by John Koloen
Insects: Specimen
A Novel
John Koloen
Watchfire Press
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
About the Author
Copyright © 2016 John Koloen. All rights reserved.
Published by Watchfire Press.
This book is a work of fiction. Similarities to actual events, places, persons or other entities are coincidental.
Watchfire Press
www.watchfirepress.com
www.watchfirepress.com/jk
Cover design by Kit Foster
www.kitfosterdesign.com
Insects: Specimen/John Koloen. – 1st ed.
Print ISBN: 978-1-940708-74-4
e-ISBN: 978-1-940708-73-7
1
“YOU HAVE TO hear this, boss,” Cody Boyd said as he burst into Dr. Howard Duncan’s office at Biodynamism, Inc.
Duncan, who had been reviewing a spreadsheet on his desktop computer, gave Boyd the annoyed look of someone who had better things to do then engage in chit-chat.
“Ever hear of knocking?” he asked peevishly.
“Sorry,” the young researcher said disingenuously as he slipped into a chair facing Duncan. “You’ll want to hear this.”
Duncan raised his eyes above the black frame of his reading glasses and frowned.
“Jason says that Dr. Thomas finally left rehab Monday. He’s back at work, after, what, three weeks?”
“Have you seen him?” Duncan said, his interest piqued.
“Jason has.”
“How’s he look?”
“Jason said he wore a mask and he’s got an eye patch.”
“Mask?”
“Yeah, I asked him about that. He said it was some kind of mesh. He thinks it’s because of the skin grafts.”
Duncan hadn’t seen Nolan Thomas since he was evacuated from Brazil with serious injuries from an encounter with a colony of Reptilus blaberii, the part insect, part reptile that had become Duncan’s obsession and his ticket out of academia and into the world of commercial research. He had tried to contact Thomas via email, texts and phone calls but never got a response. Duncan didn’t take it personally. It seemed to him to be a perfectly normal reaction for anyone whose face had been mutilated.
“I wonder if he’ll talk to me now,” Duncan said.
“I don’t know,” Boyd said skeptically. “Jason said he’s the only one who’s seen him in his lab.”
“I suppose sooner or later he’ll have to meet with his people. How else can he run his lab?”
“Jason says he’d been doing it with email, mostly. He said Dr. Thomas has a lisp now and he’s hard to understand sometimes. Maybe that’s why he didn’t call you.”
“Could be,” Duncan said absently, his attention now focused on reports filed the previous day by his two junior lab assistants.
Malcolm Chang and Jacob Winston shared a cramped efficiency apartment in the company’s dormitory for single employees and had become close friends with a shared interest in online gaming, which they indulged constantly. Winston hoped to turn pro one day.
Both had been assigned to Duncan’s lab by the division administrator, Gabriel Cox, to assist him as he studied the vicious insects. Aside from the fact that they were observing what Duncan considered to be one of the most dangerous species known to man, they were bored by the slow pace of the work.
“Anything else?” Duncan asked.
“You know, I can’t imagine how you get over something like what happened to him.”
“I don’t understand.”
“How do you recover? I mean, if my face was all chopped up I wouldn’t want to see anybody.”
“I can see that. But he’s also got his work, and that’s a powerful driver for someone like him.”
“What about you? What would you do if it was your face?”
“Well, it’s not my face, number one, and, number two, it’s a stupid question. I have no idea how I’d react and neither do you, and speculating about it is just pointless.”
Boyd bristled momentarily.
“I think I’d become a hermit,” Boyd said.
“Do you have a point?” Duncan said, annoyed. “You know, if you’re looking for something to do…”
“No boss, I got plenty to do.”
“Good, I was afraid for a minute that maybe you didn’t.”
“Say no more. It’s nearly lunchtime anyway.”
“Bring me a burger and fries when you come back, would you?”
As he left the office, carefully closing the door behind him, Boyd told himself that he would not let Duncan’s attitude bring him down. After all, today was his twenty-seventh birthday. He was still young enough to think it important and worth celebrating, while Duncan was forty-five going on sixty—or so it seemed to Boyd. Despite having worked together for three years, the young man didn’t fault his boss for not acknowledging his birthday. The man was a computer illiterate and had never bothered to spend the fifteen minutes it would take to manage his own online calendar where he could easily have entered a reminder. Boyd had maintained it when they were in academia but now that they were at Biodynamism and he was Duncan’s senior research assistant, the job fell to Chang. Chang was younger than Boyd and easy going, though formal in meetings. He always raised his hand before speaking. Jacob Winston was soft-spoken and generally quiet in meetings. In the months since he and Duncan had been at Biodynamism, Chang had become Boyd’s favorite. It was Chang who greeted him with “Happy Birthday, boss” when they arrived at the lab that morning. This was Boyd’s first supervisory role, and so far he had enjoyed it.
