By Joshua Vise – January 4, 2024

Published in Apocalyptales: Judgement Day by Wicked Shadow Press. Lulu: Paperback or EPUB

Also appearing in The Triumvirate: A Journal of Fantasy, Science Fiction, and Horror Vol. 6

As a historian, my primary role is to analyze data from a variety of sources in order to provide greater context to historical events. My doctoral advisor, Prof. Ryan Haas of Penn State, used to say that to be a historian is to commit oneself to “bringing to light our collective memory for all of humanity, not just for the specialists who read our technical papers”. It is a true calling, and one I took immense pride in when examining the forgotten minutia of our distant past.

In this regard, the present situation presents a historian like me with something of a conundrum. How does one “bring to light” a set of circumstances and experiences shared by all of humanity? How does one sift through the much publicized events of only a few years ago, events that were themselves well-documented, and many of which are ongoing? Who is the audience for such research? What could an individual like me possibly contribute in a situation such as this? Not knowing the answer, I nevertheless set out to produce a historical document of sorts, one outlining the events of the last few years as clearly and concisely as I could manage, with the hope that the answers to the above questions would reveal themselves by the end. The following document, imperfect as it may be, represents the result of that effort.

To the extent that I am able, I have tried to remove my own opinions and speculations from the narrative, a difficult task considering that I am as much a victim and survivor of this traumatic era of human existence.

Climate change has been an issue of concern for humanity dating back to the early 19th century, when forward thinking scientists such as Joseph Fourier, Eunice Newton Foote, and John Tyndall first noted how different man-made processes allowed for the retention of heat in the atmosphere. Throughout the twentieth century, models were proposed which predicted the different phenomena that would begin to arise as a result of extreme climatic change, predictions that failed to fully imagine the destruction that our societies began to experience in the opening decades of the twenty-first century.

By the year 2036, weather phenomena that had once been thought of as extreme became a yearly (or in some cases, seasonal) occurrence. Torrential rainfall, rapid temperature changes leading to stronger hurricanes and tornadoes, prolonged droughts, and fluctuations in sea and air currents each wreaked their particular form of havoc on humanity. Some cities, such as Miami and Dhaka, were completely inundated by the ocean, displacing millions of people. The American midwest and central Ukraine, once the great corn and wheat producing centers of the world, experienced repeated crop failures, resulting in food insecurity and starvation. Even areas once considered isolated and relatively immune to outside influence were affected; the entire world lamented the loss of Machu Picchu when it tumbled to the valley floor in a catastrophic landslide.

One particular effect that began as a nuisance only to metastasize into a catastrophe was the explosion in the mosquito population worldwide. As a result of a warming and increasingly wet earth, mosquitoes bred in every major waterway, their swarms numbering in the trillions, forming clouds dense enough that they could be tracked by radar. Mosquito-borne diseases proliferated rapidly among people and livestock worldwide, and medications to combat the effects of malaria and yellow fever could not be produced in great enough quantities to meet demand. More than the problems of a warming atmosphere or excessive rainfall, which were easier for people to ignore unless directly in the middle of a disastrous event, the constant barrage of biting insects stoked people’s exasperation. They decried the lack of action on this issue, and demanded a solution from those in power.

To combat this problem, governments around the world began investing huge amounts into agribusiness and bioengineering firms in order to develop an insecticide that could eliminate these pests once and for all. The most successful was Valle-Keppler Inc., a company based in the United States, whose product Anophemax held several distinct advantages over other, similar products. It was effective when applied at any stage in a mosquito’s life cycle, it was able to be introduced into water directly or sprayed as an aerosol, it was cheap and easy to produce, nonvolatile, and safe to distribute. Moreover, multiple rounds of independent testing revealed no adverse effects on humans or the ecosystem, with the exception of non-biting mosquito species. Anophemax was quickly approved, and manufacturing facilities were set up worldwide to aid in its swift distribution around the globe. By the end of 2036, every nation on earth had incorporated the chemical into its mosquito mitigation efforts.

Anophemax was a resounding success. In the first six months alone, worldwide mosquito populations were thought to have been halved, and several areas that had experienced massive population loss due to the pests began to be reclaimed. Significantly, the supercluster mosquito swarms over Louisiana (at one point the world’s largest, with an estimated 54 trillion mosquitoes and larvae) and the Nile delta (31 trillion) were reduced by almost 90% after repeated sprayings combined with the introduction of Amophemax to the water supply. It seemed as if the world could finally breathe a collective sigh of relief. However, this success was short-lived, and what took its place exceeded the bounds of any tragedy man was capable of imagining in its gruesomeness.

