Chapter 48 - Putting Things In Perspective

Felicity called Imogen. "You tell me my yarn. I'm all out of ideas"

"Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring. You're right Felicity. The meteorite is a piece of alien tech. It is filled with bacteria and phages, but instead of causing sickness it enhances the life it infects. This, of course, includes you. So lets think this through. The infection will only take a few decades to spread throughout the planet. Sooner or later another meteorite will hit Earth and the debris kicked up and sent into space will hold embedded bacteria containing the infection information. This will be picked up by the aliens and they will know they have found a planet hosted with life suitable for their colonisation. Just to put your teenage bullshit into perspective."

"Yeah, thanks, I'm perfectly fine now bitch", Felicity chuckled nevously. "Seriously though, what's my next move."

"Normally I'd tell you to enjoy the rat race. However the rats won't be racing for much longer. The Yellowstone caldera is looking a bit unstable. When it blows, which will be in the near future, that will be the end of civilisation. I'll be perfectly honest with you Felicity. I know some places where you could go and survive this. But I'm not going to tell you where they are. I have a responsibility to get life from Earth into the stars before the sun heats up enough to fry the Earth. That is still a long way to go, providing life doesn't take too large a backward step. I cannot put too many eggs on too few baskets by giving you a safe place to go to. With your abilities as a bacteria whisperer you can seek out suitable places to live. What you're looking for is places of year round fresh water ground seepage or swamps with lots of leaf litter nearby. Good luck."

Imogen hung up. Holy shit. So in summary civilisation is going under and pretty soon some alien species is going to rock up looking to take the place over. God was opening Pandora's box and she'd just been given the sneak preview and told to figure it out for herself. Why can't she just have boyfriend troubles like any other normal fucking teenager. How was she holding it together? She already knew the answer. Her mind was no longer fully human, it too had been enhanced. She was now part of Pandora's box. Ironic really. Humanity, possibly the future of life in Earth, being saved by aliens hell bent on taking us over. To err is alien.

Felicity got home and got up to date with her chores. Her mother had gone out to catch up on church time. Good luck with that one she thought. Now for the compost bin, time to find out what she had under the hood. She thrust her arm deep into the putrid contents, the repulsive smell no longer concerned her, it offered no disgust. Oh yes, this was the way to go. Mental connection, a fusion of minds into one. It was no longer a case of asking for information simply an act of recalling. Her mind had fused with the collective consciousness of bacteria, of fungi, of viruses, of slime moulds - all of which were fusing consciousness in and out of each other continuously.

The ancestors of these lowly lifeforms had formed great minds billions of years ago. Very slow minds working hundreds of thousands of times slower than our own. Very deep minds of incredible intelligence - not limited by the dimensions of the human skull. The limited time for the sun to be of use had been realised. Energy reserves had been built up over hundreds of millions of years in the form of fossil fuels. A slave species had been created to get life off the planet. Enslaved by the irrational individual belief that if they keep on trying just that little bit harder they would finally be adequate for their peers. Enslaved by corporate structures where if they didn't keep on performing harder and harder they would be controlled by another company that would make them perform harder and harder by buying them out. Enslaved by their hardwired trust and belief in psychopaths that cared little for the lives of the huddled masses. Enslaved by the vision of a better tomorrow when all they produced was hell on Earth. A species expendable to the great consciousness as other life was to them.

Felicity withdrew her arm. It stank. She had better get it washed and start introducing shredded paper into the compost to keep it fully aerobic and therefore odour free. Confidentiality was an issue here. There were several locations along the Avon river where there was enough of a hill for seepage, which luckily made it unsuitable for cropping. Not that she could do anything just yet, civilisation was still running. But she would research what she would have to do. Starting with the basics. Little or no sunlight for a few years. No plant growth. Lots of energy in eucalyptus forest litter, combined with water, combined with minerals, such as fertilisers, and life should flourish - at least that's what the NASA websites said. But what kind of life? Imogens words came back to her from the classroom termites, woodlice, earwigs, slugs and earthworms. Thank you Imogen, you're the real dreamcatcher.