Beep. Beep. Beep. Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

"Shut it off," Teral said, turning away. It'd been obvious from the start
that there was no hope, but they'd to try. Why in Gaia's name had the human
attacked? None of the other squirrels who'd been there could offer any 
explanation. Sure, he had to've been frightened, but could that somehow make
him aggressive?

"I could've told you it wouldn't work," said a squirrel from behind a 
curtain. Teral walked over, and saw a silver squirrel recovering from a nasty
laser burn, almost healed.

"Why didn't it, then?" Teral asked, "The human should've been too off balance
to attack irrationally, and we told him he wouldn't be harmed."

"Remember Aaron?" Teral nodded. "He attacked, too. Humans do that. Sometimes.
I never understood why before."

"Before what?"

"Before I changed," the squirrel said, glancing down at himself. Teral almost
jumped and ran. He recognized this squirrel -- it was the scout who'd been
shot when Kralk arrived. But what had happened to him? He'd been a red
squirrel before...

"Medic -- what happened here?" Teral asked. The medsquirrel came over.

"A very strange case. The virus seems to be reverting to the Alpha state.
Seemed to be, that is -- it's apparently finished. Never saw anything like 
it before. We can't do anything about it for the same reason we can't update 
the Alphas -- I mean, the silvers. The Alpha version eats the Beta for 
lunch. [flick] We tried re-introducing it, but within two minutes there was
no trace."

"What could have caused it?"

"Kralk caused it," the squirrel replied, "It happened right after I found 
him. He did _something_ to me, I don't know what. But that was when it
started."

"You say he did it because he was angry?"

"He seemed to be surprised that I didn't drop over dead," the squirrel 
snapped. "Then those idiots intercepted me in the corridor..."

"I don't suppose you could identify them...  I've been meaning to track down
that group --"

"Silvers all look alike," the squirrel said, smirking.

"I wonder," Teral said, "Maybe if we repeated the whole conversion process.."

"What conversion process?" the medic asked.

"Never mind," Teral said. "I really need to check some things."

-------------------------------------------
Teral Acorn     Warren leader, UCirc Warren
                President, SAADB