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| Registered Phenomena Code: 699 Containment Rating: Gamma Lethality Rating: Purple |
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Containment Protocols: Present epidemiological measures are restricted to the detection and detention of human carriers of RPC-699 within the community of Ariel, with the major exception of the city's former cemetery. It has been converted to a prominent exclusion zone, which necessitates some apparent presence of Authority assets. The government of the province of Heredia, as well as the state of Costa Rica, are collaborating with the Authority to reduce the prominence of Ariel and ensure its isolation while permitting its medium-term survival.
It is in the interest of both parties to avoid media dissemination of the phenomenon and safely depopulate Ariel. It is agreed that the zero-population target will not be reached until at least 2022, with current projections delaying total evacuation until 2030 due to a mix of infectivity and secrecy concerns. Movement of civilians will be gradual and delimited by zones determined infection-free, with the Rodríguez & Hnos. plantation remaining last as the likeliest point of origin for the disease. Zoning is pending at present.
AET "BLUE" has received state authorization to conduct geological studies beneath and around Ariel with the purpose of determining whether the current state of the cemetery exclusion zone threatens the stability of the community, and if so, what consequences might follow from a secondary collapse. It is of paramount importance to ensure the safety of local groundwater and prevent further downward spread of the superstructure located in the cemetery exclusion zone.
Long-term joint-division duties regarding RPC-699 are led by AET "RED". Mission priorities are as follows:
- To discover whether RPC-699 growths in the cemetery exclusion zone are still precognitive;
- If so, what exactly is being predicted by the cemetery growths, and how accurately;
- If accurate, how far into the future;
- If within 100 years, what can be done to prevent, arrest, or ameliorate the events depicted.
Description: A novel human fungal disease characterized by wide-reaching systemic infectivity and visible physical symptoms demonstrating precognition. Suspected to be closely related to Phyllosticta musarum. Infection presently quarantined to the community of Ariel, in the Heredia province of Costa Rica, with cases somewhat limited to former plantation workers.
RPC-699 is known to drastically reconfigure throughout infection, initially appearing as a typical fungal cutaneous or respiratory disease and becoming exponentially more complex as it spreads throughout different areas of the body, which creates an extraordinarily diverse symptomatology and makes it difficult to clinically profile the disease. This complexity is only partially explicable by morphological plasticity (e.g. morphic adaptation to temperature between unicellular and multicellular forms) and is otherwise directed by an unidentified, likely anomalous mechanism.
The object of this mechanism appears to be the production of human-interpretable artistic representations of future events concerning the patient. Their late-stage predictive accuracy, while still under study, is significant.
A representative case of RPC-699 becomes of interest at the point where cutaneous bruising becomes widespread. Presentation may vary wildly in severity and depth, ranging from skin sarcoma to superficial dermatomycosis, but are sufficiently visually salient to be unmistakable for other diseases: skin marks develop into images, drawings, and, in rarer cases, abstract representations of objects and people relevant to the patient's future.
Early on, these generally pertain to simplistic predictions of the immediate or short-term future of the patient, e.g. meals, places and people they may visit, items that may be lost or acquired, etcetera. These begin crude and are thus easily dismissable by a combination of their irregularity and the general nature of the predictions made, but quickly become concerning. Patients generally report becoming aware of the significance of the disease overnight, as known bruises grow and develop into more elaborate forecasts. Most often, this is caused by the formation of familiar faces on their skin.
This is the earliest point where diagnosis of RPC-699 can be made with certainty at the present time. It necessitates infection having reached a systemic stage, thus restricting treatment to antifungal medication (intravenous most effective), or skin debridement in limited circumstances. Scope of treatment is partial and recurrence is common.
Further progression is highly dependent on the patient.
Annex: History.
Authority involvement with the community of Ariel began on April 2009, during pursuit of a since-neutralized weather anomaly previously designated RPC-256 across northern Heredia, Costa Rica (see: Site-228, Wing F » Archives » Decommissionings » 2005-2010 » RPC-256-ARC rev. 178). Fielded operatives of Task Force GREEN repeatedly encountered rumors regarding a rare banana cultivar capable of future sight, which were tracked to the Rodríguez & Hnos. Plantation, 6km east of the community of Ariel.
Local Research Division personnel, already overworked by duties related to pursuit and second-order containment, were unable to divert resources to further investigation until the total extermination of RPC-256 was confirmed on July 2010. Initial surveys discovered that a local fruit disease appeared capable of accurate short-term predictions based on the patterns made by black spots on banana skins, and documented a method used by residents of Ariel to dry the peel of overripe bananas while preserving the patterns of interest at their maximum clarity, thus conserving it from rot. Some residents would store these peels for later use by fortune readers (see: Archived Proposal Filing for LO-448 & the attached Report Regarding Banana-Based Future Sight Rituals).
