I don’t know if anyone knows or was in the Lake Baikal area in the 1970s, but you have to believe me that this really did happen, my father worked for the Soviet Union on a project he NEVER told me and my mother about, I remember being very little, somewhere around 1975, and I found a greenish-grey rubber suit, which my father told me was for his “work” , which I now realize was a hazmat suit, similar to the ones the Chernobyl Liquidators wore, but now I can finally connect the dots, 40 years after the events my father MUST have had a part in.

In 1983, there was a farm north of Bratsk, owned by the Kremlin, which only grew some unknown flower no-one had ever seen in the area, or in the flower books found in the local library. In 1983, there was a local boy named Dmitri Borodin, who found a rusted gate without a padlock on the far side of the compound, if you will, and since I was in the same class as Dmitri we were relatively close friends, I went with him to explore.

The fields were full of flowers, a brighter blue than the sky or the ocean, and yet we saw no irrigators, no farmhands, not even a barn cat, just a bland house and rows upon rows of flowers, I would have to guess 2 square kilometers, as big as the Meteor Crater in Arizona, at least, but being foolish children we went in the house, where we found… nothing. It was as sterile as a laboratory, quieter than space itself. On the walls were nothing but pictures taken from a microscope, of what I now know as spores, electric blue as the flowers outside, which was not their only connection, but most importantly I found many Polaroid photos in a dark room in the house, which I still have, but I digress, they were horrible, depicting a column of fire, and a crater filled with the same flowers that bloomed outside, men walking through the fields wearing those yellow hazmat suits with gas masks on, a deer nearly just a skeleton with skin. A man being consumed by a blue rot, and that’s when I looked back at Dmitri. His face was starting to turn a shade of blue, pale blue mind you, but I saw these.. dots under his skin, tiny bumps like your taste buds, but it was then I connected the dots, the picture of the soldier, the deer, THE FLOWERS. I couldn’t don the hazmat suits, but thanks to many nuclear drills, I knew how to wear a gas mask, yet it was too late for Dmitri, if only I could have saved him. FUCK! His skin peeled of his face, and a mist of these fucking spores wafted out, him gargling on his own blood, I still hear those gurgles to this day. I ran so hard and so fast. But I left the gate open.

The flowers began to spread. To the town below. My father understood the implications of this, and the suits he used for “Work” were brought out of a locked cabinet in the garage, and I was told how to wear one, and a truck came to pick us up. I remember that day, August 28th, 1983. A truck marked with the Star of the Red Army came to pick us and the other personnel up. Even the driver was wearing one of those grey-green hazmat suits. There ended up being me, my mother, my father and another family. We were seated in the bed of this truck, a leftover surplus from the Great Patriotic War, driving through the streets. I saw hundreds dead. Some simply lying there like they had gone to sleep, all of them blue. But some were different. Some had their rib cages blown open like a grenade went off in them, pumping out those clouds of blue mist like it was exhaling. Some were barely recognizable as human, with elongated limbs, and a smooth, cerulean face. Some had branches sticking out of every spot on their body. Some seemed to be immune, but those that were were eating limbs of humans who were lucky enough to die before being overtaken. The man in the passenger seat of the YaG-10 shot these “People” on sight. I saw one of those king things blink. I swear to god I saw it blink. In those eyes I saw unimaginable pain, it looked like that thing’s soul was in hell, but it’s body was on earth.

I went back there around 1995, after the fall of the Union, to see it myself, I had gear, everything. It wasn’t there, just some ash. They must have burnt the research village to the ground to destroy the spores. The farm was gone too. Me, and the children from those other families are the only ones who remember the Blue Plague. I can only hope whoever was in charge of that program shut it down, after seeing that, I have never slept without nightmares. The town was named Nomosk, it was around 90 Kilometers north of Bratsk, It was similar I believe, to the USA town of Oak Ridge, a town for researchers, masquerading as a normal town. There were constant army trucks and helicopters roaming the area, it wasn’t uncommon to see an Officer at the local bar, or a grunt a at the local post office. After the Plague of 1983, we were moved to Moscow, with my father receiving a large pension, and us living in an apartment.

I remember a sign in the house though. “To prevent an apocalypse that could happen, take these steps:

•Wear all safety gear. This minimizes exposure. •Report any erratic behavior in your fellow researcher, Spores have been shown to have a psychological impact. •Tell no one what happens here. Discourage rumors, tell people that it is simply a crop experiment. •Kill any intruder on sight, and cremate the remains. Spores can still asexually reproduce inside or a corpse. Human or Animal.

I still have the Polaroids, I’m working on digitizing them, they’re an old Soviet brand from the late 1970s, I don’t even know if they made it outside the RSFSR