Enter the Apocalypse

by Gondolfi, Thomas

  Those assholes. So much for "one for all and all for one." Thousands of years together and this is how it ends? With NewCo giving away TV shows like Ritalin at a daycare to everyone but me. Famine and Pestilence could have piped up and said, "Hey! What about War? Maybe give her a reality dating show and call it 'The Bloody Bachelorette' with fifteen men vying for her affections and she gets to slaughter them all."

  But noooooo. They were too busy high-fiving each other to even think about me.

  Huh. Some friends. Some horsemen…Some mattress. This thing is really freakin' soft!

  I snapped out of my inner monologue. I was War, damnit! I had to make a plan. For now, I was an army of one. NewCo already had their hooks into Famine and Pestilence. This entire situation reeked of "divide and conquer." Something was rotten in the state of the New World Order and I was determined to figure out what it was.

  But before I got into battle mode, I needed some "me time." I glanced at my Breyer horses lined up on the wall. I'd always found model horses to be soothing. I took down the one that reminded me of my beloved Thunderbarger, the flame-colored stallion I'd lost during the Peloponnesian War.

  I'd been busy stirring up shit between the Athenians and the Spartans. There were too many horses in that mix, so I had thought it best to leave Thunderbarger with my brother and sister.

  When I came home, I found out Thunderbarger was dead.

  And that Famine decided to use him as a key ingredient in several new dishes he was testing out.

  "Waste not, want not!" he said. "Food around these parts is pretty scarce. And besides, what better way to have Thunderbarger live on than to carry a bit of him with us in our tummies?"

  Suffice to say, I was pissed. Famine apologized profusely and Pestilence swore up and down that Famine was just trying to do the right thing and take sustainable measures.

  "You, of all entities, should understand. We couldn't just dispose of Thunderbarger in a field. We couldn't wait around for you to get back from your mission to put him to rest," spoke Pestilence, ever the peacemaker. "We were going to have a funeral pyre for him anyway. At least this way, Thunderbarger would continue to have a purpose even after he was gone—as food. I think he would have wanted it that way, don't you?”

  Fighting back tears, I managed to raise an eyebrow at my sister.

  “And look! Famine knew you wouldn't be back right away, so he made some jerky out of him for you to eat, too."

  "But we don't need to eat!" I yelled. "We're the Three Horsemen! We're immortal."

  "True," replied Famine. "But eating's fun. And it brings people and animals together."

  That was the day I became a vegan.

  I shut the uncomfortable memory out of my mind and began to focus on the task at hand: getting all of us on the same page and getting out from under NewCo's thumb.

  But first, I had to check the room for cameras. I wouldn't put it past that sneaky shitbucket Garth Reed to have planted a bunch of them around the house to watch us. Reality TV show, my ass. This was corporate espionage and I would not have it interfering with the Horsemen’s duties.

  Fuck that.

  Famine…in his own words on: War Being a Bitch

  Well…That's War for ya. She can never let things go. It could have happened last week or thousands of years ago, but if you piss that girl off…Boy, can she hold a grudge.

  She just stomped up to her room like she always does the second she doesn't get her way. I think she was just mad she didn't get her own show like me and Pestilence.

  She'd snap out of it. At least that's what me and Pestilence hoped would happen.

  Pestilence…in her own words: The Thunderbarger Incident

  Okay! Flashback time!

  After Thunderbarger died, War was really mad at Famine. I tried to tell her that we were both equally guilty, but War insisted Famine was to blame since he was the one who loved to cook and that the idea of turning Thunderbarger into yummy horse jerky totally sounded like something he'd come up with.

  In reality, it was something we both came up with. Particularly because we knew it would piss War off.

  Wait! Hear me out! Famine and I didn't purposefully go around trying to cheese off our sister. We did it for her own good.

  When Thunderbarger died, I think all of us were in denial at that point. We'd existed for millennia, but this was the first time that one of our mounts had croaked.

