text: You wake up in a white room. No walls. No ceiling. Only a white floor that produces no shadow. You start to walk aimlessly, looking for something when you have no evidence of its existence. Unfortunately you do find something: a lone TV with a remote resting on top. You walk over and pick up the remote. You sit down and you turn the TV on. The screen is filled with static. You continue watching as all you hear is white noise and all you see is black and white particles bouncing around. Hours, days, weeks pass. Still static. You start wondering if anything is ever going to play. You start to get up, but you decide against leaving because theres nothing else to do here anyway. The moment you sit back down, the TV goes from static to black. You tilt your head, wondering why the TV turned off. But it did not turn off, far from it actually. The screen overflows with immense light. Now things are getting interesting. The TV shows the expansion of that light, getting brighter, but the objects in the screen are growing farther apart. You understand what’s happening now. You know exactly what this TV is showing you. The passing of time itself. As millennia pass, you witness the expansion of the universe, the formation of the first star, elements being born; you witness entire civilizations rise and fall. The history of existence, showed in a 32 inch retina display. Millions of years pass as you cover each system’s individual history, yet you aren’t bored... you’re intrigued. Billions of years go by, when you finally reach a tiny yet familiar blue planet. You watch as species rise and fall, nature deciding who lives and who dies, until you see one of the animals learned how to make things. At that moment they spread like a virus, destroying everything that came in their path. For a few thousand years they only fought each other, mostly over petty grievances that they could have easily talked out. They stopped and learned how to control themselves after they almost destroyed the planet...twice. It was at that moment that they assumed nature’s role; they were the ones who decided who lived and died. They consumed everything in their path, devouring everything that they thought was necessary to further themselves as a civilization. You continue watching, horrified by what you see. You watch a species learn how to master aspects of their surroundings that they should have absolutely no control over. They mastered their planet. They consumed their planet. They mastered their star. They consumed their star. They mastered their system. They consumed their system. Their viral infectivity increased at an exponential rate, they were becoming unstoppable. Every civilization has its filter, something that stops it from advancing as a species. The virus overcame that filter with flying colors. This was the first you’ve seen of a civilization beating its filter. You start to get frightened for the sake of the universe because this is no longer the history of time. No, this is the history of the virus. Its a story of how it spread in its influence and power, consuming everything in its path. This is the story of how the universe was infected and overcome by a virus named humanity.