Epidemia

    "Well, Doc, is it major?"
    The doctor scanned over each of the couple alternately giving way to an awkward silence.
    The couple's faces turned a shade sadder than before and they turned towards each other, looking for a shred of hope.  The man grasped his wife's hand for support.
    All three were startled by the shrill cry that suddenly erupted from the baby carriage beside the woman.  She tended to her son's needs as all three calmed back down.  The man scooted his seat closer to his wife's and laid his arm across her shoulder.  He forced a hopeful smile at her for comfort before he shot a deadening glare back at the doctor across the desk.  "Are you going to answer us or..."
    "I don't know," interrupted the doctor hurriedly.  "We just don't know.  Nobody does.  This is the first time we've seen this virus ever- anywhere.  We don't know how long you've had it..."
    Tears began swelling up in the couples' eyes and their child burst into another sob.  "What DO you know?" yelled the husband, standing up and pointing his finger an inch away from the bridge of the other man's nose.  He quickly lowered his arm again, gaining control of his composure.
    "We've done a few tests," the doctor held the emotion out of his tone.  It was just another day in medical work to him.  "It has been transferred to your son, and both of you have it.  All three of you have it- and the fourth member of your family will have it.  All of your offspring will have it.  It began in one of you, but it has since spread to your spouse, and now to your children through heredity."
    "But what IS it?" questioned the husband again, lowering his tone slightly to ensure his anger was audible.
    "That's what I've been saying, we DON'T know!"  The doctor stood to match the husband's intimidation.  "There is only one thing we know for sure.  That is, you'll experience quite a bit of deja vu."
    "What is that supposed to mean?" curiosity creeping into the angered husband's voice."
    "The virus has affected your reproductive system.  All we know is that this virus is a work horse.  It attacks your reproductive cells and defaults each and every cell to an identical, uniform twenty-three chromosome make-up.  In essence, each of your children will be completely identical."  The doctor paused.
    The husband, not fully grasping the concept, asked calmly, "Is that all?  Are we going to die?"
    The doctor chuckled.  "Of course you're going to die!  Everybody dies.  It's a fact of life.  As for the effect of the virus, no, it won't kill you.  You can live life perfectly normally otherwise.  As long as you don't mind having identical children."
    An unorthodox smile spread across the parents' mouths in unison.  They were not in harm's way.  The wife stood to join her husband.  They thanked the doctor and grabbed the baby carriage.  They began out the door expecting to lead a completely normal life- the one they had always dreamed of having together.

    Every virus serves its own purpose.  It uses its parasitic qualities to survive itself and bring about the demise of its host.  Usually, a virus affects a single host; and whether or not it's cured or not shows the success of the virus.  Usually, a virus infests for its own gain and the effects end with the end of the life of either the host or the virus itself.  The problem with most's survival is that they kill off their host before it has multiplied itself adequately for the continuation of more than one viral generation.  But a virus' plan is not always known.  What about a virus that does practically nothing but coexist with its host while it does prepare life for its own offspring?  What is its plan?  It is in fact no normal virus.  It is quite unusual.  The virus is so harmless, so it just passes away from human recognition.  The small consequence of bearing identical children just isn't worth the loss of time in finding the virus and worrying about it.  So, as the human race existed and multiplied around the globe, there were also the ones that control the population swell by doing away with themselves by their own utter stupidity.  The identicals were odd at first, but they became accepted by the other people.  There were many people with identical qualities.  Hereditary intelligence shown above the personality differences- each person was raised in a different manner, accounting for a still varied set of personalities, but net intelligence and comprehensive ability began to show distinct patterns and ranks.

