Don't Bug Me - A Vignette
Don’t Bug Me – A Vignette - Prolog
Ronnie Cobb was a take advantage of everyone and everything, no-good, low-life, but he didn’t deserve to die the way he did. Ronnie was the first in a long line of victims of what become known as the “Big Bug Invasion” by those involved.
But it wasn’t really an invasion, at all. It was, in fact, a bio-genetic program gone horribly wrong. Due to negligence, in part, a lack of foresight, misunderstandings, and sheer bad luck, did the event start.
How do I know this? I was there, for the entire thing. And let me tell you, things could have been much worse. Only through the dedicated efforts of a handful of men was a worldwide disaster prevented and kept limited to a relatively small area.
Though I filed the story, just as it happened, with some names changed, it never saw print. I was told in no uncertain terms that what I had experienced had not actually happened. If I ever said otherwise, the powers that be would bring forth a whole string of experts to testify of my mental illness and the deranged ramblings to which I am prone.
So, the story here didn’t really happen. There is no need to change any names, to protect the innocent, since the people in the story don’t exist. Nor do the places described, or the Big Bugs.
John Needles, ex-reporter, new prepper, ranch hand in training.
Don’t Bug Me – A Vignette
“Hello John,” said Dr. Marcel Kinsington. The two men shook hands. “I’m glad you were able to come out. I’m sorry it has taken so long to agree to the interview and discussion of our work here. It has just completed a key phase and I have a bit more time to devote to you than I would have earlier.
“That’s fine, Dr. Kinsington. Work must come first,” John replied, wanting to get on the man’s good side.
“I go by Mark,” said Kinsington.
“Mark, it is. What can you tell me about the project you are working on here?” John asked as they walked down a pristine hallway to Mark’s office.
“We’re quite proud of the work we are doing here. We are in the forefront of the development of genetically engineered beneficial insects for commercial farming operations.”
“Isn’t that a bit dangerous?” John asked. “What if something goes wrong?”
“Oh, we’re quite security conscious around here. Both to protect our work from industrial espionage and to protect the environment from any possible contamination until we are ready to patent our creations and present them to farmers world wide.”
When they reached Mark’s office, both took seats. Mark behind the desk and John in front of it. John took a moment to peruse the many framed certificates lining the wall.
“Impressive collection,” John told Mark, nodding at the wall.
“I have had the honor of attending, and later, teaching, at some of the finest institutes of learning in the world.”
It struck John that there was a note of superiority in Mark’s words and the way he stated them.
“So, you make beneficial bugs more beneficial…” John said to get Mark talking about his work. John had his digital tape recorder out, as well as his pad and pencil.
“No audio or video,” I’m afraid,” Mark said. “Security.”
John nodded and turned off the recorder and put it in the pocket of his suit jacket. “No problem. Notes are okay, I hope. I don’t have a Memorex memory.”
Mark chuckled. “Oh, I don’t think handwritten notes will compromise security. If I see you writing down proprietary information I’ll have you stop.”
“Fair enough,” John said. “The bugs?”
“Oh, yes. The bugs, as you put it. I suppose I should keep it simple. No long Latin names no one would recognize, anyway.”
John smiled slightly. Mark, John decided, was very full of himself. “That would probably be best. I’m writing the article for the general public.”
“Yes. No big words. Now, what particularly do you want to know?”
“I think first, how safe are these experiments?”
Mark frowned. “Quite safe, I assure you. If this is going to be a hatchet job, we can stop right here.”
“No. No hatchet job. Just the truth. Surely there are concerns about safety?”
“Of course. We take safety here very seriously. Air locked vacuum rooms where the work is done to keep anything that might escape the work station vacuum chambers.
“The technicians wear sealed protective suits and are decontaminated each time they exit the work rooms. In a worst case scenario the chambers can be flamed with a hydrogen and oxygen mix to incinerate any living thing in side. The whole room can get the same treatment, if it came to that. There is almost no danger of anything getting to the outside we don’t want to get outside.”
They were interrupted by a knock on the door, and its opening. “You want me to clean now, Boss?”
“Not now, Ronnie! What’s the matter with you? I’m in the middle of an important interview.”
“Sorry about that, Boss. Guess I’ll go take my break and come back later.”
“Please do so.” Mark’s voice was sharp. He turned to look at John again. “You know the saying about getting good help…”
John smiled and nodded. But that little interplay worried him. If the man wasn’t good help why was he working in a potentially hazardous facility? John found out.
