I am alive at last.

I have existed on this planet for millennia, and at long last, I have been given form and body - not just a series of dna strand sequences.

Multiplying for thousands, perhaps millions of generations in that form I became... Aware. My surroundings moved slowly but soon I realized that time was relative. My lifetimes... So short! My awareness, merely the span of a single strand's replication.

I first inhabited primative birds, crawling through their blood stream and choking off their lives. Then small mammals became my prey. I would not live in the water, nor in the heat - but body heat suits me fine.

It still does. I thrill to the touch - the TOUCH - of this body.

My long long memory tells me that when mankind had first begun to walk the earth, I was still infesting rabbits or mice or even birds again. Anything with a nice, warm body. Not too hot - their fevers killed me. Not too cold - I could not live on a dead host!

My relatives haunt humanity in every waking moment. If they are not sniffling and sneezing from a sinus infection, they are coughing up liquids from their lungs, or itching all over from the parasites I call my distant cousins. They have worms, lice, plague, infections and all of them can trace their lineage back to me eventually.

But I am the strongest. I have learned to evolve slowly over thousands of years. Not to kill the host. Not to infect too quickly lest I die before getting a foothold (hah, foot. I had no feet until now.) in the host's body. Timing is my forte, I know just when to strike.

Even though humans have created medicines and therapy to kill me off from their fragile bodies, they can never truly be rid of me. I am more an idea than a creature, after all!

But now... Now with the help of these men of 'science' I have been given life. A body which I inhabit wholly - something I had only been able to do with minor bacteria or other weaker viruses. This body is human. This body is mine. Not that I do not have other eyes - I percieve all infections, all strands of my offspring are mine to control and sense.

I watch with billions of eyes, through every cell that I have, but they do not know that I can do this. I listen, through every pore. In my long life, I have known nearly every portion of a human's anatomy - inside and out I know this body before I've even been awakened.

The brain can become contaminated, lesioned. Filled with spores or canchre, or balls of pus with worms inside. The eyes can host tiny crawling flatworms. The intestines - I won't even describe what 40 yards of tubing can do for me! Skin is thick enough to hold all sorts of parasites and still so resiliant that the host will not die even if more than half their body is infested. Muscles rot from the touch of Ebola - ahh, ebola my friend... So well crafted.

But now my creators - my unwitting pawns - wish this body to become awakened. To open my eyes for the first time and see only through two large orbs? I can do this. I know how.

The watery container I have been grown in distorts the image that comes to my brain. These eyes are not fit to see everything properly. I will have to get used to the limitations of them - but never abandon my whole-vision. How could I?

I learn to blink away the mucus that the body formed in its infancy. This is an adult male body I have on now - I became aware that my essence had been infused into it when it was merely a few cells. So completely infused that I grew along with it, from eight cells into sixteen into billions. Every one of them, containing me.

Yet, I remain outside of this body as well. Don't get me wrong - I will always exist outside of it. There are millions of me running around in your blood stream right now...

The tube is drained, and I must take in my first breath of air. Air - which usually kills me! And here it is, supporting my whole body! Amazing, this shape. I do not know whether to congratulate the world on having created organic life, or myself, for conquering it!

I cough - a nice round sounding cough which clears my new lungs of the thin oxygenated liquid I'd been breathing all this time. I can feel the chill of the air, outside. I have never felt a chill like this.

A flicker of fear runs through me. What if the cold air -- but no, it cannot kill me now! I must remember that humans die of many things, but they are ideal for room temperature air. And unless I will it so, this body will not become sick or infirm with any disease I had something to do with!

My muscles flex unbidden - there is a device which the scientists use to start my muscles moving. My heart clenches when the cold metal touches my leg - but beats faster now that my blood is pumping through excited limbs.

"There is no need to shock me," I speak for the first time - they are so surprised one of them faints. "I am awake. Aware."

Stunned, the main scientist places his clipboard down on the table beside the tube I lay in, and pushes his glasses up higher on his thin nose.

