Overgrowth

I fear the hulking giant that waits just outside my home.
I'm too afraid to even look up at him in his full size. He stands two, maybe three stories tall, silently watching me, his silhouette a pitch-black void against the starry night sky. At any moment, he could rip through this flimsy shelter I call home like a dull knife through skin. So why doesn't he? Why doesn't he get it over with already, instead of staring me down? Because he’s waiting for me to go outside so he may crush me and put me out of my misery. Giving in to him seems more and more appealing as time goes by. Because as much as HE scares me, there are more of them out there. A lot more. Some smaller, some even bigger.
They're all around you, too. And you know they are. I don't know how you can even ignore them: they're everywhere. If you look out your window right now, you can see one, if you're lucky. Dozens of them if you are unlucky. You might even have a few lining your driveway. You might even have a tire swing hanging off one of their branches...
My name is Dr. Adam Collier, and I am afraid of trees. You may think it's funny or unusual, but I promise you that by the time I am done telling you my story, you will fear them as much as I do.
You'll have to forgive me for any pauses or slip-ups you may hear in this recording. I am trying as best as I can to recount everything in one take, with as much detail as possible.
As I said, I am a doctor, specifically of Chemical Engineering. I am a Research and Development Technician for The Eleuthera Company in Silverside, DE. My team and I are responsible for developing and testing prototypical chemicals for...all sorts of things, really. I suppose the NDA doesn’t matter anymore… I was working on synthesizing a form of carbonic anhydrase to offset carbon dioxide emissions in the atmosphere. But even the best test results out of all my trials required L-aspartate, fatty acids, uracil, L-argininine, and...sorry, force of habit. I'll try to refrain from using too much technical jargon from here on out. 
What I meant to say is that, after a series of failures, the closest thing I could come up with still required too much to be feasible. I asked my new assistant, Dr. Anna Nemours, to contain and dispose of the chemical, as I had deemed it a failure. But, unknown to me at the time, she continued to perform tests with it. She theorized that the desired reaction could occur if the compound was introduced to isoenzymes of ― sorry, if she provided the compound with organic plant matter to consume. She took some of the byproducts of my tests and made them into a mixture of her own, and she put some of that mixture onto a fern she kept on her desk, completely against protocol and off the record. She told me all this later after her own tests had failed to produce anything. Not only did she break a dozen rules, but she also failed to create anything that could even be considered close to a "success" for our purposes.
Looking back now, I should have fired her.
She did show me something entirely unexpected and deeply interesting: the chemical had not eaten away at her fern, like she expected. In fact, the fern that she claimed was almost dead had sprouted new leaves. Quite a few, actually.
At the risk of being penalized for my own assistant's actions, I hesitantly reported this to my superiors. Instead of punishing me, they encouraged me to perform more tests! They saw potential for this as a new fertilizer. From that point on, things moved quickly. Our entire team ran more tests on the original compound I had made. It turns out the chemical was more than just a decent fertilizer: we saw a 2% increase in the rate of construction of plant cells.
Once my team published our findings, funding started flooding in from all over. Government agencies, farming corporations, and agrochemical powerhouses were all chomping at the bit. Our findings could impact food shortages or help places that couldn’t regularly grow crops. It wasn’t too much of a stretch to say that our research could have solved world hunger. With all the funding and more than enough manpower thrown at this, we pressed on to the prototype development phase.
Everything seemed fine; there were no issues and no downsides. We further engineered the chemical to make the affected plants drought and frost resistant as well. We even devised a means of controlled distribution.
Two dizzying months later, we conducted the first tests on outdoor crops.
Tests proceeded admirably, but this latest batch grew a little too fast. And, more concerning, our control crops, which should have been untouched by the chemical, also showed accelerated growth.
We determined that the test plants themselves were producing their own version of the chemical, which must have spread to the control crops by being carried on the wind. Or perhaps it had penetrated deep into the soil, or maybe some bees had carried it across fields? We weren’t exactly sure.
