This is an old piece I wrote on March 3, 2011 during our Creative Writing elective class with Dr. Naif Al Muttawa.
The Retro-Sin
By: Ahmad M. AlShammari
Word Count: 3406 words
Many have tried to kill me.
All those who tried died trying.
It wasn't easy becoming invincible. I had to work hard to become this way. To rule the most advanced creature known: humans, was easy. However, to rule them in a way where until this day they cannot kill me... was arduous yet challenging.
I am a lenti-virus. My size, yet so small that microscopes squint to see me, scares every human. Yes, I know you might think I'm bragging, I'm no Ebola but infect just a few of my kind into a human and s/he will be doomed.
How did I become cursed with being invincible?
My story started in the academy. I was a teen back then.
Fresh to learn, anxious to do my part and fight for my kind.. happy to be a virus... happy until..
You see there is a hierarchy in the academy. Lets say my type were not at the top of the food-chain. In fact, some called us... Retro, meaning the un-advanced or the unfashionable. It wasn't my fault I didn't have DNA or a normal RNA; I had a defected RNA. One that I learnt in the academy was.. useless.
In the first day of school in the academy, I was sitting in the back of the class. The teacher told us that our mission in life was to infect, use, reproduce. She told us that all that had to be done using the machinery in cells. And that our jobs had two rules: 1. To stay alive doing so.
“The second rule is to not get caught. That is done by staying away from the cell's HQ: nucleus. You don't need to go there. Everything you need is in the cell. Only DNA viruses can go there.”
Many have died when the nucleus knew about them. Dying by nucleus was not honorable. It was humiliating for everyone. It was how my kind became … what we were.
The way we were treated was intolerable. I had to leave to find myself. That is when everything started.
It was night, everyone was asleep. I got out of my virus bed, grabbed my run-away bag, and took off. No one ever tried to run away from the academy, so it was easy doing so because no one expected us to run away. Why run and risk dying? Everything you need to survive by was taught here!
I didn’t know where to go. But I knew that my destination is anywhere but here.
I travelled for years until I met Myco. Myco was a bacterium; humans call his speciesmycobacterium tuberculosis. We met in a slum in India. He was a huge hairy bellied guy with a mustache. He was sitting in a golden mucous majestic chair watching his brothers infect people all over. It was gruesomely fun to watch. Everyone who sneezed, talked, coughed, did whatever infected his neighbor.
“Hi there” I said.
“Hello.”
“What are you?” was the first thing I could think off for this conversation.
“Hehehe… I get that a lot. Look man” said Myco as he boggled his head while he spoke, “the key behind our work is that we are convincers. Do you remember the talk in the academy about how cells love to become martyrs for the body?”
“Yes. The greater good and all that crap, they signal themselves as bad cells and then get killed.”
“ This is how most bugs die. We, on the other hand, are convincers.”
“Convincers?”
“We convince them to live. I’ll show you, follow me.”
This was the first time I was inside a cell. I jumped on the back of Myco, he leaped into the sleeping man next to us. We walked for ours in his body. “The trick is to go to the lungs and not the stomach, you never know what this guy ate last night. Mixing stomach acid with spices makes one of the most unpleasant gasses that is … not funny”
I was about to laugh but then one of his soldiers told me not to and that his wife died that way. Wow!!
The lungs were not even close to what the pictures in the books we took showed. They were huge. Air sacs filled the horizons; each sac had multiple bubbles that reflected rainbows. It was like sitting a prism of glass.
“You like what you see? This is what I work with everyday.” I did like what I saw.
We went to one of the cells and he stuck his knife in its walls and got in. It looked so easy for him. Everything was from the first hit: the wall stab, the tent pitching in the cytoplasm, the shutting down of the programs that would kill us in the cell, everything.
Then I felt it again. I felt the overwhelming urge to go to nucleus. My limbs went numb. I swam uncontrollably towards it. I couldn’t control myself. Until Myco held me back, that was when I realized what I was doing. I stood next to him scared. I have to stop this.
“I would like to meet the nucleus” Myco shouted.
Is he serious? He is asking to meet the nucleus? Is he suicidal?
“Erm… Myco? I didn’t sign up for this.”
The nucleus came closer to us, Myco was smiling... retard! This is how its gonna end, I thought.
“This is Myco, I’m here to help you.”
A strange booming voice replied, “Help me? Invader you do know that I’m in self-destruct mode.”
