My fellow runners and I were on a run down in the Puyallup Barrens almost a year ago. We had to take over a small section of the barrens and maintain it as if we were a new competing gang. (Certainly this was an odd experience for a Tir-educated female shaman like myself, but my fellow runners were knowledgeable enough.)

While I helped organized a clinic and education center for the local denizens, others in my team took over the local rackets, among which included a latte stand with coffee that was like no other. I am more of a tea drinker, but even I could not help but indulge at least once in the drinking of this beverage that nobody else could pass up. It was incredible! I couldn’t understand how coffee so fine was being served in the barrens and not by some corporate owned distributor in Seattle.

Well, days passed... we kept peace in the area and were responsible for crumbling the foundations of a church comprised completely of magic-hating psychic wizards. While exploring and helping out in the small community that we had appropriated, one day we happened upon the daily chores of a small boy who helped operate the latte stand. Little did we know that in the basement of the building that the latte stand operated in outside of, a couple of cages housed two fattened larva bugs of some form.

To this day we aren't quite sure what it was that we had seen, but the process of squeezing these creatures until milk came bursting out of their bottoms is something that I will never be able to remove from my memory, much to my misery. (Note to self: Seek an instructor who knows the Alter Memory spell.)

As it turned out, this milk was the "secret ingredient" used in their coffee. One of my fellow runners says that it's natural even for some insects to go about similar techniques for nourishment, feeding and maintaining large larva such as those with simple vegetation and garbage in exchange for milk. But after that experience, none of us drank coffee for many months to come. And I... I am sticking with my tea from now on.

Damn! Even SOYcaf sounds good compared to that!

Tell me about it... but still, my fellow runner brought up another point:

Metahumanity enjoys the sweet taste of honey. And we all know where that comes from. Is it any different to use bugs for purposes such as milking, as we do with cows and like animals?

I'll remain an avid tea drinker, but that is something for the shadow community to chew on for a while.

Back in the 20th century they used to call fruit juice "bug juice" because the red color came from crushed beetles.

Serve me up a glass of the bug spew. Sounds better than what they've been pretending to call milk around here.

Who cares , if the joe's good ?

Can't be any worse than this soymilk crap in my minifridge right now...

Yeah but honey is bee's backwash, condensed. It hasn't gone through the bee's whole system from top to bottom. Also your average bee is what 4cm long. Any time you get some giant bug it's at best a metabug and you don't know what the chemicals are. At worst it may be a bug spirit and you don't know what 's going on there. If that's the case the people running the stand might be possessed people.
It might be just trying to build up a market. I seem to remember about 10 years ago there was some stuffer that was revealed to come from bug spirits, Blue Baccosoy I think. But it might be something more unpleasant, like carrying an infection or control the regular drinkers.

Please tell me that you shut down the "supplier."

Next thing you know, someone will try to breed a western bee spirit with an african bee spirit to create a race of bee spirits that creates more honey like the african bee spirit, but without the hostility. Yeah right.

Ah, man! Ignorance is bliss.

Who ever said the change to soy products was a bad thing?

Water, ayep. I am sticking to water. Water that has been run through a million filters, but water non the less.

How about paying ¥10,000/kg for coffee beans that come from a cat's ass?

Speaking of dubiously adulterated soy products, I have good news and bad news about SoyaFizz. The good news is, SoyaFizz Pink will be joining its SoyaFizz bretheren on store shelves all across the Barrens next week (joining the illustrious ranks of SoyaFizz Blue, Green, Red, and Yellow). The bas news is SoyaFizz Green. Yep... still made of.....

The Watcher

"Soylent Green is people!"

*cough*

mmm...AmberGel...

Funny you mention that...
I had a chummer who did a run against a clone farm once. You know, one of those joints where they speed-grow livers and kidneys and things when some rich frag's shot their OEM stuff to hell? Anyhoo, he's sweeping the grounds looking for... well, that don't concern you none . And he's findin' rooms of vats and tanks with various bits of people (and animals, but don't quote me on that) floatin' around. He moves on a bit, and finds a couple of operating rooms - still nothing unusual, given the purpose of the joint. Except, there's a blood-stained conveyor belt stickin' out one side of the room...

