It was the damnedest thing when it first began happening. To say no-one expected it was an understatement, but neither was there much surprise involved.

Understand the state of the world at the time: the whole damned place was on fire. Humans weren’t sure they’d live out the day, let alone a century or millennia. Of course, that led to a lot of short-sighted mistakes, but every reaction bears an equal and inverse action.

It only made sense that something had happened to all of those old fucks ruining things. Gender politics muddied the waters, but it was obvious who the problem was, male or female. It was even more obvious they were all fucking stup–

There goes my own prejudice again… hugghhhhh.

We knew they weren’t the smartest bunch. It had to be genetics. The average person is neither burdened nor emboldened by their Humanity. They exist in a state of existence, subsistence, and occasional resistance. Mixed and matched in various forms, this is what concocts the Human-everything. Enough that it has managed all of Human greatness thus far.

Who’d have thought it could go away? Like, really… away. Or not be there in the first place?

Meanwhile, the utter lack of surprise is self-explanatory. Hundreds of thousands– then millions of Humans were suddenly the equivalent to walking vegetables, nothing out of the ordinary. Now however, they seemed incapable of doing little more than occasionally putting hand to mouth.

Apart from being utterly unhelpful, it was mystifying. Grown adults who’d spent their whole lives working in office blocks, commuting to and from marbled-staircased homes with large families, now incapable of little more than feeding themselves.

They could stand about, move if prompted, and often were seen flocked on street-corners as if pigeons. So, that’s what they became: Pigeons. Save with eerily less motion. It was as if the groups of once-besuited, rag-tattered creatures had become a hive-mind no-longer coherent of its imitated species.

But how? How could it be possible for any creature to suddenly shift so intensely, let alone a group so immense and varied as they?

In the studies conducted since the First Occurrence, of which there are three, enough has been concluded to confirm the cause as Genetic. It is, along with other factors, much of the similarity that binds the hive-minded groups to one another. Hive-minded though, is misleading. A hive-mind may have a goal or objective, whereas these creatures are more empty-minded.

Had they existed in the time of Siddhartha Gautama, they might have been termed to the effect of Śūnya-Buddha, orvoid-enlightened one.

In essence, they’re Human hardware running no software. Perfectly functional in every way, but uninhabited by anything resembling the Godhead or Soul, Consciousness or Humanity. They’re Human blanks, reactive but never active, like a PC at POST– spooling hardware-test on ingrained command, instinct.

Buddhists themselves have postulated Śūnya might mean more Consciousnesses are achieving the Godly realms, and these creatures are the byproduct. Mostly though, they’re just empty. They have no software, no operating system. Merely functional components functioning until they can’t any longer. A sort of natural phenomenon from closed-sentience tracts of evolution, as in the case of some primates.

Occasionally too, like pigeons, one is found in the gutter. Dying or dead doesn’t matter, little can be done then save to show mercy.Such extremes are rare, though, and their idle time is spent flocking from place-to-place, picking scraps. They are more an occasional nuisancethan the plague carriers they once were.

Given the alternatives, it’s a relief really.

The irony is lost on no-one save the Pigeons themselves, but faulting something like that for not understanding its world fundamentally misunderstands its nature.

So, what is their nature?

Officially classified as Pseudo-Sapiens Homo-Śūnya after someone thought the name fitting, its mythology therein spawned itself. Regardless of academics, they are the empty-people. Incapable of retaining memories or planning beyond moment-to-moment flashes, these creatures suffer from newly-termed Zero-Oneness Disorder: unable to feel or function as is clinically normal for Humans.

The First Occurrence revealed it, astounding the world.

Random people suddenly brain-dead on the streets, driving their cars, sitting or moving about in their homes. Powerful, prominent, or aspiring, anyone was effected.

But there was no chaos. Just confusion.

In everything since, one thing’s known: the presence of a select few was wholly ignored by the majority. Or in some cases, entirety. The effect, rather than outrage, was nothingness. It seemed counter to Human-Psychology– the first clue to the then-termed “illness” and its origins.

Hospitals overflowed. General Practitioners, some seeing a patient or less a week, were suddenly overflowing. Short staffed E-Ds and Psych-wards led to public panic over the growing dangers to overall public health.

However, the Second Occurrence disproved the idea as an illness, reinforcing it as a genetic indication of Human and non-Human separation. Coming shortly after news that a common gene-trait had be found in all of the “sufferers,” it was learned this and other traits were tied to known genetically-guided pathological-personality types.

It was thereafter obvious how to identify Pigeons in the wild, avoid them if desired.

By the Third Occurrence any hints of panic and chaos had subsided. The issue was tempered. Enough that now focus could shift to prevention, treatment. Doctor-patient tidings were at an all time low, but the establishment of specific health-centers for those wishing not to let their Pigeons live abroad. Neither was a terrible diagnosis, really.

Unfortunate? Certainly. Not life-threatening though. The Pigeon Problem It could be handled, and there was help: that alone made things infinitely easier.

Yet hard decisions were, and often still are, made.

The whole sequence of events engendered only a little more restraint in the Human Ego. Never a bad thing given its history and propensity for violence. In keeping with its methods, too, Pigeons reaffirmed what Science strived to remind: thateach action incurred an equal and inverse reaction.

Pigeons were Humanity’s anti-particle, the negative to their positive– but for the species, Humanity, as a whole. Nothing really surprising, just unexpected. And lucky, in a way.

The Pigeons turned out to, every single one of them, down to the very last, have the same corruptible personality flaws making them easily identifiable. Many theories on their origins in the greater scheme argue genetics, personality-reflection, andnature’s serendipitous reality are equally at fault. Yet all agree on the most telling, and thus defining of Pigeon traits– the one that, during the Second Occurrence became so clear and allowed for the Śūnya child-testing:

Every damned Pigeon was a fucking politician.

We should’ve known!