I feel like I've had a big ol' Stormtrooper boot shoved in my face and it pushed me back into that nasty trash compactor on the Death Star. Over, and over, and over...

(Yes, out of a fevered sickness I've been watching Star Wars.)

My throat is raw, my nose is runny, my head feels packed solid, and my ears are ringing. I don't feel like I'm running a fever, but I'm hot and cold at the same time. (This could be because all I'm wearing is a pair of cotton-poly blend shorts, and I keep walking between the heat and my wall unit in my room on fan, pulling in the cool air from outside.)

I bet when they run my bloodwork, they come back and say, "hey, did you know you were getting the flu?" No shit, Sherlocks.

I don't usually get sick. I used to get sick all the time, at least until I was three or so, and then I got better. I half-jokingly figured I'd built up enough antibodies in my system to fight off most anything.

But then, here I am using up a whole box of tissues and staring blandly at the TV without the energy to mock the '70s special effects.

So here I sit, under assault from organic nanomachines, not quite alive, but based off proteins nonetheless, trying to hijack my cells to their own relentless, mindless, self-replicative ends.

I get up long enough to take "The Matrix" out of the VCR in the living room, wander down to my bedroom and root around in my (literal) piles of videotapes to find "Star Trek: First Contact".

Bleeble! I pick up. "Hello?"

"Hey, how are you?" It's Moogie.

"I feel like crap. You gave me your crud. Thanks a lot."

She starts reeling off this list of things I have to do - take vitamins, drink juice, get some rest, keep warm... all the things she didn't do when she was sick. Hypocrisy is wonderful, I learned from the best.

"Yeah, okay, I will. ...yeah... ya, okay..."

I hang up the phone. She sounds like she's getting better. She knocked me enough off course, though, that I don't get back into the movie.

Instead, I'm picturing a swarm of virii in my body, spreading out and attaching to my cells, injecting their payload of DNA into the nuclei so that instead of normal functionality my cells churn out more and more virii until the cell membrane bursts, the new spawn seeking out more victims.

Also, I'm thinking that it's funny I'm watching these two movies when I am thinking about the nature of the virus. Remember the part of "The Matrix" where Agent Smith is doing his "soliloquy" in the federal building with Morpheus, where he says that he would classify humans as a virus, because we function as they do, expanding, using up resources, multiplying, and moving on to someplace new to exploit?

Perhaps. It's an interesting, if extremely cynical way, to look at the species.

I always thought of the Borg being more of a race akin to a virus. They spread, seeking new species to assimilate, bringing others into their fold, never creating new, but taking in the old. They are the ultimate scavengers, using up the resources of the galaxy.

Either being true, it doesn't look towards a larger future; what happens when you run out of resources? The universe is a zero-sum game if you don't grow and figure out how to do more with less.

Just the other day I was telling Crafty how, my whole life, I'd had this nagging thought at the back of my mind that I was supposed to discover something and that the world was cut from whole cloth. The exploration of that answer led me to paranoia about the nature of power and control in our world.

But the thing is, the ideas I explored weren't entirely wrong, they were just extreme; I began to see their influence everywhere. That was my key mistake.

The world is controlled. The thing is that I don't think anybody really runs it. A global society is a behemoth too large to be guided. Rather, I think that we created this large beast, and we are all parasites on the beast. Fortunately, most are symbionts, it can't live without the parasites, in fact it exists because of the parasites. However, what some of the parasites do is try to nudge the behemoth in the direction they'd like to see it go, while keeping the mass of parasites too busy with everyday affairs to nudge it themselves.

So yes, I think the world has gotten to the state it's in today due to the malice of a few who seek to reform the world in their own image. They don't do it through control, they do it through trying to hack the system. They do it by spreading out, trying to transform institutions to their own ends, and in turn use the results of that to infect others.

They're a virus.

I'm not exactly sure what I want out of life. I think I could go a lot of ways. However, I've always wondered exactly how I'm supposed to get it. I mean, I don't like to play The Game. I don't understand the rules, and personally, I am indifferent to learn them. I refuse to play office politics, and when I am dragged into it, I usually go for blood just because it makes people realize that it's not worth it to play The Game with me, sort of like the one time I got into a real fight in school so I literally tried to kill the kid, and nobody messed with me ever again.

I just want to sit in my corner, fiddle with my toys, make good works, and be recognized for them. But it just doesn't seem to work that way. Unfortunately, it seems like I have to spread and infect, like everybody else. Build mindshare. Win friends, influence people, hide the bodies of your enemies.

I can't get excited.

So where do I go? I have no idea. I wish I had some guidance.

restlessmind