Ripples Short Story Competition 2024

Runner-Up: A Whale of a Tale Award

The Words on the Waves Writers Festival's inaugural Ripples Short Story Competition received around 100 entries from students across the Central Coast. Wyong Christian Community School Year 7 student Mathias W's story placed as runner-up in this year's Secondary Competition. We have shared his creative story below. Well done Mathias!

The Ripple Effect: One action can have big consequences, Mathias W, Year 7, Wyong Christian Community School

One action can have big consequences.

One day, imagine you are going for a light stroll. This shouldn’t be too hard, as long as you have a brain. There are a group of children playing around about thirty paces ahead of you. This mental image will be the first of many pictures you will imagine as we take a dive into a magical journey inside of yourself. You are about to see the ripple effect of your internal systems when you come down with something like Rabies, the Flu, or even the odd case of a common cold. In this case, you are about to come down with a bacterial infection after the simplest little cut on your hand allows you to be exposed. You are now going to see first-hand the ripple effect that your immune system experiences - all without you even knowing.

So, back to the stroll you were walking on. You are walking past the group of boys and girls playing a ‘casual’ game of soccer. One boy kicks the ball into a spiky Yucca plant. Being the nice person that you are (and that the ball is about two metres away from you) you move to retrieve the ball and cut your finger on the way out on the spiky plant. How annoying. You hand the ball back to the children and finish your walk. Little do you know, that little bit of pain you feel in your finger represents a sacrifice you could never imagine.

If only you knew what your immune system is about to go through.

This small cut has literally ripped their world ripped open, sending poor, helpless cells scattering. The bacteria on the plant, and now on the surface of your skin, are so pleased that this big, seemingly defenceless mountain of flesh came by to pick the ball up. The Bacteria has just found this amazing wormhole into a nice, warm, comfy VIP Bacteria lounge. What a load of luck!

However, they couldn’t have been more wrong.

All the dying or dead civilian cells scream for help, using special chemical signals known as cytokines. The main defenders (probably because they are the only ones at the moment) run (‘run’ is a figurative term – cells can’t run as they don’t have legs) up to the invading bacteria. They begin to throw themselves at the bacteria and eat them alive (if you would call a bacterium ‘alive’). This crazy cell that is decimating the bacteria is called a macrophage.

Macrophages are pretty scary guys to be up against.

As the battle rages, the Macrophages call for inflammation, which happens when a blood vessel opens like a dam, flooding the battlefield with blood and reinforcements. These reinforcements are so deadly that after about three days, they kill themselves to prevent them causing your body damage. These crazy fighters are known as Neutrophils. Neutrophils have a way of fighting, somewhat elegantly running into the enemies to drench them in acid then eat them alive.

But the scariest thing they can do is this:

If a Neutrophil ‘feels’ (cells can’t think – they are just guided by biochemistry) as though the bacteria are spreading too fast, they can make this creepy thing called a NET (Neutrophil extracellular trap), sacrificing themselves in the process. First, the nucleus dissolves, meaning that the DNA or, more correctly, your DNA, can move about the cell. The cell fills up with DNA, so the proteins and enzymes in the cell latch on to it. Then the cell membrane bursts, spilling the harmful DNA out, creating a trap for bacteria that damages and kills them. Although, even after literally eliminating their own insides (the process of dissolving their DNA kills them – kind of in the same way that if your brain dissolves you would die), these cells can still fight, dying for you, so you can live.

Now we have an invisible army.

Time for another mental picture: You are swimming in a pool when suddenly, thousands of fish come and swarm around you, latching on to your flesh and leaving you without the slightest hope of getting rid of them. As you can imagine, this would not be a pleasant experience and you would not be happy with it.

This is what a bunch of mindless proteins known as the compliment system does to bacteria.

They swarm the bacteria, covering it ‘head’ to ‘toe’ (bacterium don’t have either). Then they rip tiny holes in it, making the insides of the bacteria go outside the bacteria.

Back to our wonderful mental picture. Imagine, this is when the fish turn to piranhas and begin to eat you - not quite what the compliment system does, but close enough.

With the combined forces of the Compliment, Neutrophil and Macrophage attacks, the bacteria are killed, inflammation is calmed, and your finger begins to heal.

But after that dreaded Yucca plant cut your finger, and there was an alien invasion of bacteria, you casually wipe the blood off your finger and hand the ball back. Meanwhile, your immune system was fighting for their, or more correctly, YOUR life.

And you have no idea that it happened.