Juan Bustillo Oro - "Humanity, the Parasite" (1951)

INTRODUCTION

Juan Bustillo Oro (1904-1988) was an extremely prolific Mexican filmmaker, playwright, and author of fiction and non-fiction. "Humanity, the Parasite" ("La humanidad parásita") was published in the April 1951 issue of Los Cuentos Fantásticos (#32). Oro published another story in Los Cuentos Fantásticos, "The Lantern" ("El farol", issue #36, February 1952), which is a republication of a piece written in 1928, dedicated to Fritz Lang. "Humanity, the Parasite" appears to be his only piece of prose science fiction. 

For the original Spanish text and further information on his fiction output, see "La Penumbra Inquieta y Otros Relatos" (2009, eds. Lourdes Franco Bagnouls and Jael Tercero Andrade). For more information on his film career, see: https://diccionariodedirectoresdelcinemexicano.com/directores-cine-mex/bustillo-oro-juan/

HUMANITY, THE PARASITE

I

In the very heart of the hell that Earth has become over the past few months, half mad and swollen with horror, I gather my scattered notes and assemble the pieces of my accounts that survived this wave of destruction, amazed that my memory is capable of recalling everything when my eyes found themselves incredibly full of fantastical and superhuman horror at everything that's been unfolding. And I do this to bequeath to the future generations — if any germ of humanity survives and this inhospitable planet is repopulated — the harrowing, disillusioning, and bitter story of the last days of the present representation of the human race, hatefully besieged by all of nature.

Assuredly, no other man would now undertake such a thankless and possibly fruitless task as filling a manuscript with these notes and accounts which perhaps no human eye will ever read, for the simple reason that the extinction of the human species is almost certain; yet in this overwhelming solitude, into which these recently befallen terrible events have cloistered me, inside this tiny corner of the mountains where I've managed to hide my flesh, so voraciously sought after, my cells condemned to destruction by who knows what unknown and implacable power; in this frightful isolation, I feel desperate with inactivity and fear. An irrepressible desire to narrate everything, with no hope of having any reader other than the very paper of the notebook I now employ, compels me to undertake this task, which provides some small escape from the anguish in my mind which has me on the verge of madness.

Overwhelmed by the unknown, driven mad by the mysterious, asphyxiated by the terror of the unknowable and the constant and impalpable menace that will most likely destroy my flesh like that of all men, I begin this brief account of the last painful stage of human life on Earth, trusting that I have enough time to bring it to a conclusion.

I pray — yes, I've prayed with infinite fervor, with tears in my eyes, with desperate faith born of absolute helplessness — to a vague divinity I can sense within me, mistress of my life, of my flesh, to permit me to finish this work, which in the end may be of great use to men if this fever of destruction passes and they can dedicate their minds and their lives — if they consider it useful and feasible — to the search for an effective defense, one I can't conceive of, against another incursion by this being, or whatever it is, intangible and mysterious, that's been withering away human life. I'm the only surviving man who can provide precious, if approximate, data on the most tragic and strange phenomenon in recorded human history: and I'm prepared to do so for the assured good of my weary spirit and the uncertain benefit of humanity's dubious future.

II

The first news I heard regarding the matter came to me, ten years or so ago, by way of my old chemistry professor Estanislao Monter, during one of the visits I made to his private laboratory. But the first truly disturbing news was obtained from his lips on a day when I was making one of those unpleasant and compulsory trips related to my profession as a mining engineer, which offered no more pleasant refuge than the possibility of stopping by to embrace my old professor in his solitary little house in the tropics.

Estanislao Monter developed a great affection for me during my time in his classrooms, and he deeply admired my scientific intelligence and love of study. I was his favorite student, and I was the only one of his disciples he took to his private laboratory, a true sanctuary of science, egotistically closed to all those who failed to gain the professor's absolute trust. And Estanislao Monter was a difficult man to please, difficult to convince, difficult to engage in conversation, difficult to overcome in his systematic opposition to anything that involved stepping outside himself to place trust in a foreign being. Everyone always considered him somewhat deranged, given the kind of strange and absurd experiments he pursued, but he had the best lectures on chemistry, and his teaching position was secure until he himself voluntarily left.

As I've already stated, Don Estanislao grew fond of me for my interest in my studies and my clear intelligence; I insist on this point as modesty or vanity are completely pointless in these moments of certain death, when my name won't even go down in history and will remain eternally unknown. Thus, we'll just say that I was extraordinarily intelligent and studious, and that little by little, I gained my mentor's sympathy.

