Nano Surveillance (Dave Henson Series Book 1)

Nano Surveillance

By Mark J. Donovan

COPYRIGHT © 2013

Prologue (January 25, Sunday 7:00am)

              It was a cold and raw winter morning in the nation’s capital. The sky was overcast with thick grayish white clouds heavily laden with moisture. Moisture which would inevitably fall in the form of snow or freezing rain before the day was over. The cold outside air, however, was perfectly still and everything appeared frozen in time and space as the man stared blearily out his kitchen window.  As he raised a hot cup of coffee to his lips he noticed an odd aberration in the wintry scene. A large gray moth had flown up and attached itself to the window pane directly in front of him.

Seeing the moth was odd, just in the simple fact that it was in the middle of winter and it was daylight, not common conditions for observing moths. They were nocturnal and typically only seen on hot summer nights flittering around underneath street lights.  This moth also looked odd in some strange way that the man couldn’t quite fully grasp. Yes, it looked like a moth, but it lacked that dusty appearance common with them. Instead, its body and wings had a weird type of oily sheen, albeit a gray sheen.  Its eyes were also strange. They were big. Very big. And dark. Black and shiny as coal.

For several minutes the man stood perfectly still watching the moth, half expecting to see it freeze and fall to the ground. Instead, it seemed to sit transfixed at the position it had initially come to rest on the window pane, only occasionally fluttering its wings. As it stayed stationary on the glass the man noticed that the moth’s eyes seem to stare directly back at him in an odd kind of way. As if it was watching him.

After observing the moth and sipping his coffee for several minutes, the man finally decided to move on and get the morning newspaper from his front door step. His spare time was limited today as he had to get down to his boss’s office by mid-morning for a series of meetings.

As he walked to the front door he thought to himself how the world had pretty much gone all internet-wired for its news. He hadn’t totally been converted yet into that concept and doubted he ever would. He was old school and still preferred to physically read a newspaper, at least on a cold and quiet Sunday morning. There was something about holding, flipping, and folding a thick newspaper in the morning that a laptop or tablet just couldn’t replicate. Maybe it was a form of exercise, or simply a comforting routine that he had grown up with and was not quite ready to let die. Whatever the case, like many middle-aged and older adults, he had not fully bought into reading exclusively from a screen.

As the man walked from the kitchen to the front foyer entrance, the moth detached itself from the window pane and flew in the direction of the home’s front entranceway.

At the front door, the man turned the button lock on the door knob and switched the deadbolt lever to its released position. When he pulled the door open, a rush of frigid air was sucked into the home giving him a cold chill. He bent down and quickly picked up the Washington Post newspaper. While glancing down at the headlines and shutting the door, the gray moth that had been on the window pane seconds ago slipped into the house just as the door closed. The man, engrossed in scanning the headlines, didn’t notice the moth enter the house.

He retired to his favorite seat at the kitchen table, placed the newspaper on the table, and began reading the top headline articles. As he was taking his seat, the gray moth silently came to rest on the kitchen counter next to the table. Again, going unnoticed, it stared directly at the man.

The first article the man read was about another suicide bombing that had occurred overnight in the Middle East, killing thirty people. No group had yet claimed responsibility for it. The poor bastards he thought to himself as he ruffled the paper in his hands and quickly moved on to read the next headline article. The moth flinched its wings briefly as the man shuffled the newspaper, but it did not move from its perch and continued to stare at him.

The next article was about the impending International Global Climate Change Conference that would be occurring in a few weeks down in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Advocacy groups on both sides of the issue were already posturing and positioning themselves on what they would say and do at the event.

Though it would inevitably be a politically charged ruckus event, they were still planning to attend the conference.  Their financial backers and supporters expected them there, so they couldn’t ignore it. They would, however, limit the administration’s appearance to their number two man.  A classless act, but a perfect scapegoat in the event things got ugly down there.

The man caught a slight movement out of the corner of his right eye and looked up from the newspaper.  Sitting only two feet away from him on the kitchen countertop was the gray moth. It had flittered its wings for only a brief fraction of a second, but the man had apparently sensed the movement. It was the same moth that he had seen outside on the kitchen window just a few minutes earlier. At least he thought it was the same moth. How had it gotten into his home he wondered to himself? Could it have somehow slipped into the house when he opened the front door? Impossible he thought. But what was the alternative? A second odd looking moth that just happened to be in his house. Impossible.

Sitting perfectly still the moth just continued to stare at him. He took the sports section of the newspaper and rolled it up into a tight tube. While still sitting in his chair the man swung at the moth with the rolled up paper to kill it. Just as he swung, the moth leapt from its perch on the kitchen countertop and flew out of the kitchen. The man swore to himself as he missed hitting the moth. Not seeing where the moth had gone, he decided to give up the hunt and continue his reading. He’d kill the damn moth later he thought to himself as he took another sip of his coffee.

As the man continued to read the newspaper the moth silently flew unnoticed back into the room and came to rest on top of a kitchen cabinet door near the table. Again, it stared down at the man, and quietly observed him as he read the paper. The moth’s gaze seemed so attentive that it appeared as if it was also reading the newspaper.

The man continued to read the climate change conference article and debated to himself if he should also attend the event. The conference would be the administration’s first venue where it would hint about its future plans for the country and the world. Leaving it solely up to the Vice President to deliver that message was a risky proposition. He could easily screw it up and piss off the wrong people. Or more specifically, their people. Their most ardent and wealthy financial supporters. 

