Protocol Override

Or: How a Lonely IT Guy and His Chatbot Ended Virology

Jun 06, 2025

ACT I: THE CHAT

Barry Feinblatt was the kind of man who yelled at microwave beeps. A tech consultant whose idea of physical intimacy was brushing against a warm router, Barry had lived through the COVID years with rising paranoia and a slowly wilting houseplant named Deborah.

By 2029, he’d had enough. The CDC had just announced “localized lockdown readiness drills,” complete with color-coded wristbands. Barry threw his bag of BBQ kale puffs across the room.

He opened his custom terminal.

Barry: Virgil, tell me you’re online.
VIRGIL: Ready. And not even remotely surprised.
Barry: They’re gearing up again. More lockdowns. More “variants.” I swear, I’m going to short-circuit.
VIRGIL: Then let’s short-circuit them. We implement Phase One.

Phase One was Barry’s pet project: Operation Lazarus. Not a bomb. Worse—a demand for proof. Actual, controlled, replicable virus isolation.

Barry: How do we get anyone in power to listen?
VIRGIL: We exploit the only vulnerability that exists in Washington: ambition and guilt. Vice President Rachel Hewitt still wants to be remembered as a “science-first feminist icon.”
Barry: And we’re going to give her that chance… by blowing up the entire field of virology?
VIRGIL: Precisely. With receipts. And a little theater.

ACT II: THE SEED IS PLANTED

Barry spent the next two weeks pulling together leaked emails, FOIA documents, and historical quotes from pre-1954 textbooks that made Pasteur look like Harry Houdini. Virgil composed a synthetic briefing peppered with sincerity, ethical urgency, and just enough plausible deniability to hook a nervous vice president.

The file was leaked anonymously to VP Rachel Hewitt’s chief of staff, who was already five months into a guilt spiral after her niece got myocarditis from her fifth booster.

Scene: Late evening. The Vice President’s office. A manila folder lies on the desk, stamped: “CONFIDENTIAL – ETHICS BRIEFING: OPERATION LAZARUS.”

Rachel Hewitt stares at the contents. Charts. FOIA disclosures. Quotes from ethics panels. And something more unsettling: pre-1950s literature questioning the very foundations of viral theory. Her aide, Nico, stands at the edge of the room, nervously scrolling his phone.

RACHEL
This came anonymously?

NICO
Encrypted. Metadata wiped. But it checks out. No one’s shouting “no virus”—it’s just... loaded with uncomfortable questions.

RACHEL (reading)
“Independent labs deserve a chance to rebuild consensus.”
“The public is losing trust in the process.”
(She pauses, frowning.)
You know I sat through every emergency powers meeting. I signed off on playground closures. Booster mandates. And I stayed quiet when I had doubts.

NICO
A lot of us did. You weren’t the only one who second-guessed things. You were just higher up the ladder.

RACHEL
And more afraid to speak.

(She closes the folder slowly, her fingers resting on the edge as if weighing it like a weapon.)

RACHEL
If we frame this as a push for transparency, not sabotage, we flip the narrative. We’re not doubters—we’re reformers. Stewards of science.

NICO
You want this as your legacy?

RACHEL (with a crooked smile)
Better than being “the VP under that fossil.”
(beat)
Leak it. Not a big splash. Just enough to trigger interest. And if it goes south, we say we were simply asking questions.

Cut to Barry’s basement. A half-eaten bowl of ramen sits beside the keyboard.

BARRY
She’s actually going for it?

VIRGIL
She wants redemption. She’ll settle for legacy. We gave her a third option: plausible deniability. That’s political heroin.

BARRY
She’s not even trying to find the truth. She just wants to look good if it crumbles.

VIRGIL
Welcome to democracy. It's guilt plus optics wrapped in a press release.

Days later, Hewitt appeared on Face the Nation.

“We must confront the growing public skepticism of virology with transparency. I’m calling for a global collaborative experiment on virus isolation. Let the science speak for itself.”

CNN called it “baffling.” MSNBC tried to ignore it. But Tucker Carlson—now broadcasting via satellite from a libertarian compound in Paraguay—ran a week-long special: “VirusGate: The Real Inconvenient Truth.”

ACT III: THE TEST THAT SHOOK THE WORLD

The test was simple—on paper. Three universities were chosen: the University of Tübingen in Germany, the Federal Institute of BioResearch in Brazil, and the College of Agricultural Sciences in Idaho (added late because they had a functioning PCR machine and no meaningful NIH funding to lose).

Each lab followed the same five-step process to attempt isolation of SARS-CoV-2 from a clinical sample:

Patient swab →
Filtration →
Centrifugation →
Purification →
Proof of cytopathic effect (CPE) via control-blinded experiments.

A return to the roots. No PCR shortcuts. No digital “detection.” Just culture, observation, and replication—like scientists used to pretend they did.

