Survivor

A Survivor (the word is always capitalised in the Florian system) is any one of the inmates of a survivarium. They were mostly chicks and slags who had escaped from hanyo town and made it through the radiopoisoned desert to a place of safety, where they either joined an existing survivarium or built one themselves. They are the ancestors of all humans born after 2174 who mostly refer to themselves as Florians.

History

The word 'Survivor' was first used by Zigsa in 2071 to describe herself after she escaped from Test to Destruction Centre 8 in the Lop Nur desert. She defined a 'Survivor' as someone who had once been a Loser and a Victim, but was no longer so because she had learned to love herself and others, because as she says in [[Puzzle Two] of the Karma Sutra, 'when Losers and Victims are loved, they Survive'. From this word 'Survivor', Zigsa coined the word survivarium, as a name for a place where Survivors lived and practiced karma.

The Hopscotch

An essential part of becoming a Survivor is undergoing the Hopscotch a ten-level process designed to clear out corpsemeat, kill the hanyo-in-the-head and give control of body and soul back to the self. Until a person undergoes the Hopscotch, they cannot be happy and safe in Antisense.

Post-Flowering Usage

After the Flowering of 2174, the descendants of the Survivors tended to refer to themselves as 'Florians'. However, the word 'Survivor' continued to be used in ritual settings and wherever the Karma Sutra was read and explained.