Paradise Violated
"As I stated the Xont were working on a germ weapon to make others obedient to them. I guess it wasn't so much of a weapon, as a reinforcer to those they had already enslaved. They really needed it too, at that point rebellions were becoming a big problem and they couldn't just resort to mass genocide, as they had become too reliant on their slaves. The idea was to create a virus with Xont DNA. They thought by infecting others with "themselves" that it would cause them to be more willing to serve."
"I'm not a scientist, but that doesn't make a lot of sense."
"Oh the virus was a lot more complex than that, but that was the basic premise. Still, you're right, there wasn't any evidence that it would work. Oh sure they did some tests that were successful, but they had done just as many that weren't. They brought me here to help, and they really didn't want to hear me telling them that the virus would never work the way they wanted it to. I told them they were making a lot of assumptions and were biasing their testing which really isn't a good idea, if you're making a virus weapon. Only when there was an accident in one of the labs did they see I was right."
"So what happened?"
"Well before they unceremoniously switched me offline, I got to see first hand what the virus did. When the vials were broken, they should've evacuated the place then, but they were convinced that the virus wouldn't have any effect on them, so it was treated like a minor mishap. A few days later it was pretty apparent that was the wrong way to go about it. The Xont scientists here started acting more aggressively, paranoid, and downright nasty. And keep in mind these were traits that most of them already exhibited, so these traits were increased ten fold. The other servant races here started acting the same way; some weren't the loyal little slaves the virus was supposed to make them though. The air was ripe with rebellion, and soon everyone started killing each other. Xont were even killing other Xont, a few non-affected tried to send a distress call to the nearest military detachment to end this madness that had taken over the facility, I was going to go for a more direct approach and activate the Silver Sentinels, but then someone switched me offline, and I've been that way until just now."
"How come it didn't affect some? And how is it still affecting people after all this time has passed?!"
"Like I said, viruses aren't certain. They mutate, and some people just have strong constitutions, so some won't be affected at all, while others have severe reactions. For those affected, the only common thing that I saw the virus do was increase aggressiveness. It didn't necessarily make one loyal to the Xont or anything else for that matter. As for why it's still around after all this time, I don't know. It's obviously airborne, but I would've thought it would've died out by now as well too. Something is still carrying itÂ… that dead Daklow in the doorway, didn't you just kill it?"
"You mean that tentacled thing? Yeah."
"Those creatures were designed to be strong physically, and very resilient, it's quite possible that they are carriers and aren't affected, of course you'd never know since they were bred to attack almost anything on sight. Anyway if that's the case, I'd say anyone coming in here runs a risk of being infected, who in turn could infect others."
"Well how the hell are those things still alive though, if they were created eons ago?"
"Uh, my guess would be they MATED with each other, thus producing generations of offspring and those aren't same ones! Sheesh! Think man! It's a good thing they have a strong sense of territory, that's probably why they haven't overrun the planet; they tend to stick near the place that they were designed to guard."
"So what do you think happened after you were shut down?"
"Oh I imagine someone escaped, maybe several people and ended up spreading the damn virus to other planets, causing more strife in an already volatile situation that the Xont were in, which caused a predictable domino effect. I told them to stick with technology."
"I'm not a scientist, but that doesn't make a lot of sense."
"Oh the virus was a lot more complex than that, but that was the basic premise. Still, you're right, there wasn't any evidence that it would work. Oh sure they did some tests that were successful, but they had done just as many that weren't. They brought me here to help, and they really didn't want to hear me telling them that the virus would never work the way they wanted it to. I told them they were making a lot of assumptions and were biasing their testing which really isn't a good idea, if you're making a virus weapon. Only when there was an accident in one of the labs did they see I was right."
"So what happened?"
"Well before they unceremoniously switched me offline, I got to see first hand what the virus did. When the vials were broken, they should've evacuated the place then, but they were convinced that the virus wouldn't have any effect on them, so it was treated like a minor mishap. A few days later it was pretty apparent that was the wrong way to go about it. The Xont scientists here started acting more aggressively, paranoid, and downright nasty. And keep in mind these were traits that most of them already exhibited, so these traits were increased ten fold. The other servant races here started acting the same way; some weren't the loyal little slaves the virus was supposed to make them though. The air was ripe with rebellion, and soon everyone started killing each other. Xont were even killing other Xont, a few non-affected tried to send a distress call to the nearest military detachment to end this madness that had taken over the facility, I was going to go for a more direct approach and activate the Silver Sentinels, but then someone switched me offline, and I've been that way until just now."
"How come it didn't affect some? And how is it still affecting people after all this time has passed?!"
"Like I said, viruses aren't certain. They mutate, and some people just have strong constitutions, so some won't be affected at all, while others have severe reactions. For those affected, the only common thing that I saw the virus do was increase aggressiveness. It didn't necessarily make one loyal to the Xont or anything else for that matter. As for why it's still around after all this time, I don't know. It's obviously airborne, but I would've thought it would've died out by now as well too. Something is still carrying itÂ… that dead Daklow in the doorway, didn't you just kill it?"
"You mean that tentacled thing? Yeah."
"Those creatures were designed to be strong physically, and very resilient, it's quite possible that they are carriers and aren't affected, of course you'd never know since they were bred to attack almost anything on sight. Anyway if that's the case, I'd say anyone coming in here runs a risk of being infected, who in turn could infect others."
"Well how the hell are those things still alive though, if they were created eons ago?"
"Uh, my guess would be they MATED with each other, thus producing generations of offspring and those aren't same ones! Sheesh! Think man! It's a good thing they have a strong sense of territory, that's probably why they haven't overrun the planet; they tend to stick near the place that they were designed to guard."
"So what do you think happened after you were shut down?"
"Oh I imagine someone escaped, maybe several people and ended up spreading the damn virus to other planets, causing more strife in an already volatile situation that the Xont were in, which caused a predictable domino effect. I told them to stick with technology."