Let's consider some hypotheticals. Let's say you've got yourself a master's degree. Let's
say you've got a job at a small branch of state government. Let's say
you work there for the better part of your early adult life. You built
everything around that job, got an apartment, moved in with your girlfriend,
had an orange cat with seemingly a single brain cell. Life is good,
right, Hypothetically, Then comes along this man says he works in conjunction with
the federal government and the private sector. The guy reeks corporate, got a
suit with a custom cut, no labels on his clothes, tells us that
we're going to be working closely with a small department that has recently got a
boost. Apparently there's a need for expansion, and some people from my branch
will be moving on up. Let's say that one of those people is me.
Hypothetically, all right, I'm going to stop with that. Sorry,
it still gets to me. You can safely presume that I've changed a couple
of details to make myself less recognizable. I got to get through the filters.
I had moved from Milwaukee up to Superior. Sarah and I tried to
make it work, but she couldn't leave the city behind. He came down
to a choice between me and the rest of her life. It made sense
for her to stay. Kind of annoyed me. She kept the cat,
though, that thing I loved. I started working at the DUC in September
of nineteen ninety eight. At first I didn't even know what the acronym stood
for. It wasn't a matter of secrecy, But they had these stupid sayings
plastered along the walls that people followed to a t. For example, water
off a duck's back. This was the standard operating procedure. Don't ask too
many questions. Let your questions and worries drift right off like water offer ducks
back. They displayed this proudly in the lunch room with a picture of a
duck peacefully sleeping by a pond. We worked in collaboration with other agencies in
Michigan, Iowa, and Minnesota. Mostly Minnesota. I helped them develop software
to codify reports of invasive ecological species. It would break down verbal reports with
the bare bones takes the speech program, which in turn is transcribed and separated
into categories. Categories were measured, analyzed, and turned into probability reports.
Once information had been categorized, the most prominent reports will be sent to the
department lead. Seemed simple by today's standards, but back then it was cutting
edge staff. It was November nineteen ninety nine when we final lies the first
version of our system, lovingly named Daisy. Hours before the launch party,
the department lead took me to his office, closed the blinds, and sat
quietly across from me for about two solid minutes. This man, the department
lead, was Thomas Rubin, a sixty seven year old extra sergeant with a
penchant for the dramatic, kept his head as bold as his lies. Having
worked there for over a year. I thought I had a foot in the
door by then. Turns out I was still on the outside until that very
moment. Thomas poured me a shot mint schnaps. To a job well done,
he said, raising his glass. I accepted the invitation and down the
shot. What the hell right do you have reoccurring nightmares? He asked?
Seeing something strange at night those last few hours before the sunrise? Do the
shadows gain a peculiar tint? No, sir, you're not a very haunted
man, are you? I'm not, sir. I can work With that,
he bored me another drink. I can get you working on the real
deal, he said. But you're not going to like it. You're not
going to like it one bit. That sounds like a party to you.
I took the glass and studied it, little sugar crystals swirling around, back
lit from a lone computer screen. I downed the second shot, and Thomas
smiled. Imagine a lighthouse, he said, and whenever someone thinks about the
lighthouse, it lights up. You're with me so far, yes, sir.
And this lighthouse draws in all kinds of things from far and wide,
traders, smugglers, warships, everything. But you don't want that. The
beach is closed and these ships are bad news. What do you do?
We turn off the lighthouse, sir ah, But it comes right back on
whenever someone thinks about it. Even when you do we demolish the lighthouse,
sir, same thing pops right back once you think about it. Try again.
We forget about it, sir. You can't unknow something. Then you'd
have to go after the people that know about it, and you'd have to
be careful not to learn anything about it yourself. And that's what we do,
said Thomas, we turn off the lighthouses. Thomas elaborated over the course
of three more shots. What he was describing was an invasive ecological agent,
something that literally grew from the ground. It's very presence acts as a sort
of go ahead for other more dangerous enterities, but thinking about it too much
causes it to appear, not immediately, but slowly over time. The more
you knew, and the more intimate your knowledge about it was, the stronger
the connection would be. I was safe, though you had to know the
details to trigger it. Thomas gave me the example of a red lily.
