Dust Mites

Dust Mites
Synopsis
Short story 3984 words, in the sci-fi/ suspense genre.
Plot
When a cloud of dust mites get carried to Earth on a returning spaceship from Pluto they discover the delights of the taste of sandstone. Unfortunately for the picturesque market town of Townsville, Cambridgeshire, the first landfall of the dust mites is directly onto their ancient and majestic parish church. They quickly demolish the church, and other ancient sandstone buildings, causing gruesome deaths to many of the inhabitants.
The unknown source of sandstone destruction causes panic moves by the government and attracts media interest from around the World, as the destruction of anything made from sandstone spreads ever wider around the English countryside.
Keen observation by the boss of the masonry contracting company which had been working on the Townsville church leads him to a solution which kills off all the Plutonic dust mites, and the country returns to normality.
Or just maybe, are they all killed off? Watch this space!

Narrative
Easy reading, straight forward story telling, with no over elaborate adjectival ramblings. Aimed at any age group male/female, over fifteen.

Dust Mites
The Beginning.

No one could possibly have seen the dust that came off the returning space ship as it hurtled, at a searing, metal burning speed, into the Earth’s protective upper atmosphere. The dust, which was a mass of minute living beings, interlinked for safety, floated away, to become potentially the most deadly scourge to the established normality and evolutionary growth that the planet Earth had known for millions of years.
The ancient, majestic, parish church of Townsville was the unlucky recipient of the almost invisible mass of the Plutonic Dust Mites. Paradoxical in the fact that they were individually innocuous, yet as a mass were indescribably destructive.
For nine hundred years the church had stood, a symbol of man’s engineering ingenuity and want of appeasing an unknown God. It stood in splendid isolation, its two hundred feet tall spire perfectly perpendicular. The most famous landmark for many thousands of acres of the gentle flat countryside, and in medieval times the last hope of many sanctuary seekers.
Nine hundred years had passed since the last stonemason had packed his tools into his sack and moved on to his next task and for nine thousand years more, yes nine thousand, its permanency seemed assured,------------Until.
Three billions of the dust mites came, almost the full complement of an Escallon of Plutonic Dust mites, to follow in blind, but uncontrolled obedience, their leader, Thog. Although they had little control over the direction in which they would be wind blown in the dense atmosphere of Earth, they had as one, released their grappling toe hold from the surface of the returning Earthship XT 19, at the moment that Thog had rasped, “Go”. From that moment they were at the mercy of the upper atmospheric winds of the jetstream.
At least they were still alive and able to function as mites. If Thog had held back from giving the order to abandon for another five Plutonic nanovecons they would all have been burned to ash dust. What happened to the other five Escallons was anyone's’ guess. They may have remained on Pluto or been burned up on the surface of the spaceship
With tenuous toeholds on to each other, the swirling mass had gradually closed with the surface of the Earth, until they were in a position to enjoy their first meal since setting out many ultra zaacks of Plutonic time earlier.
Extraordinarily good fortune had fallen on the Plutonic Dust Mites. For in their emaciated state they would not have survived much longer, had not the fortuitous wind blown them on to the sandstone church spire.
A few yards either side would have seen them extinguished by the defoliation poisons which had only that day been sprayed onto the overgrown weed strewn graveyard, where the undiscerning mechanical spraying machine had also covered all of the sandstone headstones in the burial ground.
The sandstone of the church spire had an immediate appeal to them and sixty million to a square millimetre, they happily set into gorging their fill and recharging their strength for future foraging in this new environment. For each grain eaten they doubled their size, until they again attained their ultimate of a micron of a millimeter.
Thog was overjoyed with the acclaim that he was getting. The ferocious rasping around him signified how happy every mite was at the excellence of the sandstone that they, with their simple minds, believed Thog had led them to. The abundance was unbelievable, for as far as any mite could see there was the sight of wonderful sweet scrumptious sandstone, the likes of which they had never known before.
