Let’s consider some hypotheticals. Let’s say you got yourself a master’s degree. Let’s say that got you a job at a small branch of state government. Let’s say you worked there for the better part of your early adult life. You built everything around that job. Got an apartment, moved in with your girlfriend. Had an orange cat with (seemingly) a single braincell. Life is good, right? Hypothetically.
Then along comes this man. Says he works in conjunction with the federal government and the private sector. The guy reeks corporate; got a suit with a custom cut. No labels on his clothes. Tells us that we’re gonna be working closely with a small department that has recently got a boost. Apparently, there’s a need for expansion, and some people from my branch will be moving on up.
Let’s say that one of those people is me.
Hypothetically.
Alright, I’m gonna stop that. Sorry, this… it gets to me. You can safely presume that I’ve changed a couple of details to make myself less recognizable. I gotta get through the filters.
I had to move from Milwaukee up to Superior. Sarah and I tried to make it work, but she couldn’t leave the city behind. It came down to the choice between me and the rest of her life. It made sense for her to stay. Kinda pissed that she kept the cat though, that thing loved me.
I started working at the DUC in September of 1998. At first, I didn’t even know what the acronym stood for. It wasn’t a matter of secrecy, but they had these stupid sayings plastered along the walls that people followed to a tee. For example;
“Water of a DUCs back”. This was the standard operating procedure; don’t ask too many questions. Let your questions and worries drift right off, like water off a duck’s back. They displayed this proudly in the lunch room, with a picture of a duck peacefully sleeping by a pond.
We worked in collaboration with other agencies in Michigan, Iowa, and Minnesota. Mostly Minnesota. I helped them develop software to codify reports of invasive ecological species. It would break down verbal reports with a barebones text-to-speech system, which in turn is transcribed and separated into categories. Categories were measured, analyzed, and turned into probability reports. Once information had been categorized, the most prominent reports would be sent to the department lead. Seems simple by today’s standards, but back then it was cutting edge stuff.
It was November 1999 when we finalized the first version of our system, lovingly named “Daisy”. Hours before the launch party, the department lead took me to his office, closed the blinds, and sat quietly across from me for about two solid minutes.
This man, the department lead, was Thomas Rubin. A 67-year-old ex-drill sergeant with a penchant for the dramatic. Kept his head as bald as his lies. Having worked there for over a year, I thought I had a foot in the door by then. Turns out, I was still on the outside; until that very moment.
Thomas poured me a shot. Mint schnapps.
“To a job well done,” he said, raising his glass.
I accepted the invitation and downed the shot. What the hell, right?
“Do you have recurring nightmares?” he asked. “Seeing something strange at night? Those… those last few hours before the sunrise, do the shadows gain a… peculiar tint?”
“No, sir.”
“You’re not a very haunted man, are you?”
“I am not, sir.”
“I can work with that.”
He poured me another drink.
“I can get you working on the real deal,” he said. “But you’re not gonna like it. You’re not gonna like it one bit. That sound like a party to you?”
I took the glass and studied it. Little sugar crystals swirling around, backlit from a lone computer screen.
I downed the second shot, and Thomas smiled.
“Imagine a lighthouse”, he said. “And whenever someone thinks about the lighthouse, it lights up. You with me so far?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And this lighthouse draws in all kinds of things from far and wide. Traders, smugglers, warships, everything. But you don’t want that. The beach is closed, and these ships are bad news. What do you do?”
“We turn off the lighthouse, sir.”
“Ah, but it comes right back on whenever someone thinks about it. Even when you do it.”
“We… demolish the lighthouse, sir.”
“Same thing, pops right back once you think about it. Try again.”
“We forget about it, sir.”
“You can’t un-know something.”
“Then you’d have to go after the people that know about it. And you’d have to be careful not to learn anything about it yourself.”
“And that’s what we do,” said Thomas. “We turn off the lighthouses.”
Thomas elaborated over the course of three more shots.
What he was describing was an “invasive ecological agent”. Something that literally grew from the ground. Its very presence acts as a sort of “go-ahead” for other, more dangerous entities. But thinking about it too much causes it to appear. Not immediately, but slowly, over time. The more you knew, and the more intimate your knowledge about it was, the stronger the connection would be.