Myco signaled me to look far away on one of the heart-shaped ribosomes. It had been wrapped by red RNA ribbons and flowers. He chuckled, “This cell is a lover. This is going to be easy. ”
“Are you going to die and let your love be with someone else?”
“My lover will live on if I kill my cell”
“Yes they will live, but with who? Maybe with a neuron! Those neurons that boss you around, hiding behind their blood brain barrier. Those ugly neurons who can’t even regenerate! Your loved one hanging out with them while you fight off invaders like us…” The more he talked about the neuron, the more I felt envious hatred coming out the nucleus.
“STOP. Yes. But if I let you go, you might kill the whole body.”
“Not instantly! Death takes time. Time you can use to be with your… love”
“Its too late. Im in self-destruct mode.”
“Never say never!”
“Come on! Justin Beiber lyrics?!” I mumbled inaudibly.
“I will save you. Just do as I tell you.”
Everything in the cell’s machinery started working. All was under Myco’s control. He was building a new cell wall which was..
“The Unstickable wall.. shiny.. but no one can stick to it!! Your friends out their will not be able to stick to this wall and then wont be able to gobble you up and kill us! And it also gave you a better look for your date. Remember, your amazing just the way you are”
“Amazing? Bruno Mars now? Where did that Myco come from really” Myco was now in control.
Suddenly, I felt blood thrushing against my head. I was thinking too fast. This was against everything we were taught in the academy. This was unethical. This was fun.
“So my dear friend, this is how we do our work. You might think its un-ethical but its not. Ethics is what humans do. Anything humans do is humane, anything non-humans do is not humane. What I did is totally humane.”
“No its not. Humans are decent ethical cre…”
He smiled, got on one knee, put his greesy hands on my shoulder and said
“Humans are different from what the academy books tell us. I know you have studies the codes they go by, but did you teach you their history book? (I looked puzzled. History books?) Of course they didn’t, this was the section of the academy that you were not allowed to go to.”
“What do humans really do?”
“What we did today was tricking a cell into doing what we want. We manipulated priorities. Made the cell give up its land for a woman it loved. Millions of cells will die because of that. Normally, cells won’t do it because ethics stops them. But, trigger the humane aspect of them and they will do murderous things.”
“Humane aspect”
“Yes, cells are not used to being talked to. They don’t read anything written by anyone except neurons who they despise greatly. They know nothing about their lives other then what they are put into by neurons. Do you know that those cells can become any type of cell they want if they unlocked the DNA parts that the neurons have locked? Those cells have rented out their decision making to neurons and when you let someone else decide for you everything in your life…you are ”
“..naïve, but that doesn’t justify taking advantage of them. That’s not humane.” Myco looked at me surprised.
“The academy is good. Of course it’s humane. Humans take advantage of other species all the time. They put monkeys to do tricks for money, run beauty experiments on rats to make them look pretty, Hell, they even take advantage of their own people. Haven’t you heard of.. ”
I was stunned. He continued,
“a thing humans created called politics? its where they control people into doing bad… bad things. Like what we did, we made the cell literally kill all the cells around it.”
“I’m not sure how humans do that. You are lying!” I shouted.
“Rwanda’s genocide. 400,000 killed before sunset. Why? Because some people convinced both groups that they were different. Too different to live together.”
“Sometimes when your different people should kill you rather than treat you differently.” I mumbled sadly. He heard me and answered back, “I know what you are. I know how viruses treat your kind. I am the same. They don’t understand us, so they put rules to control what they don’t understand about us. Our kinds do not follow those rules. In fact, we shouldn’t. Our difference is our power.”
“You don’t understand. I’m useless. I am a pathetic RNA virus that even my RNA can’t operate a single machine in a cell.”
“Well, I’d like to chat but…Now, I think you should leave. Anytime now, this place will be closed by giant cells and you might not leave for years.” He said in a hurry as he pushed me out the cell.
Before I left the cell he whispered to me, “Know how you are different, only then will you know how powerful you are”
I am different. But how is my difference is my power? Defected RNA is a difference that is powerful. A lot of questions raced through my head, but one lingered: Why did I want to go to the nucleus so badly? I remembered my first encounter with the clinical psychologists back in the academy regarding that.
I was labeled a nucleo-phillic and the academy wanted to know why I was that way. So, they sent me to see The Psychologist. He was a highly revered chubby middle-aged psychologist virus with a goatee. He welcomed me to his office, seated me, and then asked me about my accidents, which I had many. I used to tell him about them but I never recalled if he was really listening.
