Quinneapolis
[leech] update because things are getting fucking wild
Quinneapolis
so there's two parasites in the story
Quinneapolis
The Institute, which is the parasite network that acts as the protagonist
Quinneapolis
specifically one of its bodies, in a remote mountain villa
dragon time
Quinneapolis
it takes the form of a hivemind of connected brain parasites that act as the chief medical institution across half the world
Quinneapolis
it uses human brains as hardware platforms with which to think its thoughts and their bodies to act
Quinneapolis
in order to protect itself and achieve symbiosis with humanity
Quinneapolis
harming it as little as possible and in return giving it a wealth of pooled medical expertise
Quinneapolis
and Pseudomycota, its discovery, the nightmare beast from the depths
Quinneapolis
a relentless, extremely active parasite that almost killed the Institute body that discovered it, and which moves between hosts in mysterious ways while spreading itself to as many bodies as it can reach
Quinneapolis
for a long time things are getting very bad at the manor, Pseudomycota is spreading and the Institute can't figure out how
Quinneapolis
every time they encounter it, they burn the body and burn everything it came in contact with and quarantines but it never seems to work
Quinneapolis
until the Institute - or at least, the current body of it, cut off from the rest of the network for some reason - has a hunch
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and takes its live pseudomycota specimen jar, and puts it in a fire to heat it up
Quinneapolis
and the parasite inside the jar responds by exploding into a haze of microscopically thin fibers filling the air inside the jar
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fire isn't a weakness, it's how it spreads
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and even worse, the Institute's host body has been infected
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as pseudomycota ravages it from the inside, the cavalry arrive, in the form of 20 other Institute hosts who arrived via airship
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and the protag host wakes up having undergone extensive surgery to fully extract the pseudomycota that had infiltrated her
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losing an eye and half her face in the process
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and the reason I'm saying 'her' now instead of 'it' is
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the original human personality that used to occupy the body has resurfaced
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and she remembers the ten years she spent not only unable to control her own actions but unable to think her own thoughts
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because a parasite was using her mind as a server
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and what she puts together as the Institute is trying to decide what to do with her - reintegrate, vivisect, destroy -
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is that pseudomycota is not actually a lifeform that kills humans
Quinneapolis
if the Institute is a bacteria, then pseudomycota is a bacteriophage
Quinneapolis
it's another organism from the same place as the Institute, which devours it and uses it to reproduce
Quinneapolis
it's not a disease like the Institute, it's the cure to the Institute
Quinneapolis
it was portrayed as such a horrifying thing for the first 75% of the book because the thing occupying the protagonist brain was its primary food source
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two Institute bodies were infected by it and both of them were left alive but free of Institute control
連続犬
holy shit
ғᴏxʏᴍᴏʀᴏɴ
god damn
Quinneapolis
the identity of the main character changed but the physical brain didn't
Quinneapolis
just who's using it to think
Quinneapolis
it's a horror story about a vaccine from the perspective of a virus
Gabiluzbad
This all sounds delightfully fucked
Quinneapolis
it's SO fucked
Niamh Vibes
All the different details of the world and how much weird shit has happened
Quinneapolis
this is a post-post-apocalyptic setting, not in the sense that the world has recovered, but in the sense that more apocalypses keep happening to it
dragon time
It's SO fucked
bluecanary
oh this rules
dragon time
The very slight perspective shift that changed absolutely everything turned my own brain inside out and set it on fire for the rest of the book