Mutant

A birth, of sorts.

The mother splits into siblings, deep within the moist stronghold of raw red caverns which no daylight has penetrated.

A series of slow convulsions shatter their sanctuary. Propelled upwards, borne into alien daylight just as the birthing cycle begins again. Both siblings split, disappearing into what should be two perfect copies of each parent, grandparent and earlier generations beyond numbering.

But this time is different. Perhaps a photon of light, or the violent wave action of ultra violet. The reconstituted genome is imperfectly paired, the double helix spirals linked in one location by adenine and thymine instead of cytosine and guanine. Consequently, one cell’s membrane has a different structure of proteins and phospholipids to its ancestors. It is stickier. Such a change, beyond microscopic, will change the world. In time, it will be discovered, but not until it has claimed the lives of ninety per cent of the human population.

The consequences are yet to unfold as the mutant splits into two deviant copies, blind to the sparkling dust motes that dance in the swirling air. Caught by a vortex, the twins are sucked into a gaping maw, embraced by fleshy darkness. They are grains of sand on an alveolar beach amongst their half-siblings, but they alone stick as the tide recedes and their fellows are expelled on a rainbow spray.

They stick to the surface of the lungs. They multiply, two, four, eight, sixteen times and more, spreading into the new frontier of the bloodstream. Nutrients abound in their new home, which they absorb, convert and subvert like living creatures everywhere, chemical reactions leaving by-products in their scythe-like wake.

One of these by-products is a three-protein toxin which acts as an enzyme, a cellular catalyst, interfering with the complex mechanisms which regulate water uptake into the host human cells and form the very basis of their function. It also kills the macrophages which are the footsoldiers of the immune system. Rapid cell death follows as the invaders sweep through arteries, veins and capillaries, splitting and splitting all the time.

The man coughs, spraying microscopic droplets throughout the train compartment. He has a low-grade chest infection anyway, the common cold virus allowing bacterial proliferation, making it even easier for the new invader to set up camp. Soon, at work, he shivers and sweats, chest convulsing in a rasping series of coughs. He returns home and retires to bed, sipping a hot lemon and paracetamol drink. Within twenty four hours, he is dead, surrounded by mask-wearing medical staff and other patients close to death, as the sweat chills on his wracked and wasted body. The masks offer little protection against the tiny microbes, whose malign ancestor was borne into daylight just over a day previously. Within another couple of days, fetid winds will gently lift their distant cousins from the bloody foam congealing around corpse-mouths, blown around the litter-strewn and silent streets, emperors making their triumphal procession amongst the newly-conquered kingdom of the dead.

This short story came to mind on the train last week, when someone sneezed. I thought about a pandemic from the microbe's point of view. The science is loosely based on the mutation of a bacterium leading to an effect similar to that of anthrax, which is extremely toxic but not very infectious.