The Ningen (1990-1992) Timeline

This is the chronological timeline of MISTER MANTICORE's analog horror web series 'The Ningen (1990-1992)'.

## Timeline

### Sometime before 3200 BC

Cave paintings of a story similar to the story of Icarus are painted in Antarctica 11,000 years before the story of Icarus is first mentioned. Also during this time, humans diverge from Ningen as a species, and leave Antarctica. We are their warm children.

### 1989

At the beginning of the 1989-1990 International Trans-Antarctica Expedition, camera footage of the Antarctic Peninsula unknowingly picks up footage of a Ningen.

### 1990

A Ningen corpse is discovered in the mountains of Antarctica, presumably during the 1990 International Trans-Antarctica Expedition. The corpse is given the name Icarus I.

After this, Japanese team member Keizo Funatsu goes out to feed the sleigh dogs a few miles from their destination, which was a Soviet base. During this time, the Funastu family becomes prey for the Ningens. Upon finishing feeding them, he turns back for camp, but isn't able to see it. When he sees that the dogs behind him have disappeared, too, he realises that he'd been caught up in a snowstorm.

The wind was too strong for Keizo to walk straight ahead, eventually knocking him down. He crawled on his stomach to where the camp should've been, but nothing came closer. At the time, he was carrying pliers to unfreeze dog collars and fix broken ones, so he used them to dig a hole in the ice. The ground was almost impossible to dent, but he dug for hours and managed to create a little ditch which barely kept the wind away and climbed inside. He thought that very few people had the experience to settle down in the blizzard and try to enjoy it. He allowed himself to feel Antarctica and let the snow cover him like a mother's womb.

Eventually, he heard someone yell his name. Keizo yelled back, announcing his location, and the voice replies, saying that it sees him. Keizo kept yelling to allow them to find his location. Slowly, a Ningen steps out from the white, scaring Keizo. Keizo ran as fast as he could away from him. He then saw the team leader Will Steger, followed by the rest of the team, and they are reunited. Keizo would later name the creature he saw 'human', or 'ningen' in Japanese.

### 1991

Footage of an aquatic Ningen is recorded, most likely in the Antarctic seas, given that that's where the Ningen live. The specimen in the video is given the name Icarus II.

Sometime after the footage of Icarus II in it's aquatic form is recorded, the crew of the 1990 Trans-Antarctica Expedition encounter it in their ship named Professor Zubov. Icarus II's head and arms sloshed off like uterine lining and it ascended into the sky. It hung with no clear direction, but it's gaze could be felt on all of the crew members. It was impossible and beautiful, like a glimpse into an ancient process. The Professor Zubov slowly pulled away from it's view, but the memory is still a putrid stain in all of their minds.

Icarus II approached the ship, attacking the crew members, before fusing with it, the Professor Zubov and it becoming Icarus III, a factory for producing humans/Ningens, coved in the Russian word for 'help' on the outside.

### Sometime after 1992

Keizo Funatsu's son Hugo would read his father's journal in a series of interviews, however reading it would make him become insane. He would later remove his eyes to 'avoid the truth', but in the blindness he realised that the Russian text on the outside of the ship was not written by any crew member, as they could never have reached, nor was it spray paint, as it does not become a dull brown. It doesn't even say 'help' as a verb, but as a noun, as in 'assistance' or 'aid'. It was a lure for the humans, a lure that mocked them. Or perhaps they see their treatment of us as assistance, taking us beyond our current state in evolution. Perhaps they consider themselves our saviours.

Hell is real and it's cold. What will happen when it's warm?