Bezug über
Details
Post-human world: After thousands of years of degeneration and several nuclear disasters, humanity as we know it, along with most vegetation, has been erased from the earth.
Extreme heat, drought, and occasional thunderstorms as well as acid rain characterise the weather and have turned the planet’s surface into a grey, muddy wasteland without any trace of animal life – except for one lifeform.
The new prevalent species are reptoid brutes [ecophagists] which are only faintly reminiscent of humans: taller, sturdier, with thick & scaly skin, sightless but with an acute sense of smell - perfectly adapted to the harsh life conditions. Spoken language died out a long time ago; ecophagists communicate with grunts and screeches.
They're omnivores, not even stopping for their own spawn. Yet the high level of radiation in the atmosphere is also essential for them to live - and so is their birthplace, ‘the womb’, a toxic blue lake of heavy water.
In the midst of this dystopian scenery, a fungus, mutated due to the high radiation levels of the environment, starts growing within the concrete walls of leaking permanent repositories.
It is of pitch black colour and feeds off radiation (radiosynthesis). Since the present conditions favour its rapid growth, it soon oozes out of the concrete chambers and -without facing any resistance-, takes over the rotting forest and starts spreading across the wasteland, its mycelia forming a complex network of robust ‘roots’ and fast approaching the lake where the ecophagists live.
The leader of the brutes -Bruteus Alpha-, who lives on the highest point of the wasteland (a mountain of wreckage and human remains) and is also the most intelligent of the folk, sees the black mass from afar and understands that doom is inevitable. He commits suicide by jumping from a cliff into the swamp below, where he is devoured by the fungalkind within minutes.
When most of the landscape is covered by the fungus, it comes to an encounter between fungus and ecophagists.
The brutes fight the fungus, attempting to tear it out of the soil, but at this point, its mycelia have grown too huge and powerful to be uprooted. All who come into contact with the fungus die immediately as it sucks the radiation from their skin and organs, leaving them withered and crumpled within seconds.
The last few brutes retreat to a small rock in the centre of the womb, hoping the fungus is powerless against the toxicity of the water- but the moment spores reach the surface of the lake, it turns from bright azure blue to jetblack. Panicking, the few remaining brutes drink from the heavy water until the last drop is used up and the lake is bone dry, which only makes it easier for the fungi to approach, close in on the isle and infest their enemy.
With a huge burst of released energy and green light, the brutes crumble to dust. Since the last source of radiation has now been sucked dry, the fungalkind dies, too.
As radiation levels of the atmosphere reach zero decades later, plants are slowly coming back, soon taking over the landscape. The world changes into a green planet: new species arise, more diverse than ever before in history.
Cleansed from any hostile life form, a true utopia has come - a new lease of life.