Doing the Best I Can Here

I’m a traveler.  Just not in the traditional sense that you’re thinking.  How I got all wrapped up in this is a long story that I’ll explain later.  But to all of you in 2020 right now just know that I’m really really sorry.  Please understand that I’m doing the best I can here...  Also sorry about the whole murder hornets thing.  That was totally my bad.

I work as an intern for a government agency called the Kronos Adjustment, and Readjustment, or Enhance Now division, or K.A.R.E.N for short.  Look I didn’t pick it.

The emergence of COVID-19 is what we call in time travel speak as a “Stakeholder” event.  In other words it can’t be prevented.  K.A.R.E.N tried to avert the assasination of JFK sixteen times before we figured this out.  Also there was that time we tried to kill baby Hitler.  And boy, I REALLY don’t want to get into that… But there are some things we CAN change, and the mandate of the organization is to create the best possible reality for the future of humanity.

The problem we run into often is the butterfly effect.  One small change can really fuck things up somewhere else down the line.  So for every time jump we do heavy analysis like butterfly branching, or predictive consequence mapping.  Sometimes we really nail things and see them coming.  But because time is a bitch other events just sort of come out of left field.  Remember that time scary clowns took the streets?  We kinda allowed that as a byproduct of preventing World War III.  Hey, it’s complicated.

About the Murder Hornets

Look in my defence this is my first job. I shouldn’t even be on this assignment, and to be completely honest a lot of time travel is like throwing spaghetti against the wall to see what sticks. I knew there was a shortage of PPE in the US so as soon I arrived I hacked the delivery itinerary of a large cargo ship exiting out of Japan carrying all sorts of medical equipment. The consequence map I received said that the original destination was a part of Taiwan that was already well stocked, and therefore would not be detrimentally impacted. What I didn’t realize was that the cargo ship I picked was part of a relatively shady outfit, and in addition to 15 containers of masks, gloves, medical gowns etc. among other things it hid: 1 container of semi-automatic weapons, 2 containers setup for potential human trafficking, 3 containers full of sex toys (I don’t even know how you sell that much “equipment”), and one, ONE friggin container left mostly empty except for a hive of absolutely pissed off hornets that covertly setup shop while the ship was docked. So let me take a step back. K.A.R.E.N has made multiple efforts in the past to contain Vespa Mandarinia (aka the Giant Asian Hornet aka Murder Hornets aka Psycho Flying Bastard Kill Machines) to southeast Asia, and specifically Japan. I mean these people took on Godzilla for fucks sake and survived. They can handle some bugs. By the way Godzilla is totally real. We’ve had to go back and prevent his rampages so many times that he’s now somehow embedded in the human psyche, and we make movies about him. It’s another time travelish thing I don’t completely understand yet. Anyway I forged all the delivery requests so things could get distributed. I called the police regarding the trafficking containers and guns. I don’t even remember where I sent the sex toys honestly. Somebody’s grandma probably got one hell of a surprise. Just when she was waiting for that new crock pot to come in from Amazon BOOM a thousand dildos in the driveway. Did I mention I really shouldn’t be responsible for this year? Then I saw the alerts come in regarding the hornets. All it took was one pesky queen to go sightseeing off of the ship. Now some of you might say “big deal” they’re ugly bugs with a scary name. We can handle it. But let me tell you that if not kept in check they devastate ecosystems. Bees are a huge part of agriculture. I’m not being dramatic when I say with out their bumbling little asses cross pollinating plants our food supply will collapse. Believe me I’ve seen the consequence map. Humanity first turns into obligate carnivores then resorts to cannibalism. Many a vegan dies in this scenario, and not due to malnourishment. Let’s just say a “vegan burger” takes on a whole new meaning in this dark reality. Japanese honeybees figured out a method to combat them a long time ago. Dozens of bees swarm the hornet in a giant “bee ball”, and the heat generated from them literally cooks the hornet alive. This basically makes Japanese bees the tiny samurais of the insect kingdom. European/American bees on the other hand have no defense. One murder hornet can eviscerate an entire hive in under fifteen minutes. They just plow through hives like it’s their job and they're late for a pedicure appointment. Decapitation is their most common method of murder. Originally they were named Vespa Sphincterus or the “Asshole Hornet” but apparently it wasn’t descriptive enough. At this point I have to file for a “Readjustment”, or what’s commonly called a “mop up” request. It means I have to get sent back in time again at a slightly earlier date before my current incarnation of 2020 is mucking around with the timeline. Which means there will be 2 of me in 2020 which is really weird and I don’t want to think about it. There’s a couple of scenarios and K.A.R.E.N pretty much leaves it up to the agent as to how to handle it. You can either confront yourself in the timeline and say “Hey here’s how you’re going to screw this up let’s fix it.” Or you could covertly just fix the problem without your other self knowing. Because quite frankly I’m mentally fragile right now, and didn’t want to meet my other self I went with the latter. So under the cloak of night I set fire to the container containing the hornets a day before I was to originally arrive in 2020. So YAY! No more murder hornets guys! The only ones that made it to America were already toasted. Sorry about that. I’m still kinda learning on the job here. I already mitigated the threat from the Space Raptors so I hope you can cut me some slack.

