Writing prompts are great opportunities to exercise creative writing ability. The prompt consists a few sentences that describe a central scenario for a story. The writer then both creates a story based on the scenario and writes an excerpt from that story. Generally, the writer will write at least one scene from said story. However, it’s totally possible that the writer could write the entire story, if so dedicated.
The prompt in this story was written as follows: You are Patient Zero of a virus that replaces the victim’s mind with a psychic link to your own. A viral hivemind with you at the center.
With that, I hope you enjoy my entry for “Patient Zero.” Let me know what you think of the story excerpt in the comments below.
“Aaaaaagh!” I fell to one knee and covered my head in my hands.
“What happened?” The worry in James’ voice carried over the intercom.
“Ugh!” The pain in my head increased as he approached the glass surrounding the containment room.
“What the hell did you do, you fool?”
James approached the staging area, put on a containment suit, and entered the virus vault.
As he approached, I put up my hand to wave him off.
“We don’t know if the suits will prevent this from spreading,” I warned. “Get out of here!”
“Your suit is torn!”
“Something freaked Nola out and she tore both our suits when she latched onto me.”
“You’re supposed to have that chimp on a leash when you’re in here with it.”
“With her.”
“I think pronouns are the least of our concerns here, Conrad. We need to get you into quarantine and examine you for any infection.”
“Heh,” I laughed through the pain. “You’re going to regret not being nice to her one day.”
“The only thing I regret is that the early, volatile version of the virus didn’t kill it. That thing destroyed notes we needed to complete our work!”
“Ugh!” I strained with the headache as Nola drew closer.
James regarded the reaction.
“Wait a minute…” James pondered.
“No need to wait.”
“You don’t mean…?”
“Yeah, I think we got it. Or rather I got it. Literally.”
As the pain began to subside, I gathered myself and stood up.
“How are you feeling?” James queried.
“Better.”
“What did you experience?” James started the audio recorder.
“Can we wait on that?”
“We need to record what happened. We need to be able to provide a detailed report on this.”
“Just give me a minute to-”
“There are no minutes left. You know this. This is science that may save us. And good science is accomplished through adherence to process; every time.”
“Fine. As soon as my suit was breached, I felt a warmth in my cranium. Then a felt intense headache.”
“We need to determine if illness is a side effect. If the virus doesn’t die again, that is. Come on. It at least sounds possible that we’ve nailed a virus that targets the brain.”
“We’ve done more than that.” I pointed to Nola.
“That thing is walking into the cage by itself-”
“Herself.”
“Bah! It never does that.”
“Not voluntarily, anyway.”
James turned and looked at me. I nodded.
“Do you know what this means?” he asked.
“Unfortunately, yes.”
“Unfortunately? Don’t start with that liberal crap. It’s either us or them!”
“I fully understand survival. It’s what comes after that concerns me. The human race doesn’t have a good track record with handling power responsibly. It saves us first. But eventually we kill each other with it.” I cut my eyes to the side.
“Given the circumstances, we’ll just have to cross that bridge when we come to it. Step into the bio-scanner.”
I complied. James walked over to the control panel and ran the analysis.
“I can see the virus active in your frontal lobe. No signs of degradation like the previous incarnations. This might be it. And in case you were wondering, I don’t see any signs of damage to your brain. If anything, then it’s lighting up more acutely than a normal brain would. There’s one more thing we need to check.”
“She hates this thing more than the kennel.”
“You should be happy. You don’t have to bribe it to prevent me from dragging it over there, anymore.”
“You’re all heart.”
I stepped out of the bio-scanner and looked in Nola’s direction. I concentrated my thoughts on her. In my head, I thought about wanting to walk over to and into the bio-scanner. She complied.
“How does that work from your end?” James leered at me.
“It’s odd. If I focus on her, then I can feel her thoughts. Then I just think about what I want her to do and she does it.”
James turned back to the control panel. “Do it again.”
“Do what? She’s in the scanner.”
“Anything. Make it scratch it’s head, or something.”
“Her head, you mean?”
“Bah!” he threw up a hand of dismissal at the use of the gender-specific pronoun and focused on the control panel readouts. “Wait for my signal. Ready. Now.”
I concentrated on Nola, and thought about wanting to scratch my head. Again, she complied.
“We need more study, but it looks like her brain lights up with a similar intensity to yours when you issue commands. We’ll need some way to verify when this works on a subject, at some point. For now, we need to get you to quarantine. There could be long-term effects.”
“Gentlemen!” came a loud, stern voice over the intercom.
James and I turned to the observation window. It was Colonel Brand.
“Colonel, “ James acknowledged. “We have a breakthrough. It’s unexpected, but promising.”
“And?”
“Dr. Templeton appears to have accidentally infected himself with the latest strain. But it seems to be working. We need to run a few tests to verify-”
“No need for additional tests, Dr. Stevenson. If what you say is true, then we’ll move directly to a field test. This isn’t what we were planning for, but time is short so we’ll make it work.”
Colonel Brand disengaged the intercom and made a call out over his radio. A few minutes later some of his men entered the lab with what appeared to be a long, tube-like coffin made of smoked glass. There was instrumentation on the side that appeared to be controls of some kind.
“Get Patient Zero ready,” Colonel Brand ordered over the intercom. “My men are coming in with a live subject.”
“Wait… is that a-?” I started.
“Yes, Dr. Templeton. This is a captured member of the alien race that is currently invading our planet. If your virus doesn’t work, then the meeting to negotiate the terms of our surrender will be real. We’ll lose our planet.”