Page 97 of The Paradox Club

“You’ve lost me again,” said Tess.

“Every member of the club has an alias,” said Vivian. “Inside the halls of the Paradox Club our true identities are hidden.”

“But your father thought that was all rubbish,” said Richard.

“Why did you say a portal to another universe could destroy humankind?” asked Tess. She, Vivian, and Richard sat in the camping chairs, covered in blankets, looking out across the water toward the boat landing.

“Do you remember Harry talking to you about astronauts going into quarantine after they got back from the moon?” said Vivian.

“I remember everything Harry told me on the dock.”

“I doubt that.”

“Well, I remember that conversation.”

“And do you remember what you said to Harry?”

“Okay, maybe I don’t remember every detail.”

“I was there,” said Vivian, “as usual sitting in the shadows listening to you two. Sometimes I was jealous of you because of how much Harry doted on you, what joy he took in teaching you. And sometimes I was jealous of Harry because of how you adored him.”

“I adored you, too.”

“Not the way you loved Harry. Anyway, on those nights at the lake, when Harry taught you about science under the stars, I would occasionally sit with my feet dangling in the water and listen; so would Marie sometimes. Harry was smart, we all know that. But you were wise. And that night, you asked Harry what the point was of a three-week quarantine if a foreign virus could remain undetected within a person for months or years.”

“I do remember saying something like that,” said Tess.

“Good,” said Vivian. “I was afraid you wouldn’t.”

“I still wonder about that.”

“As you should. Now, I told you that Harry calculated the dates when the universe of the radio—the universe he believed was the source of all the UFOs—came into temporal alignment with our own.”

“Because Harry was brilliant at math.”

“Exactly. Harry believed—or he had convinced himself—that the universe of the radio was so similar to ours that it didn’t pose a threat. And he pointed out that there had been no major pandemics near the times of any of his calculated alignment dates. But, after Harry died, I did some research of my own on those dates with the help of a historical epidemiologist.”

“A what?” said Tess.

“Someone who studies the history of diseases. And we discovered that two of Harry’s dates lined up perfectly with the emergence of previously unknown viruses.”

“And you think those viruses came from the other universe?”

“It’s a possibility. Luckily, neither of those viruses has proven particularly dangerous to humans in this universe, but their existence suggests that organic UFOs could introduce new pathogens. Maybe Harry was right—maybe the radio’s universe can’t harm ours. But maybe he was wrong. Maybe the next organic UFO won’t be so benign.”

“What do you mean by organic UFOs—like living things could cross over?”

“The most likely source of a new virus is a living host,” said Vivian. “The host, whether it’s a mouse or a rat or whatever, might die shortly after arriving in our universe and never be recognized as a UFO, but by then the virus could have jumped to another host.”

“So organic UFOs are dangerous,” said Tess.

“Extremely dangerous,” said Richard.

“An organic UFO might be a host to a pathogen that could wipe out humankind.”

“It could,” said Vivian.

“And that pathogen could lay dormant for months or years before it started to spread.”