A Conversation With The West Nile Virus

"It's only a stopgap," the more bellicose among them pointed out, in a secret protocol. "We'll be working on this in secret, biding our time, figuring out how to enforce our knowledge that we humans are the chief ornament of everything in the Universe, that everything else is there to serve us, and that we can kill whatever we please in fulfilling this mandate from our own own innermost nature."

The President gave the order, though he had grave doubts about it. It seemed to him that he was acting like some dictators in the past he had been opposed to: pretending compliance but secretly putting together his weapons and planning for a great breakout.

His advisors convinced him that this was not the case. He was only doing what any other intelligent, dedicated human would do under similar circumstances.

The president agreed and the order was given. The president won reelection on the platform, "He saved us from the Evil Council," as the Congress on Universal Consciousnesses was known on Earth.

And to make it all better, there was a brief economic upturn when the president tooled up for war against the Central Asian Confederacy, which had been found guilty of promulgating the doctrine of Communism under the guise of a religious message from the poet Kabir, and of producing and stockpiling atomic weapons for no clear purpose but with clear evil intent.

Americans, as opposed to evil as they always have been, rallied to this war. The rest of the world reluctantly went along. And as a capper and final resolution, the president declared all West Nile Virus sufferers to be Heroes of the Fight For Human Freedom, to be awarded medals, to be given free hospital care and cost of living benefits.

This move was applauded. But Congress proved lax in voting the necessary funds...

More important, a top movie entertainer went on TV at her own expense and recited Tennyson's "Locksley Hall, ending with the stirring lines, "And the gentle Earth shall slumber, wrapped in Universal Law."