It was my son Kevin who brought it to me in the first place. I can't remember what I was doing at the time, but it was something that was perceived as important and not to be put off. Kevin was used to me being busy and told me that it could wait. An hour later I went to him to see what he wanted only to find out that the insect that he had caught had escaped. He told me that it was way too big to fit through the air holes in the top of the jar and that it was impossible for it to get out, but it did.
When I asked him what kind of insect it was he told me that it looked like a grasshopper, but seemed to have parts made of metal, like a robot. He said that he had found it in the back field and that it was injured or he would never have caught it. I really didn't know what to make of it. I have seen him sit for hours like a statue, to catch one of his insect specimens.
I know at the time it did not seem like a big deal so I let it go and told him to show me another one if he could. It took another week for that to happen but he did find another one.
Coming home from a shopping trip to town, I had parked in the driveway and had an armful of groceries heading for the front door when he called me back to see something in the grill of the van. I put the groceries in the house and came back out to see what he found that was so exciting. He had just transferred it into his specimen jar and showed it to me with pride. The plastic grill cover he had taken it from looked like a sharp stone had imbedded itself in the plastic. He assured me that it was the insect that had caused that mark.
When I took a closer look at what was in the jar I realized he was right. There were parts of it that looked like they were made of metal although I have no idea of what kind of metal. He took the jar containing his metal insect in the garage.
He knew that his first catch could not have gotten out of the jar and was making sure that this one wasn't doing the same. He had rigged up a holder for his sealed specimen jar that was in the center of a 15 gallon fish tank filled with water. He also had our Camcorder on a tripod aimed at the tank and had backed that up with a manual wind-up 8 mm movie camera.
Kevin put his specimen in his water sealed storage and came back out to take another look at the grill. I got him to help get the rest of the groceries in the house and he was off to the garage to study his new find. He came back before I was done putting away the groceries saying that the insect was gone and it couldn't be. I went out to see for myself.
That was when I found out about his elaborate holding cell and recording equipment. I was impressed that he had put it all together for the find of one specimen. He showed me the tape and it showed him putting the jar into the holder under water in the aquarium and leaving. Shortly after leaving the sound of bees or some type of flying insect increased for a second or two and then both sound and sight seemed to fade out for about fifteen seconds. They both faded back in the same way they had faded out, but now the jar was empty. Well, not empty, there was air in it before and now it was filled with water and looked even more clear and empty.
I had no explanation for what I saw and said so. He was just staring at me looking deep in thought when his focus seemed to shift to just over my right shoulder and a smile lit up his face. He pointed and headed straight for the old film camera. Taking it off the tripod and checking the wind up key he determined that the camera had wound down and exposed film. He asked me if we could go right back to town and get the film developed, and I couldn't see why not .
After writing a note to Beth and Cindy we drove into town and put in the film for developing, finding out that it would take two weeks to process that type of film. We were able to cut that time down to five days by agreeing to pay the extra Courier fees and then it was a waiting game.
The girls thought that the whole thing was kind of funny, like we were making it up or something and even later that night in bed Beth asked if we were up to something. I was confused about why they didn't believe us, but by then I was scared, and scared takes a lot more of your attention than confused. Kevin wasn't scared yet. Lots of things were still new to him and so far this was a new unexplained thing that he wanted to know more about. Scared would come later.
The waiting game was hell. Work had been a grind for a while and the waiting and thinking were starting to take their toll. The stress showed and on the fifth day I took the day off to wait at the camera store for the courier. Kevin was waiting with me drinking juice and watching. I knew that if I took the day off to wait, there was no point in making him go to school. He would make about as much progress as I would, so we both sat there waiting for the film to arrive. I thought we looked like a couple of cops on a stake out, but that picture sobered me up quickly. The thought of being on a stake out with my son wiped the smile off of my face. The courier driver probably thought it was a little strange when he pulled up and we headed straight for him. I'm sure his first thought was that it was a holdup, but no guns and me with a thirteen year old probably made him realize that a holdup was not what we were about.
We got through the paper work of getting the film and started heading straight home to the garage where the film projector was set up and waiting. I don't know why I thought it, but on route I decided to stop off at the video store where they do foreign film transfers and much to Kevin's disappointment delayed us for another hour to get the film copied to regular VCR format.
The store was a little busy and we normally would have had to wait, but small town business as well as a couple of owed favours had the manager put the film through the system quickly, and although he did not oversee it, he assured us that there had never been a problem transferring that type of film before, so he did not have to watch it to make sure that it went OK. We would have had to wait until the following day for him to have the time to sit through it to make sure, so we OK'd the transfer sight unseen.
At Kevin's urging we made one more stop before heading home to put the original film into my safe deposit box in the bank. I was a little reluctant to do so but Kevin has always seemed to see reason and logic far beyond his years and you could say that he talked me into it.
