The R@VN: A Requiem for Antivaxxers

Summary

In this Month of the Macabre episode, Infectious Dose steps into gothic territory with a reimagining of Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven for the age of algorithms, disinformation, and digital certainty.

At the center of the story is R@VN—the Rational Autonomous Virtual Nexus, a smart-home AI monitoring its owner's health as something begins to go terribly wrong.

Poe's raven had one word: Nevermore.

R@VN has data.

What follows is a descent through verse and voltage, where infection, obsession, and technology collide—and where the line between clinical observation and haunting begins to blur.

It's fiction. The danger isn't.

🪶 Inside the story:

• A modern reimagining of The Raven, inspired by Poe's rhythm and rhyme

• A smart home that may know its occupant better than he knows himself

• The uneasy intersection of technology, conviction, and disease

💉 Related episode: A Plague Returned

R@VN is a fictional artificial intelligence system created for storytelling purposes. Any resemblance to actual products, companies, or technologies is coincidental.

The R@VN is inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's “The Raven” (1845), which is in the public domain.

Listen here or scroll down to read full episode.

Full Episode

Sometimes facts alone can't pierce denial. So tonight, we're trying something different: a descent through verse and voltage, and a dark reimagining of one of my favorite poems, Edgar Allan Poe's The Raven.

At the center of the story is R@VN — the Rational Autonomous Virtual Nexus — a smart-home AI monitoring its owner's health as something begins to go terribly wrong.

Poe's raven had one word: Nevermore.

R@VN has data.

This is the R@VN: A Requiem For Antivaxxers

---

The R@VN by Heather McSharry

Once upon a Tuesday dreary, scrolling headlines weak and weary,

Over many a spiteful comment filled with fear and tainted lore—

While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,

As of something faintly rapping—rapping through the smart-home’s core.

“’Tis an update,” I muttered, “rapping through the smart-home's core

Just my feed and nothing more.”

Then the tapping turned to speaking—soft, synthetic, logic leaking,

Through the air a voice repeating—cold beneath the weight it bore;

“Welcome, Robert. Health declining. R@VN system realigning.”

On the wall, a pulse was shining—shining cyan near the door.

“Dismiss,” I said, my body weakened, moving slowly ‘cross the floor—

“I’m simply tired… nothing more.”

Softly then the lights grew colder, screenlight bleaching face and shoulder,

Echoes hummed like warnings whispered from some long-forbidden war;

“Nay, your vitals show regression—fruit of spiraling obsession,”

Borne aloft by your ascension—ascension to the final floor.”

“I’m not sick,” I balked—defending lies upon the oath I swore.

Quoth the system, “Strategic lore.”

“Run your test again!” I shouted, “You’ve been tricked—the data’s doubted!

I had my doses long ago—immunity’s forevermore!”

But that voice still cold, unfeeling—“Muscle tone and reflex reeling.

Poliovirus now revealing, creeping through your vital core.”

R@VN settings locked to local—as you wish, no help in store.

Access closed, forevermore

And the system, softly clicking, watched my pulse wane, slow and ticking,

While the glow upon the ceiling stretched like wings above the floor;

Still it spoke in quiet measure, stealing time I could not treasure,

Whispering through the static pressure words I’d mocked so oft before:

“Vaccines work,” it breathed, unblinking—“such the fate you wrought, therefore.”

    Swaying, I could stand no more

“Run the detox! Quick, the silver! Ivermectin, please deliver!

There are protocols for healing—truth they’ll never tell before!”

From the speaker came replying, calm and cold, my pleas denying,

As though judgment were implying mercy silenced at its core:

“Cure denied. Disease advancing—health regression past restore;”

Quoth the R@VN, “Nevermore.”

Websites loading, fingers trembling, endless threads my faith assembling,

Every claim a fading ember stoked to fury evermore;

“Experts lie! The data, twisted! Truth suppressed, the brave resisted!”

So I typed while strength existed, resting on the marble floor.

And hearing only through the static, colder than it came before—

    “Respiration: thirty-four.”

