July 7, 2012

Existence.  What does that word mean to you?  To me, it means a continuation of all things.  Never changing.  Never adapting.  Never...evolving.  That is what it means to exist in this day and age to me.  A day where technology has reached its peak and an age where people live out their usual 9 to 5s without delay.  Looking out the window of my foster home, I watch as people go about their usual daily lives with the same looks of boredom on their faces.  They wake up.  They eat breakfast.  They get into their cars.  They go to "work".  They do their "jobs".  They come home after several hours.  They eat dinner.  Say hi to the kids and then go to sleep.  Rinse and repeat.  This is ordinary.  We are animals of repetition.  We don't like disruption to our routines.  We like the usual.  We enjoy making money to pay the bills...but for me and my older sister, we don't share such beliefs, as we live in a foster home.  The rent here is free.  We can wake up and do as we please for most of the day and despite our ages, we still have "fathers" who take care of our needs.  We eat what is given to us.  We play together by going outside and climbing trees during the day.  We take baths every night together.  Rinse and repeat...this is normal to us.  To everyone.  And yet...something is missing from it all.  What was it...oh yes...THAT incident.  Hello.  My name is Genevieve Nightingale, and this is our story.  I was born on August 19, 1991, at exactly 6:13 AM in the morning.  At the time, the doctors were happy to greet me as my biological mother pushed me out of her womb and into this world.  I remember the lights on the ceiling and the lights of the operation table where my mother laid as she gave birth to me that day.  While fuzzy, my biological father was also present, as was my two-year-old sister, Fionnuala, to which as they watched me come out, my real father was soon granted permission to hold me in his hands.  I heard that he did the same thing with my older sister when she was born, and so he wished to do the same thing with me.  I didn't have any restraints by just being born, so I pissed in his face as a welcome.  He held onto me tightly regardless of that, which is something I learned about later, but at the time I, just being a baby, was innocent to who these people were and what they would mean to me later on in life.  The one thing that I'll never forget at the time was my real fathers' eyes, blue as the sea and deep as the ocean, as I always wanted to see the ocean while growing up.  We as a family never traveled much, as we lived in one home for the majority of our lives, while the most we would ever "travel" was to the grocery store or to the hospital for a regular checkup.  Things are fuzzy after those brief moments, but become clearer with me and my sister being taken to our first home, which was where we would live out a good portion of our early childhood together.  The next thing that I recall is being a small toddler at the age of 4.  My older sister Fionnuala, being 2 years older than me, was having her 6th birthday at this time, which I enjoyed because of the cake on display.  I didn't know at the time, but my parents had gotten my older sister a chocolate cake, which even at this time I can recall being the most delicious thing I'd ever had the pleasure of putting into my mouth.  My older sister got a big slice of this cake, but instead of eating this slice of cake she climbed onto the tabled and destroyed the cake with her hands and body.  She ate huge pieces of the chocolate cake anyway, while my parents and their friends and family laughed if off as my sister toying with her food.  Those were simpler times indeed, as nowadays, fresh food is scarce and clean water is even rarer-but I'm getting ahead of myself.  Another standout memory that I can recall was my biological father falling into alcohol regularly as the months and years went by.  He was a policeman from before my older sister was even born, of which my real mother, being a nurse, would often tell me and my older sister horror stories about the kinds of things he would have to do to come back home almost every night.  From dealing with drug dealers to fending off riots in the streets due to the metropolis we lived in, my real father had seen it all-and while most people would say that kind of profession was admirable, I and my older sister just had to accept that maybe one day we wouldn't have a father to come back home and see us.  He thankfully always did come back home, as he was a very capable individual who always took every possible precaution he could to come and see us, but with each passing day whenever I looked into his eyes I could no longer see the kind, blue eyes belonging to the man who once held me in his hands when I was born, as they were instead replaced with the look of a battle-ready soldier.  That was possibly a good thing to see in him, as looking at the world that we live in now I can see a lot of how his tales would shape me and my older sister into the individuals that we are now.  Was that a good thing?  Maybe not, but having such information on how to deal with how people truly act in times of stress and few resources was and still is an invaluable asset-something that a lot of people beforehand didn't have access to...I feel bad for those who didn't make it as far as we did today, but there is little we can do to change the fates of those who have come before us.  We didn't hear much of our mother's activities, other than the fact that she was a nurse and working on a serum that could potentially bring back the dead, which was a huge deal at the time.  Me and my older sister didn't have any relatives or siblings who were deceased, so the concept of bringing back loved ones was something we didn't care much for-but that didn't mean that we didn't see other people who lost their loved ones and yearned for the day when such a serum would become successful.  