pathology Archives - Sci Phi Journal

Fiction

How I Became A Willow

by E. E. King

We learned the secret to eternal life. Hand washing.

This was the catch. We had to wash our hands continually. We had to eat through straws. Pay others to attend to our bodily needs. Because if we were separated from soap and water we would perish, overcome by a sea of bacteria. Sunk in a tide of virus.

Those we paid to feed us were doomed to die, but that is nothing new. The poor have always bathed the rich.

And so, society evolved into two classes, the washed and the unwashed. The clean and the unclean. The saved and the damned.

Still, it wasn’t much of a life. Stuck at our sinks, we designed computers we operated with our toes. We converted our mirrors into screens. We wore virtual reality googles. But no matter how clever the sensoround, or how compelling the avatar, eventually, over centuries, we had to confront the reality. We were the doomed. The dammed. The isolated. Alone.

Some of us tried to reach out, metaphorically. We tried to become friends with our caretakers, but that always ended in death. Besides, by then our minds had changed. We were unused to conversation anywhere but inside ourselves.

And so we began again. We Invented mechanical feeders but that only increased our loneliness.

We had our keepers make biodegradable soap, so that we could venture out into nature. Carrying portable washbasins strapped to out chests, we were wheeled, or driven, to lakes, rivers, and tide pools. By then, over the decades, we had lost use of our legs. Only our hands, clean and ever moving, remained strong.

It was better, this connection with field and stream. But even the most biodegradable soaps are slow poisons. And so, we turned to plants. My favorite was the ceanothus flower, which only needed to be rubbed to produce a foaming wash.

We sat with our toes in water, scrubbing, creating a foam of flowers. Our feet grew red and long, weaving into riverbanks, drawing nutrients from the soil, and holding firm the shore. Others wept, and our tears filled ponds, creating new seas. Our roots spread and touched and linked and connected, to each other and to the plants we had considered so very different from us.

And so, the world was born again. And we were not alone.

~

Bio:

E.E. King is an award-winning painter, performer, writer, and naturalist. She’ll do anything that won’t pay the bills, especially if it involves animals. She’s been published widely, including Clarkesworld and Sci Phi Journal. Her stories are on Tangent’s 2019 and 2020 year’s best stories. She has been nominated for five Pushcart awards. Check out paintings, writing, musings, and books at: www.elizabetheveking.com and amazon.com/author/eeking

Philosophy Note:

I am more and more convinced that all beings, plants included, communicate in ways we don’t even conceive of. They have evolved longer- then can turn sunlight into food. This tale deals with that idea – the concept of evolving into plants, as well as the inevitable inequity of human society.

Fiction

Food Webs: A Parable

by Geoffrey Hart

Those who survived the early days of the apocalypse received a short, sharp lesson: that there’s an ecology of interlocking food webs in nature, and just because you don’t know the rules that govern such systems, it doesn’t mean they don’t apply to you.

When the zombies began to appear, the government initially assumed it was nothing more than LARPing run amok — never mind the vigorous denials by LARPers once they got over their surprise that the government knew who they were. But as the body count — and the bodies — began rising, living corpses began accumulating in hospital ERs and morgues. It soon became difficult for the government to deny that something bad was happening — not that this prevented them from denial. The final straw came when the first members of the 1% started losing close relatives. Then the government sat up and took notice.

The National Guard was mobilized; then, when they proved insufficiently numerous for the task, the army. The lessons learned from SARS and the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 helped slow the plague’s spread, but it took precious weeks before the government understood that this situation was qualitatively different. With outbreaks like SARS and Covid-19, control could be achieved through curfews and travel restrictions. The first zombies were also one-percenters, though with a very different spin on the phrase, and like their wealthier namesakes, they ignored curfews and travel restrictions.

Whatever a zombie’s origin, stopping one required blasting them into tiny fragments. Explosive devices, improvised or otherwise, worked, as did shotguns loaded with buckshot. (Suggestions had been circulating for some time about adopting the same approaches for one-percenters in the original sense of the phrase. Whether that inspired the zombie control program, we must leave to the historians.) Unfortunately, though blasting a zombie into bits stopped the vector, it had little effect on the pathogen; on the contrary, dividing an infected corpse into a great many small bits just spread the pathogen faster. First-responders learned the hard way that the residues had to be incinerated, and quickly. It took time to scale up production of flamethrowers and incendiaries that would be safe for expensive property, not to mention for civilian use, yet still effective for crowd control. Only then did the surviving sanitation workers begin to significantly slow the plague’s spread.