On one occasion, he took me to his laboratory, where he started telling me about his strange experiments. Far from generating the same absurd impression in me that the news of these experiments generated in everyone else, they interested me intensely. With my clear perception, I comprehended their underlying nature and possibilities, and I told my mentor of the interest that arose in me to become acquainted with them in more detail.

His enthusiasm knew no bounds when he learned how much I studied his theories, or at least, what I had managed to find of his theories in the realm of established science, and he decided to make me his assistant.

This is how I made my first visit to his laboratory and how I was informed in detail about his first experiments and his first conclusions.

Long hours, long days, months were spent in the exciting and fascinating work of discovery, through a series of enchanting experiences, the clear conviction that the common earth, the overall composition of our planet, what everyone has assumed to be mineral simply because they've only seen it superficially, is organized, living, cellular matter, a kind of sensitive flesh full of existence that is, only, at a different degree of vibration than ours and that, therefore, has a different appearance.

As exciting as our research was, my youth, distracted and fickle, separated me from it. I fell in love and abandoned my professor so that I could get married, but not without carrying the distantly anguished idea with me that we live within the breast of a living being, that the Earth is an immense ball of flesh different from what we know, but, after all, organized, cellular, sensitive matter.

In the months I remained in the margins of Estanislao Monter's immense research, my old professor's genius made notable advances that were revealed to me when I began making frequent visits to the isolated little house in the tropics, taking advantage of my business trips. A growing interest took hold of me, and I listened tirelessly, passionately following the experiments he carried out in my presence. Both he and I acquired a certainty about the reality of our theory. I believed we lived in a fantastic world; our absurd discovery demoralized me, but I never had such a clear idea of the anxiety contained within it as when my professor spoke to me about the ultimate degree of his discoveries.

- "As you may have noticed, Eugenio, our experiments always give us identical results. The Earth is organized, living, carnal matter, but of a disconcerting monotony; every mineral element, in any of its forms, gives us the same synthesis and has the same reactions of identical sensitivity. Valuing all our data and all our experiments, as well as the total knowledge of science and our senses, we can't help but recognize that the Earth isn't an animal, that it isn't a complete organism. But this contradicts the data of our new framework of chemistry, with our theory isolated from the old worries of established chemistry, which has created such a deep and false division between so-called mineral chemistry and so-called organic chemistry. I have come to the conclusion that the entire Earth is nothing more than an atom or a cell of an enormous living being, of an enormous organism, of which the other stars and planets are probably just as many atoms or as many cells. The enormity of this being is relative to our senses: we would be infinitesimal animals, alien to it, with an isolated existence independent of that unknown organism. We would be to this being what the microorganisms living in us are to our bodies. From the analyses and experiments we have conducted, it appears that the tissue is more than muscular flesh; we're inhabitants of a nervous atom intimately connected to the bony part of that enormous, unknown body."

These considerations of my professor were profoundly disturbing and filled us with unease, as they were also what my knowledge and data on the matter conducted to me, but I could've never imagined the terrifyingly overwhelming truth that lay at the heart of them, which days later was revealed in the most terrible way.

III

It was precisely one month after my return to the city that the press started reporting on a rather strange phenomenon that was ravaging various parts of the planet. Vegetable products from various regions, as well as the drinking water consumed in them — the area of the incident encompassed all of Asia and part of Africa — seemed to be causing serious and continuous cases of poisoning which were decimating the population in large numbers; at first, it was believed that a subtle and unknown poison came from rice, wheat, fruits, or water; but it turned out that the animals that ate the poisoned vegetables and drank the toxic water showed no symptoms of poisoning. Humans were the only ones afflicted by this strange phenomenon. Then it was thought this was a new, unknown epidemic that was threatening human life in Asia and Africa.

Prior to this disturbing incident, a multitude of strange and novel catastrophes were occurring across the planet with unusual frequency. This began with the collapse of Mont Serrat in Argentina, which buried countless human lives under its debris, and with the inexplicable burst of a huge dam in Yankee California, which filled the neighboring valley with death. At first, all this didn't make a very profound mark on my mind, nor could I relate it to Estanislao Monter's theories, but a letter from him, unexpectedly received, set me on a path whose end frightened me for the terrible consequences it entailed.

