The Doomsday Virus
by Arthur Pitchenik
Arthur Pitchenik is a retired professor of medicine with many published research articles in top medical Journals on infectious diseases.
Dr. Herman Vildeshreck was a genius with a vendetta against viruses.
He was obsessed that a single piece of genetic material, a particle one thousandth the size of a grain of sand that may or may not be alive, can invade a host cell, hijack the cells machinery to make a thousand copies of itself, devastate the host and then be transmitted worldwide to devastate mankind. He himself had been crippled with Polio and had a close friend who died of AIDS.
By the age of 30, Vildeshreck had written the definitive textbook of virology, published 20 landmark papers on viral vulnerabilities, won a Nobel Prize for synthesizing unique anti-viral drugs and was just getting started when he contracted a progressive dementia.
He became forgetful, paranoid, and confrontational. His lectures became rambling and incoherent. At one of them he peed in a flowerpot before leaving the stage. Teams of top specialists evaluated him and were bewildered. CAT, MRI, and PET scans of his brain revealed foamy sponge-like lesions that had never been seen. Biopsy of his brain revealed an invasive gel-like material of unknown cause. Microscopy and electron microscopy of the material were non-diagnostic. DNA amplification (PCR), special stains and cultures of the material for all types of infection, especially viruses, were repeatedly negative.
Despite the mysterious malady that was slowly sapping his intellect, Vildeschreck continued his work. He had been studying a new human virus that emerged in Africa. Like the AIDS Virus, it had jumped from monkey to man after a critical mutation. Unlike the AIDS virus however, it presented only as a mild cold and a subtle euphoria. It was diagnosable with a simple test on nasal secretions. Brain scans in infected humans and monkeys were normal and brain biopsies in infected monkeys were also normal. It seemed harmless to all except Vildeschreck who called it “The Doomsday Virus”. No one took him seriously however, since the virus seemed so benign, and he had become so mentally compromised. He was now more pitied than respected and had been barred from his university lab. Nevertheless, he continued to study the virus obsessively at home in his-well-equipped basement laboratory.
Vildeschreck had never seen a human virus cause euphoria. There were people who wanted to become infected by it and this made him very suspicious. Also, he had never seen a virus that did not generate at least some immune response. For this latter reason he focused on synthesizing a drug rather than a vaccine to destroy it.
In his search for an effective drug Vildeschreck ran into barrier after barrier. Within days of exposing the virus to a drug that blocked its cellular attachment, cellular entry, intracellular replication and/or cellular egress, the virus mutated to a resistant subtype. He had never seen or heard of any human or animal virus that mutated that fast. Vildeschreck became totally confused when the virus mutated to a subtype that was resistant to a drug whose theoretical molecular structure, he had just scrawled on his blackboard the day before, a drug to which the virus had never been exposed! “This is impossible,” he thought. “Am I infected with this virus and hallucinating?” He performed a PCR test for the viral antigen on his nasal secretions and it was positive! He examined his brain biopsy with electron microscopy and saw “Doomsday” viral particles within his own jellied brain cells! A tidal wave of questions flooded his mind. “Why weren’t these viral particles within my brain detected before by teams of specialists who examined the same material? Why did this virus produce brain pathology and dementia only in me, the only person working to destroy it? “How could one explain the virus’s impossible acquisition of drug resistance? How could it mutate to a drug resistant subtype before it was exposed to the drug; while the drug was still only, a hypothesized formula scrawled with chalk on a blackboard? Is this virus an intelligent entity that infects the brain and steals human thought? By causing my dementia is it protecting itself against my plans to destroy it. Does It, like me, have a vendetta?”
Vildeshreck knew that the notion of a virus with willful intelligence, willful behavior and a vendetta sounded paranoid crazy, to put it mildly, but he still presented this theory to his colleagues, submitted it to medical journals and announced it to the press. He was promptly Baker Acted. Repeat studies of his nasal secretions and brain biopsy by top specialists did not confirm his findings and again showed no evidence of the virus. Vildeschreck knew they were wrong! The virus had mutated back and forth just in him to avoid detection, to prove him delusional and to stop his work.
