Sniffer

Sniffer

Mr. Niffer agreed to grant this interview to KLML only under the proviso that his location not be revealed.  His statements reflect the events that took place last June.

OK so I’m a bit of a mutation myself, but I’m certainly no Germ. Germs, that’s where I come in. Phineas S. Niffer, one of a long line of Sniffers who, long ago, like the Turners and the Carpenters, changed our name to what we do--“Sniffer.” It’s my job to use my highly mutated olfactory apparatus to sniff out those scourges of humanity called Germs. Yes, ladies and gents, I can smell germs—detect the substances they emit when I stick my proboscis down a Citizen’s throat and inhale their colonies deeply. Even just a few thousand little Helicobacter pylori scrunched up in the folds of a stomach lining sends my primitive archicortex into convulsions like you’ve never seen.

Sniffing is our Gift and our Curse.  Gift, because what that old, hidden part of the brain does to the rest of the central nervous system is like fresh bread, that first shot of Royal Lochnagar, and the best orgasm ever, rolled into one. Curse, because imagine walking down the street bombarded by E. coli, S. aureus, and the not-infrequent-enough N. gonorrhoeae every step you take!

Sniffer work is steady, very well-paid, fun (see above) and essential to keeping our country Clean and our borders GermFree. Clean Citizens, Clean Clear Through, C⁴T, that’s President Rickles’s slogan, and that’s what we aim to do.  Sometimes when I walk through Mill City in my Sniffer uniform, I turn my head and give a fake Sniff to see some guy grab his jacket tighter (as if that can cover up the stench of a Strep infection!) and hurry away. I saunter on, grinning to myself.

But I digress. Last June...

I’d signed in, put on my gear including the plastic chest shield in case some mope might throw up on me, when in comes Norman, my least favorite Preparer.  Preparers control our schedules, but that doesn’t mean that we like ‘em.  Norman’s arrogant, pompous, and aspires to being something he’ll never be—a Sniffer.

“Hey, Mr. S., how’s it going?” Norman said. “Ready for a long evening?”

“Yes, Mr. Strong,” I said, formal-like to preserve professional distance. “That’s why I’m here.  A regular evening is a long evening.”

“Got a little challenge for you tonight.  Pretty interesting.” Norm’s last “challenge” was a derelict who smelled like a toilet but turned out to be Cleaner than Clean. I’d always wondered whether Norm had set me up.

“Room 2, all ready, go for it!” Irritated, I went for it.

SmellRoom 2 is my favorite because it’s got the best view of the sunset. As I entered, the light hit me full-on and distracted me from the rest of the room and what was in it.

Or who, I should say.  Against the green chlorine sunset, I saw a woman.  I liked Sniffing women: you had to get up close (obviously), and sometimes they offered you some extra, let’s say, contact, if they thought it would influence your decision. (Of course, I was never seriously swayed). I liked being inside them the Sniffer way, even though it wasn’t like the other way; they felt soft and didn’t hit you and usually didn’t throw up and didn’t have beards that scratched you on the way down.

So, “Kate Berg” (her name was on the sign outside the door) was about 26 and the most beautiful person I’d ever seen: skin like rich-creamed coffee, black black black hair shiny like the deepest water where nothing lives, pearly teeth in jaws begging to be parted gently so that I could get my nose down real deep.

I could smell the fear coming off her. And I could smell something else.

She was infected, big-time.  Colonies galore, but I was hooked. I knew the one-way bridge I was going to cross and what I was going to report about this woman. Nothing. A big fat nothing. “Cleanest girl ever”, I’d write in my report.  (How could I even contemplate lying? My world was changing right before my eyes! And I was loving every minute!)

“Good evening. Nice sunset. Let’s get started, OK?” We’re supposed to Sniff two Citizens per hour, and my numbers are always top of the chart. But she asked, “Could we talk a little first?” This wasn’t unusual, especially for a woman.  “Yep!” I said, putting on Friendly Face Number 4 from the Sniffer Manual.