While all this was going on, researchers were doing what researchers always do: competing to be first with the Nobel Prize–winning solution: isolating the pathogen and figuring out how to block it. The winner — so to speak — was the Romero research lab at Columbia University. Unfortunately, in their zeal to win the race, they failed to follow containment protocols as scrupulously as might have been desirable, and dead scientists are ineligible for the Nobel. (The eligibility of living dead scientists remains a problem for future generations. And it looks like there will be future generations, if we’re lucky and careful.)

By the time the Romero lab’s notes were recovered from offsite backups — the lab itself having been sterilized too zealously by terrified National Guardsmen — several other labs had identified the pathogen — a weaponized, broad-spectrum strain of the entomological zombie fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis with a dash of bacterial quorum sensing thrown in for good measure. Once the geneticists got involved, the footprints of CRISPR technology were unmistakable, but whether one blamed the Iranians, Russians, North Koreans, or Earth First! depended largely on one’s position within the political spectrum; the available evidence provided no smoking guns. When the plague broke out in Russia, then Europe, no one was sure whether this was karma or just plain bad luck.

The mechanism of the disease’s spread was, as is often the case, devilishly simple: Fungal spores blown on the wind were inhaled or entered the body through undercooked food or a wound. They incubated overnight, leading to a raging fever, and by late the next morning, the host was brain-dead or nearly so — and very hungry. Given the anaerobic nature of the host environment — a living but non-breathing corpse — the fungus had to survive in a metabolically inefficient manner, and therefore needed enormous quantities of energy to function and reproduce. Thus, it drove its hosts to obtain more and ever more food. About the only good consequence was that the enormous energy expenditure made the zombies easy to detect at night; with infrared scopes, they blazed like beacons.

A fortunate side-effect of this macabre infection was that it diverted the host’s metabolism towards feeding and reproduction, and away from anabolism and immune responses. As a result, the host quickly began to decay. Each zombie gradually slowed down as its muscle fibers stopped functioning, leading to rapid depletion of its energy reserves once it could no longer catch and pull down living prey. Finally, when its decayed limbs could no longer drag it along the ground in pursuit of prey, the zombie stopped moving. But as soon as its host became immobile, the fungus shifted strategy towards reproduction, and the host quickly sprouted fruiting bodies. Spores released onto the wind, or consumed by carrion birds and spread via their feces — or by their bites, when the fungus infected them too — renewed the infection cycle. Bites and scratches that broke the skin also worked, and were far more common in the early days of the plague, before we’d learned to find secure refuges and keep the zombies beyond arm’s length.

The spread would have been slower for a non-windborne plague. Sure, you could wear a facemask to exclude the spores, and that worked for a time. It kept me alive long enough to write this. But survivors had their needs too: you had to take your mask off some time, whether to eat, to visit the dentist, to make love with your spouse or a convenient stranger in defiance of death — or just to breathe freely when the claustrophobia the masks created or confinement to our homes overcame the drive towards self-preservation. If you were unlucky, you woke one day as a zombie and had a few minutes or perhaps an hour to realize the horror of what was happening to you. Or perhaps you woke with your loved ones staring hungrily at you out of feverish, already-decaying faces right before they sank their teeth into you. Fungal diseases were notoriously difficult to treat, and this one had been engineered for immunity to the available antifungals, making treatment next to impossible.

The government found a solution. It was the Fish and Wildlife Service, operating with — ironically — a skeleton staff after yet another round of budget cuts, that proposed it. They understood intimately that everything in nature has something that eats it. In this case, they noted that wolves were highly efficient carnivores and had worked wonders in areas such as the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem where they’d been released. Captive breeding of wolves was a proven technology, and unlike most other large predators, wolves were happy to consume dead meat if their preferred prey weren’t available — as was the case when they were released into the country’s plague-stricken cities. Moreover, their immune systems were sufficiently robust to handle the kinds of pathogens that naturally infected the corpse of (say) a moose that had sat out in the sun for the several days it took a pack to consume it. If the wolf cubs were raised on zombie flesh, then once they were released into an urban environment, they recognized the zombies as a food source, and quickly became highly efficient predators of zombies.

