While Time Traveling to the Victorian Age: The Infectious Baby

 Hello All:

Happy Monday!

On Sunday's post I mentioned a new labeling or classification of my various writings that are centered on a theme or topic. I have a few of them and introduced Channel 0 on Sunday.

Today I introduce a series of short stories that I call Adjacent Channel. These are often peculiar stories that are written in second person narrative. We'll have plenty of these available for your reading pleasure.

While Time Traveling to the Victorian Age: The Infectious Baby

In one of your time travels you arrived in the year 1850 and found yourself to be a doctor in a Victorian hospital. You had just been called to the bedside of a newborn baby with a strange rash. The baby is a boy.

The rash was all over the baby's body, and it is an indicator of a serious infectious disease. You also knew that if the baby had any physical contact with another person, that person would also catch the disease. 

The rare disease, you understood, had been caused by a virus which is spread through contact with infected blood or bodily fluids. There was no cure for the disease, but there were treatments that could help manage the symptoms.

You approached the cradle where the baby lay. The baby cried, and his skin was hot to the touch. You could also see that the rash was starting to blister.

In the back of your mind you knew that you needed to get the baby away from you, but you also knew that it was your duty to help him. So you gently picked up the baby and carried it to the window.

You opened the window and let the fresh air in which seemed to calm the baby down a little, despite the fact that the rash continued to blister and spread.

You returned to the cradle, and laid the baby down as he appeared to be falling asleep.

Upon returning to the window, you pondered on what your course of action should be. You knew that you needed to do something, but didn't know what. After all, you weren’t really a doctor, just suddenly in this role after traveling back into time.

Perhaps there was one or more fellow doctors in the hospital who might have some answers. 

You were about to turn for the door and head out into the main hospital area to request assistance. But then you saw something that caused your blood to run cold.

The baby pulled itself out of the cradle and dragged himself across the floor while heading straight towards you! You were aware that if the baby touches you, you would get the disease, so you tried to run away. But the baby was too fast. You were not aware that the disease actually made the baby stronger and he was attempting to rejoin with whoever the perceived mother was. Then, suddenly he closed his eyes and fell asleep on the floor.

A few minutes later, a nurse entered the room, looked at the baby and then you. "What happened?" she asked.

You told her about the rash and how the baby had pulled itself out of the cradle.

The nurse looked at the baby and then at you. "I don't know what to say. This is the strangest thing I've ever seen."

“I don't know what to say either. I am still trying to process what just happened.”

The nurse took the baby and left the room, left you alone still trying to figure out what just happened.

That’s when you returned to the present.

It was the strangest and most disturbing session of time travel for you.

The End!

***

This article was developed with the help of Bard, a large language model from Google AI. Bard is always happy to help people create content, and is always looking for ways to improve. If you wish to put Bard to work for you please visit: https://bard.google.com/