Kate looked toward the window. Stink, did she have a perfect profile! That nose, long and straight, begging to be invaded!

“Listen, I think I’m…” she said, and a big tear ran down her left cheek. I had to stop myself from licking it off. I was already in pretty flagrant olfactory mode, as you can imagine. My nose quivered.

“Ms. Berg, do you have something to tell me?” She tightened those rosy lips and said, “I think I’m infected. And it wasn’t my fault.”

She looked at me. “I must tell someone. It’s eating me up.” Who better than me to tell? I Smell you. I Love you. I want to take care of you forever. Yeah, I know it’s eating you up; that’s what Germs do.

Kate continued. “I know about Germs. I teach at the medical school. Microbiology. A guy, Bob, works in my lab, C⁴T-Certified, they all are over at Micro. We were working on samples from a Clean who’d come down with a serious infection!”

“Too bad,” I said.

Kate nodded. “The microorganism was very, very hungry, and we worked together a lot. At night.”

I imagined what was coming next.

“I see what you’re thinking.  Bob did…pursue… me.” Kate’s face was bright pink, just begging to be licked. I could almost feel her skin under my wet tongue, pliable yet firm, slightly oily just how I like it, and the thought of getting into the folds at the edge of her nose, and then into her nostrils then up into the mucosa itself…the snot. OMG… Back to reality. 

“Well, I wasn’t interested. The chemistry just wasn’t there.” 

“So, what happened?” I asked in, I hoped, a neutral tone.

“One night he brought my favorite chocolates (Dirty Dozens) and the sweetest card, an incubator with embryos that said ‘Want to Oven With Me?’  But you can’t base fertilization on sweetness, so I said, ‘Bob, you’re very dear to me. But that’s not the right feeling to start a family with.’” He asked whether there was anyone else, and I told him, not at all.”

Good, I thought.

“Well, it was awful.” More big, juicy drops. This time, I couldn’t stop myself and I leaned in and licked them off. Heaven. Better than Heaven: sweet and salty, tart too, with a little mucous from her runny nose.

“I just didn’t want the room to get contaminated,” I explained. Really lame.

She was into her story now. “Bob had prepared for rejection, in a really awful way. If he couldn’t have me, then no one else would. He reached out a hand, and I thought, OK, the drama’s over—and then I felt it.”

“What? You felt what?” I asked, although I already knew.

“A little stick, like with a pin. Bob had Lancers, and he used up four of them before I could Stun him and 911 for help!”

Lancers are the black-market weapon of choice to get back at someone you think has wronged you. One prick with a germ-laden Lancer can get you sent away maybe forever, depending on what you’ve infected your victim with.

“Don’t be afraid,” I told her. “It’s going to be OK.” Our eyes locked. And then we were done for. It lasted a long, long time, and it was the most wonderful deep wet snotty Sniff I’d ever executed. Her body surrounded mine, I went in all the way, and her esophagus and even the top part of her stomach rose up to meet me. My hands were busy as hell and so were hers with other body parts, enough said about that.

Afterwards, we sat back and just looked at each other.

Then reality intervened: Norman on the ViewBox. “Everything OK? You’ve got Citizens waiting.”

This was going to be complicated. I knew Norm had always wanted to become a Sniffer, a genetic impossibility, but still…I could play him.

“Listen, Norm. I’ve got a big opportunity for you, but you have to do exactly as I say. Wanna try?”

“Oh yes yes Mr. N., just tell me what to do!”

Back to the ViewBox. “Open the door slowly.  You have protection, right? Your Moonsuit?” He entered the room.

I yelled “Welcome!”, then pounced on him. I got him down on the floor, with Kate right at my side.

“Mr. N., what’s happening? “Norm asked.  I had no idea— Plan 1 was, “Disguise yourselves and run!”, and there was no Plan 2.  I was hyperventilating and my nose was drying up so fast I could hear it going crunch, crunch (uncomfortable and itchy).

