Extinction Level Event

Jose Pino Johansson

Table of Contents

1. Prologue . . . . p2

2. Contamination . . . . p5

3. The Agencies . . . . p27

4. Propagation . . . . p91

5. A Can of Worms . . . . p154

6. CSI: Deniability . . . . p230

7. Catch Him if You Can . . . p260

8. Extinction Level Event . . . p277

9. Epiphanies . . . p345

Appendix & References . . . p357

01 PROLOGUE

"
...it may be doubted if there
are any other animals which have played such an important part in
the history of the world as these lowly organized
creatures
."

-Charles Darwin

A long, dark corridor. Only a thin beam of
artificial light seeps in through tiny glass panels from an
adjacent room, illuminating the opaque hallway. Utilitarian,
crepuscular tiles and metallic, whitewashed walls lend an eerie
feeling to an already abandoned, seemingly forgotten location. Yet,
the spotless cleanliness and highly sterile nature of the hallway
indicates the presence of people who have deserted the place for
some unknown reason. There is no sound in the stygian environment.
Rather, the empty expanse is a sea of complete silence. Here, even
the buzzing of a fly's wings would seem louder than a skyscraper
construction crew. Utter silence reigns.

Footsteps break the hallowed silence of the
mysterious and eerie hallway. A dark human shape moves through,
barely visible in the nearly light-less space to anyone who may be
looking. The steady yet quiet steps of the man's shoe soles
resonate against the tiled floor. The man is the only moving object
in the room, a flurry of motion in a long expanse of tranquility.
The echoes of the man's formal wear shoes bounce back from the
walls, like a bat's sonar. Only these waves, unlike those of the
bat, disturb the perceived environment to any human outsider. Just
like the bat, the man's walk is quiet, confident, and purposeful.
The reverberations slowly die out, to be replaced by new ones
generated as the man continues his stealthy gait.

The man stops at a barely visible door, the
outline made visible only be the light from the man's cell phone,
which he uses to illuminate the path around him. The cold, steel
door in front of him has no windows, no knob, no keyhole, and no
keyboard. Merely a magnetic swipe machine, which controls access
through the portal. Seemingly undeterred by this, the man pulls out
a card on a chain and proceeds to slide it through the swipe
machine. A dim red light above the machine turns to a bright green,
followed by the
thack-thack
sound of heavy locks being
retracted within the door. With apparent familiarity with the
system, the man pushes the door open, and enters the guarded room
beyond.

Inside lies another dark and obscure room,
this one lighted by dim green light. The room, approximately
fifteen meters on each end, houses an array of state-of-the-art
laboratory equipment, from multimillion dollar microscopes to a
cryogenics quarantine capsule. The man walks over to a small
pedestal in the center of the room, where a cylindrical object
approximately the size of a human head lies. The object is attached
to numerous tubing devices and a small LCD screen and monitor. Bold
print stating the warning "Caution: Hazardous Material" faces
bluntly outwards towards any who may, in the unlikely event, see
the cylinder as an object of curiosity. The man steps up to the
cylindrical device and pushes a button located on the side of the
cylinder. Promptly a hissing sound emerges, followed by the top of
the cylinder rotating slightly. The man pushes the top cone of the
cylinder upwards, allowing deathly cold gases to escape from the
device. Inside, arranged in a circular pattern, are six small
vials. With the vials' cryofreezing process seemingly disrupted,
the man puts on a pair of latex gloves.

Reaching into the cylinder, the gloves draw
out one of the encased glass vials. Carefully opening a small case
he brought along and placed onto the table, the man carefully and
diligently places the vial in the case. The hand reaches into the
cylinder to draw a second vial and place it adjacent to the first
in the case.

The man returns the large metallic lid onto
the top of the cylinder, sealing it shut. The lid snaps back on
with a hiss, leaving the man alone with the case. He closes the
case, and slowly, silently walks out of the chamber the same way he
entered. This time, no card is required to access the space beyond-
merely the turning of a knob. The man leaves the laboratory room
and closes the door behind him, making sure to lock the multitude
of locks. Satisfied that every conceivable trace of his presence
has been removed, the man walks back out the corridor from whence
he came from. His silhouetted figure retreats into the darkness,
the echo of his footsteps quietly dying out as he fades into the
blackness. Then there is nothing at all, as if the empty corridor
was not graced by anyone's presence, as it seemingly was meant to
be. An ominous dark emptiness once again pervaded the arena,
seemingly forgotten by the outside world.

02- CONTAMINATION

The central valley of California is a
greenish-yellow, botanical expanse. Free of the dense, smog covered
urban encroachment that lines the California coastline and bays,
the interior of the state is a paradise of sorts for farms,
villages, and small towns. The shining peaks of the Sierra Nevada
and the Rocky Mountains come up to the west of these towns,
providing a magnificent, whitish glowing background. Naturally
growing plants are supplanted by artificially growing ones,
primarily in on the lands of farms. Many of these farms have many
acres of farmland, growing corn, wheat, potatoes, various dairy
products, and other foods stuffs.

Michelle Williams is one ordinary California
resident who lives next to one of these farms. A small-time lawyer,
she works in the town center in the nearest town, Oakridge.
Although she does not own a farm, she does own two acres of land,
and uses one acre to grow a large, home-grown garden of vegetables
and fruits that she shares with her family. The garden was started
by her grandparents, during World War II. At the time, it was
called a “victory garden” by the media and the government, who
encouraged Americans to grow their own food to help with the war
effort. In subsequent years the garden was expanded and enlarged,
becoming quite sizable and very beneficial to all the family’s
generations.

