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Infectious

by Marian Allen

For so long, the world had been approaching perfection. Human habitation had spread nearly across every possible inch of land. More human constructs floated on the surface of the water or crawled in anti-pressurized tunnels through levels of ocean previously considered unlivable for land creatures.

Food was no longer a problem, since it could be synthesized, lab-grown, replaced by personalized cocktails of necessary nutrients that kept each body in optimum levels of vitamins, minerals, trace elements, and caloric requirements.

People had everything they needed to live healthy, happy, fulfilling lives.

The problem, as always, were the rebels and the rich. The rebels, because they always had to find fault with something, even perfection; the rich, because perfection was never good enough for them.

But even rebels could be tracked, their collectives could be infiltrated, their attempts to undo society’s balanced order could be thwarted. Even the rich weren’t above the laws that maintained the integrity of the system, much to their impotent fury.

And still, chaos persisted in its attempts to creep in. All the squads with their daily sprays of every crack in construction could only halt it and drive it back but could never stop it breaching those cracks. The cracks could be plugged, but the plugs had edges and new cracks were always forming, invisible at first, but inevitably growing. New materials replaced older ones but, despite best efforts, there were always spots where the strength of nature was just that much stronger than the strength of manufacture, and the stress of the battle caused ruptures too tiny to detect until the deadly color showed itself in a delicate fur of infection.

Rebels wore the color to show their defiance of order and – not to put too fine a point on it – civilization itself. The rich decorated their houses with pictures of riots of it, thumbing their noses at what would be the end of a society structured and organized for the benefit of all humanity.

In these bloodless wars, the Maintenance Squads was the first, last, and only defense against the invasive, creeping breakdown. If it weren’t for the Squads, everything humankind had constructed and sealed around itself would crumble, and the invading forces would take over the spaces now the sole province of people. People would again stand, vulnerable, within a world not centered around their well-being and purpose.

The line must be held. The infection, once allowed to exist, would spread and grow. Today, moss; tomorrow, a forest. If that happened, humans would once again be just another piece of a larger whole.

How could that be allowed?