Within a year, thousands of wolves had been released into the worst-affected cities, where they rapidly began thinning the zombie population and breeding more wolves. An unexpected benefit of this approach was that, as was the case with their traditional prey, the wolves favored the slow-moving zombies, which were easier and less risky to bring down; this also slowed the spread of the plague by preventing the living dead from progressing to the decay stage, when fruiting bodies would form. There was still no progress on developing a vaccine or an effective antifungal, but at least the rate of new infections stabilized at a survivably low level.

The government had hoped the cities would become livable once more, but they’d reckoned without an inconvenient consequence of their desperation to implement any control mechanism that could give them a fighting chance. Of course, those of us who lived outside the big cities could have told them what was going to happen: at some point, thousands of starving wolves that had been trained to consider upright bipedal organisms as their natural prey would run out of the food they’d been trained to hunt. Then, wolves being clever dogs, they would find a replacement.

But that was a problem for another day.

~

Bio:

Geoffrey Hart works as a scientific editor, specializing in helping scientists who have English as their second language publish their research. He also writes fiction in his spare time, and has sold 24 stories thus far. Visit him online at www.geoff-hart.com.

Fact & Opinion

Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Bug?

by Mina

The words “virus” and “pandemic” are all around us. The media is constantly bombarding us with them and friendly acronyms such as “COVID-19” and “SARS”. We are currently living in a climate of fear and anxiety most of us would prefer to find only in SF movies about alien invasions and post-apocalyptic futures. It is a fear of the unseen because we cannot see the virus that has become part of our everyday lives, as have lockdowns, confinement and isolation. We have lost our freedom of movement and countless small liberties we used to take for granted. Have we entered an era of mass hysteria or are the measures imposed upon us right and reasonable? Are we on the verge of a breakdown in our social order? These are the sorts of questions often posed in Sci-Phi, so I set myself the task of finding parallels in SF. I have tried to avoid horror fiction, but all good disaster SF has an element of horror and formless fear to it.

The best place to start is with the classics of this genre: H. G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898) and John Wydnham’s The Day of the Triffids (1951). The War of the Worlds is, on the surface, an alien invasion story. Digging deeper, it is an exploration of societal and personal collapse. The narrator and other main characters are never named, giving it a universal feel: this could happen to you or to me. The Martian invasion in this story can be likened to the spread of a virus, just with the unseen made viscerally visible. Wells himself drew parallels to the social devastation wrought by British imperialism and, today, we could draw parallels to rampant globalisation obliterating all resistance in its path.

The alien tripods protecting the fragile bodies of the Martians come armed with “heat rays” and a poisonous “black smoke” – we cannot help but think of chemical warfare today. This thought comes with uncomfortable questions for – are not humans an infestation that needs to be wiped out from the point of view of the “superior” Martians? As well as their deadly weapons, the Martians bring with them the “red weed” to take over the surface of our planet like a vibrant parasite. In the end, the Martians are killed by simple pathogens, unseen infectious agents. This is the closest parallel to COVID because we too, in our hubris, could be wiped out by such microscopic organisms.

My favourite adaptation of the novel is Jeff Wayne’s 1978 rock opera with the mesmerising voice of Richard Burton as the narrator. The basic plot of the novel was maintained in the rock opera but several details were changed, for example if we look at the SF anthem, “The Spirit of Man”. In it, the nameless pastor from the novel becomes Nathaniel whose wife Beth, a character that does not exist in the book, argues with him as he despairs. Nathaniel has been driven mad by the invasion and is ranting and raving about the end of times:

“Listen, do you hear them drawing near
In their search for the sinners?
Feeding on the power of our fear
And the evil within us?
Incarnation of Satan’s creation of all that we dread
When the demons arrive those alive would be better off dead!”

The pastor is lost in his fear: for him the world has descended into hell and there is no hope of salvation, not even for a chosen few. Beth refuses to accept this:

“No Nathaniel, no, there must be more to life
There has to be a way that we can
Restore to life the love we used to know
(No) Nathaniel, no, there must be more to life
There has to be a way that we can
Restore to life the light that we have lost.”

