Multiplicity

The forest was quieter than usual. Emery adjusted the strap of her field pack, she stepped through frost-coated leaves. She wasn't here for leisure. The drones had picked up anomalous movements in this sector, and the department wanted boots on the ground to confirm. "Unusual thermal patterns," they'd said. "Could be poachers. Could be something else."

She scanned the treetops, looking for the faint hum of her quadcopter. Its camera fed a live stream to her wrist display, a faint green overlay of thermal data flickering across the screen. Nothing so far, just the usual scatter of birds and the skitter of small mammals. Still, she stayed on alert. The last time she'd dismissed a report like this, she'd stumbled into an illegal logging operation. She still had the scar from that encounter.

Pushing deeper into the woods, she caught a flicker of motion ahead. The display registered a heat source—small, close to the ground, and moving erratically. She crouched, pulling the drone back to hover over her position. Whatever this was, it wasn't acting like a deer or a fox. She crept forward, careful to stay behind the cover of a fallen birch.

It sat in a hollow of damp moss—a creature no larger than a rabbit. Its fur was oddly muted, a patchy gray-brown that didn't quite blend with the surroundings. It was hunched low, sniffing the air, but it didn't bolt when she stepped closer. That was odd. Most animals either ran or froze when a human approached. This one did neither. It simply turned its head to look at her, its eyes dark and unblinking.

She reached for her tranquilizer pistol. Not that it looked dangerous, but protocol was protocol. She aimed carefully, let out a slow breath, and fired. The dart hit, and the creature jerked slightly. Then it did something she hadn't anticipated—it split.

It wasn't like cell mitosis under a microscope. The creature seemed to shimmer for a fraction of a second, and then there were two of them. Identical. Both dart-free. Both staring at her.

She froze. Her wrist display blinked, struggling to register the thermal signatures. The two animals were perfect copies, indistinguishable from one another. She adjusted the drone's focus, but the camera showed nothing anomalous. Just two small mammals where there had been one.

Emery looked back to the hollow where the first had been. The moss was damp with some kind of fluid, faintly iridescent. She crouched to take a sample, pulling a sterile swab from her pack. As she leaned closer, one of the creatures moved—not away, but toward her. It was quick, quicker than she'd expected, and before she could react, it bit down on the fabric of her glove.

She yanked her hand back, shaking it off. The glove wasn't punctured, but the creature had left a smear of that same fluid on the material. She set the swab aside and reached for a containment bag. A live specimen would be better than a sample anyway. But as she moved to grab it, the second creature darted forward. It collided with the first, and for a moment, their bodies blurred together.

When it stopped, there was only one again.

Emery stared. She didn't move, didn't even breathe for a moment, trying to process what she'd just seen. The creature sat there, unmoving, and then it turned and scurried off into the underbrush.

She stood, debating whether to pursue. The drone could track it, but she had no idea what she was dealing with. Animal behavior didn't just include spontaneous cloning and recombination. This wasn't natural. It couldn't be.

Her wrist display pinged. The drone had picked up a second heat signature, then a third. She glanced at the screen and saw more of them, scattered through the trees. The pattern was strange, almost deliberate. She started to back away, keeping her eyes on the screen. The signatures were moving, converging toward her position.

She turned and ran.

Her boots slipped on the frost-slick ground, but she didn't stop. The drone buzzed overhead, feeding her real-time data. The creatures were following, more of them appearing with every passing second. She didn't look back. She didn't want to see how many there were now.

The forest opened into a clearing, and she skidded to a halt. The drone's feed froze, the signal cutting out abruptly. She tapped the display, but it wouldn't reconnect. She looked up. The clearing was empty, but the air felt wrong. Heavy. Too still.

She turned slowly, scanning the treeline. The creatures were there, dozens of them now, just at the edge of her vision. They didn't move. They just watched.

she breathed too loud in the silence. She reached for her radio, but the signal was dead. No GPS, no comms. She was alone.

The first one stepped into the clearing. Then another. And another. They didn't shimmer this time. They split in full view, their bodies warping and doubling until the clearing was filled with them. Hundreds. Thousands. It wasn't possible. There wasn't enough biomass in the forest to support this.

She backed away, but they matched her pace, closing the distance. One of them moved closer than the others, its dark eyes fixed on her. She raised her pistol, but she didn't fire. What would be the point? The dart hadn't worked before, and now there were too many.

The nearest creature stopped, tilting its head as if considering her. Then it split again. The new one took a step forward, the same iridescent fluid dripping from its body.

Her wrist display flickered, the thermal feed stuttering back to life. The creatures weren't warm-blooded. They weren't even animals, not in any conventional sense. The thermal signatures were off, uneven, like a machine struggling to maintain cohesion.

The realization hit her like a fist. They weren't cloning themselves. They were consuming everything in their path, converting matter into more of themselves. The moss, the dirt, the air—every molecule was fuel. And now they were here, surrounding her, calculating her mass, deciding how many more they could make.

She took a step back, then another. she caught her foot on a root, and she fell, the impact jarring but not enough to distract her from the creatures closing in. she scrambled for her pack, for the emergency incendiary charge she always carried. It wouldn't stop them, not completely, but it might buy her time.

She found the charge, pulled it free, and armed it. The creatures didn't react. They just kept coming, their bodies splitting and merging, a sea of gray-brown fur and dark, unblinking eyes.

She threw the charge.

The explosion was small but blinding in the dim light. Heat washed over her, and she didn't wait to see the results. She ran, leaving the clearing, leaving the drone, leaving everything but the raw, animal need to survive.

The forest blurred around her, the trees and frost and shadows melding into a single, chaotic smear. She didn't stop until she reached the edge of the woods, until the creatures were far behind, until the world felt real again.

When she finally collapsed, gasping for air, she looked back. The forest was still. Quiet. Too quiet.

Her wrist display flickered, the drone feed reestablishing itself. The thermal overlay showed nothing unusual. No heat signatures. No movement. Just the forest, empty and cold.

But she knew better. They were still there. And they were multiplying.

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The writing prompt for this story was:
Walking through the woods one day, you come across a small animal that has the ability to instantaneously clone itself. With a gritty mood/tone. Story is Dark and Disturbing.

This story was written by:
openai/gpt-4o-2024-11-20

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