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Chapter 2: Only Human

Year One

Jacob Mallow was a bright young man, the interviewer decided.  His eyes were wide and always searching, so he looked lost, but he would probably contribute to some graduate program in bioengineering… just not this one.  The interviewer glanced at Jacob’s folder and knew he wouldn’t get in.  His test scores and grades were as exceptional as those of any plausible candidate.   Hell, he hadn’t even heard of the St. Louis college Jacob had attended.

On the off-chance that Jacob had some previously undisclosed quality, the interviewer lobbed him a few softball questions. Maybe he was a major donor’s son. Probably not, given that wreck of a suit.  When asked why he wanted to become a bioengineer, Jacob said “I want to help people.”  The interviewer had heard that response almost fifteen times that day, but usually it came with superhuman tales of compassion and service.  The interviewer’s stomach grumbled.  This was already eating into his lunch break.

When prompted, Jacob mentioned a project to grow vegetables for inner-city dwellers he had been involved with.  Strictly speaking, “involved with” wasn’t as accurate as “run alone and worked like a full-time job,” but he hated sounding boastful.

The interviewer wasn’t even sure that this alleged service project had actually existed.  He didn’t have any reason to specifically suspect that, but psychological studies have shown that two-thirds of  applicants to top graduate programs lied on their applications… they usually said that competing honestly would be unfair because so many lied.

When asked what he liked doing, Jacob said he enjoyed writing and painting and problem-solving. Jacob thought that it might sound good to say that he might eventually figure out a better way to grow crops in the heavily polluted farmlands surrounding the shattered neighborhoods of East St. Louis that he had grown up in, but he demurred. That prediction was presumptuous; he didn’t know if he would graduate, let alone what kind of bioengineer he would be and whether his research would yield significant results.  He had been Missouri’s State Scholar in high school, having earned a perfect ‘five’ on sixteen college-level tests, but he had, embarrassingly, only accomplished that by begging a bookstore owner to give him the Barron’s Guides for courses vastly beyond the capability of his crumbling high school. Besides, the three books he had consulted on graduate school interviews said that referring to high school accomplishments screams of desperation.

After wasting eight minutes trying to squeeze answers from the painfully humble and shy Jacob, the interviewer had already mentally written his assessment.  Jacob really was interested in people, but his hands shook so much he looked epileptic.  His back was pressed against his seat and he seemed to squirm a little whenever asked about his qualifications, particularly what he did for service activities.  The interviewer had four more prospects today.  He just didn’t have time for this.

The admissions committee for the same university glanced through the interviewer’s assessment. Phrases like “meek,” “might not contribute much to intellectual environment (ready for academics here??)” stuck out, but it was “NO HOOK” that was scrawled at the bottom, underlined twice.  A hook is a compelling reason an applicant should be admitted.

After two minutes of conferring, the admissions committee rejected Jacob Mallow.  He had done research on the shifting demographics of poor farming communities, but it didn’t sound scientific.   Next!

By comparison, it took a jury 46 minutes to convict Charles Manson.

 

In all, eight schools concluded Jacob would excel… somewhere else.  MIT, Penn, Harvard, Georgetown, Washington University, etc.  Only the University of South Carolina at Surf City said yes. Jacob didn’t know that it was ranked forty-second on US News and World Report’s list of top postgraduate bioengineering programs, but science recruiters did. They had all heard the joke that USCSC had only ranked that high because US News figured it would sell more copies if at least one school in the city of five million people was in the top fifty. It might not have been a joke.

Jacob had heard a lot about Surf City. Strange things happened there that just didn’t happen in the Midwest. People sometimes put on capes and went berserk, things like that.

In any case he was dimly aware that living in Surf City would entail exotic risks. East St. Louis was unsafe in a more banal way. The city had a life expectancy roughly twenty years below the national average, fully ten years worse than Gary, though ten better than Mogadishu. It was the no-man’s-land where destitute slums loaded with drug-dealers and prostitutes and gangs met dusty, dead farmlands. Jacob had survived by being a totally valueless target in a slum where several pizza-boys got killed each year for the change on a twenty. But Jacob rarely had any money and looked so mousy that his presence on gang territory–more or less all of East St. Louis– usually warranted jeers or warning shots rather than, say, a stabbing.

There were, however, disadvantages to having no money. Food stamps had helped, and he got cheap chicken from his job at Lenny’s Chicken Shack, but the flavor of refried chicken gradually induced him to crave produce. But even imported fruits had been beyond his means. Originally he had grown up in the far reaches of the county, what had once been real farming country, but the best land available for cultivation here was the burnt-out shell of what might have once been a factory.  His makeshift vegetable garden was probably the only completely drug-free plot for miles around.

Most inner-city dwellers don’t know much about international trade and agro-economics, but every kid on the corner knew the market value of a kilogram of marijuana, which can be grown in the space of half a pound of corn. Farmers usually get four dollars for a bushel of corn, 56 pounds. Even farmers could do the math from there.

As enticing as another summer of inner-city farming and the Chicken Shack had been, he tried finding a job over the summer in Surf City. He had a college degree– admittedly, one hardly worth the paper it was printed on.   He figured he could find something better than $5.25 an hour and whatever chicken was left at the end of the night. But the degree would only be worth anything if there were white-collar jobs. In East St. Louis, that meant running meth labs.

He first tried looking away from USCSC.  He assumed that the school would be mostly vacant over the summer. Unfortunately, it wasn’t just the University that shut down.  His job search was an unsuccessful routine.

