So, Here is the next installment of The MOTH, created by yours truly, gaki Lanenkar. Please, read, review, shudder and ENJOY!!! (all you college students out there, you….And be careful at Frat Parties! Never go upstairs!)
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The world was a white room with blurry moving faces without names and a myriad of voices echoing strangely, as if from down a long tunnel or a vortex of air from the bottom of a pond. "She wasn't damaged by the tranquilizer shot." "See if you can reverse her genetic mutation.." "If we can get this cortical implant in, we can control her behavior if the gene therapy fails at any point…"
The words floated through the syrup of reality, randomly hitting her tympanic membranes. "A little to the left. There. Can you feel that?" "…Very good." "She is progressing nicely. Any signs of reversion?" "A shame that you had to turn her into a drone. She's such a nice looking child." "I can't BELIEVE Trin would befriend such a freak like her." Vlad's voice "We had to shoot her. She went crazy."
How did going crazy constitute running out of a room in denial when two really weird people told you the world had ended, and you were some sort of genetic throwback likened to a cavewoman of the stone age? Made her into a drone? What the heck? What was really happening? What HAD happened to her?
Her mind spiraled back to the beginning of the spinning galaxy- that bright crush of exploding creation that had all the answers to her past: the beginning of memory, the beginning of time, the rebirth of her world. There could be found forgetfulness, protection from the rape of her genetic codes, and the savage misappropriation of her conscious will through electro-cortical stimulation.
There was pain. There was the destruction of the human soul and mind for the irreverent brutality that had taken her happy-go-lucky 21st century college life and warped it into the twisted mass of flesh that lay now upon the stark white lab table to be stabbed and pried apart with knives and then slapped back together with banal disregard to her humanity. There, there were answers to her nightmares.
No, there was no humanity. There were only mutants, and those who were Not.
___________________________________
It was odd; there were only fuzzy fragments of her childhood, drowned instead by the persistently overwhelming imperative strength of the memory of the college fraternity party. She had been drunk—VERY drunk. She had gone upstairs…and then the world went dark. Had she been drugged? What? Snatches of memory flickered in the matrix of limitless stars.
Something had happened at that party. Everyone had died…but she hadn't. Why was that?
The drugs! The drugs they had given her had a strange side effect when the terrorists came with their bio-weapons; she was already in a hospital, and the isolation ward where she had been put mistakenly was untouched. Something…about a chart…they thought she had some sort of new contagion because there were no drugs in her blood, but she'd been bleeding from every pore…why weren't there any drugs?
Dream reality twisted as she rode the trail of another comet fragment of memory. A…hospital? Masked faces arguing over her…"put her in isolation" a voice, disembodied, behind her eyes…no, wait, her eyes were closed! "You've got the whole hospital dying, girl. Nobody knows what it is you've got, but you're still alive. We can't stop this thing. Pretty soon, we won't be able to stop the whole city from going." A bloody cough. "I'm dying too, girl. Lanen, that's your name. And there's no cure…we can't find it."
The first to die had been the other partiers, then, the paramedics who brought her to the hospital. How did she know this information? The cruel truth of it was causing the stars to rumble. She hated herself. Why her?
Blackness with red explosions of suns going supernovae.
Monsters in orange suits bursting in… something yelled about "This one's alive!" and "God damn, the whole city wiped out! Who the fuck would do such a sick thing?!?" "Good job for checking the isolation ward. We've got the carrier, looks like. She supposed to be the first recorded case…and the only survivor." "Get her. The doctor will want to see her." "Careful! Don't break your suits! We don't know what she has…"
Ebola? How could it be anything else? But Ebola was so fatal to everyone who contracted it; it couldn't possibly have been the culprit. Besides, it took three days to liquefy you from the inside out. And everyone else at the party had died much faster…that same night, in fact. They'd started dropping like fruit flies after mating.
And who would give her something like that at a fraternity party? Heck, how could something like that get inside the borders of the United States? What had happened to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta? The National Guard? The Army? The Navy? Heck, the AIR FORCE?!? Wouldn't they have stopped it? What about the CIA? The FBI? Homeland Security?
Where was the vaunted preparedness that the president was always speaking of?
Who had known about it? What had it done to her?
The heat of the galaxy increased as small fragments from the waking world sought to intrude on her sanctuary of pain. "Why isn't the cortical implant working?" "Her brain has flat lined." "The therapy should WORK!"
Frantically she dived toward the galaxy again. Reaching out and embracing the stars, despite how they burned her soul to ashes and dust in the solar winds.
It hadn't decimated the city after all.
No.
It had stopped.
And she had gone into a coma before they could ask her what happened. Nothing they could do would give them the answers as to why she lived, and the others had died. So many others.
In time, they decided to deep freeze her like a Popsicle so that the future would have a chance to figure out what had happened. That, and they could extract samples from her whenever they wanted. Her parents, scientists themselves of some notoriety, were only too willing to donate her unresponsive flesh to "Antarctica" before passing on themselves.
So began her journey as a slab of frozen pork. How did THIS knowledge exist? How would she know something like that unless someone told her? Stranger and stranger.
No-one told her. No. Instead, when she woke up, it was machines that woke her, telling her that she had been infected with a nano-virus. A gene altering nano-virus to be exact. A self-aware nano-virus that had somehow judged everyone at that party to be a threat to its continued existence, and had invaded them and de-coiled their DNA like a spring flattened by a hammer. All at once.
The machines didn't tell her how the nano-virus had gotten there. Nor would they tell her anything else about what it could do. All they did was leave, and then she slept again.
Hibernation.
That's what viruses do, when the living conditions aren't right for them to survive. They cocoon themselves off behind a sturdy protein membrane and wait.
___________________________
AAAND You'll have to wait too! What do you think of this as the next chapter to the Moth? Reveiws please. I'm not feeling terribly motivated to work on the Kagome/Sess fanfic right now. Sorry, but that's how it is. I like doing the research for this story though. It's fun.
I realize this is a bit darker (less comedic relief) than the earlier bit, but hey. It's here!
Oh, a little info on the whole Ebola thing: (according to the CDC)
What is Ebola hemorrhagic fever?
Ebola hemorrhagic fever (Ebola HF) is a severe, often-fatal disease in humans and nonhuman primates (monkeys, gorillas, and chimpanzees) that has appeared sporadically since its initial recognition in 1976.
The disease is caused by infection with Ebola virus, named after a river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) in Africa, where it was first recognized. The virus is one of two members of a family of RNA viruses called the Filoviridae. There are four identified subtypes of Ebola virus. Three of the four have caused disease in humans: Ebola-Zaire, Ebola-Sudan, and Ebola-Ivory Coast. The fourth, Ebola-Reston, has caused disease in nonhuman primates, but not in humans.
So, there you have it. Are you excited for next time?!?!
SOURCES:
Coven, Emily. Peptides, Antibodies, Membranes…WHAT? Scientists Spell out their approach to SARS. PBS News Online. © 2004 KQED & WGBH. URL: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/hongkong/science.html#1
Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever. © Center for Disease Control. November 26, 2003.
URL: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispages/ebola.htm
Fullwood Packo Group. Pharmaceutical Industry: Cryogenic Freezing Equipment. © 2003 Packo Inox NV.
http://www.packo.com/en/products_subcategories.dhtml?category_id=1683
Abbadon. Cryogenic Freezing. . © Totse.com 2003.
URL: http://www.totse.com/en/fringe/life_extension/cryogenicfreez170566.html
______________________________
The world was a white room with blurry moving faces without names and a myriad of voices echoing strangely, as if from down a long tunnel or a vortex of air from the bottom of a pond. "She wasn't damaged by the tranquilizer shot." "See if you can reverse her genetic mutation.." "If we can get this cortical implant in, we can control her behavior if the gene therapy fails at any point…"
The words floated through the syrup of reality, randomly hitting her tympanic membranes. "A little to the left. There. Can you feel that?" "…Very good." "She is progressing nicely. Any signs of reversion?" "A shame that you had to turn her into a drone. She's such a nice looking child." "I can't BELIEVE Trin would befriend such a freak like her." Vlad's voice "We had to shoot her. She went crazy."
How did going crazy constitute running out of a room in denial when two really weird people told you the world had ended, and you were some sort of genetic throwback likened to a cavewoman of the stone age? Made her into a drone? What the heck? What was really happening? What HAD happened to her?
Her mind spiraled back to the beginning of the spinning galaxy- that bright crush of exploding creation that had all the answers to her past: the beginning of memory, the beginning of time, the rebirth of her world. There could be found forgetfulness, protection from the rape of her genetic codes, and the savage misappropriation of her conscious will through electro-cortical stimulation.
There was pain. There was the destruction of the human soul and mind for the irreverent brutality that had taken her happy-go-lucky 21st century college life and warped it into the twisted mass of flesh that lay now upon the stark white lab table to be stabbed and pried apart with knives and then slapped back together with banal disregard to her humanity. There, there were answers to her nightmares.
No, there was no humanity. There were only mutants, and those who were Not.
___________________________________
It was odd; there were only fuzzy fragments of her childhood, drowned instead by the persistently overwhelming imperative strength of the memory of the college fraternity party. She had been drunk—VERY drunk. She had gone upstairs…and then the world went dark. Had she been drugged? What? Snatches of memory flickered in the matrix of limitless stars.
Something had happened at that party. Everyone had died…but she hadn't. Why was that?
The drugs! The drugs they had given her had a strange side effect when the terrorists came with their bio-weapons; she was already in a hospital, and the isolation ward where she had been put mistakenly was untouched. Something…about a chart…they thought she had some sort of new contagion because there were no drugs in her blood, but she'd been bleeding from every pore…why weren't there any drugs?
