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“What’s a rumbled Jalosk “Is that a new symptom?”
“Incredulously: Neverin her assessment of Jalosk’s intell
igence Yorrik hurried on Talking about it helped so about it s had real solutions Sometimes “With nervous hesitation: The junk RNA is also how I know, at last, that this is an artificial disease Someone has done this to you Ayalon B is not a naturally occurring virus The salarians engineered it in their station on Erinle, but it proved too volatile for mass manufacture and all samples were process-bleached and incinerated And yet it is here It is there It is in you Helpful exposition: A chimera virus is just this A virus which combines aspects of many other viruses This one, whatever we decide to call it, is in the Metastolizoht better of his choice of vocabulary and started over “Viruses are living creatures Not like us Not like synthetics But living creatures all the saoal is to survive and reproduce, just like us Viruses are simply much more ruthless in their methods”
“I like ruthless,” coughed Jalosk
“Sharp correction: No you do not,” Yorrik replied “Please try to focus Viruses have personalities Correction: They do not have personalities like ours But they have so like personalities Family traits Some are very conservative and averse to risk; they anized; theybefore it has a chance to spread the infection Ours is… opportunistic You could call it nimble, if you wanted to When it encounters an obstacle, such as a strong immune response or a treatment or an already weakened systenificant replication… that doesn’t have enough ‘food’ to keep the virus going, Fortinbras has so many other viruses spliced onto it that it can very easilyoff
“With growing intellectual excitement: All viruses mutate to some extent It is part of their life cycle When a virus meets a healthy cell, it first attaches to the surface receptors, then penetrates the protein membrane, then binds to thewith them in order to take control of the cell’s reproduction in order to force the cell to make copies of the virus rather than more healthy cells It turns the cell into a factory formore viruses At that point, thereprocess—shedding that crystal part you see there in order to transcribe its proteins over the proteins of the original cell And in e with parts of the virus, and thisthe replication stage
Many eous Some will be more specifically adapted to the environment To the infected body Better for the virus, worse for the patient Personifying the internal ue of a virus: I was a puls, so I’o play in the brain stem Solemnly: But Fortinbras here has so many exotic proteins to draw on that it is far more likely to produce very bizarre and unpredictable mutations That means many more of them will be catastrophic failures, of course But the ones that succeed are likely to succeed in wildly interesting ways Such as being able to jump from drell to hanar Or from hanar to batarian And all it needs to find these wildly interesting ways is tiht sparked in Yorrik’s ht at all yet, just a little road in the dark that ht lead somewhere… somewhere new “That is why it is so resistant to Horatio’s attempts to kill it Every time it reproduces, it actually becohtly different Soht and day”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about”
But the captain did The elcor could see it in her posture She knew just how bad this was, and it was really starting to sink in now that she would not look back on this fondly in ten years In ten years, sheat all
“With renewed confidence: Batarian, i to board a vulnerable ship by force First, you locate the airlock—the part of the ship you can commandeer and enter most easily, yes?”
“Sure, I suppose”
“Then you penetrate the ship’s defenses and sware You either kill or enslave the command structure and the cre you have control of the ship On the outside, it still looks like an asari cruiser or a volus frigate But in reality, it is now a batarian ship, and you can use it to attack other unsuspecting craft and make them into batarian ships, too Yet you did not kill everyone on board Some you took as slaves You absorbed them into the new ship’s hierarchy, into the batarian culture, and ill come of that synthesis it is impossible to say That is what a virus does It survives, consumes resources, and reproduces Without mercy or morality And just like people, once it has learned a new trick, it will not go back to the old way of doing things”
Qetsi was looking down at the floor, deep in thought After a long silence, she said, “What is that little equation in the corner?”
“Dejected: I was hoping you would not ask That is the R nought number Every virus has one It is a variable Not everyone who encounters a virus will contract it, not everyone who contracts it will die There are always natural iht nule infected person is likely to pass the virus to given ideal conditions, population density, te For exaht nuht infect five to seven other people before they die Ochreous rhinophage, an ancient elcor pandeht number of six to nine”
The batarian coughed and spat blood again “And what’s my score, Doc?”