Beth believes in the spirit of man, that humanity will survive somehow. As Nathaniel sings of darkness and demons, she clings to love and light with unwavering faith. Interestingly, the power of religious faith is not really part of the original story. In the novel, the narrator has a nervous breakdown after the ignominious end of the Martians and is helped by kind strangers, so there is perhaps some faith in basic humanity. Upon his return home to find his wife alive and well, the narrator still cannot shake off the anxiety caused by his recent ordeal, as humanity cannot hope to survive a disaster of such proportions unscathed. Unlike a great deal of disaster SF, we have no hero saving the world; humanity is saved by pure chance.

Nightmarish as Wells’ scenario might be, it remains small in scale. All the action occurs in and around Woking, touching briefly upon South London. The scale of Wyndam’s The Day of the Triffids is much larger – it is a global disaster. The aliens are replaced by a manmade enemy: bioengineered carnivorous plants capable of locomotion, armed with stingers and poison. The triffids could be compared to an opportunistic virus that spreads after a freak “meteor storm” blinds most of humanity (the protagonist wakes from an eye operation and several weeks with bandaged eyes to a world gone to hell, ironically spared permanent blindness because he could not witness the lights in the sky). Social order breaks down completely and the triffids sweep through like a ferociously efficient pandemic. These monsters do not seem particularly intelligent, acting mostly on instinct, but they only have to bide their time and strike at the weakest, just like COVID kills those with the lowest defences.

There is much ordinary courage in The Day of the Triffids with the protagonist/narrator and the small family unit he manages to build surviving against all odds. There is even a love story which, although it is a pragmatic partnership in many ways, is real and solid in a disintegrating world. Towards the end of the novel, the protagonist reflects without bitterness that humanity probably brought the disaster on itself, theorising that the “meteor shower” was actually the result of manmade satellite weapons systems being set off by accident and producing blinding radiation. He hopes that future generations will learn from the mistakes of their ancestors. He and his family unit will retreat with others to an island they can defend (the Isle of Wight) until they can find a way to fight back. The spirit of man does survive in this novel.

The zombie apocalypse film 28 Days Later about a rage-inducing virus spreading from animals (chimpanzees) and causing societal collapse in the UK clearly borrows a lot of ideas from The Day of the Triffids (for example, the protagonist wakes up from a coma to a devastated world). The infected can no longer function cognitively and simply starve to death. The sequel 28 Weeks Later shows the “Rage virus” being spread to Europe (the pandemic originally having been contained within Britain) by an asymptomatic carrier – one of the biggest fears in any pandemic scenario.

Ray Bradbury’s short-story collection The Martian Chronicles(1950) contains a short story that also touches upon disease, “And the Moon Be Still as Bright”. In this story, the fourth manned expedition to Mars discovers that the Martians have been mostly wiped out by chickenpox (an infection caused by a virus), brought by one of the previous expeditions. It is ultimately a story about colonisation. Bradbury ponders on whether there is a right or wrong form of colonisation, with wrong being an attempt to recreate Earth (thereby repeating old mistakes) and right having respect for the fallen civilisation (and learning from it). We are left with the question – are humans an infestation on Mars or will they become the new Martians in a brave new world? This question is highlighted in another short story in this collection, “Night Meeting”, where two characters meet outside time but without us knowing which one represents the past and which the future. It is almost irrelevant as civilisations will always rise and fall and disease will always be one agent of change.

The Star Trek canon also examines viruses in different contexts. The most fun episode is “Macrocosm” in Season 3 of Voyager. In it, we see Captain Janeway single-handedly fighting giant viruses in a spoof of Aliens. She is combating the result of a viral infection with insect-like macro-viruses flying around the ship infecting the crew and propagating from their living flesh. The doctor and Janeway manage to exterminate the giant bugs in the end with an antiviral gas. In reality, antiviral medication cannot be produced in less than one hour.

In the episode “The Quickening” in Season 4 of Deep Space Nine, Dr Bashir tries to find a cure for the “blight” caused by biological warfare, where the series’ archenemy, the Jem Hadar (the military arm of the Dominion), infect a planet that resisted them. Bashir is unable to cure it but finds an anti-viral treatment that acts as a vaccine – when injected into pregnant women, the baby is born disease-free. This is the hope in any pandemic, that a vaccine can be found to preserve at least the next generation. Ironically, Earth later hits back at the Dominion by infecting an unwitting carrier who, in turn, infects other Changelings like himself. Deep Space Nine does not shy away from the tough questions of whether anyone (including humans) has the right to use biological warfare to potentially wipe out an entire race.

