East Africa had somewhat of a reputation for disease origins, and so was somewhat more closely watched than most regions. The region also had a high rate of Gateway traffic, so it was no big surprise that the new Gate biohazards were first detected there.
Of course, most biologists just assumed they were normal outbreaks, possibly transmitted more widely due to the sudden changes in travel brought about by all the new Gates. Indeed, the samples collected by WHO showed these new outbreaks to be close relatives of known diseases in the region - so no immediate alarm was raised.
But then it became a much wider issue. EVERYWHERE with high return Gate traffic was experiencing above normal infections of all kinds, but strangely, few people actually IN Gateworld were ill.
The answer was simple, once enough data came in - despite the absence of radiation, the mutation rate in Gateworld was high...very high. Bacteria cultures quickly proved the phenomenon. Fortunately, whatever force was causing the mutations seemed to also enhance living immune systems - so few people became ill - until they returned to Earth.
So, in the midst of the Gateworld exploration frenzy, the CDC, WHO, and several other international medical organizations declared a quarantine of returnees from Gateworld.
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Dan Vogt was happy in his new paradise. His plants were growing unbelievably quickly, and his lake now had a few frogs and tiny fish. Of course, somehow, several kinds of bugs had also found their way to cross over and Dan had already spotted mosquito larvae near the lake edge. His current main project was getting fruit trees established, as well as grape vines and assorted berries.
Dan had made himself a makeshift outhouse by the cliff edge with a flush toilet gravity-fed from a stream via a long hose. He had also moved over nearly all his household appliances and was powering them via extension cords. He had all sorts of things on order via Amazon, but no idea when or if they might arrive.
He had tried to stock up on fuel for his generator, but gas rationing was already a thing. As an alternative, he had MANY orders in for things like Coleman fuel and propane. He even placed orders for candle wax and rubbing alcohol, since it looked to him like any energy sources would soon be in very high demand. He wondered just how long he could count on the electrical grid.
With this latest quarantine, though, Dan decided to stay almost entirely in Gateworld, leaving only briefly to gather up the deliveries of the day. On his last trip to town, Dan had gotten a few "pets" to add to his little world - hamsters and bunnies, as well as a litter of 6-week old kittens. The frogs and fish had been from an earlier trip.
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Still, things were shaping up nicely and he slept better in Gateworld than ever before on Earth.
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The Cartan family was doing quite well. They already had large fields of grass and corn growing in their Gateworld homestead, irrigated via a small canal system and waterwheel. They also had a windmill pump setup going. They imported started stock for both their freshwater (river mouth) and saltwater coasts. The biggest problem was going to be the lack of tides - Gateworld didn't have them, and that was going to mess up many coastal ecosystems.
The family also ended up opening 5 other Gates nearby, but only one of them offered much additional potential - the others were mostly just rocky hillsides or desert. The "good" gate was about a half mile from a very large freshwater lake. The group decided to build their main compound near the coast, as planned, but to also seed the lake and surrounding area with life and put in a barn and cottage there.
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Marc Cassidy was starting to get a clear picture now, as he studied his map. The fit was with a 293-mile hexagonal grid, with the "oldest" Gates at the center and expanding outward in rings. Of course, over 95% of the supposed Gate positions were either unknown or in water, which was what had made finding the grid pattern so difficult - but at least now they knew where to send drones and probes to have a good chance of scouting a Gate position.
He had also started the Beacon project, in which the US Government would provide settlement aid in exchange for the maintenance of a solar-power beacon that would map each settlement and register the owners, and could be triggered to send out an SOS if needed. Of course what he didn't tell them was that each beacon also contained powerful spyware equipment that would monitor each settlement and alert the NSA if the beacon AI detected trouble brewing.
North Korea still worried him the most. Estimates were that they had shoved nearly half their population through Gates and were building and expanding their outposts even faster than expected, due to the insane fertility of Gateworld. Even the "sacrificial" N. Korean outposts, given essentially no support at all, were likely to survive and expand. Marc had located 2 of these and sent drones to those locations with a cargo of fast-growing vegetable seeds and Korean instructions and anti-government propaganda - letting them know that the USA supported them.
To the "Korean Empire" outposts he could locate, Marc sent an experimental variety of bio-weapons that he intended to blame on the Gateworld mutation effect, should he ever be accused.
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Frixprl the Explorer appeared over Hex 0-0, the initial entry point of the new species. About 300 miles "over" it, in fact. He sent out a quick low-power chi-mana pulse to see if anyone had beaten him to the post. Getting no result, he went about getting settled in for observation, seeking the nearest high peak, phasing himself into the stone, and opening up his recording senses. His probability matrix quickly determined that no real threats were likely for the next 512 human years, so he went into adaptive trance and entered human Dreamspace, quickly finding himself defined as a "little green man" in human concept frameworks.
He took no overt actions, but simply played out the Dreamspace roles humans gave him, which were defined by their conceptual space meeting his own.