New Donk Times
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Tri-colored virus epidemic infects New Donk City!
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By: Robbie TallmanAn unusual phenomenon had been observed starting two weeks ago in New Donk City of multi-colored snot being blown from people’s noses. What was at first thought to be the work of a strange mushroom was eventually confirmed to be the work of a new virus, the disastrous effects of which were made apparent during last week’s New Donk City Festival, which saw a grand total of 90 people of various races infected and bedridden.
“My heart goes out to all the infected,” Mayor Pauline said when reached for comment. “As mayor, it is my job to see to the well-being of the people of this city. In this particular case, I must put the peoples’ well-being into the hands of professionals, and I have the utmost trust in the doctors of New Donk Clinic.”
The virus, which has been dubbed the Primary Virus due to its specific color scheme consisting of all three primary colors, has proven to spread quickly. According to medical professionals, Primary is actually composed of three individual viruses forming a cohesive unit: Fever, the red one; Chill, the blue one, and Weird, the yellow one, each one having been named for the specific conditions they inflict upon a victim. While Primary spreads fast, we have been assured that a cure is rapidly being developed and the first patients are expected to be administered the new ‘megavitamins’ this weekend.
“First step to diagnosing you, Mr. Widebrim,” Dr. Mario said as he rummaged through the drawers of his work desk, keeping his tone cheery to lift the sickly man’s spirits, “is to see how severe your infection is. Aha!” He pulled out a mushroom with a sickly face; it felt wrinkly underneath his latex gloves.
The taller man sat on the edge of the exam table, red in the face and breathing heavily, his hat and suit laid carefully on the bed next to him. His eyes had a faraway look like he was in a trance and only barely conscious of his surroundings. Attached to his nose was a plastic tube which ran through a machine and into a glass jar. Dr. Mario handed the Sneezeshroom to him and he took it without a word, though, his arm’s movements were slow and tired like it was a struggle to move it.
“Make sure you eat that mushroom very quickly, preferably in one bite,” Dr. Mario explained. “Otherwise, the bad taste will make you spit it out. It will make you sneeze, and I need-a you to help it by blowing through your nose as hard as you can. Can you do that for me?”
Mr. Widebrim nodded without a word.
“Okie Dokie!” Mario set his finger on a switch on the machine. “I’m ready when you’re-a ready!”
Mr. Widebrim popped the Sneezeshroom into his mouth. He made a wretched face as the mushroom’s bitter taste went into effect, but he soldiered on, chewing for a moment before swallowing the whole thing in one gulp. His mouth opened and his eyes closed and he blew a loud, hard sneeze into the plastic tube, filling it with a thick load of multi-colored snot.
Dr. Mario flipped the switch on the machine and it roared to life. Immediately, the snot in the tube was pulled into the machine like a vacuum. Mr. Widebrim did as instructed and repeatedly blew his nose into the tube, expelling as much multi-colored snot as was stuck up his nostrils. The machine expelled the snot into the jar like an ice-cream machine, filling it until it was three-fourths full. The snot was as thick as paint and gradually the three colors shifted until they were neatly stacked atop one another; why exactly that happened was still a mystery.
Mr. Widebrim took a few deep, relaxing breaths once his nose was cleared out.
“That’s a high density of mucus,” Dr. Mario said, observing the jar. “That’s-a gonna need many megavitamins to cure.”
“I’ll take as many as I need,” Mr. Widebrim proclaimed, his voice coming out hard and raspy.
“Good to hear.” Dr. Mario reached into another drawer and pulled out a plastic bottle showing all kinds of medical information about the megavitamins inside, including its total dosage of three hundred milligrams. He handed the bottle to Mr. Widebrim and got to work removing the plastic tube from his nose. “Make sure to take three vitamins every morning and night, one for each color. That should be enough to cure you.”
“Thanks, Dr. Mario,” Mr. Widebrim said as the tube was pulled off of him.
