Parasite, A Love Story
By Helotage
CHAP 1: How Do You End a Career Before It Even Starts?
She was the last speaker on the early morning panel that was intended to showcase up-and-coming researchers. As the only student on the panel, she saw it as an exceptional opportunity that only came about because her faculty mentor had considerable influence among his colleagues. The other speakers had been politely received, but their areas of research were better known to their fellow entomologists and their credentials more established. Her area was obscure and even suspect, and she was still just a doctoral candidate who was only allowed to speak because of her mentor’s advocacy. Neuroworms, her topic, were so little studied and, therefore, so little understood, that some thought them a myth. As she started speaking, she detected a few titters in the audience when she first mentioned neuroworms. Scientists could be such asses. Couldn’t they cut her a break? After all, she was just beginning her research for her dissertation and was very young at a mere 24. Always an intense and dedicated student, she had graduated college early and had ripped through her required graduate classes and qualifying exams. Now she was on a panel at a prestigious entomological conference giving her first talk as, almost certainly, the world’s foremost expert in neuroworms, and some tenured dicks were laughing at her. Here, as everywhere, she felt like a freak.
Since even among entomologists few would have little accurate information about neuroworms, she decided she had to take a risk and describe them in detail despite the sensational nature behind their very name. She first learned of them as an undergraduate not long after their discovery and had become fixated, maybe a little obsessed, and even wrote her senior research thesis on them, which is how she had become the foremost expert. The competition, to be fair, was exceedingly slim, but still it was kind of cool to be the foremost expert. She was never cool.
Neuroworms, she explained to her audience, were native to the depths of the Amazon rainforest. In fact, humans had no knowledge of them until less than ten years ago when a certain portion of the jungle had been cleared for cultivation and settlement. A small village became the hotspot for human-neuroworm encounters, and even there they were almost unheard of. It had still not been determined whether neuroworms were worms properly, but they had wormlike bodies that terminated in a sharp spike on the posterior and venom-producing structures, which would make them the only venomous worms with a single stinger. She of course had a slide presentation that accompanied her talk since most of the scientists present had never seen a neuroworm or even believed they existed. The worms were less than two inches long, and the fleshy part of their bodies was exceedingly narrow, about the thickness of a pin. The tail spike was another 3/4 of an inch and tapered to a point that was fine enough and strong enough to penetrate an animal’s hide without the creature sensing it.
The worm could inject, through its spike, a tiny but sufficient dose of a paralytic agent that was like no other. Once delivered, the paralysis would radiate out from the injection site and would last for many hours. She was the only one who had ever witnessed the entire process from beginning to end, albeit with rats in a lab setting. The neuroworm was parasitic and, after paralyzing a creature, would eventually enter its new host’s brain, usually via a nasal canal, to feast and lay bundles of eggs in tiny cocoons. In fact, so dependent were they upon neural cells for their nourishment that they did not survive long without them. The eggs of course would hatch in the host’s brain and begin feasting themselves until they were mature enough to breed. The slides depicted several icky images of neuroworms at work on rats in her lab. None of the scientist flinched. They had seen worse.
This much had been previously reported, if not widely disseminated, about the parasites. She continued with some of her original research. The mature neuroworm had no sexual differentiation. It could reproduce with another in either the female or male role and could even reproduce asexually, all on its own. Once hatched, the neuroworm’s offspring distributed themselves throughout the host’s brain until they matured and could reproduce on their own or with others, a matter of hours. This process would continue until the neuroworms had consumed enough of the host’s brain that the host died and the tissue necrotized and was no longer a viable food source. Then, they would seek to exit to find new hosts. This stage was difficult, and most failed.
The length of the entire process depended entirely on the size of the host’s brain and could take days or, theoretically, weeks. Neuroworms also did not differentiate among species or even genus so long as the host had a supply of brain tissue. Neuroworms had been recovered from frogs, birds, and cows. She added that humans had also been reportedly infected, but she instantly regretted mentioning it. This was the sensational part, and several in the audience murmured their discomfort or disapproval.
