In the reactor’s ruins, time begins to misbehave. Watches stutter, ticking backward, then forward again. The floodlights buzz, dim, and flicker as if drained of power. A visitor withdraws a probe. Inside the sample tube, the fragment pulses softly.
They retreat to the safety of the observation post, but the sample does not remain inert. It spreads across the containment chamber, thin filaments etching patterns into the glass, forming shapes that resemble letters, numbers, symbols—but in no language anyone recognizes. The organism reflects their thoughts, their memories, weaving them into its infinite sprawl. It isn’t just alive. It knows. It understands. Days pass. The fungus reaches the core. The radiation levels plummet. The earth beneath the reactor grows warm, like a fever breaking. But strange things begin to happen. Some begin to hear whispers. Not in their ears, but in their bones, as though the fungus is speaking through them. It doesn’t use words but something older, something primal. A vibration, a hum of knowing. It reveals secrets—of time, of decay, of the deep machinery of the universe. The fungus has reached the observation post. It blooms across the equipment, delicate and spindly, forming towers that resemble cathedrals. The whispers grow louder, and the air itself seems to pulse with a vast, unseen heartbeat. The visitors feel themselves changing. Their skin tingles; their thoughts blur and stretch. Time bends around them. They see themselves as they were, as they are, as they could be—splintered timelines converging into one. The whispers grow into a song, incomprehensible but beautiful, and they realize, too late, that they cannot leave. – http://thevisitors.jeron.org/
_______________________________________________ NetBehaviour mailing list NetBehaviour@lists.netbehaviour.org https://lists.netbehaviour.org/mailman/listinfo/netbehaviour
