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06/25/00 Me And The Bee By Eddie Nambulous Welcome to the hive paranoid-iacs. Bee obsession. I’ve always had one. Honey on everything, that was my motto as a larva. Alright a cheesy joke, but I did love the spun nectar. Had an aunt who called it bee spit. Had an uncle who called her an idiot for that. They recently celebrated their fiftieth anniversary. How’d I get off track so fast? Bees. Cool little bugs. One summer when I was a kid, I became so obsessed with a hive in my yard that my mom had to start ordering calamine lotion by the jug. It was the whole collective principal that had me so jazzed. The idea that each and every one of those winged wonders had a job and they did it to death. Seemed simple, seemed nice. Of course, they didn’t live in a world where you could play video games instead of punching a time clock – now I know better. When I got older I got the facts about our fuzzy, yellow and black pals. Bees can communicate from one hundred yards apart. Cool. They use movement and vibrations to get their points across. They don’t sleep, they can see ultra-violet light, each and every one in the hive serves the Queen. They have a Queen. VERY cool. But if the queen gets wounded or can’t function the hive turns on her and so she bites it by being bitten – eaten alive -- blecch. And the hive is only as strong as its leading lady – so if she’s bad news you better believe the hive won’t last. Obey the strongest link, purge it when it becomes weak – for bees it seems to work. But what if the hive principal became a part of the human world? Would we be better off or headed for trouble? Foster got a taste of that scenario recently when he followed a quatrain to Fairvale, Ohio. And what a queen he found there. Charlene Fay, the Fairvale High School Falcon’s self-proclaimed "Number One Fan." As over-the-top a southern belle as they come – she drives a cherry-red, mustang convertible, flashes the fake tipped nails, low cut dresses and push up bras – just the kind of older lady who makes any Senior Jock sit up and say, "Ay co rumba!’ The Falcons had had an amazing turn in their luck on the field and there didn’t seem to be an explanation for it -- until Foster did some digging of course. Turns out Miss Charlene was branding her boys with team tattoos that packed an extra punch – a time released dose of the primary chemical compound in bee venom called Mallitin. The drug made the boys act in perfect synchronization – they were at Charlene’s command without her saying a word. Nifty trick, too bad Foster and I had to take her down. Psycho or not, Eddie likes a girl in curls. Now tattooing is already a taboo of sorts in our society. I’ve always wanted one but never had the guts to get it. I just can’t get the image of myself at sixty with a drooping hoola girl hanging on my arm looking as old as I am, her once perky coconuts swallowed up by my wrinkles. But Charlene’s tats were more than decoration. And the Falcons were quickly becoming the guinea pigs in a Gua plot that could turn us all into hapless slaves. Angry teenagers and mind control. We’d seen it before … Mellitin was lethal in large doses – but Charlene had found just the right amount to keep her boys in check. When Foster called her on the alien’s latest game she dosed him major and dumped his freaked out bod on the side of the road. Had to pull a "Pulp Fiction" on Cade. Stabbed him in the chest with a patented cocktail of antihistamine, adrenaline and lithium to bring him back from anaphylactic shock. He thanked me … sort of. Even if it saves your life, nobody likes a needle in the heart. Cade thought the key to bringing down the football-league hive was Trevor – he was the hold out of the bunch. Once he was co-opted things would get ugly. The kid came through, and I got to give Miss Charlene something I’d been wanting to give a Gua chick for a long time. A fire-extinguisher full of salt. A hive-collective in the US of A. Not something we want, some might call that communism. We can’t blindly follow. Trevor taught Foster that one person can turn the tide – just like Trevor did with the team. We’ve been preaching it here to you for the past two years and your numbers don’t lie. One person can make a difference, and with enough of you on our team we can send the Gua home and I can finally go back to playing video games. Everyone’s gotta have a dream.
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