Free Golgotha Run by Dave Stone Page B

Zarathustra processes had come from the “disaster” that had,
notoriously, struck the city of Des Moines a decade before—the nature and
origin of which had never been satisfactorily explained.
    The specific and targetted nature of what came to be known as the Rapture Bug
suggested that it had been actively
designed
, but no human agency had ever stepped forward to take responsibility for the effect.
    Besides, designed or not, the mechanisms of the Bug seemed far in advance of
any technology available on planet Earth. Speculations as to some
extraterrestrial—or even extradimensional—origin were endless and
ultimately fruitless. The simple fact remained that it was as if the Rapture
Bug had come from some entirely other world.
    Initial investigation of the effect suggested—erroneously—that the Bug
had operated by means of nanonetics. In fact, as it was later learned by a
process of back-engineering, it operated on the subatomic level: a quantum-level self-propagating construct that, in effect, rewrote the base code of the
world. It was designed to target itself upon, incorporate itself within and
radically alter the individual, living humanoid form.
    Its basic nature meant that when released, it proliferated something like a
virus but
instantly
—or at least at the speed of light—saturating its
target area in a matter of seconds. The vast majority of those caught within
its sphere of influence never even had the luxury of
waking up
to find their
world had changed.
    The initial effects had been quite impressive to say the least. The pores of
every human body opened like industrial vents and began pumping out a sludge
and spray of deconstructed pathogen-components and accumulated toxins.
    Foreign bodies like artificial hearts, hips or small items lodged in some
inextricable location as a child were physically
ejected,
often at
velocities of several thousand metres per second. There were cases, in
particularly crowded situations, of some largish hunk of matter being
fired
into someone else, ejected in its turn to hit some other body and the process
continuing on for up to an hour.
    Old scars and fresh wounds healed themselves in a matter of seconds. Calloused
tissue went, too, being the product, effectively, of cumulative
minor injury—with the result that fingertips and the soles of feet ended up as soft and
pink as those of a baby. The Rapture Bug would counter further damage to this
otherwise vulnerable new flesh, of course—though unfortunately without
suppressing the pain reflex.
    The question of biological organ transplants had been somewhat problematic, on
the basis that the Rapture Bug was, in the end, something of a misnomer. It
did not, as such, resurrect the dead; it merely transformed the living into
something effectively immortal and invulnerable.
    Hearts, livers, lungs and so forth with a dissimilar genetic coding from their
hosts were ejected and replaced, but being living humanoid matter in their own
right couldn’t die. The “homing” mechanisms of the attendent to the Bug meant
that they would gravitate together with the other such items transplanted from
the original donor. Piles of living offal, sitting there forlornly and without
the ability to regenerate further.
    The primary biological transformations that made sexual reproduction instantly
obsolete, among the good citizens of Des Moines, had occurred with the same
speed as the regeneration of original hearts and lungs and renal systems…
with the result that a lot of those actively engaged in copulation at the time
ended up being catapulted across the room. Pregnancies spontaneously aborted,
the reaction driving several thousand sudden mothers into the air to bury
their heads in any available ceiling.
    Fortunately, as coherent living humanoid matter, the offspring came under the
remit of the Bug and would survive to grow, just as those children whose
entrance into the world had been slightly less dramatic.
    Twins, though, were and are