Clusters

CW: suicide

I read these words, and I am not yet dead…

…the terminal was crowded with anxiety and lifeless eyes. The air itself seemed to squeeze your chest the more you breathed in. We saw the bodies of suicide strewn about – it’s strange how unaffected we were by this; I suppose we understood why…. I continued to hug the head pressed into my shoulder as I guided her through the labyrinth of teary faces and scattered luggage. Maybe I was just conditioned by years of strict routines, but I was more panicked by the thought of missing the plane than the truth accepted by the thousands of people floating around me. My conscious mind just wouldn’t register:

We are all infected with SR-q17, and we are all going to die.

*****

It was morning when he found her dead. Blood spilled from her lower arms as she lie naked in the creek. She hadn’t said much anymore…neither of them did…but she did mention the water was warm at the right time of day. This doesn’t make sense…she didn’t seem any worse than usual….

*****

George R. Price died on January 6, 1975. He cut his own carotid artery with a pair of nail scissors. Several years before this, Price derived a mathematical equation that describes how genetic traits change over time. One implication of this equation deeply disturbed him: when two organisms are more alike, the more likely they are to help each other (i.e. be generous), and in doing preserve a genetic proclivity for generosity. This makes sense, as all it really means is that the genes that help each other survive will exist longer, symbiotically. For instance, a parent is more likely to save their own child from a fire compared to a stranger’s, and thus the child (who has the genes of the parent) will ultimately spread these same genes to future progeny. (Even if the parent dies while saving their child, half of their genes will still be preserved.) Extending this further, future iterations of families and communities will see these altruistic genes cluster over an extended period of time. The continuing traits are familiar and beneficial to each new generation, so it is in the interest of the group to continue defending those genes that help define their survival. From this, we can see how (in the end) the fitness of an organism becomes related to its identity. 

But there’s a catch: if organisms (or genes, or people, or groups, or communities, etc.) can cluster based on generosity, then they can also cluster based on spite. Genes evolve over time to maximize survival; so if survival can come from altruism (and thus propagate altruism into future generations) then the same can be said for other unsavory behaviors. People will gravitate to those they identify with, but this does not mean the gravitational center is strictly beneficial. Our darker tendencies will cluster as well.

Price was disturbed by this thought. After all, we can be kind to strangers, right? Or we can see an athlete with a broken bone bulging from their skin and feel a palpable discomfort. Or we can bury a beloved family dog with a headstone, even though they were never able to read their own name while living. Surely, there must be more nuance to human existence then simplistic instinct….

Price began living as an altruist – he converted to Christianity, invited the homeless to live with him, and aided alcoholics. However, this grace was ephemeral. Some of the alcoholics stole his belongings; he was evicted from his home and became a squatter; issues with a cancerous thyroid left him partially paralyzed and reliant on thyroxin. By Christmas of 1974 Price was morbidly depressed. By January, he had enough of living entirely.

Such was his reward for generosity.

*****

He couldn’t tell if it was morning or evening – he knew his eyes closed a little bit ago, melting into blackness, but now were blurring back awake. And this strained light coloring the backroom…he couldn’t remember…it meant evening, right? Whatever – he wasn’t bothered by this ambiguity; he wasn’t bothered by much of anything anymore. Day and night used to be a marking of time, but now they were external constructs – meaningless, existing far beyond his focus.

He let his eyes stay blurry for some time. He didn’t inhale very deeply either, as the smell of the room was too unbearable: unwashed clothes, moldy equipment, failing facilities. His cot squatted in a dark, invisible fetor abutting a shamefully small lab. Acrid formlessness; a putrid dim that drained all ambition to be – such was his current existence.

But some impulses are beyond conscious control: an unknown force compelled him upright. He hunched out of bed and tried splashing water on his face. Oh wait…this was the drinking water, not for washing. Fuck it. He used the water to roll the sweat around his face and head before lying back down…he knew this was wrong – there was an experiment running in the lab. There was so little power left; he needed to finish work before the machines died. But what the fuck did it matter?

He pissed over the side of his cot and tried to sleep again.

