A random story that came together in my head today.
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“How could you do something like this?!” The scientist was practically screaming at the man in quarantine on the other side of the glass pane. The man sat, looking somewhat sheepish, as he faced the other man’s wrath.
“My daughter had a recital; I couldn’t be late to it, not again!”
“You could if you realized what you’ve done!” the scientist cried. “You were exposed to a new, manmade virus! No human on the planet has a resistance to it! You might have killed your daughter and everyone in that recital. You may have started the plague that will wipe humanity from the face of the EEEEEEEAAAAAAARRRRTTTTHHHHHH!”
The man waited for the spotlight shining on the scientist to turn off, and the ominous organ music to die down. “Why would we create a virus that could kill the entire world?” he demanded. “What sense does that even make?”
“Well, it’s highly unlikely that the effects will be lethal, but we have no idea what side effects this could cause!” Someone was shining spotlights off of the scientist’s glasses again, making the glare almost unbearable.
“So what does it do?” the man asked.
“We aren’t sure, honestly,” the doctor said, pacing. The man behind him hiccupped abruptly, but the doctor ignored him. “We’ve been testing it on alpacas in test environments, and they haven’t shown any obvious effects. We can hope that there is no effect, but we cannot assume.”
“Doctor?”
“It is quite likely that some things that do not affect alpacas can be harmful to humans. Since we have yet to authorize human testing, we cannot possibly know what this will do.”
*Hic* -- “Sir?”
“We will simply have to hope that—“
“Dr. Roberts, I think we have a—“ *hic* ”—problem.”
“Yes, what is… oh.” The scientist stopped as he saw the strangely altered man before him. The man’s neck was oddly stretched, now several feet in length. Around it was a coat of strange wool, and his face was stretched out oddly. As he hiccupped again, his neck extended even further, and his ears began to swivel about independently at the sides of his head.
“Inform the health department,” the doctor demanded of someone off screen. “We have to stop this before it—“ *hic*
“Oh dear.”
* * *
“Mommy, where’s daddy?” the little girl asked as the two of them went to the car early that morning.
“He had an emergency meeting at work. He should be back by tonight, dear,” her mother replied. She started the car and began to pull out of the driveway.
*Hic*
“Now dear, what do ladies say when we hiccup?”
“Excuse me,” the little girl replied with a giggle. She bounced in the back seat as they began to drive down the freeway. She hiccupped again a few times, each time replying as her mother had instructed. When it went on a little while, however, her mother pulled the car over.
“Here, dear, I have a bottle of water. That should help you with—“
There was an alpaca in the back seat. An alpaca wearing her daughter’s clothes.
“Good gracious! Emily, what has happened to you?” the startled woman asked
“I dunno! I think the hiccups did it!” the alpaca replied in her daughter’s voice.
“That’s not possible, hiccups don’t turn people into alpacas,” her mother insisted, trying to reassure herself as surely as she was trying to reassure her suddenly changed daughter. “Come on; we have to get you out of this—“ *Hic*
She felt something odd, and turned to the rear view mirror. Her ears had changed, now wiggling oddly at the sides of her head.
“Maybe hiccups do cause strange things,” she pondered, hiccupping again. The two of them scrambled quickly to exit the car, and were soon completely changed by fits of hiccups. A pair of alpacas soon stood by the side of the road, trying to figure out what they should do. A man pulled over to try to help the driver of the car, and was surprised when the alpacas spoke to him.
“This is highly irregular,” he commented, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ve never seen anything like—“ *Hic*
* * *
The news anchor pulled on her collar as her neck grew too large for comfort. “In breaking news, the sudden outbreak of *hic* what scientists are calling the Alpacalypse virus has swept the globe *hic* into a fit of panic. Everywhere, people are being suddenly *hic* subjected to fits of hiccups that change the victim into an alpaca with no reasonable explanation.”
You turn off the television, laughing as you do. Technology was certainly becoming better! The transformation sequence live on the air almost looked like it was real. It was ludicrous, though; what sort of virus would change people into alpacas? It didn’t make sense that anything like that would exist, did it?
*Hic*