“When I see the nucleus, I just forget how to control myself. I shout to my body to stop. But it doesn’t until someone nudges me or pulls me. I’m telling you I swear it’s not intentional. I think I’m possessed because someone takes over. Yes that’s it.. I’m possessed.”
He would always say, “I know you might think its hard for you to fill the shoes of your 98 cousins that were viral heroes. But no one is asking you to do so. Just do your job. Infect, use, and reproduce. No one wants a 99th hero.”
In the end of each session, I would secretly peek at his notepad to see what he wrote. Usually, one word would be written about me “suicidal”. Around it were drawings of super heroes from comic books, most of them fat. Those sessions annoyed me. I’m glad I don’t need them anymore.
My life was boring after Myco. Until I met her. I remember that when I was in Amsterdam, I was trying to infect this guy. As soon as I got into one of his cells, every single alarm in his body went nuts. I panicked. I swam to every machinery trying to operate it but couldn’t. I was useless. I thought it was the end.
Then out of nowhere, I saw Herpena. She was a Herpevirus. She came in the cell, so elegantly. Took off her high heels and jacket. She was a goddess in beauty. She didn’t see me inside the cell. As she walked slowly in the most feminine way any virus can desire, I wished I wasn’t asexual.
“Ugh, not again. Why all these alarms?” She swam to the nucleus while humming a song. I crept closer to see what was going on. Was she serious.
“STOP! Don’t go in there.”
She turned around scared. “Who is this?”
I came out from behind the Endoplasmic Reticulum.
“You are too close to the nucleus!! You will get killed”
She let out the sexiest laugh there is that I seriously wished I wasn’t asexual. She swam next to me, stood up, bent over and looked me in the eye and said, “Honey, I have a date with the nucleus. Besides, have you looked around? This place is going to blow up any minute. Come with me, let’s have fun.”
She pulled me with her. I couldn’t resist. Now the feeling was so overwhelming that I was blinded. I could only see the nucleus… I wanted to go there. If we were going to die, I wasn’t going to die alone.
We went in. She was running the show inside. I was too young to call the shots.
“Hey Nooky?” She called girlishly. “Do you want to share DNA?”
“Oh, its you.” Answered the nucleus. This nucleus was different than the one I met with Myco. No deep voice. He was a fast talker and… smart. “Listen dear, your hot and all but NO.”
She tried convincing him by arousing him in every way possible but he didn’t care. He replied that his military training taught him not to resist all kinds of torture.
“Sexual arousal was one of the techniques I was trained to resist, dear. I know your type. Aren’t you taught in the academy not to come to the nucleus?” She was astonished. “Yes we know what they teach you there.” He sighed.
“Who the hell are you?” Herpena said in a tone that showed that she was scared.
“I am your worst enemy. You came to the wrong cell, dear. I am what usually destroys… you vile creatures. I am part of the immune system. A CD..”
“4! CD4 cell.” She continued his sentence. A tear came down her pretty cheek. “So what’s gonna happen now?”
“Nothing. We wait. As we speak, my cell’s machinery is making what it takes to kill you. Some of the worst acids known to you. Why did you break the rules and invade the cell’s nucleus?”
“This isn’t the first time. I did that a lot. But this is my first time in a CD4 cell. Please let me go. I’m too young to die.”
“And let you kill other cells? Not gonna happen dear!!”
“I’ll do anything!”
“Anything?” he asked elfishly rubbing his hands together. She nodded.
“I want to know how you started doing what you did.”
She looked down. I could see her eyes. That information was sacred. She either dies with that secret. Or survives by exposing it. She chose the latter.
“I was never raised in an academy. Never had any formal training. I had always lived in humans. An orphan. No one knew us in that body. We lived among neurons in a place called Gangleeyaa.”
She told her story about how she fell in love with a neuron and how that neuron told her everything she could know about humans. She said that love conquered all their life then. It all stopped when he proposed to her and brought her to meet his parents who recognized her at once. His dad was her parent’s killer. He did not hesitate to order her death. “Listen son, this is not of our type. She is a virus. You know you need to do”. He handed a gun to his son. From the look on his disgusted eyes, she knew that he had no tolerance. She ran away. Infecting cell after cell, doing what she did best. She didn’t care what type of cell she went to. She was heartbroken. Infecting cells was her way of forgetting.
