Mid-West Campaign
Session Five

Saturday, 7 October 2000

After a couple of days rest, Jane returns to the office to file her reports. A battered Nathan Harlow is also present. The pair receive a new case (reference 1097-IN1), an incident on a field owned by the department of agriculture in Clayton, Idaho. The crops were part of an important GM food study and have been vandalised. Our contact at the Department of Agriculture is Michael Levin (Gilgoolie's mysterious sponsor).

The pair arrive in the tiny town of Clayton, Idaho in the late afternoon. They are to report to farmer, Neil Prentice. The field in question is located within his land. The agents enter local diner and speak with Sheriff Liam Mullice. He gives directions the Prentice place (it is about 20 miles out of town). Prentice was last in town two days ago to pick up supplies.

The agents check into a local motel run by Miss Winter who mistakes them for a married couple. They leave Harlow's dog, Bobby, at the motel and drive to the isolated Prentice place in Harlow's sports-car. The track to the farm is very difficult to manoeuvre. It look as though a very bad storm is about to break. The track will be impossible to negotiate for Harlow's car in mud or heavy rain.

At the farm the agents meet Neil Prentice. He explains that the Department of Agriculture lease seven fields from the farm for their research, and have done for the last fifty years. Prentice is paid to administer them.. Only one was vandalised, and by vandalised he means a gigantic crop-circle has appeared in it. All seven of the fields contain GM maize.

Prentice drives them out to the field on an impressive all-terrain tractor. It is a considerable distance from the home to the field - the farm is massive. All seven fields owned by the Department of Agriculture all are surrounded by one high fence and a locked gate (opened with a computerised keypad - the number is 1234). The agents walk into the field to see the crop circle as it starts to get dark. It is very muddy. Prentice checks bug traps in each field they travel through - it is part of his responsibility. Prentice says he checks the field every three days, the damage occurred at some point between 1 and 4 October.

The field is five acres in size. The crop circle is in the shape of diamond. It is 100 yards long and 30 yards wide at its widest point. It is difficult to see how it could have been made. Harlow wants to get a look at from the air tomorrow. Prentice suggests fellow farmer, Lee Shreider might be willing to fly them up in his crop-sprayer the next day. On the return to the farm the storm breaks. It is the heaviest storm the agents have ever seen. It is impossible to return to the motel. Prentice invites the agents to stay at his house and take dinner with his family.

The agents are given clean clothes. Harlow is amused to see Jane in a gingham dress. Including children, spouses and grandchildren there are ten people here beside the agents. Prentice's wife, Maisie, makes them very welcome. Jane becomes very sociable and becomes involved in a moonshine drinking competition. Her Olympic constitution serves her well, but she becomes more than a little loud and merry by the end of the evening.

Harlow and Jane share a bedroom (twin beds) above the garage, looking out on the main courtyard of the farm. Jane is quite drunk and tells Harlow much of her life story, dwelling on her estrangement from her father. Nathan records all this on tape.

In the night Nathan hears a scratching at the window. He gets up to investigate, suddenly a creature which resembles a mosquito but the size of a house cat, phases through the wall and attacks him. It attaches itself to his face and tries to phase into his head. This is obviously one of the brain bugs! And this was evidently how one got into Jenson Gilgoolie's head. Harlow panics, takes his enormous gun and tries to shoot the thing off him. He hits and kills it, but blows half his face off in the process.

The sound of the shot wakes Jane who is still a little groggy. She sees a green mist filling the room that she recognises as the same mist that came from Gilgoolie's head during his autopsy. She leaps out of bed too (naked but too shocked to care) and tends to Nathan's wounds. Fortunately the shot was not fatal, entering through the chin and leaving through the cheek.

Suddenly the door bursts open and Neil Prentice enters carrying a shotgun. Jane quickly realises he means to kill her and dives out of the way of the first blast. Completely unarmed she jumps across the room and kicks Prentice in the chest. He staggers backward but fires again, catching Jane in the shoulder. Jane strikes a second time, breaking Prentice's neck and killing him. It is the first time she has ever killed someone.

A second brain bug now rises out of Prentice's head and moves to attack Jane. It latches onto her face and begins to phase into her skull. At the last possible moment Jane lashes out with both hands, crushing the bug and giving herself a bloody nose.

She awakens Harlow and explains what is going on. Then she dresses. Harlow quickly takes photographs of the scene and puts his tape recorder on to record what is happening. From the window he notices that the rest of the Prentices seem to be setting fire to the farmyard. Harlow's sports car is torched and explodes. Even in his gunshot agony, Harlow mourns the loss of his car. The flames spread to the garage beneath their room. The garage is where the moonshine still is. They hurry from the room, Jane half-carrying Harlow.

The agents creep toward the exit. They are surprised by one of Prentice's grandchildren, Milo. A brain bug flies out of Milo's head to attack them. Jane destroys it with a well-placed kick before it can attack. Milo falls to the floor. Jane picks him up with the intention of carrying him to safety. On the way to the ground floor the agents investigate several of the bedrooms. Two of the wives (including Milo's mother, Ellen, are dead, probably strangled by their husbands who are currently destroying the farm.

The agents and the unconscious child arrive at the front door. The storm is still raging and they cannot any reception on their mobile phones. Visibility is poor as they look out of the front door and see Maisie. She suddenly disappears into a green haze. The storm begins to recede. There is a burst of shooting stars that rain over the farm. The storm has gone.

The agents search the farmyard. It has been completely wrecked and the house has now been burned down. There is no sign of any member of the Prentice family except Milo. He is likely the only survivor. One body (John Prentice) is found in the grain silo. They are dead face down in the grain, but the brain bug occupying them is also dead, because the silo is full of green gas. Could something in the grain be harmful to the bugs. This project was sponsored by Michael Levin, as was Gilgoolie's project. Is he working on a way to destroy the brain bugs? Harlow jokes that he Department of Agriculture is Earth's first line of defence.

Jane calls the police and an ambulance. She speaks to Sheriff Mullice who is completely disbelieving. He comes out and surveys the scene. He says he has contacted the regular Idaho FBI who should arrive in a few hours, and that the agents are to wait at the scene until they do. Paramedics treat Nathan and Jane's wounds. Milo is taken off in the ambulance. Mullice is very suspicious of what happened. He knew Prentice and knows he would never have acted like this. The agents do not mention the brain bugs.

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