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"What are some of those images?" Bartow asked.

"Some random newspaper clippings and the like that somehow alludes to the same thing."

"That doesn\'t help us much either…"

Mitch nodded, "Aside from knowing it\'s just as unravelable as it\'s confusing. It\'s either we are against a super genius who was able to make different strands in one lifetime to cause chaos or a very large group doing pretty much the same thing."

I chimed in, "It\'s either of the two really but we could also say that it could just be one simple thing at first before it turned to what we\'re facing right now."

"What do you mean?"

"I\'m not a scientist, okay? I only have the basics down but take a cold for example, the moment we gain resistance to that particular strand, the only way we\'d get a cold again is from a different strand but causing the same experience.

Well— there are some cases were you could reinfect yourself with the same cold—though it is very hard—the \'easy\' way to do it is having an immune system low enough for the antibodies we have for that particular cold to not kick in or lose its effect."

Bartow was already smoking but Mitch was looking at me solemnly before he opened his mouth:

"I do understand that but what does that have to do with this?"

"Ah— I\'m still getting on it but are you also familiar with coinfection?"

"In regards to colds?"

"Yes."

"I do. It means having two strands of different colds affecting us at the same time— Are you talking about the mutations?"

I nodded, "Something along those lines but building on that, there\'s at least 100 different strands of the cold virus—maybe even more—because it just changes and changes into different strands depending on its environment for example—"

Bartow cut in, "Wait. So, what we\'re facing\'s a fucking cold?!"

Oscar, Mitch, and I answered at the same time, "No."

"Then—"

Oscar chuckled, "We\'re just talking about viruses in general and how they behave a certain way. We\'re just on the topic of colds at the moment. It\'s not the virus per se but there are certain aspects of it that we could correlate but not determine the actual causation of what happened here."

I continued, "As I was saying, viruses could just evolve on their own when they replicate and have these errors as they say but it could also happen when they jump or cross to different species, making it a jumbled mess. There are limits, sure, but my guess right now is that it used to be this one thing that was let out many, many years ago and laid dormant until last year."

Bartow\'s eyes just went wide, "Hold up, hold up, hold up! Is that why I heard some say that we\'re all infected?!"

"Not 100% sure but that\'s the premise we\'re on. Unless someone actually isolated themself from the world—no, nature could\'ve been contaminated as well… This is really confusing, we\'re trying to find the single connection among an unlimited number of possibilities as to what caused this thing.

Finding it out by elimination would work but how long and how lucky could we be before we arrive at the right answer? Are we even alive by then?"

"Why are we trying to find the cause again?"

"Well, if we could figure out how it\'s made, we could figure out how it\'s cured. People do it on the daily without their notice, but in our case, taking them out by means of violence always works but it\'s like a catch-all without solving the actual problem. It does help it in some way but that doesn\'t mean that it\'s done. At the end of the day, we just know how to kill it, not the way it works."

"Is that a bad thing?"

"Of course. If we know how it actually works, it opens the whole to almost the same number of possibilities. It\'s gonna sound sci-fi-ish right now but imagine if we could command a horde with one look or—"

"Flip a tank like it\'s nothing!"

I chuckled, "That\'s right. Or not even needing to sleep—"

Then Oscar interjected, "Or be immortal."

Mitch looked a little taken aback, "That\'s… That\'s promising actually, I would\'ve loved to see my kids grow."

I got taken aback as well from his statement, "You… You will, right? You don\'t look that old."

"Hah! I mean… You know, I\'d like to see them grow up and have families of their own and see their families grow up and on and on… I\'ll jump on that chance the first time it lands on my lap."

"Eh. I would\'ve loved that too so I could see the endings of the things I used to binge before the world ended but yeah, that sounds actually good too. I\'d want an off switch though."

Bartow\'s ears perked, "Off-switch? What\'s the point?"

"Are you sure you wanna have this kind of conversation now?"

"Fuck it, at least I could understand some of it now since we\'re in fantasy land!"

"Hah! Depends on the type of immortality. Do just not get even older or do we move bodies? Are we just moving our consciousness around or could we store them in a thumb drive like this? What if we lost an arm? Can we grow it back or better yet— what if we\'re just a head and got thrown at the bottom of the sea?

Are we just stuck there forever?"

"Alright, stop! Stop! Stop! You\'re making me even more confused! One at a time, alright?!"