The Varaha Crisis

What does humanity have permission to do to individual humans in order to ensure humanity survives?

**

Seven years ago, Ark: Varaha was home to more than four hundred thousand people. Only a fraction of those escaped The Closure.

No human has entered Varaha since. Nor has any human left.

We know not everyone left onboard was infected. We do not know how many survived the first month after the doors were sealed. We do not know how many survived the first year, nor do we know if anyone aboard is alive today.

What follows is not an attempt to answer these questions. It cannot. These are the accounts of people who were there. 

**

Terry Murphey

Ark: Varaha resident

Stockman at Redmans Pork Co. Redmans was one of the larger producers on Ark: Varaha. Before the outbreak, Redmans controlled 23% of Varaha’s commercial livestock population. 

Murphey evacuated with his family 37 days before The Closure.

*

The Ark had been overrun. There was some new disease spreading through the ship and we had no idea where it came from or how it started. Pretty sure it was the livestock. It had to be. The pigs, most likely. They were the ones showing symptoms. Cysts around the snouts, aggressive and nipping at each other. The eyes would turn cloudy, too. That’s when we started the culls. At first we treated it as a standard outbreak. Quarantined the husbandry decks and euthanised the infected stock. We were wrong.

Paul visited a clinic after one of the pigs bit him. Was a deep wound but he was fine. The boss got a call that Paul was going to have the rest of the day off. He didn’t come in the next day, but none of us thought anything of it. Just assumed he was having some time off. I would have. Hell, I’d have taken the rest of the week. It was two days later we heard Paul attacked his family.

Yeah.

I was one of the first off the boat, you know. Me, Mary and Penny. Got the hell off that ship first sign of trouble. Been sitting in Bellona’s quarantine quarters for years now. They say they need to monitor us. Something about prions but I don’t understand it all. But hearing what happened after we left, what Varaha’s like now… I’m happy we are here. 

We’re alive.

**

Melanie Wenz

Ark: Varaha resident

 History teacher, Morrow Secondary College. Now held in quarantine on Ark: Bellona with other Varaha refugees. Wenz evacuated Varaha nine days before The Closure.

*

At first it was called the Redman outbreak. After a while the other Arks came to call it the Varaha outbreak. These days everyone just calls it The Outbreak.

I almost didn’t make it out. I didn’t believe it at first. I ignored the rumours. Treated them as, well, rumours. It wasn’t until I saw one of them that I believed. It’s not like those old zombie movies you hear about. These people aren’t the walking dead or mindless killers. You can see it in their eyes. They understand, they listen, they feel, they remember. I swear they can still think. Not just enough to survive. Actually think. They open doors, use tools. Hell, I heard a story of one driving a forklift. Apparently he looked like a drunk driver, but he could still operate it. I didn’t see that, I did see one using the lifts though. I know that doesn’t sound like much, pressing a button, but they knew which deck they wanted to go to. That’s why I support The Closure. Who knows what else they could have done.

The eerie part is their attention. They fixate on the nearest person not infected. Near the beginning, I had a student that was infected. She unnerved me. All of us, really. She would stare at whoever sat next to her, but still ‘do the work’, if you can call it that. She’d continue writing even though half the time it was illegible and gibberish, but now and then her text made sense. The sentence that sticks with me, even today, was “I hurt. I pain. I hungry. I scared.” This was a history class, you must understand. We were studying the American constitutional crisis of 2030 and what it did to US influence afterwards. None of what she wrote had anything to do with the lesson. Normally she was one of my best students. Well behaved, attentive, always participated. She might not have been a straight A student, but she was clever. Then one day she changed. At first I thought she had a crush, went a little boy crazy and didn’t learn the art of being subtle. She kept staring at the boy next to her. After a couple days he started sitting in a different seat, but she was no longer staring at him. Now she started staring at the girl on the other side. Weird right? The next day was that history lesson incident I told you about just now, and two days later she was home sick and never came back to school.