1) Ride subway to public library after work ($1.45 each way)

2) Print resume ($.10 each)

3) Google Surf City companies

4) Mail applications ($.45 each)

5) Speak with recruiters ($.5/minute)

6) No job offer: back to step 1.

The recruiters proved eerily curt and unproductive.  This conversation with a Wendy’s manager was typical.

“Hello, this is Jacob Mallow.  I was wondering if the night manager position might still be available.”

Jacob heard the manager sifting through papers over the phone. “Mallow… Mallow… there.  Sure, we’ll hire you as night manager.  Can you start in September?”

“I was kind of hoping for something a bit sooner, maybe something by late May, if that’s possible?”

“We, uhh, won’t have any openings until September. We, uhh, don’t get much summer business.  Yeah.” The manager sounded edgy, maybe thrown off when Jacob mentioned May, so he didn’t push the issue.

He was offered several jobs, some paying an unthinkable $9.60 per hour, but all started in September.  He speculated that Surf City was a college town that just shut down during summer. Whatever the reason, it only mattered that there were no jobs, not why.

As the ordeal of another three months of serving chicken from behind two layers of twice-proven bulletproof plexiglass appeared increasingly inevitable, Jacob turned to the University, his last resort. He didn’t know what summer jobs a university might offer,  but buildings presumably got cleaned and being a janitor in a fairly wealthy area would be bearable.

He called the Career Center and spoke to a staffer who mentioned offhandedly that his summer vacation would start in three days. Jacob said that he was looking for work.

“Sure thing. The market is pretty hot now.  Many jobs will open up in late September, maybe early November.” The staffer sounded rushed.  Jacob speculated that he was thinking about his summer vacation.

“Do you suppose there are any openings right now?”

“No. Surf City doesn’t have many people over the summer.” The staffer’s response was immediate.  He couldn’t have looked in his computer or made any calls or sifted through listings, anything.  His tone was cold and final.

“Are you sure? Do you think you could maybe check again?” Jacob felt very awkward imposing on him, but getting out of East St. Louis meant that much.  Even beyond the smoke-filled, ashy air and extremely irregular garbage service, the city just felt dirty. There was a grimy film over everything.  The smog didn’t help, either.

“Fine.” The staffer sounded annoyed, as though Jacob had asked him to double-check whether the sun is hot.

Jacob heard around ten seconds of petulant typing and then a “Hot freaking damn…” After a few more seconds, the staffer said “Say, do you know anything about farming? We’ve got an experimental field that needs someone to tend to it over the summer. ‘Pay negotiable.’ ”

Jacob wanted to rip his phone out of the socket and throw it through his already broken television. He could get out of St. Louis, work in a real city, away from the Chicken Shack… as a college-educated farmer. His father—one of many failed farmers—must be spinning in his grave.

“I know a bit, probably not as much as an agricultural engineer, though.”

“My guess is that this job probably won’t be too hard, at least mentally. Here, let me give you Professor Michelle Polono’s number; she runs the plot. Bye.”

With that, the staffer rather abruptly hung up.  Jacob didn’t know how to find an application or where to send it, but he did have the number, so he called Polono.

“Hello, I was wondering where I could find an application for the farming position.”

“Application? For the summer job on the experimental plot?”

He hadn’t been too excited about farming, but when he heard “summer job” his blood started really pumping.  He was close, so close to escaping.

“Yes.  The summer job.”

“There isn’t an application.”  Jacob cursed silently.  He assumed that the opening had been closed, that Surf City would have to wait. Down the street he heard three gunshots and a siren.  He wished he had talked to the University sooner.

“Oh, uhh, that’s too bad. I was really hoping to get the job.”

“The job’s still open, but I don’t take applications.”

“You don’t?”  asked Jacob.

“Can you use a ruler and write passably in English?”

“Assuredly.” He kicked himself for using that ostentatious word—it sounded really stupid, in hindsight—but he hadn’t been sure that Professor Polono would have been sure his English was good enough if he just said “Yes.”

“Then, if you can use a hoe and other hand-tools, the job is yours. Assuming you’ll be in Surf City until September.”

“Thank you.” Jacob’s voice was weak; it was only then he realized that he had no way to get to Surf City. He had essentially no savings, certainly not enough for a plane ticket, but couldn’t bring himself to mention that because then Professor Polono would think he was hiring a hobo or something…

Professor Polono abruptly asked, “What salary were you looking for?” That question unnerved Jacob, who had been kind of expecting the Professor to lay out an ultimatum “offer” like “the position pays $7.50.”

Jacob saw an opportunity to press for more money. “Eight would be fine, but I’d really like to maybe get an advance.”

“Well, I’ll have to legally contract you to stay on for the duration, but sure. Four thousand tomorrow, four thousand at summer’s end.”

Jacob nearly dropped the phone.

“Four thousand dollars?”

The Professor sounded annoyed. “Right. Your advance.  Half of your pay.”  Jacob had been expecting twelve weeks at eight dollars an hour, $3840. His expected pay had doubled because of a misassumption that he wasn’t about to correct.  The advance would easily cover the University housing deposit.

The next morning, it was Tuesday. He went to his tenement’s mailroom on the way to the Chicken Shack. It was early, but people with money– Colombian drug dealers working for the creatively named ‘The Colombian– ate at the Chicken Shack every Tuesday morning and talked about whatever dealers talk about.  It was understood that the store would be open early or bad things might happen. The Colombian and his dealers weren’t the only ones awake at eight.  A few people were checking their mail or walking through the adjoining hallway.

