bungakertas (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
bungakertas) wrote2018-12-16 09:12 pm
bungakertas) wrote2018-12-16 09:12 pm
Entry tags:
The Invasive Species
Rating: PG-13
Warning(s): none especially
Summary: When the alien invasion finally came, they effortlessly defeated humanity. They were expecting military resistance. They weren’t counting on bears.
Author's Notes: Written in response to this post on Tumblr.
*~*~*
They had taken over many of the native farming operations, fortifying them as best they could against the moh-skee-toes, skunks, and dheeres. The human prisoners were always careful not to be caught aiding the local fauna in attacking the few food supplies the Ziks had managed to establish, but the Overseers couldn’t help but suspect that their prisoners knew at least a few tricks that would keep the small gray creatures known as “skwur-alls” from eating so much of the crop. Possibly linked to their odd affinity (and unproven but widely known collaboration with) the packs of feral kay-nhines that roamed the woods. Still, the Ziks had learned that their prisoners were unlikely to cooperate unless forced, and even then they sought ways to undermine the planet’s new leadership.
None of that mattered. This farm was secure and producing, and they had fences of sturdy metal chains to keep the marauding animals at bay. All was well.
No one really noticed the new plants at first. Or possibly the prisoners had. Maybe they had known. Known and chosen to say nothing. The Overseer at Farm 4816 could not tell when, on one side of the farm, the color of the tall folliage the humans called trees had gone from green-and-brown to nearly-entirely-green-and-only-a-few-hints-of-brown. It was simply that one day, the new plant was not there, the next it was present, and then three-to-four-days later it was dominant.
The prisoners were interrogated, but they were all firm in agreement. The new plant was not generally toxic. Humans were not, on average, more particularly prone to allergies to it than to any other plant. Possibly less so. They all allowed that this plant may have, at some point, caused a death somewhere, but none of them could recall ever hearing of one. Certainly, this new plant didn’t look dangerous, with it’s wide leaves—always grouped in clusters of three—and purple flowers.
The Overseer didn’t notice the plant growing out from the edge of the forest until it had covered roughly half the distance from the trees to the fence. It did notice that the trees had gone from “peeking out from under” the plant to “utterly smothered by it.”
He decided to chance sending a patrol outside the fence to examine the plant. No harm came to them. The plant was not harmful. It was simply…there.
The Overseer didn’t like it, but the time it would take to clear it away would take too much from the operations of the farm.
The plant reached the edges of the fence in about a week. The Overseer was beginning to think those leaves were sinister. Then the plant started to grow up the fence and The Overseer realized it had been right. It was sinister. It instantly sent a team to clear the plant away from the fences, all the way back to the treeline.
The team managed to clear a quarter of the interim space that day, planning to come back the next day and do more. But when they went out the next day, the plant was already growing back into the space they had cleared. Not far, but without any sign of genuine injury. The team cleared away the new growth and started on the next section. The next day was more of the same, but with even more new growth, which was time-consuming to reach. And the plant was filling out around the sides of the farm, engulfing more of the trees around it and sending out those vile tendrils towards one of the Ziks’ best working farms. The Overseer assigned another crew.
They battled the plant all summer and into the fall. But even with three crews working to clear away the tendrils of the plant, they couldn’t destroy it fast enough. Soon, they began to make it through the walls.
The Overseer could already see the shape this invasion would take. The plant would slowly but surely engulf Farm 4816, smothering the crops and threatening the Ziks’ food supplies. It knew who was to blame. The humans had a ringleader, and it demanded the man be brought forward.
He was nothing to look at, this man the humans favored. They’d called him a farmer, but he had been the most deadly of all of them, always forgetting some crucial interaction of chemical and soil or weather and plant until it was far too late to correct it. He was, if anything, an anti-farmer. They’d lost half the contents of one of their storage barns last year because the humans had left all the doors open in their haste to reach their shelters before an oncoming thunderstorm—something the humans always sensed coming but the Ziks never developed the knack for. The wet had caused something called “mill-du.” This man had looked deeply apologetic, but his eyes had been satisfied.
He had known.
His eyes were satisfied now.
“You swore to me the plant was not dangerous,” the Overseer said.
“What, kudzu?” the Anti-Farmer shrugged. "It ain’t. It just grows fast, is all.“
*~*~*
Author's Notes: A number of other responses were written to this post. The following is a list of my personal favorites. Whether these links will work reliably after December 17, 2018 is a bit of a mystery, but we will all find out together.
Skunk
Big Cats
Japanese Honeybees
Abyssal Giant Squid (at least, I think the author was writing giant squid, but lots of deep ocean animals are more-or-less horror monsters...)
