This is a podcast extra from Nature.

Every week, nature publishes a science fiction story in our futures slot.

Each month we read you our favourite.

This month's story is Emancipation, written by Jewel Romalho Santos, published on the 19th of June and read by Kerry Smith.

As she stumbled into the secure underground conference room clutching a stack of overflowing

files, Clara mentally tried to organise her presentation.

Clara tackled all her assignments for the Centre for Disease Control with the same

overzealous principles. Diseases are biological revolts. And as in all recorded uprisings

throughout history, inaugural events often go unnoticed or are explained away as anomalies. To understand

anything, one needs to know its reasons, its beginning. Search the unheralded edges rather than the

full-blown epicentre to which everyone is attracted.

In this particular case, that had involved looking beyond the sudden rise in diverse symptoms.

Early onset cardiac failure, neurodegenerative disorders, severe bleeding in the digestive and urinary tracts.

Clara's initial meta-analysis had clearly shown that the sets of symptoms were

related. It was just a question of which came first, what caused what? How aggressive hemorrhaging

and early onset aging were connected worldwide by a phenomenon that did not distinguish east

from west, north from south, poor from rich, old from young, male from female.

In fact, it was not even partial to any vertebrate species in particular.

Is it some sort of superbug?

The metallic voice came from the conference screen Clara had failed to notice on the far wall.

Unidentified stern faces in crisp uniforms stared out at her as the scientists in the room went uncannily quiet, shrinking into their lab coats.

Clara had expected to be summoned to a meeting sometime after the presentation.

...