Bob, Mary, Klaus, and Mr. Treadwell were standing in front of a container marked, Transgenic 1. Bob slipped a heavy glove onto his right hand and reached inside. “This is the transgenic hybrid spined ambush assassin,” Bob said, pulling one out. As he turned to give his potential investor a better look Bob pointed and said, “Notice the size of the rostrum.” The bug made a sudden move to the edge of Bob’s hand.
Joshua Treadwell took a step back. “Yes, I can see it fine from here.” The bug was the size of a large man’s thumb, nearly three inches long with a glistening greenish-black exoskeleton ringed with a series of sharp, rigid spines along the sides of the prothorax. It had disproportionately large, muscular forearms and twitchy, clubbed antennae. Its eyes were orange and rotated in their sockets with a sickening, chameleon independence, allowing it to look in two directions at the same time.
“As hybrids,” Bob said, “these were extremely violent predators. Almost as if they enjoyed killing. Through transgenics, we’ve turned them into more organized hunters.”
“Any less violent?”
Bob shook his head. “If anything they’ve become almost psychotically savage but now they work in groups, like a pack of wolves. They’re also extremely efficient.”
“How large can you make these things?”
“Probably half again as big as this one.” Bob poked at the bug with the eraser end of a pencil. It reared back on its hind legs and hissed. “But you don’t want them too large or cockroaches and silverfish could escape through spaces the assassins couldn’t.”
“Well, now, wait a minute. Let’s think outside the box for just a second,” Treadwell said. “Are there practical limits to their size? I’m just trying to think of advantages and other uses.”
Klaus shook his head. “Their respiratory systems limit their size,” he said. “Only a few very large insect species actively ventilate by muscular contraction as mammals do.” He gestured at Transgenic 1 and said, “These rely on diffusion of oxygen through spiracles and tracheal tubes. The process works only across very short distances, around one millimeter. A larger version of this bug would simply suffocate.”
“Oh. That’s too bad.” Treadwell paused a moment before saying, “Maybe that’s something you could work on.”
Bob couldn’t think of any practical reason for creating a larger version of the bug but he kept that to himself. They moved to the next container, Transgenic 2. “These are the modified masked wheel bugs,” Bob said. “Far stronger and faster than the original hybrid versions.” He pulled one out for show. It was a robust savage with an intimidating, muscular thorax. Fanned across the insect’s back were two rust-brown dorsal ridges jutting up like the skegs of a flipped surfboard. Using its front legs, the carbon-black brute probed between Bob’s fingers with enough strength to spread them apart. “This is the most tenacious bug we’ve made,” Bob said. “Stealthy, powerful, and relentless.”
“Good.” Joshua Treadwell nodded. “Very good.” He noticed a third box, marked Transgenic 3. “What about this one?”
Bob shook his head while Klaus held his hands up, palms out, saying, “We can’t use number three yet. They are unstable and dangerous, though we have not yet determined what the problem is.”
“It’s a transgenic hybrid of an Eastern bloodsucking conenose and a thread-legged bug,” Bob said. “Remarkable killers. They look like walking sticks on steroids, the body’s about five inches long, like a fat pencil with legs.” Bob held up his pencil and dangled his fingers below to demonstrate. “But the spined forelegs are like a mantid’s, extremely quick and strong. We think the problem comes from the Triatoma sanguisuga.”
“Tria-what?”
“The Bloodsucking conenose,” Bob said.
“Also known as the Mexican bedbug,” Mary added simply because it was one of the few bug facts she remembered.
“Unlike other assassins, sanguisugas will bite vertebrates, usually around the mouth, which is why they are sometimes called kissing bugs,” Klaus said. “They have attacked us more than once while trying to handle them.”
“Interesting,” Treadwell said, as if entertaining an unsavory notion.
Bob returned the masked wheel bug to its bin before leading the group over to a counter where three shoe box size containers sat covered by a black towel. Removing it, Bob set off a skin-crawling scramble of tan, reddish brown, and black cockroaches. Writhing and tumbling over each other, trying to climb the slick walls and falling over backwards onto their fellow Blattodea. “German, American, and Oriental cockroaches,” Bob was saying as he pointed at each species in turn. “The bane of the American household. We’ll use a hundred or so for the demonstration.” He turned and gestured. “If you’ll follow me, we’ll go to the staging area.”
Bob and Klaus carried the bug bins across the lab to a custom-made acrylic container about the size and shape of a refrigerator. The inside was a cutaway view of the wood frame construction of a typical American home. Electric conduit and wires ran through the wall spaces, along with water and vent pipes and ducts for heating and air conditioning.
Jutting from both sides of this was a series of shelves, each corresponding with a valved duct designed to connect to the insect containers. Bob and Klaus connected the roach and assassin boxes to the ducts. “We’re going to release the cockroaches into the wall spaces,” Bob said. “Then we’ll introduce twenty of the assassins, ten each of the two transgenic hybrids.”
“I should also explain,” Klaus said. “In nature, an assassin bug would kill and eat a single cockroach and not kill again until it was hungry. But as we want them to kill all the prey they encounter, that requires that they stop eating. They simply do not have the gut space to consume that much food, so we had to manipulate the genetic design of these bugs so that killing is not merely a means to an end, but is an end unto itself.”
