© 2007 MN
THE HANCALAE TRAGEDY
Like most other countries, mass panic ensued in Marcusburg following news that the President of Congressional Parliament had resigned. As per a rarely known clause in the Congressional Parliament constitution, the Speaker – a resident of Marcusburg – assumed control of the institution and immediately issued a moratorium on movement between countries. To restore a semblance of normalcy, the Speaker unexpectedly proclaimed that international elections would go on as planned on January 1, 2006.

However, it remains unknown how much of these announcements were received by those outside Marcusburg. Although signals were sent out from the Command Bunker, it was widely speculated that satellite communication had largely broken down. Furthermore, few people remained on the surface and even fewer still continued to operate megaphones located atop large vans once controlled by Congressional Parliament.

A majority of the millions who had taken refuge in the sprawling underground subway network resented the Speaker for spending precious resources, time, and energy on a needless election when their very existence remained in peril. This sentiment was shared by the Prime Chancellor who brought up the issue with the Speaker at a secret meeting in the Secord Restaurant located in the Millennium subway station.

According to witnesses, the Speaker reacted angrily to the Prime Chancellor’s pleas. Without warning, a rapid succession of bullets penetrated the cranium of the Prime Chancellor. The crania of most other occupants in the restaurant quickly suffered the same fate. Later that same day on December 23, 2005, the Speaker assumed the title of Prime Chancellor in addition to being head of the now largely ceremonial Congressional Parliament.

Ironically, elections in Marcusburg were cancelled by the very person who had announced them for the world. Although he ordered an inquiry into the death of the Prime Chancellor, the Speaker repeatedly blamed the assassination on victims of the Hancalae virus who managed to avoid the most dramatic of neuropsychiatric manifestations in order to live among “normal” survivors without suspicion.

To prevent such a catastrophe from ever happening again, all citizens of Marcusburg were to be screened for the Hancalae virus. Those found with the virus were sent to sanitariums for further treatment. In reality, political opponents were rounded up with the truly sick and sentenced to gulags where many died in squalid living conditions. At one gulag, records from a confiscated diary show that a prisoner had seen parts of the Prime Chancellor’s corpse lying on the tracks close to the Millennium subway station. Shortly thereafter her diary was discovered and she was taken away to be erased from history.

By February 2006, a series of unethical medical experiments at the sanitariums had yielded the first known promising treatment for the Hancalae virus. As the procedure included pooling the antibodies of those who had natural immunity, thousands were exsanguinated accordingly in the primitive medical facilities afforded by the subway network. When the Speaker’s own children became afflicted with Hancalae, a wide-reaching system was quickly established to gather as much antibody as possible. Unlike the initial Hancalae screen which uncannily identified only political opponents, the new screen could target anybody.

With nothing to lose, resistance to the Speaker stiffened. Martyrs were made of those who abducted the Speaker’s children in return for the full restoration of Congressional Parliament and democracy in Marcusburg. Though unharmed and eventually returned, the children eventually all passed away from Hancalae. Meanwhile, a black market evolved from traders who risked their lives obtaining supplies from the surface for sale in the underground. These supplies consisted mostly of weaponry which fueled a subsequent guerilla conflict.

In March, explosives were planted by the resistance at the Annexion Circus subway shopping complex in preparation for the Speaker’s public rally to celebrate the survival of the “Great Republic”. The explosives detonated at the wrong time, missing the Speaker and injuring hundreds among the thousands who had voluntarily or involuntarily attended the rally. When the dust settled, a large proportion of the Imperial Library which was built over top the Annexion complex had collapsed underground.

Widely perceived as the cradle of Markish democracy, the building’s damage galvanized many into joining the resistance even though the destruction was ironically at the hands of those fighting the Speaker and his armed forces. The symbolic significance of the event was not lost on the Speaker who ordered the immediate reconstruction of the library from the bottom up, followed by another purge of government officials on whom he pinned blame.

But these actions were too little, too late. By the middle of May, a full-fledged civil war had erupted. The resistance operated on the basis of slowly eroding the Speaker’s forces by cornering entire battalions in pockets of the vast subterranean system as they were forced to travel in strange labyrinthine configurations. Soldiers were then given the choice of defecting or being starved of oxygen and food. Over time, voluntary defections from those within military ranks greatly bolstered this strategy.

By early July, pockets of resistance-controlled territory loosely merged into a confluent area comprising the western arms of the subway network. Various factions in the resistance agreed to put aside their differences until the end of the civil war. Through sewage corridors, the resistance managed to wrestle control of the subterranean power generators away from the Speaker’s forces. Providing electricity to the whole underground system, leaders of the resistance began half-hearted negotiations for the termination of hostilities.

The Speaker responded by ordering the internment of all blood relatives of known resistance members no matter how distantly related. Fearing the worst, the resistance shut off power to the Command Bunker before internment could properly begin. In retaliation, the vestiges of the Markish domestic secret service (EA1) started assassinating anyone associated with the resistance based on illegal information provided by the foreign secret service (EA2) which had itself been gradually transformed into a Gestapo-like organization.

Deaths continued to mount on both sides. By proclaiming international borders reopened, the Speaker could then legally dump all dead bodies on the surface of neighbouring countries. Out of sight and out of mind, he hoped, to avoid further inflaming the public. As the Speaker’s new policy became widespread knowledge, citizens often joked of a “great wall of corpses” ringing the country’s surface borders.

On August 17, 2006, a routine encounter between a faction of the resistance and the Speaker’s forces escalated into an aggressive and pitched battle. Even though most guerilla fighters were killed by a direct offensive, the explosives they had planted as per the resistance’s “scorched-subway” policy would dramatically change the course of the war. The brunt of the ensuing blast was somehow directed upwards instead of forwards towards the Speaker’s soldiers.