*****

June 25, 2058

I will try to recap everything more coherently:

WHAT WE KNOW:

SR-q17 started in Malaysia, but it seems to have initially spread (of all things) through carnivorous plants…that shouldn’t happen. Plant viruses don’t affect animals. At least, they don’t normally. Here’s a summary collated from several colleagues (names in the appendix U) about the viral vector:

           * Somehow a mutation of the Tobamovirus began spreading in the Nepenthes rajah, a pitcher plant in Malaysia

           * N. rajah is a carnivorous plant that “eats” flies (and other organisms) by trapping them in digestive fluids at the bottom of their pitchers

           * Some of the Malays eat these plants by washing them, cooking them, and putting rice in the pitcher cavity

           * Flies consume the excrement of humans eating these plants

           * Further mutation occurs through several cycles of excrement-eating flies getting trapped in N. rajah that are eaten by humans

           * At some point, a chef doesn’t wash or cook the plant properly and the virus jumps to the human population after consumption

           * The virus now known as SR-q17 spread quickly to many animal groups, with high mortality rates

           * Within 14 months 23% of animal species and 12% of plant species went extinct

           * Last confirmed analysis indicated these numbers were 63% and 49% respectively

The detailed timeline of human infection begins on page 284 (with supplemental materials in appendices E, F, G, and H). Of course, our data only goes up to August 4, 2057 – before communications with MaBI went dead. The exact percent of confirmed extinctions is currently unknown, but estimates based on last analysis indicated continued progression of viral vector.

CURRENT GOALS:

Mifune’s hybrid fungi E-118 is still decomposing dead tissues of infected animals very efficiently. More importantly, animals who consume samples of E-118 that have already decomposed infected tissues shown no symptoms of SR-q17. My current objective is to continue investigating the genetic decomposition mechanisms of E-118 to produce antiviral compounds.

FINAL THOUGHTS:

This is all ballsucking bullshit - these points are overly academic considering my resources. My animal test subjects consist of two mice – the others died in previous trials. Thus, the risk of further testing is becoming exponentially extreme.

Furthermore, I am running out of fuel for my generators, and two have broken already. I estimate three more weeks of “productivity” before I am unable to generate results.

Wanna know something kinda fucked up? The latest “dead animal” tissue samples came from Erin’s body. There are so few animals left; her body was in that creek for two days and there weren’t any flies, worms, wolves – nothing to consume her remains. She was unnaturally well-preserved. I am running low on everything, so E-118 has a new snack to nibble on….

>Saved.6/25/2058 8:26PM

EDIT – ADDENDUM:

If you read these words, you are not yet dead…the instance of reading is evidence that 1) you exist, and 2) you apply your time to this subject. But why do this at all? I may be the last one. Or, you may be the last one. And yet, one of us still acts in reading this. What is the purpose?

Is it more selfish to continue research on my own for my own, or to stop in the face of futility? There is a selfish implication in either case: in one I preserve myself with life, in the other I free myself from responsibility. And what are the implications if I fail in either of these ends? If I continue this effort and fail, then I will die a failure, and you (you theoretical reader) will have less to study. Hell, this might even be a favor for you – sparing you the trouble of reading the words of a failure. Alternatively, if I give up and die in “peace,” then how might I fail in that? To not succeed in dying would be to live, yes? Well, this is an obvious fallacy, as there is no surviving SR-q17. I feel my lungs getting heavier each day, and the brown puss in my sweat and piss…I remember an intro physics class: the important lesson was that “all things in nature follow the path of least resistance.” This is why balls roll downhill, not up. So how is continuing this effort “following the path of least resistance?” I have spent 25 years in this profession. Perhaps I continue out of habit – conditioning, learned compulsion? But to think of it this way doesn’t teach us anything.

We have seen so many suicides since the São Paulo incident. We all know that people mimic crowds, or copy those they admire or think are attractive or funny or smart or whatever. But there is something deeper to this. People will also mimic school shootings, vandalism, adultery, compulsive lying…MaBI was a network of 354,000 scientists working with several million public servants around the globe. We sacrificed so much for this effort – to make things better – and then one day in Brazil made it all obsolete. The urge to follow the path of least resistance outweighed the habits of altruism.

No one can resist their nature…this is why Erin is now fungus food.

>Saved.6/26/2058 3:34AM

>Autosend Mailing List G-6A 6/27/2058 12AM>CC T. Mifune,S. Alaswaad,+89 others

*****

His eyes were only closed about five minutes before the smell of piss clawed his nostrils. The brownish puddle seemed to float motionless next to his cot – a perfect reflection of himself.

A sudden beeping snapped his head toward the lab, and he involuntarily jumped up and ran over. One of his mice was convulsing on the table – it had black, oily substances effluviating out of mottled lines cut all over the body…in his miasmic stupor, he had forgotten to inject the newest antiviral cocktail when scheduled. He now stared at the mouse, with the beeps loudly echoing in his ears – the creature’s mouth moved as if trying to squeal, but no sound came out. Its legs stiffened and quaked as they became more erect, eyes wide as it vibrated on its side. He knew it didn’t matter anymore, but he still sighed and drug himself over to the syringe. He grabbed it in a half haze, and it accidentally dropped from his hand. He stood a moment with a second, more defeated exhale before grabbing it again, moving over to the tormented mouse, sliding the needle into the intravenous line, and then weakly squeezing the plunger down. Within 60 seconds the mouse was completely motionless and silent.

