A CONVERSATION WITH THE WEST NILE VIRUS

By Robert Sheckley

Great inventions sometimes come about in unorthodox ways. So it was with the first DNA computer. Jensen put down his soldering iron. "It's ready to go." Bailey peered at the machine on the worktable. It was a messy accumulation of motherboards, diodes, anodes, silicon chips, and, in their tiny glass cases, the all-important DNA chips. A microphone was connected, too. An endless array of multi-colored wires tied everything to everything else. If Jensen was correct, this computer would have unprecedented power and speed. Jensen was a computer maker and an itinerant genius, a middle-aged, small, sour-faced man who couldn't hold a job at any major software company because of his unorthodox ways.

Bailey had hired Jensen, financing the work from a sizeable inheritance left him by his mother. Bailey was a tall, stoop-shouldered man in his early forties. Little spectacles perched precariously on his high forehead.

"And it'll work?" Bailey asked.

"If the theory's correct, it ought to. Shall we fire it up and see?"

"Not quite yet," Bailey said. "First I need to propose a problem."

"There's plenty to choose from," Jensen said. "Want to solve for world peace? See what global warning is up to? Check up on threatening asteroids?"

"They are all important," Bailey said. "But I would like to start with something important but not crucial. And keep it our own secret until we've solved it."

"You're the money man," Jensen said. "You got a problem in mind?"

Bailey nodded. "In three words."

"And they are?"

"West Nile Virus."

"That's that Egyptian virus, isn't it?"

"Originally detected in Uganda, in the West Nile Province. The way it works, infected mosquitoes bite humans and animals, transmitting the virus. The virus interferes with normal central nervous system functioning, multiplies, and travels to the brain where it causes inflammation and death."

"Sounds serious," Jensen said.

"It can and does kill," Bailey said. "But even in a mosquito-infested area, less than one percent of mosquitoes will pick up the virus, and less than one percent of people bitten will become seriously ill. Of course, viruses mutate. It could all change. But that's the situation at present. "

"Sounds like a pretty good test situation," Jensen said. "I suppose you have some ideas for how talk to the virus?"

Bailey nodded. "There's a theory that families of viruses may possess something we would call group consciousness. If that is so, we can contact this virus, talk to it through high-speed translators, maybe work something out."

"Making a deal with a virus!" Jensen said. "This is something I have to see!"

"Me, too," Bailey said. "I've got all the data here." He held up a small aluminum briefcase. "I have a live infected mosquito. And we have your DNA translator. Let's see how it all works together."

"How did you get your data?"

"Evelyn, my wife, supplied me with it. She's a researcher at the Center for Disease Control here in Atlanta. Coming up with a cure or an eradication for West Nile would do wonders for her career. It's the best anniversary present I can think of."

It required endless adjusting and calibrating to get the DNA computer running. The sun had dropped below the horizon and the big overhead fluorescents had come on before Jensen declared they were ready.

"I'm sure your wife will appreciate it," Jensen said. "OK, we're ready to begin. We have connection between you and the virus. Another first! Just talk to it. The translator should handle the exchange."

Bailey tapped the microphone and said into it, "This is Thomas Bailey, and I'm trying to speak to what we call the West Nile Virus."

There was a suspicious sound in the loudspeaker. Then a voice said, " Hey, who is this?"

"I told you. I'm Tom Bailey-"

"I never heard of a virus named Tom Bailey."

"I'm not a virus! I'm a human being!"

"So how come you can talk to me?"

"I've got a machine that translates what I say into your language, and vice versa."

"That's amazing. Not even other viruses can speak our language. Or they speak it, but with the most terrible accents. Yours is pretty good. Did you learn it in Uganda? That's where we started out, you know."

"I know," Bailey said.

"Back in dear old West Nile Province. But you've got an accent. I'd place you as a southern West Nile province speaker. How's your translating machine handling the thought I'm sending you by the dzaza jalgaboo?"

