SPROUT

By Nina Paoli

This is my story, told by me, an astronaut, living through hell on earth. The stratosphere has collapsed, resulting in the need for sun- suits and oxygen tanks to merely survive.There are no living plants or animals left to walk this planet. With earth crumbling at the seams, a plan to create a second earth on Mars is put in motion. My team and

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palmetto Publishing
• Release date: Sep 27, 2021
• ISBN: 9781638376866

Nina Paoli

Nina Paoli lives in the small town of Haddon Township, New Jersey, in a constantly busy house filled with a large Italian family. She is a fourth- year honors student, studying science, at a nearby university. Nina has always had a love for casual writing, keeping a journal about her life from a young age. This story started out as school paper for her science fiction class, but quickly, and unexpectedly, grew into a novel. Nina is a huge movie buff and video game nerd. She enjoys her down time by sitting on the porch with a cup of coffee, family, and some good music. She especially loves listening to classic rock music like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and The Talking Heads. Though she is new to the world of writing, some of her writing inspirations are John Carpenter, Stephen King, and Quentin Tarantino. Nina believes her family and closest friends were the reason she continued to carry through with writing this book. Nina is thrilled to share her developed story with the world, hoping to bring new light to the world of science- fiction.

Book preview

DAY ONE

WHERE DO I EVEN BEGIN? The last sight I remember of the world before disaster (B.D.) was through the lens of a telescope while sitting at the red, white, and blue picnic table out front of the US reserves. Utterly shell-shocking, to say the least. Since then, nobody has really talked about what happened—all just kind of accepted what is. Can you really blame us? I mean even I still don’t understand exactly what happened, and I saw it all go down…so quickly. Our only future of the world left remained scattered about the sky, in pieces, ceasing to exist.

The whole world was ending. The stratosphere around us all was crumbling with every sunrise, sunset, and breath we took. Weather turned extreme, even in places where weather normally would be consistent. It began with colder winters, with temperatures dropping into the negatives; next thing we knew it was snowing in Florida. Yes, snow flurries were falling on the once-sunny beaches of Key West, Florida. The even more messed up part? We knew this was happening for a long while (a solid seven years before it caused even the slightest panic), and still, they continued to ignore it completely. By they I mean those who did not believe science, yet they were responsible for money distribution. For me, I think nobody believed they could make a real-enough impact to change the reality of our situation.

They all kind of knew we were in deep and hoped they’d be long gone before it even mattered. One person may not seem to do much, but when the many outnumber the few…it makes a difference. That's when it really might have dug us out of the grave we so caringly dug for ourselves and threw rose petals into and sobbed over. The reality hit the rest of the non-science-believing world like a brick wall when it came up that our natural resources were going to miscellaneous places for some years at that point. Some document was released about oil bunkers and their need for carbon products of any sort. The way I understood it, it was like World War II and the need for metal products to be melted down for weapons, only this time it was completely against our will. It wasn’t long before people could not access fresh groceries or water anymore. Of course, the rich were able to afford it all to make personal greenhouses; isn’t that new. It got bad enough that people began to need to get water delivered, for drinking purposes. Fresh water was completely undrinkable. Showers were sketchy; I’ll say that much. We mostly collected rainwater for showers at that point, but I was always afraid the shower would just start spewing acid rain—I don’t know—like something straight out of the movie Alien; don’t ask. All in all, that was only a tiny part of a monstrous problem. Large corporations didn’t care, straight up did not give a single rats ass. It was only ever about the money they were spending versus the money they were making. The golden negative correlation of the business world, spend less, make more. It didn’t really matter who suffered along the way, or maybe I should say it didn’t matter what suffered along the way. Surprise, it was our entire existence.

It was too late by the time people actually started realizing the political fights were not supposed to still be about the government, but the impact of what was happening around all of us, to all of us. Everyone was always so concerned about the money side of the government. The realization there would not be anything to spend any of the money on, if there wasn’t an earth, was completely overlooked. I thought that would be pretty obvious; apparently not. They’re over here worrying about taxes; meanwhile there isn’t enough air for any people to take half a breath in. Priorities are different to the cold hearted, I guess.

Action needed to be taken and nobody was stepping up, not a single leader from any country left was making rational decisions. To nobody's surprise, they did absolutely nothing. Commercials started to play between news episodes warning the world what was left of meat consumption, the importance of driving less, and using reusable water bottles, but it was pointless. The world was too far gone at that point. The commercials served as a haven of convincing themselves they were making an effort in the world, when in reality, they knew the damage was already done. The failure to acknowledge our earth's health was absolutely appalling. Nobody in our field could do anything either; they tried in their speeches at the banquet a few years back, but not even that helped. You would think the smartest of the smartest scientists giving a warning to the world that it is coming to its demise would do something, right? No. Not even a little. They all pretended. Pretended like they cared, and maybe they did, but no real efforts were done to stop this. I am not even sure anything could have been done by this time.

