Quite suddenly a large fraction of humanity is stricken with a strange new microbial disease. The symptoms of the infection are initially similar to the flu then, with time, the infected people completely lose their identity and they start to talk in strange languages and act in a weird way. The medical community and public health officials are puzzled by the sudden spread and unprecedented neurological symptoms of this new infectious agent. Many religious people think it is the end of the world and there is a significant amount of panic worldwide. Scientists begin studying the infectious agent and after a struggle to learn how to grow it in the laboratory they learn that it is an unusual type of bacterial cell that appears to have been created by some form of sophisticated genetic engineering.
Scientists discover an astonishing fact: the bacteria that cause the new disease have a large number of introns that contain unusual versions of human genes. The first scientists to make this discovery are Spanish speaking and they name them as a new form of life, Nuevas Bacterias. Soon, new discoveries are made about how the Bacterias are changing human behavior....
Backstory[]
Bacterias are a genetically engineered life form created by intelligent dinosauroids who originated on Earth in the distant past. These intelligent dinosauroids (scientific name: Troodontidae sapiens) had a common ancestor with Stenonychosaurus around 100 million years ago, however, the intelligent dinosauroids became aquatic in a way similar to how dolphins evolved from land-living mammals. Much of that evolution took place on Zealandia and left only a small fossil record (not yet found by humans). Due to their aquatic history, Troodontidae sapiens evolved a marsupial-like live birth process and the first year of life had to be spent in water. As adults they could exist on land, but they remained better adapted to water. Their aquatic adaptations made their entire pattern of technological development very different from that of humans.
Cranial changes needed for echolocation were among the important adaptations to an aquatic environment that occurred in the evolutionary lineage of Troodontidae sapiens. In particular, an organ functionally similar to the melon evolved in close association with the large brain of Troodontidae sapiens. This cranial adaptation made the species particularly sensitive to acceleration and deflected them from developing jet flight and rocketry for space travel. However, they had advanced sciences of nanorobotics, physics and genetic engineering. They developed fusion power reactors and discovered how to produce wormholes that could be used for time travel. A major limitation on the wormhole technology was that its use was limited to relatively small objects resistant to the high gravitational forces that were unavoidable associated with travel through the wormholes.
One of their major genetic engineering projects was to develop new types of dinosaurs, mammals and birds that would display patterns of brain growth similar to that of their own species. While the Troodontidae sapiens did have some mining and industrial facilities on land, they preferred to live in the oceans of Earth.
Their science of astronomy was rather primitive, but they did notice the Chicxulub asteroid and correctly calculated that the asteroid would strike Earth 6 years after its was noticed. Fearing the extinction of their species, they decided to use a wormhole to send their genetic endowment to the future Earth at a time millions of years after the Chicxulub asteroid impact. They knew that no living organism much more sophisticated than their genetically engineered Bacterias could be passed through a wormhole. They designed Bacterias that could carry their species' entire set of genetic information, but they also wanted to send a process to the future that would be able to transfer their minds, their patterns of thought, into whatever species might be able to survive the expected ecological disaster from the asteroid impact. In addition to the Bacterias, they sent to the future a set of nanobots that are programed to adapt the Troodontidae sapiens genes and thought patterns to the most advanced species that is found in the future.
Two things go "wrong" with the plan. First, the Bacterias and the nanobots are sent to the future inside of protective capsules and the nanobots are programmed to only start accessing the Bacterias after they have identified a large-brained target species. However, a major limitation on the wormhole is that the destination time and location are difficult to control (see Wormhole 'no use' for time travel and Semi-classical wormholes and time machines are unstable). The Large Hadron Collider acts as an "attractor" for the capsules that are sent through the wormhole. When the LHC is turned on, it acts as an "exit point" for the wormhole, specifying that it is much more probable for the wormhole to terminate in our time than at any previous time in the history of Earth. However, most of the capsules exit the wormhole at locations where they are destroyed or never found (inside the Earth or in orbit). It is later revealed that billionaire Paul Zilapow junior is responsible for releasing the bacteria from a capsule that his oil company Zilapow Inc. found while digging for oil. Second, Troodontidae sapiens had no experience dealing with another intelligent species like humanity. So, a war for survival starts between uninfected humans and the infected humans who are being re-programmed by the nanobots.
Genetic changes in the brains of infected humans[]
In addition to matter, information can be sent through wormholes in the form of coded bursts of muons. The goal of the nanobots in the capsule is to create a receiver for vast quantities of information from the past that were sent through the wormhole as coded muon packets. To do so, they make modified human genes that can be used to change human brain structure and thought patterns to be better suited for receiving the nanobots as mind symbionts. Only at a relatively late date do humans realize that the Bacterias are accompanied by nanobots that use these invading cells as factories for producing the needed genes.
Many of the people who are infected with Bacterias and who start talking in strange languages are scientists. Eventually, a group of them take control of the LHC and turn it into a device for receiving the transmissions from the T. sapiens of the past.
Other people who who start talking in strange languages are religious and they start a new religion (eventually it becomes known as Trodism) based on the idea that great spiritual wisdom will be soon be revealed. The scientists at the LHC cannot decode the data transmissions that they start to receive from the past, but the Trodists figure out that most of the data represents the minds of the great spiritual leaders of T. sapiens and a history of their peaceful civilization. The Trodists start trying to infect all humans with the Bacterias and convert all humans to Trodism. A faction of scientists try to develop T. sapiens technology and use it to fight the Trodists.
Resurrection[]
Assume that it is possible to transfer the T. sapiens genome from the Bacterias into an enucleated cell (maybe a human egg cell) and produce a new individual of the T. sapiens species (see Genome transplantation in bacteria: changing one species to another and Complete Chemical Synthesis, Assembly, and Cloning of a Mycoplasma genitalium Genome). A group of scientists who have been infected by the Bacterias works to obtain egg cells that can be used for this purpose. Eventually they are successful and a new population of T. sapiens is founded on Earth. Additional strategies are developed to transfer into the brains of these new T. sapiens individuals much of the data that represents the minds of the great spiritual leaders of T. sapiens from the past.