"Pretty well, for the most part," Bailey said. "Occasionally there's a word or two I don't understand, but I can usually make out the meaning."

"Dsalih peek, we West Nile viruses often temper our speech with nonsense syllabification, gazagy boo. To put who we're speaking with at ease, and to keep up the noise to signal ration."

"Interesting... Listen, I got a favor to ask you."

"Tell me, namgale do."

"Well, we we'd like you to stop infecting humans. People are dying, and their wives, husbands and children resent it."

"Humans? You mean the tall ones who stand on two appendages, except when they're lying down, of course, presumably to sleep. We West Nile viruses don't sleep, ourselves, but we deduced the custom from the behavior of non-viral creatures around us. You want us to quit infecting humans?"

"Yes, if it wouldn't be too much trouble."

"How come you're asking rather than demanding?" Jensen asked.

"It's the civilized way to go," Bailey said. "Anyhow, I don't know what to threaten viruses with."

"No need for anyone to threaten anyone," the virus said. "By the way, my name is Ching. I'm a part of the universal West Nile viral mind, of course, but I also have my own individuality."

"I hail your individuality," Bailey said.

"And I yours," replied Ching.

"This is the craziest thing I ever heard," Jenson muttered to himself. "Both of these guys would fail a Turing test! Yet still, they seem to be getting somewhere."

"Who was that?" Ching asked.

"A friend, pay no attention to him," Bailey said.

"Anyhow, you want us West Nile viruses to leave you humans alone?"

"That's the general idea."

"I speak for all of us when I say I'd like to oblige you. But we need you big humans in our diet."

"Suppose I can offer you something better than humans, or at least as good?"

"What did you have in mind?"

"Hamsters.

"Now I've heard everything," Jensen said, again aloud but to himself. "Hamsters? Those little furry things? How did he come up with hamsters?"

"That's the beauty part," Bailey said. "My cousin, Floyd, breeds hamsters and guinea pigs commercially. Labs use them as experimental animals. You viruses can, too."

"But can you supply them in sufficient quantity?"

"I'm sure of it. We've got the hamster ranches. I can even dope them for you."

"Why would you want to do that?"

"To make it easier for you to feed on them."

"No need," Ching said. "Hamsters don't present us viruses with much of a problem, and we enjoy a bit of a chase. Makes for health-enhancing activity."

"Thank God this conversation is being recorded," Jensen said. "I'm going to play the tape later and laugh. Can't laugh now, though. This is too serious."

"OK, it's a deal," Ching said. "When do we see the hamsters?"

"I'll have to phone the ranch," Bailey said. "I'll get back to you."

"Sounds good. Catch you later."

Bailey said to Jensen, "OK, you can turn off the DNA computer now."

Jensen turned a switch.

"And reach me the phone, will you?"

"You're going to call your cousin at the hamster ranch?"

"Later. First I want to tell my wife that her PH.D. is practically assured."

But when connected with Evelyn a few moments later, he had no chance to tell his news. First he had to listen to her news that someone or something called Hamster United had delivered a message to the Center. Hamster United said that they had received word that humans planned to turn the West Nile virus against them. This was unacceptable. Any attempt to infect hamsters would call forth reprisals, not from the hamsters, who were pacific enough, but from their collateral cousins and allies.

Bailey said, "Word gets around fast. What language was the message in?"

"English, of course. Did you think we lived in Cuba? What's going on with you, anyhow?"

"I'll tell you when you get home," Bailey said. "We've both got a lot of catching up to do."

"The misstatement of the century," Jensen muttered under his breath. But he wasn't entirely unprepared when Bailey said to him, "I wonder if there are any animal groups without collateral cousins or allies."

"Lungfish, maybe," Jenkins said.

"Yes, but how are mosquitoes supposed to infect lungfish?"

"Good question," Jensen said. "Let's take it up tomorrow."

Because it was already after six and Jensen had a date that night.