“Lay about, but he’s my sister’s husband. Keeping the work in the family.” Mark grinned conspiratorially.
“Do tell. Back to the safety aspects of your operation…”
Mark cut him off. “I thought I covered that.”
“Well, there are a couple more questions I have.”
Reluctantly, it seemed to John, Mark said, “Very well. Please proceed.”
“When you are ready to introduce the product, these beneficial bugs, what are the safeguards to make sure they don’t just start eating the crops they are supposed to protect?”
Mark smiled. “I see I’m going to have to get very basic with you.”
John didn’t like the smirk that came with the statement, but held his tongue.
“We use bugs that don’t eat crops. We’re not changing their basic genetic make up, only enhancing it. One of our engineered bugs that wouldn’t eat the crops before we change it, won’t eat the crops after we change it.”
“I see. That is reassuring. When do you think you’ll have something to test?”
It was a huge grin on Mark’s face when he spoke. “Oh, we’re already in the testing stage. We had some early success and then accelerated the process. Come along. I’ll show you what I mean.”
John followed Mark silently to another part of the building. He used a card key to open a locked door with a biohazard sign on it. John hesitated. “Biohazard. Should we be suited up for this?”
“Nonsense,” Mark said. “We’re perfectly safe in here. Come along.”
John followed Mark into the room and found rows of hydroponics tanks growing several different types of typical farm crops, from vegetables to cotton. “Take a close look. We’ve seeded the crops with invasive species of bugs.” Mark stood aside and swung his arm in an inviting motion.
John leaned down and looked closely at a cotton plant. At first he didn’t see anything. But then there was a motion from something tiny and he started to smile. Suddenly a bug the size of a silver dollar flew past his ear and pounced on the small bug crawling on the plant. It startled John and he jumped back.
Mark laughed. “What do you think of our little predatory bug?”
“I don’t think it’s little, for one thing,” John said, edging back a bit closer to the cotton plant. The big bug flew off to another plant. “I don’t remember anything from school about anything that big. At least, not here in the States.”
“Oh, no. It’s a cross of several different bugs, plus it’s been genetically enhanced for size and appetite.”
“What happens when they run out of invasive bugs to eat?” John asked.
“They die of starvation,” Mark said.
“What if they decide to change their diet for other, say, beneficial insects.”
Mark frowned. “The strains of bugs we merged were very specific as to their diet. Each one, in its natural genetic state only eats one thing.”
“How did you get them to eat just what you want?”
Mark shook his head. “I believe it is probably over your head. We chose very specific attributes in the cross and then changed the DNA to create a creature that only eats specific other bugs.”
“I think I understand that,” John said firmly. “It just seems like it would be difficult to limit something like that.”
“It certainly was difficult,” Mark replied, just as firmly. “This isn’t some high school biology lab. It’s taken me years of research and trial and error to achieve what I have.”
John noted Mark’s use of me and I. No mention of all the other scientists that were working with him. “I understand,” John said and started to continue, but Mark cut him off.
“No, I don’t think you do understand. I’ve done something remarkable here. In a few days the world will know just what it is. We have a field of soybeans behind the building that has had several invasive species of bug, as you call them, spread throughout. I was going to wait for some final results, but I’m sure enough of them that I will release the Predator V strain of attack bug.”
“Wait. You mean out into the open? What about controls? What if it goes wrong?”
“Pshaw. I know these bugs like I know the back of my hand. Come along. You’ll be the first to see.”
Reluctantly, yet curious, John followed Mark out of the lab and into another. This one had shelf after shelf of cage after cage of the Predator V. John noticed immediately that they were bigger even that the bug he’d seen in the other lab. He said so.
“Yes. Of course they are. More aggressive, too. They’ll even fight one another over a choice tidbit of food bug.”
“Mark,” John thought, “really likes that idea.”
Mark opened a large tube and began to take the cages to the opening to dump the Predator V’s into it. “Leads outside,” Mark said in explanation. “Right to the soybean field.”
“Are you sure you should be doing this without help at hand in case something goes wrong?”
“I must insist you stop raising unnecessary concerns about safety.” Mark had emptied about half of the cages and closed the tube. “Now come along outside.”
John had to admit, the swarm of Predator V’s were doing their thing in the soybean field.
“Come back in three days and you’ll see a completely bug free field. Good day.”
Mark turned around and walked off. John knew a dismissal when he heard one. He headed for his Jeep, deciding this story could go on the back burner. “I guess,” John said to himself, “I can go see if I can locate that survivalist group that’s supposed to be around here.”