- "Dear disciple," my mentor wrote, "I found something related to our theory and the numerous cases of poisoning happening in Asia and Africa, as well as the series of recently arrived catastrophes, which filled me with a nervous fear. I kindly implore you to leave everything occupying your attention for the moment and come and visit me as soon as possible; don't worry about the damage this will cause to your economic interests too much, as I'm sure that, very soon, terrible things will be occurring on Earth, things that have already begun and will surely end humanity's life." - Estanislao Monter

His letter interested me enough to impel me to go as quickly as possible to his summons, and I received from his lips the most distressing revelation that was ever made to any man thus far.

- "As this was something I already expected in one way or another, the apparent epidemic in Asia and Africa related to the series of lamentable events that have been wiping out entire populations across the globe, interested me intensely from the start, and I had samples of Asian and African soil sent to me: wheat and rice, fruits from those regions, and a little bit of water from their springs. As you see, and just as I suspected, a new and subtle poison exists in the plants and water that comes from the earth, which they probably won't be able to find in any official laboratory. You already know that the great multitudes of deaths in Asia and Africa are being attributed to an epidemic of unknown origin. Nothing could be further from the truth, according to what my experiments show; this poison I have found actively breaks down the organic compounds in human flesh, dissolving its protoplasm. It is so active that one must protect oneself even from its aroma."

And he showed me a test-tube containing a few drops of a yellowish liquid. He held it up to my nose and uncovered it just a little; a penetrating aroma that provoked violent revulsion struck my sense of smell, and I was at the point of being stricken with vertigo. My professor removed the test-tube from my nose, and little by little, I recovered.

- "I've been expecting this for a long time," he told me. "Its realization depended on the veracity of the new developments made in my theory, which I've now come to fully verify. 

"You'll have noticed, Eugenio, this poison doesn't attack animals, and yet without fail, the flesh of an animal that ingested it through eating plants or drinking water kills humans when they eat it. The poison is directed against humans, and this only reaffirmed my bitter conviction. Eugenio, we're microbes harmful to the being of which the Earth is an atom or a cell; we're a species of bacteria that probably extends to other planet-cells; we're the microbial agents of a terrible disease that infects the enormous and unknown organism.

"In the relativity of time, what for us is a period of thousands of years, for whatever species this enormous being we're making ill belongs to, may be a few days, just enough for inoculation and development of the disease it's suffering from. Human microbes don't behave as well as the 'good' bacteria that are the rest of the animals; they limit themselves to leading a peaceful life in complete accordance with the laws of nature, without violating or evading them, without worrying about making profound changes to the Earth's constitution. In contrast, humans build cities where it's perhaps essential for the healthy functioning of the Earth cell's life that there be nothing but a plain, a valley, or an open space. Humans, furthermore, exploit the Earth relentlessly, drilling into it, depleting its mines, extracting gold, silver, oil, all the elements that the enormous cell probably needs for functions unknown to us. And for this work of mineral extraction, men open deep breaches in the bowels of the Earth; they poison it with the excrement of their factories, forcing the unknown organism to overexert itself beyond its abilities, which harms and sickens it; these terrible microbes also invent these explosive compounds that sow destruction and death within the cell we inhabit, and wage wars that provoke inharmonious vibrations in the normal life of that being. Most likely, the same thing is happening on our neighboring planets, that is, in other atoms or cells of that organism, until they gather vast portions of tissue diseased by humanity. Humanity, extended across all planets, is a parasite that is killing a living, organic being. The living, organic being attempted to defend itself: what we call volcanic eruptions, soil sterility, the recent mountain collapses and river floods, dam bursts, and devastating hurricanes may have been spontaneous defenses of the sick region, but it seems they haven't been enough, and the disease has fully developed, the human parasite has acquired virulence, and the enormous organism now defends itself artificially, medicinally. This poison we're now discovering on Earth is the product of a drug effective against humanity injected into the afflicted animal. Beings similar to the one we're sickening must've studied the disease we produce in depth, and are now attacking it with an efficient method."

IV

The mysterious poison began spreading throughout Europe, sowing panic throughout the world. The entire old continent was devastated very quickly, and the consumption of vegetables became impossible. Famine and toxins wreaked inconceivable havoc on the population. America was still uncontaminated when Estanislao Monter astonished the world by announcing that he had discovered a chemical substance that neutralized the effects of the mysterious poison. The process for producing it was extremely simple and inexpensive, so soon a Yankee syndicate produced enough to liberate humanity from the specter that was terrorizing it.

But in my old professor's account, as well as in the scientific study that was published about his discovery, there was not a single mention of the distressing theory he revealed to me.

