Enceladus Syndrome

The first stages of the plague the astronauts brought back from Enceladus were terrifying enough - it started as a sticky, brown-grey paste that slowly accumulated between your fingers and toes, but then it would suddenly explode, spreading to cover the whole body in a thick mucus.  

As horrifying as that was, the second stage was even worse, as the mucus slowly hardened into a crisp, papery coating as though the victim had been encased in a cocoon.

The first efforts to reverse the process surgically revealed the victims within at various stages of dissolution, their bodies apparently crumbling into a slurry.  It was widely conceded that the Enceladus Syndrome was fatal.

Until the first cocoons started to open of their own volition...

That was when we realised: it wasn't a plague.  

It was an invasion.

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Sources:
https://plus.google.com/113223446359562794050/posts?hl=en
http://community.babycenter.com/post/a28729853/update_tell_me_what_kind_of_rash_this_is_pics?cpg=3
http://www.slu.edu/~swierkoszje/review/bactlist.htm
http://www.monarchlab.org/Lab/Research/topics/Enemies/Default.aspx

Mind Plague

 

When They arrived, it seemed obvious that we needed to study not only their technology, but their biology as well.  They were cooperative, and a half-dozen deep black government-sponsored projects were instantly erected around the goal of learning as much as possible from the volunteers from among Them who had opted to stay.  Progress was made on all fronts, but it wasn't until the startling discovery last year that we realised the chilling truth.

Their technology and their biology aren't separate things: The little machines They use constantly in daily life aren't accessories - they're part of Them.  And much of what we had mistaken for natural was actually highly engineered.

Including Their minds.  Including Their thoughts...

It started slowly at first.

A few of the scientists working most closely with Them started behaving oddly. It was assumed that the strain of making the mental adjustment to comprehend what they were learning was having its impact.

And then it was noticed that some of the people working in these facilities were also acting strangely...even though they weren't even highly enough cleared to know They were here, let alone living on the compound.

But really, it wasn't until after Thanksgiving that we realised the horror that had been unwittingly unleashed:

Families started to change as their members' minds started to crumble under the onslaught of self-replicating, engineered thoughts.

Children were most vulnerable of course, and the most dangerous:

School.

Now we know the risk, but is it too late?

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Source:

http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2014/04/how_dangerous_viruses_could_escape_from_laboratories.html

Secret epidemic

When the first few made their complaints to their doctors, they were dismissed - it was a psychiatric pathology, they said, an obsession.

But then the numbers grew - hundreds of people, all suffering from an infestation and the itch that came with it.

Their reddened skin, their sores, the growing desperation in their eyes...Still some dismissed it as in their minds, but others tried to solve the mystery.

Just an overactive itch reflex, said some - your body wired to imagine unreal insects, your mind concocting explanations to match. A few brave researchers, immune to the mocking voices of their peers, determined to look a little closer, if only to prove to their patients that this was nothing, all in their mind.

What they found blew their minds:

Tiny fibers - setae? spines? Something like the irritating urticating hairs of an insect thrusting up through their skin.

And they moved.

The hairs twitched, waved...and sometimes travelled across the surface of the skin to create a new lesion elsewhere.

Samples were taken, biopsies secured.

The hairs seemed attached to nothing...but then what were they? Were they left behind by creatures that had as yet escaped scrutiny?  Were they tiny fragments of irritating fibers?

Tests were done - the objects were examined under microscopes, chemical analysis was done, and meanwhile those who suffered endured the unending itch, the sense of something moving just under their skin.

Tests were inconclusive.  Some dismissed it - it was little sharp fragments of animal hair, of nylon, of cotton, they said.  But others said: yes, some of them are, but others...

There was too much silicon, strange chemical ratios, results that didn't match any database...

But these researchers were ridiculed, and they struggled to get funding to find out more.

And meanwhile, the earliest patients were beginning to change again...

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Source: https://medium.com/matter/4d980e3ac519