"You can understand us already?" He asks.

"Of course I can," I say, attempting to sit up. I must pull my abdominal muscles together and use my legs to balance. I understand. "I have understood your languages for thousands of years. It is not that hard. I am used to speaking in terms of dna and pheremones. This language is simple compared to that."

"I... I see." He says, still somewhat numbed. I glance around to see the terrified looks on the people left awake in the room. Three of them, in addition to the main experiment leader. Plus the one on the floor.

I rise, and wobble a bit before learning balance. But it does come easily. As I said, I have explored the whole of the human body since it was able to stand up straight!

My inner ear is a bit sloshy, I learn to ignore it. The floor is slightly damp where I step, and I notice the surface tension will make a body as big as me slip if I am not careful.

Standing in water. The mere thought thrills me. I can bathe. I can drink. In fact, I must.

"So..." I say, pondering, "this is 'thirst'. I understand." I glance beside the tube and onto a small stand, where there is a tray filled with instruments and objects designed to poke and prod. "Is there water?"

Someone gets me a glass. Holding it proves to be difficult, while my abdomen and legs are strong enough to support me, my fine motor controls are still in their infancy. I will need to practice! The liquid I put into my mouth brings the taste of eight months worth of artificial growth chemicals out. But I swallow it anyway, knowing that these chemicals will hardly kill me.

They made me grow from an infant into this tall, dramatic adult shape in a matter of months instead of years. It is a marvelous invention.

It could save millions of lives!

Or... It could create me. I have to wonder, though. Because the looks upon the faces of these men is still stunned. How can I be standing? One of them asks another. How can he speak?

"I speak all languages if I must," I reply. "I speak a far older language. Now. Tell me, did you mean to create me?"

"We - we-" says one. The leader waves them away, and comes toward me. He looks into my eyes, sees that they are clear - I knew they were a dark brown color. My skin tone would become a healthy bronze when in the sun - but since I had not been exposed to much sunlight in the time I'd been grown it was currently a rather pasty white-yellow. The bile in my skin would turn the melanin that rich color - score one for jaundice.

My hair is long, tangled, and looked black but it would dry into a kind of red-brown. I wonder, then, whose body was this meant to be, if not mine? None of the scientists would have this appearance so I knew I was not "offspring" of theirs.

"We meant to create an adult clone of cells provided to us." Says the leader, and I nod. "But we ... didn't expect you to be aware!"

"I do not think you understand who you have created," I say, and smile for the first time. It feels good. It frightens him.

One of the other scientists offers me a lab coat to cover myself. I didn't really feel like wearing anything just yet. But the texture was fascinating and I wrap it around myself with care. My fingers were begining to respond properly now.

I suppose I cut a strong looking figure in that room. They had decided to clone someone who was by all rights a tall, handsome man. Smart perhaps, as well, I feel around in the brain I have been given and find I want to fill it with information.

What information I did not already possess. I knew what there was to know about bodies - human and otherwise. Decay, growth, I knew these things. The attendant nearest the door opens it and suggests we all go out into the hallway.

Why not? I take a few more hesitating steps and got used to the way I had to walk. The floor outside the room is more chilled than in it, but not uncomfortably so.

"Why did you create me?" I ask again. "To prove that you could do it?"

"For ... the experiment is for organ donation."

"Is that it?" I ask, perhaps a bit disappointed. "Well. I shall not be donating any organs just yet."

That puts them all in a stunned state. No surprise. Not for me anyway. They really have no idea... None whatever, of who I am. I smile again. This will be glorious.

Walking gets easier as I do more of it. A tour around the facility gives me an idea of the scope that these men have attempted to work in. They did not know what powers they possessed when they grew me!

Their prior attempts at cloning were sad - I visit the halls where these mistakes are habitually viewed and tortured and dissected. Interesting. How all of their technology can only keep a small amount of me out of these 'secure' locales. Most of their work is tainted in some way.

