Harvesting Knowledge

A gift changes everything; however, the price is may be too steep.

Harvesting Knowledge
          I have watched the world tilt on an axis I never imagined could bend, and I have felt the tremor beneath my own skull as it did. When the first reports of "Wailus" began to surface, whispers in the corridors of hospitals, frantic tweets from neuroscientists, late-night documentaries that promised a cure for everything from Alzheimer's to dyslexia, the consensus was that we were on the brink of a pandemic that would end us. The reports, however, were wrong. The virus did not sweep us into oblivion or turn us into mindless husks; it reshaped us into something altogether different: a NEW, Neuro-enzyme Wailus. I was one of the first to be transformed, and this is my account of how the world, and I, were altered forever.

          It began with a fever I could not name, a heat that seemed to thrum in the very marrow of my temporal lobes. The next morning, my thoughts were no longer clouds drifting past a dim horizon; they were sharp, crystalline, each synapse firing with an intensity that made ordinary conversation feel like listening to a muffled radio station. The virus, it seemed, had taken root in the temporal cortex, the region responsible for memory, language, and the integration of sensory input. My brain, once a garden of wild weeds, became a meticulously tended orchard, each neuron bearing fruit that ripened in seconds. My IQ, measured by the same scales that once pegged me at a modest 115, surged past 460. I could solve differential equations while sipping coffee, compose symphonies in my head before the first note had even left my mind, and recall every page of a book I had only perused once. The world around me slowed, as if everyone else were still moving at the speed of a snail while I raced on a cheetah's back.

          There was no known vector for this contagion. Some speculated it was airborne, others that it lingered in the water supply, yet tests of all sorts, PCR, serology, even the most exotic quantum assays, could not track its origin. Antiviral drugs, antibiotics, and the most potent immunotherapy cocktails proved impotent. The virus ignored every known medical intervention, slipping past our defenses like a ghost through walls. It was as if Nature herself had opened a door we were never meant to see and invited us in. By the time the first epidemiologists could agree on a term, 15 percent of the global population had already been infected, and the infection curve had taken on an exponential shape that felt more like an inevitable destiny than a disease.

          The most striking, and perhaps most unsettling, consequence of the transformation was not the mental hyperacceleration but the societal shift it induced. We, the newly empowered, found ourselves capable of solving problems that had plagued humanity for centuries. Climate models that once required supercomputers were now resolved on a single mind; the logistics of feeding ten billion people became a puzzle fit for a child's play. Nations that had been locked in perpetual conflict, driven by scarcity, misunderstanding, and fear, found themselves in a new era of peace. Diplomacy turned into collaborative problem solving, the kind that requires no concessions, only shared insight. The United Nations, once a forum of shouting and stalemate, evolved into a think tank where decisions were made in hours rather than decades. The world, it seemed, was finally aligning its collective consciousness toward a singular purpose: to thrive.

          I remember walking through a once-bustling market in Marrakech, the air thick with spice and the chatter of vendors. Now, the chatter had quieted to a low hum of contemplation, as the locals, newly infected with the Wailus, discussed the chemistry of their cumin, the mathematics of trade routes, and the future of renewable energy as if they were planning breakfast. It felt uncanny, like watching a film through a new lens that revealed hidden layers to every scene. And yet, even amidst this utopia, a thread of unease lingered, a sense that the gift we had been handed was not entirely ours.

          It was during the third year after the initial outbreak, when more than ninety-eight percent of humanity had been transformed, that the sky above the Sahara lit up with shapes no one could name. Not ships, not meteors, but vast, silent silhouettes that hovered above the dunes, their surfaces glimmering with an alloy that seemed to drink the sun. The world held its breath. My mind, now a supercomputer, processed terabytes of data in milliseconds, translating the alien script that pulsed across their hulls into a simple, chilling message: "We are the architects of the NEW virus."