I was safe though. You had to know the details to trigger it. Thomas gave me the example of a “red lily”. You couldn’t just know it was red, or a lily. You had to know both these things to imagine it clearly. Once you did, there’s a chance it starts appearing more and more in your everyday life – until it takes physical form. And by then, you’ve opened an express highway to something far darker, and far worse.
The DUC, or the Department for Unknown Crises, was founded to combat these entities in a way that doesn’t endanger the general populace. We were preventative, mostly. The software we made scrubbed away all details and simply stated an address, sometimes a person, and the likelihood of there being at least one physical manifestation of the invasive species present. As the system was automated, there was no way for us to know the details; only the computer knew.
According to Thomas, there was a time when these things had been completely eradicated. Right before the start of the second world war, there’d been a concentrated effort to remove them. The methods they used was later adapted in creation of the DUC. Turns out, those things can’t ever be truly removed.
There was an author who’d documented these “ecological entities” to such a degree that it could be used as a gateway. While he passed away in 1926 (possibly as part of the containment), his diaries were discovered in the 60’s. Since then, the invasive species had free reign with no one to stop them.
There’d been some loose efforts, mostly from the private sector, but it took the creation of the DUC to start the work on a larger scale.
And there we were.
From that point forward, I started to work with more specific field equipment. Since being able to imagine the object is something that triggers it to manifest, we needed a way for field agents to physically remove them without putting themselves in danger. We came up with something we called the “Blur Guard”. A full headset that removes all color, dampens sound, and mildly blurs your vision. Going back to the example of a “red lily”, the blur guard turned it from a “red lily” to “some kind of flower”. That’s not enough detail to trigger a manifestation, and thus deemed safe.
Since our software knew what to look for, we incorporated a camera and basic image recognition. There’d be a little green light showing up whenever what we were looking for was in view. From that point on, our field agents could play “hot or cold” until they found what they were supposed to remove.
And when it came to people, well… we can’t kill them, or have them “unlearn” something. So instead, there was a targeted effort to herd them into place where we knew this problem was prominent enough to go unnoticed. The DUC had done it for decades. These were personalized, targeted efforts. Maybe sending a particularly juicy job offer, enticing a target to move. Things like that. We focused on two main sites; a rural town in Minnesota, and one in West Virginia. There were talks of one up in New England, but that was a separate department.
These places have been absolutely scrubbed; to this day, you can’t even find them on a map. Our colleagues in the private sector bought out pretty much everything there is to own, giving the DUC close to full control.
It might seem cruel, but most of these people had no idea that they’d been manipulated. They lived good lives. We did our best to turn off as many “lighthouses” as we could, but in a town like that, some were bound to pop up eventually.
Let’s skip ahead a couple of years.
In the summer of 2004, I had been on rotation assisting with the development of new equipment. I was also regularly updating both Daisy and the Blur Guard. We had implemented generalized search filters, looking for the “trigger words” that Daisy could use, increasing our information input tenfold. Hell, about 90% of forum infrastructure could be breached to censor descriptions of the invasive agents, if needed. We had basic bots prowling most major discussion forums to contain eventual spread.
One night, I’d taken my work home with me to work on a camera light. Some field agents had mentioned image recognition issues in low-light areas, where the camera refused to work. So I figured an extra light source would go a long way.
I was blasting my worktime playlist on my laptop, sipping on my second rum and coke. If I was gonna do extra work from home, I might as well make an event out of it.
Just short of midnight, it was time to try it out. I turned off the lights, put on the helmet, and checked to see if the camera light auto-activated as instructed. It did.
Strange thing though, I was getting a green marker.
The helmet was recognizing the invasive element right in front of me.
I know my own apartment top to bottom. So I know exactly what I was looking at, blurred helmet or no. I’m obviously not going to describe it to you, but it had the appearance of a household plant. Quite large. I’d had it in my window for years. For the sake of storytelling, let’s call it a red lily, like in Thomas’ example.
Suddenly, it dawned on me. Now I knew what the invasive agent was. I couldn’t unlearn it. From that point forward, I was going to be a threat to the department. This was an invitation for red lilies to pop up out of nowhere, possibly making everyone aware of them. But first and foremost; they’d be a lighthouse for other things to come.
I pulled the lily out of the pot, roots and all, and shoved it down the garbage disposal. I swear, the damn thing screamed.
