Jesus Virus

The injection site starts to swell, the Monday morning motivation meeting begins, and for some reason I picture Rainer Kincaide’s smirking eyes.

My new boss with the oil slicked hair pushes a pudgy finger against the slide projector. ‘Effective Communication Makes Us Work More Effectively’ flashes on the north wall of the conference room. The slide border is cobalt blue, but the saffron stripe paint scheme on the north wall makes the slide border look green.

Not environmentally friendly green or beach glass green, more like gallbladder green.
Last week, my new boss ‘action planned’ a two-hour ‘consensus meeting’ to ‘gain alignment’ on our official company slide color.

For some reason, I picture my new boss toe up beside the passenger door of an environmentally unfriendly big block V8.

Rainer Kincaide says switching to a gasoline-electric hybrid car is like stopping smoking after you’ve been diagnosed with a lung tumor.

Oxygen and gasoline mix together in the big block cylinder chamber.

A tiny electric spark.

Ignition.

Combustion.

Rainer Kincaide says a single spark can set the whole world on fire.

At the south wall of the conference room the line at the gravestone grey coffee pot is seven deep, and the smell of stale Sumatra Surprise hangs heavy in the air.

For some reason, the coffee smells different today.

Coffee causes little glands in your body to pump out adrenaline.

I like coffee, but I don’t drink coffee today.

Sometimes, the things that get you up can also bring you down.

A young kid gets medicated with an amphetamine like Ritalin, the kid calms down.

If my new boss takes amphetamine, the Monday morning motivation meeting finishes a whole lot faster.

The new hire named maybe Candy or Mandy from the toxicology testing division tilts her bleached hair against the burnt beige frame of the conference room plate glass window. She looks less at my new boss and more at the small skating rink cut in a solitaire setting on her left ring finger.

Consider little arms and hands frozen in time, trapped in crystal ice on top her finger. Those arms will never cast a vote. Picture hacked hands heaped in a pile against a thatched hut wall in Sierra Leone.

See African diamonds stained red with a continent of conflict.

Diamonds are made from carbon atoms compressed under immense stress and pressure.

Rainer Kincaide says some diamonds are made from organic carbon atoms found a long time ago in plants and animals. These diamonds are called eclogitic diamonds.

Rainer Kincaide is full of interesting information.

Imagine the prehistoric tongue-shaped seed fern of Glossopteris.

See the tufted wing of Archaeopteryx, the first feathered dinosaur.
Picture God’s creations crushed and compressed under immense stress and pressure.

God knows stress. After all, He created the world in six days.
God understands a nervous laugh, a little joke to relieve the pressure.

Rainer Kincaide says God has a sense of humor.

After all, He made us.

Sometimes, extreme stress and pressure cause tiny electric circuits in your brain to short out. Little neural impulses misfire. The wiring gets crossed. You can’t sleep. You can’t eat.

Sometimes, the things you think are real are the most unreal things of all.

Sort of like reality television.

My new boss pumps his arms in rhythm while ‘Tomorrow’s Visions Are Today’s Mission’ projects against the north wall of the conference room. The junior director of the pharmaceutical applications team nods his head in perfect time to the arm pump rhythm of my new boss. Between head bobs and nods, the junior director slurps stale coffee from one of those glossy mugs with still pictures of television shows.

Rainer Kincaide says television is like an electronic Seconal sedative, a boob tube barbiturate for the brain.

With television, we don’t need to create, to imagine, to dream.

With television, we just have to watch.

Maybe we aren’t really watching television.

Maybe television is watching us.

Telling us what we want.

Showing us what we need.

These days, television raises all the young men I know.

My new boss points a pudgy finger at the slide ‘Cross-functional Team Managers Implement Functional Change’ and a new analytical chemistry lab tech named maybe Amber or Crystal with Birkenstock boots and bright blue eyes stares at the floor. Her eyes aren’t cerulean blue or Pacific Ocean blue, more like the blue skin color of oxygen debt from cyanide poisoning.

Cyanide blue.

The lab tech with the cyanide eyes wears a trendy T-shirt with bold black letters visible through her white cling-fit lab coat.

‘Kings & queens rule,

Government controls,

Animals will inherit the Earth.’

Rainer Kincaide doesn’t want to rule the world.

Rainer Kincaide doesn’t want to control the world.

Rainer Kincaide wants the world to change.

This isn’t change as in adapt.

This is change as in replace.

For some reason, I picture the lab tech toe up and doll face blank.

The unpaid intern from the molecular biology group raises a pasty hand while my new boss emphasizes ‘Leading Change Without Changing Course’. He goes to one of those concrete-wrapped community colleges.

The student says with sly eyes, “I know communicating effectively helps us form today’s vision for tomorrow, and I understand today’s mission forms tomorrow’s vision, but how can we lead change without changing course?”