    Two millennia of the virus' rise and movement into relative obscurity finally revealed the virus' objective, but the people's ignorance of the virus kept any countermeasures from being implemented.  Already, the influx of people with like minds lacking variety threw a wrench in the complex system of technological advances.  Little change in two thousand years, but nobody really noticed.  Everybody was getting by of their own accord living in attempted harmony with all others.  The problem resided in overriding a single law of nature.
    Nature has its own method of population control that we favor to call "natural selection."  In the human race, the fact of the law relies in the common sense of every individual.  The idiots that drink and drive get themselves wiped off the planet by their own stupidity at someone else's expense.  The idiots that smoke to infest their body with so many toxins from the cigarettes they inhale, with no consideration to surrounding people.  All the idiots with a zealous desire for extreme risks with no thought of precaution.  Nature usually allows them all, and more of the likes, to dispose of themselves of their own accord.
    The virus, though, spawns many of the same individual.  Therefore, where one idiotic individual does succeed in removing himself from the human gene pool, there is yet another in his stead.  The lack of sense, in two thousand years has grown out of hand- into its own nation.
    Likewise, the people with a formidable amount of intelligence had become segregated from everybody else.  A gap had grown between those with intelligence and those lacking sense.  Over two thousand years of the virus' breeding, the growing gap was an issue.  The gap had usually been viewed as a conflict of ability, but now it has risen to a point of astronomical social unrest.

    One might chance to say that there wasn't just a difference in "brain power," so to speak.  It is the way with which their intelligence is used.  The deficit of their utility of knowledge accounted for the stupid peoples' "stupidity."  But it's not stupidity of the normal sense.  They have a reasonable amount of so-called "intelligence-"  the lack they had was solely in what is commonly referred to as "common sense."  They apply their knowledge to nothing they do, and still flourish because each person was multiple.  The traits were common throughout this race, they assumed that they were capable of anything that needed doing.  These people called themselves the Civil Republics of All Studious Subjects (CRASS).
    Now, the faction of opposing force had completely removed themselves from the CRASS.  Everybody was involved in one of the 2 factions, and any association between the two was bound to erupt in violence.  Even so, this faction of opposing force was alike among themselves, as the virus was still an important part of the group's being.  These, who called themselves the Society Of Logically Ordered Mankind Achieving Normality (SOLOMAN), had the common sense to "get by," but they lacked any desire to learn, to advance.
    By this point, everybody had gone by personal desire and instinct and moved away from those they couldn't stand, resulting in a worldwide segregation of continents.  One hemisphere harbored the CRASS and the SOLOMAN called the other hemisphere home.

    Now, things moved perfectly normal for these societies being separate.  They kept out of each others' business, so violence was avoided- for a time.  But there comes a time in ever generation when an oddball is born- a mutation of the flowing gene pool. 

    James was an adult now- an adult on his way to becoming a leader of the CRASS.  He often wondered how exactly he managed on getting on the fast track to leadership, but throughout his adolescent years, it became apparent.  His views were different.  Not painstakingly, harmfully different.  Just altered enough that he came across as interesting, non-threatening person to the others of the CRASS.  What nobody knew about him was why he was different from anybody else.  There was a slight genetic mishap that allowed him a special portion of common sense.  It wasn't a lot- just enough to let him see a panoramic view of the proverbial "big picture."  Mind you, he still missed out on many important concepts.

    It was late in the 237th year after the formation of both factions and James' 24th trip around the sun.  His common sense was leading him to unknown grounds- boredom.  He noticed the likeness of everybody around him, and could even detect his own similitude.  He was stricken with the desire for variety.  He had worked up the money to buy a plane so he could quench his thirst for difference.  Since anything available could only provide transportation within the like realm he was stuck, he used books and knowledge to increase the range of his transport to freedom.  After months of tweaking the design, he had perfected it as a means of transcontinental flight as the technology had not been needed in so long.  He was finally off to see a new world.

    After 12 hours of flight, James had become quite exhausted, but his destination was finally reached.  He unloaded himself off the plane, and stepped out onto the unfamiliar territory.  A few people had seen the visitor from over the ocean.  A handful of them came to check on who this being was that came from far away.  They called out to James.  He turned around and was completely horrified by what he saw.  The people looked just like those from the CRASS, so he assumed his plan was a failure.  The unknown people came over to James and invited him to dinner.  He accepted.