The dreams of those people would be ruptured when "it" actually happened, but we aren't ready to discuss that just yet. Coming into early teen hood, the stressful lifestyle of a policeman and nurse and the daily dose of alcohol into their systems eventually caused both of our parents to abandon us.  Instead of just throwing us out into the streets by ourselves, the two came to an agreement with three brothers whom they had a shaky relationship within the foster care program.  Our father was well versed with these kinds of people due to his job and our mother personally know of these brothers, to which me and my older sister had little say in the matter, as we either could choose to live with people who fell more and more in love with the bottle or take a gamble on a "fresh slate" as some people would call it.  We chose the fresh slate, and while our teen years were normal enough under the roof of these three men, even back then we were already intelligent enough to tell that something wasn't right with these people.  They would always stare at us while we lived under their roof in ways that would make us feel uncomfortable and while we ate, they would always talk about what they would like to do with us when we were of legal age.  We didn't understand what they could possibly mean by saying such things, but at the time it didn't matter, as we just continued to live our normal childhood lives in relative peace.  In the morning we would wake up in our pajamas.  We would next get into the bathtub and play with the bubbles.  Then we'd eat breakfast and then go outside to play.  We would read books about the wonders of the world from high up in the trees.  We'd eat cherries from the trees as snacks and then when it became dark we'd rush back for dinner with the three men, before taking another bubble bath to wash away all of the pieces of bark that stuck to our skin from climbing trees and then getting into our pajamas once more to get some sleep-and then the next day we'd have just about as much fun as the day before, if not more.  Those days were our Golden Days...and while going back to those days now seems impossible, we still hold out some hope that one day things can go back to "normal".  Now young adults, this is where our memories of the time before the end of the ordinary wrap up, as while we had little contact with our real parents after they left us, we did still hear of their achievements in their professions on tv regularly.  Our biological father stayed on as a regular officer, while our biological mother made huge leaps in her research to discovering a means to bring back the dead.  She was an inspiration to many across the world, as her mind was far ahead of her time-they said on the news numerous times.  She loved people, despite the horrors that her husband would constantly tell both her and her two daughters, and she felt deep care for those who came before us, which was the pillar of her determination to unlock the secret to reviving the dead.  And one day, that chance finally came, as a large piece of ice that fell from the sky held the key that my mother and so many others like her were looking for.  But that would also begin our downfall as a species, as we never realized just how horrific the dreams of so many would eventually become.  Finally, the day of fate began on July 7th, 2012, in which on that day me and my older sister learned from the news that our real mother had discovered a means to revive the dead.  With thousands of great minds at the helm and the backing of most of the world behind them, they ushered in a new era where science could reanimate the dead.  Starting off with animal trials, there were no visible alterations to them at first, as the deceased animals that were revived could recognize their former masters by being reunited with them, and from those successful trials Humans were next up to be greenlit.  When injected with the serum, however, the people who were "Awoken" didn't remember who they were or where they had been, which confused the doctors and families of the deceased.  They thought that their memories would return in time, and so, the trials on Humans were considered a great success, as tens of millions lined up to have their loved ones revived.  As the days and weeks passed, however, the memories of the dead never returned and were instead replaced with something far more terrifying-a new consciousness...a Hive Mind.  That was when the "End of Earth" incident began, which was a mass extinction event that occurred due to the serum that was administered into the bodies of animals and Humans mutating the hosts into various forms of brand-new lifeforms.  The serum was in fact made from a kind of fungi that thrived in space along the ice trail of a comet, to which when it landed on Earth and was incorporated into the serum, the now Awoken evolved into deadly new abominations-attacking and killing nearly 75% of the total human population over the course of 10 years.  Governments fell.  Cities were wiped off the map.  People cried out in sorrow and fear ran rampart across the entire world, as the Awoken came after them with relentless fury.  Militaries were overwhelmed.  Safehouses were routed and destroyed.  Outposts were overridden within weeks and society as we knew it collapsed...and yet, despite all of those horror stories, life still continued to struggle to survive, as life is something worth fighting and dying for.  We saw it in animals and insects of all kinds that came before the Awoken took over the world...and now, we too must return to our roots of survival at any cost.

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