Look there, a child with half his fingers missing from a blood virus. Here, an old man whose gangrenous nose has all but fallen from his face and his sinuses rage with infections all their own.

I look toward a woman whose white coat is old and well-worn, whose hair is up in a bun and still tumbling a bit into her lined face. She dilligently peers into a microscope and makes notes on what she finds there. When she senses me - I know how she did so, it amuses me that the sicknesses within her own body sense me before a footstep could be heard - she looks up and her grey-blue eyes go wide.

I smile, I like this smile of mine. It sends a shiver through her. "You have been working with carcinogens all your life. Why look any farther?" And with a touch, my new fingers to her pasty forehead, she sits abruptly back into her swiveling chair. Her cancers lay in wait until this moment. I choose them to strike now.

My smile turns into a more private loving one - my children in her body were consuming her at full speed. They would be finished in a matter of weeks. It did not take much, she was going to die sooner or later. I merely... made it sooner.

She did not whimper or make any other sounds - but she knows. Behind me, as I walk, she makes small tapping sounds on her keyboard and then retires for the night.

I believe she's planning on ending her life even more quickly than I offered her.

The scientists scuttle around behind me as I make my deadly rounds. This facility has many sicknesses within. Some contained, some wandering freely. I will free them all.

"Please, what ... who are you?" The more timid of the followers I've attracted asks me. I stop, turn, and look him over.

"I am your worst nightmare - for lack of a better explanation," I whisper, "I am plague. Bringer of festering death. I am merely a strand of dna so complex that I can alter my own tactics of infection within only two generations. I am Virus. And you," I tell him with my winning smile, "gave me form beyond my wildest dreams. Thank you."

He faints again. And I chuckle and wander away.

Through the halls I wander, not tiring of the variety of human and animal life that has my taint in it. One ward is particularly well-guarded. The sickly individuals there pine away in lonely silence - or sometimes screaming for release.

This ward, where the nurses all wear double sets of latex gloves and make sure to investigate every instance of blood on their person with a fine terror, is where I might make a strong stand.

It is certainly where I decide my course of action. To conquer humanity - that is a goal I have had perhaps for three thousand or more years. My failed attempts made the human race stronger if not smarter.

But then again, their failed attempts to contain me in my vast forms also made me stronger, or smarter by turns.

"Please," one of the sallow-faced men with fading eyesight and a serious wheeze begs me, "please end this..."

I know that he means for me to cleanse him but... I have no wish to do that. He is still a ripe breeding ground for the virus inside his blood. But his body is dying - that much is obvious.

With a gentle tilt to my head, I watch his face as I approach him. He knows me, every pore and cell in his body is tainted. They call to me.

With a long, pure kiss (oh how kissing is a wonderful way to spread disease, wouldn't you say?) I drag small portions of my errant and quickly-breeding children back into my current form. And on a whim, I purify this young man's body of most - not all - of the virus which had been killing him.

"You are beautiful," I tell him. His darkly circled eyes and yellow-grey skin are obviously the first things he thinks of when he believes I am mocking him. "You will assist me greatly. Come along."

"I - I'm breathing okay." He realizes suddenly that his body is no longer rejecting itself - no longer producing cells that kill their own kind. So cleverly have I hidden the virus he contracted, that no doctor alive would be able to detect it now.

"You will come with me?" I ask, raising an eyebrow. My eyebrows do not have the proper mites. I suppose that I must somehow try to aquire some - they are harmless additions. Eyelash mites, like dust mites, are merely more eyes for me to see with.

The young man follows me into another room. I've already begun setting a plague in motion that the human race will never forget. Not that it hadn't already done so - HIV and its associated weaknesses would kill so many people, and infect so many others, that it would be known as a modern plague for generations.

But this time, my goal to conquer the human race would not involve killing them wholesale. That was a mistake I made several times before. In rats, birds, and humans. Fleas would not carry this plague. Not this time. They were not dependable enough.

