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| Carrier Syndrome | |||||||||
| By Richard LeBlanc | |||||||||
| Part One: History | |||||||||
| Welcome to planet Earth... | |||||||||
| You wouldn't be able to tell by looking - but the year is 2015. | |||||||||
| How did the world get this way? How did it turn from the advanced civilization - to a semi-ruined wasteland? That is an interesting story. Allow me to give you a brief history lesson about this - our new millennium. | |||||||||
| Everyone - from the dark ages to the present - had some vision or another about the end of the world and when and how it would come to pass. Almost every one of these makeshift prophecies had one thing in common - a madman at the helm - some mad general or warlord leading the world to war. Boy - were they ever off their mark. | |||||||||
| In another lifetime - in the later part of 2001 - a terrorist attack rocked the free world - waking the sleeping giant and setting into motion what would eventually lead to the end of life as we all knew it. | |||||||||
| The war was pretty much an open and shut case mind you - or - so it seemed. | |||||||||
| While the war was being fought in Afghanistan - the governments of the world focused on security measures to ensure that such an attack could never happen again. Little by little - more freedoms began to be hampered in the name of national security. And that blanket - would only grow wider - covering more as time moved on. | |||||||||
| In 2004 - the body of Osama Bin Laden was found. An anonymous tip led a special forces team to a small, secluded web of caves in a sector of mountains far from where they believed him to be. The war was over - or was it? | |||||||||
| On his body was a note - saying that he had a holy vision, it said that even though he may not live to see it. His vision would live on. | |||||||||
| Few took the note to heart. It was after all the last words - the mad ranting of a fallen general that knew his time had come. | |||||||||
| In 2006 - the governments of the world began their sweep of all terrorist and sympathetic countries. Some say that - many that were brought to justice were innocent victims - yet - the evidence that had been secretly gathered was sufficient to condemn all. | |||||||||
| It was in 2008 - where the chaos began. In a small suburb in Washington - the where and who are still unknown - a youthful hacker created a surprisingly simplistic virus. If this hacker knew the wide spread chaos it would bring - none can know. But with the stroke of a key - the end of all began. | |||||||||
| For two years - that virus lay dormant - like a coiled snake perched in the trees. Then - silently - unaware - it began spreading and mutating. Some of the problems that began to surface were minor - traffic lights gone haywire - power grids shutting on and off in Morris Code. It all seemed pretty playful - but no one could have predicted the darker turn that events would take. | |||||||||
| It was determined that the cause was a computer virus. One that had been uploaded into the traffic computer mainframe and that the top computer companies were all over it - and supposedly created the anti-virus to stop it. But - they were wrong. The virus had already mutated far beyond what they attempted to purge. Before long - all of the huge company networks had been infected - hospitals - military - all home personal computers that were connected to the net. | |||||||||
| Then - in 2011 - the unthinkable happened. The technology began to go haywire on a global scale. Databases began to delete themselves - high-tech machinery began to break down causing numerous fatalities. It was then that the bad went to far - far worse. Around the world - nuclear reactors went into meltdown - military computers began targeting cities at random - firing missiles of every design - including - the nuclear ones. | |||||||||
| Three years later - in late 2014 the fragile world began to turn on the people that lived there - the ones that had managed to survive the fall out - the random military strikes that crippled so many cities and left less than a million alive worldwide. | |||||||||
| Earthquakes almost swallowed cities whole - tidal waves submerged coastal cities and islands and toxic cyclone winds laid to waste almost any remnants of life on the open plains. | |||||||||
| And here we are today - in spite of it all - we as a race managed to survive. Guess someone had to keep the cockroaches company. All things that were borne of that era of technology bore its taint. To this day - we have no means of erasing that virus or using any of the technology - although with no computers of technicians or programmers - such a feat would be kind of pointless. | |||||||||
| Some of the old cities still stand - as do the landmarks - although scorched and severely damaged. Life was hard before the fall of the west - and now - with the air almost completely toxic due to radiation - it has gotten even harder. | |||||||||
| I do not know why I am writing this - or who might find it - I guess after everything that has been lost - I want at least one record to show what we as a people have survived. | |||||||||
| I am afraid that I have to cut this short. A pack of scavengers is heading this way and the last thing I want is them looting me. Four times in one week is more than enough. If you keep anything from what I have written here - be strong - remember - and we will prevail. | |||||||||
| Michael Richards, last thoughts... | |||||||||
| To be continued... | |||||||||