Men in Black The Grazer Conspiracy

1:38 P.M. May 6, 2001 New York City, New York There's nothing like a warm, sunny day in early May in New York City. It brings out the people like bees to sweet-smelling flowers. Hordes of people. The sidewalks fill elbow to elbow, everyone walks instead of taking the subway or cabs. Every terrace, deck, and fire-escape landing is covered with a partially clad body enjoying the warmth. But it is the city's parks that take the brunt of the spring attack, as anyone with a little extra time wants to stroll among the budding trees and inhale the smell of freshly mowed grass to forget the winter just past. MiB Special Forces Agent Jay, formerly New York Detective James Edwards, didn't even know the day had turned beautiful. With his partner, Elle, formally Dr. Laurel Weaver, city mortician, Jay sat at a long metal table, deep inside the gray walls of MiB headquarters in downtown New York. In front of him was the manual on the ritual habits of the Abosins, only one of a thousand alien races that visited or lived on Earth. Abosins were a new race to Earth, with the first due to arrive in two days for a projected stay of three years. Jay and Elle had been given the assignment of showing them the "ropes" of living among humans. It wasn't a job either of them looked forward to. In fact, Jay had complained to Zed, saying, "What about ridding the earth of the scum of the universe and all that? When did we become tour guides?" Zed had only snorted and didn't answer, which meant Jay and Elle were stuck. So now they were studying. Actually, they weren't going over the manual in a traditional sense. Instead they were doing what Jay called "absorbing the manual." The MiB Special Educational Unit called it "Pattern Learning by Cellular Rearrangement." No matter what the name, Jay hated doing it. He didn't like the idea of someone scrambling anything inside his head, either for pain, pleasure, or learning. As he told Elle, he had "moral objections" to anyone but him killing his brain cells. So he only used "absorbing" when they were pressed for time, which they were with the Abosin situation. Elle didn't really trust the device either, even though she claimed to understand the principle of its operation. She had tried to explain it to Jay one afternoon, and only succeeded in losing him after two sentences. After that he and Elle just agreed they would use both ways of learning when they needed to. They would submit to "absorption" then test each other with the written manuals, just to make sure they knew what they needed to know. Jay was just about to quiz Elle on the Abosin eating ritual, a disgusting cross between the way a pig rolls in mud and a female spider eats her mate. Thanks to "absorption," Jay could see in his mind exactly what activities the Abosin engaged in during this ritual, and this was, as far as he was concerned, already way too much information. Thankfully Zed's voice broke in over the intercom, filling the room without being loud. To Jay, Zed's voice commanded authority. In all his years as a New York City cop, Jay had never had a boss with a voice like Zed's. "We have a Grazer," Zed said. "Central Park. Containment teams on the way." "On the road, boss," Elle said into the air as both agents sprang to their feet and headed for the door at a sprint. Jay and Elle didn't even have to ask for specifics about the problem. They had dealt with one Grazer about two months after both of them had joined the MiB Special Services. A Grazer was an alien that stood about the size of a cow and looked like a mad scientist's idea of a cross between a grasshopper and a pig. They were also the dumbest aliens ever to take a ship through interstellar space. The problem, though, was that Grazers simply loved Earth. There was something iSmith, Dean Wesley is the author of 'Men in Black The Grazer Conspiracy' with ISBN 9780553577693 and ISBN 0553577697.