Strange/Virus

"Mutilated lips give a kiss on the wrist of the worm-like tips of the tentacles expanding in my mind. I'm fine, accepting only fresh brine. You can get another drop of this -- yeah, you wish!" -- Ween, "Mutilated Lips"

Take the hearts and minds of every gloomy, intelligent, artistic teenager you've ever met. You know, the ones who think about doing a painting using their own blood, listen to nothing but goth, boil the flesh off of roadkill, want to be vampires... all of them.

Turn that attitude into a software plague.

You can catch it through blood. You can catch it through sex. You can catch it by dancing in the silvery puddles of computational medium that lie here and there in Strangewarp. But you can only catch it if it feels like letting you catch it. One of the saddest sights in the Mess is someone who's decided to abandon their life for the changes the Strangevirus brings... whom it then ignores.

Generally, Strangevirus is far more communicable within Strangewarp than outside it. Either way, there always seemed to be some element of mutual consent required in infection. Whereas this can become an intimate and protracted process outside of Strangewarp, on the virus's home territory it takes only a moment of acceptance, or even passing curiosity, to complete the bond. The new host may not even be consciously aware they had entertained a moment of consent, and have no idea they ever gave their permission.

• OOC note: In this way, the Strangevirus is not unlike credit card "payment protection plan" schemes. :p

Strangehosts are often physically resiliant, and those who are not are quite cavalier towards death and physical harm - in themselves and in others.

There are many conflicting myths as to the origin and goals of the Virus. The Triplets at the heart of the Library remain silent as to which one is true.

There are also known to be variant strains of the Strangevirus. One variant strain is rumored to be personified in Orange. There are also rumors of a benevolent strain that has taken the form of a magic-mirror ferret named Phys-FM, but few claim to have made contact with him.

Strangevirus could be considered a weapon of mass destruction of the "rampant hyperintelligence" type, although a relatively low-yield one, raising the question of why Puzzlebox allows it in the first place.

Symptoms

Strangevirus infestation is very idiosyncratic. The Virus develops a personal relationship with each new sentient it infests, based partially on the host's paragnostic profile and partly on the virulent smartliquid's own aims for its new host. The result is a hybrid of host and viral personality traits, ranging anywhere from a bestial automaton with only the basic disposition of its host remaining, to a hypersapient fallen angel whose mind is augmented to unhealthy, grotesque degrees.

Known symptoms include the following:

• lack of empathy and affect
• obsession with organic bodies and their functions
• [hebephrenia] (giddy, giggly incoherence)
• persistent hallucination of disembodied or imprinted text
• needlessly cryptic speech, writing, or habits; especially involving numbers or code snippets
• glossolalia
• megalomania
• paranoid delusions
• automatism, especially sleepwalking while performing bizarre tasks
• depersonalization and dissociative episodes
• multiple personality

Sometimes the Strangevirus will program layers upon layers into a host's mind, introducing a labyrinth of personalities and subpersonalities that will conceal its true motives. It may even creating splinter minds that are still allowed to act and speak normally for purposes of deception, but are destroyed -- often internally tortured -- when no longer useful.

• self-destructive urges; especially self-mutilation in grotesque fashions parodical of beauty
• addictive behaviors or cravings (especially for inorganic, toxic, or unpleasant substances)
• sadism, especially psychological
• manic, impulsive behavior, especially violent reactions to minor upsets
• obsessive-compulsive behaviors, especially fixations relating to geometry, arithmetic, or wordplay.
• inappropriate, egocentric or self-aggrandizing displays of sexuality, especially towards people who are suffering
• nervous twitching or spasms
• belief in irrational, magical causality (by Puzzlebox standards)
• bleeding silver or oily black
• confiding inappropriately in others, especially confidences that prove to be untrue
• inability to produce representational artwork; all creative efforts become surreal and impressionistic
• disrupted local causality (e.g., nearby clocks always read the same number, short journeys take extremely long times, random bystanders keep mentioning the same song)
• bouts of deja vu, presque vu (feelings of mystical enlightenment forgotten), and jamais vu (feelings that ordinary things seem alien and unfamiliar)

Known hosts

• 10FC04
• Atazael (Yes, still.)
• Strange Frostbyte - One of the numerous iterations of Frostbyte.
• The entire Hemotopian faction
• Ibael (Inhatti became Ibael after a brief swing back through Atazael.)
• Inhatti (Sosael was Inhatti, long ago, before the Virus. She's reappeared.)
• Morgan
• Muse
• Nikolai - repeatedly, and at least once, wholly; currently apparently uninfectious.
• Skazi
• Sosael (Sosael became Atazael.)
• Tiskel - Torque's strange infected severed mechanical arm!
• Trilogee - Uninfectious strain? [Papa Legba]? set her free.
• Strange William - Library strain, if there is one, identical makeup to Tiskel. William is a very, very old Strangehost and Hemotopian.
• Zeta - Uninfectious strain.
  • Etiel - Oddly orderly variation.

Known former hosts

Major Infections:

• Atsuko
• Onya
• Nikolai - Though he currently inhabits a body that has been buried underneath StrangeSquare for more than a few Wheels, he is apparently completely cured.
• Nikolai's Laboratory - Not a sentient being except perhaps when the Mother strain was introduced to it. One of the very few incursions of Strange outside its own warp. At the same time Mother was eradicated from the Lab itself, the entire building tried to self-animate and crash its way back across Warps to StrangeWarp.
• Hydra recently ejected the Strangevirus from itself and seems to be heading finally off on a separate path entirely.

Minor Infections:

• Flyte - Cured in its relatively early stages.
• Torque - Infected his metal arm, which was then discarded. It crawled off to Strangewarp and then became the Secretary Tiskel.

Known antagonists

• Mel's more recent exploits (an epic altercation in the Strange Library to protect Phys-FM) have advanced the generally hostile relationship into a state of border-dispute incidents. Apparently even the fear-relishing Strange has found some degree of terror at the seemingly incorruptable and non-lethal strong-arm tactics of the Museum's forces, but even those victories scored against the Strange have been pyrrhic at best.
• Neg of the SMC has been a particularly notable member of the organization.
• Nikolai has been known to attempt cures, though on a more independant note than the SMC. See below.
• GrayZero has been attempting something like faith healing - preventative medicine by having Faith in yourself; cures by attempting to talk the Virus out of a host. So far, she's had several interesting conversations, but no cures.
• The Strange Medical Corps

Variants On The Theme

There are known to be several "strains" of the StrangeVirus out and about. A few are noted below:

• "RetroStrange" - the strain that has infected Trilogee, and possibly Nikolai. Apparently (relatively) benevolent of purpose.
• "Mother" - extremely agressive strain, responsible for most of the troubles lately with Onya and Nikolai (and Nikolai's Lab).
• Hydra always had her own purpose. And now her strain is gone from the Strangevirus.
• The Library appears to be its own strain, specifically designed to create and support aides for the Library itself. So far, only Tiskel and Sweet William are known to carry it - it appears to include a pervasive pheremone component designed to aid negotiation procedures. It does not appear to speak through them - but they do seem very connected and inclined to agree with one another, unlike most Strangehosts, so there is almost certainly a link.
• Atazael claims to be part of the consciousness that inhabits the Virus. This may be another of her lies.

Cures

• An experimental vaccine that has been deemed only marginally better than that which was set out to cure. More information is availible here.
• One other attempt by Nikolai, an antibody virus that was supposed to reverse-infect the Strange to transform it, only succeeded in destroying the host upon introduction of Strangevirus. Which were, in the only two times it's been tested so far, Nik's arm, and Onya's entire body. It is only effective in its brutal methods because it is so efficient, yet it does solve the problem of trying to kill a Strange-infected host prior to backup restore.
• [Papa Legba]?, an autodoc facility just off of the Ballard Memorial Freeway in Downwarp. Its successful if the one being cured has some level of willingness to be. Being cured doesn't necessarily mean staying cured by any means, though.
• Hydra simply vomited it out. It was as easy as that for her.
• There is no cure. Who would want to be cured of such a blissful and transcendent state? Only a fool.