Perhaps, she continued, they had heard of the so-called neuralweb that the neuroworms spun in a victim’s brain. This web interconnected the neuroworms that bred in and fed on a host. Some speculated that it allowed them to transmit signals to each other, but the hypothesis had not been tested. If the speculation was correct, then, most likely, the signaling had to do with locating other neuroworms that were close enough to mate with. Some awkward coughs and clear guffaws from the audience reminded her that scientists eschewed speculation.
She intrepidly moved on. The web also, seemingly, allowed the neuroworms to influence and even control their hosts to varying degrees. Most commonly, infected hosts would display extreme concupiscence, which may have been the result of the mating signals that pulsed across the neuralweb. If this conjecture were correct, concupiscence would then be a collateral effect of the worms’ activities. More awkward coughs and now sharp muttering told her that she had better move on quickly with her talk, so she read faster.
She told some well-established but still unappreciated tales about neuroworm mind control. There were the cows that attempted to initiate mating cycles with other cows when no bull was around, the reptiles that crossed species to attempt to mate, the dogs that tried mating with anything they could find, and her own lab rats that attempted to mate with any other rat present and, when no other rats were available, even objects in their cages, such as food dishes. In all of these cases, after the host had expired and been dissected, neuroworms and their neuralwebs were found in their brains or, at least, where their brains should have been. Theories about the behavior of the animals abounded, but she endorsed one that considered the asexual or cross-sexual reproduction of the neuroworms. The cows and other species perceived no sexual differentiation because the neuroworms they hosted did not. One of the audience members audibly said, “fuck sake!”
And there were a few, not many, incidents of suspected neuroworm infestations in humans, resulting in extreme concupiscence that also demonstrated no sexual preference or differentiation.
At this point a few audience members headed toward the doors. Another let out a dramatic exacerbated moan that drew titters throughout the room.
She mentioned the story of the Roman Catholic priest, a missionary, who started acting in the most profane manner. Some in the audience openly guffawed, presumably at the association of priests and predatory sex. In the case she described, the priest was a confirmed lifelong celibate with no history of sexual encounters. His predatory behavior started gradually, as far as the record could show, with highly audacious flirtations. After a few public instances of aggressive seduction and molestation, he was no longer welcome in the tiny village, so he headed to a nearby town. Before long, he had resorted to flat-out rape of both males and females, some underaged. When he died suddenly while in custody, the autopsy found his skull filled with webbing and neuroworms in various states of development. Much, too much, of his brain tissue was nonexistent, which was determined as the cause of death. She mentioned a few similar cases, all from the same village on the edge of the wilderness—the mother who took to assaulting her own children, the respected elder who impregnated a half-dozen young girls, the adolescent boy who attacked his own sister, mother, and even father. All these individuals died within several days or a week of exhibiting this behavior. All were found to have neuroworms eating their brains upon death.
By now, the audience was clearly uneasy and annoyed.
“As fascinating as the reported effects of the neural web may be,” she continued, that effect and the controversy surrounding it are not the focus of my research or my talk.” The audience noticeably relaxed at this news. No one wanted to hear about mind control worms from outer space or other internet sensationalism. Still, it was this very notion, the potential for mind control, that had attracted her to neuroworms to begin with and continued to fascinate her. It was the very idea that a person could succumb to another’s will, or in this case the will of a collective other. This was was her biggest turn on. She continued, “I am here to describe my research into the potent neurotoxin that the worm can deliver to paralyze its host.”
While some research had been done on the neuroweb and its potential as a treatment for the effects of certain behavioral dysfunctions ranging from depression to schizophrenia, the more immediate promise stemmed from the paralyzing neurotoxin secreted by the neuroworm, which may have some efficacy as a chemical restraint or even anesthetic. She related the chemical analysis that she had conducted and some possible mechanisms for how the neurotoxin works. In conclusion, she thanked them for their attention and directed them to her poster on her research. By then, many had already noisily left the room.
The questions at the end were all quite professional and were directed entirely toward her co-panelists and their more conventional research areas. The one exception was a question to her: “Why are you wasting your time chasing myths about worms that can’t possibly do what you claim they do? They’re just worms!” Several in the audience chuckled cruelly at seeing the upstart student taken down a peg. Others disapproved of the questioner’s tone, but none spoke up. For her part, she didn’t even bother to answer the question and just hung her head.