“This is cool and all but this isn’t why you brought me here, is it.” It was more of a statement than a question.
“Not so much,” he said as he bent over, rooting around and under a small mountain of sweaters. He finally pulled out the prize he was searching for. It was an old suitcase that had seen better days and a box roughly the size of a football, not the shape mind you, just the size.
“Any chance you’ve got a hand grenade in there?” I asked him hopefully, pointing to the small box.
“Nothing quite as explosive, literally.”
“Figuratively then? Really?”
“I just remembered it and I thought it might be relevant. Dad gave me this box and the suitcase when I was 15. He told me this story about how his father gave them to him to eventually give to his, at the time, unborn grandkids. Grandpa told Dad to never open these and that he should give these to his kids because they would know what to do with them.” “Wait, so Papa John gave this stuff to Dad, with the explicit directions not to open them, so that he could give them to his future kids to open?” “Yeah, that’s the gist of it.”
“And you’ve been hauling this stuff around since then? But I’ve never seen it and I used to snoop around your room all the time.” “Nice Mike, so much for the sanctum of privacy.”
I shrugged my shoulders. “Hey, I was just doing what all younger brothers did.”
“Yeah, and you weren’t my first younger brother. I made the bottom of my closet into a trapdoor.” “Damn, you just keep racking up the respect points. So what else you got hidden in here?” I asked as I started tapping my right foot on the closet floor listening for the telltale sign of hollowness. Alarm flashed across Ron’s face. “So you do have something here!” I said, redoubling my efforts.
“You tap one more time and I will take the tires off the truck I’m letting you borrow.”
My foot hovered in the air. I was close, but I would leave it at that. Who knew what treasure trove he had hidden? I wouldn’t doubt it at all if it was gold bullion.
He first opened up the suitcase. There were stacks of notebooks and loose-leaf papers. They looked pretty brittle to the touch. I bent to grab a piece and the corner broke off in my hand.
“Careful,” Ron chided me.
“I barely touched it,” I said in defense.
“This stuff is almost a hundred years old.”
“Ron, I’m not getting the importance, especially now, why you’re showing me this stuff.” “Let me back track. Gram Marissa.”
“Oh I loved Gram Marissa, she always smelled like licorice and honey,” I said fondly.
“She did sort of, didn’t she?” Ron said, getting that faraway look in his eyes.
Grandma Marissa had a smile on her face every day up until the day she died; it was a trait I had often desired to emulate but I always seemed to come up woefully short. Either her faith in mankind was much stronger than mine, or much more ignorant. It was better to think the former, it made her seem a much stronger person.
“Anyway,” Ron started up again. “Gram Marissa’s dad was a doctor, actually a physicist.” “Really? I didn’t know that.” I was astonished, that was a pretty lofty position and I was fairly certain that I had never heard of the man.
“Stop interrupting me.”
“Just because you’re my big brother doesn’t make you the boss of me.”
“What are you, two?”
“Just messing around.”
“The whole stress thing?”
“It’s what I do.”
“Any chance you’ll grow out of it?”
“Pretty far in the game now to think about changing the rules.”
“Fair enough, you ready for the rest of the story?”
I nodded and twirled my hand around to let him know it was OK to proceed.
“Alright, so Gram Marissa’s dad was Dr. Hugh Mann.”
“Like Hu-man?” I asked.
“I thought you weren’t going to interrupt anymore?”
“I never said that, you did.” “Fine,” He said, a little perturbed. “Yes, like Hu-man, only with a Hugh, H…U…G…H, not H…U.” “Sounds the same.”
“Mike, shut up.”
I nodded again, I had yet to agree to anything though.
“So Dr. Mann discovered these bugs that under the microscopes of his time bore an eerie similarity to the human form.” “No way, he was the one that discovered Hugh-Mannites? Why aren’t we rich or something? I read all about them on the Internet, how they were really just a concocted boogie-man to raise awareness about hygiene back then.” “Oh they were the boogie-man alright, but they weren’t concocted. Didn’t you read between the lines, the similarity of time lines between the eradication of the dust mites…” “And the Spanish Flu? Wow, I never put it together until now.” “It’s all in these papers.”
“Now don’t get me wrong, this is super interesting shit, and I’m not even pretending.”
“Thanks,” Ron said drily.
“Wait,” a conspiracy light bulb flickering above my head. “How does this tie into the H1N1?” “Now you’re getting it,” Ron smiled grimly. “I started reading these notes right after Dad gave them to me.” I looked questioningly at the brittle parchment. Ron understood immediately.
“I had them photocopied.”
I nodded and he continued. “So our great grand dad was one of the first to put it together. When dust mites died so did people.” “So the flu was no flu.”
“And they said when Mom dropped you on your head you’d never be right. I thought they might be mostly wrong.” “Keep talking, funny one, just remember I’m borrowing your truck and you won’t be there to see what happens to it.” His previous smile fell from his face. “Anything happens to that truck…”
“Whoa, whoa, big brother, I didn’t say anything was going to happen, I merely implied it.” “Yeah, that makes me feel SO much better.”
“I’m just messing with you, nothing is gonna happen to your baby.”
He eyed me unmercifully, we both subconsciously knew my last statement was a lie.
“The doctor realized when the military became interested that his discovery could now be used for nefarious purposes.” “Big word, been using a thesaurus again?”
“Bad, asshole, it means bad.”
“Oh I know what it means, it just seems like you were dropping large words just to do it. So even back then the government was a little shady?” “Remember the USS Maine?”
“Touché. I still don’t know if I’m putting all the dots together. So the gummint…”
“Gummint?”
“Yeah, just my white trash way of saying government.”
“Whatever, how many times did Mom drop you?”
“So the gov-ern-ment,” I said slowly, making sure to over-enunciate each word. “They got a hold of our great granddad’s research and they did what any self-respecting government would do. They figured out a way to use the bugs as a means of mass destruction on our enemies. Is that a fair assessment?” “Well, yes and no. They definitely took an interest after the Spanish Flu wreaked its havoc. There is even evidence to suggest that they ran tests with it around the time of WWII but besides the deaths of 1918 that were caused by accident, there is nothing to suggest that they did anything with it after that.” “Would they wait a hundred years? And why use it against their own…” I stopped mid-thought. “ Someone else got a hold of it.” Ron put his index finger to his nose to let me know I had nailed it.
“So someone tainted the world’s supply of flu shots. But who and for what purpose?”
“Hell, take your pick little brother. The John Birch Society, the One World Government, the Illuminati, the fucking Girl Scouts, any one of them. To what purpose? Well, that depends on which one of the psychotic groups got a hold of it. Just plain anarchy, control of resources, not enough cookie sales. I can’t imagine they expected this much collateral damage but there you have it.” “What else do his notes say?” I asked.