The empty pot was left on the windowsill.
Moments later, my phone rang. Turns out my Blur Guard was actively connected to the Daisy system. It’d probably sent out a report to the department lead with my name and address the moment it recognized the species. I held my breath, trying to calm down. This was going to spark a series of events. There’d be a report. An investigation. I’d most likely lose my job and be forced to relocate. No, worse. This was unprecedented.
As expected, the call came from Thomas.
“What’s going on?” he asked.
“I’m working on the, uh… internal camera light. I think there’s a malfunction.”
“We got a positive match on your location.”
“I know, I know. It’s not a big deal. It’s nothing.”
“We’re gonna stick to protocol on this one,” said Thomas. “Expect three field agents on-site within fifteen minutes. Don’t go anywhere.”
I pulled my hair. My hand wouldn’t stop shaking. I usually get the shakes when I’m losing control. I figured I’d better remove all traces of the plant. Whatever parts were stuck in the garbage disposal, and whatever remained in the pot.
Except when I looked back up, there was another red lily growing from the pot. Almost exactly the same; like it’d never left.
I can’t stress this enough – you can’t unlearn things. You can’t un-remember something. I tried not to think about it, but that just made me think of it more. I fetched a Rubik’s cube from my desk to focus on something else, but as soon as “that” color showed up, my mind sank back to thinking of… it.
I got a garbage bag and threw the whole pot in, along with the rest of the garbage. There’d be nothing left. I went room by room, looking for anything remotely resembling it, but there was nothing. So I left the apartment, intent on throwing it all away.
But see, there’s this communal garden project outside my apartment building.
It was filled with these things. There were dozens of “red lilies”.
My mind blanked, and I could feel my pulse rising in my throat. This entire neighborhood could be compromised. Possibly more. I couldn’t for the life of me remember if the lilies’d been there earlier that day, or if it was a reaction to my realization. These things were insidious; they not only appear when you think about them, but they make a conscious effort to pop up when they are least expected; or wanted.
I called my landlord, Jerry, and started pulling up lilies from the community garden with my free hand. Some of them screamed. It was a like a tiny wail from a baby. Some of the lilies clung to the dirt, digging their roots deeper. Others came willingly. One of them withered in my hand, giving up completely.
When Jerry finally picked up, I was out of breath.
“I need to ask about the, uh… communal garden project,” I said. “I work with the, uh, department of fish and wildlife. There’s a bit of an invasive species growing here, and I need to establish a, uh, timeframe, as to when they appeared.”
“A-alright.”
“The, uh, red lilies. The community garden lilies. They’re actually a, uh, a dangerous and invasive species. Do you have any idea how long they’ve been here?”
“Red lilies? Oh, yeah, we’ve had those for a while.”
“How long?”
There was a silence on the other end. Maybe he was thinking about it. I didn’t have that kind of time.
“How long, Jerry?!”
“Look, I-I don’t know. 8, maybe 9 years?”
I grabbed my hair and pulled. The pain in my scalp forced me to concentrate. A handful of hairs gave way.
“Thanks, Jerry. If you see these… throw them away. Immediately.”
“I’ll do that.”
“And don’t tell anyone. We don’t want to, uh… want to alarm people.”
I hung up.
I was flailing, breaking protocol left and right. I was a breach waiting to be sealed. I was on my knees in the dirt, pulling up red lilies by the handful. One of my neighbors walked past, and I could hear her dog whining at the sight of me. Or maybe it saw something I didn’t.
There was no telling what this would mean. Most breaches we’d encountered was one or two of these things, at most. They were usually contained to the Minnesota side of the operation. Them having skipped the state line and latching onto me was alarming. This could prompt a whole new level of response. I knew Thomas had a “level black” response where termination of lives would be necessary to contain the threat, but we’d never employed it. Not yet. But looking around me and running the numbers, this might be it. This could be the first time they’d have to kill people. And I’d be the first in line.
The field agents would be there at any moment.
My hands were red and raw from pulling up lilies and stuffing them into the garbage bag. I was so frantic that I grabbed everything that even remotely resembled them. Anything red. Anything lily-shaped. I tore up more than half the community garden in ten minutes flat.
I could hear a car coming. I couldn’t take any chances. I looked over the garden again, couldn’t see any of them, and sprinted to the garbage cans. The moment I’d thrown it all away, I saw headlights turning the corner. I recognized them.
