http://www.e-reading.org.ua/bookreader.php/80261/King_-_The_Stand.html
Stephen King
The Stand - The Complete & Uncut Edition [ RACKETEER INFLUENCED AND CORRUPT ORGANIZATIONS US Title 18 ]
In Des Moines, at 11:30 P.M., CST, an old Buick covered with religious stickers—HONK IF YOU LOVE JESUS, among others—cruised the deserted downtown streets relentlessly. There had been a fire in Des Moines earlier in the day that had burned most of the south side of Hull Avenue and Grandview Junior College; later there had been a riot that gutted most of the downtown area.
When the sun went down, these streets had been filled with restlessly circling crowds of people, most of them under twenty-five, many riding choppers. They had broken windows, stolen TV sets, filled their gas tanks at service stations while watching for anyone who might have a gun. Now the streets were empty. Some of them—the bikers, mainly—were kicking out their remaining jams on Interstate 80. But most of them had crept into houses and locked the doors, already suffering with superflu or only terror of it as daylight left this flat green land. Now Des Moines looked like the aftermath of some monster New Year’s Eve party after sodden sleep, had claimed the last of the revelers. The Buick’s tires whispered and crunched over the broken glass in the street and turned west from Fourteenth onto Euclid Avenue, passing two cars that had crashed head-on and now lay on their sides with their bumpers interlaced like lovers after a successful double homicide. There was a loudspeaker on top of the Buick’s roof, and now it began to give off amplified boops and beeps, followed by the scratchy sounds of an old record’s opening grooves, and then, blaring up and down the spectral, deserted streets of Des Moines came the sweetly droning voice of Mother Maybelle Carter, singing “Keep on the Sunny Side.”
Keep on the sunny side,
Always on the sunny side,
Keep on the sunny side of life,
Though your problems may be many
It will seem you don’t have any
If you keep on the sunny side of life…
The old Buick cruised on and on, making figure-eights, loops, sometimes circling the same block three or four times. When it hit a bump (or rolled over a body), the record would skip.
At twenty minutes to midnight, the Buick pulled over to the curb and idled. Then it began to roll again. The loudspeaker blared Elvis Presley singing “The Old Rugged Cross,” and a night wind soughed through the trees and stirred a final whiff of smoke from the smoldering ruins of the junior college.
From the President’s speech, delivered at 9 P.M., EST, not seen in many areas.
“… a great nation such as this must do. We cannot afford to jump at shadows like small children in a dark room; but neither can we afford to take this serious outbreak of influenza lightly. My fellow Americans, I urge you to stay at home. If you feel ill, stay in bed, take aspirin, and drink plenty of clear liquids. Be confident that you will feel better in a week at most. Let me repeat what I said at the beginning of my talk to you this evening: There is no truth—no truth —to the rumor that this strain of flu is fatal. In the greatest majority of cases, the person afflicted can expect to be up and around and feeling fine within a week. Further—”
note 2
“Further, there has been a vicious rumor promulgated by certain radical anti-establishment groups that this strain of influenza has been somehow bred by this government for some possible military use. Fellow Americans, this is a flat-out falsehood, and I want to brand it as such right here and now. This country signed the revised Geneva Accords on poison gas, nerve gas, and germ warfare in good conscience and in good faith. We have not now nor have we ever—”
note 3
“—have we ever been a party to the clandestine manufacture of substances outlawed by the Geneva Convention. This is a moderately serious outbreak of influenza, no more and no less. We have reports tonight of outbreaks in a score of other countries, including Russia and Red China. Therefore we—”
note 4
“—we ask you to remain calm and secure in the knowledge that late this week or early next, a flu vaccine will be available for those not already on the mend. National Guardsmen have been called out in some areas to protect the populace against hooligans, vandals, and scare-mongers, but there is absolutely no truth to the rumors that some cities have been ‘occupied’ by regular army forces or that the news has been managed. My fellow Americans, this is a flat-out falsehood, and I want to brand it as such right here and…”
Graffito written on the front of the First Baptist Church of Atlanta in red spray paint:
“Dear Jesus. I will see you soon. Your friend, America. PS. I hope you will still have some vacancies by the end of the week.”
Chapter 27
Larry Underwood sat on a bench in Central Park on the morning of June 27, looking into the menagerie. Behind him, Fifth Avenue was crazily jammed with cars, all of them silent now, their owners dead or fled. Farther down Fifth, many of the posh shops were smoking rubble.
From where Larry sat he could see a lion, an antelope, a zebra, and some sort of monkey. All but the monkey were dead. They had not died of the flu, Larry judged; they had gotten no food or water for God knew how long, and that had killed them. All but the monkey, and in the three hours that Larry had been sitting here, the monkey had moved only four or five times. The monkey had been smart enough to outwit starvation or death by thirst—so far—but it surely had a good case of superflu. That was one monkey who was hurtin for certain. It was a hard old world.
http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/Human_(episode)
Human (episode)
"Human" is the fourteenth episode in the first season of Stargate Universe.
Original air date April 23, 2010
Sometime later, Rush is lecturing a class full of students at a University, asking if anybody is familiar with the significance of Shor's algorithm. One of the students stands up and describes what the algorithm is. While the student is in the process of explaining, from Rush's perspective, a tunnel of Ancient symbols is streaming towards him. Seeing it apparently overwhelms Rush.
In his dream world, Rush decides to visit Gloria at her death bed in the hospital. It is revealed that Gloria is aware that she is part of his imagination. She notes that since her death, Rush has become more callous. Rush tries to justify these acts as being for the greater good, and says that the good in him died along with her, though Gloria believes otherwise. After she laments that she had to inherit a defective gene from her mother which cannot do the simple job of repairing damaged DNA, Rush realizes the meaning of the number 46 from her statement. Gloria is then aware of why Rush is in this particular dream; this is the memory he'd rather forget. In tears, Rush says he has never forgotten her, and he never will. After saying goodbye to her, Rush leaves the dream and walks through the door to reality.
Sometime later, Young sees Rush in the control interface room, and wonders what he is doing out of the infirmary; Rush says he has work to do. While he cannot control the ship yet, he, Brody and Volker now have a base by which to decode the system. 46 refers to the number of chromosomes in human, and for that matter, Ancient DNA. They merely need to run through all the possible permutations to find a match. Rush has set up a program to do this automatically