The girls were waiting for us when we got back, with a movie night style of dinner ready in front of the TV. At the time I thought it was a little over dramatic, knowing that the movie itself was under 10 minutes in length, but wasn't about to say anything since it had seemed like it was a long time since we had done anything in the nature of a real family gathering. Entering teen land has its ups and downs, and one of the downs for a parent is sometimes missing the family gatherings that had made up so much of your life up until teen land. Of course they were giggling and had separate wagers on the film itself, but that was OK. The men folk of the family were on the spot and even though we really didn't know what was on the film, we were willing to have a go at the sport being offered.
All the joking died once the film was played. The girls made numerous comments that we were putting them on and that it was a great trick of photography to make it seem real. The teasing was fun, but it was obvious that it was only half hearted, because they knew that there was no way we could have pulled off what was on the film without a couple of million dollars worth of computer animation hardware and software.
It started as the previous Camcorder film had, but from a slightly different angle. Kevin was seen putting the specimen jar into the aquarium, making sure that everything was OK and leaving the room. There was a minute or two of basically a still shot of the aquarium and then the noise started. From above came a swarm of bees seeming to fly as one towards the Camcorder from behind. It seemed like they were very careful to come up on the Camcorder from the back to land on it. They then crawled forward to the lens of the camera and formed a living shield over the surface of it. They worked their way in from the outside of the lens and microphone and when they were done there was a mass of bees covering both.
When that was accomplished and all light and sound were shut off to the camera's eyes and ears more insects appeared from above. There were a variety of insects descending from the roof, but in the center of this were at least a dozen dragon flies carrying smaller insects. They flew directly to the tank and deposited their cargo on the surface of the water. The insects they were carrying were then recognized. They were whirligig beetles who honoured their names and spun around on the surface of the water in tiny circles. After a couple of seconds of whirling they dove and lined up on the lid of the specimen jar. As a group they gripped the lid of the jar and started swimming.
The lid revolved in a counter clockwise direction driven by the beetles until the water rushed in belching the trapped air and the grasshopper with it, to the surface as it filled with water. Once their injured comrade was free they reversed the process, put the lid on and came to the surface where they were all picked back up, including the grasshopper, and flown away by the dragon flies.
All of the other insects were gone before the bees started their orderly retreat. It was like watching the film backwards seeing those bees. They cleared the lens and microphone of the Camcorder and then flew off towards the ceiling. All of this was done without the Camcorder filming one of the offending flyers.
It may have been my imagination but the whole time I was watching the film I had the feeling that I was being watched. At the end of it all I thought I saw a lone dragonfly leave the upper beam and head out the small window at the top of the living room..
We were all a little shaken by what we had seen. I saw that Kevin was starting to lose that child like enthusiasm for a new project and it seemed like a little bit of fear crept into the corner of his eye. The girls seemed rattled, like they do when they see a spider or a snake, but I was starting to gain a real solid relationship with fear. I hope that I hid it well, and joked with them to the best of my ability, but I had already felt the knife's edge and it was growing sharper.
I locked up the house that night as I usually do, but with far less confidence. My mind kept going back to insects that were working together, regardless of species, for one common goal and I wondered what good door and window locks could do about something that small working as a well tuned army. Fleas, ticks, or termites are small enough to crawl through a key hole, and that isn't getting anywhere near the microscopic level that I know insects can go.
It took me hours to finally get to sleep. I spent a while convincing my wife that we were all safe and that nothing was going to happen to us, but in the end I don't think that either of us were really convinced.
I don't know what time it was that I woke from a bad dream that shredded upon waking and wandered the house for half the night afraid of anything crawling. I went down to play the tape again and found that the tape was gone. It was left in the VCR but when I pressed play nothing happened. I ejected the tape to find that the cartridge was fine with only traces of what looked like mangled tape in it. There was no tape left in the plastic case, almost like it was eaten by termites or something. The precision of the removal of the injured grass hopper kept coming to mind, painting another picture of termites or ants or something tiny marching in and eating the video tape. It took hours of wandering around after that to calm down enough to go back to bed and my sleep was filled with dreams of insects, crustaceans and crawfish.
Beth brought me out of those deep dark places filled with the sound of insects scurrying in a hurry. She came in with a coffee in hand knowing I am next to useless before having had my first coffee. She usually leaves me alone for the first 10 minutes or so to sort of come round enough to make mono-syllable conversation, but that was not a luxury to be had on that morning. After watching me take my first sip of hot coffee she told me to get up and come take a took at the kids with her. She sounded and looked really worried and that forced me awake in an instant. Slipping on my robe I followed her down the hall to Cindy's room.
Cindy seemed pale and was breathing much too shallow for my liking, and as Beth said nothing could wake her up. I wanted to shake her awake or maybe give her a slap to bring her around but Beth told me she had tried to wake up Cindy so a shaking or slap would do nothing if her mother had already tried and failed.
