Strange Cocktail

A pleasant day on the beach, as gently rolling waves lapped at the sand in clever fractals, and the puffy white clouds in the azure sky drifted demurely from horizon to horizon. There were few people bathing, as it wasn't quite ideal beach weather, a few walking, some untethered dogs, and a typical number of seagulls.

The ocean breeze picked up at one point, barely noticeable, but some may have wondered at its vaguely musty aroma. The scientific explanation would be easy had anyone bothered to take a sample, but the rise of three concurrent events is just one unfortunate chance in a billion.

The air for this brief period contained a mixture of radioactive volcanic ash, deep sea jellyfish spores, and traces of ancient Kraken DNA - which was killed by the sudden eruption in the trench.

Those radioactive spores, ingested into the eyes and mouths of the unwitting hosts would now alter their futures as genes mingled with genes.

Jelly-Krakens in various proportion, were spontaneously formed from dog, bird and human alike, though less immediately perceptible by those toiling in offices and other atmosphere controlled environs.

There were those spared entirely - like miners, astronauts and deepsea divers - but suffice that virtually all around the Pacific Rim were affected.

Now it is perfectly reasonable to suppose conjecture and speculation upon how exactly the new lifeforms would be able to co-exist within the existing network, but obviously it is not an easy one.

Naturally distrustful dogs, for example, became even more distrustful, and infused with a Kraken genome, unaccountably even more intolerant and vicious. Likewise did those more docile species of birds within an instant become birds of prey, and by prey everything became game.

Almost all land and sea animals would change in appearance and behavior as the infused strains gradually took over, and soon chaos would again rule the planet.

Much has been written on man's propensity for violence, but here it reaches critical levels as suddenly neighbor turns upon neighbor, exchanging snarls for growls, and an instinctive desire to kill.

Enter back into low Earth orbit a mission module from the asteroid belt, populated by two cosmonauts sharing a Siberian Cossack ancestry (though that is neither there nor here, apart from being able to trace their roots back to none other than Attila himself were they so inclined). But it is their spacesuits that interest us as here as they appear to have been contaminated with a cosmic borne virus that may hold the solution to this new problem.


TBC...