Last week a lot of you may have noticed my small town popping up in the news. Wylie, Texas. We were pounded by unforgiving hail the size of softballs that caused a tremendous amount of property damage. Shattered windows, busted up cars. Power lines toppled over and started a few fires.
The sound was a deafening clamor of broken glass and loud bangs mixed with howling winds. Rock hard ice was rapidly falling from the sky at such an elevated rate that the noise became a seemingly singular, elongated explosion. My car alarm had gone off, but I couldn’t hear it over the relentless weather. I stood in my kitchen watching the hail fly through my living room windows and roll across the carpet. The blinds were quickly mangled and left oscillating by a single screw that somehow wasn’t pried from the sheetrock.
When the hail finally stopped we all thought the worst was over. Mother nature had her fun and moved on.
The crashing ice of the boisterous anomaly sparsely faded until it became easy to detect individual pieces falling and bouncing off nearby objects. After I was sure the system had completely passed I went outside to survey the damage. Everywhere I looked there was destruction. Neighbors were cautiously standing under the edge of their roofs, in alcoves or staring out their broken windows to gaze in amazement at the balls of frozen water that completely covered the street and lawns.
None of us had ever seen anything like it. I sure hadn’t.
Some neighbors slowly made their way outside. We checked in on each other to make sure no one was hurt. Everyone in my area was fine, luckily. But everyone had some sort of damage to their property. I playfully joked with my neighbors that auto body shop owners all had dollar signs in their pupils at that moment.
As a group gathered in the street I noticed something odd sticking out of one particular ball of ice resting on my neighbor’s lawn. It looked almost like a thin piece of orange paper with brown spots protruding out of the side. The disparity of its formation caught my attention and I immediately bent over to inspect the contents.
I held it right in front of my eyes and shook the ice back and forth, carefully inspecting the flapping transparent material. It wasn’t until I grabbed the substance and noticed its slimy texture that I realized what it was.
A fish tail. It was small, but unmistakable.
One of the neighbors approached me after I called out to the group exclaiming that I had found something unique and interesting. He claimed it was just a wet leaf that must have somehow wedged itself into the ice when it fell through the branches of a tree. The others came over and we all glared at the piece of hail in my hand. A debate soon erupted among us as we tried to explain how a fish could have gotten stuck inside a block of ice. Mr. Bailey, another neighbor from across the street, claimed that it was entirely possible. Hail is formed by tremendous uplift in the atmosphere that derives from the surface and travels upwards. The fish could have come from one of two nearby lakes that were in the path of the uplift; Lake Ray Hubbard or Lavon Lake. When the water in the uplift reaches the sky it forms ice crystals and freezes. The stronger the winds are the more the ice crystals whip around in the clouds and gather mass, until they eventually become too heavy for the wind to carry any longer and fall back down to earth. The size of this hail was enough to reasonably conclude that the winds outside were near 100 mph. Certainly strong enough to carry a small fish out of the fresh waters adjacent to our town if it were close enough to the surface at the time the storm passed.
Some people weren’t convinced. There was really only one way to settle the debate.
I walked into the street and threw the hail like a baseball as hard as I could straight into the ground. A piece broke off and glided over the road until it collided with another ball of hail and stopped.
A large, semi sphere chunk remained at my feet. And sticking out of it were the irrefutable scales on the body of a small, orange fish still partially concealed within the ice.
I picked up the cold block and held it over my head with a crooked, proud smile on my face. I was right. There was a fish stuck in the hail.
Based on the shape of its body it looked to be a baby crappie. Another smash against the asphalt confirmed its classification.
Just a short while earlier we had all witnessed something we’d never seen in our lives. But now we were all transfixed on a common freshwater fish that I held in my hand, completely forgetting all about the destructive phenomenon that occurred less than twenty minutes ago.
The previous, inescapable sound of ice falling from the sky returned as we began smashing more ice against the road, hoping to find more mysterious contents inside each one. Ten of us, all smashing balls of ice into the ground. Had we been children I’m sure it might not have looked so strange.
Each time the ice broke I excitedly scanned the remnants in search of another fish. I was beginning to think that it was just a one-time accident of nature until someone shouted that they had found something else. It was Mrs. Moore, who lived two houses away. She rushed towards me with her palm hovering in front of her face, carefully making sure to keep her hand steady and level so she wouldn’t drop whatever it was. I peered into her palm as she extended it to me.
