Breeding War

Through the steam on my goggles, I can just make out a single light beaming through a window on the second floor of the house a few blocks ahead. A clarion call that I’m in the right place, despite wanting to be any place but here. I spill out of the van with a few of my colleagues, each draped in the same protective equipment as the other and me.

“Start your timers now,” barks the driver. “I’m leaving in two hours. If you stay a minute longer, you’re joining the ghosts in this town.”

Two hours.

My photographer’s camera wrapped in material that’s supposed to protect the equipment dangles from his neck and a microphone coils around mine, as if it knows my life may be slowly choked with every step to the beckoning light ahead. The access we’ve received didn’t come easily. My wallet is lighter than it was the week prior, much lighter, while the border guards glut off the bribes we relinquished at the crossing. But our contact’s promise is too savory to pass by. If it’s true, years of half-truths, of deception, on both sides of the story would be upended.

“You won’t need the gear,” our contact, Gino, says as we climb the stairs to his room, one creak at a time. His face unfettered by protective equipment, his hands bare, and no jumpsuit draped on his arms. Just a tracksuit and a worn chain across his neck. 

“I’ve lived here for six months. I promise, you won’t need the gear.”

My crew and I exchange looks of trepidation. My hands shake as I pull at the fingers of my gloves. But I stop, unsure of the man’s honesty.

“It’s OK. You’ll see before the day’s done how false their narrative is,” he says, voice hoarse with age.

1 hour 50 minutes.

We proceed to the site single file, our bulky suits weighing our every step while Gino walks unencumbered through the vacant streets. Sweat streams through our suits, radiating back our body heat, though Gino seems to have a slight spring in his step as we move closer to the shell of the abandoned, deteriorating structure.

“It’s safe? I mean, it’s safe to go inside?” mumbles my photographer through the protective hood.

“There hasn’t been a structural collapse in a few months,” Gino says, ducking through a doorway and shuffling down stairs, “We’re fine so long as you had a light breakfast.”

One floor, two, three floors. We shamble down a dimly lit stairwell until the lights above merge with the lights creeping from the door in front of us.

“Why do they seem new, the stairs?” I ask.

“The story on the outside doesn’t always match the truth inside, does it my friends?” Gino says smiling, balancing his weight against the guardrail along the final steps.

1 hour 40 minutes.

My photographer’s breath shutters as we approach the door. The door is other-worldly, unnatural, like it was dropped on its hinges from another planet, one wrought of iron and chrome, not the crumbling granite a few hundred yards above. Steam coats the glass on the other side of the door, indicating a different climate, a different atmosphere, a different world just inches away from my fingers.

“I promise, you don’t need the suits,” Gino says. The ticking of the dial on my hip never rang, neither did the dial on Trevor’s hip. One malfunctioning dial is easy enough to explain. Two, less so. “You’ll want to see this with your own eyes.”

I hesitate, as does Trevor, but in a moment, he slips his camera off from his neck, removes the goggles, the hood, and the remaining gear until his Nirvana shirt and bleached jeans are exposed to the elements. I follow suit, pulling at the gloves, my heartbeat skipping twice as each finger of the glove slides off my own. I release the goggles from my head, and my eyes adjust from the tint, first blurring, then making out the rivets in the door.

1 hour 30 minutes.

Gino smiles as he loosens the lock on the door. The lock seems to not want to budge, as if urging me not onward, but backward, to not accept his invitation, but to retreat while the option is still present.

But the lock gives, and Trevor and I follow Gino through the door, heart in our throats, extremities pulsing, minds swimming. 

A room spanning acres with a ceiling that seems to stretch back to the surface opens to us. Monolithic rods, seemingly of boron carbide, dot the horizon, with fluorescent lights beaming onto each. White-coated professors scurry back and forth from each, taking notes, recording observations, and exchanging glances of surprise, of awe, of concern, of frustration, of discovery.

“You glad you removed the goggles?” Gino says with a chuckle.

But we’re too stunned to speak. Here, hundreds of yards beneath the surface, where life wasn’t meant to dwell, scientific discovery grows, truth grows.

“Come, there’s a rod over here that would be perfect for you to examine, it’s well documented.”

Gino gestures to one of the two hundred rods, nearly twice my height, with probes and tools of science scattering its surface. A scientist raises an eyebrow as we approach. Trevor’s camera gazes at the rod, the science frowns, but Gino reassures him.

“Don’t you have questions?” Gino asks.

I apologize, not aware of how speechless I’ve been since crossing the threshold of the room.

“How is any of this real?” I ask, making a poor attempt at hiding my lingering shock.

“While the people believe these rods ripped apart the world above, it is not truth,” he mumbles in broken English through a thick accent. “We discovered that under correct conditions, each rod became a gateway. They did not destroy life, they created life.”

“They created life?” The shock is impossible to hide.

“Come. Look through microscope.” The scientist gestures to an apparatus the length of my arm and I peer through the glass at a sample on the table.

One hour 15 minutes. Our return journey must begin soon, yet my mind is on the small panel with answers to a million questions.

Figures bounce back and forth across the slide, figures with limbs, faces, eyes; characteristics not dissimilar from myself. Buildings, appearing hundreds of feet in scale, though mere microns in reality, dot my view.

Life. They created life. Out of the ruins above, life grows below.

“We extracted this sample from rod next to you almost three months ago,” the scientist says. “The lifeforms develop faster than we originally expected, leading us to conclude that contained bursts of radioactive material combined with the base material accelerates growth rate of cells.”

“You mean, these were single cell organisms?” I ask in bewilderment. 

“Yes, mere amoeba just a few years ago when the incident occurred. But the incident didn’t occur. Radiation is, as it was, contained.”

He ushers me to another rod. A table stands near the rod, smoke billowing from a corner. Trevor's camera clicks at each plume.

“These have been at war for a few days, despite a standstill for a few minutes. I imagine another day and the war will be over with a stronger victor emerging.

My heart races again. But a magnifying glass as thick as a dinner plate shows the horrific scene. Microscopic warriors race across ravaged landscapes, firing weapons of future and hurling explosives at a smaller, defeated force.

A lump forms in my throat. War. They bred war. I fear I know the answer to my next question.

“Why are you showing me this?”

“Because, American,” the scientist says coldly. “The truth is more powerful than any lie our country could have told. These organisms are not just the next chapter of life. They’re the next weapons on the battlefield between our two nations.”

“American. This is a warning for your country. We will not meet bombs with bombs. We will meet bombs with the next generation of soldier. Billions of Soviets. The greatest Army seen.” He gestures to dozens more tables, each crowded with evolving societies of miniature warriors. A mannequin donning American fatigues is swarmed in millions of warriors, destroying the model inch by inch in seconds.

My awe turns to horror, understanding the scene playing out before me. They didn’t bring me here as a reporter. They brought me here to be an arbiter, a messenger of the omen of war soon to arrive on my country’s shores.

Truth. A truth I wish I never knew.

1 hour. We must begin our return journey if I am to make it to our driver before he leaves us. 

Gino guides us back to the door, back to our suits, back to the lies the world made us believe for decades. My eyes have been opened, and yet I wish they were closed. I feel a terrible burden as I jump back into the van and grab my pen. I remove the hood, not that it did any good, and let the words flow into my pad.

“We believed Chernobyl was a nuclear disaster, a devastating mark of decline for the Soviet Union. We are wrong.”