Tall and slender, full of life in her favourite loose red linen dress, a pretty young woman Rena was on her way uphill to her parents. She stepped out of the bus when a middle aged man joined her on the pavement. She has never seen him before they started a casual travelers conversation commenting on weather and economic situation in the country, which he ended with his grandmother's announcement, »When the red slugs are going to come and the houses are going to sprout like mushrooms, things will get messed up and life will become very difficult.«
No-one heard of red slugs yet, and the other existing ones weren't a threat to no one. Actually, they were quite welcomed as the inhabitants of gardens and forests. And as of the »houses sprouting like mushrooms« goes, the statement seemed even less accurate. Due to the high inflation everyone was a millionaire in the country, but the interest rates were just too high to take a loan to build a house. Usually a whole family had to take it and even do quite a lot working on the construction site them.
Rena enjoyed her life; she loved herself and her cheerful mood uplifted those around her. On her working days she rode her bike through the forest to the bus station, submerging into her daily bath of exquisite forest fragrances and gentle breeze, before she'd receive her daily sunrise gaze on her bus ride to work. A daily mood uplift with exercise. Being a millionaire, even an inflationary one, was fun. Money just got an odd quality of something not really serious; it was ridiculous.
On her bike ride back home she received a short warm shower of early afternoon rain that washed off her the sweat from ride in the stinking non-air-conditioned bus and watered her little garden. Gardening was easy and the weather was just perfect. Summers had a nice short rain shower every day, the rain was warm and the temperature didn't fall for more than one or two degrees. Everyone she knew was gardening and exchanging what they had in abundance, for even plants loved the perfect weather, so the gardening was effortless – the plants took care of themselves and were giving in abundance. The dreamweavers were creating perfect conditions for sustaining natural life.
Then, without a real warning, the prophecy stepped in big time. The state didn’t have any more money to pay the printing of the money and disintegrated. A short war broke out and a new state constituted itself, but lost its former twenty million markets overnight, practically all of it. Before long the prophesized signs started popping up all over the place.
First were the red slugs. No-one knew where did they came from, and no-one saw them before. They were like a little red crawling army, eating everything around. They were proliferating themselves thousand times faster than the domestic ones. Gardening became difficult. Even riding a bike through the forest became unpleasant and tiresome, like a killing ride of sorts, hence the red slugs were all over the place.
Then, the houses started popping up like mushrooms. People started building houses in the most uncommon places, where old people would never build them. The old rules of construction were not regarded any more. But these were only the more visible signs, the signs everyone could notice.
The messing up was far more expansive and profound. Yet, less obvious. While the dreamweavers were still caring for life on Earth, the male spirit circle started rising in power and creating very unusual current of events, causing discord. Some of them decided to own the weather; they patented all sorts of weather phenomena, like artificial sun, lightning, rain bomb, cloud seeding, etc., and started trading the weather on the stock exchange. As they were controlling the supply of money, owning most of the industry and media they deemed to own the weather, too, as well as all life forms. For them it was like self-explanatory. Maybe they’ve patented the whole universe already, but the humans haven’t checked it out, yet.
Natural life and life forms weren’t good enough for them; they were too fragile for the harsh conditions of computerized mechanical weather creation and useless for the grand plan of interstellar travel and total control. Synthetic life forms, combining life forms with computers, and artificial intelligence materialized in self-replicating nanobots and other machines seemed more plausible and useful. To hell with those cranky humans?!
In the mornings, instead of getting her once so enjoyable daily mood uplift with exercise, Rena was now picking up red slugs and trying to rescue the vegetables from them. Hardly ever was there a gentle daily shower of warm rain in the summer or cozy blanket of snow in the winter. Weather was strangely confused, going to the extremes. Plants didn’t like it. Watering them every morning was a must, but it never gave them what a gentle daily shower did. Riding a bike to the town, Rena observed the crisscrossed sky with concern. The sky looked dirty and polluted with those strange artificial stains that were some of the clouds now, the artificial clouds. They made her feel nauseated. She thought other people will get insane from the loss of the natural sky, but no, their gaze was just glued to their smartphones. They didn’t seem to miss it. While a strange future seemed to be unfolding unnoticeably, the entire natural world looked to be at stake in a long run.
Rena wondered how long will it take until they patent the entire planet and claim it their own invented property while she was battling with red slugs, and a new addition to the red enemies’ forces: red cockroaches. She felt like a murderer, as she had to eliminate her red enemies. While those little red enemies looked full of life murdering them made her feel less and less alive. No longer could she uplift other’s moods, much less her own. All this killing and poisoning could uplift only the mood of those who like to destroy.
Story for the Marvelous Tales contest; prompt words red, bike
https://steemit.com/marveloustales/@playfulfoodie/marvelous-tales-contest-11-announcing-winners-and-the-next-contest