Dancing with the Dust Devil.

       A dust devil used the harvesters heat column and profile as a leverage to gain strength,definition and mass; vacuumed up the dust that had some how settled on the harvester, and took aim for Vogt.  Stopped, astonished, looked up the length of it, looked down the row, then looked back where he had just came from; a conundrum, he walk as fast as he could one way and it seemed as though the thing had changed course to cut him off, he ran back the other way, slowed a bit to look over his shoulder and the damn thing was shadowing him.  In a perfect state helplessness, he sat down and gave up, waiting for it to suck him up and spit him out.  Swirling, and scouring the ground as it approached, the colossal dust devil danced around him in a primitive ceremonial ritual preparing him as the sacrificial offering; he lay down on his stomach, gripping the stalks on either side, digging his toes into the dirt waiting for the end.  The crashing sound moved over him and although he fully expected to be flung up into the sky, he was only pelted with dirt,chaff, and other debris.  No torn limbs, just thoroughly impregnated with grime.  Sat up, and watched it dance off,  doing what only could be described as cross between the Hokey Pokey, and the Twist, he even thought he heard a tune in the crashing wind.

   

Exhale Delta Waves

Vogt was lost, looking over at that ivy, a massive field of it.  The combine made the turn at the other end, the auger wagon roared to the truck with a full load.  One or two nights in Agropolis would be a trip down memory lane, a regular tangle of recollections he had never wanted to collect, M-corp could be in for a feast. As a rule: Vogt operated on a superficial level, denying a deeper connection to M-corp, moving around from place to place; a rootless, unsettled way of life, that made sure every day was new, and when he eventually started to develop a familiarity with a location, he would request a transfer.  M-corp had caught on to this strategy that was employed by quite a few of its associates and a mass involuntary separation occurred. 
 At the time he had been embroiled in project that had become a bag of snakes, and separation would've left the snake problem to one the true 'bleeds chartreuse' M-corp executives, and that kind of admistrivia was not in her job description.  It was mess, but in avoiding that large purge, it had afforded him an immunisation of a sort: he was allowed to keep some memories from loading into M-corp, in exchange for becoming a snake charmer, and was usually rushed in a moments notice to put out the figurative fire.  It seemed a good trade off, he didn't have to go through the human resource bureaucracy for a transfer, and in-fact was constantly on the move, a dream job at M-corp.  
  He pulled up the probe, packed away the seismic device, transit, scanner,and tripods; only slightly recognizing that he seemed to have gotten the best of M-corp, and that he had never heard of anybody or thing, coming out ahead on a negotiation with that behemoth.  He started for the wagon, walking down the long straight row, trying not to go there, but he did, and subconsciously triggered a delta wave message, that started with 'Dear, M-corp', as is only proper, and ended correctly with 'sincerely Ward Vogt'.

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.