****
In the West wing of the Pentagon, Fred Whitmore assembled his East Coast Bio-Terrorist Crisis Response Team to debrief them and consider further strategy with regard to the Virginia Jant Incident, as it had become unofficially dubbed by the team. 'J' for Jerry, and 'ant' for the monstrous ant-like creatures discovered in Jerry's garage.
Two dozen team members sat down together around the long wooden conference-room table. Fred Whitmore sat at the head of the table, a huge, menacing bear of a man. Dr. Mark Sheffield closed the padded sound-proof conference room doors and sat down to the right of Whitmore, signaling the start of the meeting and providing a nice buffer between Whitmore and the eight-person science team that sat to the right of Sheffield. Major Craig Landers sat to the left of Whitmore, along with his investigation sub-leads. Like Landers, several other team members were in military uniform, but most including Whitmore and Sheffield wore dark suits and ties: uniforms in disguise.
"Let's have your weekly status report, Major," growled Whitmore, as he shot Landers a stern look.
"Yes sir. We have now definitively established the fact that Jerry Green has totally disappeared. Since the incident three months ago there has been no sign of him whatsoever."
"He has totally fallen off the grid?" Whitmore asked incredulously. How was that possible nowadays?
"He was hardly on the grid at all to begin with for the three years that he lived in Virginia, and there is also no legitimate record of his existence prior to three years ago. He made use of cleverly forged information. While in Virginia he has had no apparent employment other than teaching of a few elementary biology courses at several University of Virginia campuses using several different names and several Social Security numbers. The photos of him that we gathered aren't of much use; the man has more head and facial hair than Saint Nickolas. He avoided Facebook and other social media. He has no credit cards or mortgage; he apparently pays for everything with cash drawn from inaccessible Swiss Bank accounts."
"What word did you just use, Major?" Whitmore interjected in an ominously quiet tone. Several people at the table moved back from it nervously.
"Sorry?" Landers asked, confused. He had only worked for Whitmore since shortly before the Jant Incident, and was still getting used to the big man's wide mood swings.
"Inaccessible. Just now you spoke of 'inaccessible' Swiss bank accounts, Major," Whitmore explained. "The word 'inaccessible' is unacceptable in regard to information that we need to have. You need to follow the damn money Major!"
"But sir, we can't get Swiss bank information!"
Whitmore shot up to stand and tower over Landers, and slammed both of his huge fists down on the table thunderously. "WE CAN'T GET? WE CAN'T GET? Bull shit! We're the fucking NSA! We can get anything we want from anyone we want! Get that information, Major, if you have to scrap half of Switzerland to get it!"
"Yes sir," Land replied meekly.
Whitmore took a deep, calming breath. His tirade over, he settled back down into his chair and resumed his fake smile. "I want Jerry Green, Major, if you have to go through hell or even Switzerland to find him! Your investigations thus far have gotten us nowhere, Major, and we simply must have more progress. Now let's move on to our ant problem from a science viewpoint. Your report, Dr. Chin?"
Chin, a tiny young oriental-American man, pulled a small glass jar from his briefcase and placed it on the table in front of him, his hands shaking so badly after the Whitmore rant that the jar almost toppled over. In it a large brown insect walked about incessantly on six sturdy legs, waving it's antennae about as if tasting the air. A live jant! "Our preliminary assessment has proven correct, Director Whitmore. Extensive genetic analysis confirms that this specimen is undoubtedly a member of order hymenoptera, family formicidae."
"It's an ant," Sheffield quickly translated, hoping to avoid another Whitmore tantrum. Sheffield's primary function was to interface with the science staff for Whitmore. His PhD was in environmental science with some specialization in plant biology, but he knew enough general science to competently explain most science concepts to Whitmore.
"We already knew that the damn things are ants!" Whitmore complained. "What kind of ants?"
"A totally new species altogether," Chin replied, grinning widely.
"I'm not an entomologist, Dr. Chin, but aren't there already thousands of known species of ants?" Sheffield asked.
"World-wide more than twelve thousand species have been described at last count, Dr. Sheffield, but it is also estimated that there are roughly ten thousand more ant species that are still unclassified."
"And this is one of those?" Whitmore injected.
"We don't think so," Chin explained. "These ants have features not found in any known insect, features that thus far we have not been able to understand in terms of their function."
