Vanessa
Legacy Name: Vanessa

The scientific community tried to warn us in many ways: news stories, magazine articles, protests and proactive movement by a select few souls who believed in the cause. Some had even begun trendy artistic movements.

It didn't work.

No one cared about the bees. They sting, they're nasty bugs, there's thousands of them, right? And with that small of a fanfare, the worldwide bee population began steeply declining. Hell, a lot of farmers resorted to swirling paint brushes around to collect pollen from flowers and pollinate the crops themselves! We quickly discovered that we're not very good at being bees. Other insect populations were supplemented to attempt at a cure-all solution...but nothing did the trick. The worldwide food shortage was unexpected and particularly damaging to countries that were cram-packed with hungry people. While we had just enough non-pollinating crop to scrape by that year...it was clear that we were all consuming canned, dried, and otherwise not-fresh produce at a rate that was not sustainable. The companies that purchased millions of pounds of fresh produce to preserve found themselves closing their doors and locking up their factories before the season's end.

It didn't just impact the fresh fruits and vegetables, either. Grazing animals that relied on alfalfa, including cows, found themselves in peril. Thousands starved to death as farmers from small rural areas scrambled to find an affordable substitute. Medicines derived from plants became scarce, and one of the most beloved natural fibers in the world were all but wiped out: cotton. The price for just about everything skyrocketed - and everyone suffered.

We needed a solution, and we needed it quick. To bring back the bee population...that'd take years if not decades. The damage done with pesticides and the removal of natural habitat had done it's work so quickly with no reset button. If we can't change the bees, the next best idea was to change the plants.

It's not like it'd been the first time this has been discussed.

GMOs are probably something you've heard of before. In fact I'd be willing to bet you've eaten a genetically modified organism since yesterday! Despite the protests and scare tactics, GMOs are a part of everyday life whether we like it or not. Some GM produce is deadly to their natural insect predators while being reportedly harmless for human consumption, saving farmers millions of dollars a year on insect treatment. Other GMOs allow for a much higher crop yield from the same plant, resulting in extremely cheap food for the end consumer. So how is further modifying food to pollinate without the help of pollinators any different?

We didn't really have time to debate (or study) the answer. Money flowed in exuberant amounts to any corporation that provided a solution to the food shortage - and in no time at all, a solution was purposed. Non-pollinating plant life. So many plants already worked this way: there's your air pollinators, tubers, and leafy greens already. But the pollinating plants and non-pollinators would not produce viable fruiting plants when crossed in a lab...another solution had to be found. It was a small lab in Brazil that first began dissecting and de-coding the DNA of nature's little powerhouse grower: Fungi.

Did you know the mushrooms, flowers, buds, what-have-you that grow in moist leaf litter is actually just a very small fraction of the actual fungus? What you are seeing on your pizza is merely the "fruit" of the fungus, a small spore spreader. The real magic of many fungi species is the part we don't see...tiny "threads" hidden within the very food source keeping it alive. These threads can be small, embedding themselves in a tiny host...or they could cover miles of land, stretching out a new kilometer each and every day. Fungi can grow in extreme conditions, but most importantly: many fungi reproduce via use of spore. What does that mean?

No pollinators.

One fungus "fruit" spreads spores by the wind, water, and soil around it...and the fungus perpetuates it's collective lifecycle. It's in this way that a single mushroom has become the largest living thing on Earth. What more could we ask for? If we could harness this power and apply it to our favorite crops, not only could we resolve the sudden strain on food reserves, but we could potentially cure many other human-made problems. And so, with the bright-minded individuals at OraniCo, and the starving people of the world to motivate them, the first spliced crop began to spore.

It was a coffee bean that was first spliced with the DNA of a small, unassuming fungus- the price of the humble caffeine fix had skyrocketed now that it had been 5 years post-bees and the supply had gone down. At first the beans had an earthy, dirty taste...but a few tweaks of the genetic code was all it took before the fungus-fruit hybrid regained it's key flavor. Soon, the science was perfected and the crops were distributed all around the world. They came in any plant variety you may want! They didn't look like mushrooms, and they certainly didn't taste like it...the people rejoiced. Even well-to-do families were struggling to make ends meet due to food costs, and now it seemed as if the problem was over just as suddenly as it began. Supermarkets filled demanding quotas, and confused farmers woke up every morning with an amount of crop they couldn't believe possible. Not only could one single plant somehow fill an entire acre in less than a year, but the fruits and vegetables themselves were growing like wildfire. Apples overnight? Possible. Squash ripe in less than 3 days? You betcha. What about watermelons? One week, tops. Farmers hired farmhands by the hundreds, and had money to spare.

