I Open My Eyes (extract)

• Samuel Hatcher, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2010

“I work, or should I say worked, on the biggest medical project of our time, the cure for cancer. For years mankind has been idling along getting nowhere fast in the terms of breakthroughs, however a few months ago we had a breakthrough in a field we never expected, biological warfare.” I cut mike off. “So this is some sort of weapon?” I ask as rage builds up inside me. “Please let me finish, and no, it isn’t. The Indonesians had been trying to create a genetically engineered virus, but we got to them before they did.” I but in again “Who is ‘we’?” I ask “The A.S.S.I.S, our version of the FBI, or CIA. Anyway they handed all the seized data over to us.”

“What they had was amazing, a few more days of tests and they would have cracked the codes to all viruses’ protein coats. But now it was in our hands, and we intended to do good with it. At first we where only going to make a virus that destroyed cancer ridden cells. But then we got ideas. We could do whatever we wanted with this virus. We decided not only to make it cure cancer, but also make us immune to all other diseases, weather caused by bacteria, virus, protozoa, fungus or prion, we wanted to stop it. Then we thought, why stop there? Why not make every one fit and healthy and live 50 times as long?”

“There are so many good things this virus was meant to do, but now all of mankind is paying the price for us playing god.” Mike looks down. “Any questions?” He asks. I look at him, awe struck. Jasmine speaks “How did everybody get the virus? To not hear about a vaccine for cancer you’d have to be deaf. Was it made public that you had a cure?” Mike looks up. “No, only we knew about it, as for everybody been infected that is partially my fault directly, everybody working on the case wanted to be infected. One man in our team was arrogant of the fact that we didn’t fully understand it yet, he infected himself.”

“Everybody in that lab instantly became infected. A droplet of moisture from an infected individual contains enough of the virus to infect you 10 to the 72nd times. We made it that way; we didn’t want people to pay for something that everybody should have. The virus is also self replicating, so technically it isn’t a virus, but that’s not important. What’s important is as soon everybody in that room saw that man change we ran. I came here hoping to see my family one last time, I only arrived yesterday morning. I didn’t even stop to think that I was infected, none of us did. I’m the reason this town is infected, why the continent is infected, why by now the entire earth is probably infected.”

I ask “So why aren’t we like them?”