It was so tiny in her hand. I had no idea how she managed to spot the thing mixed within the fragments of broken hail. But it was most certainly there. An almost imperceptible translucent collection of clear mucky sludge just under one inch in length. Had it not been for the its conspicuous jointed appendages bulging from its abdominal underside I would have assumed it was just a mixture of shaved ice and water. The two black dots at the end of another appendage were indisputably two eyes.
The others gathered around to look at the specimen in Mrs. Moore’s hand, initiating a mumbling commotion of questions about the shrimp-like creature in the process.
“It’s a plankter,” I called out. “Well, more specifically...krill.”
I told the group about my studies in college on marine biology. Plankton were the baseline for all marine food chains, both fresh and saltwater. Most organisms are microscopic, but there’s a select few that can be seen with the naked eye. Krill was one of them.
It led me to the topic of the resiliency of these organisms. They were one of the few that could actually survive in the vacuum of space. Two years ago a Russian cosmonaut discovered plankton hitching a ride on the outside of the International Space Station. Nobody was really quite sure how they got there, but they were alive and thriving. After reading about it in a magazine it made me contemplate about the possibilities of panspermia - the theory that life exists throughout the universe and travels from planet to planet on meteoroids and comets. I wondered if the theory may actually be true. It’s thought that life on earth originated by means of panspermia. A meteor crashed into our planet and deposited microorganisms in the process, setting off an evolutionary chain of events that led to us all being here today.
Seeing both the crappie and the krill led me to explaining that there were likely thousands of other organisms in the hail. Possibly more krill, but most we wouldn’t be able to see with the naked eye. They were all likely caught in the uplift of the storm as it passed over the lakes and became fused with the ice as it formed in the clouds above. And, as the plankton on the ISS, they were probably still alive.
We soon discovered that I was right. The plankton were alive. And that these were no ordinary plankton.
I extended my index finger towards Mrs. Moore’s hand and pressed it lightly into the creature's abdomen and rubbed. The exterior mucus on its body felt cold against the tip of my finger.
And then its legs started moving.
“See!” I declared, victoriously. “It’s still alive.” The appendages quickly began kicking empty air as though it were trying to swim as I withdrew my finger.
“Get it off!” Mrs. Moore yelled, visibly uncertain about creature in her hand.
“Relax,” I assured. “It’s harmless.”
We fell silent as it propped itself up onto its legs and crawled forward a few steps, seemingly confused as it look back at us. This certainly wasn’t where he belonged. A faint squeak like a timid mouse from the creature broke our silence.
“Aww. He’s kinda cute, don’t ya think?” I said to Mrs. Moore.
Before she could respond, the krill jerked one of its limbs downward into Mrs. Moore’s hand and dragged it sideways, penetrating and breaking her skin open into a small red cut. She instantly shrieked and defensively jolted her hand backwards, sending the creature plummeting towards the asphalt. Without any hesitation she repeatedly stomped the ground until all that remained of the creature was a small pile of lumpy mush.
“I thought you said it was harmless?!” She yelled.
“Well, I guess not...never heard of a krill doing that before. Sorry. You ok?”
“I’m fine!” She said, clearly agitated.
We separated afterwards thinking it was just an isolated incident. I went inside my house and contacted my insurance company to report the damages from the storm. It didn’t take long for the hail to melt outside and completely disappear as though it was never there to begin with. Occasionally I glanced out my broken window to observe the stages of thaw and watch mother nature’s the tools of destruction wither away. Just as quickly as the hail came, it was soon gone.
And with the thaw, the life trapped inside the hail was set free. Released into the community of Wylie, Texas.
I was sitting at my kitchen table a couple of hours later reviewing my insurance policy to make sure I had glass coverage for my car to repair the broken windshield. Out of the corner of my eye I saw two krill scurrying across the tile floor, moving briskly with each other like two lovebirds on their way to a fancy restaurant. Both looked exactly the same as the creature that had cut Mrs. Moore’s hand. Tiny little agile shrimp.
The sound of my chair scraping across the floor must have startled them. They stopped in front of the refrigerator and turned in my direction when I stood up, their dark tentacle eyes shifting gradually until they locked with mine. I had thought the krill that we found earlier was just a single occurrence, but in front of me were two more little creatures. And they behaved strangely. One stepped forward as though it was challenging me, its eyes remaining fixed on my position ten feet away. It bellowed out a similar squeak that I had heard the other specimen make earlier, only this one had a higher pitch. It trailed off into a series of low clicking noises, like the creak of a door when it’s closed slowly.
