EAST OF EDEN ( anakin s. ) ✔️

035 | The Path to Eden..

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" the path to eden "
...
━━━ ༻ CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE ༺ ━━━

          PERHAPS THE SINGLE most difficult stage of attunement to the Force is to accept everything has an ending. Ironic as it may be for something so ubiquitous to existence to present itself as the most unbearable truth to acknowledge without the birth of a poisonous desire also altering it and bending it before a false idol of pseudo-immortality, most sentient life fears 'the end' from the moment of their birth until perhaps all their life is spent. Before one can even define what life is, they are naturally afraid to lose it. An original sin. 

As a doctor, Cay Lanshee's first duty was seemingly indistinguishable from an ideal neutrality: his hands dripped in blood trying to preserve life while his soul had to maintain itself numb to the unavoidable passage of death beneath his touch, if he wished to continue performing his dirty, yet virtuous duty. But when his ears filled with the agonizing screams of hospitals overflowing with patients until he could no longer remember what silence even was, seeing death as anything other than its facet of ugliness bringing rot and decay became impossible. 

The Thathian plague. 

Within twenty four hours from that asteroid mining shipment making it into refineries all around the planet, the greatest cities of Thathea became unrecognizable.

To this day, Cay Lanshee could not forget the disfiguring symptoms striking some people so horribly that they fell where they stood upon inhaling the toxic vapors, skin melting off of their bones and eyes popping out in a green decomposition.

Thathea used to be known as the most prominent asteroid mining planet for a whole sector of the galaxy, exporting to almost all civilized systems in its vicinity and even all the way to the center of the galaxy too. After all, their planet was a survivor in the vicinity of an asteroid belt that entrapped almost every debris that could have passed their system; they were living besides the riches of the universe. Every city on Thathea had itself a refinery and the politicians of the planet helped rise an economy that put even Coruscant to shame. So many business partners made their profit into an endless stream, but when the plague hit... They were alone.

Their scientists explained that some rare gas in their atmosphere, previously undetected, reacted in contact with the vapors released by that last asteroid's outer shell, creating a poisonous gas. Children and elderly were the first victims. Mountains of corpses forced all factories to shut down and be buried in concrete. Though scientists neutralized the gas within days, the people carried the disease. A once prosperous planet's population had decreased exponentially until the vast majority of its cities were cemeteries. And they had no cure for those who remained diseased. The few exceptions of immune people did nothing towards solving the mystery of stopping the spread of the plague, of returning the sick people to normal so they could board the evacuation ships when the boarding would begin. Try as they might, the best the doctors could do during the Thathian plague was prolong life while well aware death will claim what it's due.

Amidst the swarming wails on which their extinction was heralded, Cay Lanshee thought of his immunity to be a cruel, cruel joke. He himself embodied a blasphemy by how ridiculously useless his knowledge has been made by the catastrophe ending the Thathian glory. 

"Doctor Lanshee!" Hearing his name get called finally made Cay blink the haze off of his sight and realize he has been staring into the waiting room turned treating center, a place where, like all other wards the hospital disposed of, the floor's whiteness had been buried under a thick presence of malaria, a putrid yellow stain spotted by disgusting greens. He inhaled sharply the salted air and turned around to see nurse Bellore running across the corridor, as much as running could be achieved on a narrow path made even narrower by the patients who were unlucky enough to get access to no bed as the disease torments them away. She didn't bother with running all the way either; as soon as Cay lifted his eyes, she stopped breathlessly, "It's Riya."