Reanimated

[Nexaduro]

March 4th, of the year 562 AE

Welcome, friend, to the afterlife.

 

The world is dead. Endgame. Ragnarok. The Apocalypse. Call it what you wish, it doesn't change the reality.

Mankind is dead as well. Not much of a surprise there. The only surprise is that we hadn't already killed ourselves.

Well, that, and the fact that we kept on killing.

 

It started with a cough. Nothing serious, nor alarming. Nothing to ask the doctors about. Some did of course, but were dismissed with a wave of the hand and perhaps a few coughdrops.

Of course, coughs beget coughs. Soon, the air was filled with airborne contagion and the sound of the masses clearing their lungs.

Just as people began to worry, the coughing stopped. And not just the coughing. The sneezing stopped as well, as did the fevers, the migraines, the cancers. Death. For a time, mankind was blessed. We were clean.

Many believed that this was the prelude to the Judgement Day. They were called Christians, back then. There were others as well, hundreds of religions with their hundreds of followers, believing The End was near, that this was the time to repent. They were right on the first count, and perhaps the second as well. But the end wasn't what they had hoped for, what they had thought it would be.

Suddenly, a host of symptoms, some variations of previously existing conditions and some entirely new, seemed to afflict all human life on Earth. We fell into comas, our every muscle spasmed and failed, and we bled from every pore. Within days, our bodies were dead. But not out minds. Never our minds.

As we recovered from the shock of our deaths, we found ourselves drifting, floating through the stars, all together. We could sense the minds and thoughts of our fellows, and permeating this bond was a consciousness greater than the sum of those billions of great minds that used to be human. It explained to us what had happened on those last, fateful days. It was the cause, it was every cause. The cause of the disease, the cause of death, the cause of human life itself. And it gave us the greatest gift and greatest curse ever bestowed upon humankind. Those who had lived in the days of The End would now never die, whatever harm our physical forms endured. Our hosts may die, but not our minds. Never our minds.

For millennia we drifted betwixt the stars, reveling in peace and worship of our newfound deity, billions of minds linked as one. A few went mad, but those were the warriors, it was not unexpected that their spirits would wither without their identity. However, our peace did not last, as we were finally, suddenly, ripped out of the void and into bodies. Hideous, mortal, physical beings once more. Worse, we were corpses.

Why this happened, we do not know, though that does not keep us from asking ourselves; why? Why did our God abandon us on this horrible, warring world? Why, and how, did these horrid beings of flesh create a way to bind our spirits into their own dead, and the dead of their enemies? And finally the question that destroyed the minds of the peaceful and brought the warriors back to sanity, why were we being made to kill again?

 

I probably won't go anywhere with this, though I thought it was an interesting piece of writing. When I changed the concept of my game, I didn't want to just get rid of this, so I moved it here!

I hope you appreciate it. :smile:

[Sy_Accursed]

As a piece of writing thats the over descriptive setup you delete in the later drafts.

 

Its well written and all but as a story start it tells you everything, so it's just like well I know exactly what happened no need to read it. Its a common thing for new writers to do, heck even good writers do it they jsut knw to delete it, as it is better to jsut chuck a reader in at the deep end then slowly reveal slithers of info as things go along. Instead of going this is where we are, this is how we got here, this is who the people are, this is why we are telling you the story right now heres the story. You should go heres a story and then along the way unveil who what when where why etc.

[Nexaduro]

As a piece of writing thats the over descriptive setup you delete in the later drafts.

 

Its well written and all but as a story start it tells you everything, so it's just like well I know exactly what happened no need to read it. Its a common thing for new writers to do, heck even good writers do it they jsut knw to delete it, as it is better to jsut chuck a reader in at the deep end then slowly reveal slithers of info as things go along. Instead of going this is where we are, this is how we got here, this is who the people are, this is why we are telling you the story right now heres the story. You should go heres a story and then along the way unveil who what when where why etc.

As I said, short background to an RPG. Again, thanks for the critique though.

[Earth_Poet]

I don't think anybody has said "betwixt" with a serious face in 300 years. Seriously, I can't even say it out loud without cracking a smile.

 

Other than that it read just as you described it: background information to what could've been a decent story. It's a shame you stopped here.