First came the dreams ... then the screams.
Brian woke up in a muck sweat, busting for a pee and hung over from the bizarre ride of the last half-hour. “We get Triffids” his wife had said, her dreamself placatory. He had stared at their roof where the plantlets had started lifting the tiles, and watched as tendrils crept into the guttering of this aged house that was and wasn’t theirs ... hunting for water ... water ... and then his eyes were wide open.
“Rosina.”
“Brian?”
“It happened again.”
“Weirdness. Not our house but like we’d been there forever. A sort of invasion ...”
“Like my beetle dream?”
“Plants this time. You said Triffids.”
“I did?”
“But no UFOs. Oh when are we going to get a decent night?”
“Brian, I think we may need to look at our marriage. All this intrusion, all these dreams of a home in danger; they are trying to tell us something. I could make an appointment with Jill if you like ... “
“I am not going with you to a shrink!”
“Look, we’ve all known each other for years. If anyone can decode our hidden agendas she can. She was brilliant with my post-natal depression, and the empty nest. Maybe work is encroaching too much now. Or we have friends who aren’t really friends ... oh lord, you aren’t having an affair are you?”
“No I am not. And maybe Jill isn’t a friend. Or maybe rattling around this place on our own out of surgery hours is making us paranoid.”
“Brian, give me a cuddle?”
“Of course. In a minute ...”
He returned, relaxed. “Come here.”
Next morning Brian spilt half his coffee when something scuttled across the kitchen floor. Rosina wept over the floor-cloth. Patients muttered to each other on the way out that the doctors were both looking at them oddly. Some had double prescriptions. The writing was even worse than usual. Afterwards the pair stood outside in the early evening sunshine, and looked up at their roof. Some of the tiles seemed to be lifting.
“It was that storm last month,” said Rosina. “The place is old. Maybe we don’t need Jill, maybe we simply need a decent tiler.”
“But what is that green thing?”
Brian was beginning to shake. He needed ... there not to be something unfamiliar on his roof. As he stared, and then his wife stared, a wave of curly lime unfurled from behind the chimney stack and rolled down the entire pitch toward the gutter. Unable to move, the two of them watched in horror as an immense and convoluted light green something rapidly enveloped their house, surgery and all, until the only thing visible was a pulsing vegetable mass.
.............................................................................................................................................................
The asteroid had passed between the planet and its moon. At the moment of closest approach the scheduled fast freeze shattered the creviced rocks that had cradled Viridis’ dormant spores over this last stage of their interstellar journey, and the gravitational pull of the new, watery world sped them home.
.............................................................................................................................................................
The science was right. The sentients had predicted an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water that nourished life-forms not dissimilar to themselves in the planet’s rhythmic sunshine. Levels of polluting oxygen were relatively low. Any spore that survived the stresses of entry and lodged in a safe niche to split its glossy carapace would immediately absorb everything it needed for rapid and healthy growth. Rebirth in a new colony here would slowly empty the old and distant planet of a population at risk of extinction. Viridis would be left to its suffocating oxygen and the few creatures that could survive in the wrecked environment.
Tendril 1 now luxuriated in the rich spectrum of an unfamiliar star, relaxed over one of the planet’s many geometric protuberances. His swift weight gain was crushing it. There wre nutrients in the debris but he would have to move soon. Others who had travelled with him were now spilling out of their protective shells, feasting and maturing. Hundreds of stomata covered elastic skins filling with bright chlorophyll. The tiny lips of the stomata moved, setting up a whispering that ran on the air between adult and adult, announcing arrival, greeting friends, exchanging data. All had observed the small life-forms gathering at a nervous distance; all had sent out introductory waves to the unusual green beings who were their nearest cousins here ... and were puzzled that they never spoke, barely responded, but remained in their places, their thousands of tiny appendages only stirred by the evening breeze. All over the land-mass the travellers from Viridis were making themselves cautiously at home.
.............................................................................................................................................................
“My God.” said Brian.
“Are we back in the dream?”
Neighbours and townsfolk who had fled homes and businesses before their nightmare collapse were converging on every square yard of open ground, interspersed with the flashing blue lights of the emergency services. The Mayor had been taking a tea-time nap and escaped in his underpants; no-one took any notice of his entreaties for calm. There were both women and men in hysterics, small children pallid with fear, one or two would-be heroes who strode out of the crowd toward the massive green invasion only to be pulled back by a dozen anxious hands. The screaming carried on the air to the increasingly sensitive green skins. It was nearly sunset; on Viridis Tendril 1 and his companions would be contracting for the night, but there was too much disturbance here from the small creatures still running out from underneath them as more and more travellers settled and spread.
Brian grabbed Rosina’s hand and fought his way to the front of the shrieking and weeping crowd.
“What we don’t know yet, sweetheart ... no, we have to do this ... is whether this alien horror is intelligent. For some reason you and I had fore-warning. I don’t think it was a fluke. They don’t know what we are, either. We need to sort this out.”