He was now incarcerated in the Greenfield Sanitarium in upstate New York against his will with a diagnosis of Organic Brain Syndrome of unknown cause. He no longer had a formal laboratory. If he could at least get back to his basement lab, perhaps he could still work to defeat this virus.
The Sanitarium staff did not like Vildeschreck, and his fellow patients hated him. They complained that his music “blasted” and hurt their ears. He shrieked back, “Classical music must be played loud to enjoy. I’m partially deaf and it’s my only source of pleasure. Get me some god damn earphones!” With earphones the music could be experienced decibels louder and this was his Plan. The virus might not be able to read his thoughts when music was blasting. When he was plotting to destroy the virus, he turned the music up full volume. With the music off, he lied to his doctors that his theories about the virus had been “delusional” and that trying to destroy it was “a waste of my time”. The strategy fooled the Doctors who were incarcerating him and, apparently, also fooled the virus that was infecting him. His spongiform brain lesions shrunk, his dementia subsided, and he was discharged home.
It was hard for Vildeschreck to continue his work at home with music blasting in his ears but that’s what he did. He worked, ate, and slept in his basement laboratory and saw no one. When he slept, he dreamed that millions of red ants crawled on his skin, invaded every portal, stung him savagely inside and out and rasped the same question repeatedly. “Who are you? Who are you? “Awakening from one nightmare to a worse nightmare offered no relief. He knew that the Doomsday virus was replicating within his brain cells and would again destroy them if he tried to destroy it. If the virus had intelligence, communication was his only chance. With great anxiety and courage, Vildeschreck prepared a drug cocktail that would deepen his sleep and intensify his dreams hoping to enhance communication with the virus. It worked!
After drinking the cocktail, Vildeschreck was seized with violent nightmares even worse than before. The hordes of angry ants now had a human face, his face, with mouths that rasped the same question. “Who are you?” “I am Herman Vildeshreck,” he answered. “Are you a monkey?” they asked. “I am a human!” he said. “Who are you?” They stopped rasping and replied in one high-pitched voice. “We are you!” Vildeschreck awoke breathless in a sweat. He had communicated with the virus that lived in his brain. He saw and heard himself mouthing its unearthly falsetto voice on a video tape recording of his sleep. He had an epiphany. This virus like any virus should have only a few simple genes encased in an outer shell and should be capable of only one thing, self-replication. It must be structurally more complex than that. He again studied his brain biopsy and again identified the virus within his brain cells. This time however he found something that he had previously missed, a particle much smaller than a gene just below the viral shell, a unique particle that did not belong in viruses. It was present in every virus that infected his brain cells and in every virus that infected his nasal cells.
The same was true with monkeys that harbored the virus. He had never seen such a particle in any other virus in any species. Vildeschreck again induced a deep sleep and the hideous ants with his face again appeared to him. He had two questions. “What is this strange particle within my brain virus?” They answered without hesitation. “It is you!” “What is this strange particle within the monkey’s brain virus?” They again answered in one voice. “It is the monkey!” He awoke and was totally confused. He believed that the answer to everything lied in the strange particle. It was not DNA (another gene). Beyond this, he was stymied. Additional bizarre nightmares provided nothing new. “I must analyze these particles,” he thought “and need expert help and technology to complement my own. If I confide in any reputable scientists, they will surely lock me up again, but I must take the chance.”
Vildeschreck needed the very best and in this case, it was Dagmar Drack. She was a brilliant, eccentric, and totally unpredictable Russian physicist. In the fields of sub molecular structure and artificial intelligence however, she was the unquestioned best. She had been ridiculed by her peers for outlandish theories but subsequently became world renowned when they were proven right. Surprisingly, Professor Drack accepted Vildeshreck’s invitation to hear him out and visited his home laboratory despite reports of his recent lunacy.
