Global Warming Fun 3: A Tick In Time Page 6

PARTMENT, OR SUPPOSE A TAXI WAS GOING TO RUN YOU DOWN AND YOU DIDN'T SEE IT COMING."

  "You'd warn me then, right?" George assumed. "If you guys sensed danger coming you would tell me! You guys are my guardian bug friends!"

  "YES BUT SUPPOSE THE DANGER HAPPENED SO FAST THAT THERE WAS INSUFFICIENT TIME TO WARN YOU."

  "I would be killed then," George reasoned.

  "PERHAPS NOT! WHAT IF WE COULD WALK YOU OUT OF A BURNING BUILDING EVEN IF YOU WERE UNCONSCIOUS OR MAKE YOU JUMP OUT OF THE WAY OF A RUN-AWAY TAXI EVEN IF YOU DIDN'T SENSE IT COMING?"

  "That would be a good thing."

  "BUT WE HAVE TO LEARN HOW TO DO IT CORRECTLY," they told him. "WE CAN START TODAY. RELAX AND WE WILL TRY TO CONTROL YOUR MOVEMENTS BY LINKING OUR MINDS WITH YOURS."

  As he sat near their mound George felt his right arm lift up and move about, seemingly of its own volition. Then his left arm. Then each of his legs. "This is totally weird!" he remarked, as his body tried unsuccessfully to stand up, but ended up lying on its side.

  "WE NEED MORE PRACTICE," the jants explained.

  "I'm your man," said George, as he certainly had nothing better to do. "Practice away!"

  They practiced for several days before the jant minds were able to successfully walk George about their nest without frequently falling down. They were much more successful when a few ants rode on his shoulders and could see where they were going. After a few days that became unnecessary. The jants explained that they were tapping directly into George's own senses.

  "That's just as well," said George. "It's getting too cold out for ants to be riding on shoulders."

  It was about that time that George experienced 'sleepwalking' episodes. He would fall asleep in his easy-chair but would wake up in bed and visa-versa.

  "JUST PRACTICING!" the jants explained.

  Occasionally George reflexively or using his will struggled to regain control of his body while the jants were controlling it. They always relented and let him regain control, although George wasn't altogether sure that they had to do so. But he trusted them. They had after all saved his life and brought him back to health.

  But now that he had his health back what would he do with himself? Accounting seemed dull and irrelevant after what he had gone through with his cancer and his jant friends, he was sure that his girlfriend Julie had moved on to some other guy, and he wanted to become independent from his parents. On top of that, the job market sucked in New York City, just as it sucked everywhere in the world due to the increasingly lousy economy. The Government reduced maximum work hours to thirty-two hours per week in order to increase the number of available jobs but that didn't fully solve the problem.

  "WE HAVE A PLAN FOR YOUR LIFE, GEORGE," his little friends reassured him. "SOON YOU CAN HELP US SAVE SICK HUMANS AND HELP JANTS."

  George still avoided his parents and Julie, though he loved them. He loved them too much to allow them to watch him die, so he had moved away from Texas six months ago to hide and die in New York. Now that he was doing better he continued to assure them that he was doing well, though now it wasn't a lie. Strangely enough though, he found that now that he had his jant friends, he didn't need to talk with humans as much, and he finally skipped his weekly phone calls to them altogether. After all, he had his new jant friends to talk to and visit with any time that he wanted to. His former life in Texas was gradually being forgotten.

  His parents and Julie weren't convinced that George was doing well, particularly when he stopped calling them and stopped going to doctors. People with stage four cancers didn't do well, they died. His parents and even Julie loved him too much to let him die alone and without medical treatment. George shouldn't have been surprised when a month after meeting the jants a sheriff's deputy and a half-dozen emergency medical people with a court order to give him medical care barged into his apartment and carted him away in an ambulance.

  "But I'm not sick anymore!" he tried to tell them all. "I don't need rescuing!"

  "The judge felt different," they insisted. "You don't look sick to us but we aren't doctors. The doctors at the hospital have to follow the court order and check you out. If you aren't sick you'll for damn sure be able to go home, given the doctor and nurse shortages."

  "How many kilometers away from the Park is the hospital?" the jants had him ask. Though George had been there a dozen times it was always by way of a brief taxi ride.

  "Only four or five," they assured him.

  "WE WILL HAVE TO LEAVE YOUR THOUGHTS SOON," said the jant voice, as the ambulance pulled away from the apartment building.

  "No don't!" he told them, confusing his medical rescue team.

  "REMEMBER THAT WE SAVED YOUR LIFE JUST IN TIME, GEORGE. RETURN TO US AND YOU CAN HELP US DO THE SAME FOR OTHER SICK HUMANS. AND DON'T WORRY; WE ARE CONTACTING JERRY GREEN TO SEE IF HE CAN HELP YOU AT THE HOSPITAL."

  "Who is Jerry Green?" he asked them, but the jants were apparently already out of range and couldn't answer him, and the medical rescue team said that they didn't know anyone of that name. "I need to return to Central Park," he told his rescuers. "I can't hear my friends anymore!" They soon ignored his apparent ravings.

  "What friends are you talking about, Mr. Kelso?" the nurses and doctors asked, soon after they arrived at the hospital "Do you need to use a phone to talk to them?"

  "They don't use phones, because they don't have ears or voices!" George started to explain.

  "Why not? Who are they?"

  George wisely decided not to answer that question. These people would surely think he was crazy if he told them that he regularly talked with telepathic ants.

  The hospital staff took blood samples and checked his vital signs before they even gave him a room to stay in, and George cooperated fully. Things were going smoothly until they prepared him for a full physical.

  "Eeeeeeee," the nurse screamed and ran from the examination room after she had George sit on the examination table and remove his shirt. She soon returned with a male nurse, female doctor, and male doctor. All were soon staring at his back in horror.

  "For the love of God get Milner in here stat!" said the shocked male doctor. "Mr. Kelso, do you have any pain or itching on your back?"

  "None it all, I feel perfectly fine all over. Why do you ask?"

  "It's some kind of parasite, Mr. Kelso, attached to your back," said the female doctor. "An enormous bug of some sort. But don't you worry; we'll get it off of you! We're calling in our specialist."

  George was horrified. An enormous bug? What the hell!

  Doctor Sid Milner was soon staring at George's back, with a look of astonishment on his aging face. Sid was the doctor that the hospital turned to when exotic parasites were discovered on or inside of patents. Sid was a very busy man lately, but of the thousands of nasty things he had found munching on New Yorkers recently, this was a new one. This particular parasite was both on and halfway inside of George and it was a doozy! "Well doesn't that beat all! Just when I thought I'd seen it all!" he exclaimed.

  "What is it?" A nurse asked.

  "A giant tick!" said Sid. "The biggest damn tick I've ever heard of, and I thought that I'd already seen some pretty damn big ones. Ticks are arthropods related to spiders. See the eight legs? They start out with six legs but the adults have eight. But this one isn't one of the known eighty species of tick, that's for damn sure! It has the coloring of a common dog tick, and it has a hard shell so it's of the ixodidae family, but this one is monstrously huge: it has a three inch long shell, at least, and who knows how deep it has eaten its way into him!"

  "Ahhhhh," George moaned. "A giant tick? What the hell?"

  "Get me pure rubbing alcohol and a pint of Vaseline," ordered Milner. "We'll stun it, cut off its oxygen, and try to pull it out of him. And I want tests for the full range of known pathogens on those blood samples. And get this poor man a tranquilizer before he faints."

  After the shot of tranquilizer George started to grow drowsy even before he felt a burning, stinging pa
in on his back. Then blissfully he totally lost consciousness.