How it All Began
They call it RTP or Reverberating Tinnitus Psychosis. They being the Government. The rest of the world calls it Ringers, or at least they did until the day communication ended.
The first few cases the doctors thought were some sort of acoustic tinnitus, severe ringing in the ears followed by headaches and depression. But the onset of the symptoms seemed to come too quickly, and the depression soon turned to aggression and finally a psychotic state where they could no longer be communicated with. It is believed that by that point they could no longer hear, or at least not hear anything but the intense ringing. They became violent, attacking others, and eventually they went into some type of sensory overload. Once blood started coming out of their ears death seemed to come quickly.
For years everyone feared the day that one Government would come up with some horrific biological weapon. Some of the best scary movies were made from this very theory… genetic mutants, zombies, viruses that regenerated dead flesh or gave humans super human strength. Most of us, at least those of us with any sense of logic or common sense, knew that the chances of the zombie apocalypse were a bit on the slim side. Sure, it made for great entertainment, but there was not going to be some plague wiping out the world.
And then came RTP. I remember the first time I heard about it, I was sitting in my classroom, the students were off on lunch, and I trying to finish typing up my lesson plans before I left for an extended weekend to attend a training seminar in Boston.. An e-mail came in from the Superintendent Beatrice Anderson with a big red exclamation point which is usually reserved for there being a bear on the school grounds or some sort of early dismissal, she does not use the big red exclamation point very often and so we knew when it was marked like that it was definitely something to open ASAP.
As I started reading it I was a little confused to be honest. It was a news story out of New Hampshire where seven cases of an undiagnosed illness had popped up in a rural farming community. At that time it was described as some sort of hysteria, but because it affected more than one individual they knew that it potential of being an epidemic, and so the CDC was involved. The story gave some symptoms including ringing in the ears, headaches, dizziness, disorientation, nausea, and in some cases, extreme violent behavior. Not exactly the typical e-mail and at the time I wasn't really sure why it served any importance to us hundreds of miles away in Massachusetts, but later that night I got my answer.
At about 7:30 I received an e-mail from Beatrice, she often sent e-mails out to staff before the very same message was sent out to all parents in the district, and before the audio messages came to our phones. School was being cancelled, as was the training session in Boston, and the field trip at the end of the week to Sturbridge Village for the elementary school. Two students in the district, two of nearly 3,000 students, had developed symptoms as described in the news story, and although the CDC was yet to be contacted, the Superintendent felt it best to take precautions until those students were cleared. Of course within an hour there was a mixture of status messages and Tweets varying from excitement for a few days off, to the Superintendent overreacting because a couple kids came down with ear infections. The eleven o'clock news however, shed a little more light onto the subject.
By eleven there were nearly ninety cases and they were not just located in the upper north east of the United States, but in other areas of the country, Canada, Russia, China, Great Britain, and Asia. Of the ninety cases, over half had already died. In fact, since diagnosis it seemed that the illness only seemed to speed up. By the next morning the number of people affected had grown significantly into the thousands. The one thing that remained consistent with all of the cases was that it started with ringing in the ears and ended in death within hours, and for some, not even that long.
What was clear is that the disease was spreading, and it was spreading to everyone regardless of sex, age, and race. It was affecting people in areas from big cities to rural towns. What was unclear is what was causing it and how it was spreading. Spreading very quickly.