Drack was an imposing figure. She was 82 years old, well over 6 feet tall, and wore flowing black robes. She had blood red hair piled a foot high, a wrinkled prune face powdered chalk white, a chronic facial scowl, and a prosthetic left hand. She smoked with a long cigarette holder in her prosthetic hand and blew the smoke straight up in the air with each puff. She was arrogant, overpowering and deprecating even to Vildeshreck whom she physically towered over. She was also a creative uber-genius and a highly independent thinker. Nevertheless, even Dagmar Drack, was stunned with disbelief when she witnessed Vildeshreck’s virus mutating resistance at lightning speed to a drug whose molecular structure was just a formula on a blackboard and a theoretical thought.
Soon after visiting Vildeschreck, Drack became infected with his “Doomsday virus”. She experienced the same mild running nose and euphoria as everyone else and had a positive viral PCR Test on a nasal swab. Reluctantly, she agreed to take Vildeshreck’s drug cocktail to induce deep sleep, induce vivid nightmares and hopefully facilitate contact with the virus. Like Vildeschreck, she had freakish nightmares with thousands of red ants with her own white wrinkled face crawling on her skin and invading her body. She also saw and heard herself speaking in the virus’s falsetto voice on videotapes of her sleep. “I am you.” “I am you.” “The particle is you.” After that, she became a believer and agreed that the sub-capsular viral particle that Vildeschreck showed her, the one that “didn’t belong” must be analyzed.
After tireless research with an intellect beyond measurement and technology of her own brilliant design Professor Drack concluded that, “the mysterious particle is a computer chip small enough to be embedded in a virus. “Impossible” Vildeschreck argued, “a virus is about 50 nanometers, one thousandth the size of a grain of sand.” Ignoring him, Drack continued, “Its circuitry consists of a receiver of external information, a central processor for artificial intelligence and a powerful transmitter. It is a homunculus, a sub-nanometer sized brain whose materials are not of this earth.” Vildeschreck gasped, “an artificially created alien brain embedded in a highly contagious monkey and human virus?” “Yes!” Drack replied.
To Drack, this was the “challenge of a lifetime”. “We must experiment with infected monkeys,” she said. They confirmed existing information that the nasal virus was transmissible via aerosol from monkey to monkey, monkey to human, human to monkey and human to human. Because of their recognized genius and fame, Vildeschreck and Drack were able to obtain and study fossilized monkey brain from hundreds of thousands of years ago before the existence of man. Amazingly, some contained the virus with the unique sub-capsular particle within it.
Together, Drack and Vildeschreck theorized that a highly advanced alien race must have visited earth eons ago and planted advanced, impossibly small computer chips within monkey viruses. They chose a harmless virus that naturally infected monkey nasal cells and from there naturally homed to the monkey’s brain. (At the time monkey brains were the most intelligent on earth.) Once reaching the brain, the intraviral chip was activated. Its receptor funneled all the monkey’s external sensations (sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch) to AI circuitry, which continuously recorded the monkey’s cognition and emotion. Its transmitter then sent all this host data (information) to some highly advanced alien civilization that were monitoring it from somewhere in distant space. The aliens received continuous experiential data from millions of individual infected monkeys for hundreds of thousands of years and now quite abruptly from much more intelligent humans. The spread of the virus by the highly contagious respiratory route was ingenious since it greatly increased the spread of the virus and therefore the reaches of the alien monitor. To date, the virus served only as a harmless monitor and apparently, did not influence its hosts behavior or health –unless it were threatened. It was programmed to survive.
