The sun had yet to rise.
I was on my sixth or seventh coffee when I heard foot steps coming down the stairs. It irritated me to no end and I let Gomez know it when he peeked through the glass door of my office. I gave him the one finger salute.
He opened the door a crack, stuck his head through and said, "what's up with you this morning, you're as mean and cranky as a sleep deprived billy-goat?"
"Nothing that a good bowl of sugar coated bacon flakes couldn't fix you tub soaking aristocrat."
"Goddamn it Jim, I'm a chef not a doctor, but with a diet like yours I swear your microbiome is corrupted. If I wasn't completely unsure, I'd say you are fiber starved."
He was right. I had been starved for micro-nutrients long before this virus thing got out of control. I was moping around our tiny London flat stuffing my insecurities with white rice and rendered pork fat. Lock-down or no lock-down something would have to be done and soon.
The next day we pulled in for a hot cup of black gold at a run down cafe in the south side of Cairo. I sat and enjoyed the scenery while Gomez went off to commandeer a 10 hp round-a-bout down in the delta quarter. That's the tough part of Cairo where the Nile spills into the Atlantic. Foreigners like Gomez and I were seen as troublemakers and I was worried I'd never see Gomez again. I chastised myself, I should have went with him.
Gomez, though, is a wily character and in no time he and I were motoring up the Nile with the aim of entering into the dark heart of the Amazon jungle. We were in search of a lost tribe of fiber eaters famous for their microbial diversity. I was hoping to get a transplant.
The question was, will this collection of primeval microbes work to heal my faltering digestive system? I knew we were taking a chance. It was all a crap shoot, but I figured it was a chance worth taking.
My guts had been leaking into my bloodstream for days, possibly years. I was slipping into some kind of anaphylactic withdrawal. We hadn't eaten proper food since God knows when and my ears had swollen then turned the shape and shade of a blown Pinto tire. I was afraid if this should turn out to be my last trip to Buenos Dias I wanted to at least go out in style. I throttled down and gave her the gas.
It all started back in the 70's. I was involved in the very first Fiatso study. I was told, and I quote, when we pass through our mother's birth canal we are slathered in our mother's microbes, a kind of starter culture for our own microbial community. Sure, it's not pretty, but it's necessary. But the thing is, and I'm a perfect example, if our mother's diet is poor, which it was, then she undergoes a microbial extinction event that has dire manipulations for her offspring. It's generational. And to make matters worse I was born immature. I was a house of cards waiting to be blown over.
We floated upstream all night and reached Papua New Guinea in the morning. When we arrived there were already several boats mired to a rickety dock. I was crestfallen. "Damn it Gomez, I think someone has beaten us to the punch."
"Jim, I'm a scientist not a surgeon, it's okay, they're just scholars cataloguing an echo system that may soon disappear. It's your microbiome doing this to you. Snap out of it.
He was right. My head was in a fog and I couldn't think straight. We were here to find the key to life itself. I had completely forgotten the purpose of our mission.
A trail led from the river into the thick jungle. Gomez and I followed it. We descended a steep incline and brushed aside unfamiliar biodiversity. Eventually we entered a camp that can only be described as urban pastoral. Several thatched huts circled an immaculate seven story apartment dwelling that glinted in the evening sun. All the windows were open. I could see people hanging out inside. On the ground were various people milling about the entrance in a synagogue of confusion. They appeared to be in an argument.
A man wearing nothing but a bandana over his face and a ball cap came across the clearing to greet us. He was tall, thin and his hair puffed out around the edges of his hat. He stuck out his hand, "John Snow out of Roswell, New Mexico. The hairs rose on the back of my neck. He had an accent I couldn't place and the virus had preceded us to this remote destination, and worse, I knew that name somewhere from the dankest moments of my inglorious past.
No comments:
Post a Comment