The Milner Device - 1. Chapter 1

It had been almost twenty years since the war had ended. Nobody knew who started it, or how it started, and in all honesty, the surviving population didn’t really care. Regardless of who started it, the United Kingdom finished it; and boy did they finish it.

It all began following a worldwide famine in the early part of 2027. A new type of locust had been genetically engineered in an attempt to control a recent population explosion of locusts. Unfortunately, things did not go according to plan, someone had screwed up big time; the engineered locusts were far more ravenous than their ordinary cousins and they obliterated the grain harvests the world over. From that point on, the world slowly descended into chaos and anarchy.

Wars erupted within the Indo-China Alliance and South America, Belgium descended into civil war, and the old animosities between France and the United Kingdom resurfaced in a big way with numerous skirmishes occurring in The English Channel. Governments fell like dominos the world over and monarchies were overthrown.

Jeffery was in the kitchen with Jessica, his wife, having breakfast.

“Are you feeling better now honey?”

“No, not really. I’m still nauseous and can’t keep anything down.”

“It’s been three weeks, I want you to go and see the doctor.”

“I know you are concerned, but if I was going to contract Milner’s Disease I would have done so by now. I’m nineteen and you know as well as anyone that if you haven’t contracted Milner’s Disease by the time you are sixteen, then you are immune. I know we have both lost school friends to it over the years: Joanna when she was only six, Peter and Sandra when they were ten, and Phillip was fourteen. I’ve already got an appointment to see Doctor Taylor this afternoon, so we’ll know what’s wrong.”

The war, which had started on October 8th 2039, ended horrifically on February 12th 2041, a day that is remembered as the day the Earth died. That was the day that mankind really showed just how bad ‘bad’ could get. When Julius Robert Oppenheimer saw the destruction caused by the first atom bomb, he’d quoted the Hindu scripture the Bhagavad Gita, “Now, I am become Death. The destroyer of worlds.” An estimated one hundred and twenty five thousand died from the initial explosions in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with that figure rising to an estimated high of two hundred and fifty thousand in the immediate aftermath; however, that death and destruction was nothing compared to the carnage inflicted by the Milner Device.

Vincent Archibald Milner was a research scientist from the United Kingdom, who in direct violation of numerous international treaties – including The Geneva Protocol of 1925, The Chemical Weapons Convention Signed of 1993, and the more recent Quebec Accords of 2022 – developed a biochemical weapon of unimagined power and evil. The United Kingdom’s government became convinced that the development of the weapon was a necessity; they had been led to believe that other countries had developed similar weapons, and so the only way to protect themselves was to also develop those same weapons.

Professor Milner had weaponised a strain of viral haemorrhagic fever called Marburg. There was an outbreak of this virus in a province of Angola called Uíge in 2004. There were three hundred and seventy four confirmed infected cases with an eighty-eight percent death rate; the United Nations declared it the worst epidemic of any haemorrhagic fever outbreak at anytime, anywhere in the world. The weaponised strain developed by Vincent Milner made that Marburg outbreak look like the common cold.

“Professor Milner, good afternoon. What are the developments?”

“General Marlbrek, I believe we are about ready to begin testing. I have isolated the ventilation system in the test room from the rest of the complex and the test subjects are in place.”

Following the rise to power of a radical prime minister in 2018, the United Kingdom had become far more militaristic, and far quicker to use military strength. By 2026, the ruling government had abolished the monarchy, democratic elections, had replaced the police force with the military, and had withdrawn from the Eurasian Hegemony and its treaties. The ‘test subjects’ as they were euphemistically called, were actually criminals who were serving lengthy prison sentences for a variety of heinous crimes.

“We are all set, Professor,” said the young lab tech.

Professor Milner turned toward General Marlbrek. “With your permission General?”

“Proceed.”

Professor Milner turned the dial which activated the release mechanism. He watched in anxious anticipation as a gas slowly entered the test room via the ventilation system. Nothing happened for the first hour, or the first two hours or even the first three hours. But as hour four arrived, the first signs of infection showed; one of the test subjects started coughing up blood.

