" It's not a pathogen," he said. "It's a belief. A thought-crime. It may be the most seductive idea that the humans ever came up with. It certainly fooled them for long enough. Still does, I imagine."
"Death life," he continued. "Life after death. Afterlife. The Queen didn't even have a word for it."
"EMSAH makes you believe in the afterlife?"
"The belief is not a symptom of EMSAH," he said. "That's what the Queen wanted us to think. The belief is EMSAH. That's why it can't be cured. The Queen recruited us in her holy war. EMSAH is what will make us like the humans, if we don't eradicate it."
"So EMSAH is...an ideology?"
"It's religion. "

― Robert Repino , Mort(e) (War with No Name, #1)