"They're mutants?" Whitmore asked.
"Most interestingly they are not!" stated Chin excitedly. "Not in the usual sense of the term. The creatures resemble ants in terms of outward appearance and basic genetic framework, but some differences are so great that it would have taken tens or hundreds of millions of years to develop them through the normal random gene mutation process of evolution. Ants first emerged as a distinct family more than a hundred million years ago and have since developed many variations, but no known variations even hint at some of the features found in these creatures."
"What are its defining features?" Sheffield asked.
"As was immediately apparent, the workers are extraordinarily large, have incredibly large and powerful mandibles, and the toughest exoskeletons that I have ever seen," Chin noted.
"Humph," grunted Whitmore. He and most of his team had felt the pinch of those of those mandibles when they searched Green's property and it wasn't pleasant. The welts had persisted for weeks. Nightmares of being bitten by the nasty creatures persisted longer. And the damn things were certainly hard to crush or poison. But all of this was old news.
"That doesn't sound so very odd." noted Sheffield.
"True enough. The odd and unprecedented feature is that a full tenth of their body weight is neural in nature." Chin paused to let his statement sink in.
"Neural as in brain cells?" Sheffield asked after a few moments as his jaw dropped open in shock. He had himself dissected several jant bodies, but hadn't the background to identify even normal physiology. The mysterious greyish matter filling most of the large head segment was actually a brain?
"Close enough, according to my colleagues," said Chin. "These are tiny brains in an absolute sense, surely, but they are incredibly huge in proportion to each tiny creature; much larger than any previously known organism."
"The energy expenditure to maintain such nervous systems would be significant, and would normally register as a highly negative trait from an evolutionary standpoint," noted Sheffield. "Hence insects have never evolved large nervous systems naturally. Various chemical relationships normally control the actions of insects and other tiny creatures. Tiny brains are useless. Small birds, rodents, and reptiles have the smallest brains that are of any practical use. Brains are totally extraneous for normal insects. What do we know about the brains of these creatures?"
"The synapse density is fantastic," added Dr. Harm, their lead neurologist. "Several times that of humans."
"To serve what purpose?" asked Sheffield.
"We have no idea," admitted Chin. "That could take years of behavioral research to determine, maybe longer, if we can find and preserve enough live specimens to research. We still have several thousand live workers and a few drones in our lab, but no queens to propagate more specimens. The ants we have should have already died of old age, but they have not. I am intrigued by their brain structures and longevity, but I'm even more intrigued by how these ants got that way."
"Was it Green's Lamarckian process?" Sheffield asked. "Could these ants be an example of that?" The Government verified Green's Lamarckian theory, but decided to black-out all ne
ws of its existence. It was argued that public morale would be significantly degraded if the existence of Lamarckism became known. Lamarckism was a huge game-changer that needed to be kept secret until a viable Government response to it was formulated.
"It was not Lamarckism," voiced Dr. Samuelsson, an older, grey haired, sour-faced woman that specialized in genetics. "Not even decades of Green's Lamarckism would account for genetic changes on this grand a scale. In the long term Lamarckism is a greater danger to us than climate change; it could destabilize the genetic foundations of life on Earth with disastrous consequences. But what we are seeing here is immediate massive direct modifications to genes, done with precision and intent."
"Are you saying that it had to be gene splicing?" Sheffield asked.
"Most definitely," confirmed Samuelsson. "Gene design and splicing far beyond what we think of as cutting edge science. An order of magnitude beyond anything I've ever seen or read about. I'd give my right arm to understand how it was done in a garage laboratory."
Whitmore shot Larson an angry glance. The Major had blabbed to the rest of the team about destroying the genetic research laboratory in the garage, and the topic had become a constant distraction ever since.
"Yes, too bad no notes were preserved," added Sheffield, "but we need to move on."
"As I have stated at previous meetings, I don't think there were any notes," said Larson. "My troops searched the garage and house thoroughly before resorting to fire. Green and any notes were long gone, my men were under vicious jant attack, and many jants were obviously fleeing the scene. We had no choice, we had to counter attack and destroy everything. We had to destroy as many of those biologically hazardous creatures as possible. That's standard protocol."