Kate tugged on my sleeve. “Phin, maybe Norm can help.” Norm nodded, Sure I can. He started talking.

“There’s more to me than meets the eye,” he said. “The best way to say it is…I’ve been where you are.” Norm had been a Sniffer? But that was impossible: I knew all the Sniffers in the whole entire United States.

“Spit it out!” I demanded.

Norm talked softly. “I was one of those Sniffers who…go wrong. And it was because of a girl.  A contaminated girl. I thought it would be simple. I knocked my Preparer on the head, ripped off his Moonsuit, grabbed Molly’s hand, and beat it the Smell out of there. Sailed through the airlocks and all the exits, just like you plan to do. All, except the last one.”

“Go on,” I told him.

He nodded. “When we got out into the street, the GPs were waiting for us. Twenty guys stood there with Stunners, sedative Lancers, the works. They locked us in a SmellRoom set up for just this sort of event and brought in an expert Sniffer, a guy I knew from training.”

Norm’s voice grew bitter. “But that wasn’t the worst of it. This room had windows so other people could see the Sniff. We sat there, contaminated, holding each other. They brought in my moms, Molly’s moms, even our Sponors^[1]. I’d let all of them down, gone back on my word and my profession. And my family.”

I was feeling sorry for Norm. Scared, too. That could be us, an hour from now. 

“They scrubbed us down, inside and out; gave us antibiotics and sent us away. Far away.” Norm paused. “But…not together. Where I got taken was OK, comfortable enough.” He sighed. “But there was one thing that was very, very bad.”

Hurry up, Norm!

“They took it away. They took away my Sniff. Gone. Gone.” 

I said, “That’s not possible.” Your Sniff was genetic, inborn. You couldn’t get it if you hadn’t been born with it, and you couldn’t lose it if you had it in your genome.

Norm nodded. “Turns out, your Sniff depends on nerves to unroll your nose, transmit messages to your brain, process odors, etc. They can…cut the nerve fibers. And then you can’t smell a thing.”

“But don’t they grow back?” I asked.

“Theoretically,” said Norm. “For that, you need chemicals called ‘growth factors’, and they blocked those with chemicals. I got shots and …” He shook himself.“…end of story. It’s gone. All gone. Everything that made me, me. Gone.”

What would I do if the thing I was best equipped to do, the thing I loved and was meant to do, were suddenly taken away from me?

No time to ponder abstracts. We had to get out of there.

Quick as a flash, we exchanged clothes, IDs, and facemasks.  We exchanged CleanHugs, then I turned to Kate and said, “No time to waste!”

But she wasn’t where she’d been.

Norm looked almost jaunty now. “Hey, Mr. Niffer, are you looking for your woman? Maybe she just stepped out?”

What had he done with Kate? I lunged across the room to grab him, but he blocked me.  Just then, Kate stepped out from behind the door. 

What in Snot was going on here?

“Kate,” said Norm. His voice was soft but sharp, like a little shower of pebbles dislodged from a cliff by a climber just before he falls. “Or as I knew you…Molly!”

Wait…my Kate was his Molly? Whaaaa…?

Her eyes gleamed with rage and tears. She took a step toward Norm, fists clenched, and he drew back, scared.

She hissed, “Norm, tell Phin the whole story. You owe it to me.”

Norm whispered. “Yes. I do. I...”

Kate interrupted. “Norm only told half the story. It wasn’t ‘us’ who got away and lived ‘comfortably’—it was just one of us, this Booger. We didn’t get caught right here, like Norm said. We MobilMobiled away, got to the forest, but then we heard the sirens. This jerk said to split up. There was a little cabin in the woods, so Norm went there. I just…hid.”

Norm interrupted, “They found me right away…”

“Wait!” I shouted. “You left her there, in the woods? To…starve?”  My dear Kate, crawling around eating…worms? Drinking dirty water?

