April

The mechanics of the spread still remained a mystery, and as science continued to fail at explaining the cause, more and more people turned to religion, especially as the effect’s arrival in the predominantly Christian Europe coincided with Lent. The appearance of the hundreds of new returners that arose in São Paulo following the events of Carnival created more questions than it answered. The group, many of whom retained their cognitive and communicative functions, were dubbed the Paulines, as a toponym for their city of origin, but also echoing the name applied to the Order of Saint Paul the First Hermit, which had been founded in 13th century Hungary.

The parapsychologists from ground zero turned out to be right, the returners were definitely cognizant and were trying to communicate with the living. But now that there were finally some returners who could talk, they were not able to clarify much. Most of them remembered dying, and often still exhibited signs of trauma associated with the experience. After that they reported a blacking out, not unlike deep, dreamless sleep. Contrary to the expectations of some, there were no bright lights, heavenly choruses, or pearly gates, just a muffled, infinite darkness. The next thing they remembered was waking up with a feeling that their death had been a bad dream, and a desire to see their loved ones.

They did not seem to have any profound message or eternal truth to bring back to the world, no matter how much they were pressed for it. They just wanted to be with the people who they said were waiting for them. Despite the simplicity of their desire, most of them did not get what they want. Their very existence was seen as too important scientifically, religiously, and politically. Meanwhile their legal status was still ambiguous, being both dead and alive, which led to them being deprived of certain fundamental human rights. As such, some of them were taken in for scientific observation at secret, undisclosed locations, where they were not heard from again. Some others were claimed by religious organizations that treated them as unwilling and unwitting prophets of the new age, similar to the relics and bodies of dead saints being paraded to inspire reverence. Meanwhile the rest were traded as high value pieces in political maneuvers to countries which were still bracing for the coming impact of the phenomenon. Thus scattered around the world, they inadvertently came to resemble the hermits of Saint Paul.

Now that the returners were once again seen as sentient, for the duration of Lent, the pendulum swung back to the opposite extreme. Returners continued appearing throughout Europe, but were not seen as a threat. Furthermore, in a large part thanks to the research still conducted at ground zero, various prosthetic technologies were being developed to help the returners move around and communicate. Subsonic microphones linked to speech recognition software were attached to the returners who had comparably minor decomposition. In more advanced cases, the returners were taught Morse code, as even the blind ones still retained some degree of hearing, and so were then able to tap out messages on a touchpad that would translate it into audible speech.

That Lent saw more urban initiative in advancing accessibility for the impaired than the previous several decades combined. Most traffic-lights now had speakers that were previously only heard near old folks’ homes or schools for the blind, and many places now used Braille for signage and instructions, as blindness was the leading impairment for the returners. Indeed, for a while it seemed as if a new age of acceptance and tolerance was blossoming throughout Europe. So, while the Paulines were forced into different kinds of ascetic hermitage, on the whole, returners were experiencing a period of increased integration.

More advanced technologies were being developed and adapted to ease the returners’ re-entry into social life. There were experiments with neural language interfaces for those whose vocal apparatuses were too far-gone to benefit from subvocal speech recognition. Some were outfitted with cameras with devices that translated the visual data into audio, a kind of echolocation, which had been designed for the blind to help them move around on their own. In other experiments, instead of audio, the visual data was channeled to a kind of pin-pad attached to a part of their skin, so they could process it as tactile sensation.

It was finally possible to communicate with the returners on a wide scale. Still, for the most part, it did not seem the returners were that different from the way they were before their deaths. Most just wanted to go back to the lives they used to have. They could not explain how or why they returned, nor why others of the dead didn’t.

The respite lasted up through Easter, the celebration of Christ’s resurrection. But it was not exclusively rooted in religion. As the effect neared Russia, there was resurgence in popular interest in Russian Cosmism, a philosophical and cultural movement that first appeared in the 19th century, and proposed an optimistic view of humankind’s destiny. Going through several iterations in the 20th century, a couple of themes remained the same. Through science, we would eventually achieve immortality and control over nature. This would finally allow for real space exploration and colonization, since without it the human lifespan is too short for long term space travel. Cosmism would later have a strong influence on transhumanism and theories of space colonization.

The idea most relevant to the present situation, however, had come from the works of the 19th century Russian Orthodox philosopher, Nikolai Fyodorov. He insisted that true immortality was not just about preserving the living, but that the Common Task was to use science, alongside art and religion, to unite all of humanity, everyone who has ever died. Thus, our moral obligation was to create a heaven to be shared by everyone who has ever lived.

That year both the Catholic and Orthodox Easter fell on the same day, and for a little while it seemed that the chaos had passed. But it turned out to be merely the eye of the storm.