Kevin was in the same state as his sister, slightly pale, very shallow breathing and nothing I could do would wake him. I did notice two small marks on his neck and later confirmed that Cindy had them too. They looked like spider bites.
We bundled them up and packed them in the van to be rushed off to the hospital, but were thwarted in that plan. The engine would not turn over and after lifting the hood I saw that all the rubber in the engine compartment, from fuel lines to ignition wires, was gone.
Leaving the kids in the van I headed straight back into the house to phone an ambulance but got no dial tone. The phone was dead. Having little choice in the matter we put the kids back in their own beds. I told Beth that I'd be back with help as soon as I could and explained that even if there was no rubber on any of the bicycles I could still ride one down to the neighbours and phone the hospital.
When I got to the garage door it was covered in wasps. It looked like a moving carpet had covered the door and it was obvious that it was meant to keep me out. I thought about trying to open the door, but figured there was no way that I could get the door open and inside without getting seriously stung. Even if I did get the door open and inside without getting multiple stings, there was no guarantee that the garage wasn't filled with bees and wasps. I was about to turn away when I noticed a change in the carpet like covering of wasps on the door. It took a second or two to emerge from the pattern, but as I watched small areas of the door cleared of insects and showed the white of the painted door underneath. The pattern of cleared white resolved further and suddenly it was apparent that I was looking at printing. NO LEAVE cleared further until there was no question that it was writing and what the message was. I stared dumb founded for a couple of seconds at it and then it changed again and read All will be OK. It took almost everything I had to put on a brave face to come back into the house and Beth.
I need not have bothered. I found her in a semi comatose state just like the kids, on the kitchen floor. Barely being able to see with the tears blurring my sight I carried her up to our bed and made her as comfortable as possible.
The rest of that day and into the night was spent looking after my charges trying to make them as comfortable as possible with cool compresses. Much of that time is a bit of a blur as it was spent in tears and frustration, not being able to call a hospital or doctor and no way to transport them to the hospital to try to find out what had bit them and how to treat it. Around midnight the power went off but I was semi expecting that so it was no big surprise. I went to the living room to look across the road to see if the power was out everywhere only to discover that I was the only one without power.
That was not the real surprise however. As I was about to turn away I saw movement in light from the corner of my eye. I watched in amazement as thousands of fireflies flew up to the picture window and started walking on the glass in moving circles and patterns. I watched for a while trying to make sense of the patterns taking place on the picture window when the patterns started changing and formed words.
I don't know how long I sat there reading the messages that were printed in light, nor can I even tell you all of what they told me. The basics of it was that I was communicating with visitors who were studying our planet and wished to be left alone to complete their studies. They informed me of a couple of projects that they were running and a few of them were total surprises. Most of them I should have figured out, as they were just a little too logical and ecologically friendly to have come from the corporate minds that were claiming responsibility for them.
Some of the things that they told me I did not agree with and some time was spent in arguing the merits of going public with this information. In the end however I was given a choice of releasing this information or keeping my family healthy and safe. Not much of a choice, seeing as there was no way that I could protect myself or my family from being bitten or stung by any one of a thousand species of insects.
In the end I was totally convinced of the merits of staying quiet about what I know and it seemed like only moments after saying that I would agree to their terms I felt a sharp sting on my neck and instantly drifted off into oblivion.
When I awoke it was to three pair of bright, happy, shining eyes. Beth, Cindy and Kevin were looking down at me welcoming me back from dreamland. I felt better than I could remember in a long time. I know that I should have been upset about it all but a serene acceptance of the whole thing is more of what I truly felt. It seemed that my enforced sleep left me with a better understanding of some areas of confusion, and I accepted the things that I was told at face value.
Kevin told me that some kind of arrangement had been worked out with the visitors and that we had agreed to let them use our garage any time without interfering with anything that they wanted to do in there. I was about to argue that I had made no such agreement, but realized that it was all for the good and if they had wanted to harm us it would have taken very little real effort on their part to do so. The power and phone had been returned to working order and everything seemed back to normal.
It was rather difficult to keep a straight face for the reporters I had to face that morning when I went outside. The surprise was easy of course. Not only did I have the shock of seeing crews of camera people and reporters on my front lawn, but the view they showed me of my own back field was startling to say the least. The surprised expression that I had worn was pretty easy to keep on my face and I don't think anyone but the kids and Beth really saw the smirk that was hiding behind the expression I was wearing on my face.
My thoughts kept returning to the original grasshopper as I told them that I had no idea what it all meant, or how the crop circles got there. I don't know if they believed me or not. The fame has pretty well died down now, but most of the locals still look at me a little strange. They refer to me as the circle man when they think that I can't hear them talking. Who am I to argue with them when i had biggest field of crop circles this side of England and still have an 8 mm film to rival the X-files in my safe deposit box.
The End.