Modification

Chapter 1: My Dear Axis

Let me bring you up to speed here: life didn't go to shit all at once. First, there were wildfires. Earthquakes. Acidic rain. Crop failure. Livestock disease. That sounds pretty terrible, I know. The thing is, all of these events occurred individually around the world, affecting large amounts of people, but not enough for a global uproar. Then, third world countries began to collapse. They couldn't survive on the limited crops and animals that were left, and eventually many populations were completely decimated. Those who survived were struck by disease. If it wasn't the famine and illness, then it was the isolation. Communities and generations of people were wiped out. The silence in many villages is the only thing we have left to remind us that it was once booming with culture and art. Next to go were crowded countries with the highest populations: China, India, the United States, Pakistan. This was when the pandemic began. It was a water-borne disease, similar to cholera, but the fatality rate was significantly higher. It was nothing like epidemiologists had seen before. It mutated in a matter of hours, nearly resistant to all antibiotics. They had named it "interfectorem puer", child killer, as it had wiped out nearly 95% of all children under the age of 14 around the globe. At first, people were infected through drinking unpurified water, or even bathing in it. What researchers didn't realize was how infectious it was when inside a host. The contact infections were overwhelming, as it remained dormant in some adults while it had an incubation period which delayed the reveal of symptoms in others. It killed children nearly 24 hours after infection. Now, life was shit.

The president of the United States had activated FEMA once copious amounts of Americans started to die, whether that be from the pandemic or famine. Unfortunately, it was a bit too late. People of all ethnicity, class, gender, age, and careers died at alarming rates. Around the world, no matter how advanced the country, societies were collapsing. The stock market completely crashed, and I don't mean a simple "crash then rebound", I mean so many people died and there was nothing that anyone could do to stop or slow it down that it was an entire collapse with no chance of redemption. Scientists didn't even know where to start when trying to conduct research on the disease. Many were already burdened with trying to resolve the crop and livestock issue, attempting to create a hybrid-GMO crop or insect that would potentially resolve the issue, but it seemed that human's time on Earth was coming to an abrupt end. This is when a global emergency was put in place, something that had never been done before. A message was broadcasted to all remaining technological devices explaining how there were enough resources in Russia to support any remaining humans, approximately ~1.5 million worldwide. Those who could came together in Russia to fight for survival together rather than apart. This is when Project Modification began to rear its ugly head, and when I, Roslyn Alastair, was assigned as head scientist on the project.

When humans gathered on Asia, they were split into factions. There was no specific grouping technique, only families usually put together and others were randomly assigned an area in which they were to remain to keep everyone organized. Russian president Vladimir Putin died early in the end of society, so a new man was randomly (or what seemed random) selected to lead all 8 factions as a dictator. His name was David Golubev, but many of us call him clever snake. He was born in Russia and was a close associate of Putin during his presidency, working as a consultant on international affairs. He was charismatic, educated, and vibrant. People loved him, they found salvation in him. He was a relief, a light at the end of the tunnel. He promised to repopulate and restore society as we knew it, first by destroying the illness that so many of us lost friends and family to. Even I was captivated, blinded by his empty promises. David Golubev wanted to be idolized, and so he was. He was worshipped. Humans were so desperate for a lifeline, and he took advantage of that. He knew how to get into a broken person's mind. He realized how devastated we all were, how much loss and destruction we had experienced. Shortly after everyone arrived in their designated factions, he organized a team of remaining health and science professionals from them (forcibly removing them from their remaining friends and family) and quite literally locking them in a post – Russian government facility where they were to create a solution to the disease and famine, and were not allowed out or given any food until a sound hypothesis and testing regime was to be planned out and completed. I was part of this team. David created militia groups that went from home to home prying "gifted" individuals from their families. By gifted, I mean college educated, usually P.H.D. holding beings who were qualified enough to make the cut for the team. At least, that's what David called us: the gifted. There were 20 of us. It was 2 weeks until we were given food after we had come up with a hypothesis and testing scheme. It was 6 months until we were allowed to leave the facility after creating a rush vaccine for the 8 factions. Since the creation of the vaccine was so rushed, many had adverse reactions to it. Some went into major organ failure, while others bled from their nose, eyes, mouth, ears... it was horrific. We felt like monsters. For those that survived the administration of the vaccine, no presence of the disease was ever seen again in them again. Now, it was time to create a solution for the crops and livestock.

At this point, we are 1 year into surviving in factions under the dictatorship of David Golubev. We had been surviving off insects, mostly cockroaches and some native weeds that grew in the area. With the creation of the vaccine, we also figured out a way to appropriately purify the drinking water in lakes surrounding the area, thanks to one member of the gifted team Axis Mareo. Axis was my best friend. He was a landscape and ecosystem ecologist who specialized in aquatic habitats. He also happened to have his masters in biochemistry. I swear, he could recount nearly all living aquatic organisms and their scientific names from a snail to a shark. Axis is what kept me going while locked away in that horrific facility. No matter how morbid of situation we were in, there he was; still cracking jokes with that big stupid grin of his. Eventually, after the creation of our vaccine, David wanted a solution to the collapsing of ecosystems and species extinction. This is when Axis and I turned to GMOs, testing them out on plants, insects, and whatever small rodents we could find (mostly field mice which made the testing difficult). After a year of troubleshooting, we were only able to scavenge a few modified soybean plants for all 8 factions. At this point, cockroaches and weeds were running on short supply. Suddenly, Axis had a breakthrough, 480 days after the beginning of our project. He discovered how to tweak the genetic code finely enough to possibly be effective for other sciences too. He took a sequence of codons that were thought to code for pseudogene and modified the amino acid chains to create a brand new functioning gene that had never been seen before in a lab or nature. We celebrated, we cried, we rejoiced, only to shortly then realize the detrimental effects that it would have on living organisms and the environment. It was too horrific to even fathom what would happen if we introduced this gene to the already dying mother nature. Axis and I quickly tried to throw away, burn, and tear up any proof of his findings, only to be interrupted by David's militia group who surveyed us every hour. They found remaining scraps of notes and torn up equations, taking us directly to David.

Axis was brilliant, beautiful, and extraordinary, and David murdered him.