A teenager with an unusual phobia dies a mysterious death. Yet, the autopsy points to a mundane explanation. An open and shut case?
Not for agent Fox Mulder of the FBI, who does not believe in pieces that don't fit.
...
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A grandfather clock somewhere in the basement of the FBI headquarters in Washington DC struck midnight.
Sitting with the lights off in his office, his face lit by the neon blue of the screen of his laptop, Mulder was finishing his report.
The mysterious deaths of Anthony Terrence Crane and Daniel McNiff have been attributed to fatal shock from severe cocaine withdrawal.
This much everyone agreed upon. This was the undisputed clinical cause of death.
Cocaine was fed into the victims' bloodstreams on a daily basis by a parasitic organism called Cocassin, which lived in their sneakers and was capable of synthesizing cocaine from ingredients found in the common drink Coca Cola.
Mulder could see Scully's pensive face in his mind. "We have no definitive proof of that," she would say. She would likely argue some of the details. Then, eventually, with a sigh, she would reluctantly agree to sign off on Mulder's explanation. "OK, I don't have better guesses either. At least what you are conjecturing here is theoretically possible, I'll give you that," she would say.
Mulder continued typing.
Despite evidence collected, the Cocassin's existence remains unverified. There have been no other similar documented cases observed in modern times, and there no listings of such a creature in any scientific taxonomy.
The rest, Scully would classify as "speculation". But for Mulder, it was important to share what he believed was the truth. He wanted to write it all down, so, if the events of this case ever happened again, someone would be able to put the pieces together and maybe save a victim's life.
He wrote free-form now.
The Cocassin is a creature both rare and difficult to study. It is fragile, and lives only minutes if not attached to a host. Once dead, it quickly disintegrates to dust, leaving behind a residue of organic compounds. Given its parasitic nature, it likely multiplies via spores, which may lay latent in certain coca plants for long periods of time. Unlike the adult Cocassin, the spores are resilient. Even so, they don't typically survive the usual processing of the coca plant for commercial use such as in glue production.
In the case documented here, experimental technology for glue production conducted by Altova Labs, a Government laboratory, likely failed to kill Cocassin spores in glue materials shipped from Guatemala. This allowed these spores to get into the sneakers of two teenagers, attach themselves to their feet, and feed on nutrients from their blood, allowing an adult Cocassin organism to develop and grow.
Since the Cocassin requires constant connection to its host, it has developed a mechanism of keeping its host compliant. The Cocassin synthesizes drugs with addictive qualities via a process yet unknown to science. It then injects these drugs in its host, keeping them happy, and at the same time unlocking an immense potential of physical strength in them. To control undesired behavior, the Cocassin withholds the drug injections, forcing its host into withdrawal until the undesired behavior is corrected. In the present case, any attempt to take off the host's sneakers, which would endanger the life of the Cocassin, was punished with severe drug withdrawal symptoms. Eventually, the fear from withdrawal would translate to fear from what caused withdrawal: in this case, fear from taking off the sneakers.
One of the addictive substances the Cocassin is capable of synthesizing is cocaine. To do so, it can use ingredients found in common sugars and the soft drink Coca Cola, all of which it could acquire from the blood of its host. The host is compelled to consume large amounts of Coca Cola, since failures to procure sufficient amount will result in a failure of the Cocassin to produce and provide the daily dosage of cocaine to its host.
The Cocassin and its host exist in perfect symbiotic relationship of codependency.
He had no proofs. Still, a logical conjecture was better than no explanation at all.
Finally, he typed:
No information of any kind was found about Altova Labs, the Chula Vista Government laboratory responsible for the processing of the Guatemala glue materials. It is as if it never existed.
A idea occurred to him. He opened up his enhanced Blue Edition of Google Maps and browsed the application for a while. Then, he went back to his report and added:
Chula Vista, California, is only a few miles away from the U.S. Naval Amphibious Base Coronado, a U.S. Government Military Facility.
Not that this fact offered any answers, but it was worth at least a mention.
In the early morning hour, Mulder leaned back and took one last look at his report. Like so many others, it was to be filed away and locked in secrecy.
Classified.
An X-file.
***** THE END *****
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