Code Zulu Alpha: Nerd in the Apocalypse! Chapter 1073: The Common Cold

As we put that other conversation off and get back to reality, Mitch was in the process of copying the files in my thumb drive into his laptop—even though I told him to keep it—but he started playing the short clips—that had finished transferring besides the larger files—I played for everyone else from the first eting I had with my group.

The two thought I had definite proof from the digging I did even before it started but all of those were simply clues or allusions that could sohow correlate to what we were currently experiencing.

"What are so of those images?" Bartow asked.

"So random newspaper clippings and the like that sohow alludes to the sa thing."

"That doesn't help us much either…"

Mitch nodded, "Aside from knowing it's just as unravelable as it's confusing. It's either we are against a super genius who was able to make different strands in one lifeti to cause chaos or a very large group doing pretty much the sa thing."

I chid in, "It's either of the two really but we could also say that it could just be one simple thing at first before it turned to what we're facing right now."

"What do you an?"

"I'm not a scientist, okay? I only have the basics down but take a cold for example, the mont we gain resistance to that particular strand, the only way we'd get a cold again is from a different strand but causing the sa experience.

Well— there are so cases were you could reinfect yourself with the sa cold—though it is very hard—the 'easy' way to do it is having an immune system low enough for the antibodies we have for that particular cold to not kick in or lose its effect."

Bartow was already smoking but Mitch was looking at solemnly before he opened his mouth:

"I do understand that but what does that have to do with this?"

"Ah— I'm still getting on it but are you also familiar with coinfection?"

"In regards to colds?"

"Yes."

"I do. It ans having two strands of different colds affecting us at the sa ti— Are you talking about the mutations?"

I nodded, "Sothing along those lines but building on that, there's at least 100 different strands of the cold virus—maybe even more—because it just changes and changes into different strands depending on its environnt for example—"

Bartow cut in, "Wait. So, what we're facing's a fucking cold?!"

Oscar, Mitch, and I answered at the sa ti, "No."

"Then—"

Oscar chuckled, "We're just talking about viruses in general and how they behave a certain way. We're just on the topic of colds at the mont. It's not the virus per se but there are certain aspects of it that we could correlate but not determine the actual causation of what happened here."

I continued, "As I was saying, viruses could just evolve on their own when they replicate and have these errors as they say but it could also happen when they jump or cross to different species, making it a jumbled ss. There are limits, sure, but my guess right now is that it used to be this one thing that was let out many, many years ago and laid dormant until last year."

Bartow's eyes just went wide, "Hold up, hold up, hold up! Is that why I heard so say that we're all infected?!"

"Not 100% sure but that's the premise we're on. Unless soone actually isolated themself from the world—no, nature could've been contaminated as well… This is really confusing, we're trying to find the single connection among an unlimited number of possibilities as to what caused this thing.

Finding it out by elimination would work but how long and how lucky could we be before we arrive at the right answer? Are we even alive by then?"

"Why are we trying to find the cause again?"

"Well, if we could figure out how it's made, we could figure out how it's cured. People do it on the daily without their notice, but in our case, taking them out by ans of violence always works but it's like a catch-all without solving the actual problem. It does help it in so way but that doesn't an that it's done. At the end of the day, we just know how to kill it, not the way it works."

"Is that a bad thing?"

"Of course. If we know how it actually works, it opens the whole to almost the sa number of possibilities. It's gonna sound sci-fi-ish right now but imagine if we could command a horde with one look or—"

"Flip a tank like it's nothing!"

I chuckled, "That's right. Or not even needing to sleep—"

Then Oscar interjected, "Or be immortal."

Mitch looked a little taken aback, "That's… That's promising actually, I would've loved to see my kids grow."

I got taken aback as well from his statent, "You… You will, right? You don't look that old."

"Hah! I an… You know, I'd like to see them grow up and have families of their own and see their families grow up and on and on… I'll jump on that chance the first ti it lands on my lap."

"Eh. I would've loved that too so I could see the endings of the things I used to binge before the world ended but yeah, that sounds actually good too. I'd want an off switch though."

Bartow's ears perked, "Off-switch? What's the point?"

"Are you sure you wanna have this kind of conversation now?"

"Fuck it, at least I could understand so of it now since we're in fantasy land!"

"Hah! Depends on the type of immortality. Do just not get even older or do we move bodies? Are we just moving our consciousness around or could we store them in a thumb drive like this? What if we lost an arm? Can we grow it back or better yet— what if we're just a head and got thrown at the bottom of the sea?

Are we just stuck there forever?"

"Alright, stop! Stop! Stop! You're making even more confused! One at a ti, alright?!"