If cells were conscious, viruses would be terrifying to them. Imagine spiders that don’t crawl on walls, but passively float around the air, hoping to get into your mouth when you are not careful for a moment, crawling into your brain and forcing your insides to produce hundreds of new baby spiders until all your body is filled with them. And then your skin would burst open and all these new spiders would try to get your family and friends. This is literally what viruses do to cells.