I was inspired to write a short story entirely in dialogue.
“You sent for me, Doctor?”
“Please have a seat. I vant your blud!”
“Again? Sure. How much? And what for?”
“Just a vial. What for … well, I don’t suppose telling you will do any harm. Word is already getting out, I’m sure.”
“Fascinating preamble.”
“Yes, yes. I fear I wax prolix in my old age. Anyway, a week ago, we got a signal from America.”
“America! They’re still viable?”
“Some part is. Or was. The signal was on a loop, and it described a test for immunity.”
“Just a test?”
“Yes, we were all hoping they’d come up with a cure, but if we at least have an effective test to tell us who’s immune —”
“Without the negative result being death.”
“That, indeed. We’ve spent the last week preparing the test strips. The preparation is simple enough to carry out by hand —”
“Good thing, because the solar panels aren’t putting out enough power. These blizzards —”
“Yes, yes, I understand. I’ve tried not to put too much strain on the grid.”
“So called.”
“Getting back to the test, the raw material is abundant. It is, of all things, oak bark.”
“Oak!”
“What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Just thinking. The oak tree has been sacred in cultures all over the world, all the way back to prehistory. Did our ancestors know something we don’t?”
“This disease hasn’t spread before; we can be sure of that. This event’s going to show up in the fossil record almost like the K-T extinction. Not to mention that they wouldn’t have had paper or anything like that.”
“Maybe they brewed it up and drank it. If you can keep it down, you’re immune.”
“I’m pretty sure all that’s just a coincidence. At any rate, the Americans claim specificity and sensitivity both 99%. The problem with that — two problems — are, one, we can’t be sure they’re right, and, two, best guess is the immunity rate is only 1%.”
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning if you get a positive result, it’s even odds whether you’re immune or it’s a false positive. Well, not you personally, but someone whose status is unknown. Fortunately, the test is easy enough to make and the raw materials are abundant, oak bark and paper. God knows we have plenty of paper. So if we get a positive result, we can test again. And again, and again.”
“Why draw my blood, then? You know I’m immune.”
“We have to confirm the American claims. For all we know, the test doesn’t work at all, though that would mean someone went to a lot of trouble to give us uncertain information, and why would anyone do that? We don’t have many immunes to check it with, so I’ll test the blood of each of you repeatedly and see how it goes. Benny’s drawing blood from people in quarantine, those bitten or scratched. We’ll know soon enough if they’re immune or not. Fortunately, we don’t have too many of them, so we’ll have to test their blood repeatedly as well.”
“Can’t you use your lab rats for this?”
“My literal lab rats? No. They were bred for genetic uniformity, and they’re uniformly susceptible to the disease.”
“Right, then. Draw your blood sample and let me get back to work.”
“About that. We can’t be sure if any of the other enclaves got the signal. If not, someone needs to take word to them. If so, they’re likely running the same tests, and it would help to combine results.”
“You want me to go to the other enclaves.”
“I hate to make the request, but yes.”
“Our people’s lives are on the line. Maybe humanity itself. I’ll go. But I hope you’ve got some of the others to go too, because there’s no guarantee we can get through.”
“Understood. Thank you.”
“Share that champagne you’re hoarding with me when I get back. That’s the thanks I want.”