The Year: 2056
The Setting:
Tensions and hopes were rising with time in the 21st Century. As man continued to grow and increase in strength, a feeling of invincibility swept across the world. There was nothing humanity could not conquer, nothing they could not achieve. Yet even as technology and knowledge increased exponentially, the morality of earth’s sentient life began to erode. Ethics became something of perception, a whim which people could take or leave. The UN also increased in power, and in the year 2035, a One World government seemed only mere moments away from reality.
But something was wrong.
It’s been said that the majority is often wrong, and yet they just as often dictate the course of humanity. People of the minority, wherever, whenever, and whatever they stand for, must exert far more effort than normal people to see their goals realized. But I’m beginning to ramble; here is a far more important question.
If the majority is insane, have the minority lost their minds?
That is no longer a philosophical question; it is the bone-crunching reality of our world. You see, twenty years ago, there was a subtle shift in nearly all human beings. A virus infected our race, a thing of horror beyond our wildest imaginations. It jumped across the world in a matter of weeks, unhindered, and undetected. That was the strangest thing about it; it didn’t kill anyone, not directly at least. The infection attacked the frontal lobe of the human brain with an agonizingly slowly progression of corruption. It picked the organ apart, neuron by neuron, blood vessel by blood vessel. Yet no one died. No, that was far too simple.
Instead of taking the life of the host, the virus ate away at something far more precious: consciousness. The very thing which separates us from every other species on earth. Year after year, the billions of homo-sapiens on this planet continued with their lives, heedless of the spell of death cast upon them. But the symptoms were what made this virus truly devious; people are always looking to blame the catastrophes of mankind on something other than mankind’s nature itself. In the end, this was little more than social experiment asking the question of, “What happens when you remove people’s inhibitions?”
I doubt very much that people expected the answer to be, “The end of the world.”
In the year 2055, the world was at the breaking point. Riots, wars, food shortages, corruption, genocides; all believed to be nothing more than some symptoms of political and environment issues. It only took a few more weeks for the truth about humanity to be laid bare.
At our core, we are nothing more than primal animals.
They call it the Great Collapse now. The day when nuclear war started and the governments of the world collapsed. The war ended in a matter of hours; only about twenty major cities around the world had been destroyed. In a way, they were the fortunate ones. The rest of the world was thrown into anarchy as the remaining humans, all stripped of their sense of morality, turned on each other as the world they had built collapsed around them. First-world metropolises suffered the same fate as third-world villages. It was the Age of Anarchy.
Humanity is now a shell of its former glory. The vast majority of our species, those which survived, now roam the wilderness we once ruled, reduced to the level of intelligent apes. Aggressive and driven by the most basic of desires, they are known as Revenants.
However, there is still hope. A fraction of a percent found themselves immune to the virus. They are known as the Untouched. There is also a curious development with those born after the infections progressed significantly; they are also immune to the disease. Named the Newborns, the oldest of them is still under 20. These two groups will be the only hope which humanity will see for some time to come. In fact, if they can survive the next decade in this broken world, I would be surprised.
Ah yes, you’re probably wondering who I am at this point. My name does not matter, but what I’ve done does. You see…
I created the virus, also known as the Reveal.
I hope you recover quickly from shock, because I have more to say.
It is a twist of irony that I, the one who developed the plan which resulted in the earth’s destruction, am now trying to repair what I have done. Before engaging my apocalyptic plan, I had a contingency set in place decades earlier. I’m creating this electronic message from deep underground, inside my Omega Time Vault.
Within this ultimate bunker I’ve hidden every single piece of information humanity has ever collected. One of my servers contains a copy of every single website that ever existed on the internet. I’ve also collected the plans and instructions for nearly every process and system mankind developed. The Arts, the Sciences, Mathematics, History, Engineering, Religion, Philosophy, Mining… everything humanity ever thought, built, or tried to build.
My health is failing; I don’t know what from. Even the computer can’t tell me. Probably guilt. I did kill more people than any mass murderer in history, not to mention reduce the rest to primitive shells. This is the last bit of penance I can do:
At my death, an electronic signal will be released throughout the entire globe. It will be broadcasted in every form of communication which our species ever possessed. If anyone still living up there by some miracle can locate this time vault, humanity might have a shot at returning to its previous glory. If not… well, I tried.
That is the message received one week ago by Dr. Ava Roland, the chief technician of the group known as the Peregrinor. Led by Fintan Alasdair, the group is comprised of Untouched and Newborn survivors of the Great Collapse which occurred nearly one year ago. Since that time, they’ve been traveling from place to place throughout North America, trying to survive. Lack of basic necessities is only one of the problems the community faces. Roving bands of Revenants are hunting for food and water, and rival gangs can be a rare but even more dangerous problem. There is also the fact that earth’s environment is less stable than it used to be. Storms can be much more dangerous than the Untouched remember them to be.
You play as someone who knows or is part of the Peregrinor community. What is your history? What are you now? This is the story about a group of people in a community of survivors just after the collapse of modern civilization.
What will you do to survive?
Hosted and narrated by:
Nelson Nottveit (Cyberonyx)
Started 05/29/16.
Scenes played: 3
License: Community License