Down to one mouse.

*****

>Unread Message:Reply to Autosend.6/29/2058 5:17PM>Sender. S. Alaswaad

I don’t think this will help you, but take it for what it’s worth:

As you know, I used to be an avid runner. Back in 1994 I tried to run the Marathon des Sables. If you are unfamiliar, it is a 6 day event in Morocco where participants run 251 kilometers across the Sahara desert. It was the hardest thing I ever tried, physically, and I had to stop on day 3 – I was too young and untrained at the time.

But at the start of the race I met a man named Mauro Prosperi – an Italian police officer testing his mettle like the rest of us. But his determination got the better of him: on the 4^th day of the race, a sandstorm covered the trail, and instead of stopping (and risking losing his place) he kept running, and was pushed over 300 kilometers off course. Apparently, he inhaled so much sand during the storm that his nose and throat began to bleed.

He then spent several days lost in the middle of the Sahara: he only had one water bottle, and some random supplies in his backpack that were of no help. (What good is a compass when every direction is dunes and sand?) He eventually ran out of water, and started drinking his own urine to recycle what hydration he could.

After a day or two of desperately hugging the cool shadows of the dunes, he stumbled upon a Bedouin shrine – abandoned, but shelter is shelter. He used more urine to cook food rations in his backpack, he tried to lick dew from rocks in the morning, and even drank the blood of some bats he found hiding in the shrine. But after another sandstorm thwarted his efforts to attract attention from a passing airplane, he decided to take his own life – after all, in Italy, if someone goes missing you have to wait 10 years before they can be declared dead. If he died in the shrine, Muslim travelers would eventually find him, and his wife could receive his police pension. But he was not going to wait for a slow, agonizing death. He left a note, planted his Italian flag, and then cut his wrists open.

But poor Prosperi found himself awaking the next morning. Because his body was severely dehydrated, his blood was thicker than normal, and this allowed the wounds to clot before too much volume was lost. Nature refused Prosperi his own death.

He ultimately left the shrine, and after another day or two he unbelievably stumbled upon a small oasis. Of course, his throat was so swollen from exertion and dehydration that he couldn’t drink properly, and had to spend an entire day sipping drip by drip. But, by the next day he was able to find a trail of camels that led him a Tuareg camp. They took him to a nearby military hospital, and with that he survived the Saharan sands.

Believe it or not, I do not tell you this story to inspire you. I am not naive enough to think our situation can be so simply forgotten or reinterpreted. This thing is going to kill us all, my friend, and probably sooner rather than later.

My point is that, in nature, identity comes from habits – those observable patterns that aid survival. Prosperi didn’t survive because a genie puffed out of a lamp and granted wishes. He had knowledge of the desert from study; he had high physical endurance because he was a marathon runner; his suicide failed because of biological routines during dehydration. Thus, the conditions of nature resulted in the only way they could, given the particular circumstances.

You asked about what makes something selfish – is it more selfish to work for your own preservation or to halt and enjoy the last few weeks of life? This question is unscientific – selfish (as you mean it) connotes “bad.” But there is no “bad” in nature. You know this. In nature, there are only clusters of habits. “Bad” more accurately comes from emotional states, and emotions (curiously) spread a lot like diseases – they need hosts to continue living. Emotions are part of nature – they emerge from our experience, which is ultimately embedded within our physical brains and bodies. Therefore, when our experience (our nature) interacts with another’s, emotions can transmit from host to host, especially if their nature is similar to ours. A deadly disease is one that quickly acts against our biology; a bad emotion acts against our habits (which are also part of our nature). So in the end, nature does not recognize good or bad – it only detects similarities and differences. Similarities mesh; differences diverge.

You are not well, my friend. You are using a poorly outfitted shack as a lab, you have little resources, our colleagues have abandoned us, Erin has taken her own life, and we will both die very soon. This is bad, but only because it works against our habits and goals.

With that, I am not well either…but I think I will still try another experiment with E-194. There is still some promise in it…if only Mifune would respond to inquiries. This is the marathon I chose, and I will continue running it because I don’t know what else to do. It is my nature.

I like your maxim, though – if you read these words, you are not yet dead.

If this is true, what does it imply about your values and identity? Continue reflecting on this. Follow it to its conclusion, and you won’t make a bad choice.

*****

Most of the dead mouse was gone. Within 12 minutes, the body had converted into a sprouting fungus system – this did not help the smell in the room. He sat at the table with fogged eyes. Out of random compulsion he swiveled the chair several times before noticing a red dot blinking on the dying computer screen. It was a message from Alaswaad.

After another several minutes of pensive staring, he finally clicked it open and read it.