Infection

A cryogenically preserved people awake to find their healed world has been overrun.

Infection

My awakening began with a clack and a hiss, the pitch-black darkness steadily succumbing to ambient lighting from deep recesses all around. The dialysis pumps fading, I sensed the feeling return to my fingertips, my archived blood flowing in to replace the cryocirc that had kept me alive.

Memories flooded back. There was a cataclysm. Our people nearly died.

A series of unwelcomed stings and syringes pierced my flesh, filling my tissues with the neuromuscular cocktail designed to wake them…built to help my cells recover from countless years of neglect. A shift in illumination from inside my pod, and the hatch lifted away, exposing me to the mechanical whispers of a long-dormant facility coming back to life. I took my first deep breath of the cold, stale air.

Lurching up into a seated position I realized painfully late the toll of years in cryogenic preservation. Muscles cramped and I massaged my shoulders if only to ease the ache which seemed almost to the bone. Next to me, at least a dozen other hatches had likewise unsealed themselves, their occupants stirring from within.

“Greetings Director, how would you like to proceed,” an ethereal voice asked from the darkness.

“First, how about some lights,” I requested and, suddenly blinded, had to shield my eyes. “Whoa, too much! Decrease illumination by fifty percent.” Daring to look, I discovered others pulling themselves out, grimacing as their feet reached the cold floor. “Status report,” I requested, also caught by the surprising chill in the deck plating.

“Terraforming complete,” the computerized voice responded.

“Survival percentage?”

“57.3%”

“Explain.” I pulled a uniform from the locker at the foot of my pod.

“Zones sixteen thru twenty-four experienced system failure due to seismic activity approximately sixty-six million orbits ago.”

“Million?” I marveled in disbelief.

“Zones thirty-seven thru fifty-six experienced system failure due to mechanical malfunction approximately 436,358 orbits ago. Zones…”

“How long have we been under?”

“Nearly 252 million orbits.”

I was staggered. “And how many were lost?”

“56,260,152 occupants,” it replied, emotionlessly.

“Damn. That dramatically exceeded our projections. And the remaining pods.”

“Intact and functioning within parameters.”

I buckled the straps on my boots. “Are we the first?”

The voice replied, “Protocol states that lead personal be reanimated prior to reinitialization of the population.”

“And the surface?” I headed to a nearby console.

“Habitable within acceptable parameters. 78% Nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 0.9% argon, along with trace amounts of carbon dioxide, water vapor, and other gases, though hydrocarbon, ozone levels, and other contaminants have been increasing over the past 200 orbits.”

“Hydrocarbons? Impossible. The algorithm was designed to account for those. Give me a visual.”

The image appearing before me was a paradise. Rolling green hills splashed with wildflowers spread off to a jagged, snow-capped mountain range on the horizon. Billowy clouds floated peacefully across beep blue skies and the sun intermittently bathed the countryside in piercing light from its apex in the sky. Then, something interrupted the view. “A glitch?” I wondered, checking the controls just as the image returned.

“Could be some sort of animal in front of the scope,” Dr. Jaffi, our lead scientist, explained. He smoothed his uniform down as he approached. “We surmised the eruptions would allow for a 4% survival rate. It could be a descendant of a survivor.”

“I’m sending out a probe” I said and hit the command.

The device launched into the sky from our hidden location below ground, and I could see mountains and rivers, miles of countryside. Then, it spied a glimmer over the next rise and zoomed in on something we didn’t account for. I leaned in, frustrated. “What are those?”

Bustling through busy streets and moving in every direction, simple bipedal creatures wrapped in cloth garments hurried this way and that. Scaleless with a tuft of fur atop their tiny heads, they had neither the slim irises nor pronounced quills of an intelligent species. Their simple vehicles and modest shelters, the randomness of their being, lacked any notion of a sophisticated society such as ours – one which had preserved an entire civilization from certain doom. Worse, they all looked about the same – basic and soft, a single class without the colorful steakings, mottlings, or teeth indicating rank or status. Additional scans poured in from remote sensors, revealing a planet brimming with these creatures and on the verge of toppling back over the brink.

“An infection,” Jaffi lamented plainly. “Best eradicate them before they do any more damage.”

I sighed, agreeing, “Make the preparations.”