Well, never one to leave a curiousity unsatisfied (may he R.I.P.), my pal figures out where the belt leads to - a locked room marked 'EMPLOYEES ONLY" in the basement of the clinic. So like any self-respectin' SINless son-of-a-devil-rat, he blows the door up REEL GUD and walks right in.

Into a butcher shop. Or, more accurately, a slaughterhouse. The room was kept just above freezing (to keep the stench down low, I guess). Slabs of human remains hanging from meat hooks on an overhead conveyor. Chop tables with arms and legs draped over the side, in various states of filet. A rust-stained deli slicer with a piece of masking tape and the words 'HEAD CHEESE' jokingly scrawled across it. A stack of cardboard boxes lined one wall of the room, right next to a shrink-wrap machine. Each box had 2 words stamped on it:

LONG PORK

So by now my pal's got the willies somethin' fierce, but he's a pro. So he holds down his lunch long enough to finish the gig and evac. As he's leavin', he catches a small caravan of lunch-wagons headin' back the way he came. He didn't catch the name on the trucks, but in the rear mirror, he could make out the words "...CHEAPEST PORK COMBOS IN THE 'PLEX!".

At first, I took his story with a grain of salt. I mean, troll-gangers with a taste for hallucinogens aren't exactly the most reliable witnesses, so ka? But then I start hearin' of these noodle carts gettin' knocked over down in Everett, and how the eyewitnesses all swear that the perps smelled really foul, and had milky eyeballs...

The good news is that I assenced the community and found there to be no trace of a hive or even a splinter group of bugs. The milking bugs, however, were indeed possessed by bug spirits that were being tended to by the latte stand's staff. We didn't have the heart to shut them down since it was the primary means of supporting the community and keeping them fed and clothed.
Since there was no bug society to be found, we agreed that this new bug we found must have been some small subspecies subservient to the domineering bugs that we all know. How they came upon the little buggers is still a mystery to us.

Spookymonster:

Ack! That is truly disgusting... sometimes I am very grateful to be an elf. Salads and fruit suit me just fine, especially when I picture the horrid things that certain persons and species attempt to get away with in our society.

These bugs that were being milked sound like Aphids.

Here's a link: Ants tending Aphids
And: Ant Cows

Ack! Links?! Ok, walking away, walking away...

You didn't shut them down, just because they were a primary source of business? WAKE UP AND SMELL THE SOYCAF! Anyone remember the UB? They did lots of good- clinics, soup kitchens, counciling, possessions abductions corruption of souls and organizations! Jeez hunting them down was one of the few things that made me glad for AZT's ruthlessness. If only they'd shared their info with everyone else a lot sooner we could have avoided a lot of problems.

Ok, Snow, let's get 'em. Should I wear the high-tops with the Tech-9, or the low tops with the Uzi?

It was too pathetic to dispose of anyone or anything there. The community was not possessed, and the two bugs under their control had no sentient capacity at all that we could uncover. Aside from that, they were well tended to and were kept in cages. These bugs had no combat abilities at all and could barely move faster than a giant snail.

I know that there are those who act differently, but we all know about there being certain bugs that are neutral to humanity. The butterflies for instance. These things had no was of infesting other hosts on their own and felt more like the remnants of a geeked ant hive than a new threat.

and firefly spirits are lovely, but remember each flickering light in the darkness is a person whose body was stolen and twisted.

And so you blame the aphid for the "fault" of the summoner? You would deprive them of life and their caretakers of income?

Truly the twisted Ants should be burned, as should any who enslave others. But destroy the innocent because they did nothing? Do you kill the child who's mother died in birth, or the rapist who caused it?

This is not an innocent child. It's an alien spirit with a developed mind that has forcibly taken a human's body and now is influencing the neighborhood. Bug spirits don't go through developmental stages like true inscets- larva/pupa/bug they come into our world in the ofrm they were designated to hod.
Look to the proof that the neighbors are defending the bug. How many people from Chicago would do that? What would people from the CZ say about people who defend bugs?

Nothing a little spell would fix. How flamible if the building?

