I, Alien

Circumstance, I can handle. Haven’t I always? That is why they chose me, but perhaps I was not chosen, maybe it was just a dream that I was taken to change the world.

A dream that I begged for this cup to pass (my capacity for protest was inexhaustible then), a dream that my plea was ignored, a dream that I found myself—

—Falling, falling and rolling and tumbling and bouncing, bounce and jounce, tumble and jump, roll and folderol, surrounded by the thick, viscous, oily fluid. So they did it after all, they really did make me go and it had worked, the protocols correct.

—And disbelieving to that last scoop, swoop, loop, and whoop, I thought they would desist, that someone else would be taken to prowl the darkness. But no, no passing cup, so there I was falling and rising in that tunnel, propelled by rhythmic pulsation.

Thump. Thump: it’s dark, I said, and I miss my—

—Best not to think of them. Of origins, of the way it had been before and of what had been taken from me. I must live in this new world. This world, my mission.

Orientation Chamber earlier. Lecture topic: Meet Your Neighbors. You will be coursing through tunnellike vessels in a stream of blood. You will be surrounded by discs, oddly concave at the center. Red blood corpuscles. These new neighbors are important, yes, but not as important as the white blood cells: Leukocytes.

Remember those. That’s what you’ll be.

And even before: I don’t want that, I said. I don’t want that. Silence, I was told, and shattered and complied I acceded.

Follow your fellow  leukocytes:  watch  and  copy them. Then at a crucial moment you’ll make that one critical change and then—

And then what?

And then you’ll see what is needed and why.

And then they obliterated me.

Into that blood of memory. Leukocytes, corpuscles, my new family. Two cells in front, fellow members of the White, fellow soldiers of the Immune System. Behind, a mass of them: some round, some ovoid, and some horseshoe shaped—as, fetchingly, am I. Eccentrically located nuclei too like mine, surrounded by cytoplasm that glistens in the slick and random darkness of the blood. Cytoplasm just like mine, except for that one crucial difference, the infinitesimal message of change given this humble Voyager to carry.

I, Voyager, greet them as they greeted me. We communicate in the bloodstream’s ancient code. Their language comes easily as we signal and call to others of the Family: Monocytes. Macrophages. Eosinophils. All that instruction I have endured facilitates communication. I mask my origins and darker, higher purpose with the words of cells, commonplaces hiding the deeper codes of exile and ruin. The Leukocytes and I, burbling small confidences as we await the call: the true summons.

The call.

A nasty virus this, they say. Herpes zoster. Kill it now is the command. So it’s off to the hand where Herpes Zoster has pitched camp. We are armed and ready for battle. We jog and swim to the Herpes Fort. My own substance is grim with the knowledge that my battle is not with Herpes. Not at all. Herpes is not the enemy. I know this.

I plan my address, then.

Herp, I will say: Herp, old pal. We’re allies. Friends. Herp, I will say, you are the smallest life-form known, nothing more than a package of DNA with a dirty assignment. I have an assignment, too, and these missions are not dissimilar. Your mission is to replicate yourself and so is mine. You will use the body’s own reproductive process by taking over a cell’s internal machinery. And I—

—And I

—I stop. That would be too blunt. I might have said that I would take over Herpes’ own machinery, but that would alert him and then I would have to take him by force then instead of having his cooperation. Try this, Herp, I will say instead: I will assist your takeover by sending false signals to the Leukocytes. They will disperse, the dumb things. By the time my deception has been discovered, Herp and I will be sharing a cell and the process will begin.

This seems more reasonable.

Accordingly, I volunteer to lead the attack. The Leukocytes agree. Why not? They are so dumb, so gullible, so easily led after all. Furthermore, they are relieved. Let someone else lead the charge to the enemy camp. Find someone as willing as I.

Wait ten heartbeats I say to them. Then move to the fifth capillary along the digital crease of the third right interphalangeal joint. I will be waiting for you there.

They are dumb but imprinted. They waver. It should not be, they suggest. This seems peculiar, they bleat. We are not at all certain, they whine. We have doubt, they mumble.

I am persuasive, intense as I have been trained. This is the best way, I say. This is the source of the signal. They grumble and mumble a kind of agreement. They bounce and jounce, hobble and bobble.

I will be waiting for you there, I say. Go ye heroes, etc.

Mutual salutes, wishes of luck, and then I forage my way to the fifth capillary where Herp perches, indistinguishably.

I speak to him just as I planned. It goes as I knew it would. Herp is persuaded.

“Mommy, it itches!”

“Itching is normal when you have chicken pox. Let me prepare an oatmeal bath for you.”

“Oh, that feels better. Can I sit in the tub all day?”

“If you want.”

“I want. But, Mommy—”

“Yes, dear?”

“There’s one spot that is still itching. Like it’s on fire. And the oatmeal isn’t helping.”

“Show me.”

“Here. The middle finger of my right hand.”

“Oh, my, that is some blister. I’ve never seen one quite like this. Let’s try some lotion and see if it helps.”

“But, Mommy—”

“What is it?”

“I feel weird. And all the other blisters are starting to itch more. Something is happening. Something’s happening! The blisters—look, they are getting bigger and bigger. Help, they’re growing and growing! Look at that one on my pinkie, it’s as big as my whole finger. And that one over there—”

“Oh!”

“Mommy what’s wrong with me?”

“I don’t know. Hello? We need an ambulance immediately. Something terrible. Terrible!”

“Mommy!”

Of course I don’t kill him.

That was never the assignment, of course. Never. What would be the purpose of that? The mission can be accomplished only through a Uve carrier, an active host. And a good thing, too, because killing him— well, that would have been malevolence, nothing else.

Seven years old: innocent and adorable. Cute as a button. That’s what the nurses have been saying, now that the swelling has receded.

But before that: doctors in and out of the room, the kid’s little face now a bowling ball, his fingers and toes fat little sausages. And the arms and legs unrecognizable in their edemic monstrosity. Massive does of be-nadryl to control the itching, sedatives to help him sleep in the fever’s furnace, antibiotics to kill the alien invaders… if only they knew, if only they knew.

No one told me that it would be this way. The Priests, they kept me in the dark. That was certainly wise of them. I was already protesting and if I had known it would be this way, would I have still gone on with it/ The burning, the excruciating itching which has made the merge possible.