The world ended 13 years ago. Negligence, recklessness and cross-contamination led to the spread of wasting diseases to parasites, which adapted quickly to spread it by burrowing into a mammal's brain— any mammal's brain. Initial onset was fast, and came with mild flu-like symptoms. Parasite dormant in the frontal lobe, waiting. Enter stage 1. Affected began deteriorating. Some fast, some slow. Symptoms varied, but shared the same growth; what would start as memory problems would turn into poor coordination, would lead to dementia and behavioral changes, would lead to unusual disordered eating, aggression, and death. Four stages, two months to a year. They said it spreads through bodily fluids. Over half of the world population affected, on estimate. But how can anyone know for sure? What remains is scattered, fragmented. The wastes and the deep wastes are left abandoned, sugarcoated by those with power, made to not exist. The cities are bubbles where life goes on as before, and people think it's over— no more pandemic, no more disease. Billions of people alive still, and it does not need to be specified how many exactly. What remains is a graveyard. Automated processes dating back over a decade running as before, imitating an empty semblance of life. People long dead kept alive by their digital legacy, dead weight dragged along by a people stuck in declivity. Enter stage 5.
