Krafft's Anomaly Notes

Chapter 41 A Conjecture

"Huh? Did it really work?" Lucius took out the medical record and handed it to Kraft, pointing out the redacted "sleepiness" column to him.

"Lecturer Liston felt that it was not up to the level of drowsiness, so he erased it. I don't know if it should be included in the remarks."

Kraft didn't seem to have heard what Lucius was talking about. After getting the medical record, he turned to the basic information on the first page, and found out the occupation and address.

"Baker, third north on Elm Street? What's that?"

"I don't know. It should be a small street. I don't know where it is. It's not the turn of the follow-up visit yet."

Lucius is quite familiar with the local roads in Wendeng Port, but if you ask him which roads are called, he can only answer a few frequently visited ones.

There are too many criss-crossing streets and alleys with various names, and this kind of non-distinctive name will be forgotten once you see it.

"You don't remember ever thinking about the possibility of a follow-up visit?" Kraft demanded.

"Uh, I didn't write it, it was Liston who wrote it, maybe he knows where it is?" Lucius quickly separated the relationship.It seems that some problem has been discovered. At this time, the flaws in the medical records must not involve me, let Liston take responsibility.

"Let's go, then let's find Liston."

Picking up this medical record, Kraft left the work at hand without hesitation and prepared to go out.

It's over, Lucius thought, hopefully it's not a big deal.He followed quickly, and quickly recalled whether there was any problem with him. If he couldn't find the specific location later, it would be troublesome.

Fortunately, Kraft still maintained the good self-cultivation in everyone's mind. He just rushed back to the clinic with Lucius, blocking Liston who was packing up and going to get off work.

"I have a question that needs to be confirmed as soon as possible, so I came here by myself." Kraft pushed Liston back to the chair by the table, and took out the medical records for him to read.

"Are you sure that the patient's statement is that he wakes up later and is difficult to wake up? Did he say how long it was late?"

Liston was taken aback, and looked at Lucius who was hiding behind, who gave him a self-seeking look.

"Yes, that's the patient."

"So how long is it?" Kraft showed unusual persistence on this question.

"Let me think about it, let me think about it, he didn't make it very clear." Liston was sweating, and he had the illusion that Professor Kalman was standing in front of him. I went to the bakery last time, and now I wake up at about this time."

"Well, it's about an hour late. Has anything like that happened to his family?"

"He didn't say." Liston replied, guilty as if to say "I didn't ask".

Fortunately, Kraft didn't continue to ask about it, and changed the subject, "Do you know where Elm Street is? I'm not very familiar with Wendeng Port."

"Why do you ask this suddenly?" Liston didn't keep up with Jump's train of thought.

Kraft drew back the medical record and turned to the first page. A black circle was drawn on the address column, picking it out from all the information.

He pushed the paper back in front of Liston, "I didn't know if I was thinking too much before I knew the exact location, so let's recall where it is."

The tone is calm, but it always makes people feel that there is some emotion hidden in it.It's not the annoyance of being interrupted at work, or dissatisfaction with others, but a trace of unease that the listener can't understand.

Liston looked at him, and Kraft had no expression on his face, watching him seriously, bringing an indescribable sense of oppression.

"A small street, relatively close to the salt tide area. I have been there before, so I have a little impression."

"Hiss...salt tide area?" This is the third time I heard this word in the past few days, and Kraft had a very bad guess, "Is there a map? I want to see where this place is?"

A few days ago, the hired worker's words ran through his mind quickly, "my wife and I", "my neighbors too", "it's hard to wake up".

"Who would have such a thing?"

"Then draw a sketch for me, I just want to know how close it is to the salt tide area." Kraft took out a new piece of paper and handed it to Liston along with the pen.

Although no definite evidence has been found yet, Kraft's suspicions are gradually increasing. He feels that he may have to overturn his judgment on the earlier case. Things are much more complicated than he imagined.

For the hired worker named Gary, the earliest judgment was that the changes in the living environment had affected his and his neighbors' work and rest.In the harsh environment of the salt tide area, this explanation is the most reasonable.

Another possibility is infectious disease, which Kraft had not considered.But because Gary and his wife didn't have any discomfort at all except prolonged sleep, they didn't have any symptoms such as fever, cough, and diarrhea, and they had no clue, so they finally ruled out this possibility.

The case on Elm Street made him vigilant quickly, and he realized that he had made a low-level mistake at the time. He didn't ask Gary if he knew that more people had similar symptoms.

Liston wrote and drew on paper, explaining to Lucius and Kraft as he drew.