According to a few survivors present on the surface, the earth trembled as much as, if not more than, the Great Jamilistan Earthquake of 1998. Subsequently, ruptures developed in the “great wall of corpses” which in some places was stacked just over ten feet high. Later that day, the commander of the Speaker’s forces contacted the resistance in order to request a cease-fire.

In subsequent negotiations, he revealed that his troops had discovered all main routes of ventilation to the Command Bunker blocked by dead bodies which had rolled off the wall on the surface. With electricity in the hands of the resistance, power from emergency generators could not be mustered in time to open auxiliary ventilation routes. The Speaker and his inner circle had suffocated to an inglorious death.

However, bodies also blocked the opening of other vents, leading to sporadic pockets of death in the vast subterranean network. By the time an armistice was formally agreed upon on August 19, the victorious resistance found itself fractured. Not only was the faction responsible for rupturing the “great wall of corpses” ostracized; but an ideological schism opened between those who wanted the country to adopt a purely isolationist policy and those who wanted to pioneer the reconstruction of civilization.

Advocates of the latter approach pointed out that many arms traffickers and grave-diggers who frequented the above-ground survived, albeit with notable signs of radiation poisoning. Furthermore, the surface temperature had since warmed from -140C to -85C which seemed close to the lower limits of comfortable human habitation. Victims of the Hancalae virus expelled into the above-ground appeared to have frozen to death and much of the surface infrastructure was repairable.

Despite vociferous arguments to the contrary, both camps, weary of further conflict, put aside their differences to cobble together a shaky provisional government. By September, an awkward “road map” had been assembled, outlining the future direction of the government. First and foremost, democratic elections were to be held within one year. In addition, the government would take steps to reclaim the surface but would adopt a policy of strict neutrality in foreign affairs, thus avoiding wanton expansionism which might lead to a recurrence of 12/6.

This compromise arrangement did not satisfy everyone. Splinter groups emerged from the provisional government with different aims. The most important groups were the independent-minded governors of the non-contiguous provinces. Not physically connected to the rest of Marcusburg, they had been largely spared the chaos of the civil war. Conflicting signals from the Speaker and the resistance had convinced some in these provinces that the only method to assure survival was to seek their own destiny.

When the provisional government assumed power from the Speaker, many cheered the end of totalitarian rule. The smaller provinces, dependent on the central government for money and resources, quickly pledged allegiance. But the largest of the non-contiguous territories, Tectum, remained silent. In late September, its governor invited the highest members of the provisional government for urgent talks.

As the provisional foreign minister was busy visiting an underground telecommunications centre attempting to contact other countries, she sent an entourage with the deputy minister to Tectum. Traveling above-ground in a specially lead-encased humvee, her military convoy was suddenly attacked and destroyed. The deputy minister herself was instantly killed.

Survivors from the scene fled and returned to the capital of Marcusburg with reports of fighters bearing an ancient Denisian insignia. The province of Tectum had originally been the capital of the old country of Denisia before its head of state abdicated to Marcusburg years ago. Although used mostly for ceremonial purposes, the Denisian insignia was also the symbol of a minor separatist movement aiming for the rebirth of the Denisian state. The governor of Tectum was often seen attending the movement’s meetings.

Following the incident, the governor went on live television to announce the existence of an independent power supply in Tectum which had been built during the civil war. Curiously, the background of the governor’s podium prominently displayed the Denisian insignia with the Markish flag nowhere to be seen.

The provisional government immediately held an emergency session of all its delegates. On September 30, the military – still fragile as it was composed of old resistance fighters and forces once loyal to the deposed Speaker – was placed on high alert. Entire regiments were then deployed to assist massive convoys on their way to deliver humanitarian aid to Tectum from the Markish capital.

Nominally under the banner of non-governmental organizations and charities, the scheme was a ploy devised by the provisional government to win over the hearts and minds of any separatist Tectonites. Over the course of three weeks, ordinary citizens joined the relief effort in response to government-sponsored sob stories which adorned every subway station in the country.

After suffering numerous deaths defending the operation, Tectonites felt bound to the capital by blood, sweat, and tears. On October 23, the separatist threat largely came to an end as public opinion in Tectum turned against the separatists for good and the governor resigned.

Two days later on October 25, meteorologists detected a slight weakening of the dense radioactive blanket which had surrounded the Mapp for the past 323 days. When news emerged of this “hole in the clouds”, a small but steady stream of thrill-seekers looking for adventure metamorphosed into a deluge of common people eager to reclaim their lives on the surface in the face of perpetual cold and darkness.

With occasional breaks in the clouds, sunlight pierced through the Mapp’s radioactive shroud for a few minutes once every few weeks. The ambient temperature rose from -85C to -73C. Slowly but surely civilization returned to the surface. With time, hundreds of thousands reclaimed residences and businesses. To avoid confrontation with marauding bands of mercenaries and pirates on the periphery, most reclamation occurred in the central downtown core.

A semblance of normalcy had finally seemed to settle in. But on January 9, 2007, scientists announced an alarming discovery that cajoled the country back into a state of panic. Over the past few months, it was revealed that each and every child born after 12/6 had died. It was already common knowledge that many were left infertile after 12/6. But now further tests showed that the unique radioactive fallout from a nuclear fusion meltdown fundamentally altered the DNA of all human gametes to prevent the production of viable progeny.

These results were independently confirmed by another prominent research group on January 22, 2007.

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