It was the faint scent of clean untainted dust that had attracted them to the alien vessel. Life on Pluto was becoming unbearable since the time of the cataclysmic heat bursts, when virtually all the surface had become burned into a hard crystal sheet. Edible dust did not exist any more and the only dust that was to be had was in the rare occasional cracks to be found in the crystal plates and that was far too acidic to sustain a healthy life for a dust mite.
It was when they had taken to cannibalism that Thog had rasped that they must go on a great pilgrimage to find suitable food, or they would soon cease to exist. Six Escallons, the last surviving Plutonic Dust Mites, had set out from the small area in which they had found themselves being closer and closer corralled into, as they gathered in a natural need for togetherness in times of stress.
Many wearying linearons they had scurried over, during an indefinable number of zaacks of time, mostly living off the bodies of their own dead, until one day a forward pathfinder had returned to say that there was a faint aroma in the air. Having followed the aromatic trail was what had led them to the Earth spaceship.
From the thirty billion trillions of ‘Thog’s Escallon who had started the long march only three billions were still alive to start to nibble at the pure cosmic dust particles which were spread around and adhering to the frame of XT19. Thog had brought his Escallon through mostly intact, but the other five Escallons were in very poor condition and not many of them had survived the long trek. Even so, each individual mite stayed unswervably loyal to its own Escallon leader, but only Thog’s wisdom had seen his Escallon attach themselves to the space ship. The others had remained on Pluto to an unknown destiny.
In their simple minded way, the bulk of the dust mites had sunk into perfect tranquillity, with only Thog realising that there was no other source of food once they had stripped all of the not very nourishing space dust off the space ship. Detecting that the space ship was something alien, Thog realized that the space ship was perhaps their only chance of survival. Again it was Thog, who, when they all sensed the build up of vibrations as the ship prepared to leave, stopped the panic to scurry away and had rasped out the order for all of his Escallon to attach themselves to the surface and to each other. Then the great adventure into space had begun and was to lead them to the paradise of Earth, wherein lay the previously unknown scrumptious taste of sandstone
Satisfaction was not enough for the blissfully happy dust mites, who were now in a state of Utopia called Townsville. From being sated they went on to being gorged, and in the gorged state is when the mites copulate and almost instant reproduction takes place; reproduction on a mass scale, where all the newly created dust mites float away to form new Escallons and create a new leader. New dust mites that had been created by parents gorged on Earth’s sandstone and who had then an inherent desire for the sandstone.
The result of the gorging was that a considerable amount of stonework had been eaten away from the bottom of where the spire sprouted up from above the level of the roof of the main church building, and the Earth had been endowed with millions more ever hungry Plutonic dust mites.
The on-going church maintenance programme meant that there was always at least one resident stonemason doing some work on the old building. It was George Uttley, who stumbled across the two yards square open area which only a few hours previously had been a three feet thickness of the finest York Vale sandstone.
George in utter disbelief put his hand to the rounded edge of the nearest stone and rubbed it gently. Unbeknowingly he crushed ten million dust mites and at the same time felt an itch, as literally thousands of the mites ate into the dust embedded skin of his hard calloused hands.
George, ignoring the itch, telephoned his boss, Fred Pickering, Contracting Master Mason, to inform him of the incredible discovery, then, taking a flashlight went back to the spire and gaped in astonishment inside the hole, which appeared to be spreading horizontally around the spire. It was utterly amazing; the stonework was disappearing before his wide incredulous eyes. He clambered in through the ever-widening gap and peered around at the darkness inside. The torchlight did not even reveal any dust in the air; in fact he could have sworn that the air was purer than he had ever known it.
The itching in his hands became unbearable, causing him to drop the torch. He stumbled on the lattice framed open woodwork and fell across a timber beam. By then he could not bear to touch anything, as the outer skin from his hands disappeared, revealing the gory flesh beneath.
George Uttley, unable to use his hands to help him to get up, lay and watched the hole get bigger, whilst at the same time his sandstone dust embedded work clothes slowly disappeared and any parts of his body that had stone dust on it started to be eaten into. He was in screaming agony, but still alive at the time that the ancient spire collapsed, crushing his mortal remains beyond recognition.