"This black piece, we consider it a salt tide area, probably in the southeast part of the entire Wendeng Port. It is impossible to draw a specific map inside."

He filled in black shadows in the irregular figure he had drawn, marked "Salt Tide Area" in large characters, and drew two vertical lines on the left.

The double lines are straight and the shadows are even and natural, reflecting the good drawing skills of an anatomy lecturer. It is really overkill to draw the tissue structure.

"Then, these two lines are Elm Street." He marked two letters on both ends to distinguish the direction, "Just think of it as running north-south, it's not so standard, and the length is also very short."

"To be specific, is there a big gap between this ratio and the reality?" Kraft turned behind Liston and looked at the two lines.

"It is about one-third of the north-south width of the salt tide area. I have no idea about this particularly long distance."

A horizontal line cut off Elm Street at the bottom. "I forget the name of this street, but Elm Street ends here anyway. And what house are we looking for?"

"The third building from north to south." Lucius reminded from the side.

Kraft added: "East side or west side? There can't be only one side of the street, can it?"

"Sorry, I didn't think of that at the time."

I thought it was detailed enough, but now it seems that it is still unreliable.

"Forget it, it's not bad, it's okay to ask about one more house. Mark the place first."

Under Kraft's urging, Liston pondered for a moment, and drew a cross at his estimated location, not far from the northwest corner of the salt tide area.

The room fell silent, and Liston and Lucius looked at Kraft, waiting for him to explain why he was suddenly so concerned about this.

Kraft sat down beside Liston, took a pen and paper, and added a cross to the northwest of the salt tide area.

"Too close." He whispered, "This is too close."

"What is this?" Lucius looked over curiously. Judging by the distance on the sketch, the distance between the two forks was less than one-third of the length of Elm Street.

Kraft drew a dotted line between the two, connecting them, "I saw another hired worker named Gary before, and the description was similar, but much more serious."

"It's not just him, he claims that his wife and neighbors are also waking up later and later, and it's hard to wake up. I thought it was a small problem around his house."

"In addition to the one you found, I suspect there is some connection." Kraft added two more prongs to the side of the salt tide area with a pen, and the three prongs were clustered together.

"Could it have something to do with the clarification potion?" Lucius naturally connected the gradual increase in sleep with the effect of the diluent, which was like a weakened version.

"It doesn't make sense. This kind of situation has never appeared in the feedback of other patients. Kraft, did Gary and his wife use it?" Emotionally and rationally, Liston didn't want to bring this matter to light.

Kraft shook his head. He actually subconsciously contacted the black liquor and its diluent "Clarity", but the logic didn't make sense, "No, we have records of everyone who has used it. I can confirm that the Gary family didn't use it. Pass."

Groups of onsets are correlated in time and space.The possibility of infectious diseases was put in front of Kraft again.

The famous law of cockroaches mentioned that when you first find cockroaches, there is a high probability that there is already a group of cockroaches in the house.Kraft approved of this theory very much and affirmed its universality in a large number of cases.

Using the connected dotted line as the radius, he drew a circle that wrapped the large salt tide area and the surrounding ordinary urban areas.

"Since we can encounter it twice, there must be more than that. I suspect that the area it affects is much larger than this circle, and it may expand outward."

"Plague?!" Liston's eyes were about to pop out, "Don't scare me, two of the three of us have had direct contact with the patient."

"It's just a guess, not necessarily the kind that can be infected by contact, and the symptoms are not like it. We need further proof."

Kraft looked at the circle, assuming that such an infectious disease with unheard-of symptoms really appeared, taking the salt tide area as the initial starting point, and its spread gradually expanded.

His finger swept across the sketch, tracing the outline of the salt tide area. In such a poorer sanitation environment and more crowded places, the transmission speed in the area must be much faster than the outward speed, and it is much more difficult to investigate. .

No matter what, he needs more cases and more detailed information, so that he can circle a more accurate range and prove his conjecture.

"I'm afraid we can't sit still." Kraft stood up, and mourned for a second of absence for the next few days of absenteeism. "Whether it is or not, I have to go around there. Do you want to come together?"

"Are you serious?" Liston didn't quite agree with Kraft's opinion, and there was no benefit in investigating this kind of thing.Guessing wrong consumes time, guessing correctly consumes life.

"Then I'll go together. It just so happens that there are only two beak masks." Lucius has a good sense of self-protection, inherited from Kraft's spirit of not being afraid of [-] but just in case.

(End of this chapter)