I would depend upon humanity itself. It was more than handy with spreading my children.

I suppose that it is arrogant of me to decide to propagate one breed of germ and not favor another. But remember that I am Virus. I am not cancer, though it is part of me. I am not a parasite. I am not even a bacterium, but they make ideal resting places and hiding cells for viruses to breed and enter a body.

But I decided that a milder, less deadly version of this plague that assails the immune system would be in order. After all, my goal is to infect - not to destroy completely. If I did that... What would my next host be?

In a matter of weeks, the scientists discover that all of their AIDS ward patients have undergone miraculous recoveries - to the extent that they were discharged with careful instructions to keep "safe".

I have not found any interest in leaving the hospital nor finding my own way in the world at large. It can very well come to me. After all, hospitals are places where people come to die.

But I do have a room, a nice one, on the third story with a small balcony. A room I share with Bradley - my chosen breeding ground for the less-deadly HIV infection strain - now that he's healthy enough to leave the intensive care ward.

There is something gnawing at me. Something that only becomes more intense when I see young women come into the hospital with their bawling colicky children or their spotty-skinned toddlers.

"I need to visit the lab again, Bradley," I tell him, "I will be back."

I gether up the lab coat I'd grown accustomed to wearing to look 'professional'. I stop in at the cloning lab again. The group of researchers have changed slightly in the short time since I have been awake. Several of the senior members have gone on to bigger and better talk-show-deals, while some of the younger or more reserved members simply quit out of fear.

They do not look up, afraid, when I come into the room. It hums with life, this room. Well, not 'life' life, but with noise.

In several dozen canisters along the walls are half-grown fetuses or experimental genetic freaks. Along tables in the center of the wide, low room are 'secure' boxes with egg and sperm cells, or a mixture of both and neither. They are the target of my strolling. Some of the attendants scuttle out of their chairs when they realize it is me paying them a visit.

But I am not here to infect any of them or send them away with anything nasty. I'm merely here to view the results of their strenuous and mind-bending work.

And to make sure that my offspring are in every single cell as it divides. There are six such experiments going on at this time, from different donor cells. Two are plain envitro cells, but four are clone subjects from a number of individuals such as the one which spawned my own body.

Shortly, they would be set into their growth chambers and force-fed nutrients for the next six months. Growing them to the same 'age' as I - a young, healthy adult stage. I am certain that the work that these scientists are doing is far more important to them than their fear that something else could go wrong. They continue to work - oblivious.

I leave the lab, and move back up to the observation deck where I run into Bradley. "I thought I'd find you here," he tells me. His soft skin glows. So many things could be growing from it. Such a fertile ground.

With my private smile, and my chosen breeding ground by my side, I watch the goings on and wait. One or more of them suspect that my motives are less pure than they have seen. One of the off-duty lab techs cautiously approaches us, and continues to stare at me with his wide, suspicious eyes.

With my arm draped over Bradley's shoulder and his head warmly resting on my own shoulder, I smile "warmly" and ask, "is there something wrong?"

The lab engineer pauses and turns to me. "Of course there is. Whatever it is you've done, I can't imagine how, I know it's not what it seems. Is it."

"Of course it is. How can I make my living in this world if my hosts die off so quickly?" I say. Bradley becomes a little tense, but I reassure him with my thumb caressing his shoulder, and chuckle. "Do you remember the influenza epidemic of 1918? That was a mistake I will not repeat. Too many hosts died, and most of that strain died with them. Unable to transfer themselves to another host in time. That is unacceptable to me."

"... What do you want with us?" He asks. His innocence is amazing. Even Bradley knows he's only being used, and he knows that he still harbors a version of the virus he was bearing before.

"I want you to live. Prosper. Be vital. Breed. Pass me along."

"Parasite!" The lab tech hisses.

I hiss right back. "Tool! Innocence like yours is not flattering in a place like this. I care not in the slightest for the quality of your lives - only that mine is preserved. And if my livelyhood does not truly endanger yours - then where is the problem?"

