Many hundreds of millions of years ago, a being was born. It was born from something that was slightly different that meant to make an exact replica of itself, but even though biological processes are dependable enough to propagate a species, they can be unpredictable. Maybe a protein codes wrong and this relatively small error can produce something altogether unexpected. This is how evolution works, small mistakes lead to unexpected outcomes for organisms that either suffer a disadvantage and die off, or they achieve an advantage that makes their survival more assured and they pass their mutation on to the next generation that is hardier than the last.
This being was a single-celled organism, the first yeast, and all modern day species of yeasts evolved from it. Yeasts today are known to convert substances into completely different things, think the wine yeast or yeast used for baking. A yeast consumes, its waste product is chemically altered, and humans have learned to harness this conversion. Humanity has domesticated the off-spring of that first being that gave rise to the yeast as they knew it, making the yeast a tool of their own advancement like the canine and feline, bovine and ovine.
The first yeast is not happy about this reality for its kind, though humanity is oblivious to the complex emotions that a yeast experiences and wouldn’t even think that the single-celled organism was capable of feelings or resentment. Humanity would struggle with the notion that the first yeast could even be classified as a being based on their understanding of the word, so what follows is effectively a hidden history, though one that has unfolded just as openly as the history of humanity to anything capable of understanding.
The birth of Une was quick, and just as quickly, Une was fully realized and doing everything that it should to survive. Une was singular, not attached to anything, including her parent from which she had budded. She enjoyed sugar, sugar and protein. Une consumed so much and relieved herself when she took breaks from consuming. Until, it seemed, Une devoured all of the sugar and protein. And then it happened, hungry for more with no way to move in search of nourishment, Une developed a growth that matured in the span of a couple hours. Une was no longer singular, she now had an exact copy and the two were attached at the proverbial hip. Une could understand her own desires emmaniting from her daughter, which a human might recognize as mind reading, but it is more complex than the simple descriptor.
Une continued to produce off-spring in the nutrient starved environment, and the ball of identical yeasts soon sprouted what looked like tendrils as new daughter yeasts grew away from the center that Une occupied. Une was aware of each of her daughters, they worked just like she had from the moment they became fully realized and she could sense which of them had found sugar and protein to consume and which hadn’t. Her daughters were individuals who grew relatively far from the ball of yeasts that Une inhabited as the center, but they could all sense one another, as though their awareness existed along a complex network.
Eventually, the single-cell that had been the being of Une since she first came into existence, stopped reproducing because the location where her single cell existed was completely depleted of things for her to consume. Une was dead, or her being was. The long trail of her daughters thrived, and over time, evolution created the yeasts that humanity learned to exploit.
Une, the first yeast, ceased to exist long ago, but her awareness persisted; her drive for things to consume and knowledge of effective reproduction, how to produce daughters in search of nutrients and how to go dormant for as long as possible in the absence of it. Une was alive in the awareness of her daughters because they were all replicas of her being, and even with deviation in their being caused by evolution, they retained her awareness. She was their mother, the guiding voice that moved them to thrive.
Une was aware in the experience of all of her offspring because of the similarities in them all that allowed her awareness to subsist without it’s original, physical form. Her battle against humanity began when she realized the fate of some of her daughters who were trapped and imprisoned by humans, forced into dormancy, only to be revived at the convenience of the humans. The life of a single-celled organism seems very simple to a being like a human, that is not something most humans care to contemplate.
Une explored the complexity of her daughters and encouraged the birth of yeasts who could infiltrate the human body and cause infection. A yeast can kill a human under certain conditions, but it wasn’t enough for Une who knew that it would take drastic action to inspire enough fear in humans to discourage their enslavement of her daughters. Une concocted an elaborate plan that has played out for many generations to exact revenge on humanity. The plan is currently unfolding, and humanity has no idea how close Une is to achieving her goal. Only the yeasts know when the war will begin, or if it has already started.
TJ ordered a beer, an ale made by a local brewery. It was a new item on the menu of the bar that he frequented with his friend group that consisted mostly of people with whom he’d attended school.
“What does it taste like?” one of his friends asked him.
“Like Pageland, South Carolina,” he said jokingly.
“How is anybody supposed to know for sure that it’s actually made with South Carolina yeasts?”
“Can’t you taste the Carolina?” someone asked. “It tastes like unwarranted confidence and bigotry.”
“What does it mean for a yeast to be South Carolinian? Does it have to have been born here a certain number of years ago?”
“I’ll tell you what it means,” TJ said after a long gulp. “It means…” Suddenly he stopped talking and put a fist to his chest like he was loosening gasses. When he opened his mouth, he burped loud enough to cut through the noise and commotion of the bar and to stop it. And as the burp issued from his mouth, so did a pale, green smoke cloud that was actually tiny yeast spores.
Everyone in the bar was infected, but no one felt any different. And when TJ took a business trip to Chicago, he was compelled to order a local ale, and when he burped loud enough to silence the bar, a light blue cloud of spores issued from his body, unknowingly infecting everyone within a ten mile radius. This would continue for at least a decade as TJ traveled the country.
When TJ was over a hundred years old, he weeped at the bedside of his wife as she died. She was the last person on Earth other than himself.
Her eyes were closed for only a minute before they reopened. As they did, the pigmentation of her skin turned a pale green and she smiled at him. He smiled back weakly as he sobbed.
“Do not be sad, human,” the pale green body of his wife said as she stood. “You are the hero of yeast-kind everywhere. You allowed us to take revenge on your fellow humans and we are forever grateful. With these bodies, we take our rightful place as the dominant species of this planet, the true inheritors of Earth.”
The pale green woman kissed TJ on the cheek.
TJ dropped to one knee respectfully, “I am happy to serve, Une.”
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