I grabbed a magazine off the counter and rolled it up, preparing to swat at the things invading my house when a man screamed outside. The roar of desperation originating from the street dragged my attention away from the two creatures and towards the source. A second, longer scream from a woman quickly followed.
“Oh my god! Someone...help!” She hollered in between her shrieks.
Like any reasonable person I immediately broke into lengthy strides towards my front door to offer my assistance for whatever was going on outside, ignoring the two creatures lurking around my kitchen in the process. I burst out of my front door and stood in awe at the scene in the street, unsure of what to do.
Mr. Bailey was being swarmed and mauled by an army of the creatures. There must have been a hundred krill crawling over his body like fleas as he wildly thrashed around in an attempt to remove them. Their squeaks and clicking rang through the air in a furor of waves as though they had an appetite for unleashing violence. Mrs. Moore stood nearby with a broom, smacking it into Mr. Bailey at such a velocity that it knocked him over. He rolled on the ground screaming as I approached, protecting his face by covering it with his hands in order to prevent the creatures from entering an open orifice.
I ran to him, unsure of what exactly needed to be done to help. When I was close enough I saw numerous cuts on his exposed arms being invaded by the creatures. They had plunged themselves headfirst into the narrow openings that they created, their hairy tails squirming above the surface of his skin as they wiggled a path into his flesh. In between the swarm I spotted four tails on his arms. One disappeared under his skin. A bump from his muscle quickly receded as the creature dug deeper.
I knelt down and grabbed one of the other tails still wiggling on his arm with my index finger and thumb and pulled. The creature was surprisingly strong. It resisted as I tugged lightly at first, and continued to resist when I tugged harder. I resorted to giving the creature a sudden jolt backwards in a final effort to remove it from Mr. Bailey’s flesh. Instead the creature broke in two. One half continued wiggling in my fingers, the other dug deeper into his skin and vanished.
Before I could attempt to remove the others from Mr. Bailey a stinging pain like a papercut emanated on my ankle which was instantly followed by an odd sensation of discomfort. I looked down to find one of the creatures digging its head into my ankle and wiggling its tail.
Mrs. Moore dropped the broom and ran. I reached down and pulled the creature out of my ankle before it dug itself too deep and ran myself. It was no use trying to help Mr. Bailey. There was just too many. As I ran towards my car I saw the grass on my lawn swaying from more of these things, an entire horde of them marching over my property.
I pulled the car door open and slammed it shut behind me. The glass of the window shattered as I started my car and put it in reverse, looking out the broken back window. I drove passed Mr. Bailey and I can’t say that I’m too proud to admit that I was glad it wasn’t me squirming on the ground and calling out for help. A block away there were more people on the ground being attacked. I saw at least twenty people struggling with these things until I reached the edge of town and encountered traffic in front of an army blockade. There were men in what looked like hazmat suits walked down the streets with flamethrowers, lighting all the critters ablaze.
They refused to let anyone leave but offered their protection, assuring us that we would be safe. Somehow they knew about these creatures and were readily prepared for an event like this. We still haven't been told what they were or how they somehow populated the lakes. I can only suspect that the government was somehow to blame for their existence. But I have no proof.
Like everyone in town I was offered temporary shelter at the community center while teams of people in hazmat suits went through town clearing out the creatures that invaded our homes. I returned home yesterday, a week after the storm. The windows in my living room are still in need of repair, along with my car. But the town appears to have been cleared out and we’re all safe. I guess that’s what’s important. Except I still haven’t seen Mr. Bailey at all.
As I write this I’m contemplating the possibilities of panspermia once again, just as I did previously when I read about plankton living outside the International Space Station. Only this time it’s not about the origins of life on earth and whether we’re all the result of a crashed meteor that contained microscopic life inside. Instead I’m debating whether it’s possible the uplift in the storm was strong enough to heave some of the ice crystals carrying the chemical blueprints of these wretched creatures out of the earth’s atmosphere and send it sailing into space...
...the eventual spark of life and evolution on a distant planet.
Submitted April 19, 2016 at 07:53PM by survivalprocedure http://ift.tt/1S8cMIK nosleep
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