📖 CHAPTER 1. THE RETURN
He returned at night. It was cold on the plane, but not because of
the air conditioners—the air felt distant, indifferent, almost devoid of
oxygen. He sat by the window and stared into the darkness, seeing only his own
reflection. Sometimes it seemed to him that it wasn't his face, but a
mask—exhausted, with sunken cheeks and eyes that had sunk deeper than before.
At passport control, he didn't say an unnecessary word. The stamp struck the passport, soullessly marking the moment when the line between the one who entered and the one who had left was erased forever.
It all started two days later.
First—a slight burning in his eyes. Then—a fever, night sweats, a
dry cough. He knew this scenario well: hundreds of viruses had played it out
across the world. He thought he was prepared for such a situation and didn't
even go to the clinic. He just lay down at home, documenting each symptom like
a scientist, not a patient.
On the third day, he realized the situation was out of control: the usual fever reducers weren't working. The antivirals prescribed in such cases brought no relief. His appetite disappeared, and his dreams became heavy, as if someone were constantly shuffling the pages of his memory, disrupting their order. He would wake up from speaking unknown languages in his sleep, and looking in the mirror, he saw eyes that reflected a cold focus.
He didn't call for an ambulance. He didn't want to go to a hospital
where they would place him in a white plastic cocoon and only approach him in
hazmat suits, pretending to have the situation under control. He knew: this
virus wasn't from the textbooks. He felt it inside him, and only he could
understand it.
On the sixth day, lying in the darkness, he felt the fever recede.
Unexpectedly, in its place came a clarity he hadn't felt in a long time. His
body reacted to the slightest vibration in every nerve. He felt his breathing
had changed. It wasn't weak, like a sick person's—it was tuned to a different
frequency.
He stood up, slowly walked to the refrigerator, opened it, and took
out a test tube. He put on a mask, then gloves. He drew his own blood. His hand
did not tremble. The movements were precise, measured, as if his body had only
ever wanted to be studied.
Later, while packing a case with instruments and containers, he
looked in the mirror and, for the first time since the illness began, said
aloud:
"I'm not fighting you. I will study you."
He left the apartment. In the underground garage stood his car,
fogged up from the inside by the night's cold. He started the engine. The red
light of the dashboard colored his hands the color of blood. He drove to where
it all began—to his laboratory, where no one was allowed to enter without
permission.
📖 CHAPTER 2. THE DEVIATION
As always, the laboratory greeted him with the hum of the
ventilation system, the soft light from under the reagent cabinet, and the
click of the activating security panel. Everything seemed the same. Except for
him.
He entered as a scientist, not as a person in need of help.
Everything that was happening was so precise, it felt as if it had been clearly
scripted in advance. He knew which test tubes to take, which mediums to
prepare. He didn't rush; he acted automatically, but not thoughtlessly. On the
contrary, every step he took was deliberate.
He isolated the blood, added reagents. The centrifugation process
began. Half an hour later—the first separation. The blood divided into layers
so easily, as if it had allowed itself to be taken apart.
He watched as a shape appeared under the microscope—something
elongated, unstable, slightly pulsating. No reference book described anything
like it. He tried to compare it with influenza, with coronaviruses, with
fevers, but no form matched.
He froze, leaning back in his chair. A hum in his head. It wasn't
his thought. It appeared from nowhere, as if someone had implanted it directly
into his mind. As if the virus—or whatever was behind it—wasn't just altering
tissue, but integrating into his thinking. And it wasn't changing images, but
cause-and-effect relationships.
The scientist stood up, opened old notebooks, lecture notes—he
reviewed everything he had been taught. Now it all looked outdated, narrow. As
if he had been looking at science through a tiny pupil, and now he saw the
periphery.
He lay back in the chair again, closing his eyes. The dreams
returned. But they were no longer chaotic. They formed a structure. In every
dream, there was a pattern: at the center—the virus; around it—people. They
were infected, they died, they awakened, but they always—changed. The virus
didn't kill them. It opened up other ways of being for them. Only not everyone
could withstand it.
He woke up in a cold sweat, but without fear. Now he knew for sure
that the disease was not a physiological state. It was the perception of the
virus as an enemy. He wasn't the first to be infected, but he was the first who
didn't resist.
The scientist turned on the voice recorder.
"Day six. Temperature stable. Perception enhanced. I think
faster, thoughts have become deeper. An inexplicable feeling of inner symmetry.