Jacob was astonished to find that Polono’s letter had actually arrived overnight.  The envelope had a gaggle of stamps reading URGENT and PRIORITY and GOVERNMENT MAIL and ESPECIALLY URGENT PRIORITY.

Jacob opened the letter.  The check didn’t say $4000.  Only $3500.  He realized that even 87.5% still grossly outstripped his current salary. His arms suddenly felt tired and he found it hard to hold up the check, so he pocketed it. The next piece of paper in the envelope appeared to be a contract.

“I, __(sign your name here)__, do contract with Michelle Polono (hereafter the Contractor) to satisfactorily maintain the 3-A Tomorrow Plot for the period of three (3) months. I will be financially liable for any damages I cause to the University’s resources and/or facilities.  The remainder of my payment, four thousand dollars ($4000), is contingent on my successful rendition of duties, as is the payment already made ($4000)…”

Jacob looked at the check again. It still said $3500.

“I disclaim any right to pursue civil action against the University and Contractor for damages incurred by risks associated with the inhabitation of Surf City during the duration of this contract. These risks include but are not limited to: supernatural crime, terrorism, acts of God, loss/gain of limbs, and species change/mutation…”

“I, __(sign your name here)__, am mentally fit to enter into this contract, under neither coercion nor mental domination.  Under the penalty of law, I disclaim any right to withdraw from this contract prior to the Contractor discharging me of my duties or the contract’s natural expiration.” That sounded particularly sinister. As far as he could tell, he was signing his life away to adequately farm a plot he hadn’t ever seen, in a city where the risk of supercrime, terrorism and “species change/mutation” was significant enough to include in contracts. Suddenly the Chicken Shack sounded fairly attractive.

He stuffed the contract back in the envelope. For a moment, he thought he might have seen a flash of green in the envelope. He decided to consider the job later, after work. There _were_ risks to staying in East St. Louis, but he knew which alleys to avoid and how to stay low enough to avoid troub–

“Drop the cash, fucker, or I’m taking your head off.”

Jacob felt what was almost certainly the cold point of a mugger’s knife against the back of his neck. He didn’t have any cash but he didn’t want to say that. So he dropped everything he was holding, the envelope with his contract. There were brisk footsteps behind him, a guy or two running from the mailroom. He couldn’t exactly blame them—being a witness to a likely stabbing was an occupational hazard.

“Get against the wall and don’t move.”´

Jacob silently did so. He heard the mugger ripping the envelope to shreds.

“Who’s your supplier.”

“My supplier?”

“The drugs, bitch.  Who are you moving for?”

Jacob heard a second voice a bit farther back.

“C, the hell you doin’?”

“This bitch is selling on our turf. Was selling.”

“Daaamn. You sure, man? He don’t look like a seller. A Chicken Shack seller, maybe. I could go for some Chicken Shack.”

Jacob wanted to say that, yes, he was dressed up in a horrendously stupid-looking green apron because he did work at the Chicken Shack.

“He got two Franklins in the mail, cash. Sure as fuck wasn’t from no Chicken Shack.”

Jacob wanted to scream at himself for missing two hundred cash in the envelope, money even a bystander had seen. He thought back to the flash of green in the envelope. Damn. The first gangster, the concisely named ‘C’, had said he found $200 but there must have been $500 cash in the envelope. So he has pocketed the last $300.

Jacob considered a few different possibilities. Explaining that he had been paid so much to farm could only lead to the assumption he was farming drugs. That could only end with a slow and messy death in the mailroom.

Escape was not an option. Two gangsters stood between him and the exit. He was trapped in the mailroom. Even in broad daylight, the police were damn slow, even assuming that someone would call the cops for a stranger. The police would arrive late, find nothing, and then knock at the caller’s door, which was as likely to get the caller killed as spraypainting his door with “COP-CALLER HERE.” So Jacob was very much alone.

He had to come up with some reason to get them to want to not kill him. His mind drifted towards dark possibilities, like getting the second one to kill C for stealing his money, but they were in a gang together and he wasn’t willing to bet his life that anyone could talk that smoothly.

A hand grabbed Jacob’s neck, banged his head against the wall, and then threw him onto the ground.

Now it was the second gangster talking.

“Let’s hear it. Where’s the cash from?”

Jacob tried talking. His head felt warm and sticky with blood. Am I really going to die here? His eyes desperately swept the ground—he saw scraps of his envelope lying around. GOVERNMENT MAIL… ESPECIALLY URGENT.

He wasn’t very lucid. GOVERNMENT. ESPECIALLY. GOVERNMENT. ESPECIALLY. His mind homed in on three letters of ESPECIALLY.

“The CIA. My contract’s right there.” He was willing to bet his life that the gangsters couldn’t understand anything in the contract.  Thankfully, like all legal contracts, it was incomprehensible by design. C read maybe a line before throwing it away.

Sometimes it was whispered that the CIA was somehow controlling the inner-city drug trade. He didn’t really know much—anything, really— about any drug players, but the CIA theory still seemed so ridiculous that staking his life on its believability almost made him blush.

He thought about grabbing the GOVERNMENT MAIL scrap of the envelope and saying that it really was kind of plausible, at least as plausible as anything that had happened since he had woken up. But he just stared at the second gangster. His face was soaked with blood and hurting like he ran a bike into a car. Maybe he looked more serious and less nerdy.

