Complications

“Diabetes? I’ve heard it’s a terrible disease. A lot of complications.”

“Not likely in your case, if you’re disciplined in dealing with it.” Dr. Parmunti handed her a large envelope. “Inside you’ll find a list of instructions for tracking your glucose level. And Mrs. Dion, I can’t emphasize enough the importance of tracking your glucose on a permanent basis.”

Gail Dion felt the thickness of the envelope. “I guess you get a lot of diabetics.”

“We do. Yours is at a low level, what we call pre-diabetes. If you’re attentive and consistent at tracking your numbers, we’ll be able to control it. The instructions are in the packet. At this point, it’s not necessary to start you on drugs, but I’m going to write you a prescription for a testing meter. Your insurance should cover it.”

When Gail reached home, she immediately opened the packet. The recordkeeping form had fill-in boxes for the time of each meal, the foods consumed, and the test results an hour-and–a-half after. Heck, I could do this easier on a spreadsheet, she thought. She took pride in her computer skills, which she had used extensively in her career as a logistics manager. Though retired for a few years, she had lost none of her ability. Within a half-hour, she had a spreadsheet set up to track all the required data and more.

Seven months later, she was having lunch with Rhonda Foster, a longtime friend and co-worker from their days at Hulcap Industries. “And no bread for me,” she told the waiter.

“How’s the diabetes? Got it under control?” Rhonda asked.

“Mostly, though the glucose level occasionally spikes. I’ve kept a record of the readings for each meal, along with the foods I ate.”

“Sounds like the old Gail. You always liked data.”

“I do, but there’s something else—and this is going to sound weird, but just bear with me. As I said, I keep getting these occasional spikes—always after both lunch and dinner on the same day. Then the readings return to normal. I tried cross-referencing the spikes to what I ate, how much I ate, the meal times, even the day’s exercise. But there wasn’t any pattern.”

“Have you talked to the doctor?”

“I see him in a couple of months for my quarterly. But here’s the thing. Ralph and I were watching the news about them blowing up the London stock exchange the other night…”

“Just terrible.” Rhonda said.

“…and then I remembered my numbers had spiked three days earlier. Later in the conversation he mentioned hurricane Chloe, and I remembered it, too, occurred three days after one of my glucose spikes.”

“Interesting,” lied Rhonda.

“Then I checked every spike I’ve had since keeping track, and compared the dates against the news events around those days. There was a disaster three days after every one. Weird, huh?”

Rhonda stopped eating. Now she was genuinely interested. “Are you saying your glucose spikes are somehow causing disasters, or…”

“Oh heavens, no. I just think it’s an extraordinary set of coincidences. Once or twice I could ignore, but six times in a row? And no disasters when I don’t have spikes? What are the odds?”

“What were the dates?”

“Actually, I have a printout.” Gail reached into her purse, and began reciting the list.

Rhonda interrupted. “March 17? I don’t remember anything happening then.”

“Sure. The Texas gas refinery explosion was on the 20th.”

“Can I see the list?”

“Sure. Keep it, if you want.” Gail said. “I can always print out another one.”

“You know, Gail, Keith told me last month…or was it the month before…anyway, he mentioned some experiments by a couple of cognitive scientists. He still reads the psych magazines, even though he’s retired. What was it? Something about how they found most people sense the future without realizing it. I forget the details. I learned years ago to tune out when he starts talking shop.

“Actually, it sounds fascinating. I’d like to know more, even if it doesn’t relate to my disaster list.”

“I’ll ask him about it tonight.”

The next day, Gail’s phone buzzed. “Hi, Rhonda. What’s up?”

“Listen, I asked Keith about that article—the one about people knowing the future? It’s called ‘unconscious precognition,’ and there were two experiments that confirmed it. The thing is, Keith said it’s only a matter of minutes. No one has shown it to occur with a three-day lead.”

“So, does he think I’m a quack?”

“It’s hard to tell. You know how shrinks are: You ask them a question and they never give a straight answer. ‘Doc, am I overreacting?’ ‘Do you think you’re overreacting?’ Anyway, after 30 years, I can read him pretty well. So yes, I could see he was skeptical. But just so you know, I changed his mind.”

“Really? How did you do that?”