I brushed my hands off the best I could and shoved them in my pockets. A white hatchback with government license plates pulled up, and three people got out. I tried to stay calm. I tried not to think about red lilies. I tried to smile.
I could tell that I was looking at agent Estevez, Young, and Owens. I’d worked with these people plenty of times to prep them for excursion. Never to this extent though, and never on this side of the states. They all fixed and activated their blur guard helmets.
“Rough night?” asked Estevez.
“Yeah, yeah,” I nodded. “Working on an update. The helmet kinda… you know.”
“Sure, sure. We’ll just check out the apartment and be on our way. You mind waiting down here?”
“No, that’s… that’s fine.”
They turned on their image recog, synced their comms, and gave me a pat on the shoulder.
“We’ll be in and out,” said Young. “Sorry about the trouble.”
I watched them ascend the stairway while I stayed out by the garden. I was gonna make sure nothing popped up. If the agents just up and left, I could come up with a plan. I’d tell Thomas, eventually, but I had to be clever about it. I had to assess the damage and spread, to make sure I could trigger a quarantine rather than an eradication-level response.
Still, looking around the apartment complex, there were probably hundreds of people living there. These things could’ve made their way into every single household, opening the way for pretty much anything. Not that I had the slightest idea of what that might be.
I was lost in thought for the better part of half an hour. What the hell was taking them so long?
Had they found one?
I walked up the stairway and put my hand on the apartment door. It was quiet. It shouldn’t be quiet.
I got this sinking feeling, like my body heat was leaking out of my feet. My mind started to race with possibilities. Maybe they left? Went to the wrong apartment? Maybe they’re watching TV on my couch? Having a beer? Burning a red lily in the tub?
Whatever they did, they wouldn’t do it quietly – and this was quiet.
I pushed the door open and was met with a chemical smell. Like a moist mix of methanol and iron. It was strong enough to taste.
“Estevez?” I coughed out. “You guys okay in there?”
No response.
I stepped back out, gasping for fresh air. The smell burned my nose hairs. My eyes teared up as I tried not to sneeze. I didn’t want to go back in. I knew it was bad, I could feel it in the pit of my stomach. Still, I didn’t have a choice.
I stepped back in and shut the door behind me. I turned on the lights.
They’d been torn to pieces.
There was blood dripping from the ceiling. Two severed arms on the kitchen table. An armless, legless torso resting on the couch; the blood sinking into the cracks in the leather. The floor was covered in gore, torn straight from their bodies and left in the open. Muscle, sinew, vital organs, all splayed out on the floor and furniture.
There was a single red lily, in a brand new pot, resting on the windowsill.
There was a bright red handprint on the bathroom door.
I gently pushed the door open, only to reveal the severed heads of Estevez, Young, and Owens – unceremoniously thrown into a pile on the floor of my shower cabinet.
I don’t know how long I stood there. My mind went completely blank. I could honestly not tell if it was real, or a nightmare. For a moment, I was awash with this intense relief. It had to be a nightmare. It didn’t make sense for something so terrible to happen so suddenly.
It took me a while to realize that there was something looking at me from the bathroom mirror.
I turned to it. My face wasn’t there; just a dark space where my face ought to be. It was like staring into a hole, vaguely shaped like a humanoid. It followed my movements as I leaned my head left and right. We looked at one another in silence, hearing only the blood dripping from the living room ceiling. A trembling whisper burrowed into my spine.
H E L L O
This was one of the things Thomas had warned us about. This was one of the ships that came to shore, following the lighthouse. One of the countless entities invited into my world, drawn in by this… thing. That thing that ought not to be.
I hate calling it a red lily. I want to scream what it is and have them torn apart. But I can’t describe them, or they’ll spread out of control.
The longer I stared at the thing in the mirror, the more I understood. It was one thing to know about the red lilies. It was a hundred times more potent to know exactly how they worked. For an average person to know their appearance might invite a few to pop up, but to know them at the level that I did? That was an entirely different league. To these things, I was precious cargo. I could light a hundred lighthouses. A thousand. They perceived Estevez and the other agents as a threat and disposed of them immediately.
I was the equivalent of a carrier. Patient zero. I was stuck in the eye of the storm, and everything around me would be torn to shreds.
