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Within every urban myth lies an element of truth |
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Begin with an epilogue including the moth's experience before becoming discovered. (Maybe as a caterpillar?) Chapter 1 “I’m dying” she whispered gently, “There’s just no turning away from that now, baby. No hope for remission or some miracle. You know that, right?” “I know, Nan. Mom told me.” He reached for her hand and she smiled, gripping back weakly but with connection. Calvin’s grandmother had always smiled with her eyes first. When his Mother called him to deliver the news, he was on assignment far from home in some shitty hotel room that smelled oddly sterile and stale all at once. The air conditioner roared like a jet engine. He had sobbed sloppily sitting on that stiff hotel comforter, snot and tears streaming down his cheeks to his chin. He felt more homesick than he'd ever felt in his life. Even more than when he had discovered Maureen was fucking that jackass she worked with in project management. He knew she would find out about this somehow or another. Of course she'll try to call to comfort him and send her condolences. He had ignored her attempts to try to contact him several times since the afternoon he came home to find her in their bed with a man whom he could only describe as a ruddier, older, coke-bloated Mickey Rourke. The thought of this made his blood boil. Calvin sighed a deep, therapeutic sigh. He thought he would be prepared to see his Grandmother in these last stages. Turns out he wasn't. She was so frail lying in that downy bed, it practically swallowed her. Her face was surprisingly bright, he had expected dark circles and open sores from the last round of chemo. He saw only sunken cheekbones and love there. Her hair was soft random wisps of white. "Chickie feathers" Calvin thought. It brought a hint of a smile to his face. Chickie feathers was what she used to describe his hair when she ran her fingers through it. She would lean down and kiss his small cheek so gently. He was five years old in this memory. Her room was just as he had last seen it with the exception of some practically camouflaged medical equipment. It was a necessity, there to measure her vitals and her pain levels. At the discretion of the patient, the machine would automatically deliver the morphine as swiftly as possible. Calvin was glad for this. Also he was glad that she wanted to die at home. Nan's house was inviting and cozy and reflected all the qualities she embodied as a person. The drapes were always open, she despised a dark house. Beautiful oversized rugs lay on the floors to comfort weary feet. Lovely art was everywhere to comfort weary minds. There were sculptures, some modern and cryptic. Until you really studied them. Sometimes she'd join the study with stories to match the work. She had classic paintings with beautiful plump ladies posing by clear streams or beautiful skinny animals posed in wooded scenarios. The one that was her favorite depicted a deer, head up and alert with it's deep black eyes staring and it's head just slightly tilted, out into the wood. If you looked at it long enough it would look right back at you. Right back into you. Deer had always been her favorite animal. Of course there were photos everywhere of friends and family smiling, toasting their colorful drinks on beautiful beaches. Her kids and many grandkids looking gleeful on the tire swing hung from what seemed like, when we were kids, an impossibly tall tree in her front yard. Photos of weddings, holding newly born babies, birthday parties. Only one showed her acceptance of some award from some general. There was another from a former president. The rest of those she kept in her oversized desk drawers. Despite taking refuge in a home that he associated with some of the best times of his childhood, the plain delivery of her nearing death still sucked the air from the room. “Hand me that water, will ya’?” Calvin guided her hand to grasp the huge plastic lidded cup. She cleared her throat and took a long sip from the straw. Nan had always been Calvin’s favorite. Ever since he was a small boy they had an exceptionally special bond. She always knew just what to say or to do in the right place at the right time. His Mother always said he favored her both in looks and temperament. “Especially the stubborn part…” she would murmur with a smirk while she dried up the dishes after dinner. She was right of course. They also shared similar interests, Calvin took inspiration from her career and joined the CIA straight out of school. He didn’t have the inclination toward the sciences that she had, she had been a bioengineer with a distinguished career for 35 years with the CIA. She specialized in the study of biological warfare scenarios. Officially, the use of biological weaponry had been outlawed several decades ago. Unofficially? Well, his grandmother was still working in the same department up until her retirement 12 years ago. You can do the math. Calvin started as a pencil pusher for all intents and purposes, then later traveled