Approximately nine months after the worldwide adoption of Anophemax, a chilling incident occurred, the first of what would rapidly become a global phenomena. Over the course of the day on August 24th, 2037, twenty-seven residents of the small village of North Gattmann, Mississippi, were found deceased, each as a result of suicide. However, the deaths were not the result of some coordinated effort, such as the mass suicides perpetuated by Jim Jones or the Heaven’s Gate religious movement. Rather, each suicide was an individual effort, completely independent of the other deaths in the community. Most victims were found at their home or in their car, and there were no correlations between the deaths and any particular time of day or method of execution. In fact, the only commonality, aside from the fact that no note was left by any of the deceased, was the gruesomeness with which each person had decided to end their life. Bobby Robinson, 74, a longtime member of the community and woodworker by trade, had leaned forward into the blade of his circular saw, splitting his head in half to the top of his nasal bone before expiring. Another, Miss Emily Miller, the owner of a local nail salon, had used her nails to dig her hands into her own neck, attempting to rip out her trachea.

Given that the community of North Gattmann was the site of some of the first airborne tests of Anophemax (tests that were hidden from the community, and only divulged after subsequent incidents made disclosure an imperative), autopsies were performed by federal officials on all of the deceased save two (Alex Farias, who self-immolated, and Mark Benns, who was crushed beyond recognition in farming machinery). The preliminary results revealed nothing remarkable, while more conclusive data would take six weeks to process.

Less than a week later, Daniel Nelson, a nurse living in North Gattmann, cut open his right arm with a surgical scalpel. He was found unconscious but alive, and was admitted to a local hospital’s emergency room in serious but stable condition. Once regaining consciousness, Mr. Nelson broke a piece of hospital equipment and attempted to slice his right jugular, all while frantically screaming and cursing. He was restrained by hospital orderlies, who administered a sedative.

In light of the previous deaths, when reports of Mr. Nelson’s behavior reached higher-ups in government, he was taken by federal officers to a military hospital facility in nearby Jackson, Mississippi. Officials had planned to interview him once the sedatives wore off, but unfortunately, Mr. Nelson was able to succeed in ending his life by repeatedly smashing his head against the concrete floor of his holding room before investigators could arrive. Video footage obtained of the man in the minutes prior to his death revealed him engaged in an intense argument with some unseen (and therefore, presumed imaginary) character before freeing himself from his restraints and ending his life.

Reports of similar behaviors began to pour in from around the world. In each circumstance, an individual would become erratic, engaging in bellicose arguments, seemingly with themselves, until eventually the altercation would end in self-inflicted violence. In city after city, waves of these gruesome suicides wreaked havoc on entire communities. It struck people regardless of age, race, gender, or overall health, with the only defining factor being that areas more heavily exposed to Anophemax had dramatically increased incidence of these types of suicide. The fact that these tragic mass suicides usually began nine months after a population had been exposed to the chemical lent further evidence to the hypothesis, and production, distribution, and use of Anophemax immediately ceased.

Still, the self-slaughter continued, increasing in number in most regions of the world. The plague’s effects were sudden and rapid. Massive depopulation events occurred due to the combined effects of suicides and migration away from areas where Anophemax was heavily used. In the entire state of Alaska, not a single community south of the Arctic Circle survived. Bangkok’s population declined by 96.5% to below 500,000, a number not seen since the census of 1919. Simultaneously, other regions of the world that were less affected soon found their populations exploding, leading to all of the adverse conditions that accompany such uncontrolled growth. Reykjavík’s population increased fifteenfold in under two weeks. Social services were unable to deal with the surge in population, and the capital quickly became a hotbed of crime, disease, and homelessness. The Icelandic government was eventually forced to close its borders, but this did little to attenuate the problems within Reykjavík, problems which had firmly taken root by that time.