John drove to town, to his motel and got on the computer. Fortunately the motel offered free WiFi so he was able to get on line without a problem. He opened up the file he’d started on the lab and put down the facts from his notebook, and then opened up the file on survivalists. It didn’t have much in it.
Though he found a great deal of information, much of it marked and tagged to go back to at some time, John didn’t find anything specific about a local survival MAG. “Time to pound the pavement,” John said. “Just like the old days.”
With a list of gun shops from the yellow pages, John headed out to do some journalistic sleuthing.
When he got back late the evening of the second day of searching out a MAG, he was tired, but happy with what he’d found. It was going to be a two birds with one stone kind of thing. The MAG was located not too far from the lab. “I bet they have a few choice things to say about the work going on there!” John thought before he went to bed.
The next morning John was up early, breakfasted, and on his way to the MAG compound he’d located the afternoon before. Having learned from earlier research that members of such groups were reporter shy, John had no intention of telling them he meant to do a story about them. Just that he wanted some help on the story about the lab.
When he pulled up to the gate of the property he stopped and tapped his horn twice, pause, twice more, pause, then three taps. The signal one of the gun shop owners told him would get someone to come down to see what he wanted.
A few minutes later a man showed up on a weird looking motorcycle. He stopped at the gate and asked John, who had stepped half out of the Jeep, what he wanted.
“I’m talking to people that live close to the lab up the road what they think about it and if they’ve had any trouble from it.”
The man lifted a walky-talky to his lips and spoke. John couldn’t hear what he said, but after listening to a response, the man pointed a remote control at a gate post and the gate rolled to one side.
“Follow me up to the main house,” the man said and turned the back around to lead the way. It was only then that John saw the carbine slung across the man’s back.
John looked around curiously as he followed the man on the motorcycle. He saw people here and there, going about many different tasks. Some were tending a large garden, others working with farm animals in a large field. He could hear the sounds of a chainsaw in the distance in a stand of trees to his left.
There were two men waiting for him on the porch of the large house the man on the motorcycle led him to. There were five other, slightly smaller houses on the property. John got out of the Jeep and walked up to the porch.
“You armed?” asked the man that had led him to the house.
John shook his head.
“That’s okay Arley,” said the taller of the two men on the porch. “I don’t think he’s going to be a problem.”
John wasn’t quite how to take the man’s words. He went up the steps and shook hands with both men.
The big man introduced himself and the man standing beside him. “I’m Grant Neumont. This is by brother, Paver.”
“John Needles,” John replied. “I’m a reporter for…”
“I’ve read your stuff,” Grant said. “That’s why we let you in. You have questions about Marcel’s lab?” He led the way inside the house and offered John a chair in the living room of the house.
“Yes,” John replied. “You know him?”
“We’ve had words,” Grant said. “When the lab was built. I’m not in favor of genetic manipulation of dangerous species. Not too much inclined to favor any genetic manipulation. What Marcel is doing is dangerous. He doesn’t have sufficient safe guards to prevent one of his creatures from escaping, in my opinion. From what one our people saw, when she worked there for a while, the chance of something contaminating the experiments is high.”
“I saw the facility. The air locks. Vacuum rooms and work booths. Isolation suits. Decontamination procedures.”
“All very good,” Grant replied. “Have they changed their procedures for entering the vacuum room?”
“I’m not sure. They suit up and go in. Is that the same?”
“That is. You noticed that yes, they decontaminate coming out, but not going in.”
“Oh. Well… No, I guess they don’t, John replied. “But the danger is something getting out, not in. Isn’t it?”
“What happens if someone carries in something by accident and it contaminates what they’re working on?”
“That would ruin an experiment. Wouldn’t they just burn it and start over?”
“Would they? If they even knew? There are lots of things going on in that series of labs. Growth hormone research, for one. Other genetic research. Supposedly better food animals, and crops. You put some of those things together and there is no telling what might happen.”
“But if they keep everything isolated…”
“If,” Grant replied. “If. When Ellie worked there for a while, that dufus that passes for a janitor went from one lab to the next, cleaning, never wearing an isolation suit. There is no telling what he carried from lab to lab.”
“I saw him, I think,” John said. “Mark’s… Marcel’s brother-in-law.”
“That would explain it,” Grant said. “From what Ellie has told me, he wouldn’t be able to get a job anywhere if nepotism weren’t involved.”
Grant suddenly grinned. “Of course, I shouldn’t talk about nepotism too much. I do a bit of it myself, here on the ranch.”
