It was late at night. Milton's Clothing and Fishing Bait, dark and seemingly empty, was being invaded. Although nothing could be seen, millions of soft, hushed voices hummed, saying, "How did I let you talk me into this?" and "Quit pushing back there!" and "Shh! Be quiet! You want somebody to hear us?" and "No, it doesn't matter if the socks match! Let's just get them and get out of here!" and "Did I leave the lights on in the sewer?" and "Will you cut that out! There'll be plenty of time for that later!" and the like.
A trenchcoat gently slipped off the rack and made its way, via the mail slot of the front door, out of the store. A plaid shirt and green pair of pants followed. The socks came next, then a modest hat (but, with a wide brim, naturally). The hat refused to fit neatly through the mail slot; it was crushed.
"I don't get it," the owner told the police officer the next day. "Why would anybody go to the trouble of breaking into my store just to steal a trenchcoat, a hat, a shirt and a pair of pants? None of it even matched!" The officer, who hadn't seen it all but liked to think he had, shrugged meaningfully.
Steven Schatzow is one of those thousands of faceless bureaucrats who work out of cubbyholes in United States Government offices. The Director of the Office of Pesticide Programmes, a part of the Environmental Protection Agency, his cubbyhole was smaller than that of a comparable worker in, say, the Pentagon. Thus,. Looking up from his desk, he saw the man walking past other EPA workers towards him.
Schatzow assumed it was a man because of the trenchcoat and hat the person was wearing, although he couldn't see the person's face because his collar was up and he wore the hat low down on his head, "Mr. Schatzow?" the man, in a low, breathy voice, asked, stepping up to his desk.
"Yes," Schatzow replied, peering at the shadow where the man's face should have been. "I'm Steve Schatzow."
"I've been trying to find somebody willing to listen to me all morning," the man said. Schatzow thought he caught a very faint echo, but decided that he was just being fanciful. "The EPA...you deal with genetic engineering, right? Well, you've got to do something..."
"Oh, yes?" Schatzow said, defensively. Ever since the Advanced Genetic Sciences fiasco (in which the company tested gene-altered material in trees outdoors, claiming that the trees constituted a "contained facility" for experimentation), mention of genetic engineering made EPA representatives tense.
"Recombining DNA is a very new science," the man continued. "You do not know what the new life forms you are creating are capable of doing...the potential for destroying the environment is tremendous..."
"There are some things," Schatzow, wearily rubbing his eyes, sarcastically remarked, "that genetic engineers were never meant to know, right?"
"I'm serious!" the man emphatically whispered.
Schatzow looked to the ground, searching for something to say. He noticed that the man wasn't wearing any shoes, and that his socks didn't match. Schatzow smiled, finding it hard to take the man seriously. "I assure you," he finally said, "that before the EPA will allow any genetically altered material into the environment, it will have to face exhaustive laboratory testing."
"You don't understand," the man quietly insisted, wobbling slightly, but managing to balance himself without taking his hands out of his pockets. Schatzow realized, somewhat disconcertingly, that he hadn't seen the man's hands at all. "You don't know how genetically altered organisms will act when introduced into the environment. They may mutate far beyond anything you can imagine, or control, no matter how fully they are tested in the laboratory."
Schatzow shook his head. "Trust me," he insisted, "the government has this situation under control..."
"This is far more important than just your government," the man, urgency in his voice, argued. "If you create something you can't control, what makes you think it will remain in your country? Or, for that matter, on this continent?"
"Who are you?" Schatzow asked, finally growing suspicious.
"Call me Gene," the man evasively replied.
"No, really," Schatzow insisted, "how do you know about any of this?" Before the man could answer, Schatzow had leaned over his desk and was grabbing for the man's hat. The man tried to move back, but his efforts were clumsy, and the hat was soon in Schatzow's hand. He gasped.
The "man" turned out to be nothing more than millions upon millions of unicellular organisms holding onto each other for dear life. As he watched, the microbes started falling apart. They hummed, barely audible, saying things like: "Oops, time to go, guys!" and "It's every microbe for himself!" and "Will we ever see each other again?" and "I'll write!" and "I'm leaving this outfit!" and "Well, at least we had Paduca..." and the like.
"Wait!" Schatzow cried as the clothes fell to the ground, empty. "Think of the things you could tell us!" But, it was too late.
The man he had been talking to moments earlier had literally dissolved into he crowd in the office.