Given the behavior of most afflicted individuals prior to their violent ends, it was initially thought that the primary motivator towards death was an intense hallucination. Those who either survived their suicide attempt or were caught before carrying it out received large doses of anti-hallucinogenic medication in the hopes of reducing or eliminating their propensity to self-harm, but these efforts were completely unsuccessful, as was the use of other antibacterial and antiviral drugs. Physical restraint of a person was only effective for as long as it could be maintained, and the subject, once freed, would immediately attack themselves with redoubled violence. The only positive was that the illness, whatever it was, was not contagious. Workers tasked with caring for those in the early stages of the disease along with those assigned to clean up the aftermath of a suicide contracted the illness in rates proportional to others in their community.

It was at this time that the autopsies on the North Gattmann subjects were completed, and while the results couldn’t point to a specific mechanism causing this worldwide plague, they did at least indicate the pathology of the disease. Each body displayed the same set of anomalies. Firstly, vascular dilation in the area of the amygdala was present in all subjects, indicating extreme activity in this region of the brain at the time of death. Furthermore, there were signs of extreme vasoconstriction of the anterior cerebral arteries, resulting in the death of all major neural fibers connecting the right and left hemisphere of the brain. Each subject’s blood was analyzed, and while high levels of Anophemax were detected, they were substantially below administered levels of Anophemax that laboratory test subjects received prior to its approval. Further autopsies in different affected regions around the world confirmed identical findings in all afflicted persons.

The medical community frantically turned to the literature, and researchers poured over even the most obscure studies, looking for any evidence of conditions presenting similar symptoms. Frenzied as their reaction was, it paled in comparison to the response of the wider public. Conspiracy theorists hypothesized that the catalyst, still unknown, was a lab-created bioweapon, and the plague the result of a tragic accidental release. Others speculated that it was zoonotic in origin, passed on to humans through bats or some other as-yet-unidentified host. Amid the chaos, a plethora of shoddy machines and junk cures were offered to people desperate to save or to protect themselves and their loved ones.

As the months passed with no outward signs of this condition abating in either incidence or severity, even more radical ideas began to circulate through social media outlets. Extended solar flare activity had melted people’s brains. Anophemax had secretly awakened a parasite dormant since the last ice age. Harmonic resonances in the atmosphere were altering people’s beta wave activity. Tribalism reigned, and almost every distinct demographic became the target of baseless accusations at one time or another. The plague was the fault of blacks or whites, Jews or Muslims, rich or poor. It was the result of immigration, homosexuals, illegal drugs, or the decline in traditional values. It was a remnant of colonialism, or the product of globalization. It was punishment brought upon us by a vengeful god, or a meaningless happenstance that arose in an indifferent universe.

The cacophony of misinformation threatened to overwhelm the scientific community and destroy any attempt at meaningful diagnosis, until one man came upon what would eventually be the most important discovery in medical science.

Dr. Elias Aguilar, head of neuroscience at the Hospital das Clinicas da Universidade de Sao Paulo decided to base his medical investigation solely on the results of the Gattmann autopsies, thus eliminating to the greatest degree possible the interference of unfounded outside information. Through his knowledge of the workings of the human brain, combined with the evidence in the report, Dr. Aguilar proposed a grim hypothesis. He argued that the damage to the neural fibers linking the hemispheres of the brain effectively mimicked a corpus callosotomy, a medical procedure often used with severe epileptics in order to prevent uncontrolled electrical impulses from cascading across the brain, dramatically reducing the number and intensity of seizures. Once these nerves were severed, patients experienced “Split-Brain Syndrome”, a condition in which each hemisphere of the brain develops its own separate perception, conceptual ideas, and impulses to act. Moreover, it had been speculated that such a procedure could lead to the creation of separate conscious entities, each inhabiting one hemisphere of the once-connected brain.

Dr. Aguilar further proposed that this “split-brain” condition, combined with a hyperactive amygdala as evidenced in the Gattmann autopsies, resulted in the following outcome:

1. Because of the neural damage mimicking a callosotomy, each individual had effectively become two distinct individuals, albeit occupying one body.
2. Each “individual” would be able to control certain motoric functions of the body, such as the right brain’s ability to manipulate the left hand. Furthermore, each “individual” would be able to dominate certain functions, such as speech, to the exclusion of the other.
3. As a result of the hyperactive amygdala, both hemispheres (and therefore, both “individuals”) experienced extreme, uncontrollable feelings of aggression and territoriality.
4. A person afflicted with the above disorders would be able to identify the alternate consciousness within themselves by observing the manipulation of the limbs that the other controlled. These individuals would further perceive this consciousness as a separate entity, one that threatened their very existence.
5. Thus, the violence manifested towards themselves, appearing from the outside to be an act of self-harm, was actually an act of aggression towards this separate entity in an attempt to rid themselves of its presence.

