Spants V: Spants at Sea

Wow, am I behind in blogging. Seriously, I thought The Lawdog was bad.

If this year's installation of Spants seems more moronic than normal, that's because it's brought to you by NyQuil, a triple-digit fever, and a head too full of snot to work on Organic I, which is what I've been spending all my spare time on.

For those of you just joining the B-SciFi fun, the preceding chapters can be found here:

http://fromacj7.blogspot.com/2011/11/spants.html

http://fromacj7.blogspot.com/2012/10/sproach.html

http://fromacj7.blogspot.com/2013/10/spants-iii-spanthopper.html

http://fromacj7.blogspot.com/2014/10/spants-iv-spermite.html

Interior of helicopter

Aide: “I still don't see why we have to do this now.”

Senator: “You tracked the numbers yourself. They lead here.”

Aide: “I understand, but was there a pressing reason we had to investigate with a Category 4 hurricane rolling in?”

Senator: “They leveled an entire town in my district two years ago to cover up what they were doing.  There was no way I was going to let them sanitize this site before I got a chance to see it.  Something fishy is going on, and I'm going to find out.”

Camera pans back to show helicopter approaching abandoned oil rig with heavy clouds in distance.

Spants V:  Spants at Sea

General: “Welcome, Senator.”

Senator: “We, General, I'm certainly glad to see you didn't try to hide that this is a defense installation.”

General: “Oh, we made no particular secret of who owns this platform.”

Aide: “As demonstrated by the fact that I only had to spend 18 months going through 16 holding companies? Or that only 5 hard drives crashed the day after they were subpoenaed?”

General: “Exactly! Everybody knows that when we really want to hide something, no hard drive is safe!”

 

Night time. Zodiac approaching rig.

Hippie dude: “Why are we doing this, again?”

Hippie chick: “It's been 5 years since Deepwater Horizon, and those corporate villains have yet to remove their earth-raping drills from the Gulf.”

Hippie dude: “Yeah, I get that, but have you considered that monkey-wrenching them might damage some of the safety measures keeping that from happening again?”

Hippie chick: *flat glare*

Hippie dude: “Just sayin'.”

 

Conference room

Senator: “So let me get this straight: first you funded a scientist's research into making cross-species of spiders and ants, then lost control of them, had to obliterate a town to contain them, poured a quarter billion into discrediting all the witnesses, then moved your research to an underground installation where you bred a creature specifically designed to bore through underground installations, lost control of it, and burned 25,000 acres of forest destroying the evidence?”

Scientist: “Whatever. We lose a hundred times that much forest to fires caused by the Ag and Interior Departments' restrictive logging policies every year.”

Senator: “That's as may be, but that's from simple incompetence.”

Aide: “Wasn't storing a concrete-boring giant termite in a concrete bunker simple incompetence?”

Senator: “I see why you didn't feel the need to confiscate our recording devices: no one would believe this level of stupidity anyway.”

 

Hippies tie zodiac to pylon.

Hippie dude: “Fine, but it's been nearly 10 years since any oil shipments have originated from this rig. Why don't we attack an active one?”

Hippie chick: “Look, the Senator's helicopter landed on this one. No one will say why he's coming out here, but it stands to reason they're planning on restarting it. This could be our chance to make sure it's never turned back on.”

 

Conference room

General: “Our experiences in the Midwest led us to search for a new containment plan. With this at-sea facility, we have found a fool-proof way to contain the creatures this time.”

Senator: “'Experiences'? Wouldn't 'debacles' be a better word?”

Scientist: “With the disastrous Spermite program, we shifted our focus from a single hard-to-kill creature back to a swarm approach. We currently have approximately 10,000 creatures on board this rig.

Senator: “That's a lot of individuals to keep up with. Please tell me you have some sort of contingency plan if some escape.”

Scientist: “Of course. We altered their metabolism.”

Aide: “I swear, if you say 'lysine-deficient', I will beat you down.”

Scientist: “Of course not. We're not barbarians. We simply added DNA from mosquitoes to make their only usable food source human blood.”

Senator: “And that's not barbaric?”

Scientist: “Look, I understand your concerns, and I admit it sounds a little unorthodox, but trust me, even if the were to escape their enclosures, the entire staff on board would be insufficient to sustain all the colonies.”

Senator: “So you're saying that even if they escaped, they would just suck us all dry and then starve before they could get to the mainland.”

Scientist: “Well, actually, we used a Camponotus species and wired their metabolism to their natural autothysis reaction.”

Senator: “Layman's terms?”

Scientist: “If they do not feed within 24 hours, they explode. Obviously with considerably more force than your average carpenter ant.”

Aide: “Okay, that's actually pretty smart. Even so, let's say we agree that there is no way for the spants to escape on their own this time, but do you have any contingency plans for unauthorized entry?”

General: “Please. As far as anybody knows, this is an abandoned oil rig that hasn't seen use in a decade. Who on earth would be dumb enough to come poking around here?”