Boyd couldn’t help but grin as they ate celebratory breakfast tacos at the company cafeteria where employees shared meals leavened with gossip and rumors. Even though everyone who w
orked at Biodynamism signed confidentiality agreements and was instructed at employee orientation not to engage in rumor-mongering or speculation about the work being done there, the employee manual couldn’t prohibit human nature.
“I thought I put you in charge of Duncan’s calendar,” Boyd said with mock disapproval.
“You did, and I do it,” Chang responded guardedly.
“Well, why isn’t there a reminder about my birthday?”
“There is,” Chang said. “He just doesn’t look at it. I have to remind him to look at his calendar. You want to get his attention, you have to talk to him. Isn’t that what you used to do for him when you were working on your master’s?”
“Yeah, but I didn’t care if he read it. My job was to make sure it was updated.”
“Maybe that’s the attitude I should take.”
“No way,” Boyd insisted. “Do as I say, not as I do.”
2
“I HATE THIS,” Jason Gruber, senior research assistant to Nolan Thomas, complained to Boyd as they left a lecture hall where company officials chastened senior staff about the failure of staff to properly fill out time records. It was a new system that required employees to record which project they were working on in fifteen-minute increments so the billing department could provide better data to the organizations that sponsored their projects.
“This new system, I hate it,” Gruber repeated.
“I don’t like it either,” Boyd said. “It’s stupid.”
“I know. It’s like they expect us to stop whatever we’re doing every fifteen minutes to type in a code. Who does that? I mean, we’re supposed to be this great research organization and here we are spending more time on accounting than our projects.”
Boyd had become friends with Gruber since arriving at Biodynamism. They were like two veterans who had shared the terror of the battlefield only to survive with an experience few in the company could relate to. Gruber had gotten the worst of it. He had unintentionally killed a colleague and it weighed on him whenever he thought about those days in the Brazilian rainforest when Reptilus blaberus had stalked them. Boyd, who had witnessed the death, offered reassurances whenever the dark cloud of guilt came over his friend. He reminded him of how he had risked his life to save another member of their group.
“But he died anyway, right? The bugs got him.”
“That wasn’t your fault.”
“I know, I know,” Gruber lamented. “I just can’t help it.”
“How many times do we have to go over this?” Boyd whispered forcefully as they walked down several hallways and out the administrative building to their labs, which were housed in the same two-story building on the western edge of the campus.
“I’m sorry,” Gruber said plaintively. “I know I should be able to get past this, but I just can’t. My therapist is thinking I should go on antidepressants for my PTSD. The cognitive therapy isn’t working like she thought it would.”
“I wish I could help you,” Boyd said. “I got over my PTSD pretty quick after I realized why I was so angry.”
At thirty-five, Gruber’s world had been turned upside down during the week he’d spent in Brazil. Taller and more muscular than the six-foot Boyd, he’d always thought of himself as confident and capable, able to solve problems of any kind. His experience with blaberus changed that, made him doubt himself in ways that he’d never previously imagined. He’d gone from being someone who stood out to someone who couldn’t decide where to stand. It wasn’t difficult to hide his inner turmoil from his colleagues, thought he didn’t even try to hide it from Boyd.
“I admire you for that, you know, recognizing your problem and thereby solving it,” Gruber said.
“It’s not the same. You had it worse. Hell, if I’d killed someone…aw, shit, I shouldn’t have said that.”
“No, it’s OK. The therapist says talking about it helps me desensitize. And I know, intellectually, if I hadn’t done what I did Greg would have died a slow, agonizing death. I just can’t work through the emotions, at least not yet.”
“Don’t quit trying,” Boyd said sympathetically as they entered their secure building.
“Well, you know who’s got it worse than me?”
“Who?”
“Dr. Thomas.”
3
HOWARD DUNCAN THOUGHT he had everything he needed when he first saw his new lab at Biodynamism. Everything gleamed. The bench tops gleamed. The cabinets gleamed. The floors gleamed. Everything was first rate. But setting up a lab for the first time was complicated and involved as much accounting as it did science. He had to learn Biodynamism’s systems, its administrative software, its human resources department and the organization’s rules. Unlike academia, where he was accustomed to discussing and sharing ideas and findings, it seemed that every lab on the campus was compartmentalized from every other lab. As part of his orientation, he visited many of the labs in his building—the first and last time he would set foot in most of them. The lab belonging to Nolan Thomas, the lab he most wanted to see, was off-limits. Something about the contracts he worked under. It didn’t matter, because Duncan was still excited about his lab and the chance it offered to study and breed his captive insects.
There were only four adult specimens, three of which he believed to be male and one female. The males were four inches long and a little more than an inch in diameter. The female was somewhat longer and thicker with shorter antennae. All were housed in glass aquaria. He treated them like delicate flowers despite their loathsome appearance. Anxious to study their behavior in captivity, hoping eventually to understand how they communicated, how they were organized, how long they lived, and a million other things, his primary directive was to have them reproduce. The company CEO impressed this on him at their first meeting.
Galen Mazur was a driven and commanding figure despite his nearly sixty years. Energetic, trim and younger looking than his age, he had always been energized by challenges, such as turning the once moribund bioscience company into a booming operation fueled by a portfolio of corporate and government projects, some of them so highly classified that even to name them would be a violation of federal law, employees were told.
Mazur spoke grandly but vaguely about the company’s work and how far it had come since the days it had been churning out generic medications under contract with big pharmaceutical outfits.
“These are exciting times for us, Dr. Duncan,” he said enthusiastically as Duncan admired Mazur’s sumptuous office. Sitting in front of the huge, custom-made desk, its top devoid of anything that would interrupt the visual appeal of its highly polished exotic hardwoods, Duncan felt reassured that he had come to the right place. Money was no object here. No longer would he be subservient to funding agencies.
“I realize you’ve recently arrived and everything is new to you, but your project is extremely important to us. As you know, we went to great lengths to bring you and your specimens here.”
“I’m very grateful for that,” Duncan said absently, still drinking in details of the impressive office.
Mazur smiled.
“Impressed, aren’t you?”
“Oh, yeah,” Duncan said admiringly. “I’ve never seen anything like this office. It’s like something out of the movies.”
“Well, the company rewards success and we’ve been very successful, as I expect you to be. So, tell me, briefly, what are your plans for your specimens?”
Until this point, Duncan had been more attentive to his admiration for the office than the conversation. He snapped out of it quickly, realizing that this meeting was not just about pleasantries.
“The specimens are doing well. They are taking food and so far they seem to be getting along with each other.”
“That’s good. When do you think you’ll start breeding them?”
Duncan was surprised by the question, as if he had the power to make them reproduce. At this point he was happy that the creatures hadn’t killed each other, though he had no reason to
believe that they would be belligerent toward each other. Everything he’d seen of them in the wild suggested that they were highly cooperative and organized. How they behaved in captivity, however, was a complete unknown.
“That’s a good question,” Duncan stammered. “What we first have to do is determine whether they will reproduce on their own. They are ovoviviparous and what we believe is that they are prolific, but the only person I know who studied them was unsuccessful at breeding them. Of course, his facilities were primitive compared to ours. But that was before they overcame the limitation that killed off most of the juveniles. That was before what happened in Brazil.”
“So, you’re starting from scratch.”
“Yes,” Duncan said, smiling.
“What’s your timeline?”
“I don’t have one at this time. We’re just getting started.”
“The reason I ask is because one of Dr. Thomas’s projects depends on the success of your breeding program. Your project and his are very important to us, and I will be monitoring both of them closely. You understand, results are important here,” Mazur said matter-of-factly.
“Yes, of course,” Duncan said, suddenly perplexed. Was the honeymoon over before it had started?
Before he could say another word, a large flat-screen monitor descended from the ceiling.
“I’m sorry, I have a teleconference coming up. Thanks for coming by,” Mazur said, turning his attention to the monitor.
Duncan rose awkwardly and moved slowly toward the double doors that opened into a spacious lobby. On his way, he paused to look at photos and certificates on a wall. Some of them were military decorations, others were photos of Mazur shaking hands with important politicians, and still others were of him in military gear, his collars emblazoned with silver eagles. Looking back, he saw the CEO watching him, as if urging him to leave the office. Duncan got the hint and moved quickly, not certain whether the meeting had been a success. The place would take some getting used to, he thought.
4
IN THE TIME it took Duncan to walk from the administrative building to his lab office, his divisional administrator, Gabriel Cox, buttonholed him for a meeting. The two had met several times since Duncan’s start at the company but the meetings had been scheduled. This one was not.