- "I don't want" he wrote to me, "to embitter the last years, perhaps the last months, of humanity and fill it full of dread. It's better to guard the pious secret about the horrific end that awaits us, because I'm sure that other, more forceful, more effective methods will be attempted, given the failure of this one, other methods that will come sooner or later. And in any case, if these aren't attempted, or if whatever is attempted doesn't succeed, the being we have sickened, or at least the cell in which we live, will die, and then we, the parasites, will find ourselves in the bosom of a lifeless particle of flesh whose death we ourselves, unconsciously, provoked; it will decompose, and who knows what the catastrophic effect of that decomposition will be. In any case, our end is assured, and it's only a matter of time, a very short time, because the violence that's starting to be employed to combat the disease reveals that it's reached a special and alarming degree of severity."

V

I lived anguished over the secret I was privy to, and I definitively abandoned my profession, not only to dedicate myself fully to studying and testing the disconcerting theory alongside my mentor, in the distant hope of proving it wrong; but also because I felt an unspeakable revulsion at entering the caverns of the mines.

When I went down into the long mineral shafts and traversed through the tunnels that pierced the earth in every direction following the veins, I felt the disturbing impression of traversing the infectious channels of a pustule that I, we, the men, the parasites were building at the expense of the pain of a living being that we were making ill.

I was haunted by every strike of the pickaxe. Every time I heard the noise of the mechanical drills and the explosions of the dynamite charges, I saw our work as destructive microbes quite clearly.

I preferred to isolate myself from such suffering by withdrawing from these places that gave me such a vivid impression of tortured flesh, and I took refuge in my old professor's house to devote myself, with more passion than ever, to continue collaborating in his research.

Many months passed, everything calmed down again, and the menace disappeared. My professor expected, at any moment, the attack against us he believed was certain, and I started to lose my tormenting obsession.

I started to think that our theory was nothing more than the fantastic fruit of our overexcited imaginations, and tranquility gradually returned to me.

I was almost sorry for having abandoned my profession for such an absurd reason and I was about to resume my former life, with my books, my business, my family and my dear friends, when the symptoms of the menace started up again.

On the same day that, despite the pleas of my professor who deemed my help indispensable, I drafted the letter of reply to a mining company accepting my return to professional life, certain news began to arrive — again from Asia and Africa — that brought the nightmare back to my senses and filled me with anguished inquietude.

The air in Asia and Africa became so tainted that it was starting to cause serious accidents among those regions' inhabitants. I had no doubt that this was only the beginning, and, devastated, I decided to remain at my professor's side.

My thought wasn't far off; what was initially mild turned terrible. The multitudes of Asia and Africa were once again decimated by another specific and subtle toxin, that now came from who knows what mysterious and unknown airborne source. The air was gradually becoming poisoned, and the foul atmosphere was spreading with dizzying rapidity throughout the world. It invaded Europe and began to poison America. As in Asia, and as in Africa, the poison was in Europe and America subtle at first and produced only minor disturbances, but it promptly increased to a level of intensity where it caused the deaths of thousands of people.

Estanislao Monter and I continued to be distressed by the inexplicable phenomenon, and we saw that the terrifying abyss of our conviction was once again opening up before our minds; as the attack was directly aimed at humans: the poison in the air, as happened with that of plants, the soil, and water, did not attack animals; it was only injurious to humanity.

Fortunately, the data about the toxin coming through the Earth, previously provided by my old professor, was sufficient for chemists across the globe to ascertain, quickly, that the airborne poison was of the same nature as the previous one, only presented in a different form that was resistant to the antidote discovered by Estanislao Monter.

Men were never before in such a hurry as they were to invent and manufacture special masks by the thousands, similar to those used in wartime against asphyxiating gases, which effectively and acceptably protected the life of those who wore it.

The smell of the air was repugnant, and its color took on a yellowish aspect that made everything appear as if seen through slightly smoky glass. The passage of the poison over land, water, and air already depopulated a third of the globe, and the world appeared desolate under a heavy pall of grief. The sight of men encased in rubber suits, their heads hidden in a kind of helmet, the day's dreary yellow and the night's somberness, forced the imagination to live in a fantastical and tormenting world that haunted the mind. Synthetic foods were invented, and people seemed to live on the margins of nature, at open war with it, assailed by all the elements.

Many months passed once again, and man's physical decline was evident. The very environment of gloom and the legacy of horror left by the catastrophes exhausted mankind. And with terrifying frequency, the sea overflowed its bounds and destroyed ports, mountains collapsed and submerged towns and cities, mines were flooded with disgusting and destructive liquids, volcanoes erupted, and the earth trembled.

