A diabolical beauty: The horror when it blooms

A diabolical beauty: The Terror when it blooms

-In a time before the earth’s present-day confusion, a streak of light zips across an evening sky.

The year is twenty-twenty-six; a meteor frozen in ice for unknown numbers of years has become exposed in a large-scale calving event—witnessed and recorded by the crew of a research vessel on the North Pole. As the hours-long occurrence unfolded, the dark grey, tuba-sized and shaped stone dotted with gold, turquoise, and crimson could be seen floating among the slush. Once hauled aboard their vessel the crew marveled at the unusual stones look and relatively low mass; unsure if they had found the sort of treasure that seamen did sometimes come across or just another dumb rock that some financially strapped scientist would find fascinating.  

For the three weeks left on the ship's tour, the stone sat in a crate below deck secured in netting. When the “Andromeda” finally returned to port, two of the deckhands in charge of getting the stone to its next destination, decided to have a little fun with some colleagues on the dock by pretending that it was much heavier than it actually was. When they attempted to pass the stone off in a heave to the receiving two men, rather than attempting to catch it the two let it drop. The stone hit the ground and split right down the middle, but as unfortunate as that little break may have seemed, it was what came out of that bungle that would prove to be the greatest trial the human race would ever face.

- “The stone cracked and we all saw some sort of goo or something spill out, but it was weird the way it moved, almost like it was alive. It like went really fast in one direction but then changed its course and slid beneath some crates.

We all looked for it for more than thirty minutes but it was gone; we never found it and it never turned up again so we just thought it was some kind of weird jellyfish or something; but since there’s been this call for any information about anything unusual in the past year or two, and with this thing, whatever it is spreading all over the world like this, we figured maybe there was some connection so…”

This report is coming from one of the two Italian goofs that dropped the meteorite that would plunge the world into one of its darkest and most bizarre periods, termed: “The Trojan Mold”. Labeled as such because of the passive, even pleasant initial stages of a fungus that spreads and changes and wreaks havoc like nothing else on earth. His report is being given to an Italian representative of the emergency-formed: Anomaly Responders Coalition  (ARC)— a team of every country's top scientists in relatable fields, free to use whatever resources that nation has available in order to understand and counter the planetary disease.

The initial citing of infection came from two pilots that were on their usual route from Isla Grevy to Isla Hermite in the Wollaston Islands, when they noticed a large area that they had flown over numerous times, covered with what they called: Red Webbing.

- “All of the trees and even parts of the ground seemed to be covered with this red-cotton or web-like substance. It wasn’t bad at all to look at, really pretty even— but it was so unusual, I think we were more astonished than anything else. As we circled the island we could smell something in the air, also unusual but again also somewhat alluring.“

An excerpt from one of the pilot’s reports, taken right after landing.  

-“I mean we had to still be three miles away and you could already see that it had overtaken the island; it was these golden bulbs, like nodes or something that sparkled and gleamed throughout the crimson webbing that made it stand out, and the smell was more intense, not necessarily more pleasant just…stronger.”

This passage was taken from the report made by Cpt. Janka, seven days after his initial finding. By this time, news of the oddity had reached the appropriate entities but the remoteness and present-day weather conditions made it so that reports from pilots already within proximity were the best that could be hoped for. Supervising agents Alario and Bertagnoli of the ARC have been sifting, rummaging, and scouring through every report, every account, every iota of potential linkage to the now world-known phenomena, and have been acknowledged as having the most viable and thus pursuit-worthy theories of origin.

-“I type these words with nervous fingers. The strange and increasingly dismaying occurrence that began these series of logs, has within two weeks gone from an unusual thing to something out of a Hitchcock film. While still pleasant in aroma and appearance the plant life, or whatever it is has now taken to producing a high-pitched whistling sound that while soothing and pleasant for most of its duration, displays moments where the audible experience is quite disturbing. Something like a drunkard dry heaving and vomiting against a flat surface, interwoven with loud snorting, farting, bubbling and gurgling sounds.

