‘Accidents?’
‘Right. Nervous systems transport neuro-signals, which are essentially tiny pulses of electricity. Tiny to you, but not to us. When a larger pulse comes through unexpectedly, it can, on occasion, fry one of our workers.’
‘Oh,’ I thought, feeling relieved. ‘That’s no so bad. Big whoop.’
Balar was taken aback. ‘Wow. How would you feel if one of your family members got electrocuted?’
‘Huh? Oh, right. Sorry,’ I thought, trying to sound sensitive. I wondered about the funeral ceremony for a single-celled amoeba. Do they break out tiny little bag pipes?
‘Don’t be a jerk,’ growled Balar. Ignoring the amoeba crack, he soldiered on: ‘Thing is, sometimes an accident like that can spread to the point that it ends up effecting the host.’
‘Ah ha. Here we go. So if you guys have an accident, I die?’
‘No, not typically. You may loose vision for about half a second, similar to blinking. Or your liver may cease function for about the same amount of time, and so on.’
This I didn’t like. He made it sound like no big deal, but I wasn’t so sure. I probably need my kidney. And what if I was driving when I lost vision?
‘If such an event,’ the virus was talking fast now, attempting to head off a mental meltdown on my part, ‘were to occur along the nuero-pathway from your brain to your to heart… well, the results could be bad.’
‘Bad?’
‘The 1/15 of a millisecond, if it occurred while your brain was telling your heart to beat, might cause your heart to skip. Your brain would notice and send extra signals every split second until your heart began to beat again. But all the extra electricity could electrocute our emergency personnel. The result could be… well, death. Your death.’
‘And I suppose you guys would all jump ship and have to find another ‘host’. Sounds like a bummer for you, might even ruin your hole day…’
‘Ok, you know the worst case scenario, so now I would like to…’
‘You can stop right there. I just want to know how to get you murderous germs on mental steroids out of my system. You said something about explaining my rights…’
‘Um, yes. But first I would like to—’
‘Nope, explain my rights first.’
‘I will, just as soon as—’
‘FIRST!’
‘No, first I must—’
‘La laa laaa la la, I’m not listening,’ I put my hands over my ears and began humming aloud.