Note: This story has its origin in "The Virus" by The Joker

Naturally, a number of myths and romanticized stories have grown up even in the few short years since the beginning of the New Age. Many of these concern the first critical moments that made all the difference. Did it really happen just that way? Maybe not, but so the story goes...

Dr. Mercedes Silva was doing a routine gene sequence when the wail of the All Seal alarm froze her heart. Putting aside false hopes that it was only a drill, the Chief of the National Institutes of Health Western Biodome looked at the maze of lights and lines to see where the emergency originated. Only the gravest accident would require an All Seal, which severed all chemical and biological links of the Biodome with the outside. Carved into the heart of a mountain, the top secret facility was virtually impregnable. Until they unsealed it, Mercedes and the sixteen other of the world's elite women scientists working at the Biodome were as isolated as if they were on the moon.

Amazingly, the All Seal order had come not from one of the laboratories, but from the communications center. Trying to remain calm, Mercedes touched the appropriate videocom button and asked, "Ayo, what the hell happened? Who hit the All Seal switch?"

The image of a tall black woman filled the screen. "I did, Mechas. Look at this!"

Ayo Obkonko patched the television feed to the viewscreen in front of Mercedes. The annoying CNN logo and fanfare was at last fading and the bearded talking head of Wolf Blitzer appeared. "To recap the breaking news, CNN has learned that two days ago scientists working for a Mideast dictator released a virus into the atmosphere that has already spread over Europe and is expected to reach every corner of the globe within days. The virus attacks and blends into the human genome, producing virtually a new species of human. Effects of the disease appear to be sudden massive physical, emotional, and intellectual change in women and lesser but still major changes in men. Needless to say, there is no known cure for the malady and there is little chance of one being found, given the rapidity with which the virus is spreading and the dramatic nature of the effects. For the most recent information, we take you now to our correspondent in Baghdad, Christiane Amanpour."

The scene shifted to a pan of the Central Mosque as seen thousands of times from the top of the Ministry of Information headquarters, the place all the foreign correspondents in Iraq go for the most authentic information. Then the camera focused in on a gorgeous young woman with long, lustrous black hair and smoldering, deep- set dark eyes. Mercedes was shocked at what she saw, recognizing CNN's top foreign correspondent, but just barely. The image before her and 100 million other viewers worldwide looked more like a slightly aging movie starlet than a serious reporter. The cameraman didn't pass up giving viewers the full body shot that showed a luscious woman dressed in the shortest mini the religious authorities would allow, even on a kaffir, and sporting a set of tits that hadn't been seen in the Old World since Gina Lolabrigida was a filly.

"Hi, folks," chirped the painted lips of the remade journalist. "They want me to tell you about what this virus thingy is doing here in ... uh? ... here. So far as I can tell, it's doin' us lotsa good! Oops, I shouldn't have said that. It's really going to be a problem, I think, the way all us girls are getting sort of filled out." She paused to give her knockers a demonstrative little shake for the camera. "How are we going to keep our guys to ourselves?" she asked rhetorically. "Experts say..." Here she broke off with a sly grin, "I wonder why they couldn't get any real 'perts' instead of just EX- 'perts?'" The new Ms. Amanpour clearly had wandered out of her depth.

"The Vir-us pro-du-ces an extra-ordin-ary in- crease in the lib... ?" The confused young woman stumbled over the text she was trying to read, "The libby? ... the Libby Dole?," she giggled. "That doesn't make any sense ... Huh?" She tossed her locks and cocked her head to hear the earphone better. "Oh, yeah! That is sooo RIGHT! ... They told me to say it just makes you want to 'do it' all the time," she grinned, nodding.

"Thank goodness Jamie came over here with me to sorta keep me in line. I know last night over at the palace talking to Sadammy I got so horny I was ready to <BLEEP>him ... Oh, oh! I guess they don't want me to say the 'F'-word," she tinkled. "Well let's just say it was hard to worry about what that big sexy guy may be hiding out there in the desert when you're wondering what he's hiding inside those cool 'jammies he wears," allowed the internationally famous correspondent, unable to suppress another titter. "Fortunately Jaime got me back to the hotel before I did anything foolish and just <BLEEP>ed the <BLEEP> out of me ... Oh damn, I mean he and my producer took turns calming me down."

"Oh, well, I can't think of anything else to say right now. So, this is Crissy Amanpour for CNN in... ? Well, one of those really neat places they send me to!"

