The World We Know

In our world, The Sin is dangerous.

It is hardly ever spoken of aloud, just as The Last War is. The Last War is referred to as The Accident, as to not sound as scary and cause people to feel fear and pass out. The Accident sounds more innocent and doesn't have people pointing fingers at who was responsible.

Before The Last War, people could do it all the time. Some enough to dry themselves up. The Sin was a normal thing and could sometimes even be called beautiful or innocent. But not any longer. It is frowned upon greatly, just as most emotions are.
The Sin became feared after The Accident.
 
The Last War is true to its name. It was the last war on Earth and it ruined it.

The Last War resulted in the accidental release of a dangerous chemical. It was released from the spaceships that were stationed in a circle around the earth as a safety strategy ordered by the only neutral country, the United States. They thought that with their new experimental discovery, they could temporarily paralyze and calm every living thing so that the war could end peacefully. Their mistake was not being cautious. They had sent them up in a rush while the war was in its climax of violence. No one really knows what happened up there and there's no way to know. What we do know is that the chemicals that were originally meant for safety mixed with each other and created something new. The chemical led to the destruction of everything that was known.

The chemical changed the way strong emotions affect all things with life. Humans weren't the only species that began dying out. It wasn't the same for all species. But animals were quickly ignored since we only cared about what happened to ourselves. We quickly learned what happened with human emotions.

Anger causes the body to instantly begin bleeding randomly, sometimes by splitting the skin open in various places to let the blood flow. Staying angry too long or being in too powerful of a rage makes you bleed out and die.

Fear causes nausea and fainting, either for several days or forever. We don't try to keep the people in permanent comas alive since it wastes our food supply, so they die of starvation.

Jealousy makes the body begin eating itself from the inside out. Ridding yourself of jealousy stops the devouring but there is nothing to help what has already been eaten.
Surprise and embarrassment are the most harmless and only cause temporary headaches.

Every branch of these emotions results in the same thing, or close to it. The only emotion that was left the same was pure happiness. But that happiness and hope is nowhere to be found. It barely still exists today, but that's to be expected in a world where you're only going to die an undeserved death.

The emotions most severely affected were sadness and love.

Love, attraction, desire, lust, and passion are the lesser of the two evils. The results are less severe. Falling in love results in the loss of a limb or a 5 vital sense. People find it bearable if they become blind or mute or one-armed for their loved one. It only happens once and it's a sign of commitment. Cheating and betrayal is non-existent and people are dedicated to their mate. You have to be completely sure about your mate before allowing yourself to love them. You wait for agreement before letting yourselves become sacrificed for each other. It's more accepted among our society now and is even encouraged at times.

Sadness isn't as kind or beautiful as love. It contains The Sin. The wise people that discovered each mystery of our emotions had the most difficulty and curiosity with this unhappy emotion.

Depression, devastation, sorrow, remorse. It makes you sick.

Normally it will only cause a cold or the flu. Something simple and relatively bearable, but incurable. Ever since the change, sadness induces our sicknesses; our bodies became immune to what used to cause normal illnesses. Germs, raw meat, bacteria and other similar things have no effect.
Though our illnesses aren't contagious, people split up and prefer to stay around people of their own health. They think that people that have yet to become sad are less likely to become and make others around them sad. It is rare to see a person that is still healthy, so the two kinds of people are barely divided anymore. People want to stay alive as long as possible, and that means avoiding sadness and The Sin at all costs.

Medicines do nothing for our illnesses since they are caused by our own emotions. We have no choice but to let ourselves suffer and die after we get sick.
You leave yourself open and vulnerable for death when you let yourself be overtaken by emotion. The most so by committing The Sin.

Sadness is already the most dangerous emotion but The Sin is death itself and people's worst fear.

The Sin is a simple action. The Sin is letting that dreaded, wet spherical shape be produced and shed from your eyes.

Crying is what kills. Shed a single tear and you will become deathly ill, dying quickly before you can even care about the pain; an instant death or dying a very painful, slow death.

A type of cancer whether it be fast-acting or slow, deadly infection, AIDS, an inescapable heart attack. Anything. The type is random but how deadly of a sickness you get is determined by how much you cry. Crying multiple times gives you an illness for every time. Most people that survived right after The Accident have cancer and many other dreadful illnesses in addition to it. Sadness without crying, though, only gives you one simple sickness. After the first time you get sick, you can be sad as often as you want, sort of how love works. Which is why crying is so feared. Crying can leading to anything, including another emotion. Crying is what most often causes the mixing of emotions which leads to instant death.

Crying destroys you.

After The Accident, people cried hysterically. At first everyone was unaware, until people started dropping like flies. To suddenly feel your emotions attacking you, no matter what you were doing. Noticing the affect sent people into hysteria. People passed out or died immediately, causing others to do the same. Some became angry and cried, leading them to their demise. Mixing their emotions caused instant death by overloading their brain. It was total chaos and panic was everywhere. Mourning and fear drove humans to ruins.

Eventually after the remaining people were calm or miraculously unaware, they found their way to each other.
What was left of the world became unified in fear. There weren't many people left but they all agreed to come together as one to help slow down the dying process of each other and find a way to live. Eventually it was easy for everyone to gather into one country by crossing the bridges that connected them. Over three-fourths of the world had died out after The Accident so not many people were left to be gathered.

Now, it is only those small communities, who survived, left and we make up what is left of the world. In total, there are currently five large communities with approximately 200 humans in each.

It has been three years since The Accident and the world we used to know no longer exists. To some it is a far off memory, history. Others have forgotten all about it and only know and remember our current world.

Our 'world' is located in what used to be the Southern United States close to the water. The water provides food, such as seaweed and the 'new' fish. The communities trade resources like clean water, supplies, and dangerous kills with each other, sometimes even better hunters.
The five communities stay close to keep each other alive. Our emotions aren't the only enemies we have to protect each other from. The animals that have still survived are hard to ignore when they are constantly trying to kill you and are your main meals. They gained less control over their emotions than humans did after The Accident and are no longer the same loving creatures we knew from the world before. But there were a few rare species that had better control over themselves than before and seemed more intelligent, and we earned their friendship. It is odd to see any person without their companions today.

There aren't many rules and everyone is free but freedom doesn't mean much to a person that cannot do anything. To a person that is sick and will never get better. To a person with no life.

The world we live in is an infected, dying one but we try our best to enjoy it. Always keeping our emotions to a minimum and stating them before we speak. Always trying to protect one another from the creatures outside our homes and within ourselves. Trying to find a reason to live.

No God exists in our world and you can't find a person today that would disagree. No one could believe in a higher being that could protect us. If one existed, we wouldn't be here like this.

People rely on animals that would've otherwise killed them in the previous world to carry on. People walk around with scars all over their bodies from anger cutting them open or wild wolves attacking them; barely functioning with missing organs or patches of skin from jealousy; living with missing limbs and senses from falling in love or giant cats, whichever got to them first; existing with diseases that give them no reason to want to exist. We are all together trying to win over death. We are all together trying to survive.
This is the world I live in.

This is the world we know.