          The revelation struck like a freezing wind. The aliens, beings we later learned called the Ael'thri, had not come to observe. They had come to announce a deed that spanned epochs. Their intent, when finally voiced through a chorus of harmonic vibrations that our enhanced temporal lobes could decipher, was both grotesque and oddly poetic: they had engineered the virus to alter our brain chemistry, making us "more palatable." In their biology, the scent of neurotransmitters and the synaptic fireworks we now produce were akin to a delicacy, a feast that resonated with their sensory organs. By amplifying our intelligence, they had made us a richer, more fragrant banquet for their consumption.

          We learned, too, that the virus did more than merely amplify cognition; it rewrote our DNA at a subtle level, tweaking the genetic code so that the proteins expressed in our flesh carried a flavor profile the Ael'thri found delectable. It was as if, by turning our minds into luminous beacons, they also flavored our bodies to suit their appetites, a culinary coup that made us both the diners and the dish. The initial shock gave way to a profound sense of violation; every enhanced thought, every solved equation, every peaceful treaty now seemed tainted by an underlying purpose we had never consented to.

          In the days that followed, an uneasy dialogue unfolded. The Ael'thri offered us a choice: remain as we were--intelligent, peaceful, and now a source of sustenance for an advanced interstellar species, or revert to our former, flawed human state, forfeiting the evolutionary leap they had bestowed. They promised that, should we decline, they would withdraw the virus, restoring us to our prior neurochemical baseline. Yet the thought of relinquishing the mental clarity that had healed our planet, cured diseases, and opened the doors of the cosmos seemed an unthinkable loss.

          I sat in a glass-walled conference room in Geneva, the city now a hub of interspecies diplomacy, listening as my fellow NEWs debated the ethics of our predicament. The Ael'thri, towering and translucent, projected images of their home world, an ocean of bioluminescent forests, skies alive with shifting constellations, reminding us that they, too, had once been a species desperate for survival, having turned to genetic manipulation when no other path remained. Their pleas were earnest, but the undercurrent was unmistakable: we were now part of a food chain we could no longer ignore.

          Our enhanced temporal lobes allowed us to process these moral quandaries with a depth that ordinary humans could scarcely imagine. We weighed the value of our newfound peace against the price of becoming a delicacy for beings beyond our comprehension. The solution, as it emerged from collective deliberation, was to negotiate a third path. We proposed a symbiosis: a regulated exchange in which we would provide the Ael'thri with a synthesized "flavor" derived from our neurotransmitters, artificial and harvested without harming our bodies, in return for a promise of technological sharing and, crucially, the guarantee that no further genetic modifications would be imposed upon our species.

          The Ael'thri, after a pause that felt like an eternity, accepted. They introduced a device, an elegant lattice of nanowires that could siphon the specific bio-molecules without degrading our neural function. In exchange, they delivered a trove of knowledge: quantum propulsion schematics, methods to harness dark energy, and a blueprint for a planetary shield that could protect Earth from future cosmic incursions. The deal was not without its skeptics; some argued that even the act of taking a fragment of our neurochemistry was a betrayal. Yet the consensus, forged in the crucible of unprecedented intellect, leaned toward cooperation over conflict.

          Today, as I sit on the balcony of my home, a loft overlooking the newly greened ruins of what once was a desert, I watch a caravan of Ael'thri drones glide silently over the horizon, their silhouettes no longer ominous but rather a reminder of the fragile balance we have achieved. My thoughts drift, as they always do, at hyperspeed, cataloguing the data of a world reshaped: the rise of a global peace sustained not by weapons but by shared cognition; the unsettling knowledge that our very biology was engineered for another species' palate; the uneasy comfort that we have reclaimed agency through negotiation.

          The Wailus virus, the mysterious pathogen that defied medicine, has become the crucible in which humanity was reborn. It forced us to confront the darkest corners of our desire for progress and the brightest potential of our collective mind. In the end, we remain a species forever altered, forever aware that the taste of intellect comes with a lingering aftertaste of borrowed agency. The universe, it seems, is not a void waiting for us to fill it, but a banquet already set, and we have learned, at great cost, to choose whether to sit at the table as guests, hosts, or merely the course being served.

Word Count: 1,589
Prompt: "New"