Circle Seven

"Circle Seven" is included as prelude No. 13 in *The Juno Contingency (novel).*

## Teaser

In a world ravaged by drug-resistant superbugs, a medical researcher joins a powerful health agency that controls the population.

## Plot

### 1. Circle One

In Pura megacity, the emergence of many drug-resistant superbugs has led to public health being managed by a quasi-governmental medical agency called the Circles. This agency rations antibiotics, determines who receives medical care, and maintains cordons sanitaires that strictly segregate the population based on drug resistance. Lian is a newly graduated genetics researcher who, along with his girlfriend, Retta, and friend, Chancery, have all been admitted to Circle One as junior researchers. Chancery had the worse grades, but he jokes that he got in because his parents are in the upper echelons of the Circles.

The three enjoy the collegial atmosphere and many perks of their workplace, where internal screens trumpet the results of medical trials and play interviews of the Circles' leader, Dr. Brodt. The elderly Brodt broadcasts from the highest level of Circle Seven and exhorts the workers to continue their research to find the Final Cure for the diseases that plague humanity. The friends also work to improve their Identity Scores, with higher scores granting access to the safer, cleaner environments of the higher Circles.

The friends soon start to refer to the outside world derisively by the internal jargon of "Circle Zero." Reports circulate of bioterror attacks outside from an anti-government group known as the Phage. One researcher is caught in such an attack and killed by a mutant virus. Lian and Retta attend the funeral where his linen-wrapped body is fed into a transport chute for disposal. Afterwards they decide to join the growing movement to "cut zero" and live only within the safe, sterile confines of the Circles.

### 2. Circle Two

The three work hard and are quickly promoted to Circle Two. Lian and Retta become engaged, but Lian realizes Chancery is becoming jealous of them. Lian and Retta decide to celebrate their engagement at the site of their first date, a restaurant out in circle zero. During dinner a Phage bioterrorist detonates a vacuum inside the same shopping complex. Lian and Retta attempt to flee but the block is quickly locked down by Medical Police who capture and sedate everyone.

Lian awakes in an isolation cell and is told the bioweapon infected everyone with a multi–drug-resistant pathogen. Treatment is only available to people in Circle Four and above, and Lian's Identity Score is too low to qualify. Lian calls his supervisor and strikes a bargain for him to find the cure to a disease he has been studying so that he can raise his score enough to qualify him and Retta for Circle Four. His supervisor is incredulous that Lian could cure the disease he has been working on for months already, but she assures him that, if he does, both he and Retta will rise to Circle Four.

Lian gets access to a computer console and works feverishly as his symptoms worsen. He becomes increasingly febrile and vomits over his computer, but ultimately his work with advanced neural networks produces the new drugs and proteins that will cure the disease he was assigned to study. His supervisor validates the results and the nurses rush in to treat him just as he passes out.

### 3. Circle Four

Lian wakes up in Circle Four, which he is told is a much more sterile and controlled environment. Anybody who has entered here can never leave to a lower Circle because the advanced antibiotics they've been given cannot be allowed to leak to the outside world and produce more drug resistance. Lian asks what happened to Retta, but learns that she expired of the disease before Lian finished his work. His supervisor allows him to watch the mass funeral where multiple bodies are loaded into the transport chute.

Lian is set to work on advancing the protein prototypes he developed to cure more diseases and to extend human longevity, but his work is distracted as he mourns Retta. Now confined to Circle Four, he travels the magtubes that loop between the dozen research centers that are the only places he is allowed to visit. Circle Four also has common occurrences known as "purges," where a biohazard leak or chance mutation leads to the lockdown and quarantining of whole sectors, with few affected being heard from again.

As he continues his research, Lian reads internal papers being published by someone with the same speciality as Retta but under a different name. He gradually pieces together that there are multiple competing research centers operating inside the Circles, and that Retta may be alive but in a different pod than he. The names are scrambled when results are shared between pods in the name of fostering competition, but he suspects the authorities may have told her that Lian died in quarantine, too, in order to isolate them and make them work harder.

Chancery becomes Lian's new supervisor and talks with him over video conference from Circle Three, where Chancery has been promoted but is still allowed to travel to the outside world. He gives Lian a nearly impossible task to cure another deadly disease, and Lian's work proceeds sluggishly.

One day Lian is in the mess hall when he feels delirious and a purge klaxon sounds, initiating quarantine. Lian wakes up in another isolation cell and is told his latent infection has mutated a further drug resistance. There is a cure, but his Score is too low, as only people in Circle Six are allowed access to it. Lian makes the same bargain as before with Chancery, to finish his work in order to earn his treatment. As he works he surreptitiously takes samples of his own blood and begins to suspect that his maladies are fictitious. Nonetheless, he finds the cure for the disease he's been studying and is allowed to advance to Circle Six.

### 4. Circle Seven

Lian now resides in Circle Six, a windowless building of only a hundred people in a highly sterile environment. To limit the conditions under which bacteria can mutate, everything is disposable, everyone wears medical scrubs, and even the lamps only shine a single wavelength of light, which eliminates color from the world. The top floor of the building houses Circle Seven, the residence of Dr. Brodt, whom Lian now realizes must be the most frail and infected creature in the Circles.

Immediately Lian is put to work finding cures for more advanced maladies and attempting to translate his findings into a Final Cure. In reality he's figured out that the diseases he's been studying are really disguised forms of senescence, and that the cures he's developed are just used to prolong the human lifespan—he suspects for the benefit of Dr. Brodt and the elites of the top floor.

Lian is given an assignment to deliver a drug cocktail to Dr. Brodt. He loads the syringe and a minder takes him up to Circle Seven. Unlike the windowless rooms of Circle Six, he is surprised to find this is a luxurious penthouse with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the center of the megacity. Lian approaches a man behind a screen, and Dr. Brodt instructs him to put the syringe down.

Lian instead pulls back the screen and finds Chancery seated there, using a modulator to produce Brodt's voice. Lian is shocked, asking if Chancery was always Dr. Brodt. Chancery laughs and explains that Brodt is just a figurehead created to keep "all the little white mice" of the Circles running around doing their research. Chancery and his parents are part of Echelon, the real power behind the government. Since Chancery was Lian's supervisor, they let him run Lian's "Brodt Test." Whenever someone's loyalty is suspected, they give them an opportunity to confront Dr. Brodt. The loyal ones will simply deliver the syringe and leave, whereas the disloyal ones will expose themselves to whomever is seated in Brodt's chair.

Lian asks where Retta is, and Chancery confirms that he arranged the Phage attack to separate the two of them. Retta was treated and told that Lian had died so that Chancery could have her to himself. Lian asks if anything about the Phage or the Circles is real, and Chancery confirms that everything indeed once was real, but no one knows what the line between fact and fiction is any longer ...

*Read the conclusion "5. Sub-Zero" on Amazon.*