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Headwaters of the Flood
Posted By: Opie301<gtopie301@hotmail.com>
Date: 15 March 2003, 6:40 PM
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What follows is my view on how the Flood might have begun had they evolved naturally. While such bits of writing normally fall under the purview of the Halo Story page, i felt that there were enough personal touches (as well as being really freaking long) in this account that it also qualified as fiction. So I decided to submit it to the HBO Fan Fic section. I hope you enjoy it.
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On planet Fodder lived a race of beings known as 'Hosts'. The Hosts lived happy little lives on their happy little planet. They were a society in the midst of on an era of exploration and invention. Host cultures could be found on eight of the nine of Fodder's continents.
Thought linked by wind and tide to the rest of the planet, the ninth continent was isolated by vast expanses of ocean. No sentient species lived on this ninth continent, Costa Nueve, but it was home to a diverse and balanced ecosystem. The indigenous organisms, all unique to this landmass, would appear to your average Host to be anywhere from strangely familiar to completely bizarre.
One such creature, both the most bizarre and the most dominant on Costa Nueve, was a parasitic creature called the Trickle. The Trickle, in it's purest form, was nothing more than a spore that, when it came into contact with animals of sufficient size, could infect and assume control of the nervous system of the creatures.
The Trickle existed in colonies, and, as such, altered the infected creatures to suit the needs of the colony, usually decided by the queen. If a new drone or warrior were needed, then an infected creature would be changed to conform with this need. And so the colonies were maintained.
While the Trickle may have been a heinous and virulent species, a balanced ecosystem would not allow such a dominant creature to evolve without creating some checks into the system. Just about every creature in this isolated area had developed some sort of defensive strategy for dealing with the Trickle, with varying degrees of success. The most basic strategy was simply running, very fast, in the opposite direction of Trickle drones. Of course defenses of a more intriguing nature also developed in the food-chain.
One animal secreted a pheromone that neutralized Trickle spores. Another creature could fire a toxin that would disrupt the link between the Trickle infection and the nervous system of the infected creature. At worst this would give the prey a chance to escape, at best it would destroy the Trickle drone. Another species had developed a very dense exoskeleton along with a kind of natural respiratory filter through which the Trickle could not penetrate. And there were other example of natural defenses throughout the Costa Nueve environment.
The simple truth was that every animal on Costa Nueve had developed some method of dealing with the Trickle threat. That all changed, of course, one day when a new organism, an organism that had never encountered the Trickle, was introduced to this ecosystem. The Hosts had arrived.
First were the explorers. They arrived, first shocked to find such a large landmass so far from their homes, then amazed at all the new creatures that called this place home. Shortly after the explorers came the settlers. With the population constantly growing, the Hosts were more than happy to expand to this new wonderful world. As time passed they spread all the way across the continent, discovering new species all along the way, but always assuming they, Hosts, were still the dominant species on the land. And they were right...for a time.
Initially, the Hosts were immune to infection from the Trickle. Their biology proved to be too different from anything with which the Trickle had come into contact. But the Trickle were patient and single-minded and spent their time learning about this new threat. While the Hosts were developing new technologies such as long-distance communications, atmospheric flight, and mechanical locomotion, the Trickle was hard at work enabling its spores to infect the Hosts.
One day, news began to flow back to the mother nations of unexplained deaths on the edges of the Costa Nueve wilderness. Then came news of individuals being horribly disfigured and killed by some unknown infection. Next came news of people becoming feverish and ill before going mad and disappearing into the wilderness. No one linked these seemingly separate 'epidemics' to one another...nor to the Trickle. Finally, news just stopped coming, as all communication with Costa Nueve ceased, and no more ships arrived from that particular part of the world. Long-range reconnaissance by a few of the flyers seemed to indicate that all the settlements were abandoned, though there did seem to be Host activity in the wilderness.
An expedition was prepared and sent to Costa Nueve. It did not return. Before a second expedition could be mounted, Trickle infection exploded on the seventh and eighth continents. The Hosts finally understood. What had been a bright time for them, had suddenly turned dark. What had been a time of evolution, discovery, and even exploration into the space outside Fodder's atmosphere had turned into a bloody fight for survival.
The Trickle infection was upon the Hosts and they, unlike the indigenous creatures of Costa Nueve, had no strategy for fighting the Trickle. Strict quarantines slowed the Trickle advances, but the Hosts inevitably lost ground. Scientists dropped all other efforts and focused on one of two studies...developing an effective means to combat the Trickle (other than fire-bombing whole settlements, entire cities) or creating a vast colony ship to take the remaining uninfected Hosts from Fodder, leaving the threat of the Trickle behind forever.
Continents fell, one after another. Survivors, and they were few, reported seeing camps or farms into which living, uninfected Hosts were kept. They could not speculate on the nefarious purposes behind such camps. But others could, and the outlook was not very happy.
Finally, with free, uninfected Hosts huddled miserably onto one continent, the work on the colony ship was completed. The exodus could begin. The Hosts were herded in, those who still retained personal possessions were forced to leave these things behind. It didn't matter, for it appeared that salvation was at hand. But appearance can be deceiving.
The last continent fell, and the Trickle flowed across...unstoppable. The Host civilization was lost. There would be no exodus, at least not for them. The Trickle now had a means to travers the stars and the knowledge to build more.
Eventually the Trickle abandoned Fodder in several colony ships. They brought with them all the remaining Hosts and anything needed to maintain the colonies. As the cold passage of time marched on, the Trickle, expanding like a Flood across the galaxy, dreamed of finding new planets and new creatures on which to feed. Ultimately, one colony ship came into contact with just such a world...a world colonized by an advanced race, a race that would be called the Forerunner by those who came later.
As the Flood expanded outward, they left behind a world bereft of meaningful life. Bereft of meaningful life on all the continents except one, where the indigenous creatures had defenses that had always been effective against this virulent species.
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