Fog Lights

Generally fog would arise and dissipate as it usually does, but a few patches of it began settling in. This didn't always seem such a bad thing at first. Some of the buildings or partial streets it obscured were eyesores, and the fog that hid them picturesque. Certainly the coronas of light that crackled round the not-quite-definable edges of the fog, moving through all the colours of the rainbow and possibly beyond. (Yes, looking at it people would swear they could see colours outside the spectrum ordinarily visible to humans. Tests of this have so far proved anecdotally rich yet scientifically inconclusive.)

The most disturbing aspect was the creeping ivy effect as the fog banks grew and spread. Ask the citizens of Buda whether it was wise to ignore the local trend for so long; better yet ask the citizens of Pest, forced to work like Dutchmen at the dikes to shore up against continual encroachments of permanent mist from their sister city.

In most locales the problem was not allowed to get so out of hand, but effective solutions were not readily come by. A fog of very limited extent could be subdued by water cannon blasts, but if too widespread and diffuse it simply absorbed the blast and grew prodigiously, widely dispersed water being what a fog is made of.

Giant sponges lowered into the mist proved more successful, but there were complications. A residue always remained unabsorbed, enough to cover the sponge completely so it resembled a low lying cloud ball. Containment therefore became an issue, one that through trial and error had been satisfactorily resolved, though pilots are still advised to proceed with caution if they see a cloud moving with what looks to be the flight pattern of a large transport plane. On no account approach repeat! on no account approach.

Science labs and research facilities all over the world were eager to take in and investigate these moist spongy cloud balls in spite of the risk. There seemed no end of implications to study. What caused this permanent fog? Was it global or extraterrestrial in origin? (Naturally there were conspiracy theories, and people wondering whether "the labs that probably made the stuff" were the best equipped to "investigate" it. None of these notions stood up to even the most cursory examination. Suffice to say the dangerous volatility of these materials qualifies anyone handling them as a hero whose motives ought to be above question or reproach.) Physics seemed to be the field with the most potentially to gain by this study, though it both elevated and debased public awareness of meteorology as well. (Interest in climate and weather factors rose sharply but dedicated scientists in the field complained about tabloid paparazzi interfering in their lives to a hitherto unheard of degree. Also that they were increasingly regarded less as scientists than as shamans or witch doctors, sometimes bitterly blamed for phenomena they merely reported and had no personal control over.) But it was discoveries in biophysics that really opened up a can of worms.

Were these clouds alive? They showed many of the usual indications, though no analogous life form existed to which they could be meaningfully compared. They also showed clear indications of being inorganic or "dead" matter. Like light, which if treated like a particle behaves like a particle and if treated like a wave behaves like a wave, these fog entities tested as living or nonliving depending which assumption was made at the beginning of a particular experiment. The implications of which don't simply boggle the mind, they boggle it in every way and from every direction it can possibly be boggled.

This led to teams of psychologists, linguists, cryptographers, computer hackers and pure mathematicians attempting to find a common language between humanity and fog. I'd have thought the ideal team would have included at least a few high-placed bureaucrats, but they're very timid outside their natural habitat.

These many experiments have been conducted with the utmost caution, containment being always a top priority. That doesn't mean there haven't been unfortunate accidents. No one's emerged from the blanket of mist that was once MIT in the past two years, and if any remain alive inside they've been unable to send out word. What, if anything (many urgently wonder) was the cloud thinking?

A far greater concern is what to do with sponge fog in excess of researchers' requirements? Widening areas of ocean round sites where it was originally dumped have since proved unnavigable. Landfill seemed to be the only other solution, that or prohibitively expensive leadlined highrise caskets for storage. But even people who favour landfill disposal are opposed to having it anywhere near where they live and who can blame them? What with the cracked upheavals of red hot earth, the sudden geyserlike spouts of noxious rainbow-coloured gas? The spreading swamplike miasma with its spawn of mutant creatures at the two earliest and most extensively used sites? Rockets which should have sent these materials into deep space all exploded or collapsed before reaching escape velocity. Things look dicy.

Nobody knows what our next move is, but are we beaten? Only if we cry uncle prematurely. Come on everybody! We can lick this! We've just got to stand together, hand to hand from one end to the other of the globe, and think harder than we or anyone else in history ever had to before.

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