Work Text:
On December 6th, 20XX, a novel infectious disease was observed at Middlesea Hospital. The virus responsible has since been named Connectifia abortus.
Connectifia abortus is electromagnetic in nature. It is, in essence, a malformed signal that can cause nearby signal transmitters to become corrupt, and propagate its infectious signal.
It is capable of hijacking the natural pacemaking process in human hearts, abusing the bioelectrical signaling mechanism that regulates heartbeats to instead broadcast more of itself.
Notably, electronics can also be infected if exposed for long period of time. However, research has found that typical clock pulse setup in most devices are able to regulate themselves, suppressing infection and making them a less reliable disease vector.
Patients infected by Connectifia abortus share some symptoms with those suffering from heart arrhythmia, such as chest pain, heart palpitations, and restlessness.
Despite that, they can be distinguished from regular arrhythmia patients by their abnormal episodes of flare-ups, during which the viral signal is broadcasted so strongly, it causes electromagnetic interference and severely distorts all nearby radio transmissions.
In extreme cases, with multiple infected patients in close proximity, the virus may trigger synced episodes across all victims. The combined eletromagnetic emission can mangle the electric signals involved in human perception, causing audiovisual hallucinations even in uninfected individuals.
Infection by Connectifia abortus can be treated by stablizing patients' heartbeat with vigorous rhythm defibrillation, to counteract disruption from the viral signal.
However, due to the virus' unusual property of being able to infect via radio transmission, proper precaution must be taken to prevent outbreak and reinfection.
An effective way of quarantining patients with Connectifia abortus is with a faraday shield, as this blocks any signal from traveling out of the designated area. When treating patients, a specialized virtual firewall can be set up around the patient to only allow signals required for treatment to be sent through.
