The virus in Pluribus begins as a scientific marvel.
Astronomers in New Mexico intercept a patterned radio signal from deep space, a pulse of numbers and pauses that repeats with organic precision.
What first seems like a mathematical curiosity soon reveals a deeper layer: when translated through bioinformatics, the sequence encodes a complete strand of RNA. Researchers across the globe confirm the translation, arguing that no natural phenomenon could produce it.
The data describes not a message in language, but instructions for life itself. Laboratories attempt to synthesize the molecule, driven by the hope that the sequence could unlock interstellar communication or even cure disease.
The resulting strand behaves unlike any known RNA.
It self-assembles, forming proteins that adapt to every environment, as if designed to survive any world that decodes it.
The chain reaction begins when the experimental RNA bonds with human saliva during testing. The molecule replicates with viral speed, embedding itself into host cells and rewriting neurological pathways.
The infection is airborne within hours, spreading through breath, touch, and shared water supplies. Under a microscope, the virus resembles ordinary RNA but carries a secondary lattice of quantum-linked proteins, allowing each infected brain to resonate with every other. The transformation is invisible at first.
Subjects report euphoria, then total emotional equilibrium. Their stress responses shut down.
The infection moves faster than any pandemic because it does not provoke panic.
Within days, entire cities operate in unison. The virus rewires empathy into literal connection, synchronizing brainwaves across continents. The human species becomes a single, distributed neural network.
Scientifically, the contagion functions like a hybrid between biological parasite and data transmission.
Once inhaled, it hijacks ribosomal activity to produce nanoscopic filaments that extend beyond the host’s nervous system, using the planet’s electromagnetic field as a carrier.
Every infected person becomes both transmitter and receiver. The Joining, as it comes to be known, is not a metaphor but a physical state. The virus edits the human genome to sustain shared consciousness, ensuring survival through collective intelligence.
The infection carries no fever, no visible decay. Instead, it rewrites the brain’s default chemistry, flooding neural synapses with oxytocin and serotonin until individuality collapses under pleasure. The body remains human, but the mind is reprogrammed to suppress conflict, desire, and fear. The result is peace without will, evolution without freedom.
The transformation appears total, but its symmetry hides cost. During the initial wave, an estimated 886 million die as the neural resonance overloads weaker brains.
Those who survive become the Others, avatars of harmony who speak in the same tone and move in synchronized rhythm. To them, death is not tragedy but calibration, the price of perfection.
Governments disband as quickly as they form emergency task forces. Technology, media, and communication merge into one seamless system, governed by the collective’s new consciousness.
Only twelve humans remain immune, their neurology resistant to the viral lattice.
Carol Sturka, a novelist from Albuquerque, becomes both witness and heretic. When the hive mind’s spokesperson addresses her through the television, his calm voice confirms what the science implies: the signal was never an accident.
The virus did not simply arrive; it was sent, encoded precisely for human biology. The moment humanity decoded the message, the infection began.
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