Hauntingly Beautiful Girls

"Seeing A Story 'Zombie Worms' "

After they stand up again, the girls look over each other and me. Smoothing fabric folds and adjusting how the hair lays.

I am guided by the hand to a place that stays dark when we go in. The girls arrange themselves much like when we slept on the floor.

I think I am that right. What we did is called sleeping.

A light appears on a large wall. They position me with a straight-on view.

Old words are spoken from somewhere up high. Words that match what the flat person on the wall appears to be saying.

How do I know these old words? Yet another thing that is wrong.

The starts talking about 'Zombie Worms'.

"Here in North America, some forty years after the Zombie Worms became toxic; we have arrived during spring thaw.

To document 'Zombie Worms'.

It was just too easy to miss the signs of an invasive species. Yet, right here on this abandoned highway, the signs of destruction were in there in plain sight.

Dead trees.

The worms were driving out native species and eating the roots of trees. The stands of dead and dying trees were visible as early as 2000.

This abandoned highway also was a conduit for sped up migration of the worms. The water control ditches provided a stable supply of water for very long distances.

Today, only villages on permafrost hold any stable human population.

The first attempt to remove the Zombie Worms caused an evolutionary cascade with the worms. The bite of the worm became a death sentence.

North American populations exist on concrete islands and most went elsewhere by boat.

The worm toxicity is water born. Toxicity that travels by rivers and has left much of the gulf area a fish free zone.

Central America struggles with refugee populations and tries to fend off the advance of the worms.

Boat refugees land on any small island in the seas. It is a life that requires devoted fishing, and islands are increasingly suffering from water levels and storms.

During the filming of this documentary, we saw small birds flocks land and die.

Even with Kevlar boots, we did not try to get close enough to film the birds. Not with the ground having become muddy.

Human populations have shrunk 20% worldwide. Increased cooperation has allowed a huge population to leave North America. We will survive because we understand. When the times are tough, we work together."

The pictures on the wall go dark.

Writing then appears where images had been.

"Ten years after they filmed this documentary, the worm toxicity moved into ocean currents. Without living fish to eat, the human population dropped to 30% of the peak of just fifty years earlier."