LiL' Gene Splicers Kit

       Soon, he had his spliced vine growing, and grabbing, and it took over their back yard.  His parents notified the proper authorities and it was sprayed with a herbicide, most of it died; but secretly a bit had survived, a tiny shoot growing in hidden spot. He dug it up, and took it out, way outside of town, and planted it in the overgrown lawn of an abandoned grain bin.  Soon that plant had grown enormous taking over the old bin and most of the lot before somebody spotted it, alerted the authorities, who sprayed it yet again.  But this time it didn't die, it was affected though, the herbicide was like holy water for the twisted leprous arborific parasite, and it grew and mutated into the Ivy.  Of course the authorities knew of his devious meddling in the genetic code of such dangerous plants, he was brought before the juvenile court, sentence to behavioral therapy and the "LiL' Gene Splicers Kit" was taken off the market, litigation is still ongoing     

Phenomenally Breezy

       Vogt was lying on his side, propped up on one elbow, looking through a transit, fixed on top of a short tripod, while a scanner did it's own thing twenty feet away.  Opened his closed eye and peered over the instrument,  the subsidence ran in a straight line, the width stayed within ten or twenty feet, depth from zero to.. Lucky had made his turn and was coming back on the row where the deepest depression started.  He wouldn't really know how deep it was until the corn had been cut.  Closed one eye and peered into the scope, flipped the 4X extender, the image was a little blurry, too much wind, a big gust blew a bunch of husks, chaff, and lose stalks into the air; it all seemed to fly at him at once, he squinted, ducked down little, grabbed the transit as it was hit and tipping over, just in time to witness the optical phenomenon of apparent size when scanner will fall over onto the combine eating it's way to the subsidence.

   

Urgent: Delta Wave Alert Link {Activate}.

  The entity inside his head, lucky had started to think of as the "Other Lucky" and it had been monitoring the map 1953 when a chronological anomaly occurred.  The time code had diverged into two separate streams one just seconds ahead of the other.  It ran a check on Lucky, "Ya feelin ok". "Sure", lucky trying to achieve a calm through the repetition of the corn slaughter, wasn't really into this intrusion from a suspect reality, expand calm, then Other Lucky interrupted and broke any expanding calm that had developed, "there was an anomalous chronological event that has... ta tell truth... baffled me".  Luckies anxiety leveled up one notch.  "I don't want cha ta worry, but I thought I should just let ya know.  Ya know?"  Lucky triggered an anxiety threshold, and sent another delta wave alert cast.  The next instant: "{Dad}: your mom's going to be there soon, layer calm",out of astonishment Lucky forgot where he was at for second, his dad was not one to send messages, he was very old and mostly likely had to wake up out of his mid-morning nap, to message him, and his mom was just a few years younger and in no way should be out driving around by feel, in the country.  Amazing, it's like he was in middle school again.

A Wall of Bright

 Both sets of eye watched the march of the corn plants to certain doom -- hypnotic, plant after plant, the wind picked up, and blew across the tops of the stalks in a wave, hit the side of the combine and blew the piled up chaff into a swirling cloud; that converged with the sun, at ten in the morning, with not a cloud in the sky, into a massive wall of light to one side and in front of the combine.  Lucky slowed a bit, poor visibility, a strong gust hit, snapped the tops off from just above the ear; roared through the mirrors, antennas, cameras, and other dangles; and blew the amorphous wall of bright away.  Vogt snapped out of it and " do you have the latest survey maps of the subsidence".  blurted out, with out a check.  Lucky slowed even more,"thought I had the latest, but I don't have any survey marks". Just as he said it an external thought germinated, just breaking the through the surface realty, "just watch it kid": It was his neural I.D., so he was not being hacked into, not that such a thing had ever been done.  Was it even possible?  Just watch it kid?  Watch what?  Then it clicked, a bulb went on, a light came from within and illuminated this particular situation, and a thought formed of his own will: this guy is not a soil scientist and I do know him.  Then  the unsettling: the other Lucky faintly chimed in "you got it, now follow the breadcrumbs" 

Do Not Hand Feed the Reaper.

  "I have always been a soil scientist".  Expecting more in the way of a reply, Lucky settled in the chair, closed the standing well, looked out past Vogt to the trickle of grain coming out of the auger arm, shut down the P.T.O.(power take off) that stopped the auger, fold | ramp two thousand R.P.M, the massive electric motor made a few octave changes, flipped the safety switch that started the head,feeder,separator,thresher,knives,and other auxiliary reaping armaments; pushed the stick gently forward and started cutting.  Stalks twitched, violently slurped into the head, gnawing them down, chewing them up, and in a chronic explosive defecation event, ejected out the back.  Lucky concentrated on keeping the speed just right, the distance between the ground and the head was regulated by sensor, but only roughly, debris interference occurred.  Vogt look past Lucky into the unharvested field, map overlay on: a red outline with short regularly placed perpendicularly lines appeared about fifty yard to the left and forward,  it looked like he would be riding for a while.

Working at the Foundation Nut and Seed.

Lucky had been watching the journey from the wagon to the combine, and thought he recognized the guy.  He couldn't quite place him though. Just on the short end of average height, dark hair, slightly balding, kinda muscly, thin face , and he was wearing a watch, --weird-- nobody wore a watch.  An implanted or infected person always could call up the time.  In fact Lucky had to conditioned him self to not check the time, he had a habit before the implant, that armchair psychiatric types might have said was obsessive-compulsive clock watching.  He was sure it was a learned behavior, developed on the job counting modified hazel nuts that were all individually given an I.D..  A small team of workers, numbered one through four, (he was number three) counted the nuts.  Each plant had a number, each nut was grouped into lots of six sets, of seven seeds: so 201-50-5-1-P5, would denote bush 201,lot 50,set 5,seed 1, Pyramid 5(the owner of the plot).  All this had to be done in a set amount of time, not under or over by two minutes, if the time frame was blown that bush's nut's would go to the end of the line and have to be counted again.  lucky wasn't sure how all that fit into the genetic engineering of nuts, and years later became suspicious when he was implanted and became aware through his monthly bandwidth tracker, of how much he used to called up the time, usually a very low data consumer.  Could it have been a psychology experiment?  If it was what exactly was the purpose?  Was his fixation with time the intended result or just an artifact?  After the cognitive restructuring he went to P5 Foundation Nut and Seed, to see his old team leader, he no longer worked there, almost every one who worked with him at Foundation Nut,(that's what everyone call it) had moved on.  His team, he only new as One,Two and Four;...!...He's number Four, just a kid at the time, how he got the job he didn't know, he didn't look ,more than ten years old.

A Corporate Spook

       Vogt quickly got up the rest of the ladder, sat in the ride along seat, and pulled the door closed trapping the corn chaff in the cab.  Wade turned the fan to high in an effort to filter the dust out, turned down the music, and the steering wheel turned on it's own.  He didn't suspend the auto function of the wagon,  the corporate gooks were were all about autonomous function, and he might as well make the right impression.