I feel a foreign presence inside me, but it's not hostile. Rather, it teaches.
Perhaps the virus is not an organism. It's a pattern. I will recreate it. I
will enter it—and bring it out. I am not sick. I am altered."
A pause.
"I've given it a name. For now, just for myself. V-42. But
I think... it will demand another."
A red indicator lit up on the screen: analysis complete.
In the test tube was a form unlike any known virus. It wasn't
spherical or spiral, but asymmetrical. Almost fractal. He looked at it closely
and for the first time uttered a word that had previously seemed ridiculous to
science:
"Beautiful..."
📖 CHAPTER 3. THE SELF-SUBJECT
He knew how it was done.
He had written all the protocols for dozens of clinical trials
himself—from the phasing of injections to the tracking of side effects. But no
protocol had ever provided for the subject of the study to be himself, and for
the virus to be not a control variable, but something more. Something that was
already inside him, demanding not measurements and experiments, but
reciprocity.
He started with small doses. Microscopic injections of the purified
virus in a modified medium. The threshold reactions were absolutely nil: no
fever, no rash, no inflammation. On the contrary: his heart began to beat more
steadily, the headaches disappeared, his appetite returned. On the second day,
he noticed that he was sleeping exactly 3 hours a night, and it was enough. The
rest of the time he spent working. Complex problems were solved faster, as if
his thoughts were assembling themselves into perfect formulas even before he
could become aware of them.
He documented every step, but no longer as a scientist for a future
paper, but as a person observing a miracle from within, having become a part of
it.
"...But the strangest thing: I feel that the virus reacts
to my thoughts. As if I'm not just its host. I am its medium."
"Day eight. I hardly sleep. Or maybe, on the contrary—I
don't wake up. Sleep and reality are now almost indistinguishable. It's not
frightening. It has become familiar. Scenes I forgot years ago are surfacing in
my memory. Colors have become brighter, objects—sharper. Mathematical
equations—more understandable. Thinking has become easier. Thoughts seem to
arrange and order themselves.
Sometimes it seems to me that it hears me. That the virus doesn't
just live in me, but uses me as a medium. Not as a host, but as a home."
He conducted an experiment. He sat in front of a mirror and said
aloud:
"I am giving you access."
A pause. No pain, no fever. Just a feeling of expansion, as if a
new vector had opened in his temples. He smiled and, for the first time since
the illness began, laughed. It wasn't madness. On the contrary, he was
beginning to understand more clearly what was happening to him.
Then the visions began. They weren't dreams, but real shifts in
perception. He could see the air shimmering above the reagents, not from heat,
but as if a field existed around them. He could feel their composition, every
component in the formula, he could even sense their taste. Once, inhaling the
scent of a phosphate buffer, he knew its exact pH—he didn't need any
measurements for that.
But with this, something else came. On the tenth day, he recorded:
"Every time I approach the point where awareness becomes
complete, the virus retreats. As if it doesn't want me to understand everything
at once. It teaches—but doesn't rush. It frightens—but doesn't harm. I am
beginning to believe that it isn't just changing me. This isn't a mutation.
It's an invitation to... a dialogue."
He closed the lab journal and slowly leaned back in his chair. A
thought echoed in his head, not his own and yet familiar:
"You are not the first to try to understand. But perhaps,
you are the first who was not afraid."
He didn't write it down. He just stood up, turned off the light,
and sat in the darkness. He stared into the void for a long time.
"What are you?" he asked in a whisper.
There was no reply. But he knew for certain that he was no longer
alone.
📖 CHAPTER 4. THE MUTATION
On the eleventh day, he took another blood sample for analysis. Not
out of curiosity, but out of necessity. He felt his body changing: it wasn't
getting better or worse, just becoming different. The scientist knew that if he
wanted to continue, he had to see what was happening inside.
The color of the serum was strange. Not yellow, as usual, but with
a faint silvery glow, as if light were radiating from within. He held the test
tube up to the lamp. Its reflection fractured inside, as if the liquid had
learned to refract light, to control it. This didn't frighten him; on the
contrary, he was fascinated by what he saw. He knew such an effect was
impossible. And therefore, priceless.
Under the microscope, he saw the virus's structure. It was different from what it had been at the beginning. The virus had mutated, but not chaotically—purposefully. The new form was more complex, more elegant. It didn't just attack cells, but bonded with them and seemed to write new instructions, not destroying the DNA, but rewriting it in another language.
He didn't know what to call it. No term fit.
