The Beginning of The End

The pieces are coming together

Scarlett

All my life I have been lucky. Although I have always had questions I have normally found a way to answer them. Now there is no certainty in my life and I have to fight for the answers I want. I can only hope for some change that will make life easier to keep living. While I search for answers I must stall for more time but time will wait for no one and I constantly feel its restraints. As time passes and I get no closer to finding the answers I want, my faith dies. It seemed so easy to do a few days ago but now I fear that I will run out of time and still be no closer to achieving my goals. Only a short while ago I wouldn't have cared because when it was whether or not I would get my homework done I knew that I could always get an extension. But there are no extensions in real life. Time continues and you are forever trying to keep up with it. And I have to keep running forward in order to not fall too far behind where there is no chance that I will ever catch up.

***

We spent a few hours sorting through the reports. A few times Ella would scribble down rough notes that made no sense to me as they looked as if they were written in Latin which she seemed to be quite fluent in. The rest she committed to memory. She obviously had a good memory as her notes only filled one side of the A4 paper and were written in a perfectly formed swirly writing very similar to my own though hers was much larger. The notes covered 17 years of reports that we had waded through in one afternoon and hardly seemed like enough information to me.

My eyes struggled to focus on the characters as the hours dragged on. We needed Alex to translate complicate scientific terms more often now. Neither Ella nor Adrian were that good at science but they told us that they were both straight A students. Their lack of knowledge on the subject was surprising. Words swam before my eyes as I tried to focus on the complicated scientific concepts.

I tried to keep the very first report in my head as I scanned the others. The first report was the most interesting to me. It was written on the first day of the project and expressed the aims, goals and expectations for the entire project. You could clearly see the overconfidence of the scientist as they sat typing up their research on computers all those years ago. It carried all the thoughts and feelings of the original scientists on that very first day - when they were still thinking about the big paychecks they would receive and the potential benefits this controversial science could bring. But they failed to see the huge cracks that could form as a result of what they were doing and as time went on and those cracks grew they were still too pleased with themselves to notice it.

12/01/1992 Project Exchange

Aim:

Design a new military weapon for government officials after death threats from China. The weapon must be easy to transport, unnoticeable, easily trained and controlled and most importantly it must wipe out any sign of the threat and stop potential future threats from occurring.

Method:

Genetic engineering. Subject of experiment - Apis. Use enzymes to remove genetic information from the develop source and transport it into the nucleus of developing fertilized egg. The result is a genetic makeup with one extra chromosome. Change gene for the number of chromosomes per cell to allow change without a mutation. It should be the newly formed Apis that will be the subject of latter experiments and that should be able to live and continue the development of the project.

Predicted result:

The new Apis should be stronger, more agile, quieter (for unseen approach), able to vary their size (in order to be able to perform different tasks better) and explosive when activated. In order to control explosions, they should be able to produce a special type of poison that will react almost immediately (to allow very little time for escape). The Apis should also be able to reproduce quick enough that we do not have to wait a long time if something goes wrong during one of the tests and should be able to withstand attack by bullets, explosions, swatting and any other problem that a normal Apis might face. The Apis should receive and respond to information they are given without delay.

Other information:

Apis to be controlled by military officials and to be trained to kill without feelings for the person involved. They are to be contained in a sealed, reinforced glass box in the hidden Stanville laboratory away from harm. Backing money for the test to be sent by government officials accompanied by MI5 representatives along with payment for staff to the lab monthly. Information discovered in the lab should be kept amongst the members of staff who live and work there along with their government backers and is not to be shared with any outsiders or press. Information given away will be punishable by death to the person told and the one who told them. All staff are sworn to this under oath.

This was the simplest of the reports and the only one I really understood. It had a lot of answers but it didn't help us find a solution to the problems that were happening in Stanville as we worked. The scientific side of the report didn't really help Adrian, Ella or me as it was complicated and difficult to understand. Alex said that the report was far-fetched and had too many holes where there should have been detailed information. But they had obviously achieved what they were aiming to do as their military weapon was now attacking the civilians of Stanville, a town that didn't know what had hit them.

