Today's post is a fiction piece by Rob Baxter - it explains a little about how the outbreak in Alabaster Station took place.
Enjoy!
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Signal Station Zero Sierra Gamma
Priority Report: Solcom Science Division
Oversight
Co-ordinates: [classified data encrypted
for eyes only view]
Transcription of Outbreak event Adamant
Hexagon Seven – Tightcast received 17 minutes ago
Alabaster SSD, Code Quietus.
Transmission sent by Senior Science Advisor
Miolr Depetrus [Deceased]
[Transcription Begins]
This thing still recording? Good… air is
getting stale in here. Okay, where the hell was I? Oh, yeah. Outbreak.
I had cautioned the med team against trying
to revive the tissue sample. There had been something strange about it. Smart
gels couldn’t stain it – we couldn’t retrieve anything out of the cellular wall
aside from what appeared to be viral remnants and fungal spores. We argued for
a simulation instead of messing with the actual cellular material. Director Chamf
was all for trying to get vital replication off the remains.
Once he said go, you could see the med
techs drooling at the prospect.
I could have warned them I think. I should
have known. I had seen weaponized nanotech before. Utility mists, combat
vectors, any number of smart toxins and metabolic Trojans. This, whatever it
was, it was tenacious, and semi viral. I realize now that the tissue from the
prime specimen wasn’t muscle or brain matter seeded with fungal spore. It was
technology.
The med team thought the viral component on
the cellular wall was a rogue protein. Some thought it was a prion. Definitely
not a prion – this is some type of black magic precursor xeno-tech. Cunning, wily,
every angstrom dense with information. It’s memory, a method of storing
sensitive and vital information. Whatever was embedded in the cell walls of the
specimen, when it interfaced with our med systems, it went haywire.
In picoseconds it had hijacked the
assemblers and the medical splice routines.
The data bridge between the sample and the
core systems should not have been that easy to compromise. We had a quantum
encrypted data bridge, but data barriers had melted under some external code
attack, inserted precisely at the moment of the test.
That’s when I knew we had a mole inside. I
hope whoever they are, they got stuck out there, and they’re paying for it now.
Once through the data barriers up into the
actual replicator interface, the stuff really started to sing. The sample started
writing to the tech and reverse engineering systems, replicating with the
medical nano handles.
Sheol, the biomed AI, couldn’t compensate
and tried to flush the vat with containment protocols. No luck there. She
screamed for about four seconds while her data boiled away under the pressure
of the attack on the medical containment systems.
The sample had replicated using whatever
nanotech we had in the tank. Once it hijacked the med system it converted the
mass of sample tissue, the med container, replicator vat, and all of the
bio-medium into a viable cloud of spore. Fifteen seconds after compromise it
flowered out of the bio medium in an explosion of tissue and tendrils. I swear
I could see a face looking at me, in the middle of that mass.
Desperate, I managed to get through the
containment doors and out of the lab before the Director pressed the red button
and scorched the room. Everyone in the lab dead – Friends, people I couldn’t
stand, people I had just met. He knew I think, he was just too calm about it,
like he had expected it. I think he had seen it before.
Still, it was too late. We’d already tried
to scorch the thing. We probably could have contained the spore if he hadn’t
given it fertile new ground to germinate in. There had been forty-five people
in that section of the lab.
The nano-spore birthed the first necroform
manifestation seven seconds after the Director plasma blasted the room. This
medtech named Gillus, his face was mostly vaporized. The spore hijacked
whatever viable cellular mechanisms he had left. Reanimate biomass convulsing
under the puppet strings of an impromptu nervous system.
The scanners in the room recorded
everything. It’s the only way I know how it works. Just sheer luck, but
watching it go to work turning a former human into a necroform, it was
impressive.
The others in the room, the ones with
enough meat on their bones animate enough to shamble or move, reanimated. The
rest, too messed up to be useful or motile, bio-converted into more spore.
Utility mist like behavior, it moved – not flowed, not drifted, not wafted – but
moved to digest the seals of the door.
Less than a minute after the introduction
of the med systems to the tissue sample, and the outbreak was in full swing.
The nano-spore ate through the remaining containment
systems voraciously. Force field and static containment failed almost immediately.
The crew Director Chamf had scorched came for him through the lab bulkhead,
tearing through the armored glass and metal in a frenzy. He screamed for what
felt like hours when the Necroforms got him. I watch him every now and then on
the security cameras. He’s been mutated into some sort of dog-thing; his med
tag is still hanging from what’s left of his uniform. He deserves worse.
I worked quickly in getting most of the
remaining techs and bioengineers out. But a lot of them had already been
exposed to enough spore to become infected. Some of the security staff listened
to me – we contained the outbreak temporarily with force barriers, negative air
pressure, and a lot of luck. But eventually the spore reached intention
density, and was able to make informed distributed decisions. This is not a rogue
vector… it moves with purpose. Smart enough to figure out how to get through
the cracks.
Infection in the facility was rampant less
than 20 minutes after the outbreak event. New life forms were sprouting from
the dead, dying, or infected shortly after that.
They’re prowling the halls now. Security is
mostly gone although I hear the cannons from the automated security system fire
every once in a while. Survivors? Who the hell knows?
I figure it’s only a matter of time before
I’m either dead or one of the things out there.
I’m tight casting this data packet through
the facility secure distress transponder. You’ll see that most of the
information and telemetry has some very strong profiles on the creature’s
capabilities. Hopefully someone will receive this distress call before the
lifeform or nano-eco system or hive mind or whatever it is can get out of the
facility.
Infection is reversible, but it requires
some sturdy auto-doc systems. That’s how I’ve purged myself and the survivors
I’ve gathered. Once the spore has started tissue conversion and manifesting
biomechanical systems, there’s no way to reverse the conversion process. If you
get converted, I think it overwrites whatever nervous system you have, and
replaces any core persona with something different.
I can hear them through the security feeds.
Some of them are obviously feral, animalistic. Roars, screams, hisses and
whistles – Nonsense mostly. But the tall ones, the armored ones. They look an
awful lot like the original specimen. Those ones…
They’re obviously communicating.
Strategizing.
Figuring things out.
[Transcription ends]
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