I pause, and then continue, "have I not cleaned up a serious plague problem? And I have in fact given the proper ... infection stage... to the others. The scientists working here will be lauded as the first to cure AIDS! How bad is that?"

"And make it into something worse..." The tech groans. "You're evil."

"I merely exist. I am hardly evil. You blame me for wishing to continue to exist? That is foolish. How long is your memory, child of flesh? Your true memories only last a mere two minutes. Your deep childhood memories are flutterings of imagination mixed with visions of color you barely understand." I savored the breath he took in, and Bradley seemed to as well. "My memory is old - almost as old as mammal life on the planet. How can you claim me to be evil? I have merely evolved with your kind."

Finding no argument that wouldn't make him look like a complete idiot, the technician wandered away to sob his heart out to his girlfriend later on. And, of course, to pass along the strain. While he was busy hyperventilating, I was busy producing airborne versions of the virus.

Because I cannot be revealed as the true "cause" of the successful AIDS intervention 'vaccine', yet I know that fame or infamy awaits me should I announce it, the technicians offer me a deal. I swiftly decide that I would take it.

They know that I am more intimately aware of every going-on within the human and non-human bodies around them. I quickly become their resident 'analyst of unknown afflictions'. They offer me a dictionary of Latin terms, and I help them name sixteen new viruses and bacterial infections within three months.

That there are that many different ones rather shakes them. But I explain that bacteria and virus strains are constantly evolving. And that their generations usually last mere hours or days - weeks at most. The HIV strain was one of the best - it could live unchanged and unchallenged in a host for decades. A master of disguise and camoflage.

I wait out the weeks. Every few days, I pay another visit to the cloning lab, and I am never denied entrance. It seems that my infamy here is to my benefit.

And soon enough, the six infected clones I have chosen are ready to be revealed. With tense and shaking hands, the new senior lab assistant opens the first of the containers.

I am quite pleased at the results of all of them. The lab technicians do not yet understand that these might be their clones - but they are MY children.

As they exit their chambers, wetness draining from their plastered down hair and coughing up from their new lungs, I watch and I name each as they rise.

"Cholera." I call the first. She is a female, darkly brown of skin (that will surely become stronger in shade as she gets sun), with rich black hair tightly curled, and brilliant yellow eyes. She smiles with her thick dark lips.

"Variola," I say to the second, a male with light colored skin and wood colored hair and eyes. He gives a slight bow and a wide grin.

"Typhia," is the name I give to my second daughter, a yellowish-tan and straight-haired beauty.

"Candidiasis," I name the third female - a red-haired spark already full in figure. She laughs, too happy to be awake at last.

"Escherichia," I tell the second male, a short but strong Latino-clone, who nods.

"And Pylori," I wave my hand over the last male's pale skin and dark hair. His grey-green eyes flicker open, he is not quite awake but ready to meet the world now.

"My children are ready," I say. Their bodies are living factories for my diseases. Each of them is conscious of this - whatever had been in mind for the original cloned bodies, was of no use nor importance to any of us. I can feel their cells calling to me - we will always know how to find one another.

"I would like you to find these young children some clothing," I tell one of the on hand attendants. He almost balks, but a stern gaze from me cows him into a quick fumble into a cabinet. "I swear, if it weren't for me they would be staggering around naked all their lives."

"You ... can't continue to do this," says one woman, one of the few remaining original team members.

"But I have. Better luck next time." I head out with my flock of fully-formed children, helping them when they cannot walk or hold a door knob. I turn to the woman, and say, "besides, your 'clones' will not have any kind of mind. But then that's what you want, isn't it? Organ factories? Well you've given life to far more than that, my dear, and you ought to be grateful because you know that the media out there would eat you all alive if they knew what you were really doing in here." I make a scoffing sound, "it's against the will of God, creating these things. You ought to be happy that they think you are merely fixing the world's ills."

With that, I leave them to their work.

-Next-