The Great Game

Sorry about the multiple notifications (if you get email notifications). It took a few tries to get this episode to go live, for some reason… My apologies!

If you’re new to the Great Game, please have a quick look at the blurb to your left, where you’ll find a short catch-up introduction.

Travis stumped off. I went and got my first course of stims — “You may experience some mild psychological effects with extended use,” lied the doctor blandly — and headed back up to the office. There were half a dozen people around, but I really wasn’t feeling chatty, so I nodded to them pleasantly and sat myself down at my desk. My eyes felt dry and achy, so I reluctantly shook out a stim and took it. Then I stared at my terminal for several minutes.

Eventually, I shook myself out of it, and started catching up on the events of the last three weeks. It did not make comfortable reading.

Initially, official responses to the diaspora had been highly secretive. Massive intelligence operations were put in place, and although they didn’t seem to be getting any instant results, they appeared to make steady progress. There were some polite queries and other mild probes from foreign agencies, but we characterised our efforts as preventing domestic terrorism.

Then things started to get a little odd. There were mentions of reports of hysteria in some cities, and communications problems in a few more isolated areas. Tensions started to rise in poorer segments of the populace, particularly ones with a strong religious ethic. Intelligence coming in from overseas suggested possible parallels in other areas.

The first significant anomaly was the sudden and inexplicable abandonment of the Twin Towers Correctional Facility in LA. On the evening of the Saturday after I vanished, it was the largest jail in the world, and the biggest psychiatric facility in the USA. Sunday morning, it was completely empty. Almost 8,000 prisoners and support staff — including well over a thousand mentally disturbed prisoners — had vanished. Overlook hadn’t seen them leave; internal security footage showed only static. Twelve cells, in a line, were covered top to bottom in utterly unfamiliar writing.

From there, things started getting hairy. A number of peculiar riots broke out spontaneously across the country. They were small, and lacked the usual group mayhem, but what they lacked in sheer destruction they more than made up in weirdness. Some people were trashing things or burning stuff down, sure, but individually rather than in packs. Others were wandering around aimlessly, or just staying put, or dashing back and forth screaming, or… well. Or just about anything else, it seemed. The National Guard tried to assist the police in regaining control, but the situation was so chaotic — and varied — that it proved extremely hard to suppress.

It was more frightening to discover that Overlook failed inside the rioting territories. All of them. It didn’t just switch off, or go to static; it appeared to show normal daily life inside the affected areas. It wasn’t old footage. It was as if the system was observing events that just weren’t actually happening.

Sometimes, the riots subsided naturally. When they did, invariably large swathes of the population would be missing. Many of those left behind were… changed. Contagious. The Infected, as they became known, caused massive damage in the first few days, subverting entire units. The disturbances kept cropping up, seemingly at random, and it took a while to confirm that Infected appeared to seed them.

By this time of course — the following Thursday — it was perfectly obvious that the problem was global. We had already lost several millions of people. The vast majority had just vanished.

Containment became the primary objective. If a street, or block, or neighbourhood became erratic, the military cordoned it off, and if possible, created fire-breaks of demolished building. Any attempts to leave were met with lethal force. It did slow the spread of the disturbance, but it didn’t entirely stop new Infection. Even with reserves called up, and every force pitching in, control was very thinly spread.

Two weeks later, large chunks of the country had ground to a halt. Martial law was in place, as srongly as available manpower would allow. Food, power and vital supplies were still being produced, and even shipped around, but anything non-essential was simply not happening. Hysteria was rampant.

Travis hadn’t lied when he’d said that things were grim.

 Loading ...

Today’s picture is Urban Decay by Zenoptic