A Common Enemy

A love letter to your immune system and the life-or-death battle you call the common cold.

I have always been fascinated by science, whether it be the vast network of stars in a galaxy or the millions of cells beneath your skin. This short story is an artist’s depiction of the intricate network of spies and soldiers that make up your immune system; an inside look into the microscopic war that causes the common cold. This is an homage to the carefully designed cells that give their lives protecting you from dangers you may never even be aware of.

Though you might not know me by name, I am quite familiar with you. In fact, you and I have probably met dozens of times. Traveling a distance equivalent to a trip to the moon, I have taken great risks to get to you, as have many before me. Interrupting your delicate ecosystem with symptoms of war that make it difficult to breathe without coughing, I come in swiftly and make my presence known. You sit in the corner, sniffling and shivering, huddled in a blanket as you realize I’ve returned to torment you again. By now you might recognize me as one of the many viruses known to cause the common cold. A nuisance, of course, but not especially noteworthy. It’s true, I’m not a particularly deadly pathogen, nor a rare or unusual one... but I am effective. I am small and silent, and my kind will successfully storm through your defenses many times throughout your life. My name is Human Rhinovirus, or HRV. For the sake of the complex neural pathways you call memory, you can call me Harvey. I want you to remember me.

I don’t remember much about my beginnings, though that isn’t unusual. It’s questionable whether memory is the right term, considering I’m not a proper organism. I function only as far as my coding dictates, imitating a living thing yet unfeeling, a sort of synthetic intelligence. My existence serves the sole purpose of finding a host for my species, and I am flawlessly designed to complete that task. I carry the instructions of my mission with me, tucked away inside the layers of my protective coat at all times, along with any other important information I might need later. That is all I have with me when I finally reach my destination. In truth, it’s a miracle I’ve made it here at all, considering how close I came to landing in the acidic desert outside. I may have had to wade through a thick, greenish lake, past guarding monsters a hundred times my size, but I made it in one piece. Down here it is dark and quiet, an isolated community trading peacefully with the outside world. This is the epithelial region. Though well aware of the fact that I have essentially ridden a tornado to get here, it is only at this point that my mission becomes truly treacherous.

The epithelial region is a crowded neighborhood composed of hundreds of working units; individual cells placed so close that they are practically stacked on top of each other. So far, I haven’t come across any of the guards supposedly patrolling the area, but I know my luck won’t hold out long. The cell closest to me seems to be up and running, which is all that really matters at the moment. Following protocol, I approach the reception area, taking the oddly-shaped spike I keep in my coat and putting it into the keyhole. I’m not sure whether it will even be accepted, but before I know it, I’m ushered inside.

“I wasn’t expecting a delivery yet,” the head of this cell greets me with a perplexed smile.

“You must not have gotten the message from headquarters,” I lie, pulling my coat off as I continue farther inside. There’s the main room, right there in front of me. Within a nanosecond I’m inside, something in me waking up as I start hacking the mainframe.

“What are you doing—”

I ignore the resistant cries, silencing the cell before he can finish letting out a scream. He never really had a chance. I’ve already hijacked the cell machinery, and with the information I brought in with me, I’ll have a few more of us here in moments.

It isn’t long before the unit I’ve commandeered begins to get overcrowded. There are dozens of us inside the cell now, and we can’t stay any longer. The next phase of the mission is risky, more than it has been even up to this point. I shut down the cell machinery, silencing my first victim for good as we all flood outside. We spill out of the unit in different directions, making our way next door and around the corners. I make it to another unit, slipping inside and silently taking over this cell as well. It all seems so easy, but I have no idea what’s coming.

We make it to morning with little trouble. So far, we’ve quadrupled our area. But someone is too sloppy. Someone doesn’t move fast enough, and one of the units gets the word out somehow, telling them that we’re here. Within minutes we all know what’s coming. The monsters are awake.

I’ve never seen these monsters called ‘macrophages’ before, but something deep within me knows I should fear them. So, I batten down the hatches, sealing myself up inside the cell while I try to keep the machinery running. All the entrances are barred, and I do my best to stay out of sight. They’re already outside. I can see them, massive, pale things more than a hundred times my size. They can smell us, and as I hunker down I can hear the screams as my comrades are found. Cell units collapse as the army I’ve brought breaks down and starts flooding out, debris clouding everything as the monsters consume anything and everything in their path. With this deluge of chaos, the war begins.

No one ever explained to me what I was getting into. Not that I ever asked, but it would have been nice to know that every invasion my species had ever engaged in ended in carnage. What surprises me most is the discovery that the monsters have friends. I want to say they are called Neutrophils, though it’s difficult to hear much over their screaming. Messages are being run back and forth just outside my hiding place, little envelopes lost and scattered everywhere. I can’t help but watch, shuddering with horror as the Neutrophils actually tear themselves inside-out and fling themselves at the invaders I’ve brought. Hundreds of us are falling left and right, while the monsters collect the corpses. All I can do is pull myself farther into the cell and pray I won’t be discovered.