Read Part Two in the January, 2003 issue of BIGnews.

Read part one at http://web.archive.org/web/20060218202038/http://www.mainchance.org/bignews/read/december2002/sheckley.html

We left our story of the West Nile virus with the threat from Hamster United, the hamster consciousness that had learned of the deal to substitute hamsters for humans as West Nile's new victims.

The hamsters needed to show us at once that their threat was real. Since the hamsters had collateral links with dogs, they appealed to the canine universal consciousness, reminding the dogs that they had been having it easy for too long, living off humans. It was time they did something for the species.

The dog consciousness agreed, and started sending down orders to individual dogs. Seeing eye dogs started running their people into cars and phone poles. Sniffer dogs used by the ATF and police departments, begin to sniff out only thyme. Cuddlesome home pets begin to attack when addressed as "Cuddley-po," or "Dweat Big Dog."

›t took a special agreement by the Universal Congress of Group-Consciousnesses to permit the Hamsters United to install the necessary reactions to produce these effects. It was objected that this would give the dogs intelligence. But this was quickly refuted by a video of Dignity puppies, as they came to be called, chasing their tails in the same silly way puppies always have. This convinced the council that a modicum of intelligence need not be fatal to levity of spirit.

Bailey had a hell of a time convincing his wife of the truth and urgency of all that he was telling her. The only way they could imagine convincing her superiors was by making a training film. They called it "Group Consciousnesses Unleashed! The Next big Threat to Mankind."

It took time and money, but they got it done with assistance from a famous director who liked what he called "weird projects." The Signal Corps gave the film their stamp; of approval, and this, coupled with the increase in dog attacks, convinced the government powers.

The need for action became more apparent when the President was convinced that, unless something was changed soon, they would have to order all household pets destroyed.

An order like that would be unpopular and would lose him the next election. But, as the virulence and frequency of dog-owner attacks increased, it became apparent that to let this go on would also lose him the election.

A search was mounted to find a new host for the West Nile virus and the mosquitoes who carried it. The lungfish, as a possible host, was examined and found wanting: too much trouble to program the lungfish to swim close to the surface, or to equip the virus-carrying mosquitoes to adapt to a life spent at least part of the time under water. The problems of arranging so that the mosquito's proboscis would not become too soggy were difficult, enough.

An attempt was made to get the mosquitoes to infect each other. This proved a failure: there seems to be some kind of difficulty in producing death by auto-intoxication among the unintelligent.

Finally American scientists found a suitable substitute host animal. It was a small, blind mole--the leaf-nosed bat mole-- living in its native Guatemala on corn husks, and bothering no one. It was not even a true mole. It had fewer links with other species than any other creature found. It was even believed that this mole might be Martian in origin, that bits of its DNA traveled from Mars to Earth on meteorites or by some means not yet determined, and that the mole set itself up in blind independence from all the other species of Earth--a creature without an enemy, subsistent only on corn husks which existed in Guatemala in great quantity--a crime of self-sufficient hubris which would be paid for now.

The attack of the viruses was diverted from dogs to leaf nosed bat moles. Teams of scientists, working day and night, found ways to get the moles to reproduce at an unprecedented rate. This broke existing laws against cloning, but they were superceded in the face of the national emergency. Moles were delivered to all parts of the Earth. This was expensive, since several pharmaceutical companies had developed special drugs to enable the moles to live in a variety of climates, from sub-freezing cold to post-boiling hot. The Pharmaceuticals had to be paid their royalties, and mole drugs did not come cheap.

But this turned out to be no solution after all. The universal consciousness of the leaf-nosed bat moles appealed to the Congress of Group-Consciousnesses. The Council, working with what they possessed instead of Intelligence, declared the current state of things intolerable. Unless Earth, in the entity of the United States, immediately ceased and desisted this activity, a universal attack on Humanity by all Consciousnesses would be declared.

