The virus spread under our noses, most of us didn't know it was working its way through our social systems all along. The Xenovirus, a strange hybrid of cultural, digital, and biological attacker that spread through our Internet traffic, air, conversations, like a predator with no competition. It was Youtube, Twitter, Facebook first that spread it best. Their algorithms, unknown to its human creators, had discovered its efficacy in increasing traffic and view watch before anyone realized how dangerous it was. radicalism, bombings, school shootings, church shootings, closed borders, no one knows how much exactly was caused by the virus. Was it causing all the terrible acts people sought to do or merely assisting in fulfilling their wildest desires? When it was discovered the national leader had contracted it, the state had no recourse for dealing with something like this. Too much is yet unknown in how it works or spreads. Efforts to quarantine have been made, but the hate camps grow by the day, and the types of people all involved are willing to be around dwindle as their homogeneity centralizes. We've never seen something quite like this before. 

Maybe the virus had always been around us, just never with enough ability to propagate. Before the tech corps and their motivation to drive their business ends, tapping into an unknown benefactor. The WHO has tried their best to come up with cures. Counter algorithmic function, counter conversational vaccines. It's infected everything from how we speak, to the air we breathe. They’ve tried to understand as much as they could, but research isn’t easy as telling when researchers themselves have contracted the virus often isn’t known until too late. The virus itself isn’t deadly, and perhaps that’s why it’s so dangerous. No one dies from infection, but the behavior and activity caused leads to broad destabilization, violent outbursts, paranoia, xenophobia, tribalized organizational behavior, and a whole host of other social ills. Communities who have tried to isolate themselves through collectivism and progressive language management have sometimes found new strains popping up, the study of which has been especially helpful. 

Little is known how exactly a virus can spread from Internet contact, less the genesis of the actual form from machine interface to physical manifestation. We’ve discovered enough to tell that it maintains the relative viral form even through digital transfer. Perhaps it’s harnessing nanotechnology to produce itself on the other end? It may even still be manifesting itself through the brain by Spontaneous Information Site Genesis. Dr. Gettes has managed to find a way to shorten the lifespan of the virus, and once those tested have passed its infection period, they seem immune to most strains of a similar kind. Their research may be out only chance, let’s hope it can be done before full collapse.