The tiny housefly paused, lifted its forelegs, and brushed at its strangely faceted red eyes. During its scrambling over the dirty plate, the fly had gotten a speck of grease on one eye and now methodically groomed itself to remove the grease from its eyes.
A light buzzing of wings and it flew from the sink, circled the room, and picked up something new.
Sal called out his brother’s name a couple of times, to no response, after he entered the house. As usual, he had applied deodorant, a spritz of body spray, and a generous amount of his favorite cologne after his shower a few hours earlier. The chemical cocktail of deodorant, body spray and cologne combined to form an intriguing aroma for the household’s new fly. Its insect senses were developed far beyond anything a human could have achieved.
Sal had just seated himself on his brother’s sofa when he heard the whirring of wings near his left ear. He ignored the sound, more interested in a shiny device at rest on the arm of the sofa.
Ignoring the fact that the device wasn’t his property, he gave the view screen and touchscreen a quick scan.
Some sort of active timer he shunted to the side, punched what looked like a HOME button, and called up the home screen of the device.
The fly, in the meantime, hadn’t given up. In fact, it landed on the nape of Sal’s neck, just below the hairline, and extended its proboscis to lap up some tasty perspiration.
Sal crashed ahead, obliterating all the device’s safeguards with his random exploration of its functions.
“Is it some kind of game?” Sal wondered aloud.
“CANCEL TIMER. YES/NO.”
He lifted his hand away from the device and swatted at the tickling itch on the back of his neck.
A faint, whiny buzz receded and a dark housefly flew across the room.
With a derisive snort, Sal remarked, “Good thing Papi’s not here, or you’d be a goner.”
The housefly ignored the warning, but Sal lost interest and went back to his study of the device. Randomly, he clicked yes on the timer question, and the blinking message went dark and let him keep exploring the device without distraction.
The little fly followed the air currents coming from the front door, left slightly ajar by Sal. The housefly flew through the gap and soon hovered over the paved sidewalk, feeling thermals of warm air ascend from the sun-heated concrete.
Sal finally found an ABOUT header on the complicated array of menu options.
Chronivac Vers. 2
Copyright © 2006–2022
All rights reserved to TransDem Laboratories, Inc.
“Damn! Bro’s got a Chronivac!”
He’d heard some secondhand information about the luxury tech. He clicked a PROFILE button and Brad’s recent entry emerged on the screen.
Sal smirked as he scanned the information, wondering what Brad had changed about himself. Then he noticed a linked profile.
Clicking it, his expression changed as he read.
Name: Musca Domestica
Age: 11 days
Gender: Male
Height: .25 inches
Weight 10 micrograms
Aware/unaware: Unaware
Duration: 60 minutes
Baffled by the Latin, he resorted to google on his phone.
“Housefly?” He scratched his beard.
He kept reading to the end and saw the line about 60-minute duration, his mind flashing back to the timer… the timer that he had canceled.
“He wouldn’t,” Sal muttered. “Why the hell would he…”
His brows knitted with alarm.
“He did!”
Then he recalled something else. The irritating itch. The whiny buzz. His half-assed slap…
“Oh shit!”
He leaped to his feet.
“Brad!” Sal shouted out the name.
He felt a breeze, and his eyes fastened on the nearby front door.
“Oh no.” Carrying the device with him, he kept looking around the room, straining to detect any faint buzzing noises.
He was about to panic when a fly buzzed through the door, literally right under his nose.
Sal slammed the door closed and tried to follow the insect’s zigzag flight.
Sal followed the buzzy whine all the way to the kitchen where the insect flew into the sink and landed on a dirty plate.
“Sorry, Brad. You can’t just buzz around like that. It’s not safe.”
Seeing what he needed, Sal soon had the insect trapped beneath an overturned water glass. He stared through the glass at the fly.
“Of all the things, why a fly?” Sal questioned.
The insect clung, unresponsive, to the side of the glass.
Meanwhile, outside, the other fly left the yard surrounding the Walters-Rivera home and...