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“So, you want me to go into the jungle, find a contaminated stream, and take water samples?” Vanessa looked at the Health For Humanity’s project manager, a woman named Sanja Meskal who was in her late fifties, a PhD in microbiology who had not bothered with physical fitness for a very long time. She was aware of her limitations.

“Look at me! It’s either you or Jose.”

Jose Mendez was a MD who had survived a drug cartel’s attempt on his life by means of vehicular homicide that had resulted in both of he legs being amputated just below the knee.

Jose looked over from the microscope. “Seriously?”

Vanessa laughed. “Okay, so… I just follow the road outside the lab until I get to a bridge. Pull over where the fishermen park, and start wading?”

“The guy whose place you took said there are trails along the big stream. When you get to the foot bridge over the little stream, you might have to get your feet wet.”

Vanessa was in a remote village west of Manaus, Brazil on the Parana Badajos tributary to the Amazon River. She had been directed there to help investigate what was believed to be the emergence of an aggressive and far more infectious version of a common amoeba.

Naegleria fowleri, a common amoeba found in all untreated surface waters and soil. Thriving in warm, still waters above 80 degrees Fahrenheit, this amoeba generally coexists harmlessly with swimmers. However, its benign presence can turn perilous through a rare but deadly infection known as Primary Amebic Meningoencephalitis (PAM).

In several areas around Manaus, it appeared that the rarity was drastically reduced. Unprecedented cases were being reported.

PAM unfolds when activities such as diving, jumping, or engaging in water sports like skiing cause water to forcefully enter the nasal passages, carrying the amoeba straight to its unintended destination. Once inside, Naegleria fowleri travels through the nasal mucosa to the brain and spinal cord, beginning its destructive path. There, it wreaks havoc, devouring brain tissue, leading to symptoms that could easily be dismissed as the flu or meningitis: severe headaches, high fever, stiff neck, nausea, and vomiting. As the infection progresses, it becomes more sinister, causing seizures and hallucinations.

Despite its flu-like onset, PAM is far more severe and often fatal, claiming lives within a week of symptom onset. With no known effective treatments, the quiet ripple of a warm lake remains a deceptive facade, concealing a potential predator beneath its serene surface.

The guy whose place Vanessa took, Ciecel Jamerstone, had spearheaded a massive modeling project to locate potential sources of a new strain of the microbe. He had then led researchers to narrow down potential sources, coming to the conclusion that a small pond near the lab was incubating the aggressive Naegleria fowleri. Runoff from the pond flowed into a small stream that fed the Parana Badajos which flowed into the Amazon River.

Ciecel’s progress was stifled when he contracted the condition and was hospitalized.

“Just keep your nose dry,” Jose replied.

The goal was to create, essentially, a selective pesticide that would kill the Naegleria fowleri without doing unpredictable damage to the Rainforest ecosystem. In the first stages of the project, Sanja’s team had carefully packed samples and sent them to a fully equipped lab in Manaus. In the stage they were in when Vanessa arrived, Sanja was in charge of getting samples and testing reagents sent from Manaus to see if they were effective in killing the targeted microorganisms without killing everything else in the water.

Vanessa was to get fresh samples of water from the area Ciecel had located with which the latest potential remedy could be tested. She grabbed the keys to the lab's truck, packed up some sample bottles, put them in a backpack, and headed out.

She found the place to park and found the trail. It was a relatively short hike to where the smaller stream confluxed with the Parana Badajos. The footbridge Sanja mentioned was two discarded telephone poles lashed together with baling wire.

Vanessa scrambled down the bank toward the stream. She slipped a little brushing against a muddy post of the bridge, but she made it down. She found nowhere to walk better than the muddy stream bed. She started upstream as planned.

She was to find the ditch from which the runoff from the pond was coming, then take samples. Vanessa was well aware of how fragile an ecosystem could be. To just blast the pond with chemicals might kill the amoeba, but those chemicals had to go somewhere. Health For Humanity was trying to work with the officials and WHO to find an effective solution that would minimally impact everything else.

She was a little out of her element. A muddy stream in the Amazon Rainforest was far from a clean, often sterile, lab. She’d spent a lot of time since graduating high school in those. The jungle was a different place. She didn’t mind it. It was just…

It’s huge. I’m a tiny organism in a vast ecosystem… 

She had to admit she was a little uneasy.

Vanessa looked back toward the footbridge to make sure it would be obvious when she tried to find her way back to the car with the samples. Then she headed up stream. Jose had said it wasn’t far.

Something niggled her mind that she would get lost. She paused and looked back again to make sure the footbridge was obvious.

It was. She tried to reassure herself that she would be okay, then trudged on.

Vanessa, if she stopped to think about it, loved her job. She didn’t make a lot of money working for a humanitarian agency, but they covered all her expenses. What she loved was that she was on the front line.

She was seeing whatever infectious organism that was causing problems—usually days—before any other immunologist in the world. Her work in Tibet had identified unique markers on the antibiotic-resistant bacteria that was causing all the sicknesses there. Here findings were included as what the first authors of the research papers called “clear proof of non-mutation” between the time of collection and the final examination in the world's most advanced labs.

In essence, the articles all pointed back to her as originally locating traits in the bacteria that allowed for development of effective vaccination protocols. She thought of it as a little moment in the spotlight.

She had come to, according to the GPS coordinates on her smartphone, the location of the culprit ditch. She took out the specimen bottles and collected the samples as planned.

“I’m getting mud all over me.” Her voice sounded strange as it mixed with the jungle sounds that droned all around her.

She had been very careful, though, not to touch her face, especially around her nose. She did not want to find herself facing Ciecel’s fate.

She packed up the bottles and headed back to the car. Seeing the footbridge, she was surprised by her level of relief.

I wasn’t really going to get lost… I have GPS… Vanessa thought she, a scientist, should be above irrational fears.

She stopped at the lab and dropped off the samples, then said to Sanja, “I’m going to the house and taking a shower.”

Jose looked at her. “Blow air out your nose when you wash your face. Whatever you do…”

Vanessa nodded and laughed a little. “Doctor’s orders! You bet.”

The three members of the Health For Humanity team were sharing what had been the main house on a small coffee plantation. It had been abandoned when the owners sold their land to a big corporate farming company.

Vanessa undressed, putting her clothes separate from all her others; she would wash them by themselves, and use bleach. Then she went into the bathroom to clean up.

She knelt in the tub and used the water from the tap to wash. The last thing she thought would be a good idea was to sit in a tub full of water polluted by the mud and muck from the stream. Since coming to Brazil, She generally hadn't filled the tub for a bath, instead creating a makeshift shower by splashing herself from the tap.

Once done with her wash-up, she went to the corner of the big bedroom she shared with Sanja where her bed was and began dressing.

She would have to get back to the lab as quickly as possible to help prepare the samples for testing. She hoped that the reagent the lab Manaus sent this time would be the one.

If not… Well, she knew the way to the pond.

{{{{ FIN }}}}}

• The “AGI” logo used in some images was created by Instagrammer, Luna Fit. (@luna_fit_gamer)

• Whereas this storyline is fictional and includes NSFW content, any agencies or teams mentioned in this story are also fictional, though they might remind readers of real organizations.

• Please remember that Vanessa Lenen is an AI model, a character in Ailana Geven Imagines stories.