I still have no idea what happened to her exactly. I mean, I have a general idea. We all know what happened to the infected. But her specifically? I don’t know.

**

Matthias Chen

 Ark: Varaha resident

Paramedic, Zeitgeist Public Hospital, Harrisville Residential District. Now held in quarantine on Ark: Bellona with other Varaha evacuees. Chen evacuated Varaha three days before The Closure. 

*

We responded to an incident in the Harrisville Residential District on ring three. Were told it was a domestic violence case, but when we got there… it…

(I had to prompt Matthias to continue. He had drifted off, lost in thought).

Yeah. It wasn’t what we were expecting. Normally it’d be the wife beaten up. That’s what you’re preparing yourself for on the way there. But this was nothing like that. She’d — she chewed him up. His nose was gone, scratches all over him. He wasn’t breathing. He’d drowned in his own blood, and she, she’d had it worse. Weird thing to say considering he was the bastard that died I know. But her injuries were something else. I don’t know what happened exactly, how it happened, but he must’ve hit her pretty hard, hard enough that her jaw was hanging sideways. She couldn’t speak, couldn’t move it. But she was trying, and when we came in she’d just stare at us. The police had her tied to a chair, apparently she was on top of the husband scratching and trying to bite him while he was unconscious, but with her fucked up jaw she couldn’t. 

But she just stared at us, man. Whichever of us was closest. Her eyes, her eyes looked terrified. You know that look someone gets when they’re scared shitless? That was her. But she didn’t act scared shitless. She acted fucking possessed. I’ve never seen anything like it. It fucked with me. Everything except her eyes said she wanted to tear us apart. 

I’d been a paramedic there for fifteen years, and that’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen. Thank Christ I’m on Bellona now. 

**

I feel it is important to disclose that these accounts do not appear in the order that the events occurred, nor in the order I recorded them. I refuse to say they have been placed randomly, although some may argue otherwise. I have ordered them where I believe they belong. That may not make sense to everyone. It doesn’t need to. What matters is that these accounts were recorded. That they exist. When an account appears in this record is considerably less important than the fact that someone survived to give it. There were over four hundred thousand residents onboard Ark: Varaha. And of those, only an estimated forty thousand successfully fled. The exact number has never been confirmed, and most likely will never be. What can be confirmed is that after the closure, not everyone in Varaha was infected. To this day, no one has reentered Varaha. It remains quarantined and is now one of the most heavily regulated vessels in the Ark program. As a result, no one can confirm whether survivors remain aboard nearly seven years later. 

**

Dianna Alvarez

Ark Athena resident

Former Director of Quarantine Operations and Incident Commander for the Varaha Crisis. Led the quarantine and recovery operations and authorised the final closure of Ark: Varaha. Awarded the Fleet Distinguished Service Medal for her actions during the crisis. At the time of the crisis she was a resident of Ark: Bellona, now she is retired and residing aboard Ark: Athena. 

*

Bellona is often criticised for the closure. I understand why. We all do. But people forget what the alternative was. Or they refuse to think about it. What is the greater evil? If I’d opened the door, I might’ve saved another two thousand people, sure. Let’s say ten thousand. Give their argument every advantage. But if even only one of them were infected, I might have destroyed humanity. People don’t see it this way. They see it as inhumane. They look at us as if we are heartless, as if we don’t value human life. I was the one who authorised it. My name is on the order. I was the one who locked those gates. I was the one who condemned more than three hundred thousand people. I’m the one whose photos Varaharans spit on and burn. I’m the devil in their story. I’m the woman who closed the door. 

[The remainder of Alvarez’s account concerning the initial Bellona quarantine procedures has been omitted until final approval is given for its inclusion in the entire unabridged journal]

**

I must also add that this record is not intended to be exhaustive. A complete history of the Varaha Outbreak is currently being assembled and will include the unabridged testimony of survivors, responders, officials and others involved. 