The Spread.
The resultant explosion of breaking sandstone blocks, as the once proud spire hit the sandstone paving flagstones in the crowded public market square, created a vast cloud of dust, which also carried with it millions of the parasitic dust mites, to start what had the prospects of being a disastrous colonisation of the Earth.
57 unsuspecting citizens of Townsville were killed and 30 injured as the spire toppled directly onto the square, at two forty in the afternoon, on a busy market day. The occurrence was such, in a relatively small community such as Townsville, which was the county town of a thriving, but well spread out farming community, that it was a major disaster.
Not only were the dead and injured slow to be tended to by the limited number of medical staff at the local small community hospital, but even worse, by the time help arrived from the nearest large town many of the slightly injured, and others, who had only been covered in dust, were by then in desperate need themselves. They at first started to itch, then bleed profusely, as the dust mites ate into the pores of their skin.
The wider spread of dust and associated dust mites, was rapidly assisted by the covering of dust on the emergency service helicopters and ambulances, as they transferred casualties to other hospitals.
The following days saw more widespread evidence of the destructive nature of the, as yet unknown, but strongly rumoured by the more sensationalist press, ‘stone virus’. What had become obvious was that something was attacking the structure of all natural untreated sandstones.
The government broadcast via television, radio and touring loudspeaker cars, the urgent message for people to stay calm. They said that the situation would soon be under control, but in the meantime everyone who lived in a sandstone house must leave until the exterior could be painted over with a stone penetrating and sealing paint.
Barriers were erected to keep people away from all tall sandstone public buildings. And until more sophisticated coverings could be designed and manufactured, all persons who must travel in the affected areas should cover there heads with clear plastic bags and wear gloves so that no part of their skin was uncovered. The messages concluded with a laconic sentence stating that the wearers of plastic bags were strongly advised to ensure that there were breathing holes in the plastic bags.
Containment was the first priority of a very panic stricken government. If the stone virus was to reach London the cataclysmic consequences could not be imagined.
The first thoughts, in their ignorance, was to thoroughly saturate all the areas around with water, but this only helped the spread of the dust mites as they did not absorb dampness and in fact took a liking to the previously unknown element.