Dr. Aguilar’s conclusions immediately attracted a lot of attention, but while the logical connections between his ideas matched the practical realities that the condition manifested in afflicted persons, the hypothesis still needed to withstand the scrutiny of direct testing. That test came in the form of a highly controversial procedure. Under the supervision of medical officials from around the world, Dr. Aguilar and his team performed a complete hemispherectomy, in which the entire right side of an afflicted person’s brain was removed. The patient selected for this procedure was one that had earlier attempted suicide, but had been restrained before doing serious bodily injury to himself. It was thought that this procedure, and the subsequent administration of mood stabilizers, would prove the doctor’s assertion.

The surgery was seen as a definitive and pivotal moment for mankind in its fight against the scourge of the plague, or at least its disastrous symptoms. Two weeks after the initial operation, the patient showed no proclivity to violence towards himself or others, nor were there signs of cognitive impairment beyond what was typically experienced in other documented cases of pre-plague hemispherectomies. Though the patient’s road to recovery would be a long one, requiring the relearning of many basic motoric skills, it was considered preferable to the alternative, and an acceptable outcome of the procedure.

Armed with the knowledge of the direct workings of the disease (though still with no definitive evidence of a cause), scientists could now begin working on a cure. While mood stabilizers such as risperidone, olanzapine, and lithium effectively addressed the aggressive impulses of a hyperactive amygdala, there was no preventative treatment available for the brain changes humanity was undergoing. Stem cell treatments to rebuild damaged nerve pathways invariably lead to seizures. Hemispherectomies, already an imperfect solution due to issues of scale, raised thorny ethical questions. Is it right to destroy a consciousness that isn’t displaying any threatening behavior? Could such a procedure ever be used in a preventative or elective sense? Who has access to this procedure? As the medical world debated these and other pressing issues, the suicides continued in places too poor, too remote, or considered too far beyond saving to warrant intervention.

Only one year after the North Gattmann suicides, and less than two after the introduction of Anophemax, “Acute Connective Neural Collapse” (or ACNC, as the medical community called the condition) or “Spray Brain” (as the condition was dubbed by the wider populace), was responsible for 840,000,000 deaths worldwide. The plague had severely depleted both skilled and unskilled labor, and with the dissolution of the workforce, the ability to gather or produce material resources was completely compromised. Nation after nation found itself unable to provide even the most basic of services. Nor could these governments seem to protect their people, either from the plague itself or from rampant crime perpetuated by a desperate or opportunistic citizenry.

The most prescient of those in power recognized this as an existential threat, and through a collaborative effort unknown in the course of human history, enough mood stabilizing medication was able to make it into the hands of every major community around the earth. Just when it seemed that the entire world would pass over the edge of the precipice and into the pit of chaos, this temporary fix allowed humanity to secure a handhold, as well as much needed time, and a vantage point from which to gather some perspective. Most that survived this initial culling of the human herd used this brief reprieve to mourn those that they had lost, as well as to try to reassemble what few intact pieces remained of their previous lives.

The medical community, on the other hand, dedicated itself to finding and eradicating the source of this catastrophic epidemic if such a thing were possible. One side effect of the worldwide affliction that actually worked in their favor was the abundance of bodies available, and every remaining facility not directly involved in caring for the living could now draw from a diverse collection of the dead for their research.

One conclusion that became evident early on was the exact cause of the plague. Anophemax was present in significant quantities in the brain tissues of the dead, as well as in the symptomatic living. Tests on living tissue showed that the chemical caused swift necrosis of the nerve fibers composing the corpus callosum, as well as the enlargement of the amygdala. But how could this be? After all, clinical trials had shown that Anophemax produced no adverse effects in humans, and the dosages given during these clinical trials far exceeded the amount discovered in the brains of the dead.

The answer, the true source of this causal sequence that had pitched human civilization into a hell of its own making, was nothing more than a simple methodological oversight.

