The day we fly to Roma, the wind is strong and the sun is hot, and all I see are worms: the twisted mass on the trees, the moving swarms on the rivers, the slime covered clumps on the cracked ground. The land is flat and glistening, and the worms seem to stretch forever. “Do you see a place to land?” Dako asks, as if I can create one. “We need to report back to the Commander soon.”
Dako, my friend and flight partner is usually calm on missions like these. But today I can see he is visibly shaken. Before we boarded our aircraft in Galacia for the quick flight here, he told me he heard some bad rumors about this mission. He whispered something in my ear when the Commander wasn’t looking….something about death worms.
Now, looking out the aircraft window, I too am somewhat afraid. There are millions of worms below us with some odd fruit attached to them. If Dako is right about his death worms, we may never make it back alive.
“I think I see a clearing,” says Dako nervously, taking a firm grip on the controls. “Let’s make it quick. I don’t like this place.”
After we land, we suit up properly and climb out of the aircraft. The first thing we notice is the stench. Dako and I gag simultaneously. I crouch down with gloved hands and scoop up a large glob of worms and fruit. Dako does the same. We jump into our aircraft and slowly rise above the moving ground. Dako gives me a terror glance. He points to what appears to be a mushroom shaped spacecraft near the horizon. But we also see the runway on the landing ship. We make a dash for it and land safely.
Dako hands the Commander our canned specimens. The Commander hands us a report labled “classified.” We tell him about the mushroom shaped spacecraft.
“That’s no spacecraft,” the Commander says in a low tone, “that is a nuclear bomb cloud.” he says leaning in and pointing at the report. “Our ancestors wrote it all down. They spoke of the human fruit, or earthling fruit, that would destroy itself eventually.”
“But what are all those worms doing on the human fruit sir?” Dako asks the Commander as I listen closely.
“Those worms are called death worms. It seems they like to eat this type of fruit when it dies.”
As the gray cloud mass rains down below the sun, Dako and I gaze down upon the planet Roma from the window of our spacecraft. We are on our way to other planets in our quest for fruits. I doubt we will find fruits like those of Roma. We have never encountered self-destructive fruits on past space journeys.
I glance over at Dako, and see he’s holding an open specimen container. He obviously popped the lid. He takes a whiff and licks the worm covered fruit. “What a strange fruit,” Dako says with a half grin. “What a very strange fruit indeed.”