It all happened exactly how Mike explains his bankruptcy to Bill in Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises gradually and then suddenly. People with preexisting illnesses began to have even more complications more than usual. The issues really started popping up when those who were completely healthy began to fall terribly ill. This wasn’t like a common cold I have an excuse to call out of work type of illness; this was an Oh my god people are falling apart within hours with no rhyme or reason type of illness. Doctors were completely frantic. At first, those sick reported extreme energy levels and chills. Soon enough after they began projectile vomiting black liquids, their skin becoming so thin it almost looked gray. Some were going bald and even reported loss of teeth, fingernails, and toenails while some were completely healthily fine. It made no sense.

The first night this all went down was completely chaotic. Streets all over the world were looted. It was like a recreation of a super bowl parade, except everyone was fighting for their lives. Some robbed jewelry stores and banks to make a quick buck in case they made it out alive; some looted grocery stores for food. Bricks were being thrown through windows, cars were getting set on fire, and people were dying beyond that of natural cause. I can’t help but think about Mr. Harold over on 23rd Street. He was left dead in his own survival shop because a pack of fuckin’ junkies came in to get weapons to protect themselves, because I’m so sure they knew how to use them properly. That man was probably the only hope that town had to distribute weapons to everyone fairly, and those bastards took it all for their selfish selves. Turns out someone found them later in the raids, sauced off of some concoction of drugs and liquor. One of the idiots ended up killing his buddy by accident with the same .22 they stole from the shop—figures. He didn’t turn out so well with that conscience, found hanging from the oak tree in the park a day later.

Illness, after some days, ultimately caused total starvation and dehydration in the hosts’ body. The throwing up of black bile prevented their bodies from absorbing any form of necessary nutrition. It was a grueling process to see happening around the world. My best friend's son, Arthur, wanted to attend the film academy in New York and decided his senior project would be to travel around, interviewing the families of those impacted by whatever this disease was. He had a smart phone and a notepad, but the stories projected to the world by his film were unbelievable. The horribly raw footage of those suffering people was unbearable to watch all of the way through. Imagine a spotted, ashen-colored, rotting tomato, lying with hopeless eyes, and that is the respectful version to describe the way these people looked. Their expressions were blank yet somehow desperate for help, as if there was a person inside howling for help, but no sound came out. Their faces, deprived of all expression, yet you could see they knew they had to continue hour by hour slowly deteriorating. Those who somehow survived the disease were either looting or laid in complete isolation inside of their homes, not daring to leave their safe, warm environment.

News reports were solemn, only one 5:00 a.m. report per day on one station—Station 7. Reports were not about countries we had feuds with, the president, or the latest singing dog with a hat; there were only reports of total death tolls, along with the latest testing of our air quality. Our world all came down so hard, right before our eyes, and there was literally not a single thing to be done to stop it. There were not enough police or military in the world to stop this kind of madness.

I’ve been an EOD in the Air Force for a while now. We were constantly on call to manage the mayhem of streets. I’ll never forget the morning of August 14, there was a bomb threat over on Groove Ave. It was an eighteen-year-old kid that had somehow managed to make a pipe bomb out of household appliances. Of course, me and my unit, wolfpack 1502, were called in to sort out the drama that was going down. If I’m being honest—and it sounds messed up—it felt completely pointless to even attempt to make the situation calmer, given everything that had happened these past weeks. That said, we still tried our best to deescalate the situation. Didn’t work. That bitch still blew himself up, and yeah, I call him a bitch because it ended up causing shrapnel to fly everywhere, taking my right arm below the elbow completely off. That sucked. A lot. Charlie, my best friend, was there, and he wrapped a tourniquet around my arm up and took me straight to the lab. I was in and out of consciousness for about two days. Luckily, when I woke up, I had a legit Anakin arm attached to me. It was the coolest moment of my life! Now when people ask me what happened, I tell them I fought Dooku. Usually gets a pretty good laugh going.

The streets were filled with pure outrage for about two months; they stopped sending out military all together because it was so pointless. Eventually, researchers in England found a glitch in the virus. Only vegans or people with lactose intolerance were immune to whatever this disease was. It made no sense at first. Why would lactose or meat have anything to do with this wretched illness? And then it all made sense. A doctor at U-Penn began testing dairy and made an extraordinary discovery. All of the dairy tested contained ortho-phthalates, or hormone disruption chemicals. After some questions were asked to effected patients, blinking once for yes and twice for no, another major discovery was found. Apparently, those who had daily intake of dairy were addicted to this chemical found within their food. There were more questions coming up from people wondering why this had not happened sooner if they had been ingesting it for so long. Turns out, a massive lump of farmed animals died about a year before (more than 85 percent of the meat population to be exact). The government's solution was to begin genetically creating animals. Yeah, like straight out of a 3D printer, completely alive, animals. Somewhere within the transposition, they began injecting these animals with this drug to