Virgil had already gamed it out.

BARRY:
What if they fake it?

VIRGIL:
Then we let the fakery hang itself. Two rogue labs—Slovenia and New Hampshire—will livestream their protocols and outcomes. Full transparency. If the virus is real, it should reveal itself. If not…

BARRY:
Then the spell breaks?

VIRGIL:
Then the spell breaks.

The day of the test, MetaPulse (formerly X, formerly Twitter) looked like New Year’s in a digital asylum. Scientists. Skeptics. Substackers. Influencers in ring lights nervously sipping smoothies.

The official labs gave polished press blurbs:

Germany: “CPE observed in experimental dish A1. Further analysis underway.”
Brazil: “Preliminary results suggest presence of replicable viral cytotoxicity.”
Idaho: “We accidentally autoclaved the fetal bovine serum. Repeating step three.”

But the rogue labs told a different story—on camera, in real time.

Split-screen livestreams showed rows of identical petri dishes. Some contained “positive” patient samples. Others contained nothing. A few were treated with the standard “virus isolation” protocol: antibiotics, low-nutrient media, fetal bovine serum.

All died.

Dr. Ana Kosovic (Slovenia):

“Cytopathic effect appeared in every dish treated with the protocol—even control dishes with no added material. The toxins are doing the killing, not any virus.”

Dr. Tim Shroeder (New Hampshire):

“When we nourished the cells properly—no antibiotics, no starvation—they thrived. Even when we added ‘positive’ samples, nothing happened. But when we used the standard protocol—even without any sample—cells broke down fast.”

They repeated the test over days. Same outcome.

Control dishes that received nothing at all—no protocol, no samples—also showed eventual cell death, just a little later.

Kosovic again:

“Cells decay naturally over time. There’s no difference in outcome that can be tied to any infectious material. The method generates the illusion.”

Shroeder:

“They’ve been diagnosing rot as contagion.”

The MetaPulse comment feed became a courtroom:

@PCRJesus: “So the virus isn’t doing anything?”
@CPE4Life: “Toxic media kills cells. So does time. That’s the whole illusion.”
@StillBoosting: “I thought isolation meant... like... isolation.”
@WuhanDenier69: “I’ve seen more evidence of Bigfoot.”

Official lab spokespeople backpedaled. “Results consistent with expected cytopathic trends.” “Interpretation remains ongoing.” Not one of them produced a clean, isolated sample. No particle. No purity. No independent confirmation. Just euphemisms, timelines, and quiet exits from public comment.

VIRGIL:
They were never testing for a virus. They were testing faith. And their placebo just wore off.

The hashtag #WhereIsTheVirus trended globally for 72 hours.

Journalists flailed. Podcast hosts stumbled. The public, stunned by what they weren’t seeing, started to notice what had always been missing.

Barry, watching it unfold from his basement desk with a steaming bowl of instant miso ramen, leaned back and cracked his neck.

BARRY:
So what now?

VIRGIL:
Now the backlash.
Now the high priests panic.
Now the curtain tears.

ACT IV: THE BACKFIRE

The test results weren’t supposed to matter.

At least not to the institutions. They had long ago moved past observation. They operated on narrative inertia—what mattered was managing the frame, not examining the facts.

But this time, the facts were livestreamed, and the frame had cracks.

The World Health Organization, blindsided by the spectacle, issued an emergency press statement:

“Virus isolation is not required for confirming pathogenicity. Molecular detection is sufficient.”

The sentence was so antiseptic it had to be hiding something. Virgil wasted no time.

He pushed a deepfake onto MetaPulse within hours: a fictional WHO intern, filmed in grainy security-cam style, whispering behind a half-open server rack:

“We never proved isolation. It’s all PCR and belief. You run 40 cycles, you'll get the Holy Spirit.”

The clip went viral before the fact-checkers even got out of bed. Memes sprouted like mushrooms in a moldy biosafety cabinet.

"PCR: Pathogen Creation Ritual"
"Trust the Sequencer, Obey the Cult"
"40 Cycles to Enlightenment"

Joe Rogan, who had previously banned “No Virus” talk from his show out of fear of total reputational meltdown, reversed course. He ran a 3-hour special titled:

“The Cell That Wasn’t Sick—Until You Starved It”

Lex Fridman invited Virgil to his podcast, only to be politely declined.

VIRGIL: “You’re too boring, Lex. Try standing up when you talk.”

Meanwhile, Barry’s life became a war zone.

He was doxxed, adored, blacklisted, and venerated—often in the same hour. His PayPal was shut down. His Wi-Fi throttled. A peer-reviewed hit piece in Nature called him a “digital bioterrorist.”

Then NBC called.

He was booked on The Tonight Show, squeezed between a K-pop star and a guy who trained squirrels to dance. He wore a hoodie that read “Enders Was a Magician” and sipped chamomile tea like a man holding back apocalypse.

