writing without a net

Remember that time a whole human world is transformed into Magog? The crew of the Andromeda Ascendant are racing around, trying to stop the infection/impregnation of the colony. And they fail.

Those people died, but were reborn as a litter of Magog.

Yet due to events that took place and Rev’s presence there to calm the change, the Magog that are born are self-aware. Like every other Magog, they have the memories of their human host. But unlike the others, they also have the compassion and empathy of their hosts.

I don’t know if it’s a change in the body chemistry of the hosts — calming hormones that smooth the change — or if he taught them after they were born, but Rev started a change in the way a whole group of Magog think.

He’s the Magog version of Jesus. They create a religion around him and continue to carry the message of humanity down through the generations. [Tok’ra]

*

The Magog birthed from the people of the World felt that they were the original person transformed. They had all of the memories; the feelings; the loves, lusts, and hates of the original person.

They had been transformed into hideous beasts with disgusting hungers, but they were still themselves down where it counted. In the soul.

Sally and O’Kelley had been in love from the first moment they met. She’d looked at him and thought: He’s kind of goofy, but he’s sweet. I think that I could love him. He’d looked at her and thought: This is the girl I’m going to marry. And both of their visions had come true.

They had a cozy cottage encircled by floral greenery and all of the sweetness of nature. They married and had a couple of kids, Dante and Thora. They had a great life together and they fell more and more in love with each other the longer they were together.

Their lives were the kind of perfect that modern people refuse to believe in. Nobody could trust that everything would stay so idyllic. There’s no surprise that things would fall apart.

The Magog Worldship passed through their solar system. Every planet was seeded with infestation pods. Inluding their world.

There are times when Sally can still remember the terror of being mauled by a hairy brown beast. All she’d seen was eyes and teeth A quicksilver flash of sharp white while angry yellow eyes glared into her.

And then there were the days of terror when her impregnation was confirmed. She had seven Magog growing in her guts, gnawing on her organs. It would take three days for them to fully mature and burst out of her body.

She wandered around in a daze along with the other infected. There was no stopping a Magog birth. And as their peoples’ religion forbade suicide or kin-murder, once most of their population was infected it was decided to let things happen as they would.

They watched the ships full of the Lucky Ones fly off into the stars. They sent along their last messages for loved ones on other planets, then they settled down to wait.

It was painful.

Sharp, tearing, agony. Transcendental lapse, synaptic resonance. Hormones flooding, rushing, and filling. Synapsis darkening and going black.

It was beautiful.

She was born with her eyes open and her mind filled with the memories of Sally. She loved O’Kelley and their two children, Dante and Thora. She’d spent each day falling more and more in love with O’Kelley and the life they had. She’d been reborn in a new body, with a new sense of vision and smell. She was lither, faster, stronger than she’d ever been allowed to be.

She was Sally Jenkins.

But O’Kelley… When he’d had a human body he’d gotten desperate and tried to rid himself of his infection. Some of the Magog had died.

When his rebirth happened, there were only two O’Kelleys, and one of them was sickly. He barely lived for half a day. There was only one O’Kelley left. Sally vowed that she would have him.
But she had six sisters that thought they were Sally Jenkins too. They all wanted to take O’Kelley — her husband — away from her and each other (she’d never been good at sharing).

She had no choice.

It was a fight to the death. And she won.

She was Sally. She lived in a cozy cottage with her husband O’Kelley and their two children, Dante and Thora. They had no other family left onworld.

*

The ways of their lives had changed, but not the hows and the whys. They loved each other and lusted after the people they’d once been.