The only momentary distraction comes when something else passes by outside. Loitering out there in the melee, it has the basic appearance of a drunk octopus. As I hide there, spying, the tentacled thing introduces itself to one of the Macrophages as a Dendritic Cell, gathers up a few armfuls of the wreckage and rubble strewn everywhere, and then promptly leaves. I peel myself away from the window, unsure of why I’m trembling.

Within hours the temperature has pitched dramatically. The heat is making many of us ill, and we’re dying almost as fast as reinforcements arrive. I’ve managed to move to a new cell without being spotted, the one I just left consumed almost immediately behind me. As another wave of my army emerges, I look out and see the Macrophages are still making their way across the battlefield. They’ve been there for hours and now they seem to be gradually slowing down. If we can maintain a steady increase, we may be able to regain the upper hand and—excuse me? I lean forward into the window, confused by what I see outside. Some little guy is dashing across the field, catching up to the Macrophages with some urgent classified message… T something. That’s what they called him, a helper of some kind. I do not know why he’s here, but something tells me it can’t bode well.

The Macrophages are angry. Whatever message these helpers passed along, it has filled them with a white-hot rage that sent them back at us all over again. We’re dying in scads, and all I can do is keep this unit under control. And on top of everything else, there are more of them. A group of them designated merely as B are coming in, and they’ve brought weapons. Aside from the Neutrophils spraying us with blades and acid, this Plasma-B group that’s coming in—they’re bringing heavy artillery. They’re carrying load after load of these tiny little creatures they call antibodies, who are currently flooding into my army, latching onto them in swarms and locking them in place. All I can hear are the cries of my comrades shrieking, held immobile as they are devoured alive by the monsters. A very unpleasant thing to listen to, really. This enemy seems to have unlimited resources, even as our numbers triple every second, we can’t seem to get by them. There are little messengers dashing by outside, interfering with everything and shutting down all the units and machinery we might have been able to use. This is beginning to exhaust me. I’m still feeding the army, as we’ve tripled in size yet again, but not without effort. The heat alone has nearly shut me down. But only nearly.

I send another squadron of us out as the unit next door collapses, killing the dozens of viral agents inside. Half of them are swarmed by antibodies almost immediately, while the other half search for units the interferons haven’t locked down yet. I keep moving, maintaining the cell machinery even as the battle rages closer. I’m in the process of starting up a new batch of us when something moves by outside. In a panic I run to the window and peer outside, across the street to one of the units filled with my kind. There’s a killer outside. He looks like one of the other T cells, but there’s something different about him. Something that screams danger. I watch in terror as he presses his face up to the window of the unit, undoubtedly spotting my comrades inside. The T Killer says something to the unit manager held hostage inside, then slowly backs away. I don’t know what happens inside after that. The cell unit shudders as the machinery inside grinds to a halt, and only a second later the entire unit splinters apart, taking my comrades with it. Horrified, I reel back, suddenly realizing the dire condition we are about to be in. I keep the shutters closed after that.

Night passes again, and somehow, I’ve made it to daylight. Either the temperature has lowered slightly or I’m starting to adapt to it. I don’t even dare to look outside. Some of the noise has died down slightly, and I’m sure that it’s bad sign. I know I’ve only been biding my time, yet somehow I still jump when I hear a thump at one of the windows.

“Are they inside?”

“The windows are supposed to be open. There must be someone hiding in there.”

The killers are here. I only manage to grab my coat as I make a dash for the exit, one last desperate bid for my life as the unit begins to splinter apart. By some miracle I make it outside before it’s destroyed completely, but that’s the last miracle I will be receiving. The world begins to blur at the edges as I am swarmed with antibodies, dozens upon dozens of them clinging to my coat and pulling me down. There’s no chance I’ll be getting away this time. I know I’m going, and as I start to fade I take one more look around. There are bodies everywhere. The monsters are still going, picking up as much as they can while what few of us are left are chased down. The destruction is incredible. There are bits of cells and torn messages everywhere, intermixed with survivors and dying invaders like me. I wonder if the entire epithelial region looks this way.

“Hello.”

Even now, there are more of them. This one looks like the rest of the B designates still wandering around the battlefield, yet softer somehow. Still covered in the antibodies slowly draining the life from me, I stare at her.

“Who are you?”

“I’m a memory cell,” she says, and for a moment I almost believe she pities me. “You must be the one responsible for all this.”

A shallow breath rasps in my chest as I struggle to speak.

“I didn’t think it would end this way.”

“They never do,” she kneels down with her list, gently pushing aside one of the antibodies to study me for a moment. “Do you have a name?”

“HRV,” I grunted. “Feel free to call me Harvey.”

Is this how it ends? After everything I’ve done, how hard I’ve worked… I’d been through so much, only to watch the army I risked everything to create be destroyed in the span of a few hours. My species will go extinct someday, I realize. I started and finished a war, one that disrupted the delicate balance of this entire ecosystem… yet it is clear that my war will be completely forgotten by the next rotation of the seasons. As the pain starts to ebb at last, and everything begins to fade around me, I wonder if any of us might have escaped. If we’ll ever have another chance to try and make a place for ourselves. Will we just vanish? Will it all fade into silence alongside me?

In this last moment of stillness, it’s the memory cell that I hear last.

“Don’t worry, Harvey,” she says. “I won’t forget you.”