THE SECRET WEAPON
written by
Bridget Denise Bundy
LIST OF CHARACTERS
Goggle Man,
Chancellor Dominic Erato’s Staff
MAP OF ERATO
OLD LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA
BACKGROUND
The summer of 2026 and the world was a different place. The human population was less than a hundred fifty thousand. Cities, nations, civilizations were snuffed out by a single flu virus known as N12. The first publicly reported case was in Egypt on December 21, 2012.
The N12 Virus was never successfully contained, and it went deeper into the African continent, east into Israel and Saudi Arabia, and north to Turkey and the Ukraine. It wasn’t long before the viral outbreak touched every part of the world. No one was immune. Once infected, a person was highly contagious for 48 hours. The host would be dead two to six days later or rendered sterile as a lasting permanent effect, but usually the final result for most was death. There was no cure.
Erato Biotrade, a leading manufacturer in medicines and biological technology, was tasked to quickly develop a vaccine. Little did the world know Erato Biotrade already had a vaccine because they were the ones who developed the N12 Virus. They withheld the vaccine from the public on purpose, but they gave inoculations to all of its executives and employees, which numbered just over 23,000 people. The vaccine had a side effect Erato Biotrade wasn’t counting on, sterility. It was an unforeseen development they used to their full advantage.
Within 5 years, countries began to crumble right out of existence, including the United States. Laws no longer mattered. Police, fire, and ambulatory services stopped operating. Basic utilities ceased to work. Looting, murder, and utter chaos were the order for days, even months. A once technological advanced world returned to the dark ages faster than a blink of an eye.
In 2018 Erato Biotrade began to move forward with its secret agenda they’d been planning since the year 2000. The plan began with demolishing Los Angeles city center. A new nation was developed and built over the wiped out landscape.
A gleaming royal palace with a marble twenty foot wall was built around it for the appointed Chancellor and her family. Just outside the palace walls were the Erato Government Center, comprised of numerous buildings that looked exactly like the old US Department of the Treasury building in Washington DC. Another wall was raised to separate the Erato Government Center from the outer areas. Those areas were divided into regions, also separated by walls, and ninety-six skyscrapers resembling the World Trade Center Towers were to be built and scheduled to be completely finished by the year 2030. Each region were planned to have twelve towers. Each one would contain the means for its inhabitants to live, work, and shop in a single location. Lastly, a fifty ft. tall wall was built around the entire infrastructure for protection. The new nation was properly called Erato, and all the regions were given names, as well. This innovative self-sustaining mecca shined like hope against the western sky.
Word spread about this new nation, her abundance of food, comfortable living, and safety. The refugees that could migrate arrived in hopes of being allowed into her safe borders.
Erato Biotrade took care of its employees first. They were given the best of accommodations, and most of them lived in the Barat Region closer to the Pacific Ocean. Eventually, Erato offered an opportunity to the refugees to live within its walls after nearly fifty of the ninety-six buildings were completed, but they had rules the refugees