  Being Pestilence, obviously, I wanted to figure out why.

  "Do you think it was a broken heart?" asked Famine. "Maybe he missed War?"

  We both cracked up laughing.

  As sweet and sentimental as that theory was, it was highly unlikely. Because as much as we love War, there were times when Famine and I were pretty glad she was away.

  But I didn’t want to totally rule out that possibility. The whacky ’n' whimsical part of my thought train was at odds with the big science-y caboose in the back of it. I mean…Hello! I'm Pestilence! Disease is what I do!

  I thought about what was different in this scenario: What could have caused Thunderbarger to go hooves to Jesus? (Okay, this happened centuries before J.C. put in an appearance, but you know what I mean.)

  This was the only time in thousands of years that War didn't take Thunderbarger with her into battle and left him behind. Several hundred miles away.

  Maybe Famine was onto something with War's horse dying of a broken heart. It wasn't quite as starry-eyed a premise as that, though.

  It was more of a crossroads of metaphysical science: The Horsemen had the power to imbue our minions with long life by being in close proximity to us.

  I couldn't ride Famine's horse and he couldn't ride War's horse, either. Our mounts were unique to each of us—kind of like cars that use a transponder key. Our horses were used to each of our energy signatures and adapted to their rider.

  For instance, by virtue of the fact that my horse, Windbourne, was around me all the time, he'd developed an immunity to everything. (And I do mean everything.)

  And because Famine's horse, Sir Bouncy, was around him all the time, he could go without food for weeks!

  So, what does nature encourage us to do when we're in a foreign environment? It forces us to adapt or die.

  Being away from War for some time caused Thunderbarger to begin to adapt to an environment without her. He wasn't immortal like us. None of our horses were. They were just granted super-long longevity because they were our animal companions that hung around us all the time and were essential tools for our jobs.

  We had never been separated from our horses for any length of time. They were always nearby—in a stable or a barn—when we weren't riding them.

  They needed us as much as we needed them.

  And the Horsemen needed each other. Without our horses we were horseless men…er…horseless men and women.

  And without each other, we were just lone riders.

  Nope. Even if we got on each other's nerves, we had to stick together.

  "So, he really did die of a broken heart?" asked Famine.

  "In a way, yes," I replied. "But also because…Science! Metaphysical science!"

  As bummed out as we were, we didn't want War to lose her spunk. The thought of several centuries with a really mopey War racked with guilt was a bleak one.

  War is supposed to be Hell. War isn't supposed to sulk.

  "Well, we still need to figure out a plan so War doesn't freak out," I said.

  "And we still have to give Thunderbarger a decent funeral. I don't know if you've ever smelled dead horse in the middle of a Mediterranean summer, but I'm not really down with that."

  So true.

  Then Famine asked, “When was the last time you had a good meal?”

  “I dunno,” I replied. “Maybe a few months.”

  Given our status within the universe, we didn’t really need to eat. But food was a pretty awesome and pretty delicious thing. However, this was Greece in the fifth century B.C. That said, good luck finding any
thing to eat, let alone something delicious. Most of the farmers were at war and there weren't too many women and children left to tend to the fields.

  That was when we decided to make Thunderbarger burgers.

  It was a simple solution, really: What better way to make sure War was more angry than sad that her beloved equine companion bit the dust than to cook him up and eat him? Added bonus, we'd lose our hunger pangs and avoid dealing with a stinky, fly-covered nightmare.

  Did we feel a little guilty about it? Absolutely! We weren't really giving War a chance to grieve or attend Thunderbarger's funeral. But it had to be done for her own good and for the good of the Horsemen.

  Unfortunately, Famine took the brunt of her anger for centuries afterward. I don’t know why she blamed him more than me. I think it was because she was on a big "girl power" kick after seeing a production of Lysistrata in Athens when she was trekking around without us.

  Eh. What can ya do?

  But let's snap back to the present, okie-dokey?

  War was on the verge of another of her epic tantrums. Granted, she'd always been a tad selfish, but it bugged me a little that she couldn't just be happy for me and Pestilence getting our own shows. If she toned it down just a little, she could have the same opportunities, too. In thousands of years, War had never quite learned that you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.

  Actually, a dead body catches more flies than anything.

  But, I digress. We were going to be TV stars and kick off the Apocalypse! How could anyone be mad at that?!

  Garth Reed, NewCo CEO…in his own words on: The Plan

  I wasn't happy about handing over the reins to the Horsemen to kick off the Apocalypse. The wheels were set in motion to not only divide them geographically with press junkets in different parts of the country (and eventually the world), but to divide them mentally. Together, they were too volatile a group that could potentially make it harder for NewCo to control. Divided, it would be easier to maneuver them to more effectively carry out our mission.

  When you've worked on a project for years and years, it's hard to have someone else come in and take credit for what you've done.

  But a deal is a deal and I am a man of my word. The executive decision was made and I was prepared to take one for the team. Regardless of who takes the credit for it, the end goal is the same. And like Gordon Gecko says in Wall Street: "Greed is good."

  Welcome to the start of the Apocalypse.

  Damn, I'm good.

  10 to 1

  Russell Hemmell

  Editor: As a species, conscience and morality are our only deterrent for destroying… sometimes ourselves.

  "Magnificent, isn’t it?"

  Ashton regulated his holo-microscope, magnifying the genetic sequence of his baby up to 109,000 times. It was already a few months since his brand-new creation had come to life—as much as a virus could be considered alive, of course—but he still marvelled every time he looked at it.

  "I don’t share your aesthetic sensibility, Doc," Kathy Ellis, the scientist cum CEO of Future Pharmaceutics SA, said tartly, "but I do admit you’ve done something amazing."

  "Yet, you can’t but admire its purity. It’s elemental, uncomplicated, deadly powerful," he replied, staring at her through the videocam. "We’re lucky not to be his target."

  "By design." She nodded. "After all, resuming the development of bacteriophages to fight antibiotic-resistant organisms was a brilliant move. It was a genius idea, Mr. O’Reilly."

  "Nothing new. Doctors did that in the 1920s, you know, before the discovery of penicillin. Almost 150 years later, we do the same."

  "With a slight but substantial difference." Her dry smile made Kathy’s face look almost wicked. "They used bacteriophages already existing in nature. You and your team manufacture them, starting from those well-known and innocuous viruses hidden in bacteria and cells like nested dolls in a Russian matryoshka. Now they end up in your perfect killer machines." Her hands moved in the air in elegant gestures to illustrate her point. "Thanks to you, lethal pathogens like MRSA and the Shanghai’s Pneumonia are a memory of the past. And this is just the beginning. If you think that the existing ratio of virus to bacteria in nature is 10 to 1, well—that's a gold mine out there for us to exploit. This is the start of a brave new world..."

  Ashton nodded, but something in her voice made him shiver.

  "…where we’re going to use our little viruses not just to save our lives, but to improve them."

  "In time," he conceded.

  "Sooner than later." She shook her head. "I’ll have to leave you to your phials, Doc. I have a press conference in ten. You see, I’m working hard to ensure your Nobel Prize."

  "Bye, Kathy," he said, switching off.

  Sometimes he couldn’t avoid thinking his boss was a disaster waiting to happen.

  ***

  Friday night, and you’re in your lab—and as happy as a clam to stay put. When even your sister thinks of you as a hopeless geek, she has a point, Ashton thought.

  He went back to his holographic platform, where the sequence of the components of his new creation were displayed in a 3-D rendition. His baby, with the unappealing name of PhiXZ42, was a negative-stranded RNA virus, simpler than most DNA viruses, and yet there were a few areas that continued creating compatibility issues. Also, PhiXZ42 belonged to the same family of Ebola and other hemorrhagic fever viruses, which in itself was not reassuring. And there was the mutation factor, definitively higher in case of RNA types. This is why he had decided to use a negative-sense ssRNA, so that it needed to have its genome copied by an RNA replicase to form positive-sense RNA, and that was a way to keep it under control—since it could be found only in the bacteria it was programmed to attack.

