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Under Construction
Aug. 2nd, 2018 01:55 pmDon't worry yer pretty lil' head, there'll be a lotta words here soon enough. Here are some, removed o' all the charm o' my lovely accent:
The World
It’s quieter now. The once United States of America, while still technically held together by a tenuous collected government, is practically divided into four rough areas with their own form of politics: North, South, East, and West. There are fewer people; no city is legally allowed to exceed approximately 600,000 people. Most cities are protected either by man-made fortifications or natural barriers such as rivers, cliffs, or gullies with few in-roads. Traveling happens in groups, normally on foot with gasoline powered vehicles used sparingly and often modified to have a secondary emergency power source. All this change due to a tiny bacterium no bigger than three micrometers.
The Disease
The bacterium is a mutated and particularly virulent strain of yersinia pestis, more commonly known as the plague—the latter word now permanently capitalized in the global mindset. Starting in east Asia, the Plague blazed across the world in a relentless wave that was only made so much worse by the arise of several copy cat diseases and formerly assumed “extinct” illnesses in the wake of societal meltdown. With a 98% fatality rate, contracting the Plague is a death sentence; yet being able to tell whether or not a family member has succumbed to the true disease or one of its less deadly copies is nearly impossible without advanced medical equipment—which, considering the state of the world, isn’t readily available. This might not be as big of a problem if the final stage of the Plague didn’t involve turning the host into the walking (or more accurately running) apex predator humanity always strived to be with the sole purpose of further spreading the bacterium. Being able to detect the difference between the real thing and an impersonator is all that stands between putting a loved one out of their misery or murdering them over the equivalent of the common cold. This is where the Doctors come in—capital D and all.
It’s quieter now. The once United States of America, while still technically held together by a tenuous collected government, is practically divided into four rough areas with their own form of politics: North, South, East, and West. There are fewer people; no city is legally allowed to exceed approximately 600,000 people. Most cities are protected either by man-made fortifications or natural barriers such as rivers, cliffs, or gullies with few in-roads. Traveling happens in groups, normally on foot with gasoline powered vehicles used sparingly and often modified to have a secondary emergency power source. All this change due to a tiny bacterium no bigger than three micrometers.
The bacterium is a mutated and particularly virulent strain of yersinia pestis, more commonly known as the plague—the latter word now permanently capitalized in the global mindset. Starting in east Asia, the Plague blazed across the world in a relentless wave that was only made so much worse by the arise of several copy cat diseases and formerly assumed “extinct” illnesses in the wake of societal meltdown. With a 98% fatality rate, contracting the Plague is a death sentence; yet being able to tell whether or not a family member has succumbed to the true disease or one of its less deadly copies is nearly impossible without advanced medical equipment—which, considering the state of the world, isn’t readily available. This might not be as big of a problem if the final stage of the Plague didn’t involve turning the host into the walking (or more accurately running) apex predator humanity always strived to be with the sole purpose of further spreading the bacterium. Being able to detect the difference between the real thing and an impersonator is all that stands between putting a loved one out of their misery or murdering them over the equivalent of the common cold. This is where the Doctors come in—capital D and all.
