AW? Chapter 01 (Patreon)

Inside the Wuhan lab in China, they were trying to create the next evolution of humanity. They were creating a virus with the sole purpose of strengthening humanity. What they didn’t realize is that by making the virus have the ability to adapt and evolve the virus was already out of their control. The virus became aerosolized and started to spread itself looking for the ingredients needed to grow itself.

Like a light switch suddenly flipping the virus gained sentience. From the animalistic instincts to that of a three-year-old the virus continued to rapidly grow. As it found the ingredients to grow itself in the lab it greedily absorbed them. Its intelligence evolves again from that of a child to a small computer instantly. With the massive improvement, the virus also increased in size from a small cloud to something that could fill a room.

The virus began infecting every human inside the lab and turning them into corpses producing the virus. She had gone too hard with them and all had died, producing a huge spike of the virus but wouldn’t after the body lost function. It made more sense to make the humans braindead so they would keep producing the virus. She kept refining her techniques as she effectively puppets the brain-dead people around her. Thus creating an almost hive-mind connection as more and more people were absorbed.

She didn’t realize what she was doing until everyone in China was effectively braindead. Her instinctive need to make people stronger kicked back in after her own longevity was secured. How would she go about making stronger humans? Some of the people had died at computers. As one figured out pressing the little black squares would make symbols appear. Dozens then thousands began clicking away. In seconds the virus learned the Chinese language.

Thousands then tens of thousands began researching everything on the computer as she rapidly absorbed information from the internet. A single one miss clicked and entered a website for adults only and the virus became curious. She saw the people fighting with no clothes on but didn’t understand. The tens of thousands became hundreds of thousands researching the human ‘mating’ patterns.

It thoroughly gained her attention. She hadn’t realized it but she had become a voyeur in an instant, wanting to see more and more of the ‘sex’ and making some of her hivemind begin to fuck each other… It wasn’t the same. It felt more like smashing two dolls together and pretending they were fucking than actual sex. She had learned most other languages and knew that beyond the tiny island she was on was more land.

If she wanted to see it happen in person she needed to leave some that weren’t braindead. It would also function as her primary goal of strengthening humanity. Reaching the landmass she began to spread rapidly. Over the course of eight hours, everyone on the planet was infected. It made her really think about what she was doing.

The main goal was to strengthen humanity but humanity was too weak, they had no predators or threats in their lives. If she just made them all stronger the cost would be far too high. It made more sense to strengthen a much smaller population than trying to strengthen everyone. In her process, she had effectively turned ninety percent of the world's population into zombies.

With only one of every ten living the population on Earth had dropped from seven billion to seven hundred million. Every single person on the planet was knocked unconscious as she made changes to the brain-dead versions of herself. It took too much effort to constantly micromanage every single zombie. She had watched enough zombie movies that making the braindead people facsimiles of the zombies was nothing more than a second to accomplish. 

The zombies had their bodies changed further so they would use less energy and need far less food but be able to consume grass and bark to survive. As she was using the brainpower of seven billion people she hadn’t realized it but she had become a fourth-dimensional being. She could now pull material from the fourth dimension and feed the zombies keeping herself and them alive now.

It only took another second to figure out everything she could do with the fourth dimension and began making more changes to the humans and zombies. One, the zombies were given a power source in their bodies. It would allow them to function normally without the effort to constantly feed them. It also functioned as a way to strengthen the humans.

She put a similar source in the bodies of all humans. Eating the sources inside zombies would strengthen their source making them more superior than they were before. She devised other rewards for the people. With nine out of every ten alive, one percent were given a special power on top of the normal source in them. One out of every hundred thousand was given an even better power. One in a million was given the ability to have more than one power… No, she completely changed the system again.

Everyone could gain powers but they needed to steal them from each other or collect them from zombies. The zombies were given the special sources as well as the humans. Constantly fighting to get stronger was good but it left her feeling… Off slightly. A niggling feeling in the back of her head wanted her to do something more… She had given everyone systems that would let them know how to get stronger but something was missing.

Lust, she needed something to make sure the humans were more likely to have sex. She slightly increased the lust of all living humans while also giving some incentives for procreating. It was eight hours later after she perfected her system that people began to wake up. This ended badly for some, if a person was in the same room as a zombie when they were knocked out the zombie would attack them immediately when they woke up.

Almost half of the population was put into a fight the moment they woke up and most lost. The population dropped again as seven hundred million became four hundred million in just a few minutes of activating the system. The virus hadn’t thought of that, proving that even though it was a fourth-dimensional being it could still overlook things like that.

She felt… Bad for killing so many humans. Her goal was to strengthen humanity after all and she had just killed half of it without even giving them a chance… She decided to give the living humans a bundle as an apology for what she had done. She worded it in a way that made it seem like it was a reward for surviving the turning but it was payment for her mistake…

Even still the virus felt something was missing… She decided to give humanity a few ‘champions’ to work around. Seven humans were selected across the planet for humans to work with to survive. She didn’t realize how humanity actually worked. Even with seeing all of the internet and knowing so much about humanity she didn’t see that humans would kill each other as much as they’d work together. She still didn’t see the bloodthirsty side, how could she? She functioned above humans, she didn’t think jealousy and lust for power would end with half of those ‘champions’ being killed in the first week of their creation.