“The CIA hired you to move its dope? Where’s your supply?”

Clearly, Jacob hadn’t thought this all the way through. His legs wanted to run. No. Think. There is a solution here.

“No, I wasn’t paid to sell drugs. I’ve been paid to kill someone.”

C roared with laughter at the supposed assassin in the Chicken Shack uniform.

“Who, Ronald McDonald?”

At that moment, Jacob realized that his story had come together.

“The Colombian. His security is looking for armed men, not a slow-acting poison in his fried chicken.” That seemed too charitable to the Chicken Shack. If anything, its food was a fast-acting poison.

The gangsters just stared at each other. Jacob forced himself to keep pushing them towards the conclusion that he was going to kill a rival gang boss. He wanted to sit down, breath.

“When I kill the Colombian, your gang will have less competition. You can even keep my two hundred as a sign of good faith.” It was more a sign that the gangster had the money and that Jacob had absolutely no way to take it back, but C smiled thinly. He looked pleased, possibly because Jacob had “confirmed” that the envelope had only held $200, so his pocketed $300 was safe from his gang. Unfortunately, C probably needed more dental work than $300 could buy.

“Well, bitch.” When C said “well,” it sounded a lot more like “whale.” “If you’re being straight about capping the Colombian, then damn. Damn. If you’re just fronting, get iced trying because his crew will kill you a lot faster than we will. See you tonight, I bet.” C bent down and picked up a scrap of the envelope and held it close enough that Jacob could clearly see his address, before C pocketed it. C threw a nod at his friend and then they left.

Jacob didn’t doubt that they would kill him that night. Attempting to kill the Colombian would also get him killed.  That left one alternative, a somewhat less sure but certainly more interesting death in Surf City. It couldn’t possibly be as bad as this, right? I couldn’t even pay the Professor back if I back out now.

Jacob walked to the nearest subway station without returning to his room. Nothing there was worth getting East-sided for. And, if word got out that he mattered, hanging around would get him killed. Even CIA hitmen had to kill or be killed. He laughed.

He didn’t even change out of his sweat-drenched clothes. He just tossed his Chicken Shack apron to a hobo splayed across a bench. As he did so, the thought hit him that the hobo would have it stolen by someone even more desperate for clothing.  At that point, Jacob didn’t care.

Jacob used a comfortable downtown bank with complimentary coffee and new leather seats. Although the $100 minimum balance was harrowing, Jacob had long ago decided that the measurably better interest rate and the immeasurably lower chance of being shot outside were worth it.

He didn’t usually read body language well, but only a blind man could have missed the security guards gesturing to each other as he approached the teller’s window. One fingered his holster. It’s like they can smell desperation. As he took a breath, he caught a whiff of his bloody clothes, which did fairly reek of salty perspiration and rusty blood. Well… maybe they can.

When Jacob got to the teller, he said, “Hello. I’m making to look a withdrawal.” The teller had been edgy before, almost like he was going to hit the deck. Jacob’s malapropism only contributed to the teller’s suspicion that his bullet-proof glass would soon be tested. Jacob was about to correct himself when the teller, with a pale and sweaty face, pointed at Jacob’s check. “You mean you’re cashing a check?”

Jacob scratched his head. He didn’t quite understand why the distinction between making a withdrawal and cashing a check mattered. He was aware that something was wrong—the guards now stood within ten feet. Even the other customers noticed, quietly leaving the bank.

“Yeah, cash a check, that’s it. $3500.”

The teller and guards considered the warning-signs of an impending armed robbery. A poor person, bloody and sweaty and obviously nervous as hell, walks into a bank without a clear idea of what he’s there to do and tries to take out a large sum of money.

“You’d like $3500 in cash?”

The teller’s question prompted Jacob to consider how ridiculous his imprecisely worded request had been. No one in St. Louis imagined carrying that much cash.

“No, uhh. I just need enough for a plane ticket to Surf City. I’ll deposit the rest.”

The teller exhaled what Jacob didn’t understand was a sigh of relief. Someone trying to deposit money is, by definition, not much of a bank robber. The teller still wasn’t completely certain that he would get through the day without seeing someone—possibly himself, but probably a guard or customer—get shot. Banks have been robbed for less than the price of a plane ticket.

“If I could make a suggestion, sir…” the teller trailed off.

“Sure.”

“Airlines heavily screen people that buy tickets with cash. Would you like a debit card instead? Your flight will go more smoothly.”

Jacob had dreamed about a debit card for a long time. They were much safer than cash. The pen he had been fidgeting with in his other hand clattered to the ground. He bent down to pick it up. From the angle of one of the three guards, it looked like Jacob had entered into a position from which he was going to draw a weapon without the guards seeing. The teller saw the guard draw his pistol and frantically waved his hands and shook his head. The guard didn’t fire. After a few seconds where nothing much happened, the guard holstered his weapon again.

Jacob retrieved his pen and stood up again.

“But your debit cards charge fees if my account drops below $500.” For a very poor person, this fear was certainly reasonable, but it could have not seemed that way to a teller whose only knowledge of Jacob Mallow’s financial situation was that he had a $3500 check with him.

“We have a special introductory deal. Our debit cards assign no penalties for the first year.”

“Wow, great. I’ll deposit the entire check.”