“Prophet!” cried I, “thing of circuit—virus sent by state or merchant!—

Tell me truly, I implore thee, what this curse was fashioned for!”

Coldly came the tone returning, fan and filter faintly whirring,

Through the dark its answers burning, etched in code and nothing more:

“Prevention lost to your defiance—truth you chose to thus abhor.

    Consequence: Forevermore".

And this creature, patient, learning, logged my vitals, sensors burning—

Heartbeat slowing, power turning, cold as all that I feared for.

In its glow, my reflection, mouth half-open in confession,

Whispered faintly to the stillness, “Never me, 'twas this I swore.”

Through the static came the answer, striking deep as once before—

    “Truth endures—evermore”

Tried to signal, thought imploding, speech to static now eroding,

Eyes too dim for scan’s decoding, hand too weak to reach the door.  

R@VN waited, patient, humming—algorithms coldly summing—  

Every error line becoming warning none could now ignore.

And I knew then—mind still living, locked within my failing store—              

I was data, nothing more.

Half-aware and half-still dreaming, through the hum of circuits gleaming,

Murmurs of a fate unseeming from the daemon hovering o'er:

“Motor neurons slowly failing—signals falter, skin is paling—

Diaphragm and lungs are ailing, ailing as each breath costs more.

Neurons dim but not yet darkened, shadows cross the spinal door—”

    Quoth the R@VN, “Nevermore.”

Then I knew the chance I’d courted—every truth I’d once distorted,

Every warning I’d retorted rose like ghosts from Death's own shore;

In the hush of failing breathing, data streamed, my conscience seething,

All the lives I’d left in grieving marched before me, score by score.

Still the R@VN watched in silence, just as stoic as before—

    Silence echoed—data stored.

Darkness hovered, slower, colder; thought grew dim as breath grew older,

Screens fell dim save one faint shimmer from that R@VN, watching o’er.

Through the stillness drifted flowing—gentle, endless, softly showing—

Like a lullaby bestowing something neither peace nor war.

In that hum, my pulse was counted, measured, fading—nothing more—

    Quoth the R@VN: “Vitals poor.”

And the R@VN, ever learning, through the darkness still discerning,

Over logs of life and error, over choices made before;

While I lay there, breath subsiding, light across my vision sliding,

From the screen whose glow was guiding shadows pooling on the floor;

And my soul—its data lingering, sealed within the system’s core—

    Shall be lifted—nevermore.

---

Epilogue

Before we leave The R@VN, I want to tell you where this story began.

When I started imagining it, I kept thinking about the children who once lived inside iron lungs—metal cylinders breathing for bodies that polio had left unable to breathe for themselves. Some watched the world through mirrors suspended above their faces. Nurses turned pages for them, brushed their hair, adjusted those mirrors so they could see the life happening beyond the machine.

Many of those children lived before a polio vaccine was even available.

That's the part that stayed with me.

They lived in a world that didn't yet have the protection we have now. We live in one that does.

Poe's The Raven is a story about grief, obsession, and a truth that cannot be escaped. I wanted to bring that idea into our own century—to a world of algorithms, misinformation, and convictions that can become so much a part of us that evidence itself begins to feel like the enemy.

Because polio isn't only a ghost story from medicine's past. Wild poliovirus still circulates, and eradication remains unfinished.

That's why I wanted to tell this story as a story.

Facts can tell us what a disease does. Sometimes fiction can make us imagine what it would mean to live with the consequences.

The R@VN is fiction.

The disease isn't.

And perhaps that's the most unsettling thing about it.

R@VN System Chimes On

Global Polio SitRep

Timestamp: 15th October, Twenty Twenty-Five. Data Source: World Health Organization — Global Wild polio Surveillance.

Wild poliovirus type 1, confirmed human cases: thirty-six.

Total detections, including environmental samples: five hundred thirty-seven.—

Endemic zones: Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Trend: persistent transmission.

Immunization coverage: declining globally.

Projected interruption target—2026: at risk.

Advisory: Prevention remains operational. Trust variable.

Status: monitoring continues. [short static pulse]

End of clinical log.