“By figuring out how the ‘precoging’ thing could connect with the glucose spikes. You know how Keith is—the scientific mind and all that. I came up with a mechanism that could explain it.”

“So? Don’t keep me in suspense. How? I’ve practically pasteurized my brain searching for a connection, but haven’t been able to think of one. How does a plane crash affect my blood three days before it happens?”

“My aunt is diabetic. I remember her saying that whenever she had an anxiety attack, her numbers would rise—something involving stress hormones. So I told Keith that maybe if you’re unconsciously aware of the coming disasters, your body might be releasing stress hormones. Then Keith starts pacing the room, and says, ‘That makes sense. The precognition is subconscious, and so is the release of hormones. She wouldn’t be aware of either one.’ Then he looks at me and says, ‘Honey, that’s brilliant! And the three-day precognition…why, that’s incredible! Absolutely record-setting.’”

Gail was bewildered. “Good heavens! You think that’s what’s causing it?”

“I do. And Keith does, too. Do you know that was the first time in 30 years that he ever complimented me on any remark I made involving psychology? It was always like he built a fence around the subject. He was very possessive about his field of expertise. I learned to avoid the topic as much as possible.”

“So what do I do now? I worry about the spikes. Diabetes can damage the body’s nerve cells.”

“You can ask your doctor, but from what I’ve heard, occasional high readings won’t cause damage. Otherwise, nobody would dare eat a donut or ice cream. But Keith says you should start posting your numbers on your Me&Mine page.”

“Why?”

“He thinks there’s something of a medical miracle here. It’s like posting a doctor or clinic you recommend or a new herbal supplement that helped you. I think he’s right. Maybe other people will begin tracking their readings and find similar precognition. Who knows how far this might go?”

“Post my glucose numbers along with my travel and family photos and friends’ postings? Tacky.”

“Just start a second page,” Rhonda said. “Lots of people do it. That way, all the diabetes stuff could be on one page. Not just your readings, but diabetic recipes too. A lot of people have the disease. It could help them.”

“Hmm. I’ll have to think about it.”

The next day, Gail decided Rhonda was right. Who could predict how far it might go? She created a Diabetic’s Discovery page and listed her purpose, as well as the information about her glucose reading’s connections to future events. After several days, she still had only 28 followers, all of them her regular friends. Nevertheless, each day, she dutifully listed her readings for all her meals.

Two weeks later, a plane crash in the Alps took 280 lives. From her glucose numbers three days earlier, she had known something was going to happen. She realized her discovery of her “Diabetes ESP,” as she now called it, was more of a curse than a gift. Knowing three days ahead that some terrible tragedy would occur bestowed only a feeling of dread. She wished she’d never noticed the link. She even considered ceasing to track her numbers, but the doctor insisted it was necessary. After all, she did have an actual medical condition, one that could cause serious complications.

The next day, her phone buzzed. “Hi, Morgan.”

“Hi, Mom. Have you looked at your Me&Mine page today?”

“Not yet. I usually record the numbers in the evening.”

“You’ve got 500 followers.”

“What?” She quickly opened her laptop. “You’re right. How did this happen?”

“Word of mouth, I guess. Your followers linked your page to their family and friends, and they all did the same. It’s gone viral.”

“Oh, for heavens’ sake. I’ve got 117 people who want to friend me. I don’t even know these people. What do you think I should do?”

“Go ahead and friend them. It doesn’t mean anything, anyway.”

“You know, Morgan, this is getting to be more trouble than it’s worth. Come to think of it, it doesn’t pay anything, so it’s worth nothing.”

The air disaster was the first story on the news that night. Near the end of the segment, the news anchor said, “And for an unusual addendum to this story, we go to Ronnie Twift.”

The face of a preppy twentysomething woman appeared. “Yes, John. It seems someone out there can actually foresee disasters before they happen. Her name is Gail Dion, and she…”

“What the shit?!” Ralph said. Gail remained silent, unable to speak.

“…records her diabetes glucose readings on her Me&Mine page. More important, her readings seem to foretell disastrous events. Her readings go high for lunch and dinner three days before a major tragedy occurs somewhere in the world.”

“Ronnie, is this Ms. Dion some kind of astrologer or fortune teller?” the news anchor asked.

