Whoa. I just slept for four and a half hours and had the craziest dream.
Something had gone disastrously wrong with the Earth in the far future. The core of the planet had been poisoned, and the entire planet was slowly rotting from the inside out. When the rot reached the surface, the Earth would become uninhabitable and every living thing would die.
It was decided that the cause of whatever was happening to the Earth was rooted in deep time, and would have to be dealt with at its source. The scientists of the future scoured two million years of human history, searching for a group of people with the physical toughness, mental stamina and moral fiber to travel three billion years back in time to the dawn of life on Earth, where they would systematically move forward through those three billion years in an attempt to locate the source of 'The Scourge', which is what they'd taken to calling the Earth's sickness.
Only four 'perfect' people were found to have ever existed throughout the entire history of humanity, and all four of them were American World War 2 soldiers; two men and two women. Once contact had been made with them by the far future humans via a wormhole communication link, the four Perfects were made aware of the dire condition of the Earth in the far future, and of the mission through time to locate and destroy The Scourge. They were told that the four of them had been chosen specifically, out of every human being who had ever lived, to take on the mission to save the future Earth.
The four Perfects agreed, and the future humans hurled them three billion years into the past to begin their search through time for the source of The Scourge. What they discovered, almost immediately, was that soon after the first single celled life had naturally appeared, the Earth had been invaded by a vast swarm of alien spores... which, upon falling into the oceans, had given rise to a planet-wide infection of alien viruses. As the alien infection propagated, a semi-sentient viral network began to emerge, similar to a neural network but on an unimaginably vast scale. It wasn't long before the nucleus of every single living cell on planet Earth had been virally injected with alien RNA, forcing an unnatural, misshapen purpose upon the natural evolution of life on Earth. This was a plan 3,000,000,000 years in the making, and the alien viruses had a lot of patience.
The four Perfects understood immediately. It was them, just the four of them - two men and two women, discovered inside the midst of one of the most morally conflicting and physically reprehensible periods of war known to human history, fighting the good and pure fight - who were all that was left of the Earth's original intent for Life. The alien virus didn't get everything, because these four had evolved along a hidden, impervious line - independent and pure and immune to alien hijinks - and guided by an inbuilt 'unconscious awareness', originally meant to be a common characteristic of alive things.
There was one more troubling thing that the four Perfects noticed before setting off into the future with their source report however, and it was this - a small and unobtrusive yet purposefully planted vegetation, growing out of a particularly significant place on the surface of the Earth in the soil, and megayears before any kind of intelligence had been purported to have evolved. It could have only been put there for some purpose by the viral network.
The reason why it was such an issue to the Perfects was this... the spot where the tiny vegetation was growing happened to be the exact spot where the World Tree would be growing, just a few thousand million years later.
What's the World Tree? In my dream that I'm telling you about right now, the World Tree is the route of all evil. 'Root' being the key word here. The thing about the World Tree is, in the far future, the World Tree is the sacredest thing to those of them living there. It's basically respected, if not actually worshipped, like a god by all of those far future humans.
As The Four were traveling back up the line of time to report to the future humans, they were able to witness the evolution and growth of the World Tree as it occurred. They watched as the alien infection slowly evolved the seeds of the World Tree, and how the root of the World Tree insinuated itself further and further down over the eons, until it had finally reached the core of the Earth, far in their own futures. They were able to see how that route had not only spread down toward the core, but also far and wide so that it encompassed practically every square meter of arable soil in the world, therefore influencing and molding all life into a state of infected knowing, from birth, that the World Tree was the source of all life energy, even though that was a lie constructed purposefully over the eons to appear true.
After the Perfects arrived in the far future of the sick Earth, they gave the future humans the bad news about everything that they had just learned regarding the alien virus and the hijacking of natural evolution. Then, after that, the Four gave the future humans the really bad news... that the history of the universe was, is and will be, ever, unfolding according to plan and that their own very existences were, are and will be, ever, born from an innate wrongness of which they'd been unaware but nevertheless had been inflicted upon them at the beginning of the world, and even before then... and that since they were an offshoot of the wrongness, they were naturally flawed and had to go.
Well, I can tell you, and the four Perfects can also tell you, that the future humans didn't really take to the simple acceptance of this doomsday notion with open arms, and so it was that an epic war began between the future humans and the four Perfects.
At this point in the dream, the view zooms out, encompassing the entire surface of the Earth engaged in all out, far future War. The future day World Tree has grown into a continent of forests which have all merged together to form one mighty trunk, several hundred miles wide, which grows up solidly and merges into an immense canopy of leaves and branches that extend all the way up to geosynchronous orbit, 26,000 miles above the surface of the Earth, and shading a quarter of the planets surface. The roots which hold this colossal vegetable to its planet-sized prize extend all the down to the core, by the way.
After the World Tree is almost destroyed,the full horror of realization finally dawns upon the far future humans, and they recognize the truth... that the source of The Scourge has all along been themselves, and that the four Perfects had performed their mission far more effectively than the future humans had ever dreamed in their most perfect nightmares.