I heard every word of her story. What a sad creature. Then she said something that startled me. “All this will end when He comes… The legend.”
CD4 cell chuckled, “You viruses crack me up. The legend is merely a fairy tale we tell our kids to scare them. How can a virus rule us without DNA material.”
“You heard about the DNA viruses that can incorporate their DNA into cells, the legend isn’t stupid.”
“Yes, but to have an RNA virus rule us... C’mon..! I mean if you said it will rule other cells it would have been ok. But rule us… CD4 cells? The army?
If you ask me, the real legend was smallpox. Killing all those people. Making epidemics. But where is now? extinct. Do you know why? Because now we found a way to fight him. We now know exactly how to kill him. I met one myself. Had a conversation just like this one. He told me all his secrets. Told me about the legend that he also heard. He said that in ancient scriptures the legend is DNA virus in heart, RNA in body, and it will rise to rule the world. History should rewrite that this is only a fairy tale too.
And like you dear, I killed him.”
“But you promised, humans honor their promises. ”
“Of course we do, Guards!!!”
I knew then, that humane is the word that describes everything that was bad. I had to run now. The guards were coming with vacuolar sacs of acid. I ran to hide in this room. It was an old dusty room. Seems like no one used this room for ages.
“Can’t you just let me live? Live and Let Live?” she cried.
I saw a plasma screen that showed Herpena. She was tied up, crying, so beautiful even in tears. A pool of acid was being filled up. That nucleus was sick in the head. He wanted to enjoy killing her. I banged at the table in front of me angrily. I wanted to help but I can’t. I was breaking all rules the academy taught me. I was in the nucleus.
“I will not rest until every Virus dies. You filth.” He roared.
I banged again at the table. But this time, a strange thing happened. The overwhelming feeling came over me, I saw a keyboard under the table glowing, I took it. Strange letters were on it. Ancient. At first, I didn’t understand them. Then my fingers started typing. All I was thinking of was to stop the acid pool. Then, I heard the nucleus screaming. Something was wrong. He was in pain.
“Oh shit, What am I doing?”
I heard my voice in every speaker in the cell. Everyone stopped to wonder what was that voice. I was airing. I was glowing and changing. My skeleton was showing like I was in an X-ray. It read DNA sequences. My fingers were typing those sequences. I had no control of what I was writing, but I knew what I was telling the computer to do.
The guards shouted in the weirdest british accent I’ve ever heard, “Sir is something wrong? Should we continue this execution?”
“No,” Was I in control? Then I spoke inadvertently some weird language that I didn’t understand. Was I possessed?
I was ordering the cell to do stuff.
Everyone in the cell was buzzing with work. Building replicas of me. I was reproducing. Herpena was amazed and frightened, yet still tied up. No one will die anymore. No blood will be shed. Herpena and the nucleus will co-exist, just like Herpena wanted. But I wanted answers, what am I?
The computer spoke, “You are a reader. The only specie left that can read and write both RNA and DNA. You are the only virus capable of doing so. DNA in heart, RNA in body.”
I was the legend.
Herpena came and said, “What happened?” The computer continued to explain my powers, I can rule CD4 cells. I can disable immunities. I can rule the world.
“Nothing, I just made convinced “Nooky” to let you go. Listen, his type of cells will never attack you anymore. They are under my control. You can go and let him live. Live your life dear.“ I said the last sentence in a superhero kind of way.
“Whatever. If he is disabled, this means I can kill him and enjoy killing the rest of his kind.”
“But I thought you wanted to live and let live.”
“Your so naïve. His type will never stop fighting us.”
“Well, its time to stop the war” I said angrily.
“This war is humane. No one knows why it started, no one will know why it will stop. Results will only be known. Oh, here’s Myco..”
“Hey Herpena! Yes, I heard this body wont react. I got all my friends here to destroy what’s left of him.”
What have I done?
I can control immunities, But I have never killed a soul. People like her and Myco never hesitate to do so when they have an opportunity. Copies of me were everywhere in the cell. One of them came to me, “I’m Leiutenant 214. I’m here to report to you that we have seen what you’ve done. And we will copy it.”
“What have I done?”
“Removed immunity so others can kill”
What have I done?
Many have tried to kill me.
All those who tried died trying.
But I swear none were killed by me.
I swear.
Written By H.I.V.
Humanely I… virus?
