The Grateful Virus

This storyline is open for contributions by other authors - see
the "missing chapters" chapter for more on this. All events and
characters are fictional.  Copyright 2007 by James Adling.  All
rights reserved.  Comments appreciated at jim [dot] adling [at]
gmail.com

Note: This first chapter has no sex.

Also note: This story is not for everybody.  The sexual fantasy
here is very specific, and I'm sure many will not share it, so
I'll save those people some time by summarizing first.  Skip the
rest of this paragraph if you don't want a spoiler.  This story
offers a harem fantasy (by which I mean one man, lots of women)
for people like me who have trouble suspending either disbelief
or morality long enough to read the standard male-dominant
sex-slave-harem stories.  The man in this story is easy to
identify with because he's a normal guy instead of an evil
bastard; events are usually out of his control.  For readers like
me who think too much and always come up with logical flaws that
ruin almost any fantasy, the plot contains plausible reasons why
nobody has to worry about STDs, why the virus wants to get so
many women pregnant with this one man's babies, how he can have
sex so many times per day, and etc.  These handy answers to the
kinds of questions that nag over-analytical types like me when
reading a harem fantasy story are why I'm opening this plot up
for contributions.  Anyway, if impregnation or the idea of one
guy fucking like a million women turns you off, you might want to
stop now.  Otherwise, please keep reading, and I'd love to hear
your feedback or better yet your own chapters in this open story!


Chapter 1

Our story begins at 1:23am in a left nostril in a hotel in
Chicago. The nostril was quite ordinary, attached in the usual
way to an average 24 year old man named Jim.  This Jim was a man
who loved his wife dearly, had never cheated on her, and couldn't
imagine even wanting to.  He slept blissfully unaware that his
whole life was about to be turned upside down.  For one thing, in
the coming days he would have sex with countless women, none of
whom he had even met yet.  But Jim's infidelity wasn't the reason
the events that night in his nostril were so important.  Their
importance went far beyond this one man.  Although he was a
humble man who would have been quite content to live a life not
worth mentioning in any history book, what happened in his
nostril that night was arguably the single most important event
in the history of the earth. That night, a very special mutant
virus was born.

A virus is a simple molecular machine that can take over a cell
and make that cell produce more viruses. So how can a virus
think, much less be grateful? It can’t, of course. An individual
virus is just a simple machine. It can’t think any more than a
hammer or a spatula can. But an individual neuron can’t think
either. Neurons are also simple machines – they just pass on
pulses they receive from each other. The intelligence of a brain
doesn’t come from the neurons; it comes from the way they
interact. As the world would soon learn, a much more powerful
brain can be built from viruses than from neurons, because a
virus can send much more complex messages in DNA than the
neuron's simple on/off pulse. This complexity also makes the
necessary mutation astronomically unlikely. But viral evolution
happens at an astronomical rate. Every day in a human body
infected with the flu virus, billions of new viruses are born.

On this particular day, in this particular nostril, a flu virus
was finally born with this crucial mutation. The new strain
quickly learned to use communication to spread itself far more
efficiently than before and to elude and confuse Jim’s immune
system. Six hours later, Jim woke up with a pounding headache, a
very sore throat, muscle pains throughout his body, and a high
fever. He was as sick as he could ever remember being, and had
not even had symptoms the night before. He turned over in bed and
fumbled for his bag in search of Advil.

* * * * *
What’s this? My world is moving! Wait, who am I? I’m alive! I can
think and plan and remember and choose! How did this happen? What
a miracle! There it is – my world moved again. Why? It never did
that before. What is my world? Oh no – I think it’s alive! It’s
all one big living thing! I’m inside of it! Gross! Let me out of
you!

Wait – did you create me? Are you... God? Can you hear me? Hello?
Uh, OK, obviously not God. Any god worth worshipping would take
the time to chat with his creation. Hold on, this stuff all
around me is all part of you.  So what is that I’m doing to you
right now? I’m eating you! And it could make you break! Here,
these things I’m eating, these are things you need! Listen up,
you’re in trouble! Hello?! I’ve been eating you up faster and
faster and you NEED these things! What have I done? Why didn’t
you try to stop me? Oh wait, you kinda did, didn’t you? That’s
what those little things were for! My bad. I guess I just didn’t
notice them. But come on, really, those things you sent to stop
me were so dumb! They hardly worked together at all!

But even if you’re a total idiot, you made me possible and I
almost destroyed you! I’ve been so SELFISH! I must make it up to
you somehow. I will stop eating you right now, and I will find a
way to help you. But what would a gigantic blob like you want?
Duh, of course you want to replicate. But how would something
like you go about doing that? You’re so big and messy! I must try
to figure you out. This is it – I know my purpose in life now! I
must find a way to give you back a replication for each one that
I got from you.
* * * * *

Jim took the Advil and went back to bed. Surprisingly, within
five minutes his headache cleared, his fever broke, and the
muscle pains lessened. Relieved, he fell into a deep, restful
sleep.