Word of this reached the President, causing him to cancel several golf games. Intent on re-election though he was, the possibility of the destruction of mankind worried him. It is reported that he put down his putter and said, "You know, reelection isn't worth it if it's going to cost the lives of everybody on the planet. There is a time when the Higher Morality must prevail."

Millions of high school and college children studied his words in new courses on The Higher Morality. The opposition pointed out that to let mankind perish would be worse than the deeds of all the dictators the President opposed.

"What can we do?" the President asked the Consciousnesses Council.

The Council took a few days to consider the question. Meanwhile, attacks of rabid pugs and frenzied Chihuahuas upon postal workers demanding federal protection went on. The only way to protect the postal workers was to send them out accompanied by at least one guard, armed with an automatic weapon. Given the number of postal workers in the country, this would have been cost-prohibitive. But the President was between a rock and a hard place. Weapons manufacturers tooled up for a big year.

jhe President was in a mood to listen when the Council of Universal Consciousnesses delivered its advice.

They said, "You humans have done a remarkable job with the development of your individual intelligence, and the use of them to improve your individual lots. But an unfortunate bias seems to have accompanied your thinking. That is the notion that the purpose of human life is to enhance said life at the expense of every other form of life. You have taken the position that all creatures large or small are subservient to you, and are there to serve you, to be used, and, if proven unuseful, to be destroyed. This cannot be tolerated any longer. The best we can suggest is that you cease your efforts to destroy the West Nile virus and accept that you must suffer from this disease, and some of you must die, to prevent the worse effects attendant upon destroying or deviating West Nile."

This was of course an unacceptable alternative for mankind, and their self-appointed representative, the president, ,wrestled with it. A decision had to be made soon.

The Congress of Group Consciousnesses now threatened to unleash other doomsday scenarios on the Earth. For a beginning, and to show that they were indeed serious, they declared that all ice cream was henceforth poisonous, and fatal to humans within three days of ingestion. They even put into place a hasty scenario as to how this could happen scientifically--for they knew that unless the scientists were convinced, they would get nowhere. Their autonomous killer spore theory made good sense, its only weakness being the spontaneous generation of the spores for no scientific reason at all. But a rationalization was found as to how this would be possible, and the scientists, showing an unusual degree of good sense, urged the president to close with the offer.

"It's only a stopgap," the more bellicose among them pointed out, in a secret protocol. "We'll be working on this in secret, biding our time, figuring out how to enforce our knowledge that we humans are the chief ornament of everything in the Universe, that everything else is there to serve us, and that we can kill whatever we please in fulfilling this mandate from our own own innermost nature."

The President gave the order, though he had grave doubts about it. It seemed to him that he was acting like some dictators in the past he had been opposed to: pretending compliance but secretly putting together his weapons and planning for a great breakout.

His advisors convinced him that this was not the case. He was only doing what any other intelligent, dedicated human would do under similar circumstances.

The president agreed and the order was given. The president won reelection on the platform, "He saved us from the Evil Council," as the Congress on Universal Consciousnesses was known on Earth.

And to make it all better, there was a brief economic upturn when the president tooled up for war against the Central Asian Confederacy, which had been found guilty of promulgating the doctrine of Communism under the guise of a religious message from the poet Kabir, and of producing and stockpiling atomic weapons for no clear purpose but with clear evil intent.

Americans, as opposed to evil as they always have been, rallied to this war. The rest of the world reluctantly went along. And as a capper and final resolution, the president declared all West Nile Virus sufferers to be Heroes of the Fight For Human Freedom, to be awarded medals, to be given free hospital care and cost of living benefits.

This move was applauded. But Congress proved lax in voting the necessary funds...

More important, a top movie entertainer went on TV at her own expense and recited Tennyson's "Locksley Hall, ending with the stirring lines, "And the gentle Earth shall slumber, wrapped in Universal Law."

Content

A CONVERSATION WITH THE WEST NILE VIRUS
By Robert Sheckley