'Chapter 1: Angelina'

Chapter 1: Angelina

By Joshua W.C. Taylor at 02/26/09 16:03

    I must be out of my mind...thinks Angelina as she glances from side to side and watches the people milling on either side of her while she waits for the bus.  Putting her feelings down to paranoia because she has been so uptight about her research, she tries hard not to notice that people are gathering in little huddles..not talking, just standing. Some of the groups were gathered around a single newspaper reading something that apparently had them amazed or horrified or both. Keeping her eyes straight ahead, she doesn't even notice the exquisite beauty of this spring day or the blue of the sky overhead.

    As the bus pulls to the curb, she rushes at the steps so she can get a seat where it would be impossible for someone to sit next to her. She has been having some awkward moments recently and wanted to avoid being close to anyone right this minute. She didn't quite understand her recent yearnings to be near people. Two's company, three's a crowd just didn't add up for her in recent days. She wanted to be around people, and lots of them. The more the better.

    She peeks up over the top of her sunglasses to see what she pegged as a boy of about college age walk by in the aisle. My God, she thinks. He looks like he is about 20, but the arms that hung down out of a short sleeve that sruggled to contain the mass of muscle looked like they belonged to a body builder older than his 20 years. Not to mention the fact that he was easily over 6 and a half foot tall. Rapidly, she pushed her sunglasses back up so they covered her eyes and looked away to the window of the bus.

    After a ride that seemed to take forever, although it was only about a dozen city blocks, the bus pulled to the curb at Duncomb and Livermore Street. As Angelina stepped off the bus, she was faced by the wide expanse of telescoped steps that fronted her workplace and Youngstown, Ohio's brightest star and largest employer, MiStar Chemical Company (MCC). As she started up the expanse of steps, she saw her co-worker and friend Brad Strong waiting for her near the top, waving. As she reached Brad, he turns and starts to walk with her the rest of the way, already starting a conversation she knew was coming.

    So...did you read the newspaper today?
    Yes, Brad.
    So what do you think happened? Is the rock star guilty? Do you think someone in our peaceful little town had enough balls to pull off something like that? I mean... that was some pretty sick crap!
    Well, if you would have asked me that a couple of years ago, I would have answered “no”...but today...I would not answer so quickly as you well know.
    So when are you going to tell me the whole story about what you know?
    I don't “know” anything, Brad, I am only making somewhat informed assumptions at this point.
    I think you know more than you're telling.
    Well that may be, but you know I am not allowed to talk about my work, Brad, even to you.
    Oh come on, Ang, you know I would never tell anyone what we talk about!
    I know, I know, but I just don't feel comfortable telling something that sounds so crazy even to me, and I have been researching this issue for 5 years.
    Fine, but can't you at least give me a hint?
    I have given you PLENTY of hints, Brad, I just can't go any further than what I have already told you.
    Jeez, Ang, I'm like your best friend...anyway who the heck would I tell?
    Are you kidding me right now Brad? You ARE a Strong after all. Your grandfather owns this company, which just happens to be my source of livelihood! What do you mean who would you tell? This theory of mine could blow this company wide open, and I don't think you or your family would be very grateful, even if what I find is true.
    Angelina, consider my job here. I am a delivery guy. I make deliveries to all of the fancy schmancy labs in this place. Do you think my grandfather would ever listen to a word I have to say?
    Whatever, Brad. OK, how about we meet next weekend for dinner and talk it over? I should have some better facts by then, and I will tell you what I “think” I know. Fair?
    Fair! How about dinner at Lozzini's? I know you love Italian food, right?
    Sure, great. Pick me up at 7:00? Ok, see you then, I gotta get to my lab.
    OK, see you later, Ang! By the way, I have a delivery for your lab I will bring by in about an hour. See you then.

    God, he is exasperating, Angelina thinks as she arrives at the locked door to her lab. On the frosted glass,  there was a yellow Post-It with a note from her boss and Director of the Research Department, Professor Timothy Jordan, telling her he will return after lunch to have a word with her. Feeling uneasy, Angelina unlocks the door and enters the brightly lit lab.

    Sitting down at her desk, Angelina reviews in her mind the pieces of the puzzle she is attempting to solve. She unlocks the drawer of her desk and removes her private research journal where she records the “unofficial” results of her research at MCC. Unofficial, because no eyes but hers have seen what is written here. She pores over the graphs and charts and reads the notes she has written, trying deperately to make it all make sense.

    As early as 1978, MiStar Chemical had aquired FDA approval for one of their “enhancement” drugs, Catamilline, for cattle intended for food consumption. The drug, after six years of careful research, was put on the market to increase meat and milk production in test herds of cattle all over the United States. Today, evidence of the drug was seen in herds all over, with larger, more muscled beef cattle and dairy farms overflowing with increased production of milk from their dairy cattle. Angelina, as head researcher on the Catamilline project since its inception, was worried that a few things were not taken into account during the initial research and development stage.

    In recent department meetings, where she had to spell out what she had found in the preceeding month, she kept trying to convince Professor Jordan that the strange diseases cropping up recently may have something (or everything) to do with Catamilline and its introduction into the human food chain. He just kept telling her to keep working on it. “Need proof”, he said. “Can't just go around spouting this stuff and causing mass hysteria without proof, Anglelina.”

    “This just doesn't make sense”, Angelina thinks as she looks at the evidence again for the thousandth time. “But it has to have something to do with the way people are looking and acting in this town”...”I just know it”, she thinks. There is no way, in her mind that the size of kids in the generation coming to their teenage years, not to mention the huge muscles that seem to just “grow” overnight at about age 14, had nothing to do with their drug. Aside from that, there was the fact that people (including herself) had developed an uncanny desire to be in each others company..and have the strangest inclination to protect the members of your “group”, even risking your own well being to do so. That it could be proven to be related to Catamilline was a worry for Angelina. She felt not only responsible, but with each new development, she felt even more torn between telling the world of her “extra” research, and her loyalty to the company she had been with for so long. Last night's murder could be the proverbial straw that broke down the camel. But how could she “prove” it?  The sheer animalistic carnage of the murder at the rock concert left her feeling sick to her stomach with a premonition of something worse to come.

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