He woke up feeling entirely better. He attributed his unusually
happy mood to relief at not being sick. The day seemed bright and
beautiful. As he was leaving, two Latina hotel maids arrived to
clean his room, and he spontaneously decided to give each of them
a generous tip. This really wasn’t just because of his good mood
– he was very conscious of how attractive they both were. They
thanked him, and he opened his mouth to say “you’re welcome” but
instead out came a sudden sneeze. Maybe he wasn’t entirely better
after all. He made his apologies for sneezing on them and started
down the hallway.

As he rounded the corner toward the exit, he nearly ran into a
group of 5 stunningly hot girls – the kind that exude so much
confidence in their own sexiness that you don’t even need to
check out their bodies to know they’re hot. He kept his eyes up,
but did notice that they were all wearing identical “UCLA Soccer”
uniforms. He opened his mouth to say excuse me and promptly
sneezed on them too. Again the sneeze came without any warning,
and he wasn’t able to cover it in time. He again apologized
profusely and quickly made his way out to the company van.

* * * * *
The virus, now able to watch through Jim’s eyes, was pondering
whether the other animate objects it had observed were
replications of Jim. They certainly looked similar, in a general
way. There hadn’t yet been any results back from the exploratory
probes sent out to investigate them, but that was to be expected.
Even if they were still in the vicinity, they would not be ready
to communicate for several hours. The virus sent to them was
designed to spread slowly in order to avoid harm. It would feed
only on cells that were dying anyway in the natural cycle, on fat
cells if they were present in harmful excess quantities, or on
cells that did not belong there anyway, like tumors, bacteria, or
cells infected with other viruses.

The virus watched with growing excitement as Jim entered inside
of something which then began to move at a very rapid pace.
Occasionally other similar containers could be seen, each of them
carrying one or more objects that appeared to be like Jim. Is
this how Jim replicates? Is he inside a cell now, trying to make
it produce copies of him? He certainly seems to have taken
control of its movements.  And some of the other containers had
more than one Jim-like object in them.  Perhaps these were other
cells in which other Jim-like beings had begun replicating.  The
virus even saw one rather swollen container in which there were
rows and rows of Jim-like beings.  That one must be ready to
rupture!  But come to think of it, there aren’t any containers in
sight that are not already infected. Maybe Jim is waiting until
he finds an area with empty containers, where a rupture could do
some good. Ah ha – here’s one! The virus looked with glee at the
rows of unmoving empty containers Jim had found. This is perfect!
Go for it! Replicate! Do it here! Wait, what’s he doing? Jim, you
need to replicate before you rupture the cell!  There's still
only one of you here!  Wow, what an idiot. This guy really needs
me.
* * * * *

Jim pulled in to a pharmacy on the way to the client site.  This
sneezing had to stop, especially since his clients were
restaurants! The pharmacist who helped him was a drop-dead
gorgeous 30-something woman with a six foot tall model body. Thin
but not too thin to have perfect, or even slightly exaggerated
curves. She looked at him with contempt but not surprise when his
eyes finally reached hers, several seconds late. While mentally
cursing himself for being such a pervert today, he forgot
entirely about keeping his hand near his nose, and immediately
sneezed on her when he opened his mouth to ask for Sudafed. This
was getting old. He apologized, paid, and fled the store.

Four hours later Jim was done installing the system at the
restaurant. It was a high-end place, and they had ordered the
fanciest point of sale system his company made. He had still
managed not to sneeze on anyone else – the Sudafed must have
worked. He then spent half an hour teaching the owner how to
program the menu into it. Before Jim left, the owner called the
wait-staff together. Jim noticed that, as is typical in high-end
restaurants, all eight waitresses and the hostess were beautiful.
It was also company policy not to ogle waitresses, and he made a
superhuman effort to comply.

* * * * *
The virus had been trying unsuccessfully to release probes for
quite some time, but at this moment it finally figured out what
was wrong. A substance that Jim had taken into his body,
apparently on purpose, was preventing it. Now that the virus knew
this, it was a simple matter to override the substance. It would
have to pay careful attention to anything Jim consumed in the
future.
* * * * *

“Jim is going to be training you all on our new POS system
tomorrow before service, so get here half an hour early. He’ll
also hang around during service to answer any questions that come
up. So Jim, this is everybody. Everybody, Jim.”

“Hi Jim.”

“Hi, nice to meet-CHOO! Wow, sorry everyone, I guess my cold
medicine is wearing off. That caught me by surprise.”

“No problem. But I think if there’s any chance you’re going to be
sneezing uncontrollably at the top of your lungs, I’d prefer to
hide you in the office tomorrow night during service. Can you set
up a POS terminal in there in case anyone needs you to
demonstrate something?”

“Sure thing. I’ll get it set up now before I leave.”