Bill & the SAV-2-S Variant

Sothear William “Bill” Meas was the son of a couple who immigrated to the US in the late 70s to escape the “Killing Fields” of Cambodia. His parents had both lost their entire families, but created a new life together after being granted first refugee status in the US and then full citizenship in the mid-80s. He was born in a Dallas hospital in June, 1983. Non-Asians were often startled when the 6’1” Asian man spoke with the pronounced North Texas accent acquired from growing up in the suburbs of DFW.

Bill’s parents had truly lived the American Dream. His parents had gone to work for a high-powered financial lawyer in Dallas who had taken a liking to them. He had taught them how to play the market. Eventually, they surpassed their teacher. They died in a plane crash the year before SAV-2 hit. As his parents’ only child, Bill became a billionaire overnight.

Bill had been divorced from his wife, Rebecca Juarez, for 6 years when the SAV-2 virus struck. He found it highly amusing when he heard that her second husband, the man with whom she had cheated on Bill for two years, turned out to be one of the 3/4 of the male population that was turned gay by the virus. A mutual friend who was also one of the men turned gay by SAV-2 said that, like every other man affected by the virus, her new husband got queasy at the thought of sex with a woman. Rebecca was now divorced for the second time, and Bill, though he knew that he was never considered handsome, had no problem getting dates.

He was also happy that he had discovered her infidelity before his parents had died. They had adored Rebecca.

Bill lived in the small town of Crawford, Texas, just west of Waco. With Dallas-Fort Worth being less than a two-hour drive from him, he knew that it was only a matter of time before this new variant hit home.

Anyone looking at his house would think that he was upper-middle class, but not wealthy. He drove a hybrid Toyota pick-up, and he liked to cruise around on his restored classic Harley-Davidson with attached sidecar.

Bill was reading the news on the Reuters app installed on his phone. The latest variant of SAV-2 was turning women into voracious nymphomaniacs who desired nothing more than becoming sex slaves to the first man to claim them by having vaginal sex. If he had been reading Fox or any of the many other “news” sites that liked to scare the public, he would have assumed that it was a hoax, but he still hopped onto the Associated Press’ website. The AP had even more articles about the new SAV-2-S variant.

Reports from around the world said that if a woman contracted the new variant and she did not bond with a man through vaginal sex within two or three weeks, she would become something akin to an animal controlled by lust. Women in such a state could not speak. They acted like animals with the intelligence of the average dog. The process appeared to be torture because women understood what was happening as they lost their minds. Several women have killed themselves to avoid becoming what many were now calling “fuck dolls.”

The major cell phone providers quickly set up an alert similar to the Amber Alert to notify their customers when a case of SAV-2-S was recorded in their community.

Bill’s best friend since childhood, Mark Hernandez, was still close with his ex-wife, Tina. They had moved to Waco from Dallas so that Tina could teach chemistry at Baylor University. Bill and Tina had always gotten along, and she had taken Bill’s side when Rebecca had cheated on him.

Everyone acknowledged that he had always had a tiny crush on Tina, but everyone also knew that it would never occur to him to try anything with her while she & Mark were married. After being hit with SAV-2, Mark had given Bill his blessing to ask his ex-wife out if that was what Bill wanted, but he had always been shy.

Bill was not surprised when Tina called him on a cool October afternoon and asked if he could come over and help her move some furniture. She only lived fifteen minutes away, so he slipped on his favorite Doctor Who t-shirt over his jeans and headed out the door.

He stopped to glance in a mirror to make sure that his thick black hair looked okay. Today was one of those days when he was pleasantly reminded of how the SAV-2 virus had de-aged him from a pudgy forty-year-old man to a fit man who looked to be about twenty-five years old. His parents always told him that he would blend into just about any crowd in Cambodia if it were not for the fact that he was 6’1”. His large nose had always made him feel unattractive, but he did take some enjoyment from the fact that his brown eyes were so dark that it was usually hard to spot where his pupils began. His skin showed that his DNA test was right: at least one of his recent ancestors had been from India.

Maybe today would be the day that he finally asked Tina out on a date.