The Globe
That scientist always had a globe on his working desk.
At first he bought it to show his native country to his colleagues.
Not much people were in the know of that small country.
He loved to hold it in his hands, especially when he had problems or it was
needful to think of an important decision.
On the one hand, he imagined himself as a tiny dust on the globe. On the other
hand, he saw himself holding the planet in his hands.
He immigrated as a young scientist.
Pretty soon he became well-known in the field of molecular biology, a specialist
in molecular virology...
He was a well-off man. He worked for a biotechnological corporation. He lived in
a good house and arrived to the office, driving a good car.
He studied the problems and causes of aging. The results of his experiments
could have won him a Nobel prize, but he was not interested in it. He had money
and fame. He wanted something else.
At times, he had terrible nightmares.
World wars, terrorist acts, thousands of wars and millions of victims. For what
sake was it all done?
Years ago, bank in his motherland, he heard a story told by an old woman who
lived through the fascist occupation. She witnessed them hanging a young
woman... just for fun.
And then, one by one, they took pictures of the dead body. One would caress her
legs, another undress her...
That terrible picture stood before his eyes.
For what sake was it all done?
He saw horrible pictures in the museum of the Second World War. Pictures of
fascists’ victims, dead or almost dead. There were lots of such pictures in the
museum of Holocaust, too. How many people were murdered in the ghettos during
World War Two? Burned alive, hanged, shot? Nobody will ever give an answer to
this question.
For what sake was it all done?
***
He had always thought of creating a vector – that is, an artificial virus,
that would only live in a male host. He created it very quickly. Soon, he
thought of a way of embedding a deadly protein into the virus. It was an almost
absolute weapon.
At first he created it against the Arabic world.
He could not forget the frightening terrorist acts performed by Arabic
extremists in the beginning of the 21st century.
He even thought of a good name for the vector – the Black Cross. In the memory
of the glorious crusades against Muslims.
Nobody knew about it. He never told anyone, not even his wife. He didn’t want to
sell his monster to anyone.
He knew that any ate organization would pay millions for it, but he didn’t want
it. He didn’t want money.
But once...
The mankind is going to kill itself anyway, thought the scientist.
The mankind has only one way out, he though and threw his favorite globe into
the dustbin at his working desk. Then he got in his car and drove to the office.
***
By the beginning of the year 2010, the unknown epidemic virus took the lives
of 300 millions men. All of the continents are flooded by the disease, except
Australia. Almost all the cities organize vast open burnings of corpses.
The crematoriums cannot cover the work. The cemeteries are overflowed.
Unbelievable, but true: there are no registered cases of women dying of this
disease. International science is trying to create a vaccine against the
terrible virus.
***
A few years later...
All the wars ceased to be. There were no shootings, no terrorist acts, no AIDS.
There was no such thing anymore as resistance between Muslims and Christians.
The planet lived a new peaceful life.
Maybe I should have given them a change, thought the old scientist, dipping in
liquid nitrogen a few glass tubes with light-red liquid.
They were marked, “Cross 2”.
And the globe stood again on his desk. And next to it, in a glass box, was a
gold Nobel medal he received for creating an antidote to the virus that had
taken 350 millions human lives...
The End
Of course this is a sci-fi story, but it is based on real events.
The main character does not exist. But, there is a saying: Everything is
possible, you just wait...
Copyright by Sergey Mordovich (2002).