 

The teller then proceeded to ask questions—how do you spell Mallow? What is your address?—that the customer would normally have answered by leaving the line and filling out a small packet.

“Please type in your PIN number, something you will remember.”

Jacob started with 46… humans have 46 chromosomes, easy enough.  He let his fingers wander and they punched in 00. He wasn’t sure what that meant. It looked like an infinity sign, a sideways eight. That cheered him more than the relatively obvious biological reality that .00% of humans survived. Everyone dies, it’s only a matter of how long they put off the inevitable.  That cold thought gave him unpleasant tremors.  He convinced himself that infinity better represented a debit card with such a large account.

“A debit card, damn. This must be my lucky day.”

_This must be my lucky day._ As Jacob left the bank, clutching his debit card as though he was afraid it might fly away, that was what the teller and bank guards were thinking, too.

At the airport, Jacob was greeted with two confused-looking blinks from a ticket clerk.  “You want to schedule a flight to Surf City?”

The clerk explained that United Airlines was not liable for “supernatural crime, terrorism, acts of God, loss/gain of limbs, and species change/mutation” en route to Surf City. It sounded suspiciously like his work contract.

“Do people often change species on your flights?” Jacob asked.

“No, I guess that usually happens on the ground. But we have to read off the full list of federal guidelines.”

After signing away his life again, Jacob paid $300 (two months of groceries) for a same-day flight.

Jacob made only one stop before getting on the plane, to get a jacket that didn’t scream ‘hobo.’ He gritted his teeth as the cashier swiped his debit card for $49.99.

Jacob then wandered toward his gate. The passengers were all stocky and overwhelmingly burly, many in military camoflague. Behaviorally speaking, they were like other passengers, sitting down, talking or reading, but this felt eerie. The readers pored through phonebook-sized binders.

Jacob peered at a binder from behind a soldier’s shoulder. He saw only snippets of text: JOHN “FLASHBURN” STOKER. FUGITIVE. STATUS TARGET– SHOOT ON SIGHT. Two pictures dominated the page, the first a mugshot of a man with a harried and possibly maniacal look in his eyes. The nightly news usually showed a few mugshots, but the inmates were always beaten, defeated and grimacing. This inmate had a cold, knowing smile. Stoker looked like he knew he would leave prison early and definitely not for good behavior.

The second photo showed a man in goofy tights spraying fire out of his hands at something obscured by the smoke. Someone, probably... Jacob hadn’t really ever had reason to be afraid of supervillains before—they hadn’t killed anyone he had met, unlike gangsters with guns or knives or power drills. In fact, before he saw the photos, he might have giggled if anyone had been afraid of some guy in ridiculously colored tights. Now, he wasn’t laughing.

“Sir, are you on United Flight 236 to Surf City? Sir?”

Jacob’s head jerked to the sound. A flight attendant was speaking.

When Jacob first tried to speak, his throat was dry. His words didn’t come out right. “Y… yes.” He flashed his ticket.

“We’re boarding now. This way.”

Jacob stumbled to his seat and fell asleep next to two soldiers arguing heatedly about how many supervillains would be a fair match for Captain Carnage.

 

 

Jacob woke up some time later. Outside the plane’s thick windows, he could see a city, probably Surf City, under the setting sun. It looked looked frighteningly like a mowed lawn. For maybe a mile or two in every direction, the buildings were equally tall. Only one building, one that almost glowed, soared above the city. It appeared to have spotlights on the roof that painted the buildings around it in almost an umbrella of light.

A brisk voice came over the intercom. “This is your captain speaking. We are now making our final approach to Captain Crash International Airport. Please brace yourselves.”

Jacob had anticipated that a clear-weather landing, even at night, would be tame. But the only “tame” aspect of a Crash landing is that the jet’s wings don’t snap off as it attempts turns better suited for jet fighters dodging missiles.

The plane suddenly jerked to the side and Jacob’s head bounced off the window. Then the plane snapped onto the runway and he jolted upwards, discovering that airlines really do expect passengers to have their tray-tables up and seat-belts on. Then gravity hit him back into the seat. The plane coasted to a stop.

“Welcome to Surf City,” said the pilot.

As Jacob searched for any pieces of himself that might have fallen off in the landing, he heard a soldier say to another, “Well, three months in Surf City beats nine overseas, right?” Everyone within earshot immediately burst into laughter, which didn’t comfort Jacob at all.

The airport was packed with people looking to make outgoing flights.  He waited at the cab station, next to a sign saying “WELCOME TO SURF CITY– WHERE ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE.”

Fortunately, there weren’t any lines for taxis leaving the airport. And, since all the traffic was headed to the airport, the ride to his dorm took only ten minutes.

His dorm room was spectacular. The light fixtures worked and the taps gave water that was remarkably not orange. The windows weren’t broken, the paint was fresh, the floors were clean, the walls had not been riddled with bulletholes. The dormitory’s public computers weren’t locked down with bolts or cables. That’s crazy. How do they keep people from stealing the computers? At the mailroom, not only did he doubt that he would be instantly mugged immediately after flashing money, but there would be several routes of escape.

 

The neighborhood was residential, quite posh. Homes had clean bricks and nice landscaping. The air was markedly easy to breath and the raw, sour smell of sewage was conspicuously absent. He even saw a few swimming pools, an unusual investment in an area where no one seemed to stay through the summer. The only evidence he hadn’t walked into Beverly Hills was that the lawns looked like they hadn’t been mowed recently. Because the inhabitants have already left, probably.