And the information still didn't answer the most important question - How do we stop them? Although we knew more information we had never seemed further away from a solution.

The other reports were about the experiments they had carried out and the training the bees had gone through. One experiment to test the poison was carried out on a human thought to be a Chinese spy. The person died relatively quickly but not instantly as the first report had stated. The whole of the report had been written in the same tone as the other one as if the death of a possibly innocent person was nothing. Even if he had been guilty that was a horrible death to experience and knowing that it was only an experiment and that it might not work made it even worse to put anyone through. They did a prognosis afterwards and it was decided that the person could have died of a heart attack.

One report recorded an escaped bee. It was written in November 1992 around the time of the girl's death. The escaped bee was caught and returned to the lab and the problems it had caused had been covered up by the government officials. It was horrible to think how the scientists had just brushed off the death of the girl as they had the spy. I imagined the same reaction coming from them about the civilians of Stanville now. What was the death toll at right now? Did they even care? It was hard to read how arrogant they all were, how they just ignored the small flaw the incident had been caused by. I hated them for it.

But things were starting to add up now. The incident in November 92 that my granddad had spoken about in his diary which I still had in the pocket of my jeans from all those days ago and the untimely death of my granddad that I had been told was caused by a heart attack. Too many coincidences, too many heart attacks in one small town around the same time. Reports of other deaths caused by heart attacks flashed up on the Google searches we did, alongside complaints that neighbours had moved without warning. It felt as if the people who had supposedly moved had died too but they had no family to question their whereabouts so all claims were dismissed. In the 1992-3 period many strange things happened in Stanville but by this year (2009) they had all been forgotten. I found this strange.

I counted the time going by as I flicked the information over and over in my mind. Seconds changed to minutes. Minutes became hours. And the Hours added up so that we had to leave it for another day.

Adrian's eyes caught and held mine often when I dragged my eyes away from the clock. He had been looking at me frequently that day when he thought I wasn't looking. At first, I thought he was trying to be sly but after catching him staring at me 3 times in less than half an hour I changed my mind.

He looked like he was trying to tell me something in the same way as he spoke to his sister. It was the same way as I frequently used to speak to Alex but his message was never clear. In the end, I thought I was imagining things.

We left their house that evening knowing that we would be back tomorrow. It was frustrating having the information in front of you but not being able to find the answer. In a way, I wished we weren't so close. It was hard to not be able to see an answer when it's written on the page in front of you. But the scientific jargon was as hard for me to understand as French which I had been taking for 4 years and the interspersed Latin words were alien to me. I wished I had gone to private school when I had the chance a few years ago. There you had weekly Latin lesson and were forced to take each subject seriously. But that hadn't happened and I had to make the most of the current situation. No use living in the past - that didn't solve anything. Besides then I wouldn't have had the friends I did no. And those friends were the people that kept pushing me on.

I was straight on the computer when we got home. Every night we watched the news for any signs of the destruction that was happening in Stanville. I scoured any and every news station from all over both countries hoping it would help me feel closer to home. It took a few days for the Stanville epidemic to reach American news. Ella and Adrian had obviously looked online for the information they had found out a few days ago. I still didn't know why they had done it or how they had known it all seemed strange to me but I was glad of the support now.

Watching the devastation on the computer it seemed more like a horror movie or slasher game. I felt like I was further from my old life than ever but I kept watching. If I couldn't be there to help I would go through all the destruction as they reported it on the news. As long as there were problems the reporters would be there. I hoped my friends were safe. As each accident flashed onto the screen I hoped that they were not in it.

I constantly tried to contact them but they didn't answer because their phones were turned off or they had no signal. I hoped that was the reason. For now, I was safe, I just hoped they were too.