>>> The building is in the Puyallup Barrens. Is has burned hundreds of times, as it is an old fire department training tower. They would set flammables on fire throughout the tower and send trainee fire-fighters in to learn their stuff. The bottom 10 m of the tower is buried in volcanic ash with only the top floor visible above. The Aphids are on the lowest level. The tower is about 80 m south of an old church, destroyed by explosives and fire last year. Don't destroy the tower during the day, as someone runs a school on the top floor. Gang members are often on watch from the top of the tower at night.
-- Hobbes

>>> While you're all busy defending us from the... dangerous aphids in the gang-controlled barrens, you might do the world some good and drop off some medical and food supplies for the squatters there and give them a fighting chance to make something more of themselves. Since you'll be depriving them of the one -gag- somewhat good business they have there, they deserve to have something given back in its place.
-- Artemis

Sure how about a couple of BTL dealers? Gun runners? Yakuza jopy girls, ulitmatley depending on the bugs for your livley hood results in the same degredation. Maybe we could just drop a dime to Lone Star and they're just nuke the block, "s'only way to be sure."

I heard one Capt davidson declare "Oh yes, fire and Acid every time."

>>> Open minded about Mantids and yet closed minded when it comes to the lower rungs of society? Well I'll say this one thing in defense of this small group of people that I spent a month among. They had amazing determination and spirit. A will to survive that surprised me for people in such condition, especially when they had families to protect among them. As Hobbes mentioned, a kind woman ran regular school classes for the children of the area. Children that deserve a chance like anyone else. There were other rackets going on when we got there, but this coffee stand was one of the cleanest forms of business they could build in a barrens slum like that. It's an inspiring sight, although misguided when you consider the bugs being involved.
-- Artemis

It's hard to say it's ONLY misguided when there are bugs involved.

These individuals know nothing about what the 'milk' they are putting into these drinks could do to others without their knowledge. I am not SURE that it's harmful, only that there isn't much good about anything involving bugs.

I feel they should be made to stop, whatever that requires.

*Activates assorted foci and heads out to gather his brethren.*

>>> Sounds like fun, but I was thinking of us all taking a short vacation to Hawaii first. Last time was great, but it might be a good change to go somewhere exotic while you're not on somebody else's time schedule. Heck, Ajax would enjoy burning part of the barrens anyhow. Wouldn't take that long to do if we planned it right. I plan to bathe in some bug repelant first though.

-- Phoenix

I bunch of bug hunters all converging on a small house in the barrens to slaughter two crippled, captured and enslaved spirits? How poetic.

>>> Hey, all I know is that if I were turned into a sorry state like that... being a bug and all... well I would rather be put out of my mysery than go on. ESPECIALLY if I was that low in the bug heirarchy to be a milking bug. It's bad enough to be a mentally controlled tool of some greater menace, but that on top of it makes like somewhat... well, meaningless. As far as I'm concerned, once a person is inhabited by a bug, their soul is gone. Their body is in the hands of a demon of some form and their soul has been imprisoned. And from what I've heard, there is no way to bring them back. The only right thing to do at that point is to release them from their oppression, read them last rights if you can.

-- HumanFly

Hearsay aside, I have not seen, heard, nor experienced evidence that the Soul is "trapped" due to spirit investing. It is either "gone" to wherever Souls go, or merged happily. You seem to belive the former.

Secondly, the "demons" as you call them now serve a human community. Were I to guess, they are "happy" - to the point of ability - because their function is to provide milk for their caretakers. I know many elderly who cling to life beyond what you understand as pain and suffering. Perhaps your value of life is flawed, yes?

I highly doubt the hosts were worthwhile beings to begin with, as Ants are efficient creatures. Most likely they used dogs or some other animal for the task... perhaps even a cow. Either that or some diseased person.

So I ask again, what greater good is served by killing them? Would it not make more sense to keep them alive and under eye so that when another Ant commun... er.. hive discovers them you can lay a trap for them?

You say with one hand that many elderly cling to life but then turn around and say you doubt the inhabited beings were worth while? Now whose making a value judgement? Can we ask how much of that coffee you've had?

So we don't burn down the building, just hose the cellar with EX ammo.
These grubbs don't exist in a vaccuum. Somewhere there's a hive that spawned them, a queen or shaman who created them in that form for a reason. it is not worth the risk to keep them going. Already you have changed your perception of bugs to saying in some forms they can contribute to society. Would the economy collaspe if the sofcaf stand suddenly had to use krill filler instead of grub puss?