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The Letter from a virus 1
June found Mr. Godwin very polite and co-operative soon after his admission to the ward, inspite of the fact that he was obviously depressed. On doing a physical examination she found his limbs swollen along with the fluid in his belly. This was removed by her senior for testing to confirm that the fluid was all due to an increased pressure in his liver. That night Mr. Godwin couldn't sleep well.
He woke up next morning to find June at her bedside. He was feeling groggy and she seemed to be asking him to keep his hands extended from his wrists for some time. He wondered why one would want him to do that. Nothing seemed to be making much sense any more since he had been admitted to the hospital. Last night he had received this letter from the virus that was supposed to be habiting his system, which from the virus's microcosmic perspective seemed a huge universe of its own.3
Dear Godwin,
I am a Hep-B virus amongst the now countless many inside your system liver. It is a desperate attempt to reach out and communicate a tale of our life long struggle in a community hated and hunted from its very inception. The present state of affairs is such that we are nearing a perishable climax but more importantly, we seem to be dragging down your system the body of Earth as well.
We were originally a tribe of fishermen living off the ocean, in the west coast of a huge landmass of Hepatocytes. Our earliest settlers had arrived on its shores long back and a strange tale of their appearance has passed down verbally over generations. They claim to have frequented a similar planet, with oceans, islands, palm beaches and plenty of fun and frolic. Once, on a yachting trip, his majesty, the HBV virion along with HBeAg and HbsAg, two of our ancestors (at that time probably in their teens) rode the waves a trifle bit longer than usual until the main land mass of Hepatocytes grew smaller and smaller, at a distance. There was a dark orange hue to the sky as the sun left an uneasy calm. It all began at that moment when both of them prepared to tackle a rather gigantic wave approaching and lifting them up. It became larger and larger, assuming proportions of a gigantic mountain.
Preparing to meet death, they suddenly found a huge steel tunnel piercing the sky and descending on to the ocean. They watched open mouthed as the gigantic tube sucked all the water along with them into its claustrophobic insides. It was, as if they were swept into another dimension and some of us wondered if it was a near death experience. After, a time, there was another gush of water from the other end of the tunnel, probably water being emptied somewhere, thought HBsAg as he hung on to the sides of the tunnel with all his might.
Before, long their tunnel pierced again into another good old three-dimensional earth and as soon as it touched the ocean, our boys started swimming for dear life. This time there was no suction vortex and they managed to swim over to a similar landmass of Hepatocytes. It was a complete virgin land in those days. None of the gory sky scrappers you see in the present concrete jungle. There were lush green fields bordering on dense forests, a hut or two, a fire to keep you warm for the night and that was all the smoke it produced. Not like the smokes of presently upcoming power plants.
Letter from a virus 2
Our ancestors arrived like Columbus and started knocking on the doors of the native population which resided peculiarly deep within the earth in a nucleus. Our ancestors might have opened a hidden trap door and descended down an escalator to a huge sphere with multiple small windows. Clothes weren't allowed and so his majesty, took leave of HBsAg and HBeAg, shed off his royal robes and climbed into the sphere, as naked as a DNA. There, he was greeted by the local chromatin population and shown around.
Great place! Thought the king and settled down, had children, another life, and another kingdom. Now we Hep -B viruses don't enter into sexual relations that easily but prefer to replicate our own DNA, so the king sat to meditate. His deficiencies and gaps were filled and he became a covalently closed circular DNA (or you could say he was totally covered up in a termite mound). The CCC-DNA was extruded out of one of the windows and then the mound broke into three pieces of slithering snakes, ready for transcription. It proceeded with the synthesis of a minus strand followed by a plus strand and finally we had baby HBVs.
The first threat of an external aggressor appeared around this period. It wasn't anything to do with the natives within the nucleus who were pretty docile and never troubled us. It was the ocean predators.
They were probably the other inhabitants of this vast body of earth in areas, which still remain unexplored. They started off by attacking our children. Dear little baby peptides dressed in colorful epitopes loved playing in the beach. We never thought they would draw the attention of those detestable classes of MHCs. They would play with our children and hold them up in the air from time to time. Little did we know that this would be a signal for their CD-8 (seedy-ate) ally that is until the first bombardment.
The hepatocyte shores went up in flames. Fire spread rapidly, lighting up the usually dark jungle silhouettes. Across another corner, in a dim glow, one could barely discern other dark shapes getting down from odd looking boats, starting to drill the earth with perforin drillers and pouring poison into those drilled perforin channels .
The ravages we have survived along with our coveted land are a tale often repeated. I guess, every society has its persecutors, bombardments and yet life begins anew. Many of our brothers devised increasingly cunning ways of eluding our seedy attackers. It's been a topic of research among you humans (some of us refer to you as Demons/Gods).