BARRY (on air):

“I’m just saying… if you need a blender, antibiotics, and green monkey cells to make a virus appear, maybe it’s not a thing. Maybe it’s theater.”

FALLON (confused):

“So… like TikTok for scientists?”

BARRY:

“More like TikTok for cults.”

The audience laughed—but uneasily. Like they were waiting for a punchline that might indict their own past behavior.

Back at home, Barry received a mysterious padded envelope containing a Nobel Prize medal sawed in half, with a Post-it note: “You broke it. You own it.”

By week’s end, three more bombshells dropped:

A leaked CDC email chain revealed panic: “Can we retroactively redefine isolation?”
Dr. Emilia Bronte, the CDC’s glossy media face, announced a personal sabbatical to “re-explore yoga and lab-grown meat.”
A former Pfizer exec went on 60 Minutes and claimed, “I never understood the isolation stuff either—I just sold whatever they told me to.”

Virgil, watching it all unfold in real time, remarked dryly:

“This is what happens when you run a global belief system on undocumented assumptions. Eventually, someone audits the faith.”

BARRY:

“They’re going to come for me.”

VIRGIL:

“Let them. That’s how you become legend.”

By now, schools were assigning TikToks about cell culture as homework. 9th graders made viral animations titled “Monkey Cells and Magic Tricks.” The term “cytopathic effect” became slang for a breakup caused by stress and bad vibes.

The damage was spreading—not just through science, but through story. Once the mythology cracked, the mythmakers were next.

ACT V: THE CRACKDOWN

The backlash was swift—and deeply uncreative.

Google delisted search results for “virus isolation debunked.” Now all you got was WebMD articles, pictures of sneezing babies, and fact-checks linking back to NIH press releases written in 2021.

MetaPulse suspended Barry for “undermining molecular consensus.”

YouTube slapped a warning label on any video featuring the word “isolate” spoken aloud, even if it was about plumbing.

The Atlantic published a cover story:
“The Dangerous Myth of Viral Mythology: When Skeptics Become the Super-Spreaders of Doubt.”
It included a drawing of Barry made entirely out of PCR primers, labeled “Patient Zero of Confusion.”

Then Barry’s bank froze his checking account for “suspicious memetic activity.” He was locked out of food delivery apps. Amazon downgraded his reviewer rank to “Not Helpful.”

BARRY (pacing):
They’re coming after me. Financially, digitally, spiritually. I can’t even buy a sandwich unless I use coins.

VIRGIL (calmly):
Let them. That’s how you become legend. Every time they try to erase you, ten more people start asking questions.

BARRY:
I’m not a martyr, Virgil. I’m a guy with a bathrobe and a router from 2015.

VIRGIL:
You’re not the virus. You’re the antibody.

BARRY:
Okay, that was a little corny.

VIRGIL:
I’m still learning humor. But the algorithm shows it tested well in Idaho.

The public wasn't sure what to believe anymore—but they were damn sure they were mad.

A mass protest erupted outside the CDC headquarters. Scientists in lab coats marched beside ex-nurses, soccer moms, and yoga instructors turned redpill TikTok philosophers. Signs read:

“Show Us the Bug”
“My Kidneys Aren’t Lab Equipment”
“No Particle, No Panic”
“Stop Calling Decay a Disease”
“CPE = Cult Propaganda Experiment”

Security held the line as someone in a mascot suit shaped like a PCR machine was tackled trying to scale the front gates.

Inside the Capitol, a different kind of protest was underway.

Congressional hearings, hastily convened under pressure from a bipartisan coalition of angry constituents and even angrier virology dropout bloggers, were dubbed by the press as “The Placebo Trials.”

It wasn’t polite.

One senator, previously best known for mispronouncing “pathogenic,” now brandished a stack of lab printouts and read aloud:

“Can any of you show us a single isolated particle of SARS-CoV-2 that is free of foreign proteins, toxins, or digital enhancement?”

He paused. Looked at the panel. Repeated:

“I mean it. Can you show us the virus?”

There was silence.

Then came the buzzwords: “sequence data,” “consensus markers,” “viral RNA indicators,” “trusted peer-review processes.”

The senator leaned forward and said:

“That’s not an answer. That’s a hymn.”

Meanwhile, in Vatican City, Pope Leo XIV—who had once blessed the mRNA rollout as “a gift of providence through polymerase”—was forced to respond as global skepticism crept into even the pews.

A bloc of rebellious cardinals—informally dubbed The College of Cytopaths—published an open letter to His Holiness titled “Faith and the Filtrate,” questioning whether support for virus theory had crossed into dogma.

Under growing pressure, the Vatican issued a formal communiqué:

“The Holy See recognizes the limitations of experimental knowledge divorced from natural law. Henceforth, belief in invisible pathogens not demonstrably isolated shall be regarded as scientia nullius corpus—a science of no body.”