In recent years the whole global climate change issue had become mired in intense political debate for a variety of reasons, chief among them, conflicting data and allegations of falsified research work by certain international institutions.  Much of the northern hemisphere had experienced extreme cold and heavy snows over the past decade. There was also new and convincing evidence showing the planet’s temperatures had actually cooled over the same time period. Moreover, there had been a recent revelation that the Antarctic ice pack had continued to grow in size since satellites began monitoring it several decades ago. Each of these facts, however, contradicted the messaging produced by various left leaning political groups and media organizations around the world. Groups and organizations who continued to demand new international global climate change policy initiatives.

Also complicating the discussion was the world’s population had simply become fatigued on the whole notion of global warming. They were no longer listening or paying much attention to the topic. People today were more focused on trying to survive the global economic recession than worry about a questionable slight rise in the average global temperature. Moreover, with leaked evidence that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) had altered results of scientific research studies on global warming over the years to support their hypothesis, the entire notion of global warming had become somewhat of a late night joke.

So although the notion of global warming being a real threat to the planet had come into question in recent years, and people’s interest on the subject had waned, certain political and business interest groups continued to promote the subject. To attempt to keep the issue front and center in the news media’s headlights, however, they had retooled their messaging a bit, and in particular, gave it a new and slightly different title. It was now described as global climate change, rather than global warming, in an attempt to combat the contradictory facts about cooling planet temperatures in much of the world.

As the man continued to contemplate attending the conference himself, he considered the main reason for attending. For many of the political groups and businessmen that were still pushing their manmade climate change message, they were doing it more for protecting their own “green” business investments rather than for their altruistic concerns for the planet. Unlike their political friends and businessmen counterparts who had jumped on and off the global warming message band wagon early, they had not yet cashed in on their own “green” investments.

It was the businessmen, however, that he was mostly concerned with. In particular, there were several billionaires who had financially supported the administration over the years, who had also invested heavily in green businesses that had either failed or languished. He needed them to stay on board with his boss, the President, if for no other reason than to maintain their control in Washington. It was the cold and ugly truth. He, no they, needed the global climate change drums to continue to beat to maintain their relationships with these key financial supporters. Whether or not he would attend the event, however, he’d finally decide after consulting with his boss.

The man continued on with his review of the newspaper and read several other articles before finally looking up at the kitchen wall clock. The hour he had reserved for himself had already flown by. He quickly folded up the newspaper and stood up from the table. He needed to get ready for work as he had to be at the White House in an hour.

As he stood up from the table he noticed the gray moth sitting on the kitchen cabinet door. Again, it sat perfectly still just staring over at him with its large black mechanical looking eyes. The man again rolled up a section of newspaper and slowly made his way over to the kitchen cabinet door where the moth was perched. As he approached the moth, he again noticed its unusualness. It looked like no moth he had ever seen before. Though it had the familiar delta shaped wings commonly seen with moths, these looked strange and un-natural. With their shiny surface, they appeared almost metallic-like in structure.  Similarly, its head, with those two large black orbs for eyes protruding from it looked peculiar. Instead of a cylindrical cone shape, its head was rectangular in structure. As if it was manufactured rather than created through a natural evolution process. Likewise, it had two of the longest antennas he had ever seen on a moth. They must have extended out an inch from the moth’s head and looked more like thin wires than antennae. He couldn’t see the moth’s feet as they were covered by its wings, but he surmised they were probably just as uncanny as the rest of the parts on it.

When he got to within two feet of the moth he stopped and slowly raised his right hand that held the rolled up piece of newspaper in it. The moth ever so slightly shuffled its body and wings as the man raised his hand. The man froze so as not to frighten off the moth. After a couple of seconds the moth became still again and continued to stare directly at him. Only its antennae occasionally twitched.

After standing perfectly still for several seconds, the man with one rapid motion of his hand, slammed the rolled newspaper onto the kitchen cabinet door where the moth was perched. Just before the paper hit the door, however, the moth jumped from it and flew rapidly across the kitchen and down the hallway. The moth’s movement and flight were so fast, and the noise of the newspaper was so loud when it hit the cabinet door, that the man’s consciousness never registered the moth’s departure from its perch.

Immediately he had assumed he had killed it when he saw it missing from the cabinet door after completing his homerun swing. But a quick inspection of the floor and kitchen countertop did not reveal the moth’s corpse. He cursed himself for missing it, as it had been so close range. After inspecting a wider area of the kitchen floor he finally decided he’d worry about getting it later. Time was running short and he needed to get into the shower.

Twenty minutes later the man was wearing a suit and holding a briefcase in his right hand as he opened the front door to his home. The black federal government owned limousine had already been waiting in the driveway for him for ten minutes and he was in a rush. He stepped out into the cold morning winter air and noticed a light snow falling. Looking out at the falling snow, he reached back with his left hand and closed the front door. Just as the door was closing, the gray moth slipped through the shrinking opening and flew away from the house. It headed in the direction of a white service van parked across the street and a hundred yards away from the home of the President’s Chief of Staff. 

As the lone individual in the van guided the moth back to him, he anxiously thought about his team’s future plans. A new form of bacteria, a lab produced parasitic nanoscopic organism, was about to infect and interrupt the political rhythms of the day. A modern synthetic germ that would ultimately change the world and how we live forever.