The Mist

The Mist

The mist was already heavy enough to drive the ships away, but not so heavy that going through was unpleasant for most of the satellites, but the loss of power ruined most of experiments. Some of the stations working for months to create a microbe that could neutralise about a dozen of different toxic-waste molecules were completely destroyed though and the most complex toxin-devouring microbe ever engineered by man had vanished in a power outrage originated from the Mist (the term Cloud wasn’t sill in use). The incident was worthy of headlines in tabloids around the world, but nobody still didn’t seen what was coming.

Common men, preoccupied with banal concerns, saw events as merely happening willy-nilly. The visionary could sense the stirring of distant events long before they crossed the horizon…

However some of the scientists were prepared to drive the last nail into world’s economic coffin, and the Chinese, Russians, Yanks, Argentinean and everyone else were taking pokes at each other. A team of scientists in a few laboratories, using data gleaned by satellites and transmitted in code directly to Huston, were already testing a microbe capable of neutralizing this toxic water molecules. Caught inside the mist, the humans positively heard a rumble.

(Extract from The Rain, the famous SF novel by Elena and George).