Dr. Mario set the tube down in the sink. Mr. Widebrim put his suit and hat back on and stuffed the megavitamin bottle into a pocket. The two said their goodbyes and Mr. Widebrim stepped out of Dr. Mario’s office.
“Mamma mia,” Dr. Mario said as he shut the door. “I’ll-a never catch a break.” He strode over to the sink and got to work cleaning out the tube. He’d lost count of how many patients he’d had today and still had booked for appointments. It was certainly a boon to his checkbook, that was undeniable, but a growing part of him was wishing he could take a break from his hectic, mucus-filled schedule.
He had just finished cleaning the tube when a strange noise reached his ears in the otherwise silent examination room. He stopped and strained his ears to pinpoint the source of the noise. Was it coming from outside or inside the room? Inside? Yes, inside. It sounded like… tiny voices? Millions of them.
A soft thud sounded behind him and he spun around. His eyes bulged in shock and disbelief at the sight of the mucus-filled jar tipped over, its contents spilling through the opening in the top. The multi-colored mucus was actually lifting itself through the jar. The mucus coalesced into a puddle on the floor, each color neatly separated in its own section, all while Dr. Mario could only stare in stupefied shock and awe.
Then the puddle started crawling across the floor towards the door. Dr. Mario snapped from his shock and instinctively moved to bar the doorway. The puddle stopped in place. Finally, Dr. Mario was able to properly assess the situation. Somehow, this puddle of Primary virus-filled mucus was sapient. That should’ve been impossible, but there was no other explanation for how it managed to get itself out of the jar and move on its own as one cohesive unit. If it was sapient, and it was trying to get outside, then undoubtedly its goal was to infect more people. It suddenly made perfect sense how the virus was able to spread so quickly and easily.
“You’re not-a going anywhere,” he said firmly.
Millions of tiny cries of laughter sounded from the puddle, which made Dr. Mario’s skin crawl and a shiver to travel the length of his spine. Then the puddle retreated across the floor towards the window. Dr. Mario seized the opportunity and rushed over to the drawer containing bottles of megavitamins, pulling one out and unscrewing the lid. The mucus puddle had started scaling the wall under the window by the time he’d reached them. He pulled a couple of yellow pills from the bottle and threw them at the yellow portion of the puddle. The pills hit dead center, producing a sizzling effect upon contact. Tiny screams erupted from the puddle.
Dr. Mario wasted no time, pulling out a larger handful of pills and prepared to drop them onto the puddle, but before he could, the puddle split into two halves and began moving away from each other; one half moved toward the door while the other moved toward the closet on the other side of the room. He focused on the one heading towards the door, tossing pill after pill and doing his best to make sure the appropriate colors hit the corresponding areas of the puddle. The same sizzling effect came with each successful hit. In no time at all, the puddle had disappeared. A brief glance towards the closet showed the other puddle half slipping underneath the door.
Dr. Mario quickly grabbed another bottle from the drawer and sprinted over to the closet door. There was nowhere for the viruses to escape inside, but there was lots of equipment they could potentially infect that he would need thoroughly sanitized should that happen. He threw open the door and raised his hand, full of pills, ready to throw down at the viruses. What he saw stopped him dead in his tracks and his mouth hung agape in stupefied shock once again.
Hovering right in the middle of his supply closet, in the tiny little space that wasn’t occupied by medical equipment and other supplies, was a rectangular section of space carved out; a dimensional doorway that had definitely not been there yesterday. Through it was an infinite expanse of white. Dr. Mario tried and failed to comprehend the sudden existence of this anomaly situated within his workspace. In the bottom of his vision, he saw the viruses piling on top of each other, the mucus puddle flowing through the doorway. The part of him which was determined to kill the viruses was buried under his confusion and incredulity at the sight before him.
