Music screamed in my ears as I danced with my friends in a nightclub called The Shark. Like every other young man, it was meant to be a special day for me, because it was my 18^th birthday. I grabbed my girlfriend’s hand and dragged her to a table. The sensor on the table knew we had come and the touch screens on the table automatically flared to life.

“Hello, my name is ATOM. What would you like today?”

ATOM was a relatively new technology being tested out. It stood for Automated Table Ordering Machine. Nightclubs in Detroit found it much more convenient now to let customers order by a machine instead of employing waiters.

Suddenly, I heard a scream from the dance floor. Dancers vacated the floor and I could see a young woman had fallen.

“Someone call a doctor!”

These words triggered a plan that immediately contacted emergency services. Within minutes, the whole building was cleared and everyone was ordered home.

I rushed outside the building, sweating. My vision started to blur and I knelt to the side of the pavement and vomited. My partner came to my side.

“You okay?” she asked.

“Yeah,” I replied.

Within minutes, we caught an aquasub, a vehicle made in the 2030’s that ran on water which was made to replace the ordinary bus.

The next day, I was watching the news in my TV booth when there was breaking news.

“In Metropolis Today, there have been over two hundred people today around the city who have been hospitalised due to an unknown condition. This virus is thought to have originated from North America and is highly contagious. Experts have found this virus to be resistant to any existing treatments. It is advised that you do not leave your house unless necessary.”

I thought about the woman at the nightclub and realised how close I had come to being affected by this disease. I heard a knock on the door. I got up to open the door, when a voice on the other side said “Wait! Don’t open the door, unlock it and stand back.”

I did as I was told. A few seconds later, a team of pandemic control specialists entered the apartment. They wore breathing masks and were covered with white clothes which looked like they were made out of plastic. Each held a small sensor in their hand.

“Sir, were you at The Shark last night?” one asked.

“Yes, why?” I replied.

“You’re going to have to come with us.”

After a short ride, we came to a big white building. Inside, I saw the people I had seen last night. They all wore an expression similar to mine: fear. There was a putrid odour coming from four machines the looked like air conditioners. I found out that this odour was actually a modified gas that was meant to stop any bacteria being airborne. 

A TV in the corner of the room flickered to life and a man appeared on the screen. “You might have worked out by now that you are here because you were in The Shark last night, and you witnessed the death of a Kelly Smith,” he said. “We suspect that the disease may have contaminated others who were in the nightclub. As a precaution, we have chosen to take everyone present that night in quarantine.”

The screen was switched off as people absorbed this information. We later found out that we would not be allowed to make contact with anyone and would all be checked for the virus which was now informally named The Green Cloud by the media.

After waiting in the room for an hour, it was my turn to be checked. When I got into the secure testing room, I was told to sit and they asked me if I had any symptoms of the disease. 

Sweating? Nothing more than normal. 

Blurred vision? The only time I thought of recently was when I came out of the nightclub, but that was probably because of the stress. 

Vomiting? Now I started to get nervous.

I thought what happened after I left the nightclub was just because of stressed, but it may have turned out to be something more serious.

The doctor put a small needle in my forearm which had a blood sensor on the end. Immediately, a beep sounded in a machine nearby that tested my blood. The doctor and I stared at the screen. Positive.

I was rushed into a secure area separate from everyone else. By the end of the day, they had tested four people to be positive out of the hundred that were present.

I lay there in the hospital under close supervision and wondered what would happen to me.

As the days passed, my symptoms got worse. I couldn’t stop sweating and I vomited twice a day. Fortunately, I was allowed to communicate with my friends and family by using Visicalls, a service introduced in the late 2020’s that allowed people to use a wristwatch sized device to communicate, effectively replacing the mobile phone.

After a fortnight, my condition was declared as severe. By now, more than a thousand people were dead because of the disease. If a treatment wasn’t found soon, I was told that there was a good chance that I was going to die like the thousands of others who were now diagnosed with Green Cloud.

The condition was now so severe that people were not allowed outside their house unless authorized. The news reporters said they were closer to finding treatment but it would still take some time.

I had started to think the worst. I felt so weak that I couldn’t stand. I was told that if there was no cure found within a month, there was a chance my organs would fail.

Being a patient had one benefit. I knew exactly how the research was going. I was given an exclusive add-on to my Visicall which gave me up-to-date information regarding the treatment’s development. This also doubled as a communication line with the hospital staff.

With every passing day, I lost more hope. Every minute of every day, I would stare at the 24 hour coverage of the development lab on the other side of the world. They seemed so calm. Didn’t they realise I was dying? I was just a statistic to them.

The end of the month was now only twelve days away. I was a lab rat and was being tested by anything that had a remote chance of working. Of course, nothing did. All it brought was more pain and weakness.

When there was one week left, the virus in me weakened, taking my body with it. It could no longer spread to others but still controlled me. The good thing about this was that I didn’t have to be in quarantine any more. I still had to stay in the hospital but this meant others could visit me.

After that month of loneliness, I got to see my friends. My family also flew from England to see me once this freedom was announced.

I was glad I could this week with my family. It was the best week of my life. Unfortunately, a few days later, they were forced to leave. The hospital started overflowing with Green Cloud patients and it became too dangerous to have any visitors.

I knew there was nothing I could do any more so I just stared at the vaccine development lab on my Visicall again. Like always, the scientists were at their machines, looking at things I couldn’t see. However, there was something different. There appeared to be more scientists than usual.

Suddenly, a scientist came running in from off screen. I switched on the volume. I couldn’t work out who was saying it, but what I heard alerted me.

“Eureka!”

All the scientists gathered around a sick patient who was connected to a heart monitor. The patient was close to death. One of the scientists inserted a needle into the bicep of the patient and after a few seconds, his heart rate stabilised and there was a round of applause in the room.

I tried to laugh in joy but instead I was overcome with a fit of coughing. I held my hand to my mouth and felt blood. I was running out of time. I pressed a button by the side of my bed and within a minute, I was surrounded by life support systems and doctors who were trying to save me till the new vaccine was available.

Thankfully, a relatively new technology that could detect the substances inside a formula took multiple tests of the new vaccine and a report was sent to my hospital. It took almost an hour to recreate the vaccine and another hour to vaccinate the people before me. I couldn’t take it any more. A few minutes felt like a few years. I closed my eyes and heard the heart monitor next to me slow down, and then came the flat line.

The next thing I remember was that I slowly opened my eyes. I looked at my arm and noticed a cover over the place where the needle had just been inserted. The heart monitor sounded steady. Over the next few weeks, I slowly recovered. I was one of the lucky ones, because they found I only had a mild case of the virus. I hate to think what others might have gone through.