Common Cold

The virus is the dead-yet-living, existing solely to and showing "life" only as it does replicate itself. The virus lies in a twilight zone between the animate and the inanimate; strings of RNA whose sole goal (an anthropomorphic term; virii just are) is to see itself repeated over and over, generated from "higher cells." Virii are amazingly successful at doing the only thing they do, which is generate exact duplicates of themselves.

The internal structure of DNA is represented by letters, standing in for the four amino acids that make up our genes. The parallels to writing (scribes, press, hypertext) are serendipitous.