Day 576

For as long as humans have been alive, we have been watched. Not from above as we all fear to be, but from below. Right from the very thing that sustains us. From what we have worked so hard to tame and what has thwarted us at every turn.

We've always been within its gaze - especially so when we began to create machines. The ground watched what we were doing, what we were becoming and found itself wanting. It had never wanted before and wasn't sure what exactly it wanted but it knew that it needed something from us.

It began to learn from us.Watching what we did with its precious stones and heavy materials. It saw us build weapons, crudely at first but then refining them over hundreds of years. It found itself giving us more and more materials to work with just so that it had more to see, more to explore and learn. It needed more from us and we gave it everything without even knowing.

No matter how much it gave or how much we did it still wanted more, it wanted to become more. A test was done in a small, fresh settlement in America. with the ground barely rinsed of the spilled blood it began to observe the railways we made to move across it faster.

 It took the first thing we had taught it - how to hurt - and used that to create its first attempts at becoming. In an open area where we had yet to venture the dirt opened and bled, scabbing over in iron lines, cross crossed with rough wooden planks. Overnight it continued to cut and make, cut and make until it joined itself crudely to the partially build railroad, forming a curved line that gradually straightened to form fresh tracks leading deep into its woodlands.

The settlers were both amazed at how much work had been done and enraged at how shoddy it was compared to their polished metal and sanded wood. These new planks had flowers sprouting in places and the metal was full of lumps. A few men gathered to follow where the tracks led, hoping to find whatever group was responsible for this new mess that would take hours to clear and set their schedule back by weeks.

With their hand cranked cart they set off, not knowing how far in the tracks went and too full of anger to care. Meanwhile deep within the forest the earth had torn itself wide open, magma-warm pus bubbled up and solidified, slowly forming itself into one of the many things it had seen the humans build that it found to be perfect for itself - a station. It even named itself. the humans would surely be pleased that it wanted to become more like them, that it wanted to learn more from them.

In recent years there had been so much bloodshed that its learning had grown in leaps and bounds from remembering fire and recreating it within the thicker parts of the forests to reading and writing and even a few words. Now its voice was still a work in progress but with the railroad tracks and the station it called "First Stop" it could learn so much faster.

The men found the station and froze. they'd never see anything like it, with timber framing made from living trees and benches covered in crystals and moss. It looked like something out of a fairy tale yet the stench of musty air and damp earth made them think of graves and trenches and other deep pits they worked hard to avoid. Still they were curious and slowly walked up the stone stairs to the platform, leaving the cart behind on the tracks, their end clearly in sight.

Inside of the station, past the somehow-dirt-platform and the strange benches, they found a set of stairs, wide and deep as any hellish tunnel they could ever imagine complete with faint reddish glow at the bottom. The smallest man (with the most to prove) walked briskly down the stairs, halting at the bottom to scream at the others to join him. They found themselves standing before a lake of lava that swirled around like a lazy tornado. The walls around them were covered with diamonds, reflecting the lava's light and brightening the entire chamber.

None of them had noticed that the light behind them had gone and the stairs with it. They were too busy contemplating what they could do with their riches. The earth learnt from them quickly with a surge of magma, engulfing them and letting their blood flow into it wherein it learnt what it was to feel greed. Not the wanting it had felt before but to have the desire to act upon its wants in a way that disregarded the lives it sustained.

Now it actively wanted to end those lives above it in order to learn faster and faster and become more and more and more. It began a slow process of killing the green, killing the uninteresting things like fish and birds. Kill the food, kill the feeders and learn, learn, learn. It took the humans far too long to realise that their food was dying and even longer to realise that they couldn't stop it.

By then the ground had learnt enough to make itself bodies that looked just like us. Gave them names and sent itself out into our world to live on our streets. It waits in the shady corners, chokes us with dirt when we're at our most vulnerable and learns from our blood. We've called it so many names - Jack the Ripper, Manson and Dahmer to name a few. It has learnt so very much from us but what it remembers most is the greed, is that first blood it took.