The most interesting viral analogies are the indirect ones made by the existence of the Borg. We first encounter them in Star Trek – The Next Generation. In the double episode, “The Best of Both Worlds” (which ends season 3 and begins season 4), Captain Picard is “assimilated” and briefly becomes Locutus, a mouthpiece for the Borg Collective’s hive mind. The Borg are clearly presented as a militaristic virus – taking over entire races, using “nanoprobes” to infect their technology, and disposing of the weak.

My final example is a less well-known film, Daybreakers. It is an interesting mix of SF and vampire tropes, where a plague caused by an infected bat has transformed most of the world’s population into vampires. The remaining humans are captured and harvested for blood but, as the human population shrinks, there is a shortage of blood for food. Vampires deprived of blood and who drink their own blood instead become psychotic and increasingly bat-like “subsiders” – a whole underworld culture is suggested with blood as the currency. The protagonist is a vampire scientist attempting to create synthetic blood. He discovers that an accidental cure has been found for vampirism – using the right amount of sun and water. Drinking the blood of a “cured” vampire will cure the drinker too, but the protagonist must fight against the corporate powers that do not want to change the status quo and lose their profits.

To summarise, SF is full of disaster scenarios involving viruses beyond our control, whether they kill humans or alien enemies. Sci-Phi also goes further, where humanity itself may be seen to be the disease, asking hard questions about colonisation and colonialism. Viruses can also become a much more abstract agent that may transform rather than kill us, although the transformation is rarely a desirable one. I expect that this is partly because a plot where we all are infected with, for example, love and peace, would make for a very short story.

The fears and anxieties triggered by COVID are primal ones and, as we have seen, ones that are widely explored in SF and Sci-Phi fiction. So how can we best respond to the panic arising both at a social level (e.g. mass hysteria or a breakdown of social systems) and a personal one (e.g. people suffering from increased anxiety and compulsive disorders, or depression due to isolation)? I would like to finish with this quote from C. S. Lewis. As you read it, replace “atomic bomb” with “coronavirus” in your head:

In one way we think a great deal too much of the atomic bomb. “How are we to live in an atomic age?” I am tempted to reply: “Why, as you would have lived in the sixteenth century when the plague visited London almost every year… or indeed, as you are already living in an age of cancer, an age of syphilis, an age of paralysis, an age of air raids, an age of railway accidents, an age of motor accidents.”

In other words, do not let us begin by exaggerating the novelty of our situation. Believe me… you and all whom you love were already sentenced to death before the atomic bomb was invented: and quite a high percentage of us were going to die in unpleasant ways…

… If we are all going to be destroyed by an atomic bomb, let that bomb when it comes find us doing sensible and human things – praying, working, teaching, reading, listening to music, bathing the children, playing tennis, chatting to our friends over a pint and a game of darts – not huddled together like frightened sheep and thinking about bombs. They may break our bodies (a microbe can do that) but they need not dominate our minds.

— “On Living in an Atomic Age” (1948) in Present Concerns: Journalistic Essays

Of course, C. S. Lewis had not met the concept of “social distancing” but the central tenet stands: we must face our fear of death head on, whatever form it takes. And Sci-Phi gives us a safe forum in which to stare straight into the eye of the monster.

[My thanks to Ian H for drawing my attention to the quote from C. S. Lewis.]

~

Bio:

Mina is a translator by day, an insomniac by night. Reading Asimov’s robot stories and Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids at age eleven may have permanently warped her view of the universe. She publishes essays in Sci Phi Journal as well as “flash” fiction on speculative sci-fi websites and hopes to work her way up to a novella or even a novel some day.

Fiction

Natural Evolution

by Sarah K. Krenicki

10.28.2019

Dear Editors,

I have taken great pains to procure the attached CDC documentation as proof that the deadly listeria outbreak in the fall of 2019 was an elaborate cover up, and that the public is currently still at great risk. I believe the documents enclosed, most taken from a highly classified file documenting the Connecticut Mycelium Mutation, speak for themselves. I understand that you may be skeptical of what I have here, but I assure you I can provide proof of identity and additional factual verification upon request; however, I will only do so with the agreement that my identity will be kept safe.

For my own peace of mind, I have not provided my contact information. I will contact you.