You couldn't just know it was red or a lily. You had to know
both these things to imagine it clearly. Once you did, there's a chance
it starts appearing more and more in your everyday life until it takes physical form,
and by then you've opened an express highway to something far darker and far
worse. The DUC, or the Department of Unknown Crisis, was founded to
combat these entities in a way that doesn't endanger the general populace. We were
preventative. Mostly. The software we made scrubbed all details and simply stated an
address, sometimes a person, and the likelihood of their being at least one
physical manifestation of the invasive species present. As the system was automated, there
was no way for us to know the details. Only the computer knew.
According to Thomas, there was a time when these things had been completely eradicated,
right before the start of the Second World War. There had been a
concentrated effort to remove them. The methods they used was later adapted in creation
of the DUC. Turns out those things can't ever be truly removed. There
was an author who documented these ecological entities to such a degree that it could
be used as a gateway. While he passed away in nineteen twenty six,
possibly as part of the containment, His diaries were discovered in the sixties.
Since then, the invasive species had free reign with no one to stop them.
There'd been some loose efforts, mostly from the private sector, but it
took the creation of the DUC to start the work on a larger scale,
and there we were. From that point forward, I started to work with
more specific field equipment. Since being able to imagine the object is something that
triggers it to manifest, we needed a way for field agents to physically remove
them without putting themselves in danger. We came up with something we called the
blur guard, a full headset that removes all color, dampened sounds, and
mildly blurs your vision. Going back to the example of a red lily,
the blur guard turned it from a red lily to some kind of flower that's
not enough detail to trigger a manifestation and thus deemed safe. Since our software
knew what to look for, we incorporated a camera and basic image recognition.
There'd be a little green light showing up whenever what we were looking for was
in view. From that point, our field agents could play hot or cold
until they found what they were supposed to remove. And when it came to
people, well, we can't kill them have them unlearned something. So instead
there was a targeted effort to herd them into place where we knew this problem
was prominent enough to go unnoticed. The DUC had done it for decades.
These were personalized, targeted efforts, maybe sending a particularly juicy job offer enticing
a target to move things like that. We focused on two main sites,
a rural town in Minnesota and one in West Virginia. There were talks of
one up in New England, but that was a separate department. These places
have been absolutely scrubbed to this day, you can't even find them on the
map. Our colleagues and the private sector brought up pretty much everything there is
to own, giving the DUC close to full control. It might seem cruel,
but most of these people had no idea they'd been manipulated. They lived
good lives. We did our best to turn off as many lighthouses as we
could, but in a town like that, some were bound to pop up
eventually. Let's skip ahead a couple of years. In the summer of two
thousand and four, I had been on rotation assisting the development of new equipment.
I was also regularly updating both Daisy and the Blurguard. We had implemented
generalized search filters looking for the trigger words that Daisy could use, increasing our
information input tenfold. Hell about ninety percent of forum infrastructure could be breached the
sense of descriptions of the invasive agents if needed. We had basic bots prowling
most major discussion forums to contain eventual spread. One night, I'd taken my
work home with me to work on a camera light. Some field agents had
mentioned image recognition issues in low light areas where the camera refused the work,
so I figured an extra light source would go a long way. I was
blasting my worktime playlist on my laptop, sipping on my second room and coke.
If I was going to do extra work from home, I might as
well make an event out of it. Just short of midnight, it was
time to try it out. I turned off the lights, put on the
helmet, and checked to see if the camera light auto activated as instructed.
It did. Strange thing, though I was getting her green marker, the
helmet was recognizing the invasive element right in front of me. I know my
own apartment top to bottom, so I know exactly what I was looking at.
Blurred helmet or no. I'm obviously not going to describe it to you,
but it had the appearance of a household plant, quite large. I
had it in my window for years. For the sake of storytelling, let's
call it a red lily like in Thomas's example. Suddenly it dawned on me.
Now I knew what the invasive agent was. I couldn't unlearn it.
From that point forward, I was going to be a threat to the department.