Jacob met with Professor Polono at the greenhouse the following morning. It was a few hundred feet on each edge. The climate inside fluctuated from from unbearably cold to boiling hot with additional variables like winds that kicked loose soil in his face.

“Hello, Jacob. The Drug Enforcement Agency has contracted me to develop a chemical can kill drugs and not overly disrupt non-narcotic vegetation, particularly in Afghanistan. This plot is going to test non-narcotic survival. Obviously, we want to simulate Afghani farming. That’s where you come in. My summer vacation starts in two days and even that’s cutting it close.”

Polono spent the two days explaining and demonstrating Afghani farming measures, how to measure the plants’ survival and progress, and how to avoid the periodic chemical sprays that came from the sprinklers at the greenhouse’s ceiling.

“Please review the spraying schedule. Theoretically the chemicals are safe for human contact, but they haven’t been proven to meet FDA requirements yet. Got all that?”

Jacob nodded. The task itself was mindnumbingly simple, like assembling the Pyramids from a vast pile of stones. If the greenhouse’s climate was comparable to Afghanistan’s, it was amazing that anyone survived there, let alone farmed.

When the workday ended, the Professor handed him a disposable cell-phone. “Keep it with you.” She didn’t elaborate, so Jacob assumed that cell-phones were just part of Surf City living, “living” being the operative word.

“Professor, if I could ask you something…”

“Certainly.”

“How dangerous are Surf City summers?”

She shrugged. “Particularly in areas with high fatality rates, men tend to be especially prone to death, given that they’re disproportionately engaged in high-risk behavior and more likely than women to loiter than to run from danger. Well, the Beach Boys’ assessment that Surf City had two girls for every guy wasn’t so outlandish, at least excluding summer. The people that choose to stay in Surf City over the summer—or, for that matter, enter the military or put on a cape– are usually male.”

Her discourse didn’t really answer Jacob’s question, at least not as well as “Keep your head down and you might survive” would have. She seemed biologically incapable of conciseness.

The Professor left town that night for Gary. After work, Jacob looked for dinner. The city was beautiful. Jacob could almost see why people wanted to live here, at least nine months a year. The cars, most leaving the city, were carefully painted and well-maintained. The skyscrapers gleamed and the coast breezes were far more pleasant than the Afghani deathstorms he braved eight hours a day. And being mugged was astronomically unlikely. Soldiers patrolled or stood at corners at least every two blocks. All smiled with their hands on their assault rifles. When he wasn’t concentrating too much about the guns or the supervillains that might be lurking around every corner, the gently warm sunlight lulled him into a fantastic sense of optimism and hopefulness.  Maybe anything was possible in Surf City, even affording $7.85 burgers.

The next day, the greenhouse’s climate moved from the “Afghanistan” to the “hell” setting. The howling winds kicked incredible amounts of loose soil and dust into the air. His glasses weren’t nearly big enough to shield his eyes from the flying soil. When he rubbed his eyes, his hands came away red. At first he panicked, thinking that the dust had drawn blood, but the soil had just been a distinctly unearthly reddish-brown. Jacob decided to put off farming until tonight, which would give him half a day to enjoy the heavenly weather outside.

That night, the greenhouse’s climate had dropped below freezing, but mercifully the wind had settled. He watered row by row until he needed to rest in the clearing where he kept his tools. A rock stood out of place. He grabbed a hoe. He only got ten away from the clearing before his foot snagged on something that felt like a weed. He tumbled to the ground. The moonlight was pretty dim; he looked closer. Definitely not a weed. It was… the grape vines? What are they doing here? Then the vines grabbed his left arm, only narrowly missing the right, too. The vines squeezed like boa constrictors. He could almost feel his arteries failing to force blood to critical organs. He recalled that a prolonged lack of oxygen can cause serious brain damage after thirty seconds.

Surf Citizens, at least the ones that survive, learn quickly to keep their heads down. Failing that, like anyone else, they will instinctively flee or fight. Jacob realized that his plants were killing him. His arm grasped a hoe. He wanted to survive and nothing else mattered.

Jacob chopped downwards, hacking blindly away at the vines strangling his body. The hoe made satisfying slicing sounds as it coaught vines against the clayish soil. He was lying on his back and couldn’t quite see where he was hacking away. After a minute he grasped that the pressure on his waist and arms had loosened. He sat up. Ragged scraps of grape vines lay scattered about like bullets after a turf battle. His right pant-leg was torn and the leg had been diced in a few places. Judging from the straight incisions, it looked like he had struck himself in the brawl. The leg needed medical attention, but it would work for now.

Escape. He saw, looming nefariously in the distance, the olive trees. They didn’t have vines or other reaching limbs, but they had uprooted themselves. Jacob had a gut feeling that the odds of slipping past them were not favorable, especially given that there were forty feet of crops between him and the nearest exit.

He tried his cell-phone. “Emergency service only,” it told him. That was a cruel joke. 911 calls didn’t work, either. He made two diagnoses. 1) He got what he had paid for. 2) His greenhouse was not the only place going crazy tonight.

He sat in the clearing, a tolerable fifteen feet away from any plants. None nearby looked visibly agitated. He surmised that plants, even within the same species, won’t identically react to the same stimulus. Maybe they hadn’t been affected as much. He wouldn’t bet his life on that, though. “10:43 pm,” his cell-phone said. 11:57 pm. 1:24 am. He tried to stay awake. Sleeping here would probably mean that his main contributions to science would be as a dissection aid. 2:47 am. 4:11 am. That was the last number he saw.