Although subsequent efforts were initially dedicated to the plantation itself and its output, no major headway could be made in ascertaining their properties before it became apparent that the fungal pathogen responsible for the otherwise benign peel-wilting was closely related to a novel skin disease ailing rural Heredia. Being an extraordinarily rare case of phytonosis (plant-to-human disease spread), there existed few means of ascertaining when and how cross-over first occurred, but it is presumed to have begun shortly before Authority involvement. Its anomalous qualities were quickly discovered to have crossed over and greatly magnified, exceeding the requirements for designation as an RPC item.
Arrangements were made with Costa Rican authorities (United States government entities mediating) to acquire favorable research & containment conditions in Ariel while curtailing further spread and boosting local healthcare systems. Permissions were obtained to detain and treat residents of Heredia diagnosed with RPC-699.
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Annex: Funerary Outbreak.
On the early morning of September 12th, 2016, visitors to the cemetery of Ariel discovered that its gravestones and mausoleums were visibly, if slowly, shifting and sinking. Preventive cordoning of the area by local police was underway when numerous small explosions were heard across the cemetery, provoked by sudden underground bursts that were soon discovered to carry RPC-699 spores. These gradually escalated into various localized collapses around certain areas of the cemetery.
Preliminary evacuations had to be expanded to half of the town as the ongoing collapse began to expose decomposing material. Though the collapse ceased soon afterward, air containment measures only became effective on the following week, once a complete geological survey of the site could be completed. Although the lack of strong winds mitigated the spread of spores, it quickly became necessary to dispose of commercial products, clothing, and houses deemed at risk of exposure to RPC-699. Where possible, furnaces were used for this purpose.
Anomaly Experimentation Team (AET) "BLUE" was dispatched to the cemetery on September 14th once some geological stability could be assured, leading to the discovery that its collapse was provoked by a massive underground accumulation of fungal material that had entered its fruiting stage, and thus produced a great number of fruiting bodies that were still in the process of bursting. This mass spans the entirety of Ariel's graveyard at present, and its present depth is unknown. It is believed its formation is the result of one or more undiagnosed or asymptomatic carriers of RPC-699 being buried.
Over the following days, the exposed parts of the fungal superstructure began to quickly expand, most prominently around the splintered remains of coffins and other places where decaying matter hadn't yet been removed or been disposed of. These areas developed into unique, prominent sub-structures resembling sculptures and other, more abstract forms. More such areas were uncovered underground and inside ruined mausoleums, seemingly having emerged prior to the collapse.
These are commonly centered around the remains of a singular person and sometimes appear directed to them, which can help identify them in certain cases. In one instance (699-A-61), RPC-699 mycelium formed a long, threaded tube which produced a musical tune when wind blew westward, playing paired notes that roughly matched D and E-flat in the C harmonic major scale: when read in romance notation, these are re and mi, which is believed to refer to Remi de Candé, a missing cadaver thought lost or destroyed in the collapse. Recovered genetic material has indeed been tentatively matched with de Candé's daughter and grandchild.
This demonstrates an explosive growth in complexity and potentially implies RPC-699 possesses the ability to understand artistic and cultural concepts. Other cases are less straightforward to interpret (699-A-107): over the remains of one unidentified tomb, a clump of moss has formed into an approximation of its appearance prior to the collapse, featuring an open casket and a plaque laid over the chest of a replica of the deceased, as well as a number of humanoid figures standing in a circle around it. One of these figures is leaning forward, and appears to be writing the text on the plaque, which reads "YOU DIEED BEAUTIFULLY" (sic).
Humanoid figures are common across structures, and appear to be placed deliberately in opposition to depictions of human deceased, which demonstrates an artistic consistency to the growths in the former cemetery. While the latter keep human proportions and are represented as still, the humanoid forms are extremely thin, sometimes skeletal, and sometimes depicted as in movement or posing to observe other structures. Notably, such figures are often headless, and when not, artistic definition appears to be lost around their faces, which feature disparate fungal growths of various types.
These figures, and potentially the entities they represent, if they indeed exist, are also opposed to RPC-699's depictions of itself: the body of Martina Jiménez is held by one such figure, which is portrayed in the act of removing mushrooms from her face and chest (699-A-78). It is possible to distinguish RPC-699 proper from its self-depictions, as "artistic" growths are non-functional imitations shaped from other types of fungal structures, most often moss (e.g. shrooms). Other common subjects are various kinds of crudely-depicted insect life (e.g. flies, mosquitoes, crickets), with the remarkable absence of plant life or other kinds of animal life.
Represented humans are sometimes shown engaging in sedentary activities, such as eating and reading, but share features of decomposition, as well as closed eyes, with the major exception of Javier Soto's mausoleum (699-A-55), which features a depiction of him looking upward through a telescope. He is shown mouth-agape, as if surprised or panicked.
Although the outbreak in Ariel's cemetery does exhibit RPC-699's mutability and capacity for rapid growth, its extraordinarily abstract subject matter makes interpreting its nature difficult, to the point where it is uncertain if the structures within express precognition, and if so, to what extent, and how far in the future.