This was an invitation for red lilies to pop up out of nowhere,
possibly making everyone aware of them. But first and foremost, they'd be a
lighthouse for other things to come. I pulled a lily out of the pot,
roots and all, and shoved it down the garbage disposal. I swear
the damned thing screened. The empty pot was left on the window sill moments
my phone rang. Turns out my blurguard was actively connected to the daisy system.
It probably sent out a report to the department lead with my name and
address the moments it recognized the species. I held my breath, trying to
calm down. This was going to spark a series of events that'd be a
report, an investigation. I'd most likely lose my job and be forced to
relocate. No worse, this was unprecedented. As expected, the call came
from Thomas. What's going on, he asked, I'm working on the internal
camera light. I think there's a malfunction. We've got a positive match on
your location. I know, I know. It's not a big deal.
It's nothing. We're going to stick to protocol on this one, said Thomas.
Expect three field agents on site within fifteen minutes. Don't go anywhere I
pulled my hair, my hands wouldn't stop shaking. I usually get the shakes
when I'm losing control. I figured I better remove all traces of the plant,
whatever parts were stuck in the garbage disposal, and whatever remained in the
pot. Except when I looked back up, there was another red lily growing
from the pot, almost exactly the same, like it had never left.
I can't stress this enough. You can't unlearn things. You can't unremember something.
I tried not to think about it, but that just made me think
of it more. I fetched a ruby's cube from my desk to focus on
something else, but as soon as that color showed up, my mind sank
back to thinking of it. I got a garbage bag and through the whole
pot in along with the rest of the garbage. There'd be nothing left.
I went room by room looking for anything remotely resembling it, but there was
nothing. So I left the apartment intent on throwing it all away. But
see, there's this communal garden project outside my apartment building. It was filled
with these things. There were dozens of red lilies. My mind blanked and
I could feel my pulse rising in my throat. This entire neighborhood could be
compromised, possibly more. I couldn't for the life of me remember if the
lilies had been there earlier that day, or if it was a reaction to
my realization these things were insidious. They not only appeared when you think about
them, but they made a conscious effort to pop up when they had least
expected or wanted. I called my landlord Jerry, and started pulling up lilies
from the community garden with my free hand. Some of them screamed. It
was like a tiny whale from a baby. Some of the lilies clung to
the dirt, digging their roots deeper. Others came willingly. One of them
withered in my hand, giving up completely. When Jerry finally picked up,
I was out of breath. I need to ask about the communal garden project,
I said. I work with the Department of Fish and Wildlife. There's
a bit of an invasive species growing here, and I need to establish a
time frame as to when they appeared. All right, the red lilies,
the community garden lilies. They're actually a dangerous and invasive species. Do you
have any idea how long they've been here? Red lilies? Oh? Yeah,
we've had those for a while. How long there was a silence on
the other end. Maybe he was thinking about it. I didn't have that
kind of time. How long, Jerry, I look, I don't know,
eight maybe nine years. I grabbed my hair and pulled. The pain
in my scout forced me to concentrate a handful of hair gave way. Thanks
Jerry. If you see these, throw them away immediately. I'll do that,
and don't tell anyone. We don't want to want to alarm people.
I hung up. I was flailing, breaking protocol left and right. I
was breaching, waiting to be sealed. I was on my knees in the
dirt, pulling up red lilies by the handful. One of my neighbors walked
past, and I could hear a dog whining in the side of me.
Or maybe it saw something I didn't. There was no telling what this could
mean. Most breeches would encountered was one or two of these things. At
most they were usually contained to the Minnesota side of operation. Them having skipped
the state line and latching unto me was alarming. This could prompt a whole
new level of response. I knew Thomas held a level black response where termination
of lives would be necessary to contain the threat. But we'd never employed it,
not yet. But looking around me and running the numbers, this might
be it. This could be the first time they'd have to kill people,
and I'd be the first in line. The field agents would be there at
any moment. My hands were red and raw from pulling up lilies and stuffing
them into the garbage bags. I was so frantic that I grabbed everything that
even remotely resembled them, anything red, anything lily shaped. I tore up
more than half the community garden in ten minutes flat. I could hear a
car coming, I couldn't take any chances. I looked over the garden again,
I couldn't see any of them, and sprinted to the garbage cans.
