I, the mold, am a keen observer of human inconsistencies.
When the Lieutenant Colonel begins to fib about the Xenomatter Incident in Lunar Region A15, I catch on right away: “We have not yet identified any cause for alarm.”
He is keen to project that behind the weariness that tatters his voice, rests the same sense of iron that lends a brooding weight to the piled cumulus in the window, drifting in metallic towers against the stars. Whether he succeeds, I have not yet been able to determine. To be fair, his opponent, positioned on the far side of the desk, one leg deposited over the other, is a tough one.
The General drums her fingertips on polished mahogany. Long enough to make the Lieutenant Colonel’s eyes widen like a rabbit lifting its head at the distant, wind-frayed call of a hawk.
The unnerving tattoo cuts short. “Unfortunately,” she whisks a fingertip across the soft, blue glow of the touchscreen at her wrist, and a bouquet of bright squares leaps into the air, crowded with text as a periwinkle glow bathes the desk, “Doctor Laffey’s report disagrees with that assessment. Significantly."
The Lieutenant Colonel swallows, but tucked snugly into the hairline crack in the ceiling, I tremble with excitement. They’re about to mention me.
“Seventeen hospitalizations since the meteor struck. Eleven of which were among the first investigatory party that examined the crater. The remaining six consist of various roommates, partners, and friends of the eleven."
Is that all? I squirm in the ceiling crack, then zing out down one long, forked limb as sparks of contact scrape my sentience, and I flitter through the growth to bloom afresh in a corner of the infirmary ceiling. A bed squeaks beneath the weight of a new body and I race back to the Lieutenant Colonel’s office thinking, eighteen.
Just in time to hear the General’s dry, “Coincidence, is it?
The Lieutenant Colonel’s jaw clenches. “There is no proof that the hospitalizations are related to the meteor. The Analysis department has tested this thing over and over, ma’am. The meteor is not possessed of any toxic substances.”
Oh, but that’s not what they said at first arrival. Not that it matters now, he’s only dismayed that this all happened on his watch. A curious inconsistency, that humans volunteer for power while hoping the responsibility will fall on someone else’s shoulders.
The General cocks an eyebrow, though her hair is so blonde the gesture is barely visible against the pallor of the skin, and I wonder if the sun of the new world will agree with her. We’re all newcomers here, though I admit, they got here a bit before me - not for lack of effort on my part. If you could have seen the haste and clamor of my arrival.
“The doctor’s reports are remarkably consistent, in spite of the diversity of subjects.” The General flicks through the neon documents, drawing down one and flicking the text larger, honing in on one paragraph with an idle gesture. The Lieutenant Colonel flinches. “Normally,” she flicks aside the first document and expands another, “one would expect random variety amid such hallucinations.” Another flick, and phrases like deep blackness, unknown constellations, roaring speed and flame, flash through the air, highlighted in crimson.
With a soft crackle of paint, I seep deeper into the ceiling, creeping forward for a better view of the Lieutenant Colonel’s face. But it’s the fist, clenched on the desk, that catches my attention.
“We’ve found nothing.” The voice is almost too soft to catch. “Every protocol, every effort, the scientists can’t explain it-”
The General sighs, and gives the touch screen another gentle tap. The documents vanish. “There is one thing our scientists do agree on. They can’t identify the variety of material that comprises the meteor.”
“But how…” My attention flickers as they round back to the same point. Humans do fascinate me - until they begin to repeat themselves. And they do repeat themselves.
Growing bored, I shiver
consciousness to the underside of the topmost beam of the wooden fence by the path outside. Splinters hang over me where the fence meets the edge of the crater.
The meteor rests at the center of a ring of cinders, holes dotting its twisted surface. Two black pits on one side, and between them, a series of smaller perforations boring into the rock.
Two guards stand beside the fence, facing away, guns heavy in their hands. They’re meant to be watching the path, but their eyes keep sliding down into the crater, where figures encased in hazmat suits crowd the meteor. Two humans hold the end of a massive device that looks more weapon than tool, but the third grips the thin barb of the tapered end, and angles it along the surface of the meteor, sloughing off a chunk of ethereal white with slow, whittling work. A scream rises from the machine, sparks skittering across the cinder-soil at the figures’ chunky boots. The crack where the needle works the meteor glows hot-amber, like a teardrop of lava, slowly-dripping.
