[Kardian’s point of view]

One year and six months ago, the Interstellar Spaceship Dominion VI docked with the Termika Space Station located on the outer edge of the Novelisk Solar System also known as Alpha-134Pi. The journey from Sol took two months, but I was awake for only four days, while the rest of that time was spent in a state-of-the-art hibernation capsule. There was not that much to do on this ship, especially since it was also a vessel equipped to handle battle situations when we encountered alien scout ships or pirates.

On the same day we docked with the Termika Space Station, we were checked in with the local authorities to make sure that there were no stowaways or individuals whose status had changed during this time. Such was the situation with a brawny-looking old man, who during our hibernation sleep became a wanted political fugitive on Mars. As soon as he was identified, he was caught and placed in jail.

Three days later, after this procedure was done, I boarded an Interstation Shuttle, a simple spaceship with the sole purpose of transporting passengers from one Space Station to another. The journey took a little over 16 hours, and luckily for us, the chairs were comfy enough to sleep in. Our destination was the August Space Station located between Planet 9 and its moon Tormas. Here, after an 8-hours-long wait, I boarded a PlanetBus Shuttle and went straight down to the Nosferatu Space Port on the surface.

After I got checked in with the authorities, again, I waited at their hotel for about a week until they were certain that the NanoHeal and TechScope was properly installed in my body. These nanobots were the main hook the colonial advertisements used. Apparently, once they reached a certain number of colonists, they would stop the free supply and instead request a minimum payment for them. I was among the lucky ones.

Just like they declared, about ten months after I arrived on the planet, they stopped the free supply of nanobots and instead asked for the new colonists to pay for them. Since they were mandatory to have on this colony, getting in without them was virtually impossible. As a result, only the ones who were above the average pay grade could move here from now on.

Once the checkup was done, I received the note that I was going to be assigned to the Resonance High School in City 203 as I had requested on my application. Initially, when I was filling out that form, I did consider going for a different job, but in the end, I couldn’t lie to myself. I still wanted to be a teacher. I wanted the chance to start anew, not to deny who I truly was and what I loved to do.

Then again, this was the other big appeal of becoming a colonist on Planet 9, the chance to start anew at a completely different job than the one you had before. Maybe I could have gone for an assistant engineer, a florist, or even becoming part of the military as I dreamed about when I was a kid, but in the end, I stuck with continuing as a teacher.

When I received the final approval and the doors opened before me, letting me take my first step outside, I felt a wave of pure and honest happiness the like of which I had never felt before. This world was like a paradise when compared to Earth, which was overpopulated, polluted, and home to the worst criminal minds of the century.

Without further ado, I made my way to the studio apartment that was given to me on Street 202 in building AN5 on the 16th story. On the way there, I got to meet some of my new neighbors, who all looked to be friendly and kind, but just like me, they all had their own past they wanted to leave behind. I would soon come to learn that it was quite common on this planet for people to refrain from talking about their past. On Planet 9 everyone who didn’t have an active criminal record could start fresh, but this didn’t mean that everyone had a social background they could be proud of.

My apartment had the number 1607 written on a small metal plate next to the door, right above the doorbell button. As soon as you entered, there was a bathroom to the left and a kitchen to the right, which had all the minimum necessities to either store or cook a meal. Further inside, there would be a single large room with a bed to the left and a desk to the right, close to the window, on top of which a basic computer system could be seen.

Once I got engaged or married, I could request to move out to an apartment with two rooms if by that time I couldn’t afford to buy one. This was the basic living space management system that was being used on space stations. Offering the new colonists a place to stay until they could privately own one made sure that there were no homeless filling the streets or forming slums. The government also helped directly by giving them a small number of credits to use until they started making money from their jobs. The employment rate on Planet 9 was said to be at a constant 100%.

With the credits given to us, we were advised to acquire the minimum necessities that we may need for the upcoming months. An online guide was added to the shops to help anyone in need. Food was also free for the first two months.

This way, even if you arrived on the planet dirt poor with only the clothes on your back, you could still have a place to live, a job, internet, and food on your table, all the basic and minimal necessities for an individual to survive in our time and age.

Settling in meant getting used to my new apartment, getting to know the area, my neighbors, and finding out what were the best paths to take to my workplace and back as well as finding out the locations where I could get drunk or have fun. On the first day of work, I got to meet my colleagues and the class I was supposed to teach. Despite having some experience under my belt, on Planet 9, not only was I a new teacher but the type of students I was going to nurture were also from different social classes than those back on Earth. So, for at least a year, I was made to fill out the role of an apprentice under another teacher. That was Masaru Kyona, a colonist that came two years ago from Planet 6. A lot of folks came from there, the overpopulation became worse after the planet’s tectonic shift led to several cataclysms that changed the weather and led to the partial collapse of City 23.

