SpoilerI don't want to end this too abruptly - we just need to get her home in an update or two, then I can get to work on the series of updates that will finally wake her up.

Wild Mass GuessingThe streets are desolated, maybe becuse everyone's indoors and stuck in some kind of eternal trance. The fact that Connie doesn't want to drink water gives me an idea that something (probably Slick's discharge of Black Goo) might have tainted the water supply and found its way into being consumed by many thirsty citizens, which ended up contributing to their "condition" as their consciousness seems to have been eaten up. Connie probably drinks liquor out of necessity since it's the only beverage she knows that isn't tainted by what the Subject has wrought.

But that's just a theory, I could be wrong.

speculation
What if connie is now some part black goop/hivemind and therefore deadly allergic to water?

SpoilerMaybe we simply never uited Connie subconcious...
I mean why would th adventure soil it's own ending like that ? Could jsut be still part of hatever illusions the hivemind s cooking to ge Connie under it's influence or something of the sort...

SpoilerThe way I see it, we're looping back to here, one way or another and we'll either see full gooification or an intervention of some sort. Which is the case? Who knows. Connie's mind is quite literally and figuratively fighting for survival but the only real plan she can have is to stall and delay her demise and hope her compatriots in the 'Real World' can bring her back or at least... bring symbiosis back on the table... At the moment, I reckon that if Slick shows up, that can only be a good sign, right?

also wow I am so glad waterworks is still going it's fucking admirable and I hope it can continue a while longer

OOCBits and pieces of the worldbuilding slowly fall into place. I wonder if it's always been this way or merely a measure taken after the incident. Hopefully the event wasn't broadcasted to the entire world or something.

OOCWoah, the state of the world is pretty cool but also sad. I wonder if the brain parasite is a lesser version of the black goo. Maybe a medical procedure is capable of extracting it and accumulation resulted in black goo. I wager it's largely extraterrestrial in origin, there's no way it is a result of evolution, natural or not.

Spoiler(Because god forbid peoples do things out of creativity, curiosity, need for self improvement or passion rather than pure necessity.

... Yeah, I'm going to call Connie as mayybe kind of an unreliable narrator here. She remind me of those workaholics who are forced into retirement and just mutter agrily at the new generation, 'what with them being asisted lazybones alway on dem newfanged computer, my god mam', in my time we were hard working and proudof it, yes siree'

And, 'the people are purposeless, the world is wasting away, misery everywheere !' doesn't that sound like a scenario some sort of control freak entity, oh maybe jsut a little hive mindish maybe, could make up to convince someone that assimilation is the best thing for everyone ?
(hey it's worth a try, even I'm pretty sure it's meant to be the real future of the adventure.)

But just from a narrative perspective, I don't get what is the point of showing this soewhat vision of the future and all hese plot elements (particulary th brain parasiite) now rather than y'know at the end, otherwise ?
(I mean it kind of take the risk of disengaging the reader as we would now already know how it end. Som storries do sometime show a flashforward and do the whole 'how did we gethere', but then it's generaly at the start, not smack in the ... middle , I think ?)

Unless LuFa actualy plan on ending the adventure very soon with the incomming flash, is already wapping loose ends (seems a lttle odd after yu just introduced one whallop of a plot element with a mysterious pandemic) and we are in the finale already, ooor the storry continues in some ways after the five years skip

In replyTo be fair, he did address this in his blog. Since he's already neck-deep in interludes, might as well get the worldbuilding out of the way before resuming the main adventure soon. At the very least we get a wider view of the world's state outside of what was given in the lore posts.

https://shakks.tumblr.com/post/162776632718/
https://shakks.tumblr.com/post/163168290588/
https://shakks.tumblr.com/post/163168798508/

And I read the world-building lore posts on his blog