01-12-2022, 10:56 AM
Rebo had missed out on the early parts of the Bug War. He had fought in earlier wars with the net result that he had gotten very, very tired of war - and people in general. After he "retired" from military service, he left civilization altogether. He'd had enough of civilization and the religions and gods and the strife produced in their names, and left it all behind for the remote interior of the equatorial continent, on which he had been born. Since he had cut off the entire world, he didn't get the memo until it was too late. The entire planet had descended into chaos before he even knew that anything was wrong. by the time he heard, news was only filtering in sporadically, in bits and pieces, but those bits and piece were serious enough that he knew he wanted no part of it, and so he stayed right where he was.
The Bug had an insidious effect of turning the sufferers who contracted it into psychotic killing machines. Perhaps "psychotic" was not the right word... one would have to have a mind for that mind to be psychotic, and it seemed to have the effect of removing the mind from the equation altogether. The effect of The Bug eventually killing the sufferer was not the worst - or most effective - part of it. The fact that it caused the sufferer to kill everything he or she encountered was. In effect, The Bug caused an infected population to implode, and destroy itself, whether any particular individual was infected or not. It did this by restricting brain operations to the brain stem, the "reptile brain". The rest of the brain was nullified.
The cities and villages, ANY population center where people gathered, became death traps and madhouses. Millennia later, and light years away, relatives of Rebo that he never knew existed would eat something called "popcorn" in an entertainment ritual where they attempted to scare themselves stupid watching something they would call "movies" of what was called on their planet a "zombie apocalypse". Those moves were eerily reminiscent of the scenes unfolding on Euzkala on a planet-wide scale.
On Euzkala, it was REAL.
The "zombies" were not really dead - they were just incredibly homicidal, incredibly stupid, and incredibly hard to kill due to the actions of The Bug's interaction with their systems. The fact that they WERE so hard to kill gave rise to rumors that they were ALREADY dead - since if one is already dead, he of course cannot be killed. The governments - for as long as they lasted - actually encouraged those rumors, giving the uninfected population an psychological boost in defending themselves. There is less onus on destroying a dead person than there is on destroying a living one.
The Bug had a rapid progression among infected populations. Every person not actually killed and eaten in an attack simply joined the pack and swelled the ranks of the Unholy, making more attackers and fewer defenders as time rapidly flew by and The Bug infested their systems. The cities were imploding as hordes of the Unholy grew and attacked the remaining uninfected. They largely ignored the infrastructure, except in those cases where it stood between themselves and their victims. In those cases they destroyed enough of it to access their targets, but otherwise they left it alone. You can't eat infrastructure, but you can eat the victims hiding behind it.
The net result of that were ravaged bodies and pestilential Unholy attackers rampaging through the largely intact cities, some filtering out into the countryside. In time, some of the Defenders became as savage as the Unholy in their efforts at survival, but they, too fell one by one or group by group as the ranks of the Unholy swelled. Also in time, The Bug started doing it's evil work of killing off the infected Unholy. Even as the Defenders were killed and eaten or themselves infected, the ranks of the Unholy began to gradually decline through attrition of The Bug itself.
After five years or so of Hell on Euzkala, the entire planet was almost entirely deserted, and the grand experiment of The Seeders had failed on Euzkala. Oh, it had a good long 30,000 year run, but it failed all the same in the end.
The surrounding races and planets, in abject fear of the unholy Holy War which had been unleashed on Euzkala, took steps and emplaced measures to quarantine the planet. They emplaced orbital cannons in the orbital space of the planet, preventing any further space launches from Euzkala, and ruthlessly exterminated any Euzkalans they found amongst themselves who had left the planet within a year prior to the initial outbreak of The Bug. Over the ensuing millennia, the orbital cannons one by one fell into disrepair, their orbits degraded, and one by one they fell to the surface in individual blazes of glory, artificial shooting stars. Only one was left in orbit by the time Ninurta came to claim the planet, now known as "Khalamzadar", but we are getting ahead of the story.