It all seemed to be going so well...of course, that's how it usually goes. We ate the food, the crashed world economy began to slowly show signs of recovery , and masses who had been surviving solely on cheaper non-pollinating plants and miniscule meat products were suddenly well-fed and free to begin life normally again. We were a broken human race, but we made it - barely.

But what we failed to realize was the extent our meddling had disrupted the natural balance of our world. If we had just killed the bees (and taken most of us humans with them), the world would have in time corrected itself. Now we'd really fucked ourselves over: and we didn't even realize it. It's not that the hungry neighbors were complaining, but in just a few months those farms that had been for so long desolate suddenly began to explode their boundaries and grow into the yards and properties of neighboring homes. And these trees were extremely hard to kill. Mis-informed farmers would apologize to their friends and go to chop the accelerated growth as soon as they could...but with every stroke of the axe, a thick cloud of dust would be swept away by the breeze.

No one really knew they were spores at first. These guys had been growing crops their entire lives, and suddenly the rules had changed - before we could blink, the farms grew beyond the farmer's pastures...and the city boundary lines for that matter. The first tiny farming communities that had been overtaken were small, local stories at first: but as more and more ill-advised backyard gardeners planted their produce scraps in the hopes of free food, the problem grew to disastrous proportions.

This odd growth spread with every seed birds would eat, with every squirrel that nibbled on the free apples that now littered the ground, and with every deer that happened to be now inhabiting the back yards of people all around the world. Trees sprouted up in the cracked asphalt of roads and highways before they could be chopped down. Traffic suddenly became a limiting factor. Tangled vines supporting cucumbers were heavy enough to pull down dilapidated walls of buildings that were once forgotten. And while the novelty of free food after years of starvation began as a joy, the spliced plant life began to take over what little foundation of human normalcy we had managed to cling to.

Labs worldwide began to study what could only be described as a mockery of a solution; plants that hadn't been genetically modified in the lab were now showing symptoms of the accelerated growth. But how? Plants that had no business taking over suddenly picked up steam...plants like roses, evergreens, and redwoods. Dangerous hybrids were suddenly cropping up everywhere - things like Deadly Nightshade, Castor Plants, and exotic carnivorous plants started growing wild. Despite our best efforts to survive what was called the "Great Famine", the human race had now come full circle: the concrete jungle we had worked so hard to build was reclaimed by nature we twisted. Steel buildings provided the perfect support for vine plants that grew so heavy that the metal skeleton inside groaned with every wind. By the time our characters are introduced, it was almost as if humans never existed.

The damage was not only suffered by plants. It was around this time that the smallest of animals began to "take root". It was baffling, and widespread: odd behavior displayed by squirrels and other normal outdoor pests in surrounding farming areas. They'd suddenly begin standing in broad daylight without any regard to their surroundings. Youtube was flooded with teens poking confused squirrels with sticks and laughing at their reaction (or lack thereof)...and the next day, the poor creature would be dead as a doornail. It'd be sitting right where you left it, eyes glazed over, and mouth wide open as if staring at the sun. Over the coming days, a long, thin tendril appeared growing from the actual animal - and before you'd get home from a weekend vacation, branches of a tree would stretch themselves from the animal's eyes, mouth, nose and ears. It was in this way that rats brought plants to the sewers and subways, stopping the use of indoor plumbing and mass travel.

So there we have it. Nature has reclaimed what was once rightfully Hers, and the spores only mutated faster as the decades went on. Most humans have inhaled the spores, just like their small critter companions, and the plants rooted them right where they stood. It roots everyone, eventually.

The most popular plants to take over ended up being the most deadly. While we may have had a fighting chance against monster sunflowers and cocoa bean trees, venus fly traps large enough to digest a small schoolbus proved more difficult. The fungus that had been used in the labs varied - but a particularly dangerous genre of fungus proved to be parasitic - accelerating growth just to prolong it's lifespan and then killing the host.

There's no one to protect us. There's so few of us left that, years ago, our local government here in Brazil sent us off with a message of well-wishes and a notification that we are no longer protected by the law. There is no more law, no more officers, no more structure. We don't trade money anymore: it's useless unless you want some kindling. Don't bother burning the plants either, the smoke just spreads the spores higher! It's just us now. Just a few. But we are strong. We know how to live in this world now better than people did 50 years ago when this all began. This is our story, not theirs. This is our chance to reclaim the earth and restart what was once ours.