BIGPOX

Dinner was over. Fine wines and spirits had loosened everyone up. Catchy music had taken hold of the gathering. A waltz, a polka, some Sinatra songs, and then a bunch of old dance favorites poured out of the band without a break. Conversations flowed ever faster. A swollen river of talk was steadily fueled by a rising tide of alcohol. Discretion gave way to the sharing of broken confidences, gossip and scandals. The momentum of the evening gathered speed toward the climax. At 10 p.m., the president would say a few words.

But at precisely 9 p.m., the one remaining canister activated itself. 

A tiny diode light on it that was no bigger than a pinhead turned from green to red. As it did so, an internal spring was released and part of the flute-shaped canister wall automatically slid open. If anyone had noticed, they might now have seen what looked like tiny holes on an elongated miniature flute, except that, as seen under a magnifying glass, the holes slanted outward on an angle and in every direction. The canister was a masterpiece of miniaturized engineering, created by Bulgarian hands.

One half second later, a tiny but high-powered oxygen jet within the housing was released. It expelled several million microscopic particles of the most dangerous, most contagious virus cocktail on earth from one side of the room to the other. A virtually invisible cloud of lethal dust dispersed languidly throughout the room, descending slowly and silently upon the assembled guests. The miniscule recombinant germs married invisibly with the swirling cigar and cigarette smoke. They now rose and fell together in one lazy, devilish dance, up and down and around the chandelier and down onto the guests in slow, silent, meandering, rings of death.

Too bad that the president had decided to waive the no-smoking tradition for tonight.

The band played on. No one could have possibly heard the sound of a tiny lethal jet spraying death over all the heads of the federal government departments and their bare-shouldered wives and escorts.  No one paid any attention to the two funny little flute-shaped canisters that hung from a cluster of helium-filled balloons hugging the ceiling. That is, except for the cleaning lady … the next morning.