The first attack was in 1999, during New Year's Eve in New York City. Right before midnight, from above one of the buildings in Times Square, heavy green gas (more like fog, some eyewitnesses would later say) engulfed the crowd. Before the world's billions of watching eyes, hundreds of thousands of people lost their humanity.
By the morning, nearly half a million donkeys were roaming the streets. Al-Qaeda claimed responsibility for the attacks, and the many of the first world nations went to war in Afghanistan. The start was rough, of course--gas masks are only so effective, after all, if they have leaks or are worn improperly. Meanwhile, as more attacks in major cities and reports of thwarted attacks were mentioned daily to the media, scientists worked tirelessly to find a cure. Unfortunately, the disease evolved, switching from a thick smoke to a thin gas to invisible to waterborne to communicable to transmitted through saliva.
In 2004 the United States government set up a major quarantine zone in the Ohio Valley. A second one was set up in the Rockies in early 2005. The rest of the lower 48 was deemed infected and was generally abandoned by state and national governments. Many people moved into these areas, but not all. In fact, some working town governments and local strongholds filled the power vaccum.
The only official government presence was a facility in Southern Alabama where scientists worked in secret. Here, the world's top scientists and disease experts discovered a few things about this strange threat:
1. This disease literally turned people into donkeys in body. They were unsure and unable to test if it changes them in mind as well, but determined that some form of mind change "most likely occurred."
2. The disease is very fast acting--usually taking between a few hours and a full day to completely run its course. How it changes the body, however, tends to depend on the person and the person's genetic code.
3. In some cases, the full effect of the disease does not occur. Sometimes, this is due to minor exposure. Occasionally, however, this seems to be due to some sort of genetic base immunity. Here, then, will lie a cure.
4. There is no full immunity, at least as far as observations are concerned.
After a massive hurricane in Fall 2005 that destroyed the facility and all the research inside, the major effort to find a cure was abandoned in favor of an immunization. Any human who had fallen victim to the transformative disease was officially declared dead. Other nations soon followed suit.
It is now 2007, and the threat of Pleasure Island Disease has generally passed. A new immunization has been declared, and there is talk about retaking back the rest of the nation as soon as the shot is widely available. People are just beginning to get their lives back together, and trying to find a sense of normalcy. But do they?
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