I ran a hundred scenarios in my mind. Destroying myself was the obvious choice, but that would be the nail in the coffin that would force Thomas to take violent action on this entire apartment complex. Without context, he wouldn’t know how to contain it. Losing personnel was the final criteria for a black level response. However, if it was attributed to a breach of protocol or faulty equipment, I could bring it down to a quarantine. There was hope, but I had to explain it. I had to stay alive.
As I pondered my options, I heard a running motor outside.
I stepped out of the bathroom and out onto the walkway. Another two white hatchbacks had pulled up. I’d lost track of time. No one in Estevez’ team had reported an all-clear, or anything. This had prompted a standard backup response. If these teams found traces of anything, our entire field division would be called in. They’d probably put people all the way down in Des Moines on high alert within the next fifteen minutes if there was no de-escalation.
There were already new red lilies growing in the community garden.
They wouldn’t let me talk. Talking was a hazard, since I could verbally describe what they were looking for. I could yell out “they look like red lilies”, and the entire squad would be compromised. Up until this point, we’d never had to worry about that kind of willful exposure, and there was no plan for it. The DUC didn’t have “enemies” in the active sense; we were preventative.
There was no way they’d let me talk or leave. Not with three human remains in my apartment. At best they’d gag me and burn this place to the ground. At worst, they’d shoot me, and then do the same.
I scurried along the walkway, turning left at the far end. I took the fire escape to the ground floor, hugged the wall of the building, and circled back to the parking lot. I burst into a sprint for my sedan. Luckily, no one noticed. At least no one that cared.
As soon as I got on the highway, I called Thomas. I had trouble staying in my lane. My hands kept cramping up.
Thomas picked up. I could hear him opening a door, putting on a jacket.
“You gotta tell me what’s going on,” he said. “Where are you?”
“I had to go. I had to. The place is infested.”
“So let’s deal with it.”
I didn’t know what to say. There was no good place to start. I leaned back in my seat, tried to keep the car straight, and took a deep breath. There were flashes of red by the roadside. Could’ve been red lilies. The back seat was dark; dark enough to hide a possible shape. I thought I saw an outline in the rear-view mirror, but it might’ve been my mind playing tricks.
“Stay where you are. I’ll have someone pick you up, and we’ll deal with it.”
“I can’t,” I said. “It’s bad, Thomas. It’s real bad.”
“How bad are we talking?”
“We’re… we’re talking, uh… quarantine. Breach of protocol. At least three casualties.”
Thomas took a deep breath. He held the line for a few seconds. I could hear him get into a car.
“You know, don’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s… I’m sorry.”
“They’re everywhere. I can’t stop seeing them.”
“Don’t tell me anything. Nothing. I shouldn’t be talking to you.”
He was right. Talking to someone like me, who knew, was like trying to pet a rattlesnake. It could all be over in a snap.
“We gotta bring you in.”
“What’re you gonna do?”
“Did we lose people?”
“Estevez’ team,” I said. “Something came through.”
“Jesus Christ… are you saying you’re causing manifestations?”
“I-I don’t know.”
“But you do know. You, if anyone, knows. So tell me.”
Looking back in the rear-view mirror, I knew there was something riding along. Something that had caught on to me. Something that’d stepped into our world, following the light of the red lilies. There was no point in denying it.
“I’ll figure it out,” I said. “I’ll deal with it.”
Before Thomas got the chance to object, I turned off my phone, and chucked it out the window.
I drove for the better part of an hour before a familiar sound snapped me to attention. Whatever surface-level plans I’d made in my head dissolved completely. I heard the sound before I saw the flashing lights.
A siren.
I was probably swerving left and right, trying to keep the car straight. No wonder I was being pulled over.
This could get real bad, real fast. I thought about booking it and hoping for the best, but that’d just draw more attention to me. Instead, I found a secluded spot and pulled over. It was only as I pulled the handbrake that I remembered I’d been drinking earlier that night. I’d had about two rum and cokes. I’d completely forgotten about it.
I tried to consider my options, but there was no time. I was told to turn off the engine, roll down the window, and place my hands on the dashboard.
