Or, How the Earth was saved.
Pete was watching the monitor intensely. 30... 20... 15...
Knock knock
Damnit, thought Pete. He quickly pulled his pants up and, adjusting his jacket, opened the door.
“Ah, Jacqueline,” he said, slowly opening the door wider, “to what do I owe this pleasure?”
“It’s this here sir...” She looked slightly confused, “are you ok sir?”
“Yes, of course, I was just a tad busy that’s all...”
“But sir, I mean, your neck...”
She pointed to his neck, looking slightly repugnated. As he felt his neck he felt many little bobbles, like spots.
“Retrieve a Petri dish,” he ordered.
When she returned he squeezed one of the spots and released the forth-coming liquid into the dish. He started coughing. Soon the carpet was stained dark red, almost black, and the girl had long since run away.
Pete came to in a hospital room. At the end of his bed was a pile of work.
Marking, he thought groggily, damn, they never leave me alone do they...
“Hey, Mr McCarty!” he heard, accompanied by more girlish voices. He often felt that his only students were girls. In fact, that was almost true.
“Have you heard the news sir?” one of the girls asked.
This isn’t the news?
“Of course not!” said another one, wagging her slender finger and nodding knowingly, “He’s only just woke up!”
“What’s happened Alisha?” Pete added, smiling. Some baloney I expect...
The girls looked awkward, still unsure how to actually tell him. Alisha stepped forward, metaphorically.
“Well sir,” she began, looking like she was holding back a smile*, “... Jacqueline’s dead.”
Pete grimaced, well there goes next years’ holiday, he thought.
2 weeks later, every girl in Pete’s class who’d visited him was dead. He was a little fidgety now, sometimes taking his tie on and off again repeatedly. Women were now banned from his immediate vicinity. Taking the Petri dish from his pocket, Pete placed it under a microscope. The sample had begun to grow and was fairly large now, even moving visibly in the agar. It almost seemed to move in a rhythm and order.
The door burst open.
Pete’s girlfriend, Jenny, ran in.
“No! Stay back!” coughed Pete, choking on a polo he’d been sucking, “Do you wanna die?”
“They’re dying everywhere Pete. Everywhere you look, they’re dying.” She said grimly, switching on the TV.
Sure enough, there they were on the news, looking pretty much dead. A film crew had run in and the image was cut as the channel quickly tried to find something to hide the deaths.
“Wow!” said Jenny. She fell to her knees and her eyes burst. Soon Pete had left, feeling pretty darn annoyed.
When he got to his friend Tom’s lab he showed him the organism in the Petri dish. Tom deciphered the movements, recognising the Morse-code style of the movements straight away.
“You know, I thought something this small would be far too stupid to communicate, let alone use a form of code we created and have long since forgotten,” said Pete, shaking his head.
“Well, it’s a bit awful, I must admit,” Said Tom, “but look at us! I’m gonna see if it’ll respond to us if we also use Morse-code, though I don’t imagine its knowledge of English is that good, it just seems to keep saying ‘Cliff’.”
Finally the machine was all set, looking like a microscope with a probe on one side and a rather small monitor on the other. The probe sent Morse-code in the form of small shocks; while any code it received back was converted to letters and retyped on the monitor. The microscope element of the machine seemed fairly redundant. You couldn’t check the facial expressions of the creature more closely related to algae than to vertebrates.
HIYA, Tom sent.
HELLO, they sent back.
ARE YOU THE WOMAN KILLER SPORE ORGANISM? typed Tom.
YES, replied the organism. ALTHOUGH WE WERE ALSO MEANT TO KILL YOU. THERE WAS SOME SORT OF ERRER (SP.?)
ITS ACTUALLY ERROR, corrected Tom, CAN WE ASK YOU TO STOP KILLING?
ONLY BY CATCHING US ALL INDIVIDUALLY AND ASKING US. IN GENERAL WE WONT STOP THOUGH I SUSPECT. A UNANIMOUS VOTE IS REQUIRED.
SHIT, said Tom, WHY? he asked.
BECAUSE WHEN WE ACHIEVED SENTIENCE WE REALISED THERE WAS NO POINT IN LIVING. NOW WE’VE ADAPTED OURSELVES TO ONLY INFECT AND LIVE UPON HUMANS, WHOM WE CAN NOW KILL AND THEREFORE DIE ALTHOUGH NOT BEFORE SPREADING OUR SPORES, ANNOYINGLY. IT’LL ONLY BE A MATTER OF TIME BEFORE WE KILL MALES OF YOUR SPECIES TOO. THEN FINALLY WE WILL BE FREE AND WE CAN FREE YOU TOO. FOR ME IT’LL ONLY BE A LITTLE WHILE LONGER HERE ON YOUR PUS.
Pete looked annoyed, and a little bit upset. He took the keyboard from Tom.
HAVE YOU NO GOD? OR GODS? OR SOMETHING YOU ENJOY IN LIFE? he asked the organism.
NO.
Pulling the Petri-dish open, he crushed the organism. In the micro-organisms last dying seconds it sighed with relief before adapting and infecting Pete with the new, male-killing spores.
The Earth’s environment was saved, for all the wrong reasons.
A butterfly fluttered its beautiful wings as it crossed an airfield. An aeroplane landed and crushed it. What an artificial way to die, thought the butterfly.
*Alisha smiled on account of having won a bet and making a lot of money. The bet was that Jacqueline wouldn’t die from not eating enough. Alisha herself was of pleasurable weight, not plump but not only eating carrot sticks for her main meal. She exercised regularly.
