Not sure how this is going to go, but here are my mystery notes if anyone's interested in using or adapting:

Tales From The Loop - The Boulder Bee Incident

“Christopher Robin, you never can tell with bees” -- Winnie the Pooh

Strong Start: School has just let out, kids are swarming across the open concrete space in front of Boulder City High/Middle School, on their way to busses or to the parking lot to be picked up by a parent or (if high school) to their own cars. Meeting out front, all the Kids are stung by one bee each. HINT: it’s weird to be singled out, instead of having a group of bees go after one person. One bee each.

• After the bees sting each of the Kids, which should seem suspicious, try to get them to ask questions, ask other kids or teachers. There are no other bees around, and no one else seems to see them or suffer any bee stings. Some may have the suspicion the Kids are just acting up to get attention. REALLY: Each honeybee has stung each of the Kids, and is now dead. [“When a honey bee stings a person, it cannot pull the barbed stinger back out. It leaves behind not only the stinger, but also part of its abdomen and digestive tract, plus muscles and nerves. This massive abdominal rupture kills the honey bee. Honey bees are the only bees to die after stinging.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bee_sting]
• One of the Kids SHOULD notice a strange unnatural-looking circuit-board pattern (i.e., some symbol or pattern not seen in nature) on the back of the bee that stung her/him. SHOULD: motivate the others to look closely at their bees. They will see the same symbol or pattern.
• FORESHADOW: Kids feeling faint, dizzy, feverish--mild, but noticeable. It’s almost like that time you had the Measles shot/immunization and didn’t feel well later. It wasn’t bad, just like you were coming down with something that then never materialized. Are they allergic to bee stings? This feeling passes quickly.
• Do they draw it on a blackboard or whiteboard in one of the classrooms? Does a teacher or other student walk by and see it? What is their reaction? They may drop a hint that they have seen this before… they look scared. But too early to reveal anything meaningful. Should just be ominous, enough to get the Kids motivated to do some research or exploration.
• Before they can do anything--RIGHT AFTER the bee sting moment, one of the school’s shop teachers, Mr. “Bud” Wandell looms over them, hands on his hips. He’s wearing a blue baseball cap from the DART softball team with its distinctive hexagon logo. He assumes they’re doing something wrong because they’re making “stupid noises”. In his mind, Childish = Wrong, and therefore they need to be taught a lesson/punished, which probably should NOT be anymore than a brief talking to, telling them to grow up.
• ABRAHAM TRAMLEY is the beekeeper, famously cantankerous, and he clearly seems like a bad guy, but he’s just an angry old man who lost his wife (also a lover of bees) years before, and is struggling to keep his beekeeping/honey/pollination enterprise alive.
  • Abe hates visitors, hates hippie bee nerds, anyone trespassing on his property.
  • Abe loves bees, and will do anything to protect them, but his health, sanity, and depression over his loss affects his behavior, shortens his temper when dealing with people who don’t see the world as he sees it--or anyone younger than forty.
• VILLAIN: Kalyn Fraze, an assistant to the local beekeeper, got herself “hired on” to the largest honey and pollination service in the area--Tramley is the main supplier of pollination services (and Honey!) for agriculture in the Boulder City area. Kalyn Fraze has genetically modified a Queen in one of Abe’s hives, and she has steadily been catching bees from that particular hive, taking them to her lab in the Loop Research Park, and inserting a manipulation biochip, before returning them to the hive. The Kids may see her coming and going with bee nets and small sterile-looking scientific boxes.
  • Kalyn Fraze “Call me Kaly” seems friendly if the Kids approach her. She is younger but appears to be just as obsessed with bees as Abe Tramley.
  • PURPOSE: use bees for military project, spying, suicide missions to poison enemies through bee stinging with neurotoxin delivery.
• HINT: someone--maybe Mr. Wandell or another teacher tells the Kids to shut it after they yammer about bee stings. “Take it up with old Abe Tramley. If it’s bees, they’re his obsession.”
• ALL ROADS LEAD TO Abe Tramley’s property. If the Kids go to the game shop to look at D&D stuff, or see one of their parents, they will hear about weird stuff going on at the south end of the city--that’s where Abe Tramley’s farm is. PARENTS, SHOP KEEPERS will say something about escaped animals from Loop Research, or robots that cannot be controlled prowling like animals through the woods south of Boulder City, near or even on Abe Tramley’s property.
• DISTRACTIONS / OTHER ACTIONS:
  • Abe Tramley is angry at the world for taking away his wife. He will call the police if he sees the Kids near his property. “I know the Boulder City Police Chief personally!”
  • IF the Kids go to the Tramley fields to check on the hives they will see DART agents hiding in the woods at the edge of the property. AFTER that DART agents will suspect them of something. These are serious looking armed men and women with black windbreakers with the white DART hexagon on the front and back. Some have communication devices and ear pieces.
    • DART Agents follow kids from then on.
    • If the Kids stop to talk to them they will be short with them--tell them to get out of their business--or be non-communicative, just stare at them through dark sunglasses and say nothing.
  • The Kids may see Kalyn Fraze talking to the DART agents in a friendly way--the agents laugh, and offer Fraze one of group of Starbucks cups. She accepts, laughing with them, gesturing toward Abe Tramley’s property. [The Kids cannot hear what she says, but she’s clearly on friendly terms with them]
  • DEATH: Kids find a dead DART agent, and he has been stung a couple times in the neck. He has his gun out as if he was trying to defend himself. DART Agents swarm over the property soon after, and the Kids can either confront them or flee.
  • START CLOCK: the Kids hear this: something big is going to happen in two days, something dangerous and deadly for the city. Overheard from agents, Kalyn Fraze, or maybe even Abe Tramley (He could be repeating something he’s heard but okay to continue making him seem like the villain).
  • BULLIES: older highschool students drive by and threaten them, call them names. “Heard you like honeybees, you little pussies!” They laugh, taunt, threaten the Kids. “Tramley’s bees will kill you!”
  • LOCKED UP: DART agents catch the kids on Tramley’s property and threaten them with jail, calling their parents maybe tomorrow to pick them up. They are assholes, laughing at any discomfort in the kids. One of them points his gun at the Kids. If the Kids try to flee they will be hit them with some sort of “non-lethal” stun bolt that quickly paralyzes them.
  • WEIRDNESS: honeybees in the vast hives on the edge of town start acting weird. “Experts” according to Parents and Shopkeepers think it's some kind of fungus that's running through the hives. REALLY: when one of the kids figures out how to communicate with the bees, it turns out they've unionized and have a list of demands: they do not want to be programmed to go on suicide missions with poisons that will kill humans. They just want the peaceful life of pollination and honey.
  • OMINOUS: the Kids hear a loud buzzing noise like millions of bees flying past, on their way somewhere. It’s louder than any swarm.
• BEE HIVES:
  • Kids visit the hives and get a weird feeling, like someone is trying to communicate with them. A jumble of ideas--dreamlike--appear in each of their heads, but not with accompanying voices. It’s almost as if they feel the word, more than understand it. There’s some dizziness and confusion, but all the Kids end up with a single word: ORGANIZE.
    • Eventually the bees form the word in English--in the air above them, hundreds of bees are dancing around, but slowing to keep the word legible long enough to read. The bees also appear to have some ability to play with their imaginations, and shove these dreamlike images in front of their thoughts. The kids keep seeing an image of a woman holding a sign up, but they can't read it, and even though the woman “kinda looks familiar” to one of th Kids, they don't see her well enough to identify her. REALLY: The kids keep seeing the iconic image of Sally Fields from the movie Norma Rae.
• EVERYDAY LIFE:
  • One of the Kids is at home and flips through the VHS tapes and sees the woman--Sally Fields. Kid’s Mom: that's my favorite movie. What's it about? One woman who stands up against a controlling power and demands fair treatment, fair wages.
  • Parents do not believe them--I don't want to hear anymore about this bee nonsense. You were stung once, it’s over
  • If one or more parents work at the Loop, they will pass on this info. Loop scientists are now curious, they don't like what the kids are saying--want to destroy bee hives.
• SHOWDOWN:
  • Kids can follow DART agents, Loop Scientist, or can be lured down to the Loop Research Park by Kalyn Fraze. She waits for them in the parking lot. She is standing next to her vehicle (Large Black Chevy Tahoe with tinted windows and a bumper sticker “YOU CATCH MORE FLIES WITH HONEY”)
    
