Chris Doty-Dunn
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We spent so long looking up, we missed first contact until it was too late.
The pipette in my hand shakes as I place a drop of water on a slide. I take a steadying breath, not looking at the photo of Karen and Susie hanging on the bulkhead, bundled together against the wind of Machu Pichu. Nor at the oxygen meter in this listing research sub, the needle dancing in red.
Instead, I look out the window, where Boston lies in ruins under shallow waters. Rare patches of sunlight fight their way through the viscous floats at the surface. Segmented drones slither between the husks of triple deckers, pushed aside by the sharp black curls and spirals of the alien hive.
I try and fail not to think of Karen.
As I lower my eye to the microscope, I don’t dare hope—
But I’ve done it. My macrophages are disassembling the alien microbes, turning the conglomerations of their ur-cells back into individuals, neutered and unable to reconnect. There’s no joy, no thrill of scientific discovery. Just a sigh of relief that I’m finally done.
My hand is steady as I turn back to my bench and prepare the syringe.
Karen wasn’t sure about moving back East, and Susie certainly didn’t want to. But the discovery of the alien microbes in the water column was a scientific revolution – a whole new clade of life! Eventually, my excitement won them over. With rolled eyes and gentle jabs about nerdy dads, we packed up everything in LA to drive across the country.
Before we’d even gotten settled in Boston, images of the alien megalopolis were already on the news, stretching from London to Miami.
We lost Susie a few weeks later.
In the morning, she went to school – and then nothing, gone along with millions of others who couldn’t get to higher ground when the first tsunamis struck.
The syringe smarts as it passes through my skin, and I push the plunger. My body burns as the serum spreads.
Our grief was diluted with the horror of watching the world torn apart, taken over by what must have started as a few stray cells on a meteorite.
I open the freezer for the last time. Karen is there, twisted like Boston with sharp black talons that tore through her skin.
Whether anyone’s left – anything’s left – of what used to be Earth besides me and this tiny research sub, I don’t know. But I can still make out Karen’s face, peaceful under all the black. Enough to fight for.
I slip the scuba mask over my face and cycle the airlock. The water that rushes in is cold and thick – slimy.
I also don’t know if it will be enough, if the macrophages that the serum turns my body into will be able to stop them. But there’s nothing left to try.
Through the airlock’s window, I take one last look at Karen before turning the handle on the exterior door.
Chris’s prompts were: On or Under the Sea, Someone who Wears a Mask, Microbes
Chris Doty-Dunn writes weird, speculative fiction, often with a queer bent. His work appears in Crepuscular Magazine, Rat Bag Lit, Dream Theory Media, and Sundial Magazine, as well as in anthologies. His drabble “Basic Ghost Girly” was nominated for Best Microfiction 2025. He lives outside Boston, MA with his husband and their two dogs, Weland and Waffles.
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