological changes. The only thing in common between the two was the fact that both were attending HawaiiCon.

Ginny had almost reached the end of her shift when an ambulance delivered another one, this one was strapped down to a stretcher as the paramedics had worried that he would hurt himself. She wondered how he managed that brown streaked hair.

Ginny went off shift and went to freshen up, she was checking her makeup in the restroom mirror when her face was obscured by a blue screen.

« conditions met – Virginia “Ginny” Fitch – Human – classes available – Healer, Entertainer or Scholar – make your selection: »

Ginny gripped the sink tightly as she endeavoured to stiffen her shaking knees as she blushed as she recalled how she’d paid for college, “I’m a nurse, a healer, not an entertainer!”

« Healer selected, lesser healing spell gained. »

Ginny gathered her courage and went to find Dr Kajioka.

* * *

Two days later in Atlanta at the HQ of the CDC.

“So what do we have, what do we know about these spontaneous morphological changes?”

“Well sir, the principal cluster is located on Hawaii’s Big Island but there are several other cases on the other islands and in the continental US. The Japanese have quarantined the crew and passengers of one of their airliners because two passengers started undergoing morphological changes whilst in flight.”

“What kind of numbers are we talking about?”

“Currently we know of fifty four cases if we include the two Japanese.”

“Just how extensive are the changes?”

“It varies from what appears to be mainly cosmetic changes to extreme morphological change somehow involving an extreme gain or loss of mass and size. Two cases involve a valid and functional sex change complete with the growth of a uterine mass, fallopian tubes and apparently functional ovaries.”

“Anything else?”

“It seems to be infectious, one victim currently in a New Jersey hospital seems to have infected one of the nurses.”

“Not good, have the FBI got anything for us?” asked the director.

“Everyone affected so far attended HawaiiCon or came into contact with someone who did, also there are far more cases of people affected by hallucinations, they report seeing blue screens and in some cases voices in their heads. One nurse in Hawaii might have gained the ability to heal wounds, investigation is ongoing.”

“Numbers?”

“Two hundred and thirty five confirmed, but people tend to be reluctant to come forward with stories of hearing voices and hallucinating blue screens.”

* * *

Dr Cy Jones walked briskly down a corridor of the CDC and rapped at a door.

“Come in Dr Jones.”

“Morning sir, you wanted to see me?”

The grey haired man behind the desk gestured at a bulging folder on his desk as he asked his visitor to sit.

“Got a weird one for you Jones, there have been over fifty cases over the last few days of people undergoing extreme morphological changes, the worrying part is they all attended the recent HawaiiCon and in at least two cases infected friends who had not attended. All the information we have is in that, and copies of everything are in the external drive that is also in there. Get your team up and running and take charge of this case please.”

Cy shuddered; his son had attended that con and was currently flying back to Atlanta with his mother.

“Yes sir, I’ll get right on it, anything else of note?”

“Most of the attendees we have interviewed are having hallucinatory episodes, they complain of seeing blue screens.”

Cy returned to his cubicle in the open plan office and started going through the mass of information he had available. The first thing to do he decided was to get in touch with his opposite number in Japan. It would be useful to have more information on the two victims that had manifested change while flying back to Tokyo from Hawaii. The quarantining of all the passengers and crew on arrival would not have gone unobserved.

A few phone calls later helped he was sure by the exercising of his halting Japanese he had Dr Iso Namura on the phone, a very excitable Iso Namura who kept on about two sisters that had turned into twin tailed Kitsunes. At least he managed to establish a proper protocol for future contacts.

He then booked a meeting room and gathered his staff. Those present were naturally sceptical of the data they had to work with but all agreed that there was a clear problem so they assigned duties and initiated all the standard protocols to investigate, contain and hopefully find a cure for the victims.

They all agreed that it was too late for quarantine as people with the condition had and were flying home and had by now spread to the four corners of the world.

* * *

A worried Cy left the Centre and headed for the airport in time to meet his wife and son on their return from Hawaii. As they drove home his worst fears were confirmed, well not his worst, Darren was unchanged but he was seeing blue screens. His young son Darren was one of the affected and he was having hallucinations.

It was remarkably easy to get Darren to open up, it would seem that the hallucinations had started on the second day of the con but according to Darren some of his acquaintances had started on the first day. Thankfully Darren had only heard of the way people could change on the third day and the whatever it was wouldn’t allow its victims to change the choices they had already made.

Cy was starting to believe that there was more to the blue screens than hallucinations and it was scaring him.

* * *

Dr Jones went through the papers on his desk once again, he wasn’t sure about some of the theories that were hovering in the background of this mass of somewhat disorganised notes and to some degree outlined in the embryonic essays. One thing was certain, the girl was brilliant, and she was one of the people affected by this condition.

He walked over to his colleague Dr Sebenschu, passed him the folder and asked him for his opinion of the contents. Then he waited patiently while the DNA specialist went through the papers. Josh looked stunned when he looked up.

“Can we recruit him?”

“Her, and no she’s not quite seventeen, and she’s one of the affected.”

“We should contact her.”

Dr Jones put in a request to the FBI and was rewarded with a conference call starting at a quarter to six that evening. Jones invited his colleague Sebeschu and both waited impatiently. Mary Silvestre was accompanied by a lawyer and three presumed FBI agents were visible in the background.

After about ten minutes things descended into blizzard of technical jargon that even Jones found it difficult to follow. Finally it became painfully obvious that unless the girl was a highly skilled liar she was not going to be able to help them. So at the end Jones slumped in despair and Sebenschu shook himself as he emerged from his thoughts.

“So we’re agreed, none of this is possible with what we know, Ms Silvestre we are both very interested in that experiment you used as an example. I suspect money and resources will be found for your uplift experiment with octopi,” said Jones unhappily, then he continued, “thank you all for your participation, please rest assured we will get to the bottom of this syndrome.”

* * *

The States Secretary of Health and Human Services was feeling tired, and now the CDC had come to him with this ridiculous story of happenings in Hawaii. When he contacted that idiot in charge of the FBI things didn’t get any better. According to the FBI this condition, these hallucinations and the few truly frightening cases of adults suffering sometimes extreme morphological changes by now over a thousand confirmed cases.

So he called a meeting of the heads of the FBI, CIA and Homeland Security to concoct a policy designed to confront this. Then he hurriedly added the CDC to the list.

In a surprisingly short time amid universal agreement that this matter should remain secret for now an extremely top heavy edifice was created to tackle the potential crisis to the nation’s health. They decided to call it Task Force Blue.

Naturally it was all over the early morning news. Depending on which news service one favoured the public was being reliably informed that it was the fault of – the President – the GOP – the Democrats – the Russians – the Chinese – or any combination of the previously mentioned or in the case of certain fringe publications, Aliens or those satanic RPG gamers.