Invasion

"With an incubation period of only a few hours," Pitt said, "combined with it being a short illness and the infected people wanting to infect others, it spreads like wildfire." He was typing away on the laptop as he spoke. "I could do some reasonably accurate modeling if I had some idea of how many of the black discs have landed on Earth. But even with a low-ball, rough estimate, things don't look so good."

Pitt turned around the computer screen for the others to see. It was a pie graph with a wedge in red. "This is only after a few days," he said.

"We're talking about millions and millions of people," Jesse said.

"Considering both how well the infected work together and their evangelistic attitude, it's going to be billions before too long," Pitt said.

"What about animals?" Jonathan asked.

Pitt sighed. "I never gave that much thought," he said. "But sure. Any organism that has the virus in its genome."

"Yeah," Cassy said pensively. "Beau must have infected that huge dog of his. I thought it acted weird right from the start."

"So these aliens take over other organisms' bodies," Jonathan said.

"Analogous to the way a normal virus takes over individual cells," Nancy said. "Remember, that's why Pitt called it a mega-virus."

Everybody was glad to hear Nancy's voice. She'd been silent for hours.

"Viruses are parasites," Nancy continued. "They need a host organism. Alone, they are incapable of doing anything."

"Damn right they need hosts," Sheila said. "Especially this alien breed. There's no way a microscopic virus built those spacecraft."

"True!" Cassy said. "This alien virus must have infected some other species somewhere in the universe which had the knowledge, size, and capability of building those discs for them."

"I wouldn't be too sure," Nancy said. "They possibly could have done it themselves. Remember, I suggested that the aliens might be able to package themselves or part of their knowledge into viral form to withstand intergalactic space travel. In that case their normal form could be quite different than viral.

"Eugene, before he disappeared, was hypothesizing that perhaps the alien consciousness could be achieved by a finite number of infected humans working in consonance."

"You all are getting way ahead of me," Jesse commented.

"Anyhow," Jonathan said, "maybe these aliens control millions of life forms around the galaxy."

"And now they view humans as a comfortable home in which to live and grow," Cassy said. "But why now? What's so special now?"

"I'd guess it is just random," Pitt said. "Maybe they've been checking every few million years. They send a single probe to Earth to see what life form has evolved."

"Awakening the sleeping virus," Nancy said.

"The virus takes control of that single host," Sheila said. "And the host observes the lay of the land, so to speak, and reports back home."

"Well, if that's what happened," Jesse said, "the report must have been mighty good because we're knee-deep in those probes now."

Cassy nodded. "It makes sense," she said. "And Beau might have been that first host."

"Possibly," Sheila said. "But if this scenario is correct, then it could have been anyone anyplace."

"Thinking back to everything that has happened," Cassy said more to Pitt than the others, "Beau had to have been the first. And you know something? If it hadn't been for Beau we'd be like everyone else out there, completely unaware of what is going on."

"Or we'd already be one of them," Jesse said.

These sobering thoughts quieted everyone. For a few minutes the only sounds were the crackling of the fire and the chirping of the birds outside the open windows.

"Hey!" Jonathan said, breaking the silence. "What are we going to do about it, just sit here?"

"Hell, no!" Pitt said. "We'll do something. Let's get started fighting back."

"I agree," Cassy said. "It's our responsibility. After all, it's possible that we know more about this calamity right now than anyone else in the world."

"We need an antibody," Sheila said. "An antibody and maybe a vaccine for either the virus or the enabling protein. Or maybe one of the antiviral drugs. Nancy, what do you think?"

"No harm in trying," she said. "But we'll need equipment and luck."

"Of course we'll need equipment," Sheila said. "We can set up a lab right here. We'll need tissue cultures, incubators, microscopes, centrifuges. But it's all available. We just have to get it up here."

"Make a list," Jesse said. "I can probably get most of it."

"I'll have to get into my lab," Nancy said.

"Me too," Sheila said. "We need some of the blood samples from the flu victims. And we have to have the fluid sample from the disc."

"Let's do an abstract of that report we made for the CDC," Cassy said, "and disseminate it."

"Yeah," Pitt said, catching on to Cassy's line of thinking. "We'll put it out on the Internet!"

"Hey, great idea," Jonathan said.

"Let's start by sending it to all the top virology labs," Sheila said.