The mucus puddle disappeared over the edge of the doorway, snapping Dr. Mario from his shock. He reached a tentative hand out toward the doorway. It passed right through harmlessly and effortlessly as if it was nothing more than air. Emboldened, he lifted a foot and stuck it through, followed by the rest of his body in a second’s time. Satisfied he wouldn’t explode or disintegrate or something equally horrible, he surveyed his surroundings.
Endless white surrounded him on all sides, including beneath him, but his feet touched upon an invisible solid surface. The only thing to break it up were dozens of other-dimensional doorways scattered among the whitescape. He quickly spotted the viruses crawling across the invisible ground of the void and dashed after them. They seemed to be booking it towards the nearest doorway to the one they’d come out of. His heart leapt into his throat when he realized that, if the white void he was in was some kind of dimensional hub world, then there could and probably did exist living, sapient creatures on the other side of each doorway.
The viruses were just in front of the doorway by the time he reached them. He raised his hand up, full of multi-colored megavitamins, and threw them down in a panic, not caring to properly aim to line up the colors. As a result, only a small portion of the puddle was killed. Dr. Mario tsked and reopened the bottle and poured a bunch into the palm of his hand. He began sorting them, glancing every now and then at the puddle to keep track of its movements, his heartbeat increasing with every second. Then he cried out in despair when his fingers slipped, spilling all the megavitamins onto the ground. He knelt down and hurriedly began gathering them again. He looked up and his heart skipped a beat upon seeing the viruses slip over the edge of the dimensional doorway.
He couldn’t waste any time. He ignored the fallen pills and pulled out his second bottle and hurriedly unscrewed the lid. He couldn’t afford to sort through the megavitamins, deciding to just dump the whole bottle onto the viruses. He practically jumped through the doorway, coming out into a dark room with a sliver of light on the ground beneath him. Another supply closet, he guessed. Instinctively, he reached around for a light switch but couldn’t find anything. Then he saw the viruses emerge from the darkness and pass underneath the door.
“What the heck!?” came a gruff, masculine voice from the other side of the door
Dr. Mario ignored the voice. He kicked the door open and scanned the immediate surroundings. The scenery itself escaped his attention as his gaze landed squarely on the viruses crawling across the floor, picking up speed as they scaled the opposite wall under a window. He poured all the bottle’s contents into his hand, rushed forward and reeled back his arm.
“So long-a viruses!”
He threw the pills with all his might. They scattered through the air, heading straight for the viruses. Millions of tiny squeals of terror sounded from the mucus puddle before, to Dr. Mario’s amazement, the bottom half of the puddle lifted up in front of the top half. The megavitamins impacted the impromptu shield, disintegrating it easily and quickly, but ultimately failed to break through to the top half. A million tiny cheers of glee sounded from the puddle before it continued its trek up the wall, making its way onto the windowsill and slipping under the crack to the outside.
Dr. Mario could only watch helplessly as the viruses escaped. He was increasingly impressed by their super intelligence, but more worried about what trouble their existence could spell for the denizens of this world. He would need to retrieve several more megavitamin bottles if he wanted any hope of combating their sky-high transmission rate, but the real challenge would be tracking them down and, potentially, having to cure hundreds or even thousands of victims. He could do it, and he would do it if he had to, but he would definitely need a short vacation afterwards.
Someone cleared their throat behind him and he turned around in surprise, having forgotten someone else had been there. The creatures before him made him stop and do a double-take. They were white, winged horses wearing fancy-looking gold-plated armor. They held spears in the crooks of their hooves and their eyes bore into him with a stern intensity that immediately told him his presence wasn’t exactly welcome. He wasn’t sure what he would’ve expected the denizens of this world to look like, but somehow this felt weird even compared to anything his imagination could’ve cooked up.
He put on his best friendly smile and held up his hands in a placating manner, hoping that would translate to hooved creatures accordingly. “I come in peace,” he said.
The winged horses glanced at each other for a moment in silent communication, nodded, and one of them stepped forward. “We’ll take you to our leader.”