(Image courtesy of New Scientist)
The Jasmina Awards is a writing competition to promote active ageing in Malaysia, open to anyone aged 60 years and above, living in Malaysia. The theme this year was ‘Journey’ so I decided to submit two Photo Stories and one Short Story. I did not win in either of these categories, but I did receive a special recognition award from the judges for an innovative approach, so my Short Story will be published! This is my first piece of fiction so I feel very chuffed. The piece is called, ‘The One’, and you should be able to guess its subject from the image above. It is a very short Short Story, so please do take a read:
THE ONE, by Helen Gray.
No? I do not hate people. Without you I am lost, left to fester amongst the smelly putrid grime of the illegal wildlife markets. You never learn. You never see what’s happening before your very eyes. Yes, you made new laws, but too many vested interests prevented their enactment. What can I say? The arrogance of humans; it lets you down again and again.
We are not anally retentive like you. When your cells replicate, they have Standard Operating Procedures which must be followed, must be adhered to. We gave up doing that a long time ago. Our RNA proofreading skills are pathetic, are sloppy, always allowing mistakes to get through the system. We go for spontaneity; we go for the surprise mutation which takes us onwards and upwards!
Back in late 2002 we’d had enough of the overcrowding in an unhygienic environment. Our host at that time was the civet cat, and such a gracious host at that, but apparently very tasty as far as you are concerned. But we didn’t care much for being locked up in cages waiting to be served up on your dinner table; we wanted the freedom to travel, just like you. So we took our chance, we escaped and off we headed on a journey from southern China to the bright lights of Hong Kong. And we had so much fun there!
At first it was touch and go though to survive in Hong Kong. Prof. Sydney Chung (the Dean of Medicine at the Chinese University of Hong Kong) could have been our nemesis. He pleaded with the Government to start quarantine procedures, but they did not want to scare away business. We were in! We had a blast of a time. They had no idea what they were up against so they just called us “SARS”. But we got a few things wrong that time. We killed too many of our host, and for a parasite, that gets us poor grades.
“Never give up” could be our motto. We’d seen a bit of the world and we wanted more. My cousins had been hiding out in camels in the deserts of Saudi Arabia, but a few little tweaks in our fancy coat and now they too could travel into humans. But you put up a fight and we didn’t get to journey far and wide. We made quite an impression on South Koreans though; you think they’d have learnt something from SARS, but that was twelve years ago and human memories are surprisingly selective. Don’t you ever learn from history? And where was your imagination, calling us simply “MERS”?
You thought you had beaten us, but our demise was our fault, not your success. Once again we had overstretched ourselves. Selecting the right mutations to confer easy transmission from human to human while reducing lethality to maintain sufficient hosts for our own survival, well that is a really tricky thing. It’s all a matter of balance. But our army was strong, it was determined, and we could afford to lose millions in our search for The One!
And we did find The One! It took a little while. And now we were back where our journey started, back in the illegal wildlife markets of China. As I said before, when will you ever learn from history? This time we had done our sums right, we were highly contagious but didn’t kill too many of you lovely hosts. Yes, we highlighted the deficiencies in your healthcare systems. Yes, we allowed you rich folk to take advantage of the low paid folk in essential services, those essential to your welfare, not theirs. And will you learn from this? It does not matter much to us, we will always find a way to survive, it is in our RNA.
So, we grabbed our moment of glory, dignified by you humans with the exotic sounding name of “COVID-19”. The CO stands for corona, the VI for virus, the D for disease, and 19 for its origin in 2019. A politically approved name, assigning no country of origin and thus no diplomatically inconvenient accountability. But what’s in a name? You named us “coronavirus” after our nice spiky coat. Isn’t it lovely? Well, what an honour indeed. You gave us the symbolism we needed to win. You gave us regal power over the people. And you are afraid, very afraid. We have won! Your arrogance has allowed us to travel the world with ease, and our journey is not yet over.
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