#

Internal CDC communication log, dated 10/8/2019 11:18:52. Date of last update: 10/9/2019 12:09:18

We received the following from the head of pathology at [redacted] hospital in [redacted], Connecticut on October 8th 2019 at 11:18 PM, EST:

Patient, 42 year old Caucasian female, arrived in ER on 10/8 at approx. 12:52 pm with a series of raised fleshy growths along her right forearm. Upon closer inspection, the growths led all the way up and around the biceps and culminated in a cluster which was concentrated in the patient’s armpit.

Initial hypothesis was severe contact dermatitis; however, it soon became apparent that the growths were indeed foreign and not raised welts or boils. A biopsy was requested and the results indicated that the growths were fungal in nature. Additional tests are being done to determine the type and origin of this parasite. No one on our staff has seen anything of this sort before; please advise.

CDC response, sent 11:38 PM, EST:

Quarantine the patient immediately and take all necessary precautions to avoid possible transmission. Send the results of the tests as they come, and prepare a biopsy to send to CDC.

Follow-up from [redacted] hospital, received 12:02 AM, EST:

Patient is secure and every known precaution is in place. Blood tests have returned as highly abnormal: patient’s blood is completely saturated with some sort of fungal material. The fungi in question is as of yet unknown, but is most similar in genetic makeup to the common shiitake.

Patient has confirmed she has ingested shiitake within the last several days, but this does not look like any allergic reaction we are familiar with. It appears to be more of a colonization.

Patient’s entire arm and collarbone are now covered in the fruiting body of the fungi, and it is continuing to spread.

CDC: 12:09 AM, EST.

We are dispatching a team. Please stand by.

#

The following has been recovered from the case notes of Dr. [redacted] [redacted], head pathologist at [redacted]:

October 9th 2019, 6:15 AM EST:

The patient’s upper body is now completely covered in what can only be described as mushrooms. Despite their close genetic relation to the shiitake, they do not look like any shiitake I’ve seen; they are the same color and texture as the patient’s flesh. These mushrooms are now expanding and lifting upward and outward from the patient’s body, exposing stems. Attempts to cut them for analysis has been easier than expected, as the mature fruits tend to drop off.

The lower body of the patient is covered in a fine labyrinth of mycelium, and we expect her legs to begin fruiting soon. We are administering high doses of intravenous antifungal medication; however, it seems that her entire body has already been colonized with the parasite. Her organs are beginning to shut down as the mycelium impede their function.

8:51 AM EST:

The antifungals seem to be delaying or halting the progression of the mycelium. The legs have not yet fruited, and we may have successfully prevented them in doing so. We are trying to regulate the patient’s body temperature and keep her skin dry, to prevent further colonization.

9:07 AM EST.

A second patient, 31, Caucasian male, was admitted to the hospital at 9:02:14 with symptoms similar to that of the first patient, above, who will now be identified as Patient X. This new patient, who will be identified as Patient Y, has the same fungal growths, though these are lining the neck and the inside of the throat, creating the appearance of overly large lymph nodes. We are collecting samples to compare with that of Patient X, as well as sending a team to Patient Y’s home in order to collect the leftover mushrooms in his refrigerator for analysis.

9:52 AM: EST

Third patient, Patient Z, 64 year old Hispanic male, growths located in the spaces between each toe. We have tracked both his and Patient Y’s food consumption habits to “The Mush Room, Inc.,” specifically their prepackaged fresh shiitakes.

11:12 AM: EST

Lot number 1794 of The Mush Room, Inc.’s product is the common thread linking each patient.

11:21 AM, EST

Patient X is in critical condition. Her organs are shutting down and it appears the initially affected arm is beginning to break down. Perhaps focusing on preventing fruition was a red herring here. Focus is shifting to keeping Patient Y and Z’s vital organs stable.

12:01 PM EST:

24 hours after first admitted to the facility, we have lost Patient X.