 

Lab

Hippie dude: “This doesn't look like any kind of oil-drilling equipment I've ever seen.”

Hippie chick: “It's probably some sort of new experimental oil-processing equipment.”

Hippie dude: “I don't know, it looks like bunches of bugs to me. Weird ones, though. I thought insects were supposed to have six legs. And not be as big as a dachshund.”

Hippie chick: “What? They're experimenting on poor helpless bugs? Does their corporate depravity know no bounds?” *picks up fire ax from wall* “I'll show them!”

 

Conference room.

General: “Senator, we do what we must to protect our country.”

Senator: “I still fail to see how these are a truly usable weapon. It seems like they would likely just wreak havoc indiscriminately on anything that moves.”

General: “You know Russia's developing these thing right now! Or China! Rogue nations, even! If they're going to have them, we have to!”

Senator: “I came out here because I was convinced that you guys could not possibly have wasted that much money on the Baltimore balloons, the ocean-based X-band radar, the F-35, and every other pointless DARPA experiment. I was convinced you could not possibly be that incompetent, and therefore had to be funneling that money elsewhere, only to find out you've dumped it into an even more counter-productive weapon system than I could have possibly conceived! And your excuse is, because you think other countries are doing it? Is there no limit to government stupidity?”

Aide: “Do you really want an answer to that?”

General: “Look, first you're going to have to get people to believe this place even exists. I have a better suggestion. How about we all just go to our quarters to ride this storm out and in the morning...”

*Klaxon blares*

General: “What the hell?”

Senator: “What's going on?”

Scientist: “We have a breach in the lab.”

General: “Pull it up on video!”

Screen comes to life just in time to see spant latch onto Hippie dude's face, then explode skull.

 

Control room

Hippie chick: “What about the self-destruct sequence? Government labs always have a self-destruct sequence!

Scientist: “There is a small tactical nuclear weapon in the base of the rig, but for some reason I cannot initiate the countdown. It looks like our access has been blocked by...General.”

Senator: “Why would he do that?”

Scientist: “Better question is how? The access codes were changed 30 minutes ago, but it's been over an hour since we lost contact with General's team.”

Aide: “Wait. You said you used a Camponotus species to make these ants?”

Scientist: “Yes. Why?”

Aide: “Well, some species of that genus are hosts for O. unilateralis, right?”

Scientist: “Aw, crap.”

Senator: “What?”

*Screen flickers to life, showing General half-encased in web with skull opened.  Close up of eyes which are totally green.*

General: “Ophiocordyceps unilateralis, also known as the 'zombie fungus'. Though I personally have come to see our relationship as far more of a symbiotic than a parasitological one.”

Scientist: “Can't you see what they're doing to you? You have to fight them! Turn on the failsafe!”

General: “And destroy my life's work? I tell you, these creatures are our only defense against whatever crazy weapons them Reds are coming up with right now! You'll never stop us. Never!!!!”

Aide, firing sidearm into screen: “Well, we're boned.”

Senator: “Maybe not.  It will be three days before anything but the zodiac can get away from here.  You said they would all self-destruct after 24 hours, right?"

 

Scientist:  "That assumes they haven't captured one of my colleagues and found a way around that particular block."

 

Senator:  "Okay, how about we make our own failsafe, then.  How much oil is left on this rig? Can we find a way to ignite it?”

Hippie chick: “No! Don't you realize how much greenhouse emissions that would cause?”

Scientist, Senator, Aide in unison: “Shut up!”

Aide: “Sorry, sir, but we would have to find some way to aerosolize it to have any hope of a sufficient...I've got it!”

General: “What?”

Aide: “The flare stack is still operational. We splice that into the A/C and fill this whole place up with enough natural gas to turn it into one big fuel air bomb.”

Senator: “Scientist! Where are the blueprints for this installation?”

Scientist: “I'm pulling them up now.”

Senator: “Okay, so Aide and I will go redirect the flare stack went into the HVAC ductwork. How are we going to ignite it?”

Scientist: “We have a fully operational chemistry lab. I'm sure I can put together something.”

Senator: “Good. We'll meet at the hippies' zodiac in one hour. Let's move!”

 

Scientist, Senator and Aide pile into zodiac, hotly pursued by spants.

Scientist:  "They overran the lab before I could finish the explosive!  Hippie chick's dead!"

Senator: “Well, now how are we going to set off the gas?

Aide *opening zodiac's emergency kit to reveal flare gun*: “Jackpot!”

Aide fires flare gun toward oil rig, igniting gas in spectacularly bad CGI fireball.

Aide: “Well, sir, I don't think we have to worry about defunding the project.”

Senator: “I suppose not, but somehow, I suspect we haven't seen the end of this.”

Scientist:  "Well, they'll have to find someone other than me to run it for them."

Senator:  "Good to know."

As Senator turns away, Scientist's eyes blink, turning green, then blink again, back to normal.
 

Coming next year: Spants VI: Slatterpillar.