Member-only story
Show Me Your Proof
The vaccine meets a virus
“Show me your proof?” A strange question coming from a fortune-teller.
Waiting for the rain to stop, I sought shelter under an awning patched in places with plastic grocery sacks. The unseasonal rain had caught many, including myself, by surprise. It interrupted my trip to the old city center, where I hoped to pick up exotic gifts for friends and family back home. As the rain swept sideways, a cool-mist settled on our heads. Tempers flared, and people began to jostle for the very back, where it was safe from the rain. Wet bodies pushed against the drier ones further back. My feet shuffled backward as the crowd forced me down a narrow stairwell where a dim flickering lightbulb lit a sea of faces in a marketplace ten feet below street level. The humid air had an odor of a musty old garage.
Though I was not in a mood to explore, I joined the crowd in the basement where numerous little shops selling cheap watches, cell phone accessories, counterfeit brand name clothing, shoes, among other things, competed for customers. The shops were little more than cutouts from the wall two to three feet deep.
The fortune-teller caught my eye. He sat behind a wooden desk piled with books, his head buried in one as his long gray beard fluttered in the breeze generated by a table fan making a loud whirring noise.