“Apparently not, John. From what we’ve been able to discover about this mystery woman, she is an ordinary suburbanite living in retirement in Cincinnati. We plan to follow up on this story and bring it to all our KWAK news viewers.”

“Thanks, Ronnie. We’ll be anxiously awaiting your report in the near future. And when we return from the break, we’ll tell you about a dog who has adopted some orphan ducks.”

Gail was incensed. “Let’s switch channels. I’m never going to watch KWAK news again.” However, other versions of the same story were on the other news channels.

The next day, the doorbell rang.

“Hi, Mrs. Dion. I’m Ronnie Twift from…”

“I know who you are. I saw your dreadful broadcast last night.”

“Dreadful? Why would you say that?”

“I’m not an astrologer or a fortune teller.”

“I never said you were. John Stimmers was speculating, and I’m really sorry he did that. But I’ll tell you what. You tell me in your own words, and we can stop all the speculations, rumors, and lies. This is your chance to tell your own story accurately. Will you help me get the truth out there?”

If Twift had been a guy, Gail probably would have closed the door in his face. But this was a chance to talk woman-to-woman. “Oh, okay, but he’ll have to wait outside,” she said, pointing to the guy with the video camera.

***

Gail made a pot of tea, laid out the tableware on the dining room table, and filled the cups. As she was about to sit down, the doorbell rang again.

“Mrs. Dion, I’m Sam Peterson from the Cincinnati Howler. Would you mind me asking a few questions about your magnificent gift of seeing the future?”

She was about to refuse, but realized she was going to be telling the story to Twift anyway. Might as well kill two vultures with one stone, she thought. However, a few moments later, a woman walked up just as Peterson entered. “Hi, Mrs. Dion? I’m Ginny Moore from…”

About ten minutes later, after she had taped a sign that read “Back at 5:00” to the front door, the six of them sat down at the table.

Twift kicked off the interview. “I’m curious. How long have you had this link between your glucose readings and the world’s disasters?”

Gail described the train of events, ending with, “I have no more idea about the how or why of this link than you do. And before any of you ask, I’ve never been a fortune teller, a card reader, or an astrologer. And let me add, I have no psychic ability whatsoever.”

The interview continued for another half hour, with the questions becoming ever less germane and ever more insipid. The next day saw a repeat performance with other media actors, and the third day would have as well if Ralph hadn’t responded to her complaints by posting a “No Trespassing” sign in the front yard. Even then, he had to assume the duty of answering the door and driving off several media people with a few slightly abridged cusswords. Gail and Ralph were glad the media were gone. They naively imagined they could get back to their sedate retired lives.

A few days later, a scientist from Ultra Rose Labs called, and she agreed to let them test the magnetic fields around her brain. Though they found nothing notable, Gail didn’t mind. The tests were short, painless, and even a bit of fun. And the scientists were very polite, unlike FBI agents Jim Goth and Rick Hun, who rang her doorbell the next day and announced their need to investigate her.

“Investigate? For what?”

“We think it’s possible that ‘foreign powers’ might be data-mining your readings.”

“Are you serious? This is what we citizens pay you for?”

“We checked your purchase records. Your glucose monitor was made in China,” Goth said.

“So are my shoes. So what?”

“We have a detection device with us. We’d like to have you take a test while we check around the monitor for transmissions. It will take only a few minutes.”

“That’s ridiculous. Get out of my house.”

“If we leave, we’ll be back with a warrant to seize your device for testing purposes,” Hun said.

“We’d rather not have to deprive you of your continued glucose tracking,” Goth added.

Gail brought the test kit to the dining room table and performed a blood test while the two agents moved a sensor around the monitor. She felt like telling them it reminded her of a séance, but she thought it best not to provoke them.

“Okay. We’re clear here,” Hun announced.

“Are you sure you don’t want to check my shoes?”

The agents did not smile. Ever.

Later that day, she heard her name mentioned in a radio announcement. For his TV show that day, Wally Bunch was going to be doing an investigative story about her. She went out to the garage. “Ralph, you ever hear of Wally Bunch?”

“Wally who?”

“Bunch. He’s doing some TV program on me. Did he interview you?”

“No. Never heard of him.”

They went to her computer and did a search. “A UFO specialist?” Ralph said with the same expression as when he opened the garbage bin lid the day before pickup. “What’s he got to do with your diabetes?”