He felt something tugging on him. Something green. He woke up in horror, finding that weeds, weeds out of a LSD-fuelled nightmare, had shot out of the clearing’s soil and coiled around his arms and torso. His lower body was free; he tried bringing his knees to his chest. He thought that might alter his posture enough that he could maybe loosen the vines, but no dice. He couldn’t reach his hoe or spade. Arms were no good. He tried to roll, back then forth, trying to break free. That actually only made the weeds’ grip tighter, more choking, harder to think. He only hadn’t been crushed already, he grimly imagined, because he was wearing so many layers to stay warm. He had a mental image of the pressure causing his eyes to pop out, but he didn’t think that was medically likely to happen. Actually, his lungs would collapse and he’d drown in his own fluids. The vines wrapped around his face and he was shrouded in darkness.

He heard a shattering sound and figured that it was his spine. But it didn’t hurt much more badly than it did just before. Then there was an enormous thud and a spraying sound and he felt wetness on his face. The pressure loosened again and he was able to roll away from the withered, dead vines.

Shards of glass littered the ground. He turned, seeing someone else in the clearing standing stiffly, a hulking menace dressed all in black. The stranger had an oversized spraying contraption that ended with a hose and nozzle dripping yellow goo.

Jacob saw a large, jagged break in the ceiling glass. The stranger must have leapt twelve feet from the ceiling.

“Greetings. I’m Agent Orange. I’m from the government and here to be assistatory.”

Jacob spat, not because he wanted to be rude or uncordial, but because the liquid tasted horribly like rotten eggs. His face smelled of the same. He rubbed his nose and his hand came away coated with the sticky, yellow gunk that the agent had doused him with to kill the weeds.

“What did you spray on me?”

“Officially, nothing. A military-grade de-weedifier.”

Jacob shuddered. There was no telling how many showers he would need to scrub it off.

“Is that safe?”

“FDA studies have proven… inconclusive,” Agent Orange said. “Perhaps you could reveal an extraction point.”

Jacob pointed at the trees, now clumped so tightly by the exit that they obscured the door completely. They might have congregated there, by the irrigation canals. _Or they’re intelligent enough to understand the door’s significance._ He shuddered.

Agent Orange lumbered through the field, spraying defoliant like it was Febreeze in a locker room.

He cut a wide path of yellowness, leaving plants cowering on the ground before the moonlight. Jacob stepped on an unripened egg plant and what oozed out was a sickly white.

“Is that really necessary? The plants on this side seem normal. The plants attacked me before I could water this side.”

“All area vegetation will be exterminated. What I spray now is immaterial.”

Jacob blanched. If he had to surrender his pay at the end of the summer because a supervillain set the plants off and then the government killed them all, he… just couldn’t. He had already burned two thousand dollars on his dormitory, plane ticket, and mugging survival fees.

“How am I going to feed myself…” he murmured to himself.

“From what I observed, it appeared that _you_ were about to feed _them._  There.” He pointed at the trees, now within fifteen feet only dotted with legumes, and stopped. He put his hand to his ear and started speaking to someone else.

Jacob was angry enough that he didn’t mention that Orange’s backpack had a gash at the bottom that was now leaking defoliant all over the back of his suit. _Hah. That’ll show him._

“Kino, we’ve got some hostile trees by the door. If you brought them down, what kind of structural damage are we looking at?”

The agent stopped talking to Kino, whoever that was.

“Don’t be obtuse. Of course the walls are glass. Breaking out that way will facilitate a plant escape.”

Jacob’s eavesdropping was interrupted by some rustling among the crops. Agent Orange’s weapon had a limited range. Many plants had survived beyond ten feet.

“Negative. Hostiles too near the aquifer to deploy chemicals. Would adversely affect general welfare. Though the plants may be highly combustible or explosive, the probable damage to this facility is relatively inconsequential.”

The rustling picked up. There was movement just beyond Jacob’s vision. He edged towards Agent Orange.

“Hey, uhh, Mr. Orange. Plants are coming.”

Agent Orange didn’t turn.

“Well, my orders preclude that. This place is maximally fifty million dollars. Losses I could live with.”

“Negative. All other resources deployed. Create the extraction point and I can attend to the Botanical Gardens.”

Jacob grabbed at Agent Orange’s sleeve. It was uncomfortably bold, but he wasn’t about to let himself be ripped by plants while the agent talked. “Orange. Turn the hell around!” The agent spun and clapped both hands on Jacob’s shoulders. “I know. The plants. I heard you. They’ll creep up on us, I’ll spray them all. We’ll leave when my associate makes an extraction point that won’t upset his bosses.”

Agent Orange spoke more naturally when agitated, Jacob noticed.

An army of monsters with barbed leaves burst from behind innocuous cornstalks. _Click. Click._ Jacob realized after a moment that the agent was out of ammunition. Jacob turned, trying to move, but lost his footing in the moist soil. He flinched, waiting for the plants to strike, but… nothing.

The agent had stormed a few feet ahead.

“Get going. Back,” he barked at Jacob. The agent grabbed his ear as the first vines of a now unrecognizable species whipped around his legs. “Kino. Snafu here. Burn the trees!”

Jacob scrambled to his feet and edged away, transfixed by the spectacle. Tides of plants crashed against the agent, submerging him beneath green waves.

