Furthermore, there was a much more serious issue: calling the police now would likely tip them off.
Once she reported it, the Food and Drug Administration would likely conduct an inspection. To pass the inspection, the owner of the raw marinated seafood shop would undoubtedly use fresh ingredients for the time being. However, as soon as the heat died down, they would inevitably go back to passing off shoddy ingredients as high-quality ones.
Over the past few days, Wendy Lynch had figured out some of the rules governing the Time Mailbox. One of the most important was that her subjective will could not influence the content of the emails. For the past two days, she had been subtly hinting to her future self to include more information about making money. To Wendy’s great disappointment, however, the future emails contained no such information.
Combined with a previous email—where an emergency measure she had hurriedly learned online was mistakenly remembered by her future self as something learned in a college elective—this indirectly proved that her future self was unaware of her cheat ability. Otherwise, the emails would surely contain more than just a few brief sentences each day.
The most likely reason the poisoning incident was mentioned in this future email was because she had just eaten the Tideworth raw marinated seafood from that shop today and gotten diarrhea. That was the only reason it had caught her future self’s attention.
If her report ended up merely delaying the accident, it meant she probably wouldn’t know in advance if another poisoning incident occurred at the shop later.
She walked to the window and watched the traffic on the street below. The evening breeze slipped through the gaps in the screen, but it couldn’t blow away the stifling tightness in her chest. At this moment, her heart felt as if it were being squeezed by an invisible hand, each beat heavier than the last.
This poisoning incident was different from Evans’s situation. Even without her help, the worst-case scenario for Evans was simply being rushed to the hospital for emergency treatment. Moreover, Evans’s allergic reaction had a full two-day buffer period. She had even had enough time to confirm the success of her actions through the second day’s email. That was why she had been emboldened to use the situation to secure greater benefits for herself.
But now? Over eighty patients in critical condition, plus the life of an unborn child. The severity of this matter far exceeded Evans’s case.
The future email only stated the tragic outcome. It didn’t specify whether it happened on the seventeenth or the eighteenth, nor did it say if there was any way to stop it. When she couldn’t even pin down the most basic timeline, how could she dare act recklessly?
Wendy rubbed her temples, trying to calm herself. Right now, she had no thoughts of profiting; her only concern was how to prevent this tragedy. The cold night wind soon helped her regain her composure. This wasn’t the time to panic. Taking a deep breath, she sat back down at her computer desk.
Suddenly, her eyes landed on a specific phrase in the email.
"Salmonella and Vibrio parahaemolyticus poisoning!"
Wendy’s fingers flew across the keyboard, and a dense list of search results instantly popped up on the screen. She stared intently at the monitor, not even daring to blink for fear of missing any crucial information.
Salmonella was commonly found in contaminated meat and eggs. Once infected, mild symptoms included nausea and vomiting, while severe cases could trigger sepsis. Vibrio parahaemolyticus was a "frequent guest" in seafood. Consuming contaminated raw seafood would lead to severe abdominal pain and diarrhea within hours. For the elderly, young children, and pregnant women with weaker immune systems, the consequences of infection were unimaginable.
Wendy had only known that she had an upset stomach; she hadn’t realized these two types of bacteria were so dangerous. She sighed. No wonder it had caused so many people to get food poisoning and even led to a pregnant woman losing her child.
As she scrolled down the page, her gaze was suddenly drawn to the words "Rapid Test." Although it had an "Ad" tag next to it, she decisively clicked on it. The interface redirected to an Amazom product recommendation page.
It was a rapid test strip for Salmonella, capable of detecting the bacteria in food within five minutes. Wendy’s eyes lit up. For the first time, she was glad that Google’s search engine had targeted advertising. She hurriedly searched for more information.
Several biotech companies had released corresponding test strips, and the procedure was as simple as taking an early pregnancy test. One only needed to take a small food sample, add the accompanying buffer solution, drop it onto the test strip, and wait a few minutes. The presence of pathogenic bacteria could be determined by the color change. The more Wendy read, the brighter her eyes became, and a complete plan gradually took shape in her mind.
She didn’t need to wait for a large-scale poisoning incident to happen, nor did she need to obsess over the exact date. As long as she could get a sample of the raw marinated seafood shop’s ingredients and get a positive result with the test strip, she could report them directly to the Food and Drug Administration.
Both Salmonella and Vibrio parahaemolyticus were serious health violations. According to regulations, once verified, the shop would not only be ordered to suspend business for rectification but would also face heavy fines. Furthermore, they would be placed on a strict monitoring list, ensuring they wouldn’t dare use unfresh seafood again anytime soon.
While this couldn’t guarantee the shop owners would never offend again, it would at least stop the impending tragedy. It would save over a hundred people from food poisoning and allow that unborn child to come safely into the world.
At this thought, Wendy could sit still no longer. She immediately opened a delivery app and searched for the relevant test strips. Fortunately, there was a twenty-four-hour chain pharmacy just three kilometers from her home, and their product list happened to include test strip kits for both Salmonella and Vibrio parahaemolyticus. The unit price wasn’t cheap—two sets came to over three hundred yuan—but Wendy didn’t hesitate for a second before clicking to place the order.
Half an hour later, Wendy successfully received both test kits.
Wendy didn’t sleep well that night. Half-asleep, her mind kept drifting back to the line in the email: "A woman four months pregnant suffered a miscarriage as a result." She could almost see the devastated look on that family’s faces.
She woke up just as the sky began to lighten.
After washing up quickly, she purposely changed into a hoodie and jeans for ease of movement. Shouldering a backpack containing the test strips, she left the house half an hour early. The early morning streets still held a bit of a chill as Wendy rode her electric scooter toward the Tideworth raw marinated seafood shop from the night before.
Turning the corner, she saw from afar that the shop’s rolling shutter was already half open. Orange light spilled through the gap, and the owner was bent over, arranging the glass jars in the display window. Wendy’s anxious heart instantly settled. She quickly parked her scooter and walked briskly over.
"Sir, I’ll take one portion of every kind of raw marinade you have."
She tried her best to make her voice sound natural as her eyes quickly swept over the menu, terrified of missing a single item.
The owner looked up at her and replied with a smile, "You’ve got quite an appetite, little lady! Our raw marinades are incredibly fresh. I go to the docks every single day to get the freshest catch!"