Fred Pickering had patiently listened to the excited jabberings of George Uttley and had hardly believed what he was being told. His first thoughts were that maybe George had been to the pub at lunchtime and had had a drop too much. But he knew that in reality George was a sober and reliable workman. So he locked the office and drove down to see what it was that was alarming George so much. On impulse he had taken hold of the video camera that he always used for taking views of prospective jobs. These video pictures helped him in drawing up his quotations and were also useful as talking points, having finished a job and being able to see the ‘before and after’ pictures. Fred’s only hobby was photography, for which he had built up a very fine film-developing laboratory.
Parking his car in the privileged ‘parish church officials only’ car park, Fred, again on impulse, partly because there was such a lovely blue sky and the light seemed far clearer than he could ever remember, took a brief three second shot of the beautiful spire. Then, before he could lower the camera, he saw the spire start to crumble down on itself, before toppling onto the market square.
Fred Pickering was the first man in the World to have pictures of what was to become the most destructive element ever to have attacked the planet Earth.
For on later analysis there could be seen a cloudy haze in the air, close by the base of the toppling spire. The dust mites had, on the rasped order of Thog, all jumped into the air in one mass movement when he had felt the vibrations of the spire starting to break apart as it fell.
If anything could be said as an alleviating factor for the residents of that area of England, it was that luckily the dust mites had made their first landfall on the English county of Cambridgeshire. Because of the prevailing winds being from the south west, and the dust mites only means of travel was to be air blown, then their path of major destruction was in an ever widening north easterly direction. This took the main masses over the mostly scarcely populated areas of Suffolk and Norfolk and Lincolnshire.
Ancient buildings and large private houses were equally effected, but the population of the East Anglian region as a whole, being scarce, and having had the benefit of a warning and in a state of near panic, took to living in tents, so human victims were relatively light. Whilst this was a serious disaster in itself, it did at least give the government and the civil defence authorities a chance to assess the situation and start to take countermeasures.
It soon became clear that the only things affected were buildings, walls paving flagstones made from sandstone, and any people who happened to be covered in any sandstone dust.
The Ministry of Mines and Natural Resources issued an order saying that quarrying of sandstone was to be stopped immediately and all areas around any quarry was to be intensely hosed down with diluted sulphuric acid water. All road vehicles, whether private or commercial must be thoroughly hosed down at the start and finish of every journey, to ensure that the virus was not being spread by road to other parts of the country.
How can sandstone disappear in front of people’s eyes? That was the question that perplexed the government and fetched in television photographers and reporters from countries around the World. Stories of the first ‘happening’ when the church spire suddenly toppled on to the unsuspecting shoppers in Townsville, and how the debris slowly disappeared before the incredulous eyes of the site clearance contractors. Stories of how the rest of the church also disappeared, from the roof downwards, and how the only signs of any church having ever stood on the site was the array of tangled roofing spars and timbers, mixed in with the lead roofing gutters and ridges. All now laid in grotesque patterns in the hole which for nine hundred years had been the crypt, but was now only a hole, where soil held the pattern of the slabs of sandstone that it had been pressing against for so many centuries. The diocesan Bishop, against governmental advice, insisted on visiting the site. He stood with tears running down his face at the poignant sight of what now appeared to be a relatively small hole, from which had sprung such a proud building.
From the time of the dust mites landing on the church at Townsville, to the time of there being not a trace of the previous existence of the church was three days. Not a crumb of sandstone flags or any of the debris of the spire, nor on the wider spread, any of the pretty, half rounded terrace of stone built Tudor shops which had encompassed the Eastern side of the square. Three stone built hotels were no longer in existence.
And no one still had a clue as to what had caused the trouble and how to stop it.