"Which Green probably knew," said Whitmore. "I think we were played for suckers. We destroyed his lab for him at taxpayer expense. While we destroyed the evidence against him he fled from the scene through underground tunnels conveniently built by his little ant friends."
Sheffield shuttered. Too late they discovered a crude quarter-mile long tunnel that ran from the house and garage to a car-equipped escape point hidden in thick woodland. It had to have taken millions of jants several months to construct it. How the hell had Green gotten them to do that?
"As did the jants," added Chin. "Standard protocol might not work for this super-organism. We don't know what these ants are capable of. The nervous systems of the jants were engineered by Green for some unknown purpose. We desperately need Green or Green's notes."
"This is the twenty-first century," noted Whitmore. "His notes could have all been on a tiny thumb-drive that he took with him. But he must have had collaborators for us to find and interrogate."
"Green apparently acted alone and we found no computers or other electronic devices in the wreckage," noted Larson.
"I can't imagine doing genetic research without huge banks of linked computers, not to mention dozens of supporting staff," voiced Samuelsson.
"Cloud computing could eliminate the necessity for banks of dedicated computers," noted Sheffield.
"I hadn't thought of that," Samuelsson admitted. "But where are his collaborating researchers? Where are his lab technicians?"
"And where are his jants?" asked Chin. "The garage mound and surrounding structures we found should have housed many millions of them, but no queen ants and only a token number of drones and workers were found: a hundred thousand of the creatures at most. We were fortunate to capture enough of them alive to study. Those were most likely merely a diversionary rear-guard rather than the entire super-organism. Both Green and his ants executed a well-planned get-away and all of our containment protocols failed miserably."
"Yes you failed, gentlemen," growled Whitmore.
"How could we have possibly foreseen an underground tunnel a quarter of a mile long?" Landers asked. "It's not our fault that Green and his jants got away! He could have driven away with a million jants in his vehicle!"
"Yes, yes, we've been over and over all of this before," complained Samuelsson.
"Normally at this point we would be studying maps that show where the invasive creatures have been found and so-forth, and planning conventional containment strategies" said Sheffield. "But we have no such information to display. So the question is this: what do we do now?"
The team members looked at each other, but no answer was forthcoming.
"We're going to find and stop Green and all other bio-terrorists" said Whitmore, pounding a big fist on the table. "We're going to kill every last invasive organism. That's our mission statement ladies and gentleman, and by God we're going to do it, before this country goes completely down the shitter!"
"Yes sir," agreed Larson. "We have appropriately widened and intensified our search for Green and for his ants." This had been done at Whitmore's command over Larson's strong objections. No human deaths had been attributed to jants. Even when his team attacked the creatures they responded with only a few bites that were nasty but much less painful than army/fire ant stings. So what if the jants had been genetically modified by Green? The modifications had apparently been relatively pointless and harmless! If Sheffield was right the jants would die out naturally due to the burdens imposed by too much brain matter. True, Green was a minor threat that needed to be tracked down and eliminated, but there were dozens of other worse threats that demanded Government attention. There were giant man-eating pumas and snakes at large to be shot! There were a dozen species of invasive insects of proven lethality that should be burned or poisoned out of existence! Whitmore's personal obsession with Green was preventing his team from effectively addressing proven threats. He had already complained about this through his military chain of command, and he sensed that they agreed with him. This was a war, a war against forces of nature that should be led by the military, not by civilians like Whitmore and Sheffield.
"And we need to find Green's notes," added Samuelsson. "Without them we'll always be several steps behind him."
"Perhaps Green is such an extraordinary genius that he keeps everything in his own memory," conjectured Dr. Harm.
"Impossible!" laughed Samuelsson. She did genetic research herself and could appreciate the intellectual and computational horsepower required.
"Or perhaps the ants are the memory and note-takers," suggested Chin. "Taken all together as a super-organism, they could possibly have the required net neural capacity."
"Let's hope not," said Sheffield. "Hopefully you've been reading too much science fiction, Chin! But we do need to keep open minds. Almost anything seems possible when Green is involved. The man is obviously an absolute genius."
"An evil genius and a traitor," added Whitmore. "I've been after this bastard for more than a decade, people. Jerry Green, alias Jeromy Brown, alias Jim Redstone, alias Johnny Silver, is public enemy number one on my short list, and the jant is only his latest creation. Keep that in mind as we look for the sneaky little bastard."