The Terrarium Anomaly

It’s 2050. Plant life was struggling to survive on earth with an excess of pollution, and in 2032 there were three hundred giant Terrariums, some camouflaged as planets, each full of every life form on earth except for humans, sent into space. This was all done by billionaire philanthropist Robert Watkins, who’s family had benefitted from oil drilling back when gas powered cars were king. Now he owned several solar power plants, wind farms and eco-friendly rental properties he called his “tree houses,” or houses that were covered in trees. His space terrarium's were his way of fixing the sins of his family. He

Robert would always show up for work early in his luxury electric flying car, the front adorned with a hologram Pegasus so it looked like the Pegasus was flying the car.

Each terrarium had hundreds of cameras installed inside, so Robert could monitor life inside each terrarium and provide any additional resources that life might need, should anything have been forgotten before launching the terrariums into orbit.

Life thrived on these terrarium's. Life thrived well. Too well.

Because the terrariums were closer to the sun then earth, the radiation was stronger. This didn’t kill the life on board, instead causing its accelerated evolution. In some cases, mutations happened.

Some mutations were inconsequential, like deers that had glowing eyes and three sets of antlers or two heads.

Other mutations were dangerous, like the muscular giant rabbits that had sharp shark like teeth and could camouflage perfectly into their environment. They grew to twice the size of a large SUV, and Grizzly bears became their favorite snack, until the grizzly bears evolved.

People told Robert Watkins to destroy the terrariums, but he said even evolved life had a right to exist, as mutated as it might be, and the life on the terrariums was his and his alone to protect. We would just have to keep the new life off of earth, so the new species wouldn’t become invasive.

My name is Spencer Talon, former soldier and current employee of Watkins eco-productions. My job used to be security. Now it’s clean up of any company-made messes.

Today, there was a really, really big company mess.

One of the terrariums had a new species of mold evolve on it that got inside the terrariums watering system, causing the system to expand and become heavier, which caused it to come crashing to earth. It landed on the outskirts of Los Angeles, and it was my job to contain or kill any species that escaped, and bring all life forms, dead or alive, back to Watkins eco-productions to be studied and sent back into space in a new, safer terrarium that Robert Watkins had yet to finish building.

“Everyone tried to tell you to destroy the terrariums. You didn’t listen, Robert. Now one of them has come crashing to earth,” I told him right before he had sent me on the containment mission.

“Why? Destruction serves no purpose other then to destroy everything. This gives us a chance to fix the problem rather then total annihilation of everything we’ve worked so hard to achieve. We can find a way to contain or destroy the mold and use the solution to save the other terrariums,” Robert replied.

“If you say so,” I said and shrugged.

A great many hours had passed before my crew and I could get to the outskirts of Los Angeles to fix the problem, giving all the new species of animals plenty of time to spread out. It was going to be a long and tedious day. There were thirty eight dangerous animals on board when the terrarium crashed. We had to find those first.

One of my crew had gone to the ship to gather a mold sample so Robert could study it and keep it out of the other terrariums.

We spent the next several hours hunting down twenty six vampire deer who learned to capture and drain blood from other species, four human sized mongoose, four small but insidious rage monkeys who learned to build and use chainsaws, and two parrots who were able to spit acid. We were able to capture most of the animals for Robert’s research, with the exception of two of the vampire deer. They almost killed my crew members and were immune to the tranquilizers, giving us no choice but to shoot.

All that was left now was a grizzly bear and a giant shark toothed rabbit. After catching everything else, how hard could this be.

The bear would be closer than the rabbit, so we decided to track it first.

We knew it couldn’t have gone more then 20 miles from the crash site based on what we had previously seen in the terrarium camera footage. The bears were slow. These new bears only traveled fast when they felt threatened, and so far, no one was dumb enough to threaten a giant radioactive glow in the dark space bear. We knew we were close to the bear when we found fresh tracks.

“Spencer, take a look at this,” one of my crew has shouted. I walked over to him and saw the largest pile of animal bones I’d ever seen in my life.