Mercedes was unable to speak for a moment, then recovered. "God! This is awful. I see why you had to act quickly, Ayo. Thanks to you, at least WE are in no danger of infection."

"Yes, but how long can we keep the seal on place?" Ayo asked.

"We have a vast store of water and several months of emergency food rations. It won't be very comfortable, but with power to run electrolysis for oxygen and scrubbers to remove the CO2 we can hold out her for months."

"But it's still pretty hopeless, isn't it? Sooner or later we will have to unseal the facility and then we'll be infected, too. Oh, God! We'll all become mindless bimbos, like ... her!" Ayo cried.

"Not necessarily. We can..."

"Hey, Mechas! There's a call coming in on the Red Line!" Ayo interrupted.

"My God! The President. Put him on."

A familiar boyish face appeared on the screen. "Good afternoon, Dr. Silva." The President paused, looking her over. "Sorry I have to meet you for the first time under these circumstances." As she listened, something about the glint in the Commander in Chief's eye made Mercedes wonder if he was referring to the global crisis or the fact that via TV images, certain kinds of intercourse were excluded.

"Good afternoon, Mr. President. Oh!" she exclaimed when she saw the President was not alone. The camera unzoomed to reveal the entire Cabinet in session. The First Lady and the VP's wife were there, too.

"Dr. Silva, I have been informed about your quick action in sealing the Biodome. You're in charge of our best microbiological research facility. I'm afraid the bulk of the effort to stop this horrific plague will fall on you and your excellent staff. I'm sure that you will rise to this challenge. Aware of the responsibility that our nation, indeed the whole world..." Mercedes tuned out as the President was off on a speech about the key role of women in the global economy, but her attention was jerked back when she heard him say, "You know that women are found in various positions in my administration!"

The Secretary of State blanched and the Secretary of Labor tried unsuccessfully to keep from rolling her eyes at the unfortunate choice of words. Several of the cabinet started to snigger, but the First Lady silenced them with a murderous glare. The Vice President, oozing earnestness, did not seem to hear anything amiss.

"You can count on us to do everything we can, Sir," Mercedes replied keeping a straight face. As the communication broke, Mercedes was surprised how attractive she found the President --he was a sleezebag, but a sexy sleezebag, she thought.

Within hours Mercedes had reorganized the group's work, everything else being pushed aside to work on the Virus problem. As soon as things had settled down at the lab, she called her boyfriend Robert to tell him she would not be coming home for - she wished she knew when she could return.

"OH darling, I'm so proud of you, but does this mean we can't... ?" he asked nervously.

"Afraid so, Sweetie. I'll be here until we find a cure or we run out of food."

"There is no way I could... ?"

"No, honey. The dome is completely sealed. Not even air, not to mention a probably infected male can be allowed to enter." This was not easy for Mercedes to say. She was already missing her lovable if otherworldly poet. He was not a prize catch by many standards -- only averagely handsome, certainly not rich on his salary from the University -- but he wasn't intimidated by Mercedes' fierce intelligence and sometimes monomaniacal dedication to work. Under her tutelage, the sex was even improving. She would miss that most of all.

A week later things were going better than Mercedes had any reason to expect. Her deputy director, Vivian Wu, had identified the Virus and determined its lineage -- an ordinary cold-like virus that lived innocuously in human breathing tracts, never causing more than a sniffle. The Virus's creator had chosen well; the body had almost no resistance to such a virus. Shireen Kumanundawata had found the active sites on the virus that melded with human DNA to produce the changes in women's (and men's, it turned out) bodies and sex drive.

Interestingly, the parts of the virus that effected the somatic changes were not those that reduced women's mentality to that of oversexed schoolgirls. Again the Virus's creator had worked brilliantly. Mercedes herself was the one who discovered that the other business end of the Virus attached itself only to the XX (female) chromosomes, leaving the XY unaltered. Diabolical as this was, it at least key confirmed what Mercedes had long suspected, that men and women were intelligent in different ways. It turned out that at least some different genes were involved.

In other ways things were not going so well, however. Her most recent call had shown that Robert was now clearly infected. As Mercedes looked at him on the view screen, her heart beat faster. Robert had grown so handsome! His shoulders were broader, waist trimmer, butt tighter, abs flatter; he appeared to have gained a couple of inches in height, as well. Damn, he had become a studmuffin and was totally out of her reach! "You're not doing anything foolish, are you darling?" she inquired.

"No, honey, but..."

"But WHAT, Robert? Is it another woman?" Mercedes demanded suspiciously.

