A/N: I'm really sorry about the long delay; life just kind of bitch-slapped me and I've been...ahem...busy for the past few months. Hopefully I'll get back to updating regularly, but we'll see. As I am wont to say: qué será, será...
"The End of the World"
The Bebop floats serenely out in space…
There are unconfirmed reports of…
No movement, no lights, no life…
Several terrorist organizations have claimed responsibility for the…
A dead ship, a ghost ship.
Several religious groups are calling it the Apocalypse, a cataclysm of…
Well, almost.
Faye Valentine is sitting on the couch in the middle of the Bebop, the sun in a universe of cold, impersonal steel. She has her knees drawn up to her chest, and her arms wrapped around her knees and her chin tucked behind them, too. Faye Valentine is trying to disappear within coils of flesh, trying to become stone.
The telescreen is on, illuminating the cabin with the ghost of light. Faye Valentine watches it and does not speak.
The very old and the young suffer the most…
We here at KWSN News have with us Dr. Robert Davies, an expert in the field of…
Two days ago someone released something on Venus and the next day exposure occurred on Mars. The virus is something like Ebola Zaire, something that is unheard of, with a mortality rate that is unheard of, and its victims were unheard of, until now. People are dying, dropping in the streets; stiffening up and locking with their mouths open, no screams no sound, and blood comes from everywhere, the pores and the mouth and the nose and they just empty themselves of blood and fluid and viscera in a sudden and violent explosion.
The government is advising people not to panic, to remain in their homes…
People on Mars and Venus are dissolving, slipping out of their routines and homes and clothes and lives. People are dying out. Faye Valentine is sitting and watching the telescreen, and with every piece of footage she knows that, in all probability, everyone in that piece of film is dead.
This virus is a slate-wiper; it causes death within hours…
This is Jane Addams, reporting from Venus. I cannot voice to you the horror, the absolute efficiency of this pathogen. We were exposed over three hours ago; we came too close to one of the Infected. I…I don't know how much longer I have. The cameraman is dead, the captain, dead. This is probably my last transmission. To my husband and my son, I just want to say that I love-
Spike Spiegel has hit the mute button. A cigarette dangles loosely in his mouth, held in the little u-loop he makes with his lower lip. Faye does not turn or flinch or indeed, acknowledge him at all.
"How many?" he asks.
"Dunno," she replies in a voice that sounds three-days dead, "estimates go from 500,000 to 6 million or more. I don't…I don't-"
She stops here and brings a hand up to touch her trembling lips, to still her quaking. All the blood has drained from her face and she doesn't know where it has gone.
Spike sits down on the couch next to her; she rocks a bit as the cushions shift in response to his added weight. Slowly he puts an arm out and gathers her to him. She does not acknowledge the action; she has disappeared into the coils of flesh, she has turned into stone. But her cheek brushes the collar of his yellow shirt and she sags into him, boneless. She is limp as cooked noodles, no longer resisting but giving in…
He presses the mute button again, and the room is flooded with sound, with screams. And so Spike Speigel and Faye Valentine go back to watching the End of the World.
