REAL WORLD: we’ve recovered. We both had to deal with some health issues which were a huge challenge for us.
Nothing serious, but you can’t pretend to live normally and post on your blog as if nothing had happened while you’re not feeling well.
But let’s stop with our bullshit, after the interview with Trump, for which we give credit to @ futuroprossimo@mastodon.uno, the Traditional Family story must begin in earnest.
DISCLAIMER: the story starts from a dystopian world inspired by real events, but as always our blog is satirical. We talk about HIV stigma, and we will continue to cover this topic without involving politics anymore; the dialogue between HIV and Trump was just a test in reply to another blogger who invented an interview with Elon Musk using AI.
A drastic choice
American elections 2028, European elections 2029. The Western world has made its choice: both continents’ population is tired of conflicts, extreme climate events and pandemics about which politics, according to the voters, has more spoken than done.
It is now clear that every United Nations goal for ending emergencies by 2030 has failed, including HIV eradication.
Thanks to artificial intelligence and mass techno-surveillance, two continents governed by one single person is no longer a problem, and Arvil Grant, a former virologist and researcher who decided to be active in politics, has been highly voted.
He was aware that despite his advanced age, immortality was now one step away from being a reality for the wealthiest social classes.
As his first measure after coming to power, Arvil Grant chose to take charge of the AIDS issue by releasing a mutated HIV virus that had been created in a laboratory years before.
Alternative research
Arvil Grant was a famous virologist in 1990s, who wanted to change the rules of pathogen research with a theorem that was more human than scientific: ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’.
Why trying to defeat HIV? By spreading it, world population could be reduced and survivors could have the chance to use the virus as a biological weapon.
But sharing it among people with no modifications, could cause protests. A more subtle approach was needed.
He had discussed it with a student, Evelyn Sloan, who was fascinated by the possibility that HIV could develop a consciousness of its own; she even believed it could talk and Arvil Grant had challenged her: ‘Evelyn, prove it to me’.
Together they had managed to combine several celebrities’ strains: Freddie Mercury for charisma, Isaac Asimov for imagination, Rock Hudson for acting ability, and John Holmes for virility.
All they needed was to train the virus to respond to Professor Grant’s commands.
The perfect surveillance idea
Years of work had borne fruit and in 2019 Professor Grant had retired as a scientist, but in his home laboratory he kept a refrigerator full of numbered test tubes.
Each virus was specialised in a form of destabilisation: rapid death, chronic suffering, aggression, voices in the head that drove you mad. What they all had in common was the ability to control their human host and report their secrets to Professor Grant, either verbally or in code, whenever he would command viruses to talk about something.
However, 2019 was not yet the most suitable time to finalize the project, but he knew that it was only a matter of a few years, time for artificial intelligence and techno-surveillance to really take hold.
Subsequently, Covid, then international crises, destabilised the world. So Arvil Grant could only take advantage of the path paved by his predecessors.
By now the disinformation machine had become unstoppable, all it took was a single human writing the right messages to steer the population towards the thought most convenient to Grant, making every opposing voice disappear. And in 2029 Arvil had Western world under complete control.
Evelyn Sloan’s ethics
What old Grant never knew was that his former faithful pupil Evelyn Sloan had adopted a little HIV positive girl in 1998.
Having escaped from an institute where Grant’s men exploited orphaned children for illegal scientific experiments, little Tatiana now lives in a protected environment and her virus is as sentient as any other, but it is a pacifist HIV and is also present in Sloan’s blood.
The challenge is on: spread the virus to selected humans, so as to gradually plant the seed of revolution.
The spread of the mutant HIV
2035. Arvil Grant celebrates his fifth consecutive year in power with a rally broadcast worldwide, but the HIV rebels are ready. Evelyn and her daughter are confident they can transmit the virus; they just need to find the most reliable human to be their seducer and donor.
Some on the internet and some in real life, people are forced to listen to yet another rant from the Leader; artificial intelligence has inhibited conferences organised by ordinary citizens, only machines can speak and Arvil Grant is the only one who can express himself in words. But for how long?
Arvil Grant speaks to the public
Citizens of the New Western Order! My people!
Today we celebrate a triumph of science and society. Something that, only a few decades ago, was impossible.
You remember what the world was like before our renaissance, don’t you?
We were collapsing! We had miserably failed.
Yes. Failed! Remember the promise to eliminate AIDS by 2030?
A lie. Repeated by spineless politicians, cowardly scientists, chronic idealists.
Public health collapsed, lack of treatments everywhere. And people? They died.
Yes, true, thousands of people dropping like flies.
And what did activists do? They talked, they cried, they didn’t face reality.
But I did. Me, only me! I faced it head on.
I had the courage to choose the only viable path. Alone. Without asking for unnecessary permission. Without wasting time.
I could have let the virus consume us like an enemy… But I didn’t. I transformed it into my ally, our ally.
Together with the world’s best scientists, I performed a miracle. With research. With courage. With determination and will of those unafraid of change.
HIV has become a defensive weapon, a social bond, the very foundation of our unity.
The traditional family, remember? The old world destroyed it, and I rebuilt it. I fought until I won, and now, now open your eyes wide!
Look around you! We are no longer divided by class, religion or borders, there is only the sky above us.
John Lennon described this vision in his famous song, I have brought it back to the real world.
Thanks to me, Europe, America, and soon the whole world, will be one family linked by the same blood, a pact that no one will ever be able to break.
HIV is no longer an infection. It is our identity.
Yet it is not over and chaos is still possible, we must be on our guard.
And all because of certain misfits who refuse this blessing. Useless people, derelicts, tied to a past that is dead and buried.
HIV negative people. No, actually. It disgusts me just to name them. Negative, and that’s it. Carriers of toxic and dangerous energy.
They are few now, of course. But their existence is an insult.
They don’t threaten us… but they reject us, which is even worse.
They spit on our gift, on our families, on our future; they exploit us, and then they despise us. How disgusting.
Those ones are an anomaly, a statistical error. And you know what must be done with errors, right?
Errors, folks, can be corrected. You can be born negative, but to change your status, you just have to want to.
I’m not cruel, I’m offering them a choice.
Every negative can go to the nearest blood collection centre for free, ask for an injection and become one of us. Return to the natural order of things. Finally become part of the new Traditional Family.
I’m not forcing you, no one will come looking for you with guns; but know this, those who refuse… don’t deserve to walk among us as equals. They will be humiliated, isolated, ridiculed. Until they realise that there is no future without the positive Sign. Until they understand that freedom without order is just anarchy. And anarchy means death.
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