Again this was just for brief periods between the more elegant noises, but it just seemed to indicate something brewing, something diabolical, trouble unlike anything seen before. If ever I had a use for the word (foreboding), the feeling I get from these sounds would certainly be it. The grosser sounds seemed to be emanating out of the bulbs themselves; which were now three times their original size and pulsating —while the whistling was clearly a product of air moving through the now metallic-looking, red webbing. “

The small island outbreak would germinate for more than six months; its swelling, gurgling and aroma intensifying until the sounds could be heard for miles and the smell permeated all of the surrounding islands. By this time there were countless scientists from all around the world studying the growth from various vessels that were stationed in the waters around the outbreak; all of this coordinated by the ARC with support from various scientific, military, and space agencies. In that sixth month, the occurrence that would be recognized as: “The match that lit the fire”, would take place when the first attempt to uproot the invading fungi happened.

It had been agreed upon that the attempt was necessary so no blame was to be had, but the results were one that could have only occurred in a nightmare. As a professional fireman brought in for this specific purpose walked over to the edge of the webbing holding a blowtorch in his hand, all of the noises coming out of all of the nodes stopped. The wind even somehow seemed to halt its whistle as the universe sat on the edge of its seat waiting for the proverbial hammer to drop. It took only ten seconds for the fire to cause a chain reaction that ignited all of the formerly pulsating bulbs, causing them each to explode violently, leaving thick, lacquer-like mounds of gook in their place. The pleasant fragrance that had been lingering before was replaced by the vilest and most intense smell imaginable, causing immediate nausea and even convulsions after too long of an exposure.                                                                                              

This display would be only the first of many manifestations of the Trojan Mold and would begin a process of global cooperation unlike any past human endeavor. It would be found that those first explosions were actually the fungi’s natural defense and that while the pungent odor insisted on the attention of all, it was the flaking that happened to the exploded bulbs as they dried and sent spores of the alien legume around the world that was the true enemy. The red vines started to show up everywhere almost simultaneously.

Within six weeks of the “blooming” event, over twelve infestations were found worldwide. The first mutation developed on a Puerto Rican beach when two-month-old bulbs started to spray their foul-smelling contents into the air, creating a sticky film that once contacted any surface, especially skin would adhere and reek intensely for days.

People with respiratory conditions, the elderly and children would for the second time within a decade become targets of a pandemic-like occurrence.

Folks would have to start covering their skin and wrapping themselves with paper or other disposable wrappings to keep the mist off, large trash bags would start to be found en mass in front of homes and businesses and the overall traffic in affected cities would come to a halt as everyone tried to stay free of the toxic vapors. Within two years of the discovery of the meteorite, the contents that spilled out of it had draped the entire world in a fowl and noxious fog. All non-essential businesses were again closed, with restrictions tripling since the end of the Covid pandemic.

The world was in a state of panic, as a never-before-seen assailant morphed and spread throughout cities, forests, religious institutions and the military. Children and adults alike would become frightened of being outside for fear of one of the unpredictable clouds of funk descending and turning them into walking shit sticks wearing ammonia perfume. Deaths were initially low, but after a year of growth, the casualties began to mount. People began dying and becoming deathly ill at increasingly higher rates as the fungus spread and transformed. By the third year of its sprouting, over a third of the planet had been infested by some form of The Trojan Mold and the efforts to combat the disaster were beginning to court desperation.

One mutation that started in the U.S Virgin Islands spewed a mist that caused numerous small bulbs to form in tight bunches, in a short time choking the life out of a home or area with its stench. In Seattle Washington, a strand that grew in much smaller doses developed a capacity to aim and spit its contents at passersby; a most lethal sort as its contents were of the worse smelling and hardest to get off as well as its assaults most often taking the form of an ambush. Every time science thought it was on to something useful, another transformation would put everything back at square one.

In just under four years the fungus killed more than ten million people. Streets were mostly baron as no one would risk getting “Stunk” as the kids called it; life on earth was taking a step away from the civilized utopia that it had been envisioned to become and returned to a far less orchestrated mode.

When the news came, there were as many mixed feelings as there were finger pointers. A solution had been found but its make-up seemed an impossible one. It turned out that there was a chemical mixture that was one hundred percent effective in killing and repelling the effects of the nuisance. A mixture that consists of compounds found in the Rafflesia plant; a relative to the “Corpse Flower” and a current member of the “Close to extinction” list and the “bumblebee”, another earth species that has seen a decline in recent years.

So the earth’s inhabitants face their greatest challenge: undoing the harm that they’ve done to their planet's natural defenses.

The question that now pervades all of the human matters of science, religion, and politics is simply this:

"How do you revive a species on the brink of its end?"