    Over the dinner, James learned something important.  He was, in fact, in a different land.  A land the natives called SOLOMAN.  His first tip-off was that their opinions were completely different from his, at which he reveled in his mission's success.  And James accepted an offer to stay with this family for some time while they learned about each other.

    It only took days before their ancient instincts of bickering between the SOLOMAN and CRASS showed through their hereditary traits.  James grew to loathe the family that took him in, and likewise the family loathed him.  It was only a matter of weeks before he was booted out of the house to live on his own in this foreign land.  The family gossiped and word got around about the foreigner, and everybody he came to shunned him, though they had no clue exactly where he was from- CRASS had descended out of the peoples' knowledge.

    James just sat by a lonesome tree out in the woods, starving, when an older gentleman came up to him. James eyed the man suspiciously.  After they had a thorough stare-down, the older man began his interrogation.
    "Where are you from?"
    "A place called the CRASS.  You know about that place?"
    "Nope, but I've hea'd stories.  I thought they was just stories my great-grandpa told me jus' ta give me nightmares.  I woulda' neva' thought it was true."
    Upon his final words, the older man drew a pistol and shot James.  The sound of the pistol was, indeed, frightening to all that were around.  The tremendous "BANG!" struck a nerve in the old man so that his frail, white-headed body crumpled down onto James'.  There also was a kid, the son of the governor, who fell out of the tree on which James had been leaning because of the gunshot.  He had heard the entire conversation and had fallen on top of the two lifeless bodies that cushioned his fall.  He ran off to tell his dad exactly the events that had happened.

    The governor researched the archives and found the whereabouts of the CRASS and what the entire meaning of the incident was.  He sent on a transmission to the leader of SOLOMAN telling of the CRASS' waging war on them and how they had spotted a spy in their town.  An immediate red alert was called throughout the continents on which SOLOMAN was spanned.

    SOLOMAN was the first to strike.  With a preemptive advantage, they sent air strikes to destroy major cities, followed by a navy that carried many military personnel to invade the CRASS territory.  Being caught unawares, the leaders of the CRASS held a quick meeting to decide what countermeasures should be taken.  The domestic military was transported within hours to the areas of assault and began to quell the SOLOMAN threat, but to end any future threat, they decided to employ their most powerful weapons on the SOLOMAN homeland.  They launched their entire arsenal of ICBM's, all equipped with some form of mass destruction ranging from nuclear warheads and biological and chemical agents to MIRV's and MARV's equipped with other weapon-grade materials meant to destroy billions of people.  Upon the order of the launch of the last missile, an engineer rushed into the CRASS leaders' briefing area.  "Stop!  That many explosives will destroy us all!"  The leaders all slapped their foreheads for not thinking about that.

    Eight hours later, the SOLOMAN had been wiped off the planet, and in just another sixteen hours, the CRASS was experiencing the final effects of their assault- their own demise by the repercussions of their own weaponry.

    For that time, Earth was a desolate planet.  Nothing lived- it was a barren rock out in the solar system.

    Arctic winds blasted at the protective suits two men were wearing.  They had no clue what time it was, what the year was, or anything.  They only knew that they were alive and different.  They had left their colony on a reconnaissance mission to report about the conditions of the Earth's surface.  "Wow, our ancestors were right!" said one of the men to the other.
    "No, they weren't just "right," they knew."
    "But how?"
    "I don't have a clue.  They must've been real smart or something.  Are you done collecting the data yet?"
    "Alright, there we go.  Yeah, just finished.  Let's head home.  I can't wait to get into that nice warm cave of mine..."

    Their colony was created long long ago, right when the first outbreak of the virus erupted.  A small band of unaffected people ran away to hide in some caves to escape the foreseen effects of the virus.  They had named their colony the WISE.

-Keith Smithson-

Author's notes: The story is quite a bit confusing.  If you think about it a long time, you'll probably get to understanding what all's going on.  If you don't understand any part of it, I could email you an explanation... but there are so many confusing aspects to it that I couldn't just go ahead and think of them all right now and label them all.  Enjoy!