myhuskytorotoro t1_j6ds1ps wrote on January 29, 2023 at 5:12 PM

Maya turns off the TV and sighs. Stupid News Outlets, all they want to do these days is cause fearmongering. She walks to the fridge and grabs a can of cream soda and returns to her desk to get to work.

She stares dully at the dual monitors, tapping her pen against her desk. She was dreading this doctorate thesis but it won't write itself, as much as she wished it would.

Maybe some music will help since the TV didn't, she thinks.

She opens a new tab in her browser and quickly signs in to her favorite pandora channel and presses play on the screen. A delightful upbeat bass starts the opening rifts to one of her favorite songs and she smiles.

This is much better, she says to herself.

She begins fleshing out her outline of her thesis; The Long-term effects of airborne pathogens. She looks over her research, back to the first date of the first noted outbreak of the most recent pandemics. She skims over the notes.

-- In the beginning, there is mass hysteria which helps to radicalize the general population into spreading it further, faster. She looks up from her notes and adds onto the already bare-bones outline, making special stylized notations on where she'll expand on the theory, and where the first pandemic example to use will go.

An emergency siren alert blasts Maya out of her thoughts as she finishes up that step in the outline:

WE INTERRUPT THIS MUSIC TO BRING YOU URGENT NEWS FROM THE WHITE HOUSE.

Ugh, she thinks. Again? They've already had at least two 'Urgent' news briefs this week. She rolls her eyes and turns the volume up. There may be something here she can use.

She only halfway listens to the broadcast, for there are no new developments that she cares about at the moment. Just the same ol' confusion and delay...people holing up in their homes afraid to come out, people eating other people to survive, etc.

She finishes all the bullet points of this part of the topic as the news brief begins to recap for anyone just joining in and pushes herself back from the desk and stretches in her chair. She rolls her shoulders and gets up to a side table where there is a beaker over a Bunsen burner in a glass enclosure. she puts on the full face mask lying there beside the thick glass box and pulls it snugly over her head and shoulders, making sure that nothing is exposed. Safety first, ya know? She then puts on a glove that goes into the glass to where she can stir the terrible concoction that is brewing.

She smiles cruelly under the mask. Once this has fully matured, she can start the research on the next part of the thesis: What happens when there is genetic mutation and modification for more widespread destruction.

She finishes up and takes off her mask. The light from the computer monitors illuminate the grotesque and shriveled parts of her face; permanent scarring from the first pandemic looking even more disfiguring and revolting in the blue-tinted shadow.

Soon...she smiles again to herself. The Joker-esque grimace that passes as a smile for her now could sour milk. I will have my revenge on the scientists that did this to me in the first place for trying to stop the first pathogen being released.

~*~*~*~*~

Sorry guys, long time lurker but first time writer: I'm super rusty and I don't normally do such realistic prompts so please go easy on me D: