PROLOGUE: The Plague Called Man

     Novelists have always been fascinated with the notion of mankind actually being a form of parasitic disease which has infected planet earth, and as a result, it is a scenario that frequently appears in various books and movies. In fact, it is such a common theme in so many of these stories that it borders on being an overused cliché. Usually, it is some villain or other who proclaims that human beings were nothing more than dirty cockroaches infesting an otherwise balanced ecosystem, their mere presence being tantamount to a desecration of the natural order. Said villain would then cackle maniacally and declare that the only way to restore the natural balance would be to exterminate all of mankind. This stereotypical bad-guy would then come up with an overly elaborate plan to kill everyone after which his evil schemes would inevitably be foiled by the heroic protagonist of the story.

     Unfortunately, reality is often times stranger and much crueler than fiction could ever be. The ‘deranged’ ramblings of the many fictitious villains in the books and movies turned out to have more truth in them than we would have liked to believe.

     The year was 2030. The world was ushering in a new decade in the same old fashion: with ever escalating war between nations based on everything from ideological and religious differences to economic tensions fueled by greed. To make matters worse, small skirmishes started breaking out over contested territory in the South China Sea. Neither China nor America and her allies were willing to back down and people were terrified that 2030 would be the year that the first thermo-nuclear war would break out. The looming disaster continued to escalate until it became akin to a Sword of Damocles whose sharp edge was hanging precariously over the fragile neck of humanity itself, ready to plunge downward and obliterate everything at the first sign of action from any of the parties involved in this perilous nuclear standoff. Everyone had their eyes set on what they believed might be the beginning of a nuclear apocalypse, but they never expected that they were looking in the wrong direction. The sword they anticipated never came, but the one they were ignoring and had always ignored, a sword made entirely from man’s own hubris, mercilessly stabbed them from the back.

     Man, in the ultimate act of arrogance and ignorance, had always plundered everything around him to his heart’s content with nary a thought to the consequences. The few people who were worried enough about the planet’s future to utter words like ‘the environment’ and ‘conservation’ were labeled worthless, tree-hugging hippies and treated with scorn and ridicule. In the pursuit of prosperity and wealth, man’s conscience was abandoned to atrophy, so much so that it degenerated to a point where it became something vestigial, something that still existed but whose function was long forgotten. Even when he saw the world dying around him, mankind chose to close his eyes to its suffering. He poisoned the air and the water. He destroyed the forests and the seas. Even the mountains couldn’t escape devastation as they were mercilessly mined in search of precious materials to further man’s idea of progress. Everything was sacrificed on an altar of greed. Man happily obliterated everything which had actual value in exchange for worthless pieces of paper that he had come to worship as his god: money. He gleefully rolled around in it like a pig cavorts in its own filth. Unable to handle the enormous strain that man put on it, the earth edged ever closer to the brink of destruction and only a little push was all that was needed to send it tumbling over into oblivion.

     That final push came in the form of the ozone layer, or rather the sudden lack thereof. Scientists had always asserted that the ozone layer would keep getting thinner and thinner with the passage of time and that there was no immediate need for concern. The scientists were all thought to be very clever and they all seemed to agree on this one point so everybody took their words at face-value and believed them. The problem was that scientists, however smart they may be, were not infallible. Instead of gradually depleting like it was predicted, the ozone layer popped like a soap bubble, leaving the earth devoid of a critical part of the system that allowed it to sustain life. With nothing to stand in their way, the harmful cosmic radiations from the sun and elsewhere from space bombarded the now defenseless earth. In the year 2030, a year that would forever be known as the year of the great cataclysm, more than two thirds of the people in Europe, Australia, South Africa, North America and certain parts of Asia were instantly wiped out by solar storms. More died from the adverse effects caused by the radiation left behind by these storms. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the particles from the solar storms supercharged the earth’s ionosphere causing lightning storms that were only slightly less destructive than their progenitors.

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     The once bountiful earth that provided humanity with a home and sustenance turned into a veritable hell. The majority of all plants and animals perished under the furious onslaught of the sun’s golden flames and multicolored lightning raining down from the sky. In some places, the ground was scorched so badly that it turned into molten slag. On the rare nights that the lightning storms abated, the sky would be covered by eerie colorful lights. The Aurora Borealis and Aurora Australis, which were once localized events that only happened near the North and South Pole, became a global phenomenon thanks to the supercharged ionosphere. The hauntingly beautiful surreal lights in the sky painted a stark contrast as they hung over the infernal landscape below. It was as if the heavens themselves were gloating at the hell beneath, finding joy in man’s suffering.

     But even in these dire times, man still managed to show his true colors. The American military dug deep into their substantial arsenal and produced something out of a science fiction writer’s nightmare. They took this abominable creation of death and dropped it in the middle of Africa. It was the first time that the world beheld the horrifying effects of the Neural Impulse Disruption Bomb(NIDB). This insidious weapon had very little visible physical effect unlike its nuclear counterpart. Instead of a large explosion, this bomb causes a specialized electromagnetic wave that specifically targeted the human nervous system. On January 28, 2031, this bomb was detonated smack dab in the middle of central Africa. All of the territories belonging to countries located in central, east, and west Africa were in the range of the NIDB. The little children playing their innocent games, men and women going about their daily lives, unsuspecting people who were unaware that their very existence had become an inconvenience to those who wielded powers beyond their ken, the shadow of doom fell upon these unfortunate souls. There was no bright flash of light or loud noise when the NIDB detonated. There was no fanfare that announced the beginning of the largest mass atrocity in human history. Without a single warning, nearly a billion people suddenly started to convulse violently as their neurons started to fire off uncontrollably. Their nervous systems short-circuited causing catastrophic failures all around their bodies including to vital organs like their hearts and brains. In a single stroke, more than half a billion people simultaneously lost their lives and the rest were left in comas from which they would never awaken.

     And what was the reason behind such a cruel action? What could motivate the most powerful nation on earth to act so savagely against some of the weakest? Naturally, it was because of greed. It was because most of North America had been destroyed by the storms from the Great Cataclysm and the Americans had decided that the relatively safe area created by a stubborn wisp of ozone hovering over Africa was rightfully theirs. “Manifest destiny” they called it, and since the locals where getting in the way of their “destiny”, they had to be removed.

     In this manner, morality was once again discarded in the face of overwhelming greed. Although people were quite fond of talking about man’s superiority over animals in terms of having standards and decency, when it came down to it, it was shown exactly how vicious mankind could be. Man was indeed different from other animals for he is much too malicious in comparison. Ironically, man is too inhuman to be categorized as an animal.

     Which brings us back to the thoughts raised by the fictitious villains; human beings might not fit into the category of animals, but their behavior is typical of parasites. When a virus infects a cell, it hijacks all of its resources in order to make more of itself. In the end, the cell dies. The way that human beings strip the resources of their environment until the ecosystem around them collapses shares a chilling similarity with the way viruses operate. The similarities between parasites and humans don’t stop there. In fact, humans share traits with most other kinds of pathogens as well. For example, bacteria usually produce toxins as they reproduce. Because they reproduce so rapidly, they poison everything around them. Just like bacteria, human beings also reproduce quickly and poison their environment as a byproduct of their propagation.

     All in all, man embodies all of the most harmful traits of the most dangerous pathogens. Man truly was a disease that had infected earth, and since its host was dying, man started working on developing the final trait of any dangerous disease: contagion.

     Once it became clear that earth had become a dead planet, man began developing space travel at a frightening rate.

     There were new planets to find, new resources to plunder, new worlds to consume.

     There were new planets to infect.