Microhockey
Out of boredom, two scientists from the New Contagious Diseases Research Centre devised themselves a new game. One day, as a result of the suspension of a research project dealing with a dynamically mutating vaccine following the pattern of the eyesocket flu bacillus, they had absolutely nothing to do until the end of the day, because the boss didn’t order them to wash test-tubes.
They decided to play a game of hockey under the microscope. For a puck they used one of the millions of experimental bacillus, and one-arm pincettes, which as it happened also resembled hockey sticks, served as sticks.
The bacillus was not happy with it at all. It wanted to rest after an exhausting task involving vaccine discouragement, and these whitecoats here planned to put it to work yet again. And this time the work was much more labor-intensive and even more exhausting than before, but the condition and health of the tired bacillus not as good as in the times of youth, about two hours ago.
The scientists got excited. On a microscope slide they etched a hockey rink with laser, agreed on the rules, connected the microscope’s camera to the big screen display and played until the morning. They had to change pucks several times, but that was fine, they had millions of them in stock.
The next day they didn’t have anything to do either and they continued to play. They even invited other colleagues and the popularity of the game was so huge they could afford to play it in a championship system. Soon, the games were joined by the guys from the car-repair garage next door. They were tough opponents and even tougher fans - they took from the lab and carried away with them several flasks and some equipment, as it turned out - to set up their own game station in pit number 5.
That was when Player Number One and Player Number Two saw in the game an additional source of modest income. They began to sell microscopes, and secretly, as a freebie, were including with each purchase a set of several million pucks.
Thanks to the internet, where you could watch the footage of the first qualifying matches of the World Microhockey Federation, the game was gaining enormous following in an impressively short time. The Federation authorities decided on several, crucial for the game’s rapid increase in popularity, decisions. The most important of which was the change in the shape of the puck from elongated to spherical, which allowed for a greater degree of control. After a long search, a new puck was proposed by the researchers from the university in Ghab-Akbad. It was an ideally spherical and unusually bouncy virus H4S19. Because this deadly virus dispersed through the easy-droplet-airborne method, special safety measures to prevent a massive epidemic had to be instituted, as well. The players, main and line referees, and the audience members in the first five rows had to wear surgical masks during the game, and each unsuitable or already used puck would be disposed in special bio-hazard waste containers commissioned by the Federation for specifically this purpose, and designed and produced by the Beoning company.
The choice of a new puck lead to an uncontrolled development of a “black league” - illegal games, where neither the players, nor the referees or the audience wore protective masks, and where the probability of infection in poorly-ventilated rooms varied between 0.75 and 0.79 to one.
On the internet, this “black hockey” was quickly named as the most extreme sport in history, and its popularity began to exceed that of standard “white hockey”.
The Federation reacted fast. For the upcoming world championships in microhockey, a super-vaccine was to be developed, which would be administered to all participants and audience members. Twenty three leading institutes all over the world, including the New Contagious Diseases Research Centre were busy working on the vaccine’s development. But FYI, the two famous scientists - creators of microhockey were not longer engaged in scientific research - they were simply too wealthy for that.
Voices of discontent were heard that the vaccine would lead to a dramatic fall in the popularity of the game. Hence the Federation members decided that the decision about the inoculation would belong to each participant individually, and each participant individually would be responsible for all resulting complications.
A great majority of people did take the shots, and the championships began in a truly great style - Jose Pelles from Brazil triumphed over Canadian Don Bronx. The games were held in massive hockey arenas, and fans sitting in the audience watched them on huge megatron screens, which single parts measuring 20 by 12 meters, made by the Beoning-Bell company were transported to the locations using stratospheric technology.
Until the second half, everything was going according to plan. During the game between Jose Pelles and Leonard Moktunowski a little incident took place involving Larry Dembovsky, a bio-hazard waste technician. Larry, while tossing a used puck into the container, yelled “Oh shit!” and fell down, lymphatic fluid began to flow out of his mouth, decationized blood gushed out of his ears, his eyeballs underwent rapid defragmentation, and thigh muscles began to reduce their volume at a visible to the naked eye speed.
“He wasn’t vaccinated,” an ER medic summed up, sneezed forcefully, and went back under the megatron to watch the second period, where in the midst of an excited crowd, he sneezed yet again and realized that something dripped accidentally from his mouth, not in the least his saliva.
An ethereal crowd of beautifully slight and delicate, measuring in nanometers, droplets was floating in the air. The droplets diffracted through them all twentyseven hues of the rainbow, and this gorgeous spectacle would have inspired many a painter or a photoshop editor.
One of the more energetic droplets jumped through the right side of the nasal cavity and let the wind carry it all the way until the first row of the audience. At the very moment when Ms. Halinne Swider yelled out “yyyyyyeeeees!” the droplet lost its twentyseven hued tint and dived into the dark organic abyss of her mouth.
After nine minutes a voice was heard inside a capillary vessel:
“Excuse me, do we know each other?” The voice belonged to a red blood cell rather too busy with the taxes it owed the connective tissue.
“My predecessors were here. About seven months ago,” the microbe said timidly, and began, this time boldly to hug the blood cell and pound on it, with what must have been its head.
“Ah yes, I remember. But nothing had happened. Hahaha! Oh, wait, what are you doing? What they hell are you doing here? Let me go!”
“You know, a lot had changed since then. We were playing all sorts of sports, and you were not, so shut up and stop twitching,” the microbe’s tone of voice changed, it was lower and more resounding.
And no surprise, the bugger was already inside.