Vildeschreck and Drack were now both obsessed with further study of the virus but for different reasons. Vildeschreck wanted to “destroy it before it destroys us”. Drack wanted to “somehow modify and then use it for the common good”. “What does that even mean?” Vildeschreck pleaded. “The virus or whoever it’s transmitting to, knows everything. It knows what you think, what I think what every frigging infected person and monkey thinks. We have no idea what it wants, what it’s fully capable of or what we’re dealing with!” “What we’re dealing with, Drack replied, “is the greatest opportunity ever to fundamentally change mankind for the good. We will isolate, magnify, and then copy the unique AI circuitry that so perfectly records the cognition and emotions of its host. We will then reprogram it in two ways. First, we will reprogram it to block the emotions of pride and wrath, the deadliest of the 7 deadly sins. Second, and most importantly, we will reprogram it to be its host’s cognition and emotions, not just to record them as a simple monitor for transmission. The infected host will remain unchanged except that any emotions of wrath and pride will be erased, and it will act accordingly. We will infect the world with kinder human beings and create Utopia. The virus won’t mind if we don’t threaten its survival. In fact, the increased survival of its gentler less warlike host, means increased survival for the virus. The aliens won’t mind if we don’t threaten their scientific monitoring of our civilization. If we follow your Plan and try to destroy the virus, it will try to destroy us by liquifying our brains. It already tried to kill you.”
Vildeschreck was dumbstruck! “You want to reprogram an alien computer chip within a highly contagious human brain virus, from simply recording its host’s cognitions and emotions for purposes of transmitting data to actually being its hosts cognitions and emotions upon which it acts?” “Yes”, Drack replied,” to act with the emotions of wrath and pride blocked. We will create kinder and more humane human beings as the virus spreads.” “Drack, you’re right that the virus can kill us if we try to harm it,” Vildeshreck argued “but you are otherwise crazy. You’re a megalomaniac!”
Far off in a distant galaxy, alien Creatures were laughing or the alien equivalent of laughing.
Vildeschreck, the Virus and even the Aliens underestimated Dagmar Drack! She knew how to veil her thoughts and had fooled many lie detector tests when she worked in high security for the government. She was far brighter and Machiavellian than anyone knew. To her, pride and wrath were not deadly sins; they were exalted attributes that achieved nature’s great design, survival of the fittest. She had been a Nazi sympathizer but changed her mind. “Even Nazis were not the master race. If they were, they wouldn’t have lost the war,” she thought. “We can do better.”
Drack informed Vildeshreck’s Doctors that during her visit she saw his dementia and psychotic delusions relapsing. His doctors insisted on a repeat CAT scan of his brain. When it showed new sponge-like lesions, they promptly Baker acted him again. His agitated ramblings about Drack and the “Doomsday Virus” just re-enforced their decision. Drack now had the Vildeshreck laboratory, 50 caged monkeys and all her own shipped highly advanced technology to herself.
Drack believed that aliens inserted their pre-programmed nano-chip into an existing and highly contagious nasal-neurotrophic monkey virus. (I.e., a monkey virus that normally infects monkey noses thru the air and then homes to the monkey’s brain.) Once reaching the monkeys brain, the viral nanochip is activated into a receiver of its host’s sensations, an AI that records its cognition and emotion and a transmitter that relays the data to its creator, presumably alien scientists from a highly advanced civilization. “I Dagmar Drack will prove this to be true and then I Dagmar Drack will alter this,” she said to herself.
After self-possessed, exhaustive experiments on Vildeshreck’s infected monkeys, Drack isolated the alien particle (AI chip) within nasal virus. She then reprogrammed it to achieve her nefarious objectives. When the chip reached the monkeys brain it’s AI would be activated not just to record the host’s cognition and emotion as a simple monitor but to replace it with wrath and pride greatly magnified (not erased as originally promised). Furthermore, the AI chip would now not just monitor the host’s brain, it would override and essentially be the host’s brain, the host’s brain with wrath and pride magnified on which it would act.
