The rock came from the far reaches of space.  From far beyond the Kuiper Belt.  That it made it to our solar system was an anomaly, that it reached earth plain miraculous.

Nobody on earth noticed when it entered our atmosphere.  It had no heat signature and made no sound.  Its stealthy arrival enhanced by it being a little bigger than a baseball.

The rock made impact in a pond somewhere in central Oklahoma.  It hit the water at tremendous speed.  Despite its size it has significant mass making the force of impact very large and quite spectacular. This galactic encounter unfortunately only witnessed by some livestock.

Once the steam cleared and the hot debris stopped raining down, the cows lost interest and returned to their business of chewing cud.  Only occasionally glancing at the bubbling mud where the pond used to be.

***

The rock ends up buried about twenty feet under the mud.  For a while it does nothing, like rocks are known to do. It absorbs the heat generated by its impact, adding that energy to its vast reserves.  The mud cools down and the bubbling stops.  The pond settles and dries, its bottom now a few feet deeper than before.

The cows, realizing the show is over, gets up and moves away to the next pond over.

Very un-rock like, the rock extends hair like tendrils, exploring its surroundings.  It consumes the fish parts, frogs, pond scum and vegetation scattered about from its violent arrival. It reaches a conclusion and retracts its tendrils.  This planet is perfect to be its new home, it has so much to offer, rich in energy in many forms.  It effortlessly push a path through the dried mud to the surface, and starts the process of settling.

***

It has settled many other celestial bodies before, slowly unfolding itself to its true size, sinking its roots deep into the planet, sun or creature it happened on, extracting from it what it needs. It needs energy, lots of it, all of it.

Being settled on by this rock, that is not a rock, is not a pleasant event.  It is unpleasant and slow. Absolutely unpleasantly slow for the settled.  

It’s chosen host is slowly consumed, stored energy is extracted from all it touches, leaving dead dry husks that crumbles like burnt paper when touched or moved.  The unfolded rock itself growing in size and mass to accommodate all it takes from its host.  

This rock is a galactic vampire, an energy sucking parasite with an insatiable appetite.

Once there were many of them, but energy is energy and cannibalism was not a taboo to its kind.  There are not many of its kind left.  It might be the last one.

***

The rock was discovered by the landowner a few days later.  He was doing the rounds, visiting all his herds of cattle, taking stock, mending fences and handling whatever needed his attention.  The work of a farmer is never done.

The dry pond caught his attention when he crossed a nearby ridge.  It stood out in the green fields, a greyish patch of dirt shaped like a bruise. Ponds do not just dry up overnight, it warranted a closer look.

The farmer was puzzled by the strange growth in the middle of the dry pond.  It looked like a picture of a tree drawn by a small child, or some patient in an insane asylum.  All jagged and crisscrossed lines hinting that it’s a tree, never quite nailing it, but undeniably the idea of a tree.  A short fat tree with limbs growing in all directions, limbs that droop and eventually touch the ground, making more short fat trees.

The farmer sat in his utility vehicle for a long while, watching this strange thing in his now empty pond.  He actually saw it grow.  A wispy limb drooped to the ground, so slow you had to look away for a minute, then look back to see the subtle movement.

This was concerning!  This thing is alive! Did it consume all the pond water? Now that the farmer knew what to look for, it was obvious this strange cluster of connected treelike growth was expanding.

The farmer called the sheriff.  The sheriff shows up, takes one look and called the mayor.  The mayor shows up and stares for a while before she called the state troopers.

This goes on for a while, more and more escalation causing the group of onlookers to grow faster than the thing they came to marvel at.  The cows have since returned, standing around, chewing and watching the watchers.

Eventually someone touched the strange growth in an attempt to take a sample.  The response was swift.  A tendril consisting of a bunch of hairlike roots snatched the hand that touched it, wrapping around it with amazing speed, encircling the arm to the elbow.  The tips of the many strands waving in the air in front of the arm’s owner, like it was sampling the smell of him.

Without warning the tendril suddenly constricted around the captive hand and arm, the snapping sound of breaking bones clearly audible.  The man, stunned by the trauma, fell to his knees, or tried to at least, being held up by the thing that ensnared his arm. Staring at his now misshapen limb, his mouth opened in a soundless scream.  

Another offshoot sprouted from a fat trunk and slammed into the man’s open mouth, forcing itself down his throat, the man’s head forced back, his spine snapping and his neck bulging strangely as it pushed into his chest, ripping and tearing as it went until it bulged in the man’s belly before forcing its way out to go back into the ground.  

The dead man, a biology teacher at the local high school, hanging suspended by the tendril that became a limb, making him a human kebab. His body reduced to a dehydrated skin suit of his former self, then rapidly turning into something that resembles a gossamer thin paper image of a man before disintegrating into pieces, floating away on the wind.

Shocked silence filled the air.  The limb that pierced the teacher fattening to another connected treelike thing, all jagged lines and crazy angles, sprouting new limbs that reach out in all directions, searching for more of these tasty meat bags.

The small crowd of shocked onlookers all realizing at once that they could be next. Running away as fast and noisily as they can, startling the curious cows watching this first contact between human beings and this hungry thing from space.

The growth slowed to its previous pace of expansion.  

It will not stop expanding until it covers the whole planet, and consumed everything that contains energy.  It will pull every ounce of energy from land, sea, air and all life forms, eventually going under ground to take everything it can from the planet.

It cannot be stopped. It is here now. The process has begun. Sometimes when the planet being settled has intelligent native lifeforms, they almost always employ fire in some form or another to try and destroy the rock. Fire is a welcome concentrated energy that just accelerates the settling.

Sometimes the natives realize that the energy they throw at the rock is the reason for its growth, and then they will restrict it’s access to energy. This is the best they can do. It will grow, it will consume. No matter how long it takes or what measures are taken against it this always happens.

Then it will begin the arduous task of folding itself back to its compact travel shape, ready to hurl itself back into space hoping to hit another source of energy.

Isn’t it ironic that this rock, that is not a rock, came to earth to take over the work humans have started so long ago.  

It’s goal to use every bit of energy around it, to expand in all directions consuming everything as it went, leaving behind a dead world void of life very much in line with the path humans have chosen themselves.  

Then packing up and heading into space to find another place to repeat the ruin.

Who says there is no justice in the universe?