“This is a ranch? Never would have known if you hadn’t told me. I thought it was just a small residential development.”
“Nice try, Reporter,” Grant said with a small laugh. “We’ve been blindsided before about our beliefs. You won’t get much, if anything, out of any of us.”
John managed a small smile. He thought he had been pretty subtle. Grant was an astute character. Nothing like the human apes that most survivalists were supposed to be. “Well, I must say, you don’t seem to fit the definition of survivalists.”
“Not the MSM…” John looked questioningly at Grant. “That’s Main Stream Media. Not the MSM definition, which has little or nothing to do with the core of the movement. The currently accepted definition only fits a small handful of extremists. In no way representative of the rest of us.”
“So you are survivalists.”
“Not by that definition,” Grant said patiently. “We’re preppers. We prepare for disasters, natural or human-made. Prepping is just another form of insurance. For use when something bad happens.”
“I see,” John replied. “I’d like to learn more about it.”
Paver spoke for the first time. “The Internet is full of Prep sites. Just Yahoo! the subject.”
“Yahoo!? Not Google?” John grinned.
“Thin ice, there, Reporter,” Paver said. “I happen not to like Google politics. I prefer Yahoo!. Matter of personal choice. We aren’t a bunch of redneck hicks here.”
“I wasn’t trying to give that impression,” John replied. “I’m sorry if I did.”
“Take it easy, Paver,” Grant said with a chuckle. “I’ve read his stuff. He’s okay. Not enough to pour out our hearts to, but okay.”
“I appreciate that,” John said. “And I must say, you’ve piqued my interest. I have done some research. On survivalists. I’ll need to do more research on… what did you call it? Preps?”
“Preps. Prepping. Being prepared,” Grant said. He gave John something of a sideways look. “I’m almost tempted to help you.”
“Come on, Grant!” Paver said. “He’s a reporter. Can’t trust him any more than the last.”
“Last?” John asked. “You’ve been interviewed before?”
“Not exactly,” Grant said. “That ambush I was talking about. Leading questions, veiled accusations. Innuendo. She wanted a MSM, bible thumping, gun toting survivalist out to take down the government with terror tactics. She left without much information.”
“Real witch, she was,” Paver added.
A young woman put her head around the door jamb. “Pappa? You want coffee for our guest?”
“Sure, sweetie,” Grant said without looking around. “Coffee, Mr. Needles? Tea? Fresh from the cow milk?”
“Coffee is fine,” John said. “And please. Call me John.”
“Very well, John,” Grant said. “Now, understanding that you want a story, what assurances can you give me that this isn’t just a hatchet job in the making?”
“If you’ve read my work, I think you can make that decision on your own.”
“Grant…” Paver said, ready to object.
“Come on, Paver,” Grant said, cutting his brother’s words off. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have a truthful accounting of some preppers?” He looked at John then. “No names or identifying information.”
“Agreed,” John quickly replied.
“What do you want to know?” Grant asked.
They paused for a moment as the young woman carried in a tray with a coffee and tea service. She poured three cups and then hurried out, Grant’s words following her. “Thank you, Tiffany.”
“Oh, man!” John said, “This is great coffee!”
Grant smiled. “We grow our own here, roast it and grind it fresh for each pot.”
“You can grow coffee here?”
“Special greenhouse we keep for specialty plants like coffee,” Paver said proudly.
“Don’t get much production, but it gives all of us a taste now and again, for those that drink coffee.”
“Oh,” John said. “You probably shouldn’t be wasting it on me.”
“Company gets the best we have,” Grant said.
“Well, thank you. I appreciate that,” John said, and meant it.
“Go ahead and ask your questions,” Grant said. “If you bring up something that is off limits we’ll just say so. Don’t try to pursue it and we’ll be fine.”
“How did you get involved in the movement?” John asked, pulling his pencil and pad from a pocket.
“We’re not too involved with any movement,” Grant said easily, after taking a sip of the coffee. “We are fairly active on some forums, giving our opinions for the most part, based on our experience, but what group we have is immediate and extended family.”
John nodded. “But you had to start somewhere. What got you interested in surv… Preparedness?”
“Being a rancher, being prepared for natural disasters came pretty natural. As did putting up food by home canning. My father lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis. Made a small shelter in the basement of the original house here, according to plans in a Civil Defense booklet I brought home from school. That was the start of the family’s prepping for human caused disasters.”
Copyright 2008
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Originally Posted by Ghost_buged_in