"This isn't replication. This is... interaction."
The scientist began to record behavioral deviations: food was no
longer a necessity. He drank water and felt full. Music became unbearable, even
classical. But in the rustle of the ventilation, he heard pleasant rhythms.
Once, upon entering the lab, he knew what phrases would be spoken on the radio
in an hour, even though the radio was off. He dreamed of a place that didn't
exist on any map, but he knew how to get there.
On the thirteenth day, he wrote:
"I don't feel fear. The thought that I'm going mad doesn't
plague me. Because I no longer use these categories of perception and thought.
This isn't madness. This is beyond the scope of familiar categories."
"But if the mutation continues, then who will wake up in my
body tomorrow? Will it be me or someone else?"
He looked at his hands. The skin had become slightly paler. The
wrinkles were gone. His heart beat clearly and rhythmically, like a metronome.
He looked at his reflection in the mirror: his eyes were the same, but it
seemed as if someone else had taken up residence in them.
He began to hear thoughts, as if they were having a dialogue with
him:
"You are getting closer. Do not be afraid. We do not harm.
We are restoring what was lost. You were never a stranger; you just didn't
realize it."
He didn't answer. But deep inside, he agreed. And for the first
time, he called the virus not "it," but "he." And
himself—not "I," but "we."
He closed all the folders on his computer. Disconnected the
external communication channels. Blocked the internet. Destroyed the backup
copies. Everything he had discovered no longer belonged to humanity in its
current form. This was information for future forms of human existence.
The scientist sat in the center of the laboratory, turned off the
lights, and waited.
📖 CHAPTER 5. THE FORBIDDEN HYPOTHESIS
He woke up before dawn. Not because he couldn't sleep, but because
sleep was no longer a necessity. He lay with his eyes closed, but his body was
at rest. It was a perfect biological system: it operated without glitches,
without fatigue, without the need for external intervention. He could feel all
his cells working in unison—as if there was no longer a struggle inside. Only
absolute accord.
He went to the mirror. The face was familiar, but something in it
had changed. The eyes looked different. Calm, steady. The skin was smooth, the
breathing even. He hadn't grown younger; he had become as he was meant to be
from the beginning. Without excess, without distortion. Real, whole. As if
nature had finally completed its creation.
He sat at the desk, picked up a notebook, and for the first time
since the illness began, he formulated not an observation, but a hypothesis:
"The virus is not a pathogen, but an
informational-biological structure with an inherently embedded vector for
transforming the organism. Its goal is not reproduction, but the re-creation of
the host.
I am not sick. I am the platform upon which it builds. I am not
healing myself, but participating in an experiment that began long ago without
my knowledge. But now I am aware. And I choose to continue this process."
He stopped. Thought. Then continued:
"If this hypothesis is correct, then the virus is not a
mistake of nature. It is a message. And this raises the main question: who sent
it?"
He reread what he had written. Crossed out the word
"virus." None of the classifications fit anymore. Now he confidently
wrote next to it:
"V-42. Variant 42."
He had given it a name. Not a scientific one, but a real one. As if
V-42 was not a thing, but something alive. Then he stood up and walked to the
window. The city lived its life. People went about their business. Shops
opened, cars made noise. But he knew that this rhythm of life was alien to him.
He operated with different concepts and categories. Lived in a different
coordinate system. And although he lived among these people, he was no longer
one of them.
The scientist tried to imagine what he would say if he decided to announce his discovery. Colleagues would doubt it, the government would try to seize everything, and pharmaceutical corporations would try to turn it into a commodity.
"They will look for a vaccine. But I—have found a path."
He couldn't allow this to become a weapon. Not in anyone's hands.
Not under anyone's control. Everything he had learned had to remain outside the
system. Not for its use. Only for those who would be ready to change, not to
control.
He took a small, sealed container from the shelf, inside which was
the modified V-42. Not virulent, not activated without an external trigger, but
possessing enough life force to—at the right moment—begin the transformation.
He placed the container in thermal packaging and put on a mask.
Then gloves. He dressed as if he were an ordinary employee heading to work in
the laboratory. Stopping at the door, he said aloud:
"Not for the sake of humanity, but for the next step."
The scientist left the house, and the world continued to live its
usual life, unaware that a person who had stepped beyond its bounds had
appeared within it.
📖 CHAPTER 6. CONTACT
He drove without a destination, or rather, without a route. But he
knew for certain that this was not a random trip. The GPS was off, the radio
silent. But every fork in the road seemed to suggest which way to turn. He
didn't ask himself how he knew the way. He simply trusted this intuition.