The moment i'd thrown it all away, I saw headlights turning the corner.
I recognized them. I brushed my hands off the best I could and shoved
them in my pockets. A white hatchback with government license plates pulled up,
and three people got out. I tried to stay calm, I tried not
to think about red lilies. I tried to smile. I could tell that
I was looking at agent estevas Young and Owens. I had worked with these
people plenty of times to prep them for excursion, never to this extent,
though, and never on this side of the States. They all fixed and
Eva did their blurguard helmets. Rough Night asked the steps. Yeah, yeah,
I nodded, working on an update the helmet kind of. You know,
sure, sure, we'll just check out the apartment and be on our
way. You mind waiting down here? No, that's fine. They turned
on their image recog, singed their combs and gave me a pat on the
shoulder. We'll be an inn out, said Young, Sorry about the trouble.
I watched them. I send the stairway while I stayed out by the
garden. I was going to make sure nothing popped up. If the agents
just up and left, I could come up with a plan, I told
Thomas eventually, but I had to be clever about it. I had to
assess the damage and spread to make sure I could trigger a quarantine rather than
an eradication level response. Still, looking around the apartment complex, there were
probably hundreds of people living there. These things could have made their way into
every single household, opening the way for pretty much anything not that I had
the slightest idea of what that might be. I was lost in thought for
the better part of half an hour. What the hell was taking them so
long? Had they found one? I walked up the stairway and put my
hand on the apartment door. It was quiet. It shouldn't be quiet.
I got this sinking feeling, like my body heat was leaking out of my
feet. My mind started a brace with possibilities. Maybe they left, went
to the wrong apartment. Maybe they're watching TV and my couch, having a
beer, burning a red lily in the bath tub. Whatever they did,
they wouldn't do it quietly, and this was quiet. I pushed the door
open and was met with a chemical smell, like a moist mix of methanol
an iron. It was strong enough to taste est evers. I coughed out,
are you guys in? There no response. I stepped back out,
gasping for fresh air. The smell burned my nose hairs. My eyes teared
up as I tried not to sneeze. I didn't want to go back in.
I knew it was bad. I could feel it in the pit of
my stomach. Still I didn't have a choice. I stepped back in and
shut the door behind me. I turned on the lights. I turned on
the lights. They'd been torn to pieces. There was blood dripping from the
ceiling, two severed arms on the kitchen table, an armless, legless torso
resting on the couch, the blood sinking into the cracks in the leather.
The floor was covered in gore, torn straight from their bodies and left in
the open, muscle, sinew, vital organs, all splayed out on the
floor and furniture. There was a single red lily in a brand new pot
resting on the window sill. There was a bright red handprint on the bathroom
door. I gently pushed the door open, only to reveal the severed heads
of Esteva's younger owens, unceremosely thrown into a pile on the floor of my
shower cabinet. I don't know how long I stood there. My mind went
completely blank. I could honestly not tell if it was real or a nightmare.
For a moment, I was awash with this intense relief. It had
to be a nightmare. It didn't make sense for something so terrible to happen
so suddenly. It took me a while to realize that there was something looking
at me from the bathroom mirror. I turned to it. My face wasn't
there, just the dark space where my face ought to be. It was
like staring into a hole, vaguely shaped like a humanoid. He followed my
movements as I leaned my head left and right. We looked at one another
in silence, hearing only blood dripping from the living room ceiling. A trembling
whisper burrowed into my spine. Hello, this was one of the things Tomas
had warned us about. This was one of the ships that came to shore
following the lighthouse, one of the countless entities invited into my world, drawn
by this thing, the thing that ought not to be. I hate calling
it a red lily. I want to scream what it is and have them
torn apart, but I can't describe them or they'll spread out of control.
The longer I stared at the thing in the mirror, the more I understood.
