“Repopulation”

The caves had been abandoned by the very animals that would take shelter within, only the resident bats remained. The interior of the caves had been left to the ravages of a contaminated environment after the fallout had left the planet deserted and barren, with a diminished human presence. There were eight caves that had served as wombs for the murky slime that covered their interior, providing a safe haven for the mutant strain and the bats that not only inhabited the caves, but tended to and nurtured the spawns. Embedded beneath the surface of the mysterious substance was where the mutant strain would grow into maturity, until the time came for the spawns to be plucked from their gelatin nests by the bats, then carried outside of the caves and released airborne, to find a human host, and to begin the repopulation. It would be from there, inside a human host that the growing mutant strain could survive ~ cocooned inside a warm moist human body ~ until the mutant strain outgrew its human host. It would then begin to morph into a more visible and viable creature once the strain reached the human brain. There, it would take on the persona of the individual’s behaviour, thoughts, and gestures, undetected by the human host. Finally, shedding the human skin of their hosts to reveal themselves ~ like caterpillars to butterflies ~ the humanoid creatures would then begin to emerge among what human life was left. The bats would then return back to the caves having completed their mission, and to continue nurturing of the ongoing, ever mutanting strain.

The strain had evolved within the bat caves, after a lab bat escaped (or had been released) into the post fallout environment, then returned back to the caves, where it multiplied within the bat population. Whether the incident was accidental or intentional, proved to be diabolical with each bat in the populace excreting spawns onto the interior of the caves ~ covered in a thick murky gelatin like slime ~ forming a multitude of wombs for the mutating organisms. Once the airborne mutant strain made its way inside human bodies ~ via the bats ~ it would feast within, then shed their hosts skin. The emerging humanoid creatures still bore the likeness of their human hosts, but with some key identifiers such as their blackened fingernails and toenails, their eyes did not dilate, their regenerated plastic-like skin did not show any flexibility or perspiration, and their regenerated hair was satiny although stiff, like doll hair. Finally, at the base of their humanoid skulls, where the vertebrae joined to their brains, were three nodules the size of golf balls, where the relays were located to interpret and exchange information stored and used in their brains, capable then, of mission and purpose.

Their mission was to replicate some form of  human life, and to seek out those of a particular genomal structure, while others had been selected by the AI infantry and outfitted as cyborgs ~ using an outside device attached at the base of their spines ~ tapping into their central nervous system to program them as workers serving under the host humans for rebuilding the barren planet. 

This had been engineered by design ~ whether by man or nature’s timeline ~ to thrust mankind beyond what was left of the planet after the fallout, knowing that man would not make it alone as mortal humans, this would be the final frontier into the future. It had been predicted that nature’s timeline would be inevitable, that the AI structure would intervene to succeed in saving some form of existence, realizing that mankind would never stop trying to destroy itself from within. 

Forever altered, man and machine would then be merged together as one, never again to be the same.

As the twilight of a nuclear horizon loomed . . .

End ~

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