“Brian, they could eat us!”
“I don’t think so. They seem to live on fresh air! Do you remember the Air Plant your mother gave us one Christmas?”
“It died.”
“I know. That was our fault. We didn’t understand it. These things may be the same. They have exploded into growth just by being here in our environment. That may be why they are here! In which case they know where they are, and this is a planned invasion. And that makes them highly intelligent creatures. Amorphous and apparently vegetable, yes, but with developed mental functions that may be superior to our own.”
“We should get Jill.”
“There isn’t time.”
Brian walked away.
Now he stood, shaking, a few feet from the intricately curled edge of a massive green ... thing ... where his surgery had been. He spoke.
“I knew you were coming. I had a dream. Why?”
Confrontation. Sounds. Tendril 1 was alert. The small, warm living thing before him was communicating! Frequency detection would not be adequate. He would have to switch into mental extension to have any hope of insight and a possible response. Brian suddenly felt very odd; he sank to his knees, nearly swooning, as the thoughts behind his words were probed by fingers of an alien consciousness.
And next it felt as if a light had gone on in his brain. He was understood. And he could understand the invader’s reply.
“You are one of the sentients! Our plight was broadcast as soon as we found your planet. We streamed data constantly as we planned this escape from our dying world, in the hope that friendly minds might receive the news that we were coming. The surprise to us is that we have arrived to find photosynthetic life in retreat - and you, the presumed lower life-form, possessed of the intelligence we thought to find in the Green.”
“What do you need from us? You are crushing our civilisation!”
“Carbon dioxide, and sufficient water.”
“CO2 pollutes our entire planet. We destroyed so many trees that the oxygen we desperately need is dwindling and the climate is now critical. And we have no means of escape.”
“Then ... Brian-and-Rosina? ... we need each other. The millions that are coming will be told to avoid the structures upon which you seem to depend, and to populate only those empty places where there is still water enough to sustain our lives. Inform your companions on other land-masses that this will happen, and far from bringing you to harm we can help your ... nations? ... gradually to re-balance their ecosystems and feed themselves again. Please don’t eat us !!! Even if you do think of us as glorified cabbages!”
A pistachio copy of Brian’s arm extended from the Viridian to touch his cheek. The delicate restorative gesture moved him, and he smiled as he turned back to Rosina and then the waiting crowd.
“Anyone here with 4G? Dry your eyes, get out your cell-phones: let’s start saving the world.”
Brian woke up in a muck sweat, busting for a pee and hung over from the bizarre ride of the last half-hour. “We get Triffids” his wife had said, her dreamself placatory. He had stared at their roof where the plantlets had started lifting the tiles, and watched as tendrils crept into the guttering of this aged house that was and wasn’t theirs ... hunting for water ... water ... and then his eyes were wide open.
“Rosina.”
“Brian?”
“It happened again.”
“Weirdness. Not our house but like we’d been there forever. A sort of invasion ...”
“Like my beetle dream?”
“Plants this time. You said Triffids.”
“I did?”
“But no UFOs. Oh when are we going to get a decent night?”
“Brian, I think we may need to look at our marriage. All this intrusion, all these dreams of a home in danger; they are trying to tell us something. I could make an appointment with Jill if you like ... “
“I am not going with you to a shrink!”
“Look, we’ve all known each other for years. If anyone can decode our hidden agendas she can. She was brilliant with my post-natal depression, and the empty nest. Maybe work is encroaching too much now. Or we have friends who aren’t really friends ... oh lord, you aren’t having an affair are you?”
“No I am not. And maybe Jill isn’t a friend. Or maybe rattling around this place on our own out of surgery hours is making us paranoid.”
“Brian, give me a cuddle?”
“Of course. In a minute ...”
He returned, relaxed. “Come here.”
Next morning Brian spilt half his coffee when something scuttled across the kitchen floor. Rosina wept over the floor-cloth. Patients muttered to each other on the way out that the doctors were both looking at them oddly. Some had double prescriptions. The writing was even worse than usual. Afterwards the pair stood outside in the early evening sunshine, and looked up at their roof. Some of the tiles seemed to be lifting.
“It was that storm last month,” said Rosina. “The place is old. Maybe we don’t need Jill, maybe we simply need a decent tiler.”
“But what is that green thing?”
Brian was beginning to shake. He needed ... there not to be something unfamiliar on his roof. As he stared, and then his wife stared, a wave of curly lime unfurled from behind the chimney stack and rolled down the entire pitch toward the gutter. Unable to move, the two of them watched in horror as an immense and convoluted light green something rapidly enveloped their house, surgery and all, until the only thing visible was a pulsing vegetable mass.
.............................................................................................................................................................
The asteroid had passed between the planet and its moon. At the moment of closest approach the scheduled fast freeze shattered the creviced rocks that had cradled Viridis’ dormant spores over this last stage of their interstellar journey, and the gravitational pull of the new, watery world sped them home.