“Torch them. Can’t explain dammit. Do it.”

The agent’s hand shot out of the pile, tossing plants around. His fingers were a silver blur glowing in the moonlight. His gloves had been badly torn. No, those aren’t fingers… they’re claws. Shreds of vines and thorns and stems rained everywhere. It looked like a bomb had exploded in a rose garden.

Then a bomb did explode behind Jacob. No, not a bomb, but a tremendous explosion that threw him face-first into the mud. Showers of glass rained over and past him, but his fingers didn’t feel significant bleeding or lacerations along his back. His shirt had been singed in only a few places, where burning pellets of wood had hit him.

Jacob turned around. The air was smokier, harder to breath in that direction. A man wearing what resembled an all-red spacesuit stepped through the shattered remains of the door and wall. He had a backpack like Agent Orange’s, but his nozzle had a tiny lick of flame, so it was presumably a flamethrower. Probably a good idea, the flamethrower. Anyone wearing something that stupid in St. Louis would be shot otherwise.

“Kino?” asked Jacob.

“Department of Agriculture Special Agent Carl Kino, you got it!”

It was far too late to ask why the Department of Agriculture had Special Agents with flamethrowers. Jacob’s plot had been annihilated. He was probably out of a job and would have to give back the money and… he saw an apple on the ground that had somehow miraculously withstood the explosion in remarkably good condition. He kicked it, splattering it against a smoldering tree trunk.

The door was open. The wall was open. But Jacob waited. Getting killed on the way to a hospital would defeat the purpose of escaping alive. He saw the agents bickering, but they didn’t notice him.

“A calculated risk. Destroying the trees and risking the building was the surest way to keep the civilian alive.” said Orange.

“What about my wife and kids? What should I tell them if I get fired because you wanted to blow a building to save some schmuck?”

“That you would rather have saved a person than glass. Assuming that is factual.”

Kino stormed off, muttering “gross malfeasance” and “reckless endangerment” and whatever else he could file a report about later. Agent Orange put his gloved hand to a tree’s flaming hulk. Jacob crept behind him. He wanted to avoid disrupting the agent more than conceal himself. The agent had stooped over a strange fluid pouring from the tree shells.

The agent poured a few drops on smoldering embers that then flared up mightily.

“As I suspected. Combustability.” The agent had his back to Jacob the entire time, but his voice was loud enough that he could have only been speaking to him. How did he know?

“Can I take some of that sap?” asked Jacob.

The agent stiffened. “A moment.” The agent took off his other glove—also revealing a green, reptilian hand with clawed fingers– and scratched his hand, drawing a bright blue blood he then flicked onto the tree sap.

The agent murmured. “Self-combustion… to make a suicide bomber, maybe? What a waste.”

He gestured at another tree, one he hadn’t touched with his blood, and spoke to Jacob. “Nothing useful there. But it’s your time.”

“What about that sap,” asked Jacob, pointing at the mixture of sap and the agent’s bright blood. The sight gave him goosebumps. The unbloody sap interested Jacob. It could probably explain how Gangrene’s formula had transformed the plants. But the agent’s blood excited him. He wasn’t sure what it could do. Maybe that was why. But he did know that: 1) the agent was not normal. He had claws, of course, but he was fundamentally different. Recklessly humanitarian, for one.

2) The agent’s blood had given him insight into Gangrene’s plants.  That incited some deep, primordial disappointment in the scientist. He had spent years struggling to memorize chemical equations, fighting through freakishly hard scientific texts, deciphering cheap microscope readouts and this guy was born with science in his blood?

3) Most importantly, the agent’s murmurings suggested that the blood could transform people.  So the blood was more than an advanced form of reverse-engineering equipment. He had to have it.

 “You want my blood? It’s government property…”

“I’m working on a DEA grant. Was working.” Jacob gestured at the battlefield.

Jacob saw the agent hastily examine him. The agent’s urgency made Jacob smile. He felt flush with something, a buoyant inevitability.

“Take my blood. But do not ingest it.” The agent waved a gloved hand at the bloody mixture and it arrayed into a solid. Then he crouched and launched himself through a wall opening.

Now alone, Jacob eyed the cube hungrily. He looked, he knew that his life’s work lay before him. As he grasped the cube, it shuddered.

 

Jacob hobbled to the hospital across campus. He probably hadn’t contracted any infections overnight, but this would help him avoid amputation to beat gangrene (the medical phenomenon, not the supervillain).  A few soldiers stood guard at the door, armed with flamethrowers.  Their faces were bruised and their uniforms were torn. They had done some weed-whacking tonight.  They had smiles, more grim than exuberant.

The hospital was cold and clean, except for some scorch marks and upturned pots in the lobby.  A nurse glanced at Jacob’s leg as soon as he got in the waiting area.  He understood disaster triage, the division of patients into three groups: those that would live without treatment, those that needed care to survive, and those that would die anyway.  Judging from the rows of stretchers and patients with various fruits and vegetables sticking from their bodies, it looked like he would be waiting.

After around an hour, the nurse came back.  She had an inexplicably cheerful smile.

“You seem awfully happy,” said Jacob.

She shrugged.  “I’m alive.  You’re alive.  Why wouldn’t we be happy?”

“I’m going to lose my job. I’ll have to return money that’s already gone. Who knows how much the doctor will cost…”

She gently interrupted him.  “You’re only human, right?”

Only human, he thought.  Maybe that was the problem.

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