Over the next fourteen hours, ninety eight out of the other ninety nine test subjects began showing symptoms. Professor Milner couldn’t believe it, a ninety-nine percent infection rate. In his forty years in medical research, he’d never encountered a pathogen with a ninety-nine percent infection rate. It was beyond anything he had hoped or even dreamed for; he had planned on a virus with a ninety percent infection rate, may be ninety-five percent.

“Well professor, a ninety-nine percent infection rate is remarkable. What is the chance of the last person becoming infected?”

“At this stage, given the speed at which this virus infects, now that we are at plus nineteen hours, there is no way he will become infected; you have to expect that a certain percentage of the population will be immune. You call this virus ‘remarkable’ General Marlbrek, I call this truly gobsmacking. A virus like this would prove a formidable weapon. No nation would dare to attack us now for fear of reprisal.”

“I agree. I have already spoken with my chain of command and with the Prime Minister, and mass production of this virus is to begin immediately.”

“But General, we have not yet finished collecting data. Just because we have a ninety-nine percent infection rate, this virus might have a zero percent mortality rate. We just won’t know until the virus runs its course.”

“How long do you need? We cannot delay the production of this virus; it is the only thing protecting us from our enemies.”

“Most haemorrhagic fevers kill quickly if untreated. We’ll monitor for three days and see where we are.”

As it turned out, Professor Milner and General Marlbrek didn’t have to wait for three days, they didn’t even have to wait two days for that matter. A mere three hours after their conversation, they saw the first death. By the end of the day, the other infected test subjects had died.

“Dear God in Heaven!”

“You can say that again Professor. A ninety-nine percent infection rate and a one hundred percent mortality rate. Twenty-four hours from infection to death; I seriously doubt the Military Commission expected anything even close to this. You will begin full scale production of the virus at once. At once!”

“Yes, General.” As he headed off to his laboratory, Professor Vincent Archibald Milner thought to himself, “For what I am being asked to do, may God in Heaven forgive me.”

What became known as The Milner Device was launched on January 28^th 2041. However, something went wrong; badly, horribly wrong. Nobody knows, or at least nobody will admit to knowing, who the intended target was. Instead of what was presumably planned as a surgical strike against a single nation, the weapon exploded at 40000 feet and the virus was disseminated the world over.

The first signs of infection showed up simultaneously in Italy and Russia; that was the first indicator of just how badly things had gone wrong. The next day, the virus started appearing in Mexico, New Zealand, and Canada. Seven days after launch, there was not one country anywhere in the world that was free of infection; it had spread around the globe far quicker than the 1918 Spanish influenza pandemic, and was far more lethal.

By the time the world declared peace (or more accurately, what was left of the world was forced into declaring peace), a mere two weeks following the launch of The Milner Device, a staggering seven and a half billion were dead. The United Kingdom hadn’t been spared from this tragedy, not by any means; only three hundred people survived out of a population of seventy one million.

Unfortunately, this devastation was just the beginning. The virus turned out to be far more pernicious than anyone expected. The virus remained in the atmosphere, and even today twenty years after the Milner Device was launched, people were still being infected with, and killed by, the virus.

Nobody knows why some of the population is immune to the virus; they simply are. There has been no identified commonality amongst the immune: all blood groups have shown immunity; all races and creeds have shown immunity; both males and females have shown immunity. The only thing that is known with any certainty is that if an individual survives until they reach their sixteenth birthday, then they are immune.

Even now, with an estimated worldwide birth rate of fifty thousand live births a year, only four hundred and twenty one children survive to the age of sixteen and reach adulthood. In the early twenty-first century, humanity was struggling with controlling an overburdening birth rate and an unsustainable population; in one moment of insanity and pure stupidity, the United Kingdom had solved both problems.

Jessica sat nervously in the waiting room at the doctor’s. She was flicking through a data pad with the latest news stories, though since the Milner Device news is not exactly what it used to be. There was no more news of how much money has been wiped off the Dow Jones, or how well the New York Yankees have done, or which politician has been arrested, or which celebrity has a new hair style. These days, news consisted of the names and locations of those children who are lucky enough to have survived to see their sixteenth birthday, stories of school plays, all those things that in the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries were relegated to the back pages are now big news. There were no more announcements of new medical breakthroughs, new astronomy discoveries; after all how can there be new discoveries when the members of the scientific community who are left alive barely understand the more advanced technology.

