Greetings 8

Day of the Triffids

Hello! I’m here!

Trying to hide from a massive attack of alien green monsters. But let’s start from the beginning…

You'll find it in the records that on Sunday, August 20, the Earth's orbit passed through a cloud of comet debris. You can even believe it, if you like - millions did. Maybe it was so. I can't prove anything either way. II was in no state to see what happened myself; but I do have my own ideas. All that I actually know of the occasion is that I had to spend the evening in my bed listening to eyewitness accounts of what was constantly claimed to be the most remarkable celestial spectacle on record.

And yet, until the thing actually began, nobody had ever heard a word about this supposed comet, or its debris.

In the books there is quite a lot of loose speculation on the sudden occurrence of the triffids. Most of it is nonsense. Certainly they were not spontaneously generated, as many simple souls believed. Nor did their seeds float to us through space as specimens of the horrid forms fife might assume upon other, less favored worlds.

My own belief, for what that is worth, is that they were the outcome of a series of ingenious biological meddlings, resulting in extraordinary summer temperatures and explosive growth of both common and mutant vegetation.

My introduction to a triffid came early. It so happened that we had one of the first in the locality growing in our own garden.

It looked not unlike the new, close-rolled frond of a fern, emerging a couple of inches from a sticky mess in the base of the cup. I did not touch it, but I knew the stuff must be sticky because there were flies and other small insects struggling in it.

The thing was constantly growing. There must have been plenty of them about, growing tip quietly and inoffensively, with nobody taking any particular notice of them. And so thousands continued to grow in neglected spots all over the world.

It was some little time later that the first one picked up its roots and walked.

People were surprised, and a little disgusted, to learn that the species was carnivorous.

Equally alarming was the discovery that the whorl topping a triffid's stem could lash out as a slender stinging weapon ten feet long, capable of discharging enough poison to kill a man if it struck squarely on his unprotected skin.

People very easily failed to notice one among the normal bushes and undergrowth, and the moment he was in range the venomous sting would slash out. Even the regular inhabitant of such a district found it difficult to detect a motionless triffid cunningly lurking beside a jungle path. They were uncannily sensitive to any movement near them, and hard to take unawares.

We later discovered that they only obeyed to puppet-like alien masters from deep space.

Furious battles ensued, with thousands of casualties of both sides.

The war is still going on but the triffids are here to stay, at least until the end of summer.

Text from The Day of the Triffids (1962) by John Windham (with a few additions and alterations by yours truly).