It was one thing to know about the red lilies. It was a
hundred times more potent to know exactly how they worked. For an average person
to know their appearance might invite a few to pop up, but to know
them at the level that I did. That was an entirely different league to
these things. I was precious cargo. I could light a hundred lighthouses a
thousand. They perceived Astavers and the other agents as a threat and disposed of
them immediately. I was the equivalent of a carrier patient zero. I was
stuck in the eye of the storm, and everything around me would be torn
to shreds. I ran a hundred scenarios in my head. Destroying myself was
the obvious choice, but that would be the nail in the coffin that would
force Thomas to take violent action on this entire apartment complex. Without context,
he wouldn't know how to contain it. Losing personnel was the final criteria for
a black Lever response. However, if it was attributed to a breach of
protocol or faulty equipment, I could bring it down to a quarantine. There
was hope, but I had to explain it. I had to stay alive.
As I pondered my options, I heard a running motor outside. I
stepped out of the bathroom and out into the walkway. Another two white Hatchbacks
had pulled up. I'd lost track of time no one in Estevis's team had
reported and all clear or anything. This had prompted a standard backup response.
If these teams found traces of anything, our entire field division would be called
in. They'd probably put people all the way down in Des Moines on high
alerts within the next fifteen minutes if there was no de escalation. There was
already new red lilies growing in the community garden. They wouldn't let me speak.
Talking was a hazard since I could verbally describe what they were looking for.
I could yell out they looked like red lilies, and the entire squad
would be compromised. Up until this point, we'd never had to worry about
that kind of willful exposure, and there was no plan for it. That
DUC didn't have enemies in the active sense. We were preventative. There was
no way they'd let me talk or leave, not with three human remains in
my apartment. At best, they gag me and burn this place to the
ground. At worst, they'd shoot me and then do the same. I
scurried along the walkway, turning left at the far end, I took the
fire escape to the ground floor, hugged at the wall of the building and
circled back to the parking lot. I burst into a sprint for my sedan.
Luckily no one noticed, at least no one that cared. As soon
as I got on the highway, I called Thomas. I had trouble staying
in my lane. My hands kept cramping up. Thomas picked up. I
could hear him opening a door, putting on a jacket. You got to
tell me what's going on, he said, where are you? I had
to go. I had to the places infested, so let's deal with it.
I didn't know what to say. It was no good place to start.
I leaned back in my seat, tried to keep the car straight,
and took a deep breath. There were flashes of read by the roadside,
could have been lilies. The back seat was dark, dark enough to hide
a possible shape. I thought I saw an outline in the rear view mirror,
but it might have been my mind playing tricks. Stay where you are.
I'll have someone pick you up and we'll deal with it. I can't.
I said, it's bad, Thomas, it's real bad. How bad
are we talking? We're talking a quarantine breach, a protocol. At least
three casualties Thomas took a deep breath. He held a line for a few
seconds. I could hear him get into the car. You know, don't
you? Yeah, that's I'm sorry. They're everywhere. I can't stop seeing
them. Don't tell me anything nothing. I shouldn't be talking to you.
He was right. Talking to someone like me who knew was like trying to
pit a rattlesnake. It could be over in a snap. We got to
bring you in. What are you going to do? Did we lose people?
Mists his team? I said, something came through. Jeez, are
you saying you're causing manifestations? I don't know, but you do know you
if anyone knows, so tell me. Looking back in the rear view mirror,
I knew there was something riding along, something that had caught onto me,
something that had stepped into our world following the light of the red lilies.
There was no point in denying it. I'll figure it out, I
said, I'll deal with it. Before Thomas got the chance to object,
I turned off my phone and chucked it out of the window. I drove
for the better part of an hour before a familiar sound snapped me to attention.
Whatever surface level plans I'd made in my head dissolved completely. I heard
the sound before I saw the flashing lights, a siren. I was probably
swerving left and right, trying to keep the car straight. No wonder I
was being pulled over. This could get real bad, real fast. I
thought about bucking it and hoping for the best, but that had just draw
more attention to me. Instead, I found a secluded spot and pulled over.
It was only as I pulled the handbrake that I remembered I'd been drinking
early that night. I'd had about two Roman Cokes. I'd completely forgotten about
it. I tried to consider my options, but there was no time.
I was told to turn off the engine, roll down the window, and
placed my hands on the dashboard. There were two officers, a man and
a woman. I could barely hear them over my pounding heart. To them,
it was a routine stop, but I was trying to save lives.
They had no idea what kind of trouble they are in. I tried to
wrap my head around it to come up with something plausible that they'd understand.