frequently and did research on some pretty high profile cases. After that the agency approached him for undercover work, mostly spying on potentially hostile governments to obtain evidence of development of chemical or bio-weapons. He didn’t spend a lot of time at home, or at his office for that matter. Lots of lonely hotel rooms. “How’s work?” She asked, as she inclined the noisy hospital grade bed. “It’s Ok" he replied. "Traveling a bit, doing a lot of paperwork. You know, the usual glamorous life of a grunt.” She was smiling as he talked, her smile turned to a furrowed brow when Calvin began to cry. She squeezed his hand tighter. “I wanted to spend as much time with you as possible, Calvin. We have a lot to talk about before I’m gone, don’t you think?” He winced at the casual “before I’m gone” that came from her small voice. The cancer which began first in her left breast, then spread to her right, had finally spread to her thyroid despite 10 years of treatment and that trademark stubbornness. In the beginning she had no intention of letting it win. That’s why her matter-of-fact attitude toward the final terminal diagnosis unsettled him. He was too busy swimming in his emotions to pay much attention to the assumptive “don’t you think” caveat at the end of her sentence. She noted the brief pain across his face. “I’ve made peace with this situation now, Cal. There comes a point when an old lady's gotta look herself in the eye and stop running away from the things she can’t change. Besides, no one believes the truth of an old woman so this is my last chance.” She was reading him carefully. “I’ve taken stock, and have found quite a lot of peace in my gratitude for this life. My wonderful family, my great friends both from work and home, my love for your Grandfather, all those beautiful moments with you and your Mother. I love you both so much, I want you to know that. Straight from the horse’s mouth. I’ve been exceedingly lucky.” He smiled at this. He looked into her face expecting a smile there too, but the expression he found was unnerving. She looked odd, he couldn’t quite place what it was. Sadness? Remorse? Maybe, but there was something deeper in there. Almost like regret. “There is one very important story I need for you to hear, Calvin, and I don’t know what you’re going to think of me after I’ve told it.” She was serious now, and the joy had left her face. “Whatever it is…” Calvin began to protest, but she cut short his words. “Just… listen first before you formulate a point of view. Be discerning, gather the facts I can give you, and what you choose to do with them is completely up to you.” “OK then, lay it on me.” Calvin got comfortable in his bedside chair. Nan gathered herself and sat up as straight as she could, the plastic cup of ice water nestled in her lap. “When I was in my late 20’s, early 30’s I received an assignment to research a sample of genetic material the senior scientists on my team had gathered from an animal. This is the only information I was given. I was to observe, and record data, nothing more than that. The details of the origin of this DNA were revealed on a need-to-know basis, and apparently I didn’t need to know.” She chuckled. “I hadn’t been out of graduate school long, and this wasn’t a particularly unusual task. They often had myself and my colleagues who shared my rank in the chain run control data on all kinds of things, usually strains of bacteria or viruses. They left the actual experimentation part to the senior staff.” She paused and took a long drag from her red and white striped straw. “So that’s what I did. Off the bat it seemed I was looking at genetic material from some sort of insect, most likely a flying insect. Taxonomy is a pretty tedious field, but I loved it. I assumed I was looking at a new species of insect, which is surprisingly common. Insects develop new species much faster than most other animals. We’re finding species, especially now that deep oceanic research has become more advanced, that are new to our knowledge but have been there since before we were. They've been hidden in a sense.” She looked at him carefully. "It’s also becoming more common to discover a single animal with chemical materials consistent with multiple species.” “So did it turn out to be a flying insect?” He made a concerted effort not to sound too eager. Or too false. “Of a sort. It had DNA coding for a species of moth called an atlas moth. They’re usually found in the forests of southeast Asia. Their wingspan can grow to a foot long.” “Holy shit, that’s huge.” Calvin shuddered a little. He never liked insects. “No kidding! They’re beautiful creatures, reminded me of something fairies would ride on in children's stories.” Nan’s enthusiasm gave way to melancholy. “They only have a lifespan of about a week though.” “So what does “of a sort” mean?” Calvin’s interest was thoroughly piqued. “The material we found wasn’t exactly consistent with that of a common moth.” Nan was growing visibly fatigued. “There were elements of another species all together within the animal’s cells. It was mammalian.” They sat in silence for a few seconds while