**

Dr Marcus Okafor

Ark: Bellona Resident

Commissioner-General of fleet biosecurity. Former epidemiologist specialising in closed-environment disease transmission. Appointed Commissioner-General two years after The Closure. 

*

I don’t think people fully appreciate or understand the function of Bellona. They see us as a bunch of self-important pricks controlling imports and exports, choosing who eats, who drinks, who gets the fancy new TVs. And ever since Varaha, they think we have the authority to choose who dies. 

That was never the purpose of Ark: Bellona. Yes it holds significant power, yes we can quarantine water imports from Ark: Thalassa going to Ark: Kodama if we suspect it’s contaminated. But it’s vital. This isn’t Earth. This isn’t a planet. We are trapped inside floating metal tubes in space. What happens if the blight spreads on the Shennong Ark? What if we transport infected wheat onto another, then another, then another? What happens if we aren’t watching? If we don’t quarantine? If contaminated grain slips through because nobody catches it? We don’t have a planet anymore. People need to face facts. If we lose our agricultural arks, what then? We can’t convert the other arks to mass crop production, at least not in a reasonable timeframe. Yes every Ark can sustain itself in an emergency. That’s not the same as sustaining its population indefinitely. Three months to critical shortages. That is the conservative estimate. We need the specialised industrial arks. That was the point of the program. We can’t move our farms to another untouched landmass. At least not for another, what? Three thousand years, if everything goes well. 

Put this in your book so the public can fucking understand it.

Your freedoms do not outweigh the survival of the species, and when it comes to protecting the species Bellona is our most important asset. It’s fleet-wide biosecurity. That was its purpose when it was built four hundred years ago. It was one of the last arks built before the Great Evacuation. It’s pest control, to put it simply. Why do you think rats don’t infest the livestock arks? Why do you think influenza has all but been eradicated? How do they think we achieved that? Because we have an ark of over fifty thousand specialist germaphobes? Sure it’s part of the reason. But those mandatory monthly health checkups have a role too. And quarantining aboard Bellona isn’t the end of the fucking world. That quarantine ring is basically a publicly funded resort these days. People need to start fucking appreciating the reality we live in. 

It’s time to accept that the Varaha Outbreak is goddamn proof that the Bellona Ark is necessary. 

**

Rachel Adeyami

Ark: Varaha resident

Store clerk at PSO Grocery. Evacuated Varaha with her son Ben 13 days before The Closure. Her husband Nigel and daughter Naomi remain on board. Their status is unknown.

*

I was trying to get my family off Varaha. Ben, my youngest, was let through but Naomi was pushed aside. She had a fever, they said. She was twelve. Kids get fevers. They wouldn’t let my husband, Nigel, through either. They wouldn’t listen. Those Bellona guards. They didn’t care. Nigel told me to go. He told me to take Ben and go. He said he’d take care of Naomi. 

[Rachel became overwhelmed here and requested a break. We resumed an hour later].

I haven’t seen them since that day. I haven’t heard anything. Don’t they have cameras? Don’t they have cameras? Can’t they look? They tell us freedom is the price to pay for security. They say that to justify spying on us everywhere we go. Where are those cameras now?

**

This was only an introduction to the Varaha Crisis. The reality of the situation is that nobody knows what happens next. We still do not fully understand what happened in the beginning. The Varaha refugees have been confined to communal quarantine on Ark: Bellona’s third ring, under constant surveillance. The refugees are subject to weekly medical examinations: blood draws, tissue samples, neurological testing and cognitive assessments. The prevailing theory is a form of delayed prion disease, but I dare not elaborate on this for I am not an expert in the field. The Closure is still one of the most fiercely debated topics in the Arks, with the Varaharan refugees and the Humanists calling it modern genocide, and Bellonians and the Continuists claiming it was a necessary evil.

What we must accept as truth is that it has been seven years since the Varaha Crisis and still no date has been set for their release. As it currently stands, the former escapees of Ark: Varaha may never truly escape Ark: Varaha.