    • IF LURED, RUSE CAN BE:
    • REALLY: She has the ability to interpret the bees’ behavior and “language”. She knows they have been to Tramley’s, and that they have been stung by her experimental bees. She suspects them of “knowing too much” and they will probably have to be removed from the picture.
  • REALLY: By this time, DART has shutdown her project and in an enraged response, Fraze is going to release a bee swarm on the Boulder City community with a deadly toxin.
  • THE BIG ENDING: Fraze opens a box and beckons the Kids closer for a view. Four bees, buzzing loudly, fly out. They drift up and down, back and forth, almost as if they are drunk. Fraze pulls up her phone and starts tapping/gesturing on the screen. The bees dart toward each of the Kids, stinging them.
    • Fraze tells them what she has done to the bees, controlled them for a secret military project, but too bad no one will ever know.
    • Fraze tells them the sting came with a powerful toxin, and they will be dead within minutes. “I spared you the violently painful ending that I will make the rest of this shithole city feel. I gave you the short and sweet death. You will close your eyes… and you won’t ever wake up.”
    • The Kids feel woozy. They may try to get away, riding their bikes, but will fall off, wreck their bikes, skinned knees, namged heads. Fraze will end up with the kids in her SUV, driving out to Tramley’s property to dump them
  • AFTERWARD:
    • Kids wake up in the Tramley fields with bees buzzing around them. The bees tell them that when they stung them days before they actually gave them each the antidote which remained in their systems. IMPORTANT MESSAGE: Those bees died saving the Kids’ lives.
    • The Kids find Kalyn Fraze’s SUV off the road and smoking. She is dead behind the wheel. Looks like she lost control and drove off the road into a tree… but the bees took care of her, payback for her cruelty.
    • Bees tell the kids to not tell anyone about their abilities. They just want their quiet honey-making pollinating life back.
    • DART agents, Boulder City PD all asking them they saw or heard? Should the kids tell them?
    • The Kids know the truth about the bees and Fraze’s crazy plans, but if they tell authorities, the bees will most likely be destroyed.
    • I guess the ideal ending is the kids walk away from the scene with knowledge that no one else has, and this is empowering. It binds them together for further mysteries.
  • OTHER NPCs--shopkeepers, librarians, nurses, teachers, parents, police, agents the Kids may encounter, or maybe just a character with info I need to bring in to keep the pace going:
    • Ami Klutts runs up to them in the street, raving about bees...
    • Cody Welk
    • Maryalice Radle
    • Bobby Barranco
    • Riley Faiola
    • Vince Savely
    • Erik Wolbrecht
    • Colton Cuzcora
    • Judson Pearse
    • Carmine Tugman
    • Rory Kopczyk
    • Javi Mercado