“Jessica Mansville?”

Jessica put down the pad and followed the doctor into his office.

“So Jessica, what’s wrong?”

“I’ve been feeling nauseous for the last couple of weeks and I can’t keep food down.”

“Any fever, diarrhoea, cramps?”

“No, just the nausea.”

“OK, hop up onto the couch and I’ll take a look.”

Dr Taylor examined Jessica but couldn’t find anything obviously wrong. “You can get dressed now, Jessica. I couldn’t find anything obviously wrong, but I’ll do a blood test and I also want a urine sample.”

As Jessica was getting ready to leave she asked, “So how long will it take to get the results?”

“Since our lab is on site, we should have the results back later on this afternoon. Can you come back around four?”

“Yeah, that won’t be a problem.”

Jessica went around town to pass the time, but it’s not like it was before the Milner Device. Sure, there are still bookshops, the library, cinemas, and coffee shops, but there was nothing new; there hadn’t been a new film or a new published book since before the war.

In the lab, Dr Taylor ran his tests twice just to be sure they were right.

Jessica re-entered the doctor’s office and the receptionist alerted Dr Taylor.

“Jessica, come on through.”

Dr Taylor closed the door behind himself. “Jessica, first of all I want to assure you that you don’t have Milner’s Disease.”

“That’s good news, but given my age I would have been surprised if it was Milner’s. So what’s wrong?”

“You’re pregnant. Congratulations.”

“I’m what?” However, Jessica’s initial feelings of elation gave way to the realisation as to the threat facing her unborn child. “I can’t be. I mean Jeffery and I have always used precautions. I’ve been on the pill and Jeffrey has always used condoms.”

“Sometimes nature has a way of getting round these things. Though since you were using precautions, can I take it that you weren’t planning on a pregnancy yet?”

“We had decided to never have a child. We felt that it wouldn’t have been fair to have a child, to watch it risking it life every single day, hoping against hope that we would get to be one of the lucky few who had a child that lived.”

“Since I could feel nothing on your physical examination, though I’d like to do an ultrasound just to confirm, you are clearly still in your first trimester.”

“What has that got to do with anything?”

“It means you have . . . options.”

“You can’t seriously mean termination!” Jessica stormed out of the doctor’s office and ran home in tears.

When she got home, she was still shaken and disturbed over what Dr Taylor had implied.

Jeffrey ran over to his wife. “Honey, what’s wrong?”

“I’m pregnant.”

“Oh, honey.” Jeffrey held his wife tightly. Once she had calmed down, Jeffrey went into the kitchen to get her a glass of water. “I know we’d never planned on having a child, but why are you so upset?”

Jessica sipped on her water. “Dr Taylor told me that since I am still so early on in the pregnancy that a termination is an option.”

“I know how you feel, honey. We both agreed to using contraception, precisely to avoid having to even consider making this kind of decision. We both agreed that we weren’t prepared to bring a child into a world where they have less than a one in one hundred chance of being immune.

“Look at Nancy Anders. She’s had seven children in the past eleven years and not one of them has made it past the age of nine. It must be soul destroying to watch your child die in that manner, and then bury them; and she’s had to go through it seven times! You know as well as I do, she’s one step away from the nuthouse. If she has another child and it doesn’t survive, it will kill her! I’m not prepared to see you go through that kind of heartache.”

Jessica wrapped her arms around her belly, trying to cradle her as yet unborn child.

“Jeffrey, Professor Milner killed over seven billion people. The disease he created is still taking the lives of children. Once I was old enough to realise the lottery that the life of me, and my friends, and all the other children in the world was, I hated my parents for bringing me into the world and for making me watch friends of mine die. I never forgave them for the risk they were playing with my life, just to give them the damned satisfaction of having a child! How can I bring a child into this world? What right do I have to roll the dice with the life of my child? But how can I add to the death toll? How can I seriously consider an abortion when there are families out there who would kill for a child?”

Jeffrey stood in silence behind his wife, with his arms wrapped around his wife. As Jessica’s tears fell anew she had the scariest thought of her young life, “How can I seriously not consider an abortion?”