My new boss shoots him a shotgun serious stare.

Rainer Kincaide says knowledge isn’t the same as understanding.

We know someday our lives will end, but we don’t really understand this at all.

Instead, we spend our time in ‘alignment’ and ‘consensus discussion’. We watch reality television, generate avatars in a virtual world, and kill computer aliens with the latest first-person shooter software.

My father died when I was a kid.

I understand that I didn’t get a chance to really know him at all.

My new boss crosses in front of the north wall of the conference room and ‘Driven Leaders Drive Employee Performance’ gleams in size forty font off his oil slicked hair.

My drive is a two-tone Acura coupe. I’m three months behind my lease payment.

My new boss is my leader. He likes to talk about leadership.

My new boss says, “Leaders inspire.”

“Leaders motivate performance.”

Hitler inspired the SS.

Pol Pot motivated people.

So did Bin Laden.

Rainer Kincaide says the old men who know the most about leadership understand the least about leadership.

Me, I’m part of the pack.

One of the herd.

An employee.

Like most of us.

Rainer Kincaide says there’s always an old man asking a young man about ‘alignment’ on an ‘action plan’.

However, when you’re an employee in the infectious disease and immunology lab certain circumstances create interesting opportunities.

Picture the flesh-eating bug Streptococcus pyogenes.

Watch respiratory influenza virus consume the lining of your lungs.

Thank about Yersinia pestis, the vector for plague, the Black Death.

See HIV destroy your infection-fighting T-cells.

Consider the most advanced techniques in genetic engineering. Mix different genetic bits and pieces of other viruses to create new viruses.

The infectious disease and immunology division creates new viruses all the time for research and development purposes.

A virus manipulates the cells of your body to reproduce more viruses.

My parents reproduced.

These days, all the young men I know don’t seem to know their fathers.

Rainer Kincaide says our fathers are our minds’ mirror image of God.

Rainer didn’t know his father.

Consider all God’s creation.

Now picture God’s creation crushed and compressed.

Imagine starting over.

No more Monday morning motivation meetings.

No more Ritalin.

At the end of the conference room, back against the north wall, my new boss suddenly stops in mid-sentence, a coitus interruptus of corporate double-speak.

That familiar facial expression.

A tiny tickle.

The strange little itch in the fleshy part of the throat.

My new boss’ masseter muscles twitch around his jutting jaw.

He coughs.

I like coffee, but I don’t drink coffee today.

Rainer Kincaide has a plan.

Sometimes, little neural circuits tangle together and you create a different part of yourself, someone you want to be.

Maybe, with the knowledge to create a new virus, we can understand how to set the world free.

Then again, knowledge isn’t the same as understanding.

Sometimes, the things that get you up can also bring you down.

Consider this morning’s coffee consumption by colleagues at PharmaTech BioScience, Inc.

A swallowed sniffle from the new hire with the bleached hair, a choked hack from the lab tech with the cyanide eyes, and sneezes in stereo sound suddenly from all corners of the conference room.

The unpaid intern from the local community college rubs his beefy arm and casts a quiet nod.

A virus is a biological enigma.

Until a virus infects a cell, this tiniest of God’s creations exists in a state of suspended animation, not really alive, but not really dead.

A biologic mystery of existence, neither alive nor dead, sort of like all the young men I know.

A virus has to infect something before it can live again.

Maybe, we need something to change before we can understand the meaning of our lives.

This isn’t change as in adapt.

This is change as in replace.

All the young men I know, we don’t understand our lives.

Advertising tells us we need the perfect car and the perfect beer, and then we’ll be happy.

We work jobs we hate to buy things we don’t really need.

Consider a new virus.

The thing is, with this virus, you get a chance to know death, to understand death.

You die, but then you get a chance to live again.

Rainer Kincaide says sacrifices must be made.

Sort of like Jesus.

Consider death.

Now imagine a second chance at life.

Resurrection.

A bone once busted heals stronger.

A mind once broken thinks about things in a different way.

These days, all the young men I know just need a chance to appreciate our potential.

Maybe we can show God the best in us.

Maybe then God will take us seriously.

Splattered coffee drips between gasping bodies on the floor. The new hire named Brandy or Candy, or maybe Sandy or Mandy, she’s toe-up. The lab tech’s blank cyanide eyes contrast with the gallbladder green slide color border projected on the conference room wall.

My new boss is ten seconds away from becoming my last boss.

Maybe he can reach ‘alignment’ with God about a new ‘action plan’.

The unpaid intern from the local community college peals back his shirt sleeve and the injection site on his left arm looks like shrink-wrapped skirt steak.

Rainer Kincaide has a plan.

For some reason, I see Rainer’s eyes staring back at me from the reflection in the plate glass conference room window.

Sometimes, things get so confused, you just have to start over.