Now, Resonance High was considered as one of the best High Schools in the area, there were a lot of teenagers here with good grades and broad dreams for the future. A lot of them came from good families and a few even had their own private drivers who brought them to school and then sent them back home. This wasn’t a school for the rich and noble, but this didn’t mean that there weren’t students who had enough monthly allowance to make the average folk puke out blood in envy.

As a teacher, however, I was impartial to them and acted as though the amount of cash in their wallets was as irrelevant as the prophecies of doom and destruction of Earth from the 21st century. Or better yet, as irrelevant as whether or not I had 29 students to teach in my own classroom or 30. It simply didn’t matter.

I tried to do my best to fulfill their intellectual needs and showed exemplary behavior and social skills. My colleagues were happy with me, and I even got a few fan e-mails from the students who were attracted to me. Of course, in order to abide by the moral standing of the school, I politely declined them, but I didn’t reject them. I just told them that if fate will have it, then it will be so, but at the moment, they were my students and they had a different future ahead of them, so if by chance, once they finished high school, they still felt the same, they were free to try to approach me at that time with romantic interests in mind.

Needless to be said, that I was already aware of how easy a teenager’s mind could switch from love to hate and then to being completely ignored. What they had wasn’t true love but a mere temporary crush brought about by their raging hormones. I was almost 100% certain none of them would even so much as dare to mention this after they graduated. However, it did make me happy to receive all those confessions, and some of the girls, especially the ones who underwent gene therapy or had parents who underwent gene therapy, were really stunning.

Fast forward to a month ago, the first signs of the Nano-Z virus were beginning to appear with individuals claiming that they were catching colds and feeling a strange pain in their body, however, no one had yet to change. If only we knew at that time about that virus, we would have certainly been able to do something about it, to contain it somehow. Nanobot purging was an available therapy in case the machines didn’t work, or the AI was corrupted. Usually, there were no problems with either the hardware or software of the devices, so it was mostly applied to criminals. Because of this, no one thought about this possibility and simply suspected that it might be some new flu virus that simply dodged the NanoHeal’s sensors. That was the official declaration at least, but I was certain from the moment I began to see my students getting sick that it couldn’t be just that.

NanoHeal was a state-of-the-art nanobot that could detect any virus and bacteria structure that was predetermined to cause harm to the human body and prevent unknown viruses and bacteria from attaching themselves to the cells. It worked by having the NanoHeal scan the healthy body of the individual during the installation process to determine the location and function of all cells and microorganisms. Thus, even if it was an alien virus, how could it get past its sensory net?

It didn’t take long for the conspiracy theorists to declare that the government was making them intentionally sick, but as someone who studied basic programming and engineering as a side hobby, I was aware of some facts and knew that it was most likely a system error, but in order to prevent hysteria and mass confusion, the information was kept under wraps. The last thing anyone wanted was to find out that the nanobots in them were malfunctioning.

Then, about two weeks ago, when the number of sick reached the peak, the first case of the walking dead appeared in the media. During the following days, more and more of them were beginning to pop up and the amount of people wanting to go through a NanoPurge was getting higher and higher. Unfortunately, the hospitals didn’t have enough units at hand and people couldn’t live without the NanoHeal and TechScope, so most of them had them reinstalled with a new batch that wasn’t corrupted by the Nano-Z.

It was a week ago when two major events took place. The first was the Mass Change Event, during which individuals all over the planet dropped dead and then transformed into the Nano-Z, by then, the name was widely used by everyone including the media. This led to the fall of society as these undead were attacking people left and right everywhere, from the most secure military bases to the complex residences in the city.

The second event, which took place the day after, was the explosion of the Interstellar Communication Station Hub. Apparently, the number of Nano-Z there was so high the commander was forced to initiate the self-destruct system, but not before we received a new piece of information from United Planets of Sol, which stated that all colonies were now going to enter Military State in order to prepare themselves to face the invading alien force.

In other words, the real threat of mankind, the first ever interstellar alien war just took a turn for the worse, so we weren’t going to receive any help from them unless they won the war, or their fleets just happened to fly by. However, since no one knew how exactly everyone was turning into the walking dead, chances were that this solar system was going to be placed into Quarantine and the infection was going to be investigated long after the war ended. This could mean years or decades of no contact with Earth. In the worst-case scenario, because the Interstellar Communication Station Hub was blown up, they could also come to assume that we fell under alien attacks.

The situation was grim unless we managed to get a message out there, however, not only the space stations, but also the military ships in this solar system were all on lockdown as soon as the first infected was discovered on board. There were no civilians entering or exiting from this solar system unless the army said otherwise. Besides, before trying to come to Planet 9, they had to secure all the other bases scattered in this system. At best, according to one of the announcers on the news, the first ship would arrive in about ten years to check the situation. This was because they didn’t think that the war against the aliens was going to last less than a year.

In other words, we were abandoned...

We were left to fend for ourselves, but at the very least, not only this planet but also most of the stations and planetary outposts in this solar system were self-sustained. This was the other big appeal of the colonies. In case of an emergency where Earth was destroyed, each one of the big 9 colonies was capable of becoming in its own right a new Home Planet, an Earth V2.