They found the TV listing, and that afternoon watched his introduction. His coverage of the Diabetes ESP (by this time, the term had become part of the common American lingo) was sandwiched between stories of a haunted swamp and a child who played ball with ghosts.

“Jesus!” said Ralph. “Look at the company you keep.” His humor took the edge off Gail’s concern about her public embarrassment.

Wally Bunch had dramatized her story and ended the segment with the most likely explanation of her “psychic phenomenon”: “We have investigated, and we know for a fact that Gail Dion has had extensive dental work done through the years. It’s clear to us that this resembles other cases we’ve investigated. Clearly, at least one of Gail Dion’s modified teeth is picking up transmissions from the other side. The only questions are whether the spirit world is deliberately sending her these transmissions, and if so, why.”

“Gail, this is getting ridiculous.” Ralph said.

“No kidding. It’s embarrassing. I never wanted this kind of attention. When does it end?”

She asked the same question the next day, after the Church of Our Lady of Lichtenstein declared her to be “a false prophet, a tool of the Antichrist.”

“Who the hell are they?” asked Ralph.

“Oh, you know. That church out on the Westside district with an effigy of a roadrunner nailed to an orange cross?”

“That place? I thought that was just a joke, a mock church of atheists.”

“No. It’s a real church, but with some weird beliefs. They think this is the afterlife. They don’t believe Hell is a pit of fire but an insane asylum, and that we’re already there.”

“That’s not just weird. That’s…well, insane.”

The next day, Rashid Berry of GasFlix Pictures contacted her, wanting to do a movie on her life.

“What do you think, Ralph?”

“We’d probably make some significant money, but once you sign, you’ll lose control of the story.”

“I already have. And frankly, I’m tired of being in the public crosshairs.”

He grinned. “Maybe they’d have Wally Bunch write the screenplay.”

She was again grateful for his humor. It helped relieve the stress. She turned down the movie proposal, as well as a stockbroker’s offer to pay for her daily revelations provided she keep them private. She talked about these events with Morgan.

“Mom, I’m going to make a suggestion.”

“What’s that?”

“Lie.”

“What?”

“Keep the real readings for your doctor, but put fake ones on your Me&Mine page. You know, like keeping two sets of books when a business wants to hide income from the IRS.”

“Actually,” Gail said, “the IRS is starting to look pretty good compared to the media and some of the nutcases out there.”

“List all the online readings as high, even when they aren’t.”

“What would be the point of that?”

“When everyone sees the high readings, and no disaster follows in three days, they’ll figure out you’re not a soothsayer after all.”

“But how do I explain it?” Gail asked.

“That’s the beauty of it. You don’t have to. If anyone asks, you’ve merely lost the power. It just went away.”

Gail discussed Morgan’s idea with Ralph, and they both liked it. People would finally leave them alone. Over the next week, she entered numbers on her website 50 points higher than the actual readings. She was confident her actions could break the public’s interest in her glucose numbers and that she and Ralph could get back to their normal life of retirement.

However, her quarter-million followers immediately panicked. The next day, security agencies in several nations went on alert. By the second day, brokerages around the world began a sell off that accelerated for two weeks, shaving 43 percent from the Dow Jones index. By the third day, churches began filling up in the evenings. By the fourth day, people on the coasts were selling their houses and moving to avoid the coming earthquakes and their attendant tidal waves. Housing prices plummeted. They streamed into rural areas to have access to food when civilization collapsed. The price of rural houses skyrocketed, as did the price of food. Devout people rejoiced that the End Times were near and that non-Christians would be cleansed from the Earth, or that non-Moslems would be cleansed from the Earth. Christians awaited the Messiah’s Second Coming; Jews awaited the Messiah’s first coming; Hindus awaited the end of the fourth cycle; Buddhists complained that the end of the world was arriving ahead of schedule.

While martial law was being declared in increasing numbers of the world’s cities, Gail and Ralph made a decision. The next day, they went for a drive. They parked their car at the curb and walked a few yards along the sidewalk before turning onto the walkway toward the entrance.

“I’ve always wondered what it looked like on the inside,” she said.

“I hope they accept new members,” he said.

Just before reaching the green- and purple-striped doors, they bent their heads back for a closer look at the roadrunner statue nailed to the cross.