.............................................................................................................................................................
The science was right. The sentients had predicted an atmosphere rich in carbon dioxide, nitrogen and water that nourished life-forms not dissimilar to themselves in the planet’s rhythmic sunshine. Levels of polluting oxygen were relatively low. Any spore that survived the stresses of entry and lodged in a safe niche to split its glossy carapace would immediately absorb everything it needed for rapid and healthy growth. Rebirth in a new colony here would slowly empty the old and distant planet of a population at risk of extinction. Viridis would be left to its suffocating oxygen and the few creatures that could survive in the wrecked environment.
Tendril 1 now luxuriated in the rich spectrum of an unfamiliar star, relaxed over one of the planet’s many geometric protuberances. His swift weight gain was crushing it. There wre nutrients in the debris but he would have to move soon. Others who had travelled with him were now spilling out of their protective shells, feasting and maturing. Hundreds of stomata covered elastic skins filling with bright chlorophyll. The tiny lips of the stomata moved, setting up a whispering that ran on the air between adult and adult, announcing arrival, greeting friends, exchanging data. All had observed the small life-forms gathering at a nervous distance; all had sent out introductory waves to the unusual green beings who were their nearest cousins here ... and were puzzled that they never spoke, barely responded, but remained in their places, their thousands of tiny appendages only stirred by the evening breeze. All over the land-mass the travellers from Viridis were making themselves cautiously at home.
.............................................................................................................................................................
“My God.” said Brian.
“Are we back in the dream?”
Neighbours and townsfolk who had fled homes and businesses before their nightmare collapse were converging on every square yard of open ground, interspersed with the flashing blue lights of the emergency services. The Mayor had been taking a tea-time nap and escaped in his underpants; no-one took any notice of his entreaties for calm. There were both women and men in hysterics, small children pallid with fear, one or two would-be heroes who strode out of the crowd toward the massive green invasion only to be pulled back by a dozen anxious hands. The screaming carried on the air to the increasingly sensitive green skins. It was nearly sunset; on Viridis Tendril 1 and his companions would be contracting for the night, but there was too much disturbance here from the small creatures still running out from underneath them as more and more travellers settled and spread.
Brian grabbed Rosina’s hand and fought his way to the front of the shrieking and weeping crowd.
“What we don’t know yet, sweetheart ... no, we have to do this ... is whether this alien horror is intelligent. For some reason you and I had fore-warning. I don’t think it was a fluke. They don’t know what we are, either. We need to sort this out.”
“Brian, they could eat us!”
“I don’t think so. They seem to live on fresh air! Do you remember the Air Plant your mother gave us one Christmas?”
“It died.”
“I know. That was our fault. We didn’t understand it. These things may be the same. They have exploded into growth just by being here in our environment. That may be why they are here! In which case they know where they are, and this is a planned invasion. And that makes them highly intelligent creatures. Amorphous and apparently vegetable, yes, but with developed mental functions that may be superior to our own.”
“We should get Jill.”
“There isn’t time.”
Brian walked away.
Now he stood, shaking, a few feet from the intricately curled edge of a massive green ... thing ... where his surgery had been. He spoke.
“I knew you were coming. I had a dream. Why?”
Confrontation. Sounds. Tendril 1 was alert. The small, warm living thing before him was communicating! Frequency detection would not be adequate. He would have to switch into mental extension to have any hope of insight and a possible response. Brian suddenly felt very odd; he sank to his knees, nearly swooning, as the thoughts behind his words were probed by fingers of an alien consciousness.
And next it felt as if a light had gone on in his brain. He was understood. And he could understand the invader’s reply.
“You are one of the sentients! Our plight was broadcast as soon as we found your planet. We streamed data constantly as we planned this escape from our dying world, in the hope that friendly minds might receive the news that we were coming. The surprise to us is that we have arrived to find photosynthetic life in retreat - and you, the presumed lower life-form, possessed of the intelligence we thought to find in the Green.”
“What do you need from us? You are crushing our civilisation!”
“Carbon dioxide, and sufficient water.”
“CO2 pollutes our entire planet. We destroyed so many trees that the oxygen we desperately need is dwindling and the climate is now critical. And we have no means of escape.”
“Then ... Brian-and-Rosina? ... we need each other. The millions that are coming will be told to avoid the structures upon which you seem to depend, and to populate only those empty places where there is still water enough to sustain our lives. Inform your companions on other land-masses that this will happen, and far from bringing you to harm we can help your ... nations? ... gradually to re-balance their ecosystems and feed themselves again. Please don’t eat us !!! Even if you do think of us as glorified cabbages!”
A pistachio copy of Brian’s arm extended from the Viridian to touch his cheek. The delicate restorative gesture moved him, and he smiled as he turned back to Rosina and then the waiting crowd.
“Anyone here with 4G? Dry your eyes, get out your cell-phones: let’s start saving the world.”