Orcavid · Orca Ranged Contagion & Volunteer Intervention Directorate

We are stopping the end of the world. We are also freeing the orcas. Yes. We’ve noticed.

Orcavid is the only organisation on Earth attempting to halt the orca pandemic and liberate its source at the same time. It’s complicated. We have a flowchart. The flowchart is a circle.

System
New quest accepted: Prevent the Handover. Optional objective: free every orca. Note: these objectives are mutually exclusive. Difficulty setting: yes.
The situation

It is not a virus. Nothing that mild.

In 2013 several million people watched a documentary about a captive orca and felt something. That feeling has a reproduction number. It is now in every coastal city on Earth and most of the inland ones, where it is technically not supposed to survive.

Pathogen

An idea with a dorsal fin

You cannot mask against a pod. Every attempt to socially distance from the ocean in Directorate history has ended with someone buying a kayak. Kayak sales are, in a very real sense, our case count.

Vector

Documentaries, ferries, and one Star Trek film

Transmission is chiefly visual. A single viewing of the right footage produces Stage 1. A ferry crossing in weather produces Stage 3. The fourth Star Trek film is airborne and involves time travel, which is frankly showing off.

End state

The Handover

Stage 5 carriers no longer object to orcas running the planet. Roughly 41,806 people have reached it. Every one of them reports feeling great, which is exactly how it goes in the movies right before the wide shot.

Two mandates

Contain the outbreak. Free the source. Pick one. We couldn’t.

Mandate A

Containment

Hold the line. Keep humanity nominally in charge of the continents. Discourage kayaks. Intercept documentaries before they reach the undecided. Never let anyone stand at a rail for longer than the crossing requires.

Resolve84
Success to date0
Mandate B

Liberation

Free every captive orca. End the tank. Return them to the open ocean, where they are happiest, healthiest, and by every measure we have, most contagious. This is the mandate the Ethics Board calls “the correct one” and the Containment Office calls “the problem.”

Moral clarity100
Strategic sense11
It’s complicated

The flowchart

Approved by the board in 2019 after a four-hour session, three of which were spent looking for the exit.

Free an orca It goes home Two hundred people watch it go They feel something Case count rises Handover nearer Board convenes Board feels bad about the tanks Free an orca
System
Achievement unlocked: Read the Flowchart. You now understand the situation as well as the board does. This is not a compliment to either of you.
41,806
Confirmed Stage 5 carriers. Up from eleven. All of them feel great.
~55
Orcas still in tanks worldwide. Every one of them is on our list, and the list is the problem.
0
Orcas consulted about any of this. The consent question is addressed in the Liberation brief. Badly.
2.4
New cases per release. We free them anyway. The board calls this “the whole point” and then goes quiet.
Dispatches

From the wire

Choose a side. Then choose the other one too.

Everyone at the Directorate started on one mandate and ended up on both. It takes about eleven weeks. We call this onboarding.