Children of the Plague

On the planet, Celeste journeys to her birthplace: Ralph 124 C41+'s former research facilities. She finds there her twin: a young man with her face. He is living in the midst of the plague as a prince of dreams and death. For he also has this strange bio-molecular imagination, and has used it to synthesize a drug that anesthetizes the sick, creating pleasurable visions and dreams that grow more powerful and overwhelming, until the user simply wastes away in a dream and dies. He tells Celeste that she and he are the beginning of a new race that can survive the plague, and that she will understand once she takes off her germsuit and allows the virus to become one with her.

Horrified, Celeste and Yali flee to the nearest established safe zone and begin to settle into life there as best they can, helping others keep hope and compassion alive. The love and attraction between the pair grows, and Celeste is sealed off in her germsuit and cannot feel his touch. Yali has already shed his germsuit and has been infected, though there are no signs of sickness yet. One beautiful autumn day Celeste, who has never felt the wind on her face, never smelled a blossom or tasted sweet apple cider, simply takes off the suit. She goes to Yali and they become lovers.  But within a few hours the girl has a raging fever, and struggles with the dawning of a new awareness. Soon Celeste must face the ultimate truth about whom and what she really is.

On the station, the warmongers have taken control and declared their intention to send the first terraforming mission to Mars. However, news of a cure could spoil their plans. Military authorities from the space station arrive in germsuits to take Celeste back to an annex of the station to contain her, for they do not want anything to interfere with their colonization of a new world.

In the annex, Celeste recovers from the coma with a new consciousness that is truly beyond human. The man-made virus has found its home in her DNA, and has expanded her brain capacity beyond previous limits. She has no emotional memory of her previous self. She is confined with the mindless humanoid clones that were infected with the plague. With her expanded ability to think at the molecular and cellular level, Celeste is able to stimulate the development of their brains and gift them with sentience. She teaches them about humanity, its history, its hopes, its failures, and explains to them that the human race is its death throes, that she, her brother, and they, the first transhumans, will inherit the earth.

The military has attempted to force Ralph 124 C41+ to help build the first terraforming bombs to create a more earth-like climate on Mars, simultaneously 'neutralizing the inhabitants there. He has refused, and to silence him, they drug him and lock him up along with the hundreds of catatonics. 

While Ralph struggles to escape from a drug-induced stupor in the asylum, to try to spread the word of the cure, and to reach Celeste, the girl struggles with her past memories, awakened by an innocent question from one of her clone  children.

Even after escaping the asylum annex, Ralph still walks in a vision of insanity, as all of the people gleefully gather to glimpse the Mars bomb as it is carried through the station to its vehicle. Hopelessly he pleads with people to understand that there is a cure.

Meanwhile, Celeste and her children take a deadly risk that will change the future of Earth forever.