They wanted their population sick enough to be too tired to fight back, but strong enough to work. Then someone introduced the immunoflu and when they tried desperately to stop the spread, their secret came out. -- Anon Guest
Any time a polity's leader starts going on about 'purity' and the strength derived from it, you know that polity is in for a bad time. And so are its people. Not just the ones who are deemed imperfect or impure.
Worse still are the ones who get a bug in their heads about medical purity, and what that means.
It's always about "the chemicals" when they despise preventative measures. It's always about "protecting the children" when it comes to keeping injections away from them. Disease? Poison? Pathogens? Those are profitable, and can therefore go straight ahead. So long as the populace were too sick to rise up and too scared to protest, then all was well according to the glorious leaders.
And, of course, they did everything they could to keep the Galactic Alliance from coming in and meddling. Border patrols, safeguards, automated detection and repulsion systems, and all the most modern conveniences for protection.
It never works.
Case in point, Courier Zing. Unafilliated with the Alliance, ze was allowed to pass freely into the polity's trading stations. There to inspect goods that could be traded between this area and any of hir other destinations. A side job that many such couriers did on their mission to deliver parcels from Point A to Recipient B.
Courier Zing had the sniffles. A common enough occurrence everywhere.
What this particular polity didn't as was what kind of sniffles Zing had.
Spoilers - it was the latest edition of the full spectrum immunoflu.
One surprise sneeze onto a display stand, and it was all over. At least, it was all over for the governing body. One sneeze, and the immunoflu scattered all over the display, atomised into the stations' air system. All over Zing's neighbouring shoppers.
It was specially gengineered to catch and spread. In one standard day, most of the station was coughing and sneezing. Station staffers brought the virus to their homes. To their families. The children shared it with their friends. Their friends shared it with their families.
It was a pandemic in less than two Standard weeks[1].
This was all glossed over, with the glorious leader claiming that this disease was only going to make the entire polity stronger. And in the expected twist of fate, he was right this time. He was right because the immunoflu protected the entire populace from becoming sick from anything else.
This was so unexpected by the populace that that sparked the rebellion. Now that the people had the strength to revolt.
[1] Twenty days. The Galactic Standard Calendar is a bit strange.
[Photo by Sangharsh Lohakare on Unsplash]
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