#

Official transcript of interview with Edson MacGunn, CDC investigator

MacGunn: We arrived at The Mush Room’s packaging plant at around 11:52 that morning, October ninth. We spoke with the plant foreman, asked if anything weird happened recently, specifically with Lot 1794. We were told we should check with the farm…

Tape fades in and out

MacGunn: …We took back some samples and swabbed their equipment, and made the order to sterilize everything. They put out the recall order for Lot 1794, and also threw in the lots immediately before and after as well, just to be cautious. No farm wants to get in trouble with the CDC, and it’s not like this is a simple case of E. Coli or whatever. Like, we’ve got fungus eating people…

Tape becomes muffled

MacGunn: ..So we got to the farm around 12:30, I didn’t note the exact time. This one guy shows me a few logs that… didn’t look so hot. They seemed to be covered in dark stains, so we took some samples. The logs were incinerated, as were any logs within a six foot radius, to prevent contamination.

Interviewer: And the stains?

MacGunn: The substance tested positive as human blood.

Interviewer: Did you locate the origin of contamination?

MacGunn: Yes. After some digging, we were able to uncover the details of the accident with the driller.

Interviewer: The driller?

MacGunn: The machine that drills holes into the logs so they can be filled with the spawn. It drills a few rows of holes down each side, and it seems someone got a bit too close, slipped, and, um, had multiple holes bored into his body, like this.

The sound of paper being slid across the table.

Interviewer: Damn…

MacGunn: Yeah. His blood- and a lot of it, mind you, got onto the next few logs in the production line, which were swept up onto the conveyor belt, filled, plugged, and sent down to the fruiting chamber.

Interviewer: Like nothing had ever happened.

MacGunn: Like nothing had ever happened.

#

MEMO, stamped “internal CDC use only: restricted access,” Date: 10/17/19

General Update on the Status of Case #02734:

The bodies of patients X, Y and Z have been properly disposed of. The hospital has been sterilized accordingly and released from lockdown as of 9:00am this morning, local time.

All remaining individuals exposed to the contaminants in Lot 1794 are currently being held under quarantine at CDC headquarters and are receiving heavy intravenous doses of antifungal and antibiotic medication. Of the twenty-six people taken in for observation, fifteen have evidence of the mutated fungi in their system.

As of today, October 17th, 2019, eight of these fifteen people continue to show no symptoms and are expected to recover fully.

Of the remaining seven individuals, four have exhibited mycelium growth along segments of their skin. Their prognosis remains unknown.

Those three individuals who have already progressed to sprouting the fruiting bodies have a less than 1% chance of survival. We are confident that once the colonization hits this level, the mortality rate is close to 100%.

The latest toxicology reports indicate that the victim of the “driller” accident at The Mush Room, Inc. had been on a mixture of four different prescription and over the counter medications as well as one illegal controlled substance. We are running tests and replicas of the various scenarios in which these chemicals could have altered the shiitake spawn. [Those interested in model replication of this data should contact the pathology lab for details. Proper clearance is required for access to raw data files.]

#

MEMO, stamped “internal CDC use only: restricted access,” Date: 10/24/19

General Update on the Status of Case #02734:

Three of the four individuals exhibiting outward mycelium activity with no fruiting bodies are now testing at significantly lower levels of contamination and continue to respond well to treatment.

Patient 4 was lost at 12:56am.

The pathology lab assures us they are close to replicating the chemical and atmospheric conditions which gave rise to this genetic anomaly.

#

Scanned Image: newspaper clipping dated 10.27.19

Listeria in Littlewood?

LITTLEWOOD — At least two people were hospitalized this weekend in response to what hospital officials are calling an isolated case of food contamination. The origin of the contamination and the names of the individuals affected have not been released, but health officials stress this is an isolated incident and the public is not at risk.

Scanned Image: Discarded Grocery receipt:

[10/25/19] REG:6 Your Cashier Today is: Hannah

Thank you for shopping at Shop-A-Lot! ☺

Happy Herd Milk, 1 Gal: ………………………………………………………….$4.50

Italiano Linguine Pasta – 2 @99¢/box:……………………….$1.98

Feather Farm Eggs, 1 Doz: ………………………………………………………$2.50

Shittake ½ lb,(Lot #1794 T.M.R):………………………………………$9.50

50% DISCOUNT (Out of Date/Disc.):…………$-4.75

TOTAL: …………………………………………………… $13.73

[Bottom of image, hand written: Beth’s Pot Luck – Saturday]

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Bio

Sarah K. Krenicki’s short fiction has appeared in Lumina, Gemini Magazine, and Syntax and Salt. She lives at the edge of the woods with her husband, who grows shiitakes in their backyard. He assures her they are not up to anything.

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