And despite this, we continued to survive: humanity continued to reproduce, and work continued. Efforts continued to extract the earth's inner riches, and more tunnels were built for railways, barbarously damaging the mountains.

Humanity, all of humanity except Estanislao Monter and myself, was unaware of the cause of those disturbances. No one could construct even the most tenuous theory about them or offer the slightest explanation. And all this ignorance was going to be poured out into an intense fever of religious fanaticism that developed violently. Terrified, with the constant threat of death hanging over their heads, humanity became more selfish and sought pleasure even more rapidly, without scruples of any kind; traditional morals relaxed, and cities lived in a constant orgy, awaiting its end at any moment.

VI

The worst of all had not yet arrived, however. Estanislao Monter insinuated it one night, calmly, naturally, with the satisfaction of a wise man who is correct in all his suppositions at every step, even.

- "At the end of the day it seems," he told me, "that we've won, for the time being. And that's worse. Perhaps it would have been preferable if we'd allowed ourselves to be quickly killed off by the active poisoning of the water or the air. As in defending ourselves, in triumphing over it, we've forced ourselves to be attacked by a more ferocious means, whose horror we can't conceive. 

"Can you imagine, dear disciple, what it would mean if it resorted to animal-derived biological remedies, if it injected microbial organisms akin to us that came to fight us and devour us, something similar to what our own medical science has already so successfully employed?"

And fatally corresponding to his imagination, news arrived, once again, from Asia and Africa.

A strange race of living things that possibly resembled humans, enormous beings that gave one the impression of gelatinous, inhuman masses, began to arise from the earth, from the mouths of volcanoes, from the mineshafts, from the sea, from everywhere. Their necessary conditions for life were totally different from ours, and they reproduced — horrifyingly by parthenogenesis — with vertiginous rapidity.

Vast armies of these glutinous, repugnant creatures, whose very presence filled the eyes with horror, started to attack cities and destroy men in the most terrifying way imaginable. They seized them with their long tentacled arms and, with a viscous slime they secreted, dissolved them before absorbing them through the pores of their naked bodies.

That army of living things moved in extremely rapid flight from one place to another, devastating population centers in droves.

All of the defenses that had been invented were futile; this new attack was absolutely effective, terrifyingly relentless. 

And from my old professor's cottage, near the mountains, we avidly followed the news that arrived from all over the world about the fantastical and absurd invasion.

When the great wave of organic destruction finished its work in the old world, it invaded the new one from the north and the onslaught was even more rapid and vertiginous, as those beings had reached the fullness of their strength and their possibilities.

Humanity was fleeing south, driven mad, with that gelatinous army always on its heels. Finally, Estanislao Monter and I fled too, joining the flock of fleeing madmen and becoming infected by their desperation and terror in experiencing all of this.

Another gelatinous army began its invasion from the south. The men of that region fled northward and eventually joined those fleeing in the opposite direction. The enemies surrounded us, the glutinous mass flung itself upon us, and continued its horrific feast, absorbing human flesh.

A few men, isolated from one another, trusting in our small size that made us barely visible to them, fled to the mountains and took refuge among the bushes and in caves, living the life of animals ambushed by the hunt.

But the instinct of these combatants of the human race is astonishing, and most of those who fled have been discovered and devoured. I've smelled the repugnant and characteristic odor of these disgusting gelatinous creatures near me several times, but, almost miraculously, I have been able to outwit them and escape. From this admirable hiding place, I've watched them feed on humans. Their life is, moreover, brief; and if they're born by the thousands, they die by the thousands and are destroyed. Very soon there won't be a single human being in the world, nor a single one of these disgusting creatures.

I anxiously wonder if I'll die at any moment in the slimy arms of one of these "bacterial" enemies of man, or if I'll survive this nightmare and, together with a few other men and women, who might exist, form the germ of a new humanity that will repopulate the world. But the disillusioning and bitter words I heard my professor say the last time I saw him render my hope sterile and weigh me down.

- "Dear disciple," he said, "behold, all the achievements of human progress are but manifestations of the virulence of the pathological germ that is man. It would've been better, thus, to reduce itself to its tame animal life without so uselessly multiplying their needs and the artificial methods to satisfy them. All the pride it had in its tunnels, its mines, its industry, comes crashing down; their material achievements are simply the achievements of a parasite."

And remembering them, I feel infinite dismay and an uncontrollable desire to go out and dedicate myself to the destructive work, so that there won't remain on the planet, for my part, a single reason for the rebirth of humanity; as I sense that, even if the future men are warned, they'll again incur the sins for which they now die, unaware of their faults.