At first, he thought about going to the institute to hand over the
sample. Then he decided to head to a private clinic where people he once
trusted worked. Then the thought of a monastery crossed his mind: that a place
where people are silent might be suitable for the first step. But in the end,
he turned towards an old scientific base—a semi-abandoned laboratory where he
had once studied. A place that could not be detected or tracked by radar. There
were no surveillance cameras there, which meant he could speak aloud without
fear of being overheard.
He set up the equipment, placed the container in the climate chamber, and connected it to an incubator. Not to grow anything, but for observation. Then he took out a container of neurons—human cells grown in a sterile environment, ready for any experiment. He opened the ampoule and released V-42.
For the first ten minutes, nothing happened: no activity, no
flashes, no resonance. He even began to doubt whether the virus had died on the
way.
But then a slow wave, a pulsation, appeared on the oscilloscope
screen. Rhythmic and deep. The neural network had spontaneously activated. Not
as a reaction to a stimulus, but according to some internal logic of its own.
The cells began to "talk" to each other, transmitting impulses as if
it were a familiar process for them, as if this had happened to them before.
Previously, he had only seen such activity in a living brain, and now it had
appeared in artificially grown cells that had begun to mimic consciousness.
He couldn't believe it.
"V-42 is not only safe. It is capable of initiating the
self-formation of neural connections. This is not a virus. This is a key."
He observed for several hours, recording, analyzing. Everything
that was happening went beyond the bounds of science, but did not contradict
its logic. It was on the edge of the permissible, a line that had not been
crossed before only out of fear.
And then the main thing happened. The waveform on the screen
suddenly changed. By chance? No.
The virus mimicked his voice. The digital projection of the
impulses recreated his phrase, recorded two days ago. He played back the
recording. And indeed—the rhythm, the pauses, the height of the waves matched
what he had said then:
"I am giving you access."
He recoiled from the monitor. This was contact. This was a
reaction. He understood: the virus not only rewrites biology, it is capable of
perceiving, remembering, recreating, responding. It is alive in a sense that
science had not previously recognized. It is not intelligent like a human, but
it is not mechanical like a program. It is a form of interaction that seeks
dialogue, feedback.
The scientist turned off the equipment and sat on the floor, next
to the incubator. He placed his hand on the device's casing and closed his
eyes. A thought flashed through his mind:
"If you can hear me, the next move is yours."
There was no answer. But he knew: the virus could hear him. Perhaps
it had begun a very long time ago. Or maybe—it had always been this way.
📖 CHAPTER 7. OPENING THE CONTAINER
He woke up in complete silence. The base was alive, as indicated by
the steady hum of its generators, but the scientist felt an overwhelming sense
of calm. The calm before a decision. Not like a patient who must die and has
come to terms with it. But like a person who knows he is no longer sick. And
that he is not in charge; he is merely a vessel.
The scientist walked over to the container and removed his
protective gloves. He wiped the glass and looked inside. There was a
droplet—microscopic, transparent, harmless. It didn't shimmer, didn't pulsate,
didn't threaten. It showed no activity. But he knew: if the process were
initiated, it would change everything. And for that, everything was ready.
He sat down at the terminal and wrote one last message. It was not
a report, but an address.
"If you are reading this message, it means I did not leave
it in vain. And this is not by chance. The container holds V-42. You can
consider it a virus, a culture, or a foreign language. But the truth is, it is
not hostile, it does not bring destruction.
It has come to show what was hidden. It will not give you power or
eternal life. It will not make you a god. It will simply remove what prevents
you from being who you truly are. It is not a cure. It is a mirror.
And you must decide for yourself if you are ready to look into it."
The scientist saved the file, copied it to an isolated flash drive,
and deleted the original. He placed the flash drive next to the container and
activated an emergency transmitter: in three days, a signal with the
coordinates would hit the network. Someone would receive it, open it, and read
it. And make a decision.
And as for him... The scientist removed his mask, clothes, and
shoes. He felt a sense of freedom and peace. He walked out of the building.
He walked across the land without haste, without anxious thoughts.
He just walked without any destination—because the destination had already been
reached. He was no longer a virologist. Not a scientist. He was a conduit.
No one met him on this path, but he knew: contact had been made.
And those who had heard his signal—they were already on their way too.
He didn't turn around, didn't look back. He just walked until he disappeared over the horizon.
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