Regardless of how it reached them, leaves and stems on all plants in both testing plots were growing 5-10% faster at the cellular level. Unfortunately, it wasn't just the test and control crops that were affected. Two days later, we noticed that the forest surrounding the test fields had grown 50 yards closer. That’s when we knew we had a problem on our hands.
Hazmat was called in to do cleanup. They burned down all plant life and salted the soil 200 yards into the surrounding forest. They also burned and salted the test and control crops as well. While it was an embarrassing mistake, we were relieved that it was successfully contained.
Our relief only lasted a few days.
The forest was back to where it was originally in just two days. This extreme rate of growth made no sense. And to make matters worse, it wasn't contained. There was evidence that it had spread even further than the woods. Faster growth meant more dispersal of plant matter, which potentially meant more plants were getting tainted with the chemical.
Hazmat was called in again, but this time the damage was too widespread. Within days, plants all around Branmar County showed signs of hyperactive growth.
On my morning drive to work, the same blind turn that I had taken dozens of times before was blocked by a giant branch that would have surely killed me if I had not stopped in time. The branch wasn’t there the day before, I’m sure of it. The next day, that road was closed. In just a few short days there were reports of major roads being swallowed up by greenery as far as 15 miles from our testing site.
And it was still spreading. But we still didn’t know how. We think the wind must have picked up the pollen, or leaves, or seeds of the tainted plants and carried them all over the state, maybe even further.
The Eleuthera Company called in an emergency response force the size of a small army. They burnt and salted as much greenery as they could, not leaving anything to chance. Hundreds of trained professionals managed a controlled fire. The company’s ties to the outbreak still hadn't reached the public, but when the massive cloud of smoke blocked out the sun, reporters came to the largest chemical company in the tri-state area for answers. And that was Eleuthera.
Some news outlets claimed the extreme overgrowth was a result of a bioweapon test gone wrong or an intentional act of domestic terrorism. Some even reported that it was a sign of the end times.
Panic spread across the nation. And so did the chemical.
The first reports of accelerated growth in the Redwood Forest on the west coast came out in just two short weeks.
We didn't know enough about it. Nobody did. Was it the wind that was spreading the chemical? Was it bees? Was it people? The government didn’t want to take any risks: all flights and boats out of the country were shut down. The United States tried to quarantine the overgrowth.
Reports of property damage flooded into news agencies. Top-heavy trees were toppling over and crushing people’s homes. Tree branches were breaking in through windows and piercing walls. Apartment buildings were being torn apart by roots plunging into their foundation.
I remember the first story of a direct death caused by the plants. All too vividly…
Brendan Waters was an elderly, bedridden man staying at the Woodford Manor Nursing Home. He woke up one day to find that his small room was being invaded by wiry vines. Those same vines were thickest around his bed, where they had coiled themselves around his legs. He tried to pull them off, but they were so thick and he was so weak that he couldn’t. He called for help, but the nurses were unable to get into his room: a patchwork of vines and roots had barricaded the metal door from the inside. Brendan could only weakly shout for help. Hours passed like this.
We know every detail of the agony that Brendan went through, because nurses were right on the other side of his door as he screamed about the cause of his pain for 35 excruciating hours. The vines that tied him down sprouted sharp thorns that tore into his legs as they crawled further and further up his frail body. The fire department was called in. Firefighters tried going in through the third-floor window, but an immense tree completely blocked it. The same window that Brendan asked his nurse to keep open on beautiful days was how the overgrowth got into his room in the first place. Firefighters worked in shifts to chop through the thicket surrounding the window, but it was much too slow, and the branches got thicker the more they chopped. Roots squeezed Brendan’s chest. The firefighters cleared out the entire nursing home and went to work tearing down the wall nearest Brendan’s bed. He couldn’t feel his legs anymore. When they eventually opened up a hole into his room, they still had to contend with a mesh of pale roots on the other side. Brendan cried out for his family. None of them were there.