Dream reality twisted as she rode the trail of another comet fragment of memory. A…hospital? Masked faces arguing over her…"put her in isolation" a voice, disembodied, behind her eyes…no, wait, her eyes were closed! "You've got the whole hospital dying, girl. Nobody knows what it is you've got, but you're still alive. We can't stop this thing. Pretty soon, we won't be able to stop the whole city from going." A bloody cough. "I'm dying too, girl. Lanen, that's your name. And there's no cure…we can't find it."
The first to die had been the other partiers, then, the paramedics who brought her to the hospital. How did she know this information? The cruel truth of it was causing the stars to rumble. She hated herself. Why her?
Blackness with red explosions of suns going supernovae.
Monsters in orange suits bursting in… something yelled about "This one's alive!" and "God damn, the whole city wiped out! Who the fuck would do such a sick thing?!?" "Good job for checking the isolation ward. We've got the carrier, looks like. She supposed to be the first recorded case…and the only survivor." "Get her. The doctor will want to see her." "Careful! Don't break your suits! We don't know what she has…"
Ebola? How could it be anything else? But Ebola was so fatal to everyone who contracted it; it couldn't possibly have been the culprit. Besides, it took three days to liquefy you from the inside out. And everyone else at the party had died much faster…that same night, in fact. They'd started dropping like fruit flies after mating.
And who would give her something like that at a fraternity party? Heck, how could something like that get inside the borders of the United States? What had happened to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta? The National Guard? The Army? The Navy? Heck, the AIR FORCE?!? Wouldn't they have stopped it? What about the CIA? The FBI? Homeland Security?
Where was the vaunted preparedness that the president was always speaking of?
Who had known about it? What had it done to her?
The heat of the galaxy increased as small fragments from the waking world sought to intrude on her sanctuary of pain. "Why isn't the cortical implant working?" "Her brain has flat lined." "The therapy should WORK!"
Frantically she dived toward the galaxy again. Reaching out and embracing the stars, despite how they burned her soul to ashes and dust in the solar winds.
It hadn't decimated the city after all.
No.
It had stopped.
And she had gone into a coma before they could ask her what happened. Nothing they could do would give them the answers as to why she lived, and the others had died. So many others.
In time, they decided to deep freeze her like a Popsicle so that the future would have a chance to figure out what had happened. That, and they could extract samples from her whenever they wanted. Her parents, scientists themselves of some notoriety, were only too willing to donate her unresponsive flesh to "Antarctica" before passing on themselves.
So began her journey as a slab of frozen pork. How did THIS knowledge exist? How would she know something like that unless someone told her? Stranger and stranger.
No-one told her. No. Instead, when she woke up, it was machines that woke her, telling her that she had been infected with a nano-virus. A gene altering nano-virus to be exact. A self-aware nano-virus that had somehow judged everyone at that party to be a threat to its continued existence, and had invaded them and de-coiled their DNA like a spring flattened by a hammer. All at once.
The machines didn't tell her how the nano-virus had gotten there. Nor would they tell her anything else about what it could do. All they did was leave, and then she slept again.
Hibernation.
That's what viruses do, when the living conditions aren't right for them to survive. They cocoon themselves off behind a sturdy protein membrane and wait.
___________________________
AAAND You'll have to wait too! What do you think of this as the next chapter to the Moth? Reveiws please. I'm not feeling terribly motivated to work on the Kagome/Sess fanfic right now. Sorry, but that's how it is. I like doing the research for this story though. It's fun.
I realize this is a bit darker (less comedic relief) than the earlier bit, but hey. It's here!
Oh, a little info on the whole Ebola thing: (according to the CDC)
What is Ebola hemorrhagic fever?
Ebola hemorrhagic fever (Ebola HF) is a severe, often-fatal disease in humans and nonhuman primates (monkeys, gorillas, and chimpanzees) that has appeared sporadically since its initial recognition in 1976.
The disease is caused by infection with Ebola virus, named after a river in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire) in Africa, where it was first recognized. The virus is one of two members of a family of RNA viruses called the Filoviridae. There are four identified subtypes of Ebola virus. Three of the four have caused disease in humans: Ebola-Zaire, Ebola-Sudan, and Ebola-Ivory Coast. The fourth, Ebola-Reston, has caused disease in nonhuman primates, but not in humans.
So, there you have it. Are you excited for next time?!?!
SOURCES:
Coven, Emily. Peptides, Antibodies, Membranes…WHAT? Scientists Spell out their approach to SARS. PBS News Online. © 2004 KQED & WGBH. URL: http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/hongkong/science.html#1
Ebola Hemorrhagic Fever. © Center for Disease Control. November 26, 2003.
URL: http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispages/ebola.htm
Fullwood Packo Group. Pharmaceutical Industry: Cryogenic Freezing Equipment. © 2003 Packo Inox NV.
http://www.packo.com/en/products_subcategories.dhtml?category_id=1683
Abbadon. Cryogenic Freezing. . © Totse.com 2003.
URL: http://www.totse.com/en/fringe/life_extension/cryogenicfreez170566.html