There were two officers; a man and a woman. I could barely hear them over my pounding heart. To them it was a routine stop, but I was trying to save lives. They had no idea what kind of trouble they were in. I tried to wrap my head around it, to come up with something plausible that they’d understand. I could tell them I had a bomb strapped to me, or… anything; but there was no time.
I hadn’t even heard them asking for my license and registration. I could feel a flashlight shine on my face, but I barely registered it. They asked me three times, then they changed tactics.
“Sir, we need you to step out and place your hands on the hood of the vehicle.”
I fumbled my response.
“There’s… something in the car,” I said. “You… you gotta be careful, there’s-“
“Sir, is there currently a weapon on your person? Something that can puncture or wound my partner? A pencil, a knife, a sharp set of keys?”
“No, listen, you… you gotta step back. There’s something in-“
My thoughts blanked. There, by the side of the road, I saw one. A red lily, clear as day, growing through the cracks in the pavement.
“Sir, I need you to cooperate with me,” the officer insisted. “Have you been drinking tonight?”
I couldn’t take my eyes off the red lily. It was like a reminder that this was already over. That my fate, and theirs, was sealed the moment we met. Dead men walking.
“Please,” I whispered. “Let them go.”
For a second, I thought that might do it. I was willing to listen, to give in, if that’s what it took for these people to live. The red lily knew. I know it knew. But like a lighthouse, it can’t help but to shine; and to bring ships to shore.
And with that, a familiar tremble rose in my stomach.
H E L L O
There was a flicker as one of the light posts went out. I closed my eyes, trying to keep the tears in.
The officer to my left started screaming. I heard a gunshot, but muffled, as if fired into something at close range. I heard fabric being torn, then flesh, then sinew and arteries. No one ever told me it was possible to discern the sound of marrow separating from breaking bone, but now I can’t stop hearing it.
H E L L O
Primal animalistic screams. A programmed response in our biology to alert other humans to stay away; to run. Splotches of blood rained down on the concrete and the hood of the car. I could feel something warm spatter across my face and run down my cheeks.
The screams stopped.
I’d sunk to my knees. I looked like a crying altar boy, praying for it all to stop. When I finally forced my eyes open, the world was red with blood. In the flicker of a dying light post, I saw something vaguely human drop the sundered remains of a torso. It followed my head movements, left to right, mimicking me. I could tell it was proud. Like a dog bringing back a stick to its master.
H E L L O
I stumbled to my feet, leaning against the car to steady myself. The concrete was slippery with blood, and I kept stepping on something indiscernible. I tried to look straight ahead, as to not look at the entity too closely. It was just standing there, in the middle of the street, looking at me. Waiting for me to say or do something. I looked straight ahead, pretending it wasn’t even there.
The car took a few turns of the key to start. The steering wheel was slippery with blood, but I managed to steer back on the road. The windshield wipers smeared the gore into a thin red veneer.
I had to go away. Far away. And there was only one place I could imagine.
As I mentioned earlier, the DUC had certain containment areas. Previously, these were spaces where they simply moved people of interest, but with me there? They’d have to leave it alone. I’d be too dangerous to interact with. They’d have to trust that I wouldn’t interfere, as long as I kept to myself and out of the way.
I burned my car in a field and walked nine miles. I washed myself off in a river. This was a town designed to keep people comfortable enough not to ask questions, so having a stranger wander in off the streets wouldn’t be a problem.
And everywhere I looked, there were red lilies. They were in the windows of every house. By the roadside. In every garden. Hell, they were even used as a logo. I’d seen that logo a hundred times. Maybe they had no idea what it meant.
I’ve stayed in that rural Minnesota town ever since. I’ve seen more horrors than I dare to count, but they seem to ignore me. They treat this place as a nesting ground, or a staging area. Considering how many of them there is, I’m astounded that anyone is still alive.
DUC has declared this entire town a hazard. I’ve tried getting in touch with Thomas again, but all my attempts at communication with the outside world has been censored. If this by some miracle gets through the filters, I urge the DUC to get in contact with me. I want to be an asset.
I want to help turning off the lighthouses.
And as for everyone else, the best thing you can do is to stop asking questions. Don’t question the armed men with strange helmets. Don’t look to closely at the strange plant in the community garden. Don’t look for anything abnormal, and if you see something, try to consider it might be artificial.
Don’t dig too deep into this. If you’re not involved, consider yourself lucky.
And stay out of rural Minnesota.