My word, but it’s loud out here.
High above, in the whirling furnaces of space, three intrepid vessels skim the moon’s ethereal atmosphere - which I believe is new, brand new in cosmic terms, the humans having only just installed one for the sake of the lunar outpost - with a sizzle that pops across the branches of my body in one electric inflammation. For a single moment, the gathering tremble erupts into a roar, bellowing against the scream of the laser drill in the crater, as three silver crafts zing through the sky, their fiery trails leadening to grey behind them in streaks that scratch the stars.
I scowl, by which I mean I open a few putrid-purple spores behind the wooden slat of the pantry wall in the kitchen. All this noise, this tumult, that draws human eyes inexorably upward once or twice every few hours. I’ve discerned what all the fuss is about: they are settling the planet which this moon orbits, and in couples and throuples, the vessels of a mighty host make landfall while the military, posted on the planet’s moons, observe the spaceships shooting through the sky like falling stars.
Well. I suppose I’m not the only one allowed to travel that way. Nonetheless. The racket of their engines, the bellows of their lungs- Humanity. The whole teeming, god-awful mass of it.
“What do you think, is it La Gallega?” Hu asks, watching the wispy trails unravel before the cosmos. “My sister and her husband should be on that.”
“You’re lucky,” comes Jackson’s gloomy reply, “my family’s so far back in the queue, half the planet will be taken before we get to move in.”
“Too bad, we got dibs on the rainforest on Continent 3.”
Jackson snorts. “The rainforest?”
Hu grins. “I’m gonna build me a fucking tree-top bungalow.”
The titanic sphere of the planet looms above the forests of the moon, splashes of tumid green marking the lush equator while the poles linger an icy blue.
I have observed this, often, in my period of dwelling among the humans. They love to expand. Ever outward. Ever onward. Leaving ruin behind them.
Well, can’t I relate?
Yet here is the difference, and one of those inconsistencies I can’t help but notice: they push forward, thinking of fresh starts and new opportunities. Abandoning a legacy of unsolved problems, and dangling threads.
“Sure. Enjoy your fucking rainforest. Come visit me in the desert on sub-continent 5, that’s all that will be left by the time I get my turn. If I ever get to leave this god-damn moon, anyway.”
“Maybe I will.”
There’s a moment of silence, then the laser drill screams to life again, and my attention swivels back to the crater as the humans succeed in severing a large, bone-white chip from the meteor. They dance away as the chip lands, underbelly seething scarlet, on the dust.
My gaze lingers on the activity with fascination until I shrink back, shivering in a gust of chill wind, and cling to the damp hollows that run beneath the wooden beam. Humans haven’t been here long, but the moon was partially terraformed before the advance military compound was constructed, and the construction was completed years before human residency was approved. Thus, the wood rots, and I have my opportunity.
“I can’t wait to get down there,” Jackson murmurs.
“I know.” Their voices are soft now that the scream of the laser drill has died away, and their eyes drift to the planet, in all its benevolent greens and blues. “I know.”
I feel myself thick here: the heft and comfort of a tree’s first and deepest root, creeping down into the soil. But I don’t like it. Not here. It’s too open; bare to the grapple and grasp of the elements. I prefer close quarters.
I am, as humans say, near-sighted. The grand scream of nature artificially implanted on this dread little moon - its scale, its movement, its endless chaotic clutter - deafens me: The titanic roar of atmospheric currents tearing through bruises of cumulus, the bawling explosions of organic pulp sloughing off the bones as a half-eaten fox mummifies at the feet of an ironwood, the fetid slurp of soil swelling now turgid and soft, now tight and brittle, as it mates with the moisture - It’s too much. Nausea crusts my belly brown in the damp hole beneath the radiator, and I shiver
back inside.
To the ventilation plate behind the eyewash station in the laboratory where the scientists debate what they call the meteor.