"Well, yes, but I haven't DONE anything. It's just that Ruth Morris, she's been hinting..."

"Well, let her hint. You leave her alone," Mercedes replied, feeling some relief she was careful not to show. She knew Ruth Morris, a scrawny, red-haired, forty-year-old divorcee who taught in Paul's department. Mercedes could not imagine a woman whom she should fear less.

"Don't worry, honey. I'll keep my hands off of her," Robert said, not too convincingly.

Only after she hung up did her doubts return. After all, Mercedes didn't know how the Virus might have affected the mousy professor. And it was not Robert's hands she was worried about.

Weeks later things were getting dicey.

Events on the outside certainly gave Mercedes and her team plenty of motivation. The scientists were horrified to see how quickly the Virus was turning society upside down. Plastic surgeons were practically out of business, except for women of eighty and ninety who were desperate to attract younger lovers. Surgeons able to reverse tubal ligations and vasectomies, on the other hand, had more patients than they could handle. Women who decided holding a job was too taxing discovered that their husbands or boyfriends had ideas about how they could pass their time, ideas that involved new additions to the family or first babies, even of women in their forties and fifties. Single women gave up waiting for Mr. Right and let Mr. Whoever-Was- Handy make them pregnant.

Sales of women's apparel shot up as millions of former career women ditched their conservative business attire, which no longer fit anyway, for slinky skirts, revealing blouses and spikey heels, only to have to change again as their bulging bellies required a hot new maternity wardrobe.

A new de facto jurisprudence grew up: a woman who eliminated a rival for a man's attention could almost always get off lightly, pleading temporary insanity, if she could show she had gone over twenty-four hours without a proper fuck. Women who killed men out of jealousy, although very rare, received no mercy.

Outside events, on the other hand, created a morale problem for Mercedes as well as the others. Last week, when she had called to check up on Robert it was a woman's voice crying out, "Yes! Oh, Yes!" that triggered the voice- activated videocom link. Mercedes saw all too well why Robert himself had not answered. The automatic camera zoomed in on the speaker, a voluptuous woman with long flaming red curls riding Robert's upthrust prick, crying out and coming repeatedly. "Do it Bobby! Make me your pregnant slut!" Oh God, Mercedes thought, could that be Ruth Morris? As if that were not bad enough, she then noted Robert's head, or rather where it should have been. There, grinding her tight teem muff into Robert's mouth was a younger version of Ruth, screaming in orgasms of her own, "Oh Mom, he's eating meeeee! ... He's got his tongue in my ... Ayyy! I'm coming so good, Mom. Can he make me preggers next?" Mercedes broke the connection in disgust.

At the next staff meeting most of the other women reported similar problems. The lack of sex had them frustrated, jealous, and bitchy! "Dammit, Mechas. Here we are slaving away like nuns for humanity, or at least for femininity, and our husbands and boyfriends are off screwing everything in sight," Bridgett Lafonte exclaimed in ire. "I'm tired of getting off with my hand up my twat night after night. I need a real fuck!"

"Me, too," added Kimberly Bradshaw.

"Oh, God, yes! I need my Leroy," Vivian Wu complained. "I can't think straight without that big black python up in me every night!"

"Now, now, ladies! Don't go gettin' so hot 'n bothered," drawled Mary Jo Lipscom, a lanky Texan who was the Biodome's Ms. Fixit. "I like a nice hunka raw meat packed into m' pussy's as much as the next girl, but let's be practical." All eyes turned to the big blonde with her boots propped up on the desk in front of her. Indeed, she didn't look nearly as uptight as the other women. "I don't like knowin' that m' Billy Bob is off knockin' up his Aint Josey 'n' her girls, but since I cain't do anythang about it riot now," she paused long enough to indicate that in the future Billy Bob was probably going to pay dearly for his fun, "I just make do with Billy Bob, Sr."

There was a gasp of amazement when the assembled women saw what Mary Jo was talking about. Leaning forward, she drew out a hugely wicked-looking dildo, black as night. Another gasp went around the room when she sat the base of the implement on the desk and a low-pitched vibration reverberated through the room. "Yessir, ever night I jus' slip old Billy Bob Sr. in there where he'll do me the most good 'n' git off a buncha times. Sleep like a baby. If any of you girls would like to drop 'round for some help, the US Gummit has put some of the finest plastic in-jecshun mouldin' equipment money can buy in my workshop. I'd be happy to whip you up a personalized set."