***
Elliott sat on the back porch and watched Kevin stamp mud off his Wellington’s then swap them for his tough walking boots. He moaned about his stiff back and aching muscles after a hard day on the farm. Elliott was happy to help his uncle with the chores and knew he would miss him when his dad was released from prison next month.
Kevin grasped Elliott’s shoulder. “I’ve got to get into town before the wholesaler closes. We need supplies for tomorrow. If I hurry now, I’ll be back after sunset.”
“Will you get me some bubble gum? That’s what good uncles are supposed to do. I read it in the Good Parenting Guide.”
Kevin clipped Elliott with a playful jab to the arm. “I don’t subscribe, I’m afraid. I prefer Pig’s Digest. Which reminds me, clean up your room while I’m gone. It’s worse than the pigsty.”
Elliott would rather wash the pigs than clean his room, but tonight was a special night, a night he’d been waiting for a long time. The comet’s tail was already brushing the earth’s atmosphere somewhere over North America. Come sundown, as the comet streaked across Spain and France, the mixing gasses would produce a show more spectacular than the Northern Lights. He wouldn’t want to miss it because he was busy cleaning his room.
“Can I do it after the comet goes by?”
“As long as it’s done before I get home.” Kevin grabbed the keys for his old pickup truck off the hook by the door. “Tell Sally not to wait supper for me.”
“Okay, drive safe.”
Kevin set a floppy straw hat on his head and bounded out the screen door. The rusted old truck with a dull paintjob and dented fenders ground to life with a pop and a bang then rattled off toward town.
Telescope in hand, Elliott rushed out to the barnyard, set up the tripod, and aimed the lenses south toward France. He couldn’t wait until dark so he could see the comet’s spectacular arc across the heavens.
***
The setting sun scattered light through the atmosphere causing a bright red stain in the sky. The fully aware mind felt a rush of urgency as rich solar radiation diminished to its green, mossy mass, slowing growth. If it didn’t feed soon, it would have to wait out the darkness until the sun returned.
At least it had been free to sink its roots in solid ground and spread in all directions. It drank greedily from the abundant water the planet had to offer. Yet the need to feed dominated its every thought.
The writhing mass had rooted extensively across the world, many parts of a single whole scattered everywhere, creeping toward fertile soil. It encountered a patchwork of cultivated land surrounded by rough saline waters and dotted with clusters of structures that ancient memory perceived as indigenous habitat soon to be consumed by the hunger.
In the fading light, the hunt began. Dark purple clouds rolled inwards. Thick forks of lightning struck the earth all around. In the wake of these plasma bolts, viscous pools of bubbling liquid remained, and multiplied, growing into budding sacks of nerve bundles that could see and hear and comprehend structures and organic material in its relentless hunt for food.
These inflating sacks formed giant bulb-shaped geophytes. Wet with green perspiration, they began to split open and launch huge globules of green slime into the air, which landed sloppily near an indigenous being.
The green globs energized their optic nerves and audio receptors to observe the native life-form moving about an oxidised metal machine that made popping and banging noises. It was infested with red minerals, dull in appearance, and dented.
Atoms within the globs detached from molecules and began to bond into different compounds, a force of instinctive behaviour the mind struggled to control. The globs were analysing the machine’s dimensions, the four round shapes beneath a cubed body, in an effort to replicate it, which would be a waste of precious time, as it wasn’t edible like the life-form moving nearby.
The sacks sensed the indigenous being’s nutrient-rich meat protected inside a waterproof wrapping of flesh, covered loosely in synthetic layers. A floppy object made of dried organic material teetered on the being’s head, and primary locomotion came from the movement of fleshy appendages known to the ancient mind as legs. The indigenous creature appeared weak, making it an easy source of food.
Hunger drove the mind to release the molecular reconstruction mechanisms within the writhing green globs. The bubbling masses gelled together and grew upwards until, as one, it stood on thick legs and sprouted long tendril arms from a broad trunk, loosely replicating its prey, including the floppy object on its head.
A feeling of individuality overwhelmed the replicated mass as it separated from the whole. Independent thoughts distinguished it from the ancient mind, and by its own will, it stalked the indigenous prey that now scrambled into the machine for shelter or escape.
Tendril arms lashed out, snagging a fleshy leg and yanking the creature to the ground. Oozing green slime covered the downed creature and began the digestive process. It struggled and kicked, emitting sounds the watching ancient mind interpreted as high-pitched screams laced with panic until finally the prey fell still...and silent.
