Zigsa

Zigsa was the founder of Antisense and the first Survivor.

Birth and life with the tribe

Zigsa was born somewhere in Western Tibet, then a Lionfist territory, and was probably one of the last children to be born outside the hanyo corporate enclaves. Her father was in his eighties when she was born, and he was probably infected with the hanyo disease MHS, because three boys were born after her but did not survive. When Zigsa was eight her father died, and the rest of the tribe (all women) elected to go down to New Kashgar and find work in the Lionfist factories as slags, since without a male 'protector' they no longer felt safe. Zigsa deeply resented this decision, but had no choice but to go along. She insisted on taking her dog Pabu with her, with disastrous consequences.

New Kashgar and Slag School

One of the first things that happened to Zigsa on entering New Kashgar was Pabu's death. He was shot point blank by a Bully Boy border guard. Zigsa went into shock and began screaming, refusing to leave his body until bludgeoned into unconsciousness. She noticed very little of what happened to her in the next few days, and when she had calmed down, she found she had been sold to the Slag School in return for work tickets for the rest of the tribe. This area of the Lionfist territory was vulnerable to plague attacks from neighobouring corporations such as Imprimatur, so children were valuable. Zigsa was found to be good at math and logic and was slated to become a RanDee.

However, she did not like the prospect of working in hanyo town at all and constantly wandered off or misbehaved. On one of her explorations of the basement, she found a trunk full of artefacts that had probably belonged to an Afghan soldier in the twentieth century, known in the 2070s as the time of the Old Men, and had simply been forgotten. This trunk was full of books and magazines and music and comics and posters and photographs and letters and other artefacts. She called this her trunk of treasures and devoured the contents avidly, learning a great deal of forbidden knowledge about the twentieth century. In order to justify their rule, the hanyos had painted the time of men and women as a golden age when every woman had a husband and a family by right and there was plenty and prosperity. The hanyos blamed the 'mischief' cause by feminism, communism and the Bitch Wars, as well as the weakness and loser-thinking of the Old Men, for breaking this happy world and the hanyos themselves.

Contrary to this vision, Zigsa found that the twentieth century had been riddled with wars and abuses. The Old Men had in fact behaved much more like the hanyos than the pathetic losers, woman-pleasers and libtards the hanyos painted them to have been. Zigsa was particularly impressed by a number of letters from home written by the soldier's wife Jessica. However, before she could make sense of all this information, her absence was noticed, a search was organised and she was caught. When her hanyobait supervisors discovered what she had done, they immediately decided to send her to Test to Destruction Centre 8. Later, her memories of the trunk of treasures were to provide her with many useful insights which she incorporated into Antisense.

Test to Destruction Centre 8

Subjects at the Centre rarely lasted a few months, but Zigsa lived for three years there. Seh outlived three of her testers, all of whom died in mysterious circumstances. This fact intrigued Basil Quan, Head of Human Resources, Lionfist, and he visited in person to check her out. The TTD Centres are a semi=secret project of Quan's, set up to discover weaponisation mind powers. He tests Zigsa brutally to find out her limits, but very soon he discovers he can neither use her 'weapon' nor make Zigsa do his bidding. He concedes defeat, wipes all records of her existence, gives her his personal journal and lets her go. Later, not trusting Quan's promise to leave her alone, Zigsa does not reveal the fact that he was instrumental in her escape.

Zigsa's Journey

Zigsa then treks through the radiopoisoned desert northwards to the Flaming Mountains. There she finds a river valley with aves nearby, and rests and recuperates. This episode in her life became known in Florian times as 'Zigsa's Journey' and became a popular subject for art.

Zigsa's Nest

As Zigsa's strength returned, she began to venture out and look for other people like her. Slowly she rallied other escapees and people abandoned in the desert by their employers. She began to heal them and teach them her nascent philosophy of Antisense. As they too begin to recover, the growing community began to call themselves Survivors and to build themselves an underground refuge, a survivarium, fully self-sufficient and hidden away from their hanyo enemies. They called it Zigsa's Nest. From 2072 to 2088, they work on building the Nest and stocking it with everything they need. Zigsa and her brood also began to write down their ideas in the form of the Karma Sutra. In 2088 they sealed the doors until the hanyos should wipe themselves out. The doors remained sealed till 2174. Zigsa died in 2169 at the age of a hundred and thirteen. Before she died, she predicted that the Survivors would return to he surface within a decade. He skull was saved after the custom of the Survivors and placed in the Place of Remembrance at the Nest, where it can still be viewed.

Legacy

During her lifetime, Zigsa was known as the Remedy, because of her ability to heal people with her mere presence, the First Survivor, and the Sunsoul.