ZIKA: None The Wiser

The virus escaped from the lab into the jungle and was picked up by a hiker. Only this time the hiker wasn't bitten by a monkey, but a mosquito. The hiker was just wealthy enough to get the attention of the press when she gave birth to a child suffering from Microcephaly.

Until then, local villagers who produced such offspring with regularity went unnoticed. The white volunteers took the burdensome infants from grateful mothers who were desperate to get back to work in the fields.

The Microcephalic children were raised and their organs harvested, none the wiser, until the virus spread out of control into wealthy population centers.

The End

Storage Locker

The pieces of wood and plastic are unrecognizable strewn and disassembled, scattered for countless days across the dusty concrete floor in the darkness of a sun-baked steel room. A note past-due is now the only friend of the rusty steel tomb, calling to sullen guests who arrive in red polyester vests, steel-toed boots and work gloves bearing shovels, dust pans and brooms.

A parade to the dumpster begins of boxes, bags of moldy clothes and children's broken toys. Disassembled bed frames and dressers missing drawers. The flotsam in the dusty sweeps are long forgotten photos, left behind for lack of space or time to carry. Papers scrawled with crayoned flowers, grass, dogs and cats in a fantasy life of peace. There simply was no more money to keep the property clean.

There are countless such trails of debris across the world, a shedding of hopes and dreams. The meaning of community and comfort erodes until all that is left is to survive. What becomes of the children raised on the road between low wage jobs and constant hunger, watching their parents leave behind broken pieces of their lives?


Review of Stranger Things on Netflix SPOILER ALERT

At first I thought Winona Ryder's character was written a little too weak for her. Although her character does win validation it seemed implicit and undersold. There are also some plot holes but I'm not sure if they were deliberate.

The violence is shared between two antagonists and is explicit by one and implicit by the other, but not too gratuitous which allows your imagination to take over.

After decades of exposure to various forms of fiction, it's easy for me to see a quilt of classic plot formulas and character developments from such films as E.T.Stand By MeItFire Starter, and Silent Hill, but younger viewers will definitely enjoy this new twist.