What if...

The conversation with his father continued for a while. Erik had a lot of things to think about and digest when it ended.

The Silverline Corporation, the same company he found the remnants of here in Liberty Watch, had made the biological supercomputer, but most of all, it spread the sinister cold.

This ugly disease didn't immediately make people get brain crystals; it took some time, and before that moment arrived, many people died. 

The Sinister Cold was a ruthless virus. <

Well, based on what dad said, I'm not sure anymore if it is a virus. >

Regardless, the effects of this man-made thing were devastating. This was not a disease but a weapon of mass destruction, unleashed not by nature but by human hands in a lab, tearing through the fabric of society like a scythe through ripe grain.

The Sinister Cold had not discriminated; it claimed millions, from the young to the old, and transformed bustling metropolises into ghost towns.