I’ve been infected by a virus I released – a mutant strain from Wyldth1ng.

Here’s the basic info, and the story up to this point.

“This has probably been done before, but that is not stopping me, oh no.Here’s what I would like to do. I want to create a story that branches out in a variety of different, unexpected ways. I don’t know how realistic it is, but that’s what I’m aiming for. Hopefully, at least one thread of the story can make a decent number of hops before it dies out.If you are one of the carriers of this story virus (i.e. you have been tagged and choose to contribute to it), you will have one responsibility, in addition to contributing your own piece of the story: you will have to tag at least one person that continues your story thread. So, say you tag five people. If four people decide to not participate, it’s okay, as long as the fifth one does. And if all five participate, well that’s five interesting threads the story spins off into.Not a requirement, but something your readers would appreciate: to help people trace your own particular thread of the narrative, it will be helpful if you include links to the chapters preceding yours.”

I woke up hungry. I pulled my bedroom curtain to the side and looked out on a hazy morning. I dragged myself into the kitchen, in search of something to eat. I reached for a jar of applesauce sitting next to the sink, and found it very cold to the touch. I opened the jar and realized it was frozen. (Splotchy)

I was used to the house being quite cold in the mornings, as the night log usually burns out around one AM when I am dreaming cozily under my covers, not normally waking to put a new one on until morning. I was surprised because on the rare occasions that it actually had reached sub-freezing temperatures in the house, I had awakened in the night to restart the fire. I would have been worried about the pipes before P-Day, but there hadn’t been running water in two years and that was one of the few advantages to being dependent on rainwater, no pipes. (Freida Bee)

I rummaged around in the kitchen and found one of the few things that hadn’t frozen overnight to eat- an expired granola bar. “Better than nothing”, I muttered to myself as I tore off the wrapper and took a bite, trying to not chip a tooth in the process.I thought I should go out to the shed and bring in more wood. The mind-numbing cold snap that had set in over the last few days seemed to be in no hurry to leave. Pulling on my heavy coat and wool hat, I considered for a moment what lay ahead for the day. Normally I would spend much of the day making any needed repairs to the house, cleaning, reading various newsletters, cooking, and just trying to keep busy in general. With no job to fill my time anymore I have found my new found “freedom” to be both a blessing and a curse. Ever since P-day, the only job most of us have is to sit in our homes and find something, anything, to pass the time.Well, that- and to stay alive. (Whiskeymarie)

I reached the woodshed I’d built from the remains of our fence, and heard a rustling. Fearing one of the wild dogs that now roamed the neighborhood, I crept back to the house for the gun my husband left with me before he volunteered to join the fighting. My hand was shaking so badly, I didn’t think I could pull a trigger, so I also grabbed an old broomstick to use as a club. My son tried to follow me, and I ordered him back inside; he obeyed, frightened by the harshness of my tone. He seemed not to sense how terrified I was and I was glad. Inching toward the shed, glancing backward every few steps to be sure the children were staying inside, I heard the rustle again, accompanied by a very human cough.

“Who is it?” I shouted, in as angry and menacing a voice as I could muster. No response.

“Damn it, I know you’re in there! I have a gun! Come out with your hands up, or I’ll just start shooting!”

“Don’t shoot!” said the voice, and…
(CDP)

I woke up hungry. The room was white, small and seemed to not have any doors. That is when I realized I was naked. I had a thin sheet of plastic over me and some machine making beeping noises to my left.

I started to rise up that is when I noticed the cuffs holding me to the bed. I started to scream.

A large booming voice came over a loud speaker, “Calm down, calm down Mrs. Peabody.”

I bellowed out, “Who are you?! Why am I chained down?! Where are my children?! “

The voice replied, ” There has been an accident, everything will be fine. There will be someone to assist and answer your questions shortly.”