“In order to do this,” Bob continued, “we’ve increased the toxicity of the enzymes in their saliva, so they don’t need to use as much for each kill. And we’ve nearly tripled its paralyzing effect as well as the potency of the amylase and pectinase they inject into their prey to liquefy the internal organs. Now they kill first and eat later.” Bob looked around and said, “Are we ready?”
Treadwell looked concerned, as if he had detected a major design flaw in the demonstration. “This doesn’t seem like a real world scenario,” he said. “I mean, if I’m not mistaken, cockroaches aren’t active in the light.”
“Correct,” Klaus said. “That is why we do this in the dark.”
Chapter Eight
Klaus looked across the lab where Mary was poised by the switch. “Lights.”
As the room went black, Treadwell said, “What?” In the darkness he kept talking, “Shouldn’t we have night vision goggles or something? How am I supposed to…”
Klaus said, “You will see.”
“Here we go.” Bob opened three valves. “I’m introducing the cockroaches,” he said.
As they streamed out, scurrying in every direction to fill the wall spaces, Treadwell’s voice filled with wonder and, just above a whisper, he said, “What in the world?” The roaches glowed an eerie green in the dark.
“Okay,” Bob said. “Now the assassins.” It was a stunning spectacle, the transgenic killers marching into the staging area like ghostly, iridescent gladiators. “This won’t take long,” Bob said. “Just watch.”
Then the attack began. It was the most remarkable and gruesome thing Joshua Treadwell had ever seen. He watched in awe as the masked wheel bugs seized and flipped the large American cockroaches (Periplaneta americana) onto their backs, holding them down with their muscular forearms. The assassins would then rear back before plunging forward, stabbing their prey with powerful mouthparts and injecting their paralyzing saliva before stalking off to the next victim.
Near the bottom of the
container, where galvanized rigid conduit fed into an electrical box, a group of the spined ambush assassins had cornered several nervous looking Oriental cockroaches (Blatta orientalis). The assassins paused, antennae touching in silent yet complex communication. The roaches had never seen bugs like these but seemed, nonetheless, to have a good sense of what was to come. They were scrambling to get behind one another, eventually pushing the weakest among them out as a sort of offering or perhaps in the hope they could escape during the kill.
Then, as if on cue, the mercenary insects pounced. One victim after another dispatched and tossed onto a growing pile. Saved for later. In the darkness, Treadwell could see the pairs of glowing eyes searching for more prey.
One of the spined ambush assassins leapt onto the electrical box, then up to the collar of a vent pipe going through a wall stud. It had seen the scalloped end of a German cockroach (Blatella germanica) disappearing into a thin crevice. Just before it could escape, the hybrid killer seized the roach’s sensitive cerci. A moment later, as the roach struggled to pull free, its cerci began to separate from its abdomen, taking with it the abdominal nerve ganglia and rear legs. A second assassin arrived and slipped its sharp claw into the crevice just enough to slide under the wing stubs where it got a purchase. Together they dragged the desperate, struggling German pest from the crevice and, hissing, stabbed it simultaneously. The two bugs then seemed to look at one another with the satisfied expression of men who had done their job well. For a second, Treadwell even thought he saw them nodding their heads as they swaggered off for more.
A few moments later it was over. The organized killing spree gave way to a natural calm. The ghostly shapes of the transgenic hybrids returned calmly to the piles of dead roaches and began to drain their liquified organs.
“Let there be light.” Bob said with a bit of bravado. Mary hit the switch and all eyes turned to Treadwell. Klaus noticed the man’s expression and wished he could have met him at a poker table. He was all tell, no bluff. This guy was impressed. Klaus felt certain they would get the funding.
Treadwell stepped toward the staging area for a closer look, craning his head to see if all the roaches were dead. Most of them lay still, but here and there legs twitched and spasmed as the nervous system fought vainly against the powerful enzymes before complete paralysis set in. Treadwell pointed at something partially hidden by a floor joist. “What’s that?”
Bob looked. It was a dead and partially dismembered masked wheel bug. “Oh, yeah, that happens sometimes,” he said. “They occasionally kill one another when things get in a frenzy like that. Sort of a friendly fire situation.” He shrugged. “Of course we’ll do a count to make sure they got all the roaches, but in any event, I think you have to agree those are some pretty impressive bugs.”
Treadwell blinked once, then looked at Bob. “But how did you make them glow?”
Chapter Nine
In Linnaean taxonomy, Bob explained, organisms are classified into groups of increasing similarity, from kingdom to phylum to class to order to family to genus to species.
Notwithstanding literary creations such as the chimera with a goat’s body sporting a lion’s head and a serpent’s tail, and the centaurs with a man’s trunk and head on the body of a horse, it was universally understood that you couldn’t create a ladybug the size of a Volkswagen by breeding it with an elephant. They were simply too different.
But once scientists unraveled and mapped the DNA sequences of genomes for all manner of plants and animals, it wasn’t terribly surprising to discover that they were able to transfer specific traits to others within the same species, or even the broader genus or family. What was surprising (except to a few I-told-you-so types) was the discovery that they were able to transfer traits not just from one like species to another, but from utterly different types of animals, like from jellyfish to rabbits, two species you would otherwise have a hard time getting to mate.
