"Of
The Mould"
Mark Samuels
The
mould first appeared in a crater on a dead world at
the rim of the universe. This world, with its thin atmosphere
and surface battered by comets and meteors for millions
of years, spun in a void of sunless dark. Perhaps it
had been one of those comet collisions that had caused
the moulds existence, some unique arrangement
of molecules in the comets slushy ice that had
been mutated by radiation, something waiting to awaken
and grow. The mould may have taken aeons to reach maturity
and begin the process of reproduction. But when it did
it grew rapidly, spreading over the surface of that
dead world, across its valleys and craters and mountains,
across the equator and from pole to pole. In the end
its ghastly, greenish hue glowed like phosphorus in
the darkness of that unknown quarter of cosmic space.
It
did not think. But once it had conquered that first
world such was its size and complexity that it became
self-aware. The billions upon billions of simple cells
formed a network whose instincts gave way to a debased
gigantic hive-mind. The mould experienced a progressively
horrible sequence of nightmares, a spiral of nameless
dread. Its form of consciousness was not that of reason,
but fed off its own derangement. And its monstrous visions
grew more intense as it spread, more profound in their
ineffable malignity.
When
it had conquered that dead and distant world, after
everything lay under its ghastly green surface, its
nightmares demanded that it reach out across the void.
And so trillions of spores were ejected into space,
as light as gossamer, defying gravity, and they spread
like a disease.
Endless
terror, deeper, deeper, without cessation, this drove
the spores of the mould on their voyage through the
gas clouds and through the black spaces of emptiness.
Nightmarish ecstasy was the moulds sole purpose.
It hungered and sought to consume the universe itself
because of its nameless dread of something to which
stark madness would be as a faded shadow.
The
mould had no means of recognising any other form of
consciousness apart from its own. As it reproduced,
the nameless dread that assailed it grew exponentially
complex. It seemed to be driven to experience the ultimate
nightmare, the heart of horror, the petrifying vision
that ends only in oblivion. And yet it was really in
order to destroy itself that the mould consumed everything
else, until there was nothing left to consume, until
the entire universe was laid waste in its wake, and
the mould could terrify itself into extinction. It was
one entity, though separated by the inconceivable vastness
of interstellar space, yet still joined by the spores
it exhaled between worlds. And nightmares travel faster
than light and are not bounded by the immensity of cosmic
space.
When
the spores found a world, be it asteroid or moon or
planet, they would drift to its surface like soft rain
and begin the process of assimilating whatever was found
there. Where once there was a mighty empire with towers
that reached to the heavens, soon there would be ruins,
and the green mould consumed the creatures of that world
with only their husks remaining to show that they ever
existed at all.
The
ravages of the mould increased as it multiplied. As
immeasurable time passed, countless galaxies bore the
evidence of its all-conquering reign. Where there had
been a multitude of worlds of differing aspects, of
arid red deserts, of misty and scarred blue ice, of
airless grey dust, now all were identical. All bore
the sickly green phosphorous glow, their surfaces entirely
smothered by the mould: Canyons and mountains, plateaux
and craters, cities and forests, ice and sand, even
oceans (but here as a miasmal slime that went down to
the depths). The mould flourished everywhere and anywhere
that possessed a surface on which to grow. It mattered
not if it were a world of liquid methane or water, or
roasting close to a star, or far flung out in space,
frozen at absolute zero.
Astronomers
on distant worlds looked with horror at the development,
were they capable of such a feeling, or if they had
eyes at all. For multiform were the species of the universe,
following different paths of evolution and modes of
thought, though none were as the mould. But those that
looked outward at the universe and wondered, whether
they were taloned crustaceans, insectoid beings, a machine-species
of incredible technological complexity, peace-loving
mammals that gazed at the stars above the waters of
an alien world, all knew the end was near and their
kind would, ere centuries had passed, be consumed and
participate in the moebian nightmares that the mould
dreamed.
There
was one insignificant species amongst the millions in
the cosmos that succumbed to the mould after many vain
attempts to resist its advance. They were hairless,
upright apes on the third planet of an undistinguished
star. The mould consumed the outer planets, the gas
giants, and in turn the moons, of this solar system
one by one and the species watched with mounting horror
as the spores drew inexorably nearer, moving unaccountably
against the solar wind and turning the red desert planet
before their own that shade of sickly, glowing green
as it had done with the outer worlds before it.
By
the time the mould had consumed the third planets
only satellite the hairless apes were in turmoil. Their
civilisation was on the brink of anarchy and they were
close to destroying themselves. The light cast by the
planets moon at night was no longer white but
of that ghastly green pallor, brighter in its phosphorescent
glow, that had reigned throughout all those galactic
regions the mould had conquered. There were morbid poets
that wrote verses to the contagion and seemed to welcome
the insidious nightmares that prefigured the species
assimilation. But there were others, vainglorious, who
fired rockets into the heavens, and watched with desperate
hope the explosions that took place on their moon. The
satellite bore a hellish aspect, utterly unfamiliar
to them, because the mould had rendered it terrifying,
like decay in a corpse.
And
when the spores finally filtered down into their planets
atmosphere, there were many more explosions and scenes
of horror amongst the hairless apes as they turned on
one another, blaming their own kind for the failure
to resist what was inevitable.
But
it was not long before the streets of their cities were
thick with the mould, not long before slime ran in the
water, not long before the apes found the first patches
of green ichor on their skins. And then the endless
dreams came and the apes were of the mould.
Once
that solar system was consumed the spores travelled
onwards, their numbers always swelled by the exhalations
of the last world overrun by the mould. Across the unknown
stellar gulfs spread the contagion, never halted in
its expansion. There were other civilisations that tried
to resist its advance, but all perished in the end.
The wiser ones, who had thought and the means, elected
to flee before the moulds coming. But even these
were consumed. After aeons, even those that fled had
nowhere left to hide.
For
the mould and its spores became omnipresent throughout
the universe. Even stars that had cooled now harboured
its presence. The gas clouds and the gulfs of space
were choked with spores. And yet the mould had not achieved
its goal. Although the entire universe had been laid
waste, and neither life nor thought existed, save for
the mould and its exponential nameless dread, still
it had not achieved the ultimate petrifying vision that
could terrify it into extinction.
And
so the spores poured into those stars that had reached
the final point of collapse, into the black holes scattered
throughout the cosmos. The mould appeared in other universes
and all points of time across those other dimensions.
It spread and adapted as voraciously as it had ever
done, unchecked and irresistible, from the beginning
until the end of all existence.
But
the ultimate, petrifying vision could not be glimpsed
and the mould, conqueror of all, dreamed on and on in
its hideous majesty and was doomed to experience and
re-experience its nameless dread. For it was the mould
itself that was the ultimate horror and of itself it
had never dreamed. It groped hopelessly, as one in darkness
gropes for the light, throughout all eternity, backwards
and forwards through all space and time, until all that
had been and will be was part of it, with no release
from its nightmare.
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