Norm spat out, “Phin, people live in woods. It was Spring and not cold.”

Kate nodded. “Norm, tell the rest.”

“OK,” he said. “They took me to the station and locked me up. They wanted information out of me, conspiracy theories and so on.  They did…a lot…to get it.”

“But what about Kate?” I asked, the only part of the story I cared about. 

“Yes, Norm, what about me?” Kate asked. “Tell him!” She twisted the skin above his elbow.

“They offered me a deal.” Norm locked eyes with me. “If I’d turn Kate in, they’d reverse the blockers and give me my Sniff back eventually.  They promised to let her go. No rough stuff.”

“But they lied,” he continued. “We went back to the woods, they caught her and locked her away. They forces us to meet every month so I’d see how bad things could get.”

Kate looked at me. “Phin, it was awful, worse than you can imagine. They acted like I’d committed a worse crime than Norm, even though he’d broken the Sniffer oath. It was filthy, the food was awful, and I lived in a cell with three truly crazy people.”

I asked, “How long?”

“Ten months,” she said. “Until last August.” Nobody spoke for a while.

“But,” I waved my hand around the room, “Why are you here?”

Kate sighed. “A condition of release was that I get Sniffed every month where Norm works, so that we’d never run away again.” She glared at Norm. “I wouldn’t even talk to this MucusMind if I didn’t have to!”

It had just been the luck of the draw that I’d gotten Kate on my Sniff list. And then we’d fallen in love.

“OK.” Time was getting short and we had to leave the past behind. “Norm, will you help? Sort of a… ‘least you can do’, kind of thing?”

Norm nodded. “Take my ID, go here.” He thrust a piece of paper at me.  “Use these GPS coordinates.”

Could we trust a guy like that?

Could we afford not to trust him?

Norm said, “I want to make it up to Kate. There’s a MobilMobile at the curb out front. I rented it for my SpecialSniff Clearance.  Take it.”  Driving ended decades ago, just before it almost ended civilization. I knew how to drive, though.

“Where is this?” I stared at the paper.

“It’s my…hideout. I set it up hoping that Molly—Kate—and I would get together again.” He trailed off. “You know, Mol, I didn’t plan for it to end that way. 

I didn’t give her a chance to answer. “You’re just giving the place to us?” Norman was deceptive at every level, why believe him? “Well,” his voice had that pebble edge again, “you don’t really have much choice, do you? You’re both going to come down with something real bad real soon. Real soon, and real bad.”

Somehow, I’d forgotten about all that. We needed medicine. How, where?

“Not to worry, Phin,” Norm grinned. “The cops gave me a big supply right here.” He pulled out two antibiotic vials from his coat pocket (which was now on me), enough to wipe out a world of Germs.

I grabbed them. “Thanks, Norm,” yeah, right, thanks, Norm.

He gestured, “Yeah, but do you think you could…?” He wanted it to look like he’d been overpowered by Big Bad Mr. Niffer, so we tied him up with his own SniffRestraints.

And raced away.

Getting out with Norm’s ID wasn’t hard (I knew the ropes), and once behind the wheel, I remembered everything I’d known about driving. We made record time out to Norm’s sweet little cabin way off in the woods.

We’ve been here ever since.

Drones bring us everything we want. 

The antibiotics did their job.

They never came after us because our escape was an embarrassment: “chinks in the system”, etc.

Mr. Niffer broke off his narrative as Kate came into the room. She had a healthy glow from good livin’, good lovin’, and lots of good Sniffin’. What a pair! As he looked up at her, I could swear I saw his nose start to swell. It was wrapping-up time.   Mr. Niffer walked me to the door. The interview was over. 

Somehow, even though I’d been in the presence of one of the world’s great Sniffers, I didn’t feel so very Clean myself. I brushed off my shirtsleeves, walked to the car, and took a slug of Scotch as I said, “Alexa, drive me home.”

[1] Sponers = Sperm donors.