  That night he had decided to run experiments with PhiXZ42-variation 3 and 4 to see what else could have been done to make it more secure. Variation 0 had never been released—it was the prototype—while variation 1 was patented and put on the market. He had abandoned variation 2 as being far too aggressive for his liking.

  He began the testing of some proteins with enhanced pattern recognition receptors, manipulating them with lab-assistant nanobots.

  You’re paranoid, Ashton.

  In earnest, Kathy Ellis had pragmatic reasons for being so optimistic. Variation 1 had been a complete, startling success, and now other companies were flocking, trying to replicate the same procedure of Future Pharmaceutics.

  Also, viruses known to infect humans were an incredibly small number, if you thought about how many there were, Ashton thought. The famous 10-to-1 ratio he suspected was definitively underestimated. Still, the majority of them could be hosted within the human body without causing any harm and undetected. They also generally ignored animals and concentrated on interactions with bacteria—both in a destructive and parasitic mode.

  Ashton had chosen to concentrate on the destruction part, while Kathy seemed more keen on the second.

  Her idea was a deceptively simple one. Why not use viruses to control bacteria, which, in turn, could make it easier dealing with humans’ degeneration process? Her thesis: Instead of working on the externally-induced DNA damage that caused aging, use agents that could avoid that damage by keeping cells safe and in good working conditions. Bacteria were already doing a similar job in the human digestive system, therefore it followed logically.

  Ashton was not convinced though, and not for the rather philosophical point that destruction was a much easier task than creation, or even conservation; he felt they simply didn’t know enough to make that further step.

  After three hours of playing with the bots, he decided he had enough.

  He threw a final look at the slender silhouette of PhiXZ42, its tail with the binding protein fibres. Good night, baby. I’ll see you soon.

  ***

  He had just put his head on the pillow when an incoming call made him stand up again.

  Amber. What could his sister want at this hour?

  H
e picked up.

  “It's late.”

  "Why? Just tell me why, bro? That was a crazy, shitty thing to do." The irritated voice of his sister made him sigh.

  "Which shitty thing?"

  "Your new virus, the phage. Attacking nasty bugs is one thing, but messing with human cells is something else. You should have waited years of testing in restricted conditions, at the very least."

  "I don’t know what you’re talking about."

  "You don’t? I should have expected as much." She sneered, "Get into the real world, genius, and watch the news, for a change. You will have a few surprises, and not good ones."

  "Do you mind being less cryptic?"

  "Your boss. She has just announced tonight that Future Pharmaceutics will be the first company to stop ageing by rejuvenate the cells with the use of damage-repairing bacteria."

  "What?"

  "She said that the virus that controls those bacteria—ones normally found in the human body—has already been sequenced and tested, and it’s ready to be put to work," she declared triumphantly. "And guess what? They're going to sell it—if they haven’t already started."

  ***

  It was past 3:00 a.m. when Ashton finally reached his lab and went to his holodesk.

  He had watched Kathy’s interview, and finally his sister's words had made some sense. Amber had never liked what he was doing with Future Pharmaceutics, and he couldn't blame her for that. Sis was one of those unsung heroes fighting deadly viruses that were close relatives of the kittens he played with—and she had always been bestowing doom predictions since the "birth" of PhiXZ42.

  Let's hope she's wrong.

  It was, however, the moment to find out whether his formidable CEO was talking about a future not so near, no matter what she had declared, or there was something more concrete to be worried about.

  It took him thirty minutes to access the company's virus biome repository and check out the listings, but, after an attentive scan of all the existing population, he couldn’t find anything suspicious or, worse, unaccounted for.