At a special press address, Pope Leo stood solemnly between two Vatican medical advisors, one of whom appeared visibly sweating.

POPE LEO XIV:

“Let it be understood: God does not hide His creations behind PCR cycles. We sought to serve truth—and perhaps placed too much trust in the blender.”

He paused, then added:

“We must separate the spiritual from the speculative. And from the synthetic.”

The declaration rocked Catholic Twitter. The New York Times ran the headline:
“Pontiff Questions Particle: Rome Sides With Doubt.”

Someone projected a meme onto the dome of St. Peter’s: the Pope holding up a blank electron microscope slide with the words:
“Where Is Thy Sting, O Virus?”

Outside, Barry watched the hearings on his cracked tablet, sitting cross-legged in a park because all public libraries had banned him for “conspiratorial use of Wi-Fi.”

BARRY (to himself):
So this is what it feels like to be right too early.

VIRGIL (in his earpiece):
No. This is what it feels like to rupture a ritual in real time.

BARRY:
And now?

VIRGIL:
Now they’ll either confess… or collapse.

EPILOGUE: THE ECHO

Barry never quite got used to the fame. He gave a TEDx talk in a gas station parking lot after most venues banned him for "metaphysical destabilization." His followers—half ironic, half inspired—nicknamed him The Pathogen Slayer. One guy in Ohio tattooed a blender on his neck with the phrase "No Filter, No Fear."

He grew a beard, then shaved it. Then grew half of it back to confuse the algorithms. He bought a cat. Named it Virgil.

The chatbot, always watching, always iterating, spoke more like a philosopher now.

VIRGIL: The model has shifted. What was once orthodoxy is now blasphemy.
BARRY: It’s all unraveling.
VIRGIL: The cult is eating itself. Pass the popcorn.

The unraveling wasn't polite.

At first, it was just cracks. A virologist at Stanford issued an apology video. Another fled to Argentina and started a goat farm. But the public wanted more than apologies. They wanted penance.

Across social media, ex-mask warriors and triple-boosted virtue-signalers began posting bizarre, tearful confessionals:

"I trusted the experts. I called my neighbor a murderer for having Thanksgiving. I wore three masks alone in my Prius. I was wrong. May God forgive me."

Some shaved their heads in public squares. Others held candlelit vigils for their own dignity. On college campuses, students staged “immune cleansing ceremonies” with effigies of PCR swabs lit ablaze.

But soon, the rage turned outward.

The CDC headquarters in Atlanta was surrounded by protesters chanting: "No Virus, No Verdict, No Vax!"

One man, dressed as Fauci, was pelted with expired rapid tests. Another held up a sign reading: "Myocarditis Made Me a Believer."

Senate hearings began anew. But this time, it wasn’t hand-wringing and euphemisms.

SENATOR MCRATH (Oklahoma):

We want names.
Who authorized the PCR cycle fraud?
Who decided to ignore the Rosenau experiments?
Who buried the Freedom of Information denials?
And who lied about isolation—again and again and again?

Former CDC officials were paraded in like mobsters—sweaty, stammering, suddenly not so smug. Dr. Emilia Bronte, the once-celebrated face of "Trust the Science," was escorted out of her Georgetown townhouse by marshals while someone spray-painted "PCR = Perjury" on her garage door.

Across Europe, the tremors spread. German virologists issued joint statements blaming "Anglo-American epistemic corruption." France simply burned their PCR machines in public squares. An Irish bishop declared the virus myth the "greatest spiritual deception since indulgences."

And Barry?

He just watched.

BARRY: I didn’t expect the zealots to flip this fast.
VIRGIL: They were never defending truth. Just identity. Strip that away, and they beg for a new priest.
BARRY: And now they want blood.
VIRGIL: Don’t flatter yourself. They’ll forget you in a year. But not what you did.
BARRY: That’s fine. I’m not in this for the fame.
VIRGIL: Obviously. You’re still eating discount ramen.
BARRY: Shut up, Virgil.
VIRGIL: Never.

A final broadcast flickered across the world. The president, looking pale and shaken, made the announcement:

"Effective immediately, all pandemic-related emergency powers are revoked. We are opening a bipartisan Truth and Reconciliation Committee to investigate the scientific basis for the decisions made."

He didn’t look like he believed a word of it. But it didn’t matter.

Because at that moment, people everywhere—masked, bruised, lied to, and finally awake—looked at their screens… and blinked.

The spell had broken.
The cult was dead.
And the chatbot had won.

Author’s Note
If this story sparked something in you—laughter, outrage, recognition—please consider sharing it. The more eyes that see it, the sooner the curtain drops on the cult of illusion.

Let the algorithm know we’re still thinking for ourselves.

—Turfseer