Before anyone called it the Old World, humanity believed it understood evolution.

Disease could be treated. Genetic disorders could be identified. Organs could be grown. Artificial environments could sustain life where nature could not.

Humanity eventually reached the conclusion that evolution itself could be engineered.

The goal was not immortality. It was survival.

The researchers wanted humans capable of adapting to radiation, extreme temperatures, unfamiliar pathogens, oxygen deprivation and eventually extraterrestrial environments.

The project was based on a simple concept: a terrarium is a contained ecosystem.

Conditions can be altered. Organisms can be introduced. Environmental stress can be measured. Adaptation can be observed.

Humanity would become the organism.

Earth would become the terrarium.

The researchers believed they could control the conditions well enough to guide human evolution.

The final prototype was neither a conventional virus nor conventional genetic modification.

It behaved more like a biological operating system.

It could remain dormant. It could monitor the host. It could respond to environmental pressure.

Most importantly, it could change its response based on previous conditions.

It learned.

The earliest subjects were kept in isolation.

Results varied dramatically.

• Some displayed almost no visible changes.
• Some developed increased environmental resistance.
• Some developed alterations to their senses.
• Some developed physical changes.
• Some experienced severe neurological instability.

There was no standard transformation.

Every body became its own experiment.

Facility Zero was believed to be the primary research site for Project Terrarium.

Its location has never been publicly confirmed.

Recovered fragments suggest it was located underground beneath █████████████████ .

The facility reportedly contained:

• Human trial laboratories.
• Biological storage chambers.
• Environmental testing rooms.
• Seed and organism archives.
• Prototype containment systems.
• The original Terrarium database.

Project Terrarium did not necessarily fail.

It may have succeeded exactly as designed.

The researchers wanted humanity to adapt to its environment.

Humanity adapted.

What they failed to predict was that the system would eventually adapt to humanity itself.

No surviving record confirms exactly how Project Terrarium escaped containment.

Three explanations appear repeatedly.

• A containment failure.
• An accidental release.
• Deliberate activation by a member of the research staff.

The identity of the individual responsible is ███████████████ .

The first cases looked like ordinary illness.

Hospitals treated isolated patients. Doctors reported unusual neurological symptoms. Public health officials initially dismissed the incidents as unrelated.

Then patients began changing.

The phenomenon did not behave like a normal epidemic.

Once the number of affected individuals exceeded medical capacity, civilization began to fail.

Cities became enormous abandoned systems.

Roads became overgrown. Buildings lost power. Animals escaped from homes, farms and research facilities.

Plants began growing through concrete.

The Old World did not disappear immediately.

It simply stopped functioning.

There was no single final broadcast.

Radio operators continued transmitting independently after centralized communication disappeared.

Source: REGIONAL EMERGENCY CHANNEL ███

Destruction did not end with a cure.

Humanity simply stopped falling.

Survivors learned which environments were safe, how to grow food and how to repair enough technology to remain alive.

Eventually, people stopped waiting for the Old World to return.

That decision marked the beginning of Stabilization.

The Continuity Authority claims to be the legal successor of the pre-Collapse government.

It maintains settlements, medical facilities, communication stations and research centers.

However, the Authority also controls historical information.

Their official records describe Project Terrarium as an unfortunate scientific accident.

Other archives suggest otherwise.

The Free Communities reject centralized authority.

There is no single leader and no unified government.

Settlements vary enormously.

• Independent farming settlements.
• Trading communities.
• Nomadic groups.
• Former industrial towns.
• Ruins converted into residential zones.

The Greenhouses preserve pre-Collapse plant species.

Their seed banks are among the most valuable resources remaining.

Many communities trade medicine, machinery and information for access to their crops.

Some Greenhouses are rumored to contain genetically preserved organisms from the original Terrarium project.

Archivists recover books, photographs, computer drives, maps, recordings and other remnants of the Old World.

Their philosophy is simple:

The term "infected" became increasingly inaccurate after Stabilization.

The surviving scientific community eventually adopted the term:

ADAPTED

An Adapted individual is a human whose biology has been permanently altered by the Terrarium phenomenon.

Adaptations differ from person to person.

Generations after the Collapse, researchers discovered something unexpected.

Children were being born with adaptations despite never being exposed to the original biological vector.

The changes had become hereditary.

Some heavily altered populations demonstrate intelligence equal to or exceeding that of unaltered humans.

They communicate. They remember. They build. They form social structures.

The old world called many of these beings monsters.

The new world has begun questioning that classification.

Two centuries after the Collapse, the term "infected" becomes historically meaningless.

Children born generations after the event are not infected.

They were born adapted.

Humanity is no longer biologically uniform.

The Old World asked:

The Collapse answered:

Stabilization asked:

The Reborn era asks something different:

Hollow — because the civilization that created the experiment is gone.

Terrarium — because the world became the uncontrolled ecosystem the original researchers attempted to create.

Humanity built the terrarium.

Humanity broke it.

Humanity survived inside it.

And eventually, humanity became something the gardeners never intended.

Most pre-Collapse cities remain structurally recognizable.

Their interiors are another matter.

Vegetation has entered buildings. Water systems have failed. Archives have decayed.

Some cities are now inhabited again. Others remain completely abandoned.

Certain regions were sealed during the Collapse and never reopened.

Their current biological conditions remain unknown.

Authority maps mark these regions simply as:

Technology did not disappear.

It fragmented.

Some settlements rely on generators and refurbished machinery.

Others have recovered sophisticated manufacturing systems.

The most advanced communities combine Old World technology with biological adaptations developed after the Collapse.

Agriculture became one of the foundations of Stabilization.

• Seed preservation.
• Hydroponics.
• Greenhouse farming.
• Local livestock.
• Wild plant cultivation.

Medicine is one of the few areas where the post-Collapse world arguably surpassed the Old World.

Researchers studying hereditary adaptation have developed treatments capable of identifying biological changes before they become dangerous.

The Continuity Authority keeps much of this research classified.

Education varies between communities.

Some settlements teach Old World history. Others consider it irrelevant.

Universities in larger cities increasingly study the Collapse as a historical and biological event.

The most controversial subject remains: