Extinction Level Event
Page 2
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.
Even though he knew that all of his cattle were vaccinated, inadvertently one of them and was a mutant and when the disease showed up, it immediately picked up the scent and struck with full force against that one cow. He lost the cow, had the entire farm quarantined for a period of over six months, and had to pay a hefty fine for “keeping unvaccinated” cattle on the farm against the U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations. He was pissed, upset, frustrated, and embarrassed by that episode and fervently hoped that nothing similar would ever happen again. The best he could do was get every cow a second vaccination and vaccinate every new one that he bought, just to be sure. New calves would be vaccinated multiple times soon after birth. He makes sure that none stray too far from the ranch, and put up extra tall and sturdy fences all around his cattle lands to make sure that all the cattle stay close together. Yet, four years henceforth, Greg Miles still does not know where the virus originated from or whether it will strike again. He also doesn’t know if one of his cows is carrying a carrier form of the virus, which could be a threat to new calves or newcomers to the farm; in addition to still being deadly to humans. All of these problems leave him worrying in bed during many nights, unable to get more than a few hours of sleep. However, for the moment, he simply uses his free time to relax on the farm
, go boating on occasion, and hope for the best.