Greenland

(after Mary Shelley)

 

I quitted Geneva, and my wanderings began. The blue Mediterranean (worse than Spanish flu). The wilds of Tartary and Russia (worse than smallpox). The vast wilds of South America (normal life beginning to break down). I (could become unstoppable) followed the rivers. It was there the population (being infected faster and faster) chiefly collected. They were dead, and I lived. Care was new, and agony unknown!

But this quickly

(cure is 25 percent complete)

gave way

(cure is 50 percent complete)

to despair.

I was about to (shuts land borders) sink (bans all flights) under (leading global cure effort) the accumulation of distress when I saw your vessel, hopes of succor and life. You took me on board when my vigor was exhausted (releasing pathogen into the air). You (infectious disease teams) took your passage in the same ship. I escaped, you knew not now. Your (cure research) plan was (expected to take a long time) unsettled.

During sleep alone (mutated and developed the Insomnia symptom) could you taste joy! Many hard and miserable hours must you—

Sorry. Little flowery there. I need to talk myself up when I’m afraid. Bravado’s free. So is travel, if you’re me. I love to travel! Never unpack! But this ticket was one way.

One way in, and no way out. I got here (closes all ports) just in time. My ship came in.

If things don’t turn around for me here, I don’t know what I’ll—

(leading global cure effort)

Sustained and inspirited by the hope of night.

Greenland. Flatland. One-dimensional. A great white expanse, all life fading, falling away. Barely anyone in the towns (dying faster than new people are being infected), no lamb or kid (bans movement of livestock), not a single flying thing (exterminates all birds) in the sky. No birdsong! Nothing. Not a creature (declares martial law) sets foot outside. I haven’t talked to anyone, anywhere (shuts down mobile networks) in such a long time.

Aren’t you lonely, everyone asks? No. No one. No one asks. All the mornings are silent. I am a monster, cut off from all the world.

Let me see that I excite the sympathy of some existing thing!

Better I quit the neighborhood of man. I’m (significantly harder to cure) better off without company. I seem to be (becoming scary) the introverted type. I know I can be (hard to control) a little moody sometimes, a little (randomly mutates rapidly) mercurial—but I should not be so desolate in this peopled earth! Who can I seize, and educate as my (infected more people than HIV) companion and friend?

Shall I respect man, when he (approves human experimentation) contemns me?

(research teams to infected countries)

You, out there. You. Pitiless as (prioritizes healthcare) you have been. You, who were there for my first breath, who (has infected its first human) first breathed me in. I’m sorry. I couldn’t accept, couldn’t believe that (medicine slowing infection) things were over between us, before they’d even started. I may have (irrational delusions and mental symptoms) overreacted, when you (distributes face masks) shut me out. I’m (unlikely to seek treatment or cooperate with others) not someone who takes rejection well. You knew that when you met me. You knew I was (hurting and killing people) alone, and (the beginning of something terrible) miserable. From you, only you, could I hope for succor, and you—

(will find it hard to rebuild civilization)

Tell me why I should pity you more than you pity me.

If I cannot inspire love, I will cause fear! I will work at your destruction, so that you curse the hour of—

The snows descend on my head. I see the print of my huge step on the white plain. I seek the everlasting ices of the north. My reign is (the ultimate infectious disease) not yet over!

(cure is 75 percent complete)

Do you dare destroy my hopes?

(cure is 95 percent complete)

I am alone. Miserably alone.

(it should never have gone ahead)

The print of my step, on the white plain. Trenchlike, cavernous (uses mass graves), swallowing hundreds, thousands, millions falling to my depths—that wonderful moment, when they’d turn back, gazing at me, that boiling light in their eyes as they realized there was nothing beneath their feet, and they all fell and fell and fell! But now, I see the bottom of the chasm. It rises up to meet me, a little higher every day, relentless floodwaters where I’ll fall, I’ll drown. The print of my step was cut sharp and deep over all the earth but now it fills in, softens, fades beneath the snows. The horrible cleansing snows. And there is nothing, not even in the hope of night, nothing I can do but watch.

I swear to you, I will quit the neighborhood of man! My evil passions will have fled!

I should’ve taken that left turn at Albuquerque.

(the cure is finished and is being deployed worldwide)

I don’t feel so good. Maybe I should go back inside, and lie—

—down. Right here in the snow, here where my step was once cut, sharp and deep, over all the earth. The night fades. (weak and used to hot temperatures) Immobile, I gaze up at the sky, at its boiling lights beneath blank and fading clouds. These bleak skies. Kinder to me than your fellow beings.

The print of my fingers on the white plain.

In my dying moments, I will not curse my maker.

(large numbers of people have died and the world is changed forever)

I can’t—

(your plague lost the game!)

(try again to unlock the next plague type)

Oh!

My creator—