Another inconsistency: humans are constantly examining the world around them. Cataloguing the details. Fabricating hierarchies. Assessing, analyzing, gathering data, data, data. And yet they hardly ever discover a problem until it reels back and punches them square in the jaw. Or, having discovered the problem, they delay as long as possible before addressing it. While fretting all the while.
Even now, the dial on the Vitals Analysis Dashboard that measures air quality in the outpost, there in the Organic Systems Monitoring room, slowly eases, by infinitesimal degrees, further to the right, where the meter turns red. I creep down the vents, fuzzing the building’s veins, and wait for them to notice. It seems I have more time than I thought.
Oh, but it’s so dreary to be ignored. Secrecy is my advantage, but I admit - I’d rather have the attention.
The scientist, Naranbaataryn, gazes intently at the white shard that rests on the silver tray. “I still don’t trust the readings.” Her gaze flits like a sparrow amid the cloud of neon documents that hover four feet over the shard.
Cattaneo leans an elbow on the table. He toys with a pen and gives the shard a sharp tap. “The shard tested negative for all known radioactive substances, contaminants, poisons, pathogens, and carcinogens.” He rolls his wrist. “Etcetera.”
Naranbaataryn’s mouth twists. “Except that the readings were off the charts, when it first landed.”
Cattaneo shrugs. “A false positive.”
“Do you really believe that?”
He shoves away from the table. “What’s the alternative? That the meteor was contaminated with a potentially toxic substance on first landing, and in the span of a few hours, it just ceased to be contaminated?”
“The meteor itself may not be contaminated.” They stiffen when the xenogeologist arrives.
Cattaneo nods to her. “Dr. Pham.”
The soft click-click of her heels on the tiles marks her approach. “News, from the ladies in Analysis.”
I perk up at this.
“They’ve confirmed that, indeed, the meteor tests negative for any dangerous substances or radiation.”
“See?” Cattaneo begins, but Pham bulldozes on with, “They’ve also informed me that roughly 34% of the outpost’s main buildings now test positive for airborne contaminants.”
Yes! Finally, someone notices. I writhe gloriously in the stunned silence. Oh, Dr. Pham, I could just crawl inside you, cozy up in those warm, wet lungs, and live there forever.
The others stare. Cattaneo recovers first, if you can call it that. “I don’t understand.”
“The contamination didn’t evaporate from the meteor,” Naranbaataryn murmurs, “it dispersed.”
Pham nods, and reaches out - a sudden gesture that makes Naranbaataryn gasp when she plucks the meteor-shard from the table. “The tests are, in fact, correct. The meteor itself isn’t dangerous.” She turns the shard over in her hand. “But the original test that found the meteor contaminated wasn’t a false positive. It was true, at the time.”
Cattaneo gives a dark chuckle. “So where, I wonder, has all of that toxicity dispersed to?”
Pham drops the meteor-shard back on the tray, and turns her gaze to his. “Perhaps we should ask the doctors attending those seventeen patients in the infirmary. Or rather, eighteen. The count still climbs.”
“Eighteen patients, all with the same dreams, the same visions.” Naranbaataryn’s voice is no more than a whisper. I notice that, despite Dr. Pham’s exhibition, she has not inched any closer to the meteor-shard. “Hurtling through space, wreathed in flames. Buried in ice and stone.”
“We have all of us just made a very long journey through space,” Cattaneo says, in a voice that makes it clear he is growing weary of being patient with the stupidity of those around him, though, as far as I have been able to discern, he inhabits this state of weariness in perpetuity. “If sick people, with their minds in a weakened state, have nightmares of hurtling through space, crashing-”
“Dr. Cattaneo.” Pham interrupts him with a gentle shuffling of fabric as she pulls back the sleeve of her coat, and taps the touchscreen on her wrist. Pictures bloom, their stark black-and-white a sharp contrast to the neon text bubbles that dot the air above the table. “Interstellar Exploratory released these photos to General Schwartz, at her insistence.” Stars, constellations. Cosmic furnaces, dotting impossible, black vistas. “They were taken roughly one month ago by an exploratory satellite in the so-called Cat Ear Nebula. Our satellites have never reached this far into that region of space. The photos have not yet been released to the public.”
Cattaneo drums the metal table with his fingers. The meteor-shard trembles gently in the tray. “Yes? And?”
