Leaving the park and walking back to the research center to finish the day, I decide on an official side-project: use micro-tracking technology to cleanly mitigate my rodent problem. I start to plan the genocide.
There were a good many issues to iron out on the rat-tracking idea, for example, the genocide would have to happen in the window of time before the rat’s digestive system passed the tracker. Obviously the method of execution should be decided beforehand, and here I think you can get really creative.
Certainly, as my research buddy pointed out, I should stop referring to it as a genocide. That was a good point. Good for optics.
But to my mind, solving the how shouldn’t be difficult. Rats were a perfectly knowable entity, scientifically speaking. People in my field used them all the time, usually for baseline research, usually involving a lot of different drugs. There was a lot of data to be had on them.
I get back to the research center and there’s a new stack of files on the desk, tidier than the cases that usually come my way. My job is to synthesize classified information and data so other people can understand it. My job is to reduce the noise in the information and find the meaning.
Technically I’m just a researcher—that’s what my business cards say, but researchers don’t really hand out business cards, as far as I can tell. Seemingly, we tacitly agree about our jobs: the fewer the questions about what we do, the more fun the cocktail party is for everyone.
I pop open the top folder and the cover page just says one word, in that proprietary font known round the world, “Mondiablo.”
Mondiablo dominates international food production, but also manufactures the pesticides that poison and kill the very earth needed to sustain that food supply. It’s ironic. And typical. They do genetically modified seeds, foods, soy. I know it’s not a perfect metaphor, but Mondiablo makes me think of one of those restaurants inside a gas station.
Why is agriculture stuff on my desk? What else do I know?
The company doesn’t go by its full name anymore, though. It changed years ago. They kept the same font for brand recognition, but now we just call the company Mondia. So these files are dated.
I know that Mondia is the manufacturer of the poison in my yard.
The poison. The rats. The refugees? The birds. Interconnectivity is a bitch.
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Current Sh*t 