Phase Q/Revolutions
The glitches continue.
On and off, around the country. Hints of disharmony among the postwar peace.
The technology continues to change. Generally speaking, it seems to have some awareness of you. Hard to say whether it’s pro or con, though.
The Zonnyxes gradually assume control. It happens so subtly that the Ruffs, their wartime partners, hardly even realize their loss of power. In trade after trade, the Ruffs seem to grow stronger, yet the Zonnyxes seem to grow stronger yet.
Soon, the Ruffs realize that their force depends almost entirely on Zonnyx-created weaponry. They set up R factories, yet manufacturing equipment by hand proves impractically slow. They seek out alternative suppliers, but there aren’t any.
The Zonnyxes develop their monopoly on electricity and data.
As the R’s continue to make families, which carry on the Ruffian traditions of brutality and beastliness, the Z’s rewire themselves from top to bottom.
The Z’s start to teleport around the planet. They appear spontaneously amid R meetings. The Z switch their metabolic pathways to run directly on quarks.
Soon the R’s become quite heavily aware of their precarious situation in World2. After a few key intelligence breaches, they declare an underground war.
Roughness in the R bedrooms abates. Their efforts steer more towards guerilla attacks, indirectly carried out, on Zonnyx strongholds.
Z life goes on more gently. With great flourishes of electropoetic reproduction, their numbers multiply. They build homes amid the molecules throughout the planetary atmosphere. They fly through the sky and burrow underground. They even start to live within the cells of the R’s.
You keep on living as a civ. Occasionally a Zonnyx security post stops you and questions you. Seems like another R to the Z’s.
The R’s, meanwhile, haven’t forgotten your debt to them.
A missile from a Z hovercraft scares you underground. You brush up against the edges of the R revolt. Almost get sucked in. Keep on treading, trying to stay afloat.
Above ground or below, you have nowhere to go. While food is plentiful around the planet, you no longer have access to the Zonnyx foodcraft. Ruffians grow food the old-fashioned way, yielding the old-fashioned shortfalls.
Your body feels the shortages. You feel hunger and fatigue. You have difficulty focusing. You want to scream, but you don’t have the energy.
The Zonnyxes have plentiful energy. Their factories grow: in the sky, in space, everywhere. Pumping out light and matter in forms that defy obvious explanation, the Z’s reroute planetary resources.
The biozone starts to dissipate. Even in the rich watery areas with plenty of sunlight, where life once thrived, it loses its zest. Ponds dry up. Forests burn. Jungles dry up. Deserts stay pretty much the same. The plants and animals you’ve always known now dwindle. The endangered species list includes pretty much all species. Even you.
Not much of a future left. Anyway, who would you mate with? Seems like your species has become pretty spartan.
Funny how amid all the fat and honey, your body starves. Your mind desiccates.
Phase Q: An interactive adventure.
