Tales from the ARVInn

Chapter 11
Patient Zero

Chapter Description: While many AR-Adults went about their lives quietly and some hid themselves away, others were quite open about their lives. One such person, a member of the original cohort of victims, is K.G., who is known and respected in his home community.

Tales from the ARVInn: Patient Zero

Of the 28 members of Professor Kadalys class, only seven are known to have developed the ARV-syndrome.  They were located in a number of countries, around the world, which complicated their identification for years until WHO completed its massive research project around the turn of the 22^nd century. 

Three members of this cohort are deceased, one by his own hand and two others in accidents.  The remaining four living today are notably unchanged physically from their initial regression.  Three of them have refused to be publicly identified, other than in general terms.  The fourth has been more forthcoming but uses an alias for public purposes.  Known as “K.G.”, he is a resident of Augsburg, Germany and is involved in a family business. ^{1 2}  His apparent age is given as age 5 and his birth year as 2024.  He published an autobiographical work in 2106, titled “Patient Null, Kind für immer” (Patient Zero, Child forever).  It details some of the struggles and accomplishments he has had since contracting the virus.  A picture identified as him was included in the book.  The book has had moderate success, but has also met with accusations of falsehoods, which were denied without releasing more information.

There are fewer than 10 others from the class who are still living.  None of them has chosen to be publicly identified and all that is known is that they are residents of a number of different countries around the world.  All were interviewed by WHO as a part of the ARV research work.

What has been published has traced the initial phase of the ARV outbreak along the routes of travel that those students took as they returned home for the summer.  Due to the rapidity of travel and the variations in the incubation time of the virus, outbreaks took place almost at the same time all along the routes, whether they were buses, trains or planes.  It took only a few days for cases to begin occurring, and only a few weeks for them to become widespread, since the disease and its vectors were completely new and unknown.

From Brogara, most traveled to Ostrava, the regional capital, whose airport, bus and train stations provided connections.  Many boarded flights from Ostrava or nearby Katowice, Poland, making connections all over Europe on their way home.  Some few travelled by car, as well, since a four-hour drive could take one as far as Warsaw or Vienna.  Reasonable train fares led a number to Vienna and Warsaw also. 

In his autobiography, K.G. [Karl Gustav] recounts his uncomfortable almost nine-hour train ride to Augsburg, as he had waited and could only get a second-class ticket. ³ He notes that he probably had begun spreading the virus by the end of the ride, as he was feeling ill by then.  He was hospitalized only 3 days after returning home.  By the time the university classes began again in late August, he was already much younger, reaching his bounce point in October.  It was ten years later before he completed, mostly online, the master’s program in business which he had begun earlier.  He stated he did so only to formalize what he was already doing, as his family business, producing medical equipment, had given him ample opportunity to learn experientially much of what he studied.

K.G. remembers vividly his mother’s disappointment that he came home sick, as the extended family had planned a group summer vacation to the Amalfi coast in Italy which was to have begun ten days after his return.  By then, he was fully involved in the effects of the virus and was barely conscious of his surroundings.  Because of the disorientation from the fever associated with the early stages, standard procedure quickly became to sedate those who had it.  His family missed their vacation, but his ever-practical father lost little money on it, as he had taken out travel insurance, as was his habit.  He told the family they’d lost money on a trip years before when K.G. was a toddler, because of illness, and he wasn’t going to let that happen again.

As it became apparent that K.G. was being affected by the new disease that was cropping up around the world, a strict quarantine was placed on him and on his family.  He was in isolation in the hospital, while his family were basically under house arrest in their home for the following six weeks, by which time it was clear none of them were affected.  The number of cases in Augsburg rose steadily for the first couple of weeks, then declined slightly and remained fairly constant for the following year.  K.G. was released from the hospital in early November and advised to remain at home for a couple of months. 

He states that his family didn’t know how to treat him when he came home.  They couldn’t decide if he was young or old.  He even notes that a couple of episodes of bedwetting didn’t help his case at all.  This remained a problem for several years, he notes, and can still happen even now, in the right circumstances.  He also had to become accustomed to his much smaller body and learn how to move about.  It took him several months to become secure enough to venture out in public, even with family.  Even though the authorities had announced that ARV-victims were not contagious after they bounced, many people were scared to even look at them.  There were episodes where victims were assaulted in various ways out on the streets.

Over the next year, K.G. developed a number of new interests, including the family business.  He began to help his father at the office.  At first, he was relegated to menial tasks, but soon demonstrated he was capable of quite a bit more.  As he learned the procedures and systems, he began to do data entry for orders and materials.  Over the following years, he developed a knack for design that let him create some new product ideas for the company.  When he finally decided to complete his degree, he finished what normally was two years’ work in just over half that time, noting that much of what he was seeing was what he was already doing for the company.  His degree was awarded with distinction.

K.G. remains today an active part of the company as a senior member of the board and senior product engineer. ⁴ His nieces and nephews are active in the company, as his parents are deceased and his two brothers and sister have retired from active management roles. 

His decision to release his autobiography was met with some resistance in the family, but the resulting publicity probably helped the company as much as anything, he notes, as sales actually rose during the following year more than any other recent one.  He has been an active member of the community, so his identity is something of an open secret to much of Augsburg, but kept confidential as a mark of respect.

Written 17 January 2111

¹ Image: public domain pictures at pexels.com

² Image by thfr from Pixabay

³ Image by Francik Woło.... from Pixabay

⁴ Image by Mary Pahlke from Pixabay; edited