I could tell them I had a bomb strap to me or anything, but
there was no time. I hadn't even heard them asking for my license in
registration. I could feel a flashlight shine in my face, but I barely
registered it. They asked me three times. Then they changed tactics. Sir,
we needed to step out and place your hands on the hood of the
vehicle. I fumbled my response. This something in the car. I said,
You've got to be careful. There's, sir, is there currently a
weapon on your person? Something that can puncture wound my partner? A pencil,
a knife, a sharp set of keys. No, listen, you,
you got to step back. There's something. My thoughts blanked. There
By the side of the road, I saw one, a red lily,
clear as day, growing through the cracks in the pavement. Sir, I
needed to cooperate with me. The officer insisted, have you been drinking tonight?
I couldn't take my eyes off the red lily. It was like a
reminder that this was already over, that my fate and theirs was sealed.
The moment we met dead men walking, please, I whispered, let them
go. For a second, I thought that it might do it. I
was willing to listen, to give in if that's what it took for these
people to live. The red lily knew, I know it knew, But
like a lighthouse, it can't help but to shine and bring ships to shore.
And with that, a familiar tremble rose in my stomach. Hello.
There was a flicker as one of the light posts went out. I closed
my eyes, trying to keep the tears in. The officer to my left
started screaming. I had a gunshot, but muffled, as if firing into
something at close range. I had fabric being torn, then flesh, then
sinuant arteries. No one ever told me it was possible to deserve the sound
of marrows separating from breaking bone. But now I can't stop hearing it.
Hello. Primal animalistic screams a program response in a biology to alert other humans
to stay away, to run. Splotches of blood rained down on the concrete
and the hood of the car. I could feel something warm splatter across my
face and run down my cheeks. The screams stopped. I had sunk to
my knees. I looked like a crying older boy, praying for it all
to stop. When I finally forced my eyes open, the world was red
with blood. In the flicker of a dying light post. I saw something
vaguely human drop the sundered remains of a torso. He followed my head like
movements left to right, mimicking me. I could tell it was proud,
like a dog bringing back a stick to its master. Hello. I stumbled
to my feet, leaning against the car to steady myself. The concrete was
slippery with blood, and I kept stepping on something indiscernible. I tried to
look straight ahead as to not look at the entity too closely. It was
just standing there in the middle of the street, looking at me, waiting
for me to say or do something. I looked straight ahead, pretending it
wasn't even there. The car took a few turns of the key to start.
The steering wheel was slippery with blood, but I managed to steer back
on the road. The windshield wipers smeared the gore into a thin red veneer.
I had to go away, far away, and there was only one
place I could imagine. As I mentioned earlier, the DUC had certain contaminant
areas, previously user spaces where they simply moved people of interest. But with
me there, they'd have to leave it alone. It'd be too dangerous to
interact with. They'd have to trust that I wouldn't interfere as long as I
kept to myself and out of the way. I burned my car in a
field and walked nine miles. I washed myself off in the river. This
was a town designed to keep people comfortable enough not to ask questions, so
having a stranger wandering off the streets wouldn't be a problem. And everywhere I
looked there were red lilies. They were in the windows of every house by
the roadside, in every garden. Hell, they were even used as a
logo. I'd seen that logo a hundred times. Maybe they had no idea
what it meant. I've stayed in that rural minace of the town ever since.
I've seen more horrors than I dared to count, but they seem to
ignore me. They treat this place as a nesting ground or a staging area.
Considering how many of them there is, I'm astounded that anyone is still
alive. Do you see has declared this entire town a hazard. I've tried
getting in touch with Thomas again, but all my attempts at communication with the
outside world has been censored. If this, by some miracle, gets through
the filters. I urged that do you see to get in contact with me.
I want to be an asset. I want to help turn off the
lighthouses. And as for everyone else, the best thing you can do and
stop asking questions. Don't question the armed men with strange helmets and look too
closely at the strange plant in the community garden. Don't look for anything abnormal,
and if you see something, try to consider it might be artificial.
Don't dig too deep into this. If you're not involved, consider yourself lucky
and stay out of rural Minnesota.