Something special for Halloween…
Look, I’ll admit it. I made a bad call. I got out ahead of the facts. Don’t get me wrong. They still needed to be shut down. Just look what happened in ’08. But the way we went about it was all wrong. We blew it, big time. That’s on me. You have to understand the kind of pressure we were under, back then. It was the Reagan era. “We’re from the government, we’re here to help,” you know? A couple of assholes build a nuclear reactor in their basement and we’re the bad guys for trying to stop them. There’s a lot that never got out. Some of it they hushed up, but mostly the press just didn’t care because the public likes stories about plucky assholes who buck the system and doesn’t want to hear how the plucky asshole almost made Chernobyl look like a chest X-ray because he thought he was smarter than the people who actually went to school to learn how to shield a nuclear reactor properly. And couple of years later, there was that kid at Western Tech that cracked over bombing a test or something and built a nuke in the basement. They had to call in DXS on that one I heard.
They weren’t the only ones, you know. Two years later, some kid built a nuke for a science fair project up in Ithaca. Only it was a hundred times more powerful than he thought it would be and he didn’t shield the timer circuits right. Nearly blew up half the state. And don’t get me started on what happened in Tuscon. But that’s kids’ stuff. Science nerds getting carried away. I don’t like it, but I’m not without sympathy. No, what gets me is the assholes who do it for the money. Back in, I guess, ’85 maybe, couple of railroad workers discover a toxic fungus. Mutant form of cordyceps. Ever heard of it? Grows on ants. Gets in their brains and takes them over. Makes them want to spread the fungus. Only this version works on people. So what do they do? Put it in little boxes and sell it as a dessert. I knew a couple of the guys who managed the clean-up on that… They don’t like to talk about what they saw.
Sorry. I know that was a little off-track. The point is, just because I made a bad call back then, it doesn’t make what they did okay. Yeah, I was skeptical. Of course I was. We’re talking about the scientific breakthrough of the century here. This should’ve been happening in a lab, with safety precautions and documentation. Not in a firehouse in Tribeca. You know most of their work’s never been replicated under laboratory conditions, right? No, my mistake was that I brought an engineer with me instead of a scientist. The other three, I could’ve reasoned with them. Academics. They were basically the same as the high school nerd types. Well, two of them anyway. I think maybe the other guy just worked there.
But the front-man. Even now, I just get so- You know when they booked him, he was carrying thorazine? Yeah. The newspapers loved to run that thing I said, about them drugging their clients. Like it was just some crazy theory. He admitted to it. She wouldn’t press charges, of course. And look, I don’t blame her or anything. But given the circumstances, investigating them was the right move. And the temporary injunction was the right move. Having them taken into custody was a step too far, I admit it. So was shutting down their equipment without proper oversight and precautions. But the point still stands. We know more now than we did back then. I will happily concede that the service they proposed to offer is real and represents a legitimate need. But this is a dangerous field, one where the science is still in its infancy. We need to establish standards. Licensing. Safety requirements. Insurance requirements. This can’t be the wild west, not when we’re talking about amateurs with, let’s face it, nuclear weapons, dealing with forces of potentially biblical proportions.
It is for that reason that I join the undersigned in respectfully requesting that permit and licensure for operating a business specializing in paranormal investigation and elimination be denied to Conductors of the Metaphysical Examination, LLC, within the jurisdiction of New York City.
Sincerely,
W. Peck
Assistant Deputy Director, Genesee County, Michigan Field Office
Environmental Protection Agency
July, 2016