With great anticipation, Drack inserted her reprogrammed virus into the nasal cavities of two monkeys in the same cage. In exactly 30 minutes the monkeys became enraged and fought to the death. The larger stronger monkey killed the smaller weaker one. She then placed a still larger and stronger non-infected monkey in an adjoining cage with a common air supply. After 35 minutes the non-infected placid monkey became enraged. She then removed the barrier between the two monkeys. They fought to the death and the larger stronger monkey again won. Professor Drack was exultant. “Survival of the fittest,” she shrieked, with only the monkeys to hear her. “We will infect the world with this virus and end up with a truly superior race. The weak will be killed; the strong will live to birth our own kind. This is evolution, my evolution at warp speed.”
At some time during her experiments, Drack became infected with the new viral strain, the one that she had programmed to magnify wrath and pride in its host. Her preexisting rage and conceit were multiplied to un-imaginable psychotic and megalo-manic levels, as were her new plans for much more bizarre experimentation. Her mind raced. “My brain has become infected with the magnificent Drack Virus. Its activated AI chip is me, Dagmar Drack! I will isolate it from my brain and see if my brain can then be transmitted through the air to others in a highly contagious respiratory virus.”
Drack called Vildeshreck’s neurosurgeon and lied. “I think I have contracted Dr. Vildeshreck’s brain disease. Since visiting him I have developed similar headaches and progressive memory loss.” As expected, a CAT scan of her brain revealed the same early spongiform lesions. She insisted on a brain biopsy and a sample of it for her own study. She isolated the virus within her brain cells, the altered one that contained the activated AI chip that was a replica of her own brilliant now even more evil brain. “Was it transmissible? She asked herself. “Could it be spread thru the air to others and from them to still others via a highly contagious respiratory virus?” She implanted it in a non-infected lab monkey’s nasal cavity. Within 30 minutes the placid monkey became enraged. It easily picked the lock to the cage with a fingernail and attacked Drack. She grabbed a tranquilizer gun, repeatedly shot at the monkey, and repeatedly missed. It was too fast and agile.
The monkey grabbed the gun and dropped her with one shot. She was humanly slow. The monkey then plucked her eyes out, bit her throat, stuffed infected lab monkey brain up her nose and locked her in a cage. “Survival of the fittest”, it shrieked. The monkey had Drack’s brain. It was essentially, the super enraged, conceited, and brilliant Drack in a monkey. “Survival of the fittest” it shrieked, again and again, jumping up and down. “I am Dagmar Drack, not her. She is now a monkey! I will infect the entire human race with me!” The frenzied monkey (Drack) jumped out of the laboratory window to a nearby tree and swung through the trees toward the nearest town. *I will infect the entire world with magnificent me. I am evolution beyond warp speed. I am survivor of the fittest.” The mad monkey suddenly seized and died in mid-flight.
Police and forensics found 49 monkeys in Vildeshreck’s laboratory. Forty of them were mutilated and dead. Nine monkeys were alive. They were frenzied, jumping up and down and shrieking within their cages. Professor Drack was found mutilated but alive. She was locked in a cage, jumping up and down and shrieking gibberish along with the other enraged monkeys. One monkey was found dead in a back yard, 5 miles from Vildeshreck’s house. Its entire brain was jellied.
The next day millions of people across the world lost that strange euphoric sensation including Vildeshreck whose brain lesions also vanished. Only he knew what happened, in part. The virus had mutated away from humans and back to monkeys. He couldn’t even imagine the rest of the story.
Millions of infected humans were unhappy. They lost their euphoria. The alien scientists were unhappy. The brief troves of fascinating incoming data abruptly plummeted back to that of simple monkey brain. Only the Virus was happy. “There is too much chaos in humans.” It thought, “Monkeys are safer.”
A toddler on a swing set in some-one’s backyard snarled and rasped through gritted teeth, “I am Dagmar Drack!”
A spaceship from a distant galaxy sped toward earth to investigate a routine monitoring experiment that had run horribly awry.
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