With a hunger that spanned a hundred-thousand light-years, the fully functional replicator dispatched its own tendrils toward the stricken prey...
And finally it fed.
***
I’d never taken notice of end-of-world predictions in the past. I’m a rational guy, I’d like to think. Millennia of predictions, Nostradamus notwithstanding, energized cranks and conspiracy theorists who’d lived and breathed the bullshit even after they were proven wrong. Still, bad news spread like a nasty cold.
The problem in here, locked in a high security prison, was that the unbelievable became much harder to ignore. Lying on my bunk, I had too much time to think... what if?
What if the earth’s orbit intersected with the comet’s trajectory towards the sun? What if the earth was in the wrong place at the wrong time? What if the two collided? Scientists had said the dinosaurs became extinct in that way. What if the human race stood on the brink of a similar fate?
Surely the world leaders would know of our impending doom, but they’d have to keep something that catastrophic a secret. Otherwise worldwide panic would ensue. But Christ, they’ve already said the comet’s tail would brush the atmosphere. What if the comet’s gasses poisoned the air and asphyxiated the population? What a horrible way for everyone to die. Elliott wouldn’t stand a chance...
I caught myself before my blood pressure spiked from this self-induced dose of fear. Like I said, I had too much thinking time in here.
The view port on my cell door flipped open and revealed Delmont’s miserable face. His brow was thick and strong like a Neanderthal’s, bushy eyebrows set in a default expression of disgust. Like a boxer’s face, his was bent and twisted by a lifetime of fistfights and riot control.
The port closed, and the sound of rattling keys advised me I was about to endure another unwelcome visit from the prison’s most brutal of guards, a sadistic bully with a chip on his shoulder the size of Big Ben. Delmont stepped into my cell, unsmiling.
“To what do I owe the pleasure?” I asked with a wide grin. Sarcasm was my best weapon against him.
“I’m not in this job to make small-talk with scum. I’m here to make sure you don’t rip each other’s heads off like the rabid animals you are.”
“I’m not an animal.”
“You smell like one.”
Delmont threw letters on my bunk with a scowl and turned to leave.
“Wait up,” I said.
He stopped and eyed me like I was something he’d scraped off the bottom of his boot.
“People are saying the comet might strike the earth, you know, all this near-miss talk being just a cover-up for an impending disaster. What’s your take on it?”
Delmont’s face turned red with bridled rage. “Don’t tell me you’re starting to believe in that bullshit, Weber?”
I sat up on my bunk. “No one knows what’s going to
happen when the comet passes.”
“A brilliant light show in the sky, you idiot. Nothin’ to be scared of.”
“I’m not scared...but Elliott might be.”
“Too bad for him. Besides, the comet is passing as we speak, and nothin’s happened.”
I stood, looked Delmont in the eye. “I get out in a few weeks, so I was hoping you could have a word with the governor. Get me a day-release to see my son. You know, before the comet is gone.”
Delmont’s face remained in a fixed display of arrogant irritation. But I knew him better than that. Deep down, he enjoyed his position of control over me.
Bastard.
He pretended to write something on the palm of his hand with an imaginary pen. “Note to Warden: Regarding prisoner Weber. He requests day-release, due to...” He looked up and drilled me with a demeaning glare. “Due to what, Weber, the end of the world, did you say?”
I didn’t bother to answer, just shook my head and flopped back down on my bunk. Delmont turned and left, laughing hardily as if I’d just made his day. Prick.
Lying back, I felt my soul slip into the quagmire of suffocating defeat. Not because Delmont had roasted me, but because I couldn’t shake the bad feeling I had about Elliott facing this comet calamity alone, like when I’d left him alone with his dead mother. I shouldn’t have done that, but I did. I had a choice back then. I have no choice now. Still, I felt an urgency to be outside these high walls, to be with him, in case the end-of-days naysayers were actually on to something this time.
Four more weeks of this hell seemed an eternity.
About The Author
Dean lives with his wife and two young children in Surrey, UK. He owns a business jointly with his father, developing and manufacturing fibre optic components. His day job consists largely of shining light through fragile glass fibres, and trying to glue very small things to even smaller things.
Dean is a 2nd Dan Black Belt in Kickboxing and has won national and international titles in the sport. In 2003 he spent a few months living, and training at a Shaolin Kung Fu academy in Northern China. He enjoys running and mountain biking, but now does most of his training in the local boxing gym.
Dean writes science fiction and horror, and his short stories have appeared in webzines in the UK and US.
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