The Bubonic Plague Squirrel in Colorado

Oh man where to begin on this one?  Before we start I want you to Google (or whatever it is you people use now) what a “rat king” is.  Go ahead I’ll wait.  See that ugly sucker?  That’s a bad omen, and whenever one appears we get an alert for it to investigate because they’re usually plague related.

Now I want you to understand the “black plague” isn’t as scary as it sounds.  What you consider to be modern antibiotics can pretty much knock it out.  But these things can mutate, and when you take out half of Europe you don’t need a coordinated marketing campaign to tell you how bad it could get.  Couple that with the current pandemic already in progress they pretty much shoved me into the time machine to check it out.

The information I received was pretty vague but as far as we could tell Morrison is just southwest of Denver where roughly 12 biopharmaceutical companies reside.  Any one of which could potentially be the origin of the plague.  All it takes is one careless janitor to throw the wrong bag of medical waste in the trash rather than the incinerator, and whatever critter that happens to be dumpster diving that day gets exposed to god knows what.

Once a colleague of mine had to deal with a pack of wild raccoons that got into some experimental steroids during the year 1993.  Now imagine a whole gang of really buff trash pandas literally launching garbage cans into the street.  I mean these furry little bastards were jacked, and just terrifying.  They looked like Rocket the Raccoon did CrossFit.  Anyway where was I?  Oh yeah plague squirrels.

It wasn’t just the squirrels.  By the time I got there several other forms of vermin had contracted the disease and were spreading it quickly.  The playbook for this particular situation says to enact plan “Disneyland 57”.  Which implies that there are 56 other plans of the “Disneyland” contingency, most of which I’m guessing are above my pay grade.

Here’s the deal.  Disneyland has a rodent problem, and not of the cartoon variety.  Every time your kid drops a churro that becomes fodder for mice no matter how well the staff cleans the park.  But not long after the mice took up residence so did the stray cats.  And cats are nature’s ninja.  They disappear during the day never bothering the guests, and only come out at night to hunt Mickey’s unwanted cousins.  What I’m trying to say is this plan mostly involves just flooding the town with felines until the afflicted animals in question either die off due to the disease, or get picked off by the claw.

So someone found one squirrel leftover from the rampage.  Big deal.  Don’t freak out about it.  It’s not like we’re talking about alligators that can walk upright.  Damn do I hate any frigging job involving Florida.

That Mysterious Chinese Seed Thing

The kudzu plant originally from Asia was introduced to American in the South on 1883 at the New Orleans Exposition. Due to it's fast paced growth and ability to provide wide coverage the vine was pushed both as a means to prevent soil erosion, and as a pretty plant to use as shade for porches.  That meant during the time all these Kentucky Fried Chicken Colonel looking motherfuckers could sit on said porch, and drink their mint juleps in comfort while watching their slaves sweat their asses off in the fields.  Kudzu: America's first actually racist plant. 

When a wave of boll weevil infestations hit southern crops hard (we tried to stop that twice to no avail) they ended the practice of controlling the plant's growth.  With no one to actively tame it kudzu become known as "the plant that consumed the South".  It's invasive.  It expands rapidly.  And it chokes the living hell out of any other vegetation in it's wake.  

So please don't plant those dumb seeds you're getting in the mail until I can fix this.

It does extremely well in warm weather which is why they're being sent to you during the Summer.  Also this isn't just kudzu.  It's weapon's grade super kudzu genetically engineered at a foreign lab somewhere in southeast Asia that we haven't been able to pinpoint yet.  How much damage can this horrible plant do?  They showed us a public service announcement from a timeline where many a dumb ass planted said seeds called "Super Kudzu: The Pet Strangler".  I'll leave the rest to your imagination.

Why do you people do this?  I mean some wacky evil scientist distributing seeds around the world as some sort of lame eco-terrorist plot to unleash a green plague is bad enough, but then you plant them?  Sometimes I wonder if you people are worth saving.  Somebody please take 2020 off my hands I don't want to work here anymore.