By the time the firefighters finally carved through the thicket, Brendan was no longer screaming. His body had been pierced by dozens of sharp, tiny branches. There was no blood on the scene. The news reported that his face had bright green leaves growing out of it by the time the coroner arrived.
…
That report came out a month ago. Many, many more have suffered the same fate since.
The country fully succumbed to panic. Many attempted to burn the aggressive forests down themselves. Gasoline became more useful for starting fires than it was for cars. All major roads were blocked, anyway.
So many people died in these amateur controlled fires. And they died for nothing.
The plants just grew back, even faster. And it wasn’t just people that were falling victim to the overgrowth. Greedy tree limbs grabbed power lines, causing power outages everywhere. Communications eventually went dark, too. Thirsty roots pierced the water pipes, and they soon went dry. The overgrowth took so much.
Too many people have listened to the screams of their loved ones slowly being strangled by bright green leaves. All they could do was abandon them — or join them.
People tried to retreat to deserts. But even the deserts showed more and more signs of the overgrowth. We’d made sure that plants treated by our chemical could be used in places where it's hard to grow crops, after all. They were drought and frost resistant, too.
Who knows what the death count is at now. I’m sure I don’t want to know.
I was shipped off to the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station in Antarctica by the US government a few days before the borders were closed. Some of the original research team were flown out here, too. We were working on modifying the original chemical, attempting to turn it into an herbicide. They even flew in Dr. Nemours, too. It was clear that she was in way over her head.
I should have fired her.
Our team wasn’t sure if the overgrowth had reached anywhere outside of North America by that point. We hoped it hadn't. But a French scientist that the United Nations flew in confirmed what we had all feared: the overgrowth had crossed the ocean. Her and her team traced the chemical to algae that had made its way to their shores via fish. Her wife was crushed to death by a falling tree. Her name was Giulia.
Disturbing questions spread throughout our makeshift research team: if fish could carry the chemical all the way from North America to Europe, how long before it made its way to other continents? How long before it made its way here?
These international scientists provided invaluable information for our research. We saw some debatably hopeful results, but they were coming much too slow. We were all desperately fighting the nagging fear that we were much too late. But as the foremost experts on the chemical, if we couldn’t figure out how to stop the overgrowth, who could?
One day I overheard the guards talking about the Antarctic coast having a "green shore" that wasn't there before, climbing up the ice walls of the glaciers. The research team and I tried to ignore these reports, hoping they weren’t true. We had to ignore them and focus on getting the herbicide to work as fast as possible. But hastiness is what got us into this mess in the first place.
So we ignored the guards. We ignored the fact that they started carrying flamethrowers. We ignored the way their numbers gradually decreased. We ignored the green fuzz cresting over the mountainside, and how it crept closer each day. We ignored the streaks of green in the snow that appeared in our footprints as we made our way from our quarters to the lab.
Dr. Nemours didn't come into the lab one day, even though we couldn't afford days off. I had to ignore the thick, teal moss that covered her like a blanket when I went to check on her in her quarters.
I should have fired her.
Less of my team showed up to work as days went on. They might have felt this plan wasn’t going to work and decided to go out on their own terms. I had to ignore the splotchy moss that covered their quarters, and how it might have meant that they didn't go willingly at all.
I have to ignore all of these things and focus on my work, because if I don't...
There is one thing that I can't ignore, though. And it's standing about 60 feet away from me. Is it closer than it was yesterday?
I first saw it as I was walking in the hall. I passed a window and saw a sharp green antenna poking out of the snow. I didn't think algae could form structures like that.
A few hours later, I saw what I could only describe as “leaves” form on its ends like lopsided veins. This was surely a new kind of plant life that has never existed before. It would be considered beautiful if the circumstances were different. If there was anyone besides me around to see it.
But it looms out there, silently watching me. Standing two, three stories tall, waiting for me to go outside so it can put me out of my misery. Silently watching me, its blue-green skin a vulgar wound against the pure white snow.
It waits just outside these walls.
And I think it's getting closer.
Category:Spotlighted Pastas
Category:Diary/Journal
Category:Nature
Category:Science