The Reckoning.
Fred Pickering. ran his video film for the umpteenth time and stood back to listen to the ‘Hoos’ and ‘Haas’ has another group of international press reporters watched. But on this occasion Fred started to have a different feeling about things.
He had had many large offers of money to sell the video film to various TV companies, but had been told by the government that it was to be classified and confiscated for government investigation purposes. So he had made a copy and had probably made more money from the sale of the hundreds of stills for newspaper publication than he would have done from the video sale.
What had suddenly occurred to Fred was, the very reason that he had been taking the video pictures whilst standing in the car park was because of the wonderfully clear air. Then on the moment of the spire starting to topple over he had seen a barely discernable cloud of dust. He felt that this cloud had a shape and clearly defined edge. But there had been at that moment no general spread of dust until the spire had started to break apart..
He excitedly, but without informing the assembled press members, re-ran the sequence several times. Then having asked the press to leave he took some of the stills which showed the dust mass and went into his laboratory to develop some large magnification ‘blow ups’.
Half an hour later Fred emerged to excitedly tell his wife Margaret that it was unbelievable, but he was almost sure that the ‘dust cloud’ which was airborne near the base of the spire was in fact a cloud of minute midges or flies of some kind. He had not been able to get a good enough magnification to be able to see individual mites but, he felt sure that that is what it was and that the mass was interconnected.
Meanwhile in the government laboratories, the scientists on examining Fred Pickering’s video tape concluded that it was of no significant value and later returned it to Fred by personal currier. They had discerned the ‘dust cloud’, but had dismissed it as only being in fact just that. ‘A dust cloud’.
By the time that Fred received his video film back he already knew what the stone virus was and how to control it.
What the practical minded Fred had done was to obtain a sample of what he called the ‘Flies’ which his magnified film had shown him.
Within the scope of masonry work one of the modern tools of the trade was to have a powerful vacuum cleaner on site. This was for sucking any dust away whenever a mason might be chipping away or grinding stone in the vicinity of valuable frescos or oil paintings. He had gone to his workshops and thoroughly washed clean, then fitted new filters to one of his industrial vacuum cleaners.
Fred then telephoned to the Bishop and asked which church buildings were at that moment being affected. Armed with the knowledge and with permission to approach the church, Fred took less than half an hour to drive to the site of what remained of St Saviours in the village of Muckleton. Tapes had been tied from tree to tree stopping any nosey bystander from getting close, but no one was there except the village policeman sitting in his car. Fred spoke briefly to the policeman, then returning to his own car he took out the vacuum cleaner, then pulled arm length rubber gloves over his hands and put rubber thigh high boots on, finally covering himself in an all enveloping plastic sheet
Fred was familiar with all the churches in the area, having at sometime done work on them all. Firstly he went inside the building of St. Saviour’s and located and switched on the mains electric, then plugging in a long extension cord, he carried the vacuum cleaner to the almost ground level walls, where he spent five minutes taking long sweeps over the smooth eaten stonework, holding the aluminium tube very close to the stones. Satisfied that he’d got enough he immediately fitted a cap over the tube and left the site to return home.
Back in his workshop Fred cleared a large area of wooden bench and taking a large clear plastic bag uncapped the vacuum cleaner tube and holding the plastic bag over the tube, shook out some of the contents. He recapped the tube then took the plastic bag into his photographic laboratory.
“If I’m not mistaken they are just a strain of tiny mite” Fred excitedly told Margaret as he showed her the results of some of the film enlarging. “Let’s take a look and see if they are the same as the dust mites in our bed.” He again went through the procedure of washing the vacuum and fitting clean filters, then, with Margaret having stripped off the top covers from their bed, he painstakingly vacuumed all the surface of their mattress.
Going through the same photographic procedures he discovered that he had vacuumed up thousands of dust mites and had been able to enlarge and see the differences from the grotesquely swollen and gorged ones that had come from the stones.
Fred then sat and discussed with Margaret the various similarities and differences then came to a decision to try to see how they would react to each other. He put a few grains of sandstone on to the slide of his microscope he then opened the bag containing the Plutonic dust mites close to the slide level. He actually saw hundreds of them scurry on to the sand grains. Then with tweezers he pulled out a tiny piece of fluff from the bag containing the bed mites and watched excitedly as the two types met. What amazed him was that the Plutonic mites immediately left the sandstone grains and scurried over to the bed bugs and tried to copulate with them. But the bed bugs, immediately on making contact with the alien mites, flashed out their lobster like pincers and cut the Plutonic mites in two, then ate the lower half of the bodies.
“Eureka” yelled Fred. Then ran to the telephone to contact the Ministry of Mines and natural resources to tell them of his findings.

That same evening television and radio news broadcasts told the people of Suffolk, Norfolk, Lincolnshire, Essex, Cambridgeshire, Hertfordshire, and Northamptonshire that a government Directive had been issued which stated that immediately upon waking in the morning they were to take their mattresses outside and rear them up against the wall. No explanation was given, but the Prime Minister himself appeared on television and said that it was of the most extreme national importance that every household should obey the order. And that the government would also replace every single mattress which may get wet or become unusable.

Three days later there was another television announcement to the effect that the stonework virus had been contained and had appeared to have been eliminated. Thanks to diligent work by government scientist.

Fred Pickering advertised for time served stonemasons to cope with the expected massive influx of new building work.

All the Plutonic dust mites had expired in delirious abandon, as they were uncontrollably sexually attracted to the bed mites, who in response ate them.

But wither be the mighty Thog and the many millions of the offspring of his Escallon made in his own image, during the time of copulating after the great gorging on the church spire? Be aware! And watch this space for further developments.
The end
Copyright Brian Kelly 20th. February 2002.