More surprising still was the discovery that they could transfer traits from the animal kingdom to the plant kingdom and vice versa. It still wasn’t possible to make an eight thousand pound ladybug, Bob continued, but scientists had taken genes from the cecropia silkmoth (Hyalophora cecropia) and put them into the genome of apple trees. Because the moth gene produces a peptide that attacks a variety of bacteria, the result is an apple tree resistant to fire blight and confer scab.
“The process is called zygote micro-injection,” Bob said, leading the group back into the conference room where he had the relevant charts and graphs. “We took a fluorescence gene from a jellyfish…” Bob gestured at Klaus. “Actually Klaus did this part. He has very steady hands. Anyway, we modified the jellyfish gene to increase luminescence, then inserted it in a fertilized roach egg cell.”
“No kidding.” Treadwell looked at Mary and Klaus to see if either would betray Bob. But they just smiled at him and nodded. “That’s interesting,” Treadwell said. “But…why?”
“Well, we did it specifically for this demonstration. Like you said, cockroaches aren’t active in the daylight. But the original idea—not ours, I might add—was to use the fluorescent marker gene to tag certain proteins or cells, like cancer cells, so surgeons would know exactly what to remove during an operation.”
“Makes sense.”
“It’s also been done on silkworms, a chimpanzee, and a rabbit.”
“Part of the same research?”
“No, the rabbit was an art project. Some guy named Eduardo Kac.”
Treadwell seemed put off by the idea. “An artist made a transgenic, glow-in-the-dark rabbit?”
“Actually, he had a French biotech firm do the actual gene manipulation.”
“The French.” Treadwell shook his head. “Surprised they didn’t use a chicken.” He crossed his arms and thought for a moment before saying, “So if you can put moth genes into apple trees, what can’t you do?”
Bob shrugged. “Now that the genie’s out of the bottle,” he said, “it’s just a matter of time before we find out. We’d love to do some experiments introducing spider venoms into some of our assassins but, as you know, it’s all a matter of funding.” He gave Treadwell a smile.
Treadwell nodded and made a note about the spider idea. “What about control? How do you keep the assassins from leaving a building where you’ve install them?”
“Right now we use a pheromone system,” Klaus said. “But it is an extremely time consuming and expensive process. We are hoping to find something more efficient.”
“Yes, well, we can probably help with that,” Treadwell said.
As Bob and Klaus exchanged a glance, Mary said, “Who is we? I mean, I’m assuming your financial partners aren’t also entomologists.”
Treadwell gave a sly smile and patted his hand on the conference table. “Well, the truth is, we’re not interested in investing in your company for your company’s sake.”
“What do you mean?” Bob said with some concern.
“We’re considering investing in you as part of a larger project,” Treadwell said. “See, we look for companies engaged in specific areas of research that we believe we can merge into a larger idea. The Blue Sky concept is to incorporate your work with other research that we’re funding. We have several different groups working on different parts of a puzzle. We believe we can integrate them into something you, perhaps, hadn’t even considered.”
“Okay,” Bob said, sitting down across the table from Treadwell. “But you are interested in funding our research?”
“Absolutely. In fact there’s only one part of your business plan that gave us any pause at all.”
“Which was?”
“The environmental aspect.”
He may as well have said it was the icky bugs. It was as if he had kicked Bob, Mary, and Klaus in the stomach and, for a moment, it seemed none of them could breathe. They looked at o
ne another in disbelief before Bob said, “You understand that’s one of the main selling points of the idea, right? It’s what positions it in the marketplace. Don’t you think? The fact that the bugs are an all-natural form of pest control.”
Treadwell chuckled slightly and shook his head, dismissing Bob’s concern. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that we want you to make the process bad for the environment. I mean, I’m not even sure you could unless you used locusts or something, you know, like the eighth plague in Exodus,” Treadwell said. “But some of the people I work with have a negative reaction to anything that’s anti-business. You know, environmental impact studies, all that sort of nonsense costs money and is based on junk science. Like the whole global warming thing.”
Bob wasn’t having a panic attack just yet, but he could see it from where he was. “But that’s not—”
“I know, I know,” Treadwell said. “Don’t worry. I understand the difference. This has no impact on our decision to fund your research. Your part of this is too important.”
As Klaus eyed Treadwell, trying to get a sense of his character, he suddenly had a change of heart, deciding that he was glad not to have met Treadwell at the poker table. It turned out he had been bluffing or, in any event, sandbagging. Klaus said, “There is something you are not telling us.”
Treadwell took a breath and looked down at his shoes for a moment before he said, “You’re right. I haven’t been completely honest.”
Mary perched her hands on her hips and leaned forward from her waist. “But you just said the environmental aspect wouldn’t affect your decision to fund our work.”
“And it won’t.”
“Then what is it?”
“The truth is, I’m with DARPA.” Their blank expressions prompted Treadwell to say, “Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.”
Klaus shook his head. “What, exactly, is that?”
The Exterminators Page 3