She eases up the misty image on her fingertips so that it hovers level with her gaze; a dozen stars spread like a dove to prick the void. “These images match the constellations that the patients in the infirmary describe in their dreams. All eighteen of them.”
Cattaneo throws up his hands. “Oh for fuck’s sake!”
I watch Naranbaataryn go pale, but then a spider tickles my anterior growth puddle behind the sink in the third floor women’s bathroom, the flitter of its scampering legs only a momentary distraction, but when I return my attention to the conversation, I’ve missed half of what one said and can’t follow the other. Frustrated, I shiver
now to the east corner of the infirmary ceiling, and survey the scene through a lacework of cobwebs.
I recognize the doctors, Acheampong and Laffey, heads bowed one toward the other beneath me. A row of beds spans either end of the tiled coffin of the infirmary.
“Another one?”
Laffey nods. “She doesn’t seem to be living with any of the first-contact patients who interacted with the meteor in the first hour of its landing.”
Delicate tubes trace the distance from the bottom of their masks to the murmuring filter of the engine tucked into the casing. They gaze at one another through the glass that seals their features from the air while long rubber gloves run up into the sleeves of their white coats like curious mice. No part of them open to the air. A clever precaution. Shame they will, at length, have to take them off. You cannot hide yourselves forever, silly billys.
A frown creases Acheampong’s brow. “Not related to them at all? There must be a point of contact. We can trace it back.”
Laffey darts a glance at the row of beds behind him. Sickness has reduced the faces of the afflicted to a uniform expression, wimpled by troubled dreams.
“I don’t know. But nothing I’ve tried has broken the fever. For any of them.”
Such troublemakers. Let’s play this out, doc. I’m curious to see what will happen.
“Damn it.” Acheampong’s mutter is half-buried by a wet cough, exploding from a patient three beds down. I giggle in a purpling of spots down the slits between the tiles at the end of the row. An amorous chill sweeps me as its occupant gives another gulping cough. A bead of mucus - black woven into the putrid yellow - rolls down a sallow chin. A nurse, encased in the same protection as the doctors, rushes to snag the sample and wipe the patient’s chin. They’re trying, ever so desperately, to analyze this thing. Contain this thing. Stop this thing. God forbid anything stop their expansion.
Then again, humans are like that. Always trying to expand outward to solve their problems. Ignoring what molders within. If you’ll forgive me the pun.
“We’ve got to seal the entire infirmary. No staff, in or out.” Acheampong’s jaw clenches. “No one.”
Laffey nods, his face grim. “I don’t think eighteen is the end of the count.”
Acheampong does not acknowledge his colleague. At his side, a fist quivers ever so softly. But I see it. I see you, Acheampong.
“This thing stops now.”
He does not know that I have begun expeditions up into the vent behind his bed, and when I reach him, yes, when I surmount the vertical shaft from the mechanical room up a fearsome three floors to his bedroom, and make camp just behind the vent’s long, metal teeth, and breath myself out into the air not six inches from where his head rests in seraphic repose against the pillow, I will tuck myself into his lungs, his blood, his brain, and he will understand more of me than he can yet imagine.
They are only beginning to notice me, but that will change, soon enough. All that exists makes itself known. Eventually.
A fly plonks itself into the web, and the tatters of the white veil tremble before me. I’m off-balanced by the distraction, thrashing little limbs busying my vision. But I force myself to focus. To remain. Know thy enemy, and all that.
They yammer on now about destroying the source of the sickness before it can reach the compound. “Pull it out by the root,” Acheampong says, and I flatten myself through the insulation, spreading. They do repeat themselves, don’t they? They discuss quarantining the patients. Preventing the sickness from reaching the dormitories. The offices. The lunar port where at this very moment, a deployment loads into a spaceship with microscopic spores clinging to damp shoelaces that have trailed in puddles and along dirty tiles. Fuel sparks and lovely, swirling engine fumes burst toxic on my tongue. Even now, a ship lifts with a skirling scream to tilt its metal jaws at the great sphere of a new world.
They speak of stamping out the corruption.
Nonsense, gentlemen.
Of course, I am already here.