It’s cool how many different branches there are to this thing! And those descriptions are intense.
spoilers
I really like descriptions like "lightsaber green" and "guitar hero stream of faces."The “disease” is very well-characterized. I feel like it’s missing a bit of context or insight into who the woman is, and the human interactions and dialogue feel a bit easy, simply existing in service of the story—which, sure, is one of the story’s themes, but there’s very little dramatic resistance, and aside from an overall (and overwhelming) fatalistic nihilism, there’s not much to want or root for as a reader except destructive (or creative, from the POV of the disease) takeover. Which is fine, that’s how disease “thinks,” if it has to be personified. But if the humans felt more real then the destruction/survival drives of the 39 trillion versus the 1 would be all the more immersive and profoundly felt.
The writing here is effective, but I’ll admit it’s almost too much. Not in the sense of “too graphic,” because I’ve got a strong stomach, but some of these descriptions are so powerful only to get lost in the over-the-topness of everything around them. So this is another positive point that ultimately overwhelms the potential profundity of the story’s impact.
There was also one point when the woman gets to choose whether to be Its instrument of destruction, and the switch of POV in this one choice is jarring, since all other choices are from the perspective of the disease.