Faces in the Fire by Hines

northern China’s Heilongjiang province.
    China. The true final frontier, with apologies to Gene Roddenberry.
    She’d seen photos of her warehouse, even done some quick translations of words, signage, and characters she’d seen in the photos. She quickly found out that Heilongjiang, the name of the province, literally meant “Black Dragon River.” She liked that. Black dragons.
    The warehouse where her servers were stored had a simple sign on its chain-link fence, consisting of two Chinese characters. One character roughly translated as “cat,” the other translated as “fish.” It made absolutely no sense to her, but what of it? For all she knew, it had some specific meaning in Chinese culture; certainly, dragons and catfish were revered in the country, from what little she’d been able to glean online. And she was immediately drawn to the image of a catfish, anyway. The perfect bottom-feeder. Much like herself. So in her mind, she always called the warehouse the Catfish Compound.
    The Catfish Compound, and the server farm it housed, helped her send millions of e-mail messages through the Internet, relaying them back and forth among dozens of active IP addresses and legitimate servers in other countries. Invariably, legitimate service providers tracked the originating IP addresses and blacklisted them. But she always had more. Always.
    She selected a ten-digit IP address and began setting up a relay script when her cell phone rang.
    She looked at the caller ID, again recognizing Swain’s number. Monday. Right. He had promised to call back today. Lost in her work, she’d forgotten the cancer word for a while.
    She sighed. But never for long; cancer was never out of her mind for long.
    She picked up the phone, answering with a quick “Hello?”
    â€œCorrine,” Swain’s voice said. “Dr. Swain.”
    â€œHi.”
    â€œI said I’d call you about the donor registry,” he said.
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œMaybe you could come in, and we can talk about it.”
    Oh, so here was Swain, trying to pretend he had a bit of human warmth. Wanting to deliver bad news—and it had to be bad news—in person.
    â€œI’m a big girl, Dr. Swain. Just tell me what’s going on.”
    â€œWell,” he said, “we’re not finding a good match.”
    She pursed her lips. “A donor match, you mean.”
    â€œYes.”
    â€œSo no go on the transplant.”
    â€œWell, right now . . . that’s right. No good match for a transplant.”
    She smiled. As if continuing to repeat “no good match for a transplant” somehow sounded better than a simple no .
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œI . . . well, I would like you to come in so we can talk about some different options.”
    â€œSuch as?”
    â€œA clinical trial, maybe.”
    â€œWe already did that.”
    â€œWell, yes. We looked at Phase II and above. But I think there might be some Phase I trials we can look at.”
    Translation: time to start grasping at straws. Phase II through IV trials were designed to fine-tune treatments already proven in Phase I trials. They experimented with dosage, timing, routes of administration, that kind of thing. Phase I trials were always one step away from lab mice, rolls of the medical dice. Important, yes, but often the last hope.
    â€œHow about if I transfer you to the front desk, and they’ll schedule you for an appointment this week?” Swain sounded desperate to end their conversation.
    She stared at the IP addresses glowing on her screen. “Yeah. Sure.”
    She waited, and he put her on hold. When she heard the soft tinkling of the hold music, she hung up the phone.
    36.
    Late that afternoon she sat staring at her screen, a jumble of information cramming her mind. She’d spent the intervening time looking up lymphoma information on the Internet, had visited at least two dozen sites, followed several