Leopard Seal
Aliens Learn About Zoos
Swans
Aliens Learn About Steve Irwin
Giraffes
Scorpion
Swans II
Komodo Dragon
Warning(s): none especially
Summary: When the alien invasion finally came, they effortlessly defeated humanity. They were expecting military resistance. They weren’t counting on bears.
Author's Notes: Written in response to this post on Tumblr.
They had taken over many of the native farming operations, fortifying them as best they could against the moh-skee-toes, skunks, and dheeres. The human prisoners were always careful not to be caught aiding the local fauna in attacking the few food supplies the Ziks had managed to establish, but the Overseers couldn’t help but suspect that their prisoners knew at least a few tricks that would keep the small gray creatures known as “skwur-alls” from eating so much of the crop. Possibly linked to their odd affinity (and unproven but widely known collaboration with) the packs of feral kay-nhines that roamed the woods. Still, the Ziks had learned that their prisoners were unlikely to cooperate unless forced, and even then they sought ways to undermine the planet’s new leadership.
None of that mattered. This farm was secure and producing, and they had fences of sturdy metal chains to keep the marauding animals at bay. All was well.
No one really noticed the new plants at first. Or possibly the prisoners had. Maybe they had known. Known and chosen to say nothing. The Overseer at Farm 4816 could not tell when, on one side of the farm, the color of the tall folliage the humans called trees had gone from green-and-brown to nearly-entirely-green-and-only-a-few-hints-of-brown. It was simply that one day, the new plant was not there, the next it was present, and then three-to-four-days later it was dominant.
The prisoners were interrogated, but they were all firm in agreement. The new plant was not generally toxic. Humans were not, on average, more particularly prone to allergies to it than to any other plant. Possibly less so. They all allowed that this plant may have, at some point, caused a death somewhere, but none of them could recall ever hearing of one. Certainly, this new plant didn’t look dangerous, with it’s wide leaves—always grouped in clusters of three—and purple flowers.
The Overseer didn’t notice the plant growing out from the edge of the forest until it had covered roughly half the distance from the trees to the fence. It did notice that the trees had gone from “peeking out from under” the plant to “utterly smothered by it.”
He decided to chance sending a patrol outside the fence to examine the plant. No harm came to them. The plant was not harmful. It was simply…there.
The Overseer didn’t like it, but the time it would take to clear it away would take too much from the operations of the farm.
The plant reached the edges of the fence in about a week. The Overseer was beginning to think those leaves were sinister. Then the plant started to grow up the fence and The Overseer realized it had been right. It was sinister. It instantly sent a team to clear the plant away from the fences, all the way back to the treeline.
The team managed to clear a quarter of the interim space that day, planning to come back the next day and do more. But when they went out the next day, the plant was already growing back into the space they had cleared. Not far, but without any sign of genuine injury. The team cleared away the new growth and started on the next section. The next day was more of the same, but with even more new growth, which was time-consuming to reach. And the plant was filling out around the sides of the farm, engulfing more of the trees around it and sending out those vile tendrils towards one of the Ziks’ best working farms. The Overseer assigned another crew.
They battled the plant all summer and into the fall. But even with three crews working to clear away the tendrils of the plant, they couldn’t destroy it fast enough. Soon, they began to make it through the walls.
The Overseer could already see the shape this invasion would take. The plant would slowly but surely engulf Farm 4816, smothering the crops and threatening the Ziks’ food supplies. It knew who was to blame. The humans had a ringleader, and it demanded the man be brought forward.
He was nothing to look at, this man the humans favored. They’d called him a farmer, but he had been the most deadly of all of them, always forgetting some crucial interaction of chemical and soil or weather and plant until it was far too late to correct it. He was, if anything, an anti-farmer. They’d lost half the contents of one of their storage barns last year because the humans had left all the doors open in their haste to reach their shelters before an oncoming thunderstorm—something the humans always sensed coming but the Ziks never developed the knack for. The wet had caused something called “mill-du.” This man had looked deeply apologetic, but his eyes had been satisfied.
He had known.
His eyes were satisfied now.
“You swore to me the plant was not dangerous,” the Overseer said.
“What, kudzu?” the Anti-Farmer shrugged. "It ain’t. It just grows fast, is all.“
Author's Notes: A number of other responses were written to this post. The following is a list of my personal favorites. Whether these links will work reliably after December 17, 2018 is a bit of a mystery, but we will all find out together.
Skunk
Big Cats
Japanese Honeybees
Abyssal Giant Squid (at least, I think the author was writing giant squid, but lots of deep ocean animals are more-or-less horror monsters...)
Leopard Seal
Aliens Learn About Zoos
Swans
Aliens Learn About Steve Irwin
Giraffes
Scorpion
Swans II
Komodo Dragon