Then there was silence. I yelled some more but nothing. No response. Then suddenly, a creaking sound. To the right there was a door opening, it was……
(Wyldth1ng)

A cat. A small black cat padded gently in and hopped on the bed. It paused to look at me and let out a sorrowful moan. As it crept toward my face I looked into its strangely unsettling eyes.

“Down, Scheiser,” a man’s voice spoke.

A sullen, shambling figure entered the room. His right hand was bandaged, part of it soaked through with blood.

“Hello, Mrs. Peabody.” He pulled up a chair. “Sit, Scheiser.”

The cat curled up on the man’s feet. The man stared past me, resigned, distracted.

“Where is my family?!!” I moved my leg to kick at the man, only inches from me, but restraints dug into my ankles.

Without turning to address me, the man spoke, in words that seemed memorized and repeated a hundred times before — “Your family is safe. As safe as any of us can be. I would let you go see them right now if I could, Mrs. Peabody. But you and I are linked.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Applesauce. Cold. What do you really know about what your people call, P-Day, Mrs. Peabody? It is starting again.”
(Splotchy)

I tag:

Lulu
Cowboy The Cat
Barbara
McGone
Manx
Tim

If I haven’t tagged you, please feel free to continue it as well, just leave a comment indicating you’re doing so.

There was some possible intermingling of this virus with another one here. To what extent cross-pollination has occurred, I leave that to people continuing the story.

I started trying to diagram the story virus, but it’s no easy task.

My main stumbling block at this point is just rendering the relationships via an image I’m creating in Paint Shop Pro 10. It became painfully obvious to me that I need some sort of computer program in which I can input relationships, and have the program sort out how to graphically represent the relationships. I might have the skillset necessary to write such a program, but I’m lazy.

Even if I had such a program, the image it would generate would likely be incredibly, wackily complicated.

From the different main threads of the people I have tagged, the one continued by SamuraiFrog seemed to be one of the less active ones (mostly due to the fact that only the Chris subbranch seemed to be thriving), so I thought I would try and document it first. As you can see from the diagram, it’s still pretty damned busy.

Click for a larger image

I could choose to diagram only the people that were successfully infected, but I think it misses some of the point when you aren’t able to see who *didn’t* get infected.

So, for now, I give up on my graphic representation. If anyone wants to take a whack at it (I saw Tom postulating some possible alternatives to a “tree” representation in a comment on an earlier post), by all means give it a try. But please don’t put a lot of effort into it, as I don’t want to be responsible for anyone’s eyes bleeding or head exploding.

I’m still trying to follow all the story threads, leaving comments and such, but it’s a crazy, gloriously diseased world out there.

How widespread is the infection of the story virus?

It has definitely gone farther than I thought it would.

I wish I was a scientist, a statistician, adept at graphic arts, something, so I can say something other than, “Wow! It’s pretty cool how it’s spreading!”.

It was interesting when it first started, in that some people were tagged multiple times by different story threads, probably due to the blogominisphere I travel in. There are a relatively small number of people that read my blog and whose blogs I read, so it’s not a surprise we sometimes tagged each other more than once. But now, the virus has definitely leapt out of that blogominisphere and into other blogominispheres, one’s I have never been exposed to.

This seems to be a pretty robust meme. When someone gets tagged and then contributes a piece of story to a particular thread, the contributor has a self-interest in propagating the story with their addition — and they want to see it thrive. In some ways, this meme really does function as a virus, as an organism that seeks to propagate itself.

Again, I wish I was a scientist or something, I’d probably have a lot cooler things to say, and more interesting parallels to draw.

I’m going to try my best to graphically represent how the various threads have traveled thus far, but if the virus continues to spread, it might be difficult.

If anyone has any recommendations as to how to represent the story virus (I was thinking of a family tree kinda diagram), please recommend one.

Thanks to everyone who has been infected. I’m making an effort to follow all the strains!

P.S. I think in coining the term “blogominisphere” I believe I have ratcheted up the obnoxiousness of the word “blog”, something I did not think was possible.