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.

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!

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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."