“Could it be the bears left overs?” And just as he finished asking that, growling came from the side of us. We turned to see a bear the size of an eighteen wheeler truck rushing us, and had launched itself at the crew who asked the question, ripping his head clean off. My crew was heavily armed and first shot tranquilizers at the bear, and when that didn’t work, they fired armor piercing bullets from a semi-automatic. The bear deflected our bullets like we were shooting peas. When the bear was done chewing my crew-mate like a squeaky toy, it slowly turned to look up at us, blood dripping down its giant hairy lips.

“Run,” I shouted.

The bear leaped into the air and crushed at least three other crew members before the rest of us found a hiding spot. We all waited, perfectly quiet, behind a large tree surrounded by bushes.

The bear huffed loudly, a gust of rancid smelling wind coming out of its mouth so strong it nearly knocked the tree over on top of us, then left.

I waved my hand for us to slowly walk away, but someone had stepped on a branch, making a loud crunch beneath his foot.

“Shit,” I said. Nothing happened until I sucked in air to catch my breath. The bear must have heard that and it came charging at us.

“Shit, shit, shit,” I shouted as the blood-lusting bear got closer. But right before it could eat us for lunch, a giant rabbit descended from the air and landed on top of the bear.

The rabbit opened its mouth, full of shark like teeth, and bit into the growling monstrosity. It tossed the giant bear into the air and after the bear landed in the rabbits mouth, it swallowed it whole, blood gushing from its mouth as the bear digested inside of the rabbit.

Blood was still dripping from the rabbits face when it turned back towards us and got ready to jump.

“Run,” I shouted. But it was pointless, the rabbit landed in front of us every time we changed direction. We shot at the rabbit, but like the bear, it deflected all our bullets.

“Split up,” I shouted, and everyone went in different directions.

We all hid and I called Robert and told him we needed reinforcements. He said more people would be here in a few hours, but in the meantime, to keep the giant killer rabbit distracted and in the area.

“I’m not sure we can do that without dying, sir, but we’ll try our damndest,” I said before disconnecting him. I officially hated Robert. It’s one thing to want to save animals, it’s another to sacrifice other peoples lives to do so, especially mine.

“We will?” One of my crew asked.

“We have to at least try to slow this monster rabbit down. We don’t want it destroying all of Los Angeles before it can be caught,” I said, not fully believing my own words.

The rabbit had managed to escape the woods, eat half a dozen people in the city, crushed a few houses and knock over several dozen skyscrapers before helicopters arrived with a specially made giant net that was dropped on it. It tightened around the rabbit, which the helicopters then airlifted back to Watkins eco-productions, where I was told they were building a giant rabbit cage for the beast.

Robert called my phone.

“Tell your men they did a great job for me. Great work in the field today. We’ll use the mold samples you gathered today to fix the mold problems on the other terrariums before they crash,” Robert told me.

“You better fix the other terrariums. That one rabbit alone destroyed a large chunk of the city. Imagine what half a dozen could do. And tell the men yourself,” I said and disconnected Robert.

I sighed in relief, thinking the problem was over. We had caught most of the animals, only had to put down two, and even the giant killer shark rabbit was caught and brought to justice.

Then I looked up in the sky to see it was too late to fix the mold problem in the other terrariums. They were already falling towards earth, each one was located above different cities all over the world.

“Well, shit,” I said.

“What’s in the other terrariums,” one of my crew asked me while also watching them crash and fall to earth.

“Giant bears. Giant eagles. Giant ants the size of a two story house. Killer sharks that can breathe fire and survive on land and have horse legs. Flying piranhas. Owls with laser vision capable of conducting biological warfare by creating new germs whenever it wants in its stomach. Telekinetic Gorillas the size of elephants. Elephants the size of mountains with the same IQ as Einstein who realize humans are responsible for poaching them nearly to extinction. Invisible giraffes. And more damn Rabbits. Thousands more rabbits. Most of the terrariums have more then one hundred shark toothed rabbits on board, per terrarium. Once they escape the terrariums, they can breed. And you know how fast rabbits can breed, right? Well, these new shark toothed rabbits can breed twice as fast. If Robert can’t contain them, which will likely be the case with so many now crash landing on earth, earth will have a new dominant species within weeks, maybe sooner,” I said.

“Well, that sucks. Us humans has a good run, didn’t we?” My crewman asked.

“We sure did, buddy, we sure did,” I said, smiled and patted him on the back. I then sighed, sitting down to watch as it all crashed and burned.