Upon hearing this, there were some big changes that happened. The highest authority on the planet changed from the Governor of Planet 9 to the General of Fleet Alpha 10, who was up in space. The governor turned into a Nano-Z about four days prior to receiving this message, but before this happened, he gave strict orders to the military on this planet, which was to organize into survivor camps where each and every single soldier was checked to make sure if he or she was infected or not. Afterwards, they were supposed to go and secure any and all vital facilities around them.

Survivor bases were also ordered to be built for the civilians in locations that were cleared out by small military squads, such as the High School I worked at, arenas, malls, or large corporate buildings. Unlike Earth’s towering megastructures that covered the surface, Planet 9 was built with the intention of architecturally representing the low population cities of Earth from the 21st century where no more than 10 or 20 million humans lived at the same time. By comparison, Bucharest, the capital of the Romania Sector was part of the Black Sea Megalopolis and had a population of 27 million. It was just one of the largest neighborhoods of the Black Sea, which was close to 1.6 billion now. Neo Constanța was now a floating city for the most part and had the highest population in the area, reaching up to 100 million. Thus, in the eyes of someone from Earth, City 203 was small and also far more spacious.

This was another big attraction point of the colony and also the reason why Planet 9 received the nickname of Retro Planet. Everyone who came here was struck by nostalgia or was attracted by the idea of having the chance to create history or rather relieve it in some cases. Copies of various cities from old Earth were made on this planet, even some of the famous monuments. It was almost as if our leaders thought that they were going to lose the war against those aliens. Well, maybe they were right, maybe they were wrong, but the colony immigration ARA was packaged so nicely that it was difficult to resist it.

The only ones who showed their disapproval of this place were the ones who didn’t like the retro style of the architecture. They made constant complaints about it, but since they weren’t citizens of Planet 9, they were completely ignored. In other words, this colony wasn’t for everyone, it was truly made for those who wanted a fresh start in more ways than one.

Back then, when I heard about the survivor bases, I also wanted to take my chances and head there. The walking distance from my apartment to Resonance High was manageable, and I figured that if I was careful enough, I would be able to sneak past all the Nano-Z.

For several days, I carefully made my plan and gathered some supplies, but when I finally decided that it was time for me to step out of my apartment and make my way out to the stairs, there were three Nano-Z waiting for me there, snarling and glaring at me with their red eyes. I got scared and immediately dashed back to my room. Unfortunately, I wasn’t fast enough. One of them grabbed my backpack, and I had to give up on it, then the other grabbed my arm just as I stepped inside, he bit hard, and using the wrench I had at hand, I was able to hit him in the head and then take cover in my room.

Unfortunately, I got bit. I was infected and the snarling sounds combined with the pounding at my door made it clear that they wanted to bite off the rest of my flesh. With great effort, I pushed the dresser in front of my door and then slumped down in my chair.

This happened two days ago, or at least, that was how much time I felt had passed. As I struggled to type the words on the computer, I could feel my life draining and my whole body becoming like theirs, a dead husk of my former self. Once that happened, the corrupted NanoHeal would take control over it, and I would become a lumbering undead, just moving from place to place, guided by my hunger for human flesh. It was ridiculous and almost unreal what was happening, but the Nano-Z plague wasn’t something that was caused by an apocalyptic virus, a magic spell, or something unreal like that, no, this whole thing was undoubtedly caused by another human. After all, when the Nano-Z told me the instructions it received, among them was the name of the virus that corrupted the other NanoHeal units, which was Zombolik V 2.003.

Someone with access to the NanoHeal network, an outstanding programming ability, and an obsession for zombies made this whole apocalypse real. Now, while the rest of the colonies were fighting against a hostile alien species, we were here fighting against the insane machinations of some madman or weird organization who turned my new life into a living nightmare.

After my little chat with the Nano-Z, I began to drift in and out of consciousness. I didn’t know if he replied to my last message because I couldn’t keep my eyes open long enough to read what was on the screen. The pain was still there, but everything around me felt almost surreal. The passing of time was blurred out completely. One moment when I opened my eyes, I was seeing sunlight and after blinking once, it was dark. Maybe all of these were just hallucinations resulted from my brain slowly being devoured and turned off by the NanoHeal.

I felt like a member of the audience at a fully immersive VR movie that showcased the final moments of my life. Even my own thoughts, they felt clear, but maybe that was just my delirious misconception.

Either way, I didn’t know how long I remained in this state because I simply could not keep track of the passing of time anymore. I opened my eyes when I could and then closed them again, unable to resist the weight of those massive giants that rested on my eyelids. The pain was still there, my thoughts were still sluggish and my whole body felt heavy as if I had just returned from a week-long marathon.

“Am I dying?” I asked myself at some point, maybe out load or simply thought it, but I definitely felt as though someone answered me in the background “No.”