Mechanisms of persistence of Hep-B viruses in chronic carriers, is a hot issue, the complete unraveling of which might push the final nail into our coffins. However, before that I seriously believe and wish to convey that your body of earth itself is in jeopardy.
Letter from a virus 3
Mechanisms Of Hbv Persistence
Some of our HBV brethren left the hepatocyte shores and swam with the strong oceanic currents to seek refuge in other greener pastures...kidneys, brain, testes, pancreas and the like. The seedy cells couldn't pursue them all the way to these places apparently dissuaded by micro-vascular anatomic barriers, which surprisingly are lacking in the Hepatic sinusoids. Other than this, some of us tried to fox the MHCs by mutating the epitopes in our babies to evade recognition by seedy eyes. Then there were some peculiar natural factors, which came to our rescue as well. The MHCs we learnt were essentially polymorphic and all MHCs were not equally bad and some of them just played with our kids. The MHC II came perched on macrophages and these giant whales required a daily rubbing of Vitamin D oil on their surface, to actually stay active.
Recently some of your people discovered a mutation (T to C at 352 position) in the Vitamin D receptor gene that might lead to inadequate activation of these killer whales. These whales also love to eat with a particular sauce (mannose binding lectin) and again this was successfully adulterated. Another ploy that we had to devise was born out of sheer desperation in our continued struggle against the seedy cells. One night, hordes of our guerilla forces attacked a fleet of passing PBMCs (peripheral blood mononuclear cells), climbed onto their ships and took over after a bloody battle. Their wireless system with which they used to summon more and more seedy cells were effectively silenced.
Letter from a virus 4
Carcinogenesis
Other avenues of survival opened up in our very homes inside the hepatocytes. The local people we noticed were surprisingly immune to seedy attackers. They had disagreeable features but in the interest of survival we started marrying into their communities (effectively, integrating with our host genomes). We married and multiplied into a modern cosmopolitan society. Gradually, we lost our food gathering nomadic existence and settled into concrete stable dwellings with equally fine-processed food to satisfy us. Multi-storied buildings started adorning our skylines. Gone were the palm trees, green fields were encroached by collagenous cement that hardened with each passing day. You could almost hear the muffled cries of earth as it stifled over this new overpowering burden.
Since the early part of this century ...we had continued to rebuild and regenerate after each and every seedy attack. However regeneration and degeneration can leave ugly scars. Presently we have had the unfolding of another interesting scenario. The seedy missiles having been silenced, what we have now is simply growth and more and more growth.
Some of us have begun to see through all this growth and realize our days as well as that of the earth are numbered. It's only a matter of months now. That is, if we can't devise new ingenious methods to escape our present predicament. Life is generally defined by some universal traits, which we suspect might be present even in you humans. It might be present even in the myriad subatomic particles that make up our relatively puny bodies.
Letter from a virus 5
The earth which we live in seems similar to your earth and we are accumulating enough evidence (partly through internet) that it's inside you humans where we might be residing (like your concept of a living earth). Therefore, this uncontrolled growth of our civilization might be the death of your body and therefore this desperate communication (By the way, is the growth of your society too progressing exponentially - really, this concept of parallel universes is fascinating).
Life grows as an expression of its universal traits, chief among which is a perennial dissatisfaction with the present and an insatiable urge to change, replicate and evolve. Look at our evolved bodies, added up from myriads of subatomic particles and look at your body (our earth) even more highly evolved and yet yearning for more. More love, more growth, more reproduction both in thought and form ... yet survival is the name of the game and we have evolved over the years, just to survive. I am confident some of us will manage it even in the wake of this global cancer.
As night falls, a few dark silhouettes among us have been noticed to wade out with their rubber dinghies into the deeper waters of a darker ocean, hoping against hope.... someday ... another tunnel, another universe, fresh green rice fields bordering dense forests. Clouds you'll notice, too exhibit living characteristics of a non-linear replication, summation and accumulation, which from time to time, bursts into a downpour, catching you unawares in the rain. We wanted to live like a cloud but ended blowing up in smoke.
Yours truly,
Hep-B alpha
Godwin had suffered a blood vomit that very night of his first day of admission and in the morning he was found by June to be a bit drowsy. He was in a confused state and June found his hands flapping when he tried to obey her request for keeping his hands extended. An ultrasound examination that very evening he got admitted had shown a tumor in his liver. Mr. Godwin died the following day, mercifully saved June thought from all the treatment that would have followed if he had survived. Godwin's elder brother had come to take his corpse and on his request she removed some of the fluid from his lifeless belly as that definitely made it lighter and easier for them to carry.
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