All the family members, including her husband
and two younger children, help out with the work on the garden.
Today it is 6:12pm, and Michelle is returning from another long day
at the office to an evening's rest at home. Before leaving herself
free to take a break, Michelle follows her daily habit of tending
to the garden, in order to make sure that some work is done every
day. She thinks it is a good habit, as it enforces a routine into
the children’s lives and makes sure that the garden receives
maintenance every day. As it is mid-summer August, the sun shines
on until nine, providing plenty of sunlight for the job.

She opens the door to her eighteen-hundred
square-foot house, and sets her carrying bag on the table besides
the door, next to the shoe closet. “Mommy!”, her little daughter
Sarah, 5, runs up and gives Michelle a hug. Returning the embrace
warmly before picking her up in her arms, Michelle walks over into
the dining room where her mother is sitting. “How’s she been
today?”, inquires Michelle. Her mother, Annette, a woman of 69,
replies, “Not too bad. Today we went out for another walk around
the farm lands, watered the top part of the garden, and guess what
else?”, she exclaims excitedly. “No! She did not start sewing!”
groans Michelle, only half-jokingly. “No. Of course not! Don’t be
silly, she’s still too young for that! But we did do another puzzle
today.”

“Ohh, I see. Hey Mom, I’m going out to take
care of the garden for about half an hour. Is Mike home yet?”. “Not
yet, dear”, replies Annette. “Fine.”. Michelle heads to the
bathroom and gets out of her lawyer apparatus.
No more
spiffyness today
, she thinks to herself for the hundredth time.
She then goes into the garage, which is designed for two cars but
fits only one since they used one half of the space to store
various things, some completely unnecessary. Putting on some
gardening gloves, gardening trousers, taking out a rake and heads
outside, she thinks-
Wait, I don’t need raking today. We did
that just two days ago. Let's see, what else is there?
Michelle
walks back into the garage, and starts going through the shelf on
which they store all of their gardening tools and appliances.
Whats this? Groundup SuperPower? Letsee. Oh, yes of course.
That’s the new herbicide that Mike bought yesterday. He said it was
brand new, and should work like nothing before it has.
Hmmmm, another MalSanto product? Oh well, might as well try it
out today.

Grabbing the large can of herbicide, Michelle
heads outdoors for the garden. She starts dosing the garden with
the pesticide, spraying the leaves of the tomato plants before
moving to the asparagus plants and onwards to a few poplar trees
that are in the garden for decoration. Dosing most of the garden,
she realizes that the can is quickly emptying itself..
It is a
big garden. Still, this can is going quicker than I thought it
would. Well, we’ll how good it is in a few weeks.
After an
hour, she returns to the garage just in time to see Mike’s red
Honda Civic pulling into the driveway.
Now we can all get dinner
and head to bed.

Miles Farm

One of the farmers living adjacent to
Michelle’s property is Greg Miles. His farm is a medium sized
enterprise for a farmer, covering many acres. On one side, next to
the residential houses near Lake Road, corn is grown. Lots of corn,
enough to feed his cattle.
Because cattle is where the money is.
Everyone’s obsessed with beef. You, me, and I, we want a hamburger.
And cereal with milk please. American beef too, not that imported
Argentinian crap.
The other side of Lake Road is the pasture
where Greg keeps his cattle. Let's face it, if the cattle were kept
on the side that the corn is currently grown on Greg would have
many a lawsuit on his hands. Cattle are notorious for the quantity
of methane that they produce, which is why Greg sensibly keeps them
as far from civilization as humanly possible. The neighbors would
throw a fit if they were any closer.
As much as I like them, I
really hate it when they give me trouble. Like that one
time.

He keeps over a hundred cattle living around
on the free-range farm. Between himself, a few ranch hands, large
modern harvesters, and the new Siemens self-milking systems of
which Greg bought four, the farm is quite productive. The
harvesters harvest tons of grain at a time and need only one driver
to operate. The cows, when they feel their udders to be full, are
taught to use the self-milking machines. The machines then milk the
cow themselves, leaving Greg a little extra time that he could use
for other things. Greg makes enough income to pay his ranch hands
and pocket enough himself to keep expanding his acreage every year.
Greg even bought himself a boat last year, and although he doesn’t
use it often, he sees it as a sign that the last four years were
quite good.

Things were quite horrible before they became
better. Miles had to deal with an infection of foot-and-mouth
disease on his farm, one which he would never forget very easily.
Foot-and-mouth disease is a vicious disease that attacks cattle
without mercy when infected. The disease, which is caused by the
FMD virus, can usually be quickly identified by lesions that form
around the tongue and feet of the animal, hence the disease's name.
The hooves and the mouth develop extensive lesions after a few days
of exposure. The virus comes in three strains, C, A, and O, of
which O has been determined through many experiments to be the most
unpredictable and prone to resistance. The disease is so
unpredictable that the United States prevents the importing of any
beef from a country that had even one case of foot-and-mouth
disease. Salted, frozen beef was once believed safe from the virus
until experiments demonstrated a survival of the virus in lymph
nodes in the salt-cured beef. Despite years of research, the only
known cure for foot-and-mouth disease is repeated vaccination of
cattle.