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I Am Rabies

I am a disease almost born of legend and always instinctively feared. I am the top assassin of the viral world and by the time your body realises that it has an intruder in your central nervous system, it'll be too late to fend off my attack. I am known as Rabies and I will take your system down from the inside.

I am the Lyssa virus, one of the few members of the Rhabdo-virus family capable of taking down humans. Biding my time in the salivary glands of an infected animal, I hide waiting for an unsuspecting (or suspecting, - I don't discriminate) passer-by to get a little too close. Thanks to me, an infected animal will try and bite anything near it, and if successful, I can hitch a ride in the saliva to the new victim's wound. Travelling silently along nerve tissue from that wound of opportunity, I eventually settle down in my host's central nervous system using the brain as my control centre. I hide out from the bodyguards of my host and am not usually recognised as a pathogen by the immune system. This gives me time to recover from my journey and allows me to replicate over time, taking between three weeks and three months, although for the laziest among us an incubation period of years isn't unheard of. In any case, as soon as I feel ready, I disperse into the brain all that I have replicated.

If all goes according to plan, then there should be three stages to the disease I just released into your body. I've heard that your scientists have named these stages, - the first is the prodomal stage, the second is the 'anger' stage, and finally the neurological stage.

In the first stage, I may cause typical flu-like symptom of a fever, vomiting and loss of appetite. I also usually cause headaches - that is where my control centre lies remember. From this control centre in your grey matter, I try to awkwardly pilot your autonomic nervous system. This is kind of like one human trying to control an entire space mission, which is why you humans have lots of your kind to work together to ensure space mission success. It's also why I did all that replicating earlier; - I also need help to ensure that I successfully take over parts of my host's body.

Because the main mode of transport from host to host is hitching a ride in an infected animal's saliva (usually into a wound, although mucous membranes and occasionally the respiratory system are acceptable) one of my most important roles is to make the animal copiously salivate and create accommodation for some of my replicates.

The 'anger' stage is probably my favourite as I gain more control over the central nervous system. My aim at this point is to mainly transport my self into new hosts. Seeing as I spent all that time in stage one creating all that infected saliva, I figured I should put it to good use. My host will appear restless, irritable, and may also display signs of aggression - including attempting to bite those nearby. This stage lasts for an average of two to four days. During this time, I create disorientation and seizures.

After that busy stage, it's onto the neurological stage where I cause some pretty harrowing paralysis, (don't get me wrong, I'm a virus, I don't get sentimental but I can appreciate my own work). The first part to freeze is usually the portal of entry. More common than this, however, is paralysis of the face and throat, making swallowing an arduous labour and drinking an impossibility. I also produce confusion, delirium and increasingly uncontrollable movements. These movements, especially in the face and throat, can be triggered by the sight of water - hence ye olde timey name of hydrophobia that was used to describe my work. Finally, my host becomes very anxious and hyperactive. From here, it's all down hill for my host and in less than two weeks they'll be six feet under.

Like I said, I'm the top assassin of the viral world with a mortality rate of 100%. According to your scientists, if administered very soon after I infect you, a serum or vaccine can be effective in fighting me off. Apparently an animal can be immunized with attenuated rabies virus; antibodies from these animals are injected into infected people to give temporary immunity to me.

This 'treatment', however, is only effective if administered within twenty-four hours of exposure. There has been a rumour of your scientists curing a little girl that was infected by one of our own by using this method of attenuated virus vaccines. We like to think of this as nothing more than an urban legend of sorts; - can you imagine what it would do to our reputation if it were true? No, for now all Lyssa-viruses must simply keep infecting, keep replicating and doing their jobs, and maybe one day in the not too distant future, we'll bribe evolution to allow us to mutate into an even more formidable virus.