Calvin absorbed this information and Nan caught her breath. “I don’t see how that’s possible, I mean I’m no biologist but it seems to me the two are way too different to have compatible DNA working within the same organism.” Nan’s tone was almost impatient. “Yeah, yeah. You’d think that but you’re failing to take into consideration the experiments into gene splicing that have already successfully taken place. And a long time ago, at that.” Calvin looked blankly at her, making her more irritable. She rolled her eyes. “Do you not know your history, boy!?” She looked instantly remorseful. “I’m so sorry baby, I’m overdue for my pain meds.” Right on cue, the device humming quietly in her room sensed this and administered a healthy dose of morphine through the dermal sensor fastened to her wrist. “I can go if you need some rest…” Calvin felt guilty that this whole time he had not considered her discomfort. “Don’t be silly, I’m right as rain now.” Nan gave him a mischievous wink. “So where was I? Oh yeah, history. Back in 2010 scientists harvested DNA material from a certain species of spider designed to code for their web building capabilities. They managed to combine this DNA with lactating female goats. I won’t bore you with the scientific details but in a nutshell they made goats that gave milk containing spider web proteins that could be made into super strong spider web fiber. There. Exhibit A.” Again, silence was all Calvin could give while he processed the implications this had for his grandmother’s work 25 years ago. "That was way before your time in the labs, what happened to the project? How did they end up using it?" "Well, the fancy decision makers of the world went back and forth on this very subject for a long time. The ethical implications of tampering with natural law was a big topic. For a long time there, it was legally fine to do so within certain parameters. But after a while those parameters were stretched such that any form of genetic manipulation had to be... well, put in time out let’s say. She chuckled. "Just like when you and your brother would fight over your virtual gaming modules so we just had to take them away completely and send you both outside." Calvin laughed. I remember that, you'd yell "GO OUTSIDE AND PLAY LIKE NORMAL ANIMALS!!" She smiled. "Exactly." "If I'm following you right, you’re saying a phenomena like this somehow occurred naturally? Surely if it was against the global treaty the agency wouldn't let a newbie lab rat work on it...no offense." "None taken", again with her smiling eyes "Yes, good ol' Mother Nature doesn't have to abide by stupid human laws, so the fusion had occurred naturally." "What traits ended up being found in the specimen?” “Well, as far as I could tell from behind a microscope this particular animal could fly but had the physiology to stand semi-upright as well. Also, as far as I could tell it was highly intelligent.” She looked at Calvin closely, reading his face for a response. “Like it had cognitive reasoning capabilities? Problem solving skills?” “Something like that. But there was something extra. There was evidence of a gene for electroreception.” Calvin looked puzzled. “Ok, nooooot a scientist. You’re gonna have to educate me on what electroreception is and what it does.” Nan had a mischievous spark to her eyes now. “Electroreception is a trait that allows the animal to perceive electrical stimuli in their environment. It’s most commonly found in aquatic animals, but it’s also been found in bees, cockroaches, dolphins, even monotremes like the duckbilled platypus if you can imagine that.” She smiled. “The animal can use it to locate objects, like food or other animals that may be a threat. It can also be used to communicate in some species by altering the electrical waveform they emit, using it for attracting mates or for defending it’s territory. A species or two have been found to actually use this ability to fight off other animals. In some cases the animal generates it’s own electrical field, in others it detects bioelectric fields generated by other animals. We all generate bioelectric fields naturally, but it isn’t the same thing as the generation caused by a species that actually has an electroreceptor organ.” She could see Calvin’s brain was somewhere else. “Do you see what I’m saying?” she said sharply. “Yeah, I think I do. So which kind of electroreception did your animal use? Did you ever find out what it used it for?” Nan looked coyly down at the fluffy yellow blanket warming her frail bones. “From what I found out eventually, it wasn’t limited to a kind or a specific use. It could generate, it could detect… it could communicate.” "Shit, that's amazing!” Calvin leaned forward in his chair. “So was the animal itself ever found? Did it actually live or was what you were observing from fossilized material?" Nan was still picking at at the thread in her blanket. It took her a while to answer, and Calvin's gut sank a bit. This time he knew something dark was about to come from this story. And he knew that's why she wanted to tell him now. |
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