Of the most of this, Rebo was unaware. All he knew is that he was alone, horribly alone, on a planet of carnage.
(Continued... )
.
The Bug had an insidious effect of turning the sufferers who contracted it into psychotic killing machines. Perhaps "psychotic" was not the right word... one would have to have a mind for that mind to be psychotic, and it seemed to have the effect of removing the mind from the equation altogether. The effect of The Bug eventually killing the sufferer was not the worst - or most effective - part of it. The fact that it caused the sufferer to kill everything he or she encountered was. In effect, The Bug caused an infected population to implode, and destroy itself, whether any particular individual was infected or not. It did this by restricting brain operations to the brain stem, the "reptile brain". The rest of the brain was nullified.
The cities and villages, ANY population center where people gathered, became death traps and madhouses. Millennia later, and light years away, relatives of Rebo that he never knew existed would eat something called "popcorn" in an entertainment ritual where they attempted to scare themselves stupid watching something they would call "movies" of what was called on their planet a "zombie apocalypse". Those moves were eerily reminiscent of the scenes unfolding on Euzkala on a planet-wide scale.
On Euzkala, it was REAL.
The "zombies" were not really dead - they were just incredibly homicidal, incredibly stupid, and incredibly hard to kill due to the actions of The Bug's interaction with their systems. The fact that they WERE so hard to kill gave rise to rumors that they were ALREADY dead - since if one is already dead, he of course cannot be killed. The governments - for as long as they lasted - actually encouraged those rumors, giving the uninfected population an psychological boost in defending themselves. There is less onus on destroying a dead person than there is on destroying a living one.
The Bug had a rapid progression among infected populations. Every person not actually killed and eaten in an attack simply joined the pack and swelled the ranks of the Unholy, making more attackers and fewer defenders as time rapidly flew by and The Bug infested their systems. The cities were imploding as hordes of the Unholy grew and attacked the remaining uninfected. They largely ignored the infrastructure, except in those cases where it stood between themselves and their victims. In those cases they destroyed enough of it to access their targets, but otherwise they left it alone. You can't eat infrastructure, but you can eat the victims hiding behind it.
The net result of that were ravaged bodies and pestilential Unholy attackers rampaging through the largely intact cities, some filtering out into the countryside. In time, some of the Defenders became as savage as the Unholy in their efforts at survival, but they, too fell one by one or group by group as the ranks of the Unholy swelled. Also in time, The Bug started doing it's evil work of killing off the infected Unholy. Even as the Defenders were killed and eaten or themselves infected, the ranks of the Unholy began to gradually decline through attrition of The Bug itself.
After five years or so of Hell on Euzkala, the entire planet was almost entirely deserted, and the grand experiment of The Seeders had failed on Euzkala. Oh, it had a good long 30,000 year run, but it failed all the same in the end.
The surrounding races and planets, in abject fear of the unholy Holy War which had been unleashed on Euzkala, took steps and emplaced measures to quarantine the planet. They emplaced orbital cannons in the orbital space of the planet, preventing any further space launches from Euzkala, and ruthlessly exterminated any Euzkalans they found amongst themselves who had left the planet within a year prior to the initial outbreak of The Bug. Over the ensuing millennia, the orbital cannons one by one fell into disrepair, their orbits degraded, and one by one they fell to the surface in individual blazes of glory, artificial shooting stars. Only one was left in orbit by the time Ninurta came to claim the planet, now known as "Khalamzadar", but we are getting ahead of the story.
Of the most of this, Rebo was unaware. All he knew is that he was alone, horribly alone, on a planet of carnage.
(Continued... )
.
Diogenes was eating bread and lentils for supper. He was seen by the philosopher Aristippus, who lived comfortably by flattering the king.
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’
Said Aristippus, ‘If you would learn to be subservient to the king you would not have to live on lentils.’ Said Diogenes, ‘Learn to live on lentils and you will not have to be subservient to the king.’