Traditional insecticides simply kill the targeted pest. Their effectiveness generally comes at the cost of being incredibly toxic to the environment and dangerous even when handled properly. Given the scale of the original mosquito problem, such poisons were feared to be too detrimental to be able to be used. Anophemax, however, had been developed with just such a concern in mind. Rather than simply kill mosquitoes, the chemical acted as an enzyme inhibitor that effectively shut down a mosquito’s reproductive system. Both female and male mosquitoes exposed to Anophemax would be rendered sterile, and previously laid eggs became nonviable. Acting in this manner, Anophemax was never metabolized by a mosquito, and was instead excreted through the biting insect’s saliva after having destroyed the pest’s ability to reproduce. This meant that every time a mosquito bit a human, the person received a tiny injection of Anophemax.

One would think that such a small dose would have virtually no effect on a human. Indeed, even people subjected to dozens of mosquito bites on their body displayed no symptoms of ACNC. This was in line with the original clinical tests, in which people were injected with doses of Anophemax equivalent to receiving hundreds, if not thousands, of individual mosquito bites. However, as a large molecule, Anophemax was unable to pass through the blood-brain barrier, a feat it managed easily when a person was bitten by a mosquito anywhere on the head or face. A bite allowed the chemical to enter the capillaries directly, circumventing the barrier, and once there, it began to destroy neural pathways in much the same way it destroyed reproductive pathways in mosquitoes. Essentially, Anophemax never showed any effect on the brain when administered as an injection during trials simply because it never reached the brain. Ever since the beginning, the chemical contained the seed of our destruction, a seed that germinated because of our failure to imagine such a contingency.

Nor was this destruction limited to mankind alone. Nearly every species of terrestrial mammal on earth upon which mosquitoes feasted contracted ACNC.

Large predatory cats and dogs bit through their hind limbs and, no longer able to hunt for prey, spent their final days dragging their broken bodies to whatever small watering hole they could find. Lions were declared extinct in the wild in 2038, and the last captive member of its taxon expired in Zoo Antwerpen, Belgium, after having publicly mutilated itself. Large pods of hippos across the African continent submerged themselves and drowned, either unable or unwilling to surface. Primates were affected in much the same way as their human cousins, displaying erratic behavior before engaging in self-harm. Those animals not directly able to harm themselves nevertheless still showed behaviors commensurate with split-brain activity. Domestic cats seemed unable to control their legs, and would flop and summersault around, making them easy prey for any unaffected dogs. Overall estimates predict the extinction of roughly half of all placental mammals by the year 2100.

And what of future predictions for humans? As a historian, the best I can manage is to extrapolate the trends of the past into the foreseeable future, and the data is bleak. Deaths attributed directly to Anophemax never reached the frenzied heights of that first year, and the crumbling of most major world infrastructure means that reports are approximate at best, but the official (as if there are any major groups left to claim authority) numbers read as follows:

2038 – 840,172,700

2039 – 522,460,000

2040 – 322,560,000

2041 – 185,000,000

2042 – 98,000,000

2043 – 122,000,000

2044 – 63,200,000

2045 – 67,000,000

2046 – 66,900,000

2047 – 65,000,000

2048 – 62,200,000

For the past five years, deaths have remained relatively stable at roughly 65 million per year due to Anophemax. That’s all of the military and civilian casualties from World War II, condensed into a year, repeated each year, with no anticipated end in sight. Another unfortunate property of Anophemax is that since it is never metabolized, the same chemical can continually reenter the environment, infecting more mosquitoes, which in turn infect humans. This means that the cycle of deaths will only be broken when the brightest remaining individuals among us find a cure for ACNC or a way to remove Anophemax from the environment. Until then, we will continue to live in a world in which the richest among us schedule elective hemispherectomies for their infant children, while the poor are left to their own devices.

So, having reached the end of my report, I find myself still left with a pressing personal question; why write any of this down? I suppose that it is in my nature as a historian and a researcher to document things, and in any case, I don’t have any other skills to share with humanity. A once-common throughline in my profession was that those who don’t learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. As dispassionate as I try to be, I cannot help but now think of the hubris behind this statement when applied to the past few years. The past is not a separate entity, but one that is intricately wedded to our current circumstances. There is no way to escape the effects of the past, there is no normal to return to, nor is there a guarantee of a future. I am a historian forced to live in the present, and the present is this; when I finish writing, I will stand up from my desk, adjust the protective netting around my face, and step out onto my porch. From there, I will hear the ever-present buzz of the trillions of mosquitoes that remain.