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Ten-year-old Me dragged from store to store. Momma has to buy her dresses, shoes, wigs and jewelry. I want to do my homework and read books of science, but I have to stand around waiting, bored and ignored. This small jewelry store is the boringest yet. Momma chats with the lone storekeeper lady and looks at ring after ring, necklace after necklace. One low countertop has several necklaces on top of the glass.

One necklace has a peculiar pendant. A locket in the shape of a heart. Not the same old heart shape as all the other heart-shaped lockets. This one is shaped like a real human heart. Ventricles, vessels, veins and all. Just like a real heart, only one-tenth the size, flat and gold-plated. With a tiny latch. Two flat pieces held closed by this latch.

I want to snap it open and see what's inside. I pry on it with the nail of my left thumb. It won't open. My thumbnail gets stuck in the seam next to the latch. I can't pull the locket off of my thumbnail. I'm scared. I run to Momma. Maybe she can open it.

Momma and the storekeeper lady look at me. They seem to think this is not unusual. A kid tries to pry open a locket once in a while. Nails sometimes get stuck. "Open it! Open it!" I beg Momma. She says she cannot open the locket. Says it's not a pretty-looking locket. "Who'd want to wear an ugly little thing like that?"

She holds my left thumb firmly, and yanks off the locket. And one quarter of my nail. Pink under-nail exposed on top of my thumb. I'm crying like a girlie, Momma apologizes to the storekeeper lady, the lady seems not to react, Momma's done shopping. We never went to THIS store again.

A year later, this particular heart-shaped locket was held in a man's hand. The same piece of thumb nail still stuck in the seam, like a tell-tale claw. The man, wearing a serious business suit, commented: "Lost item recovered. Who knew an agent's wife would up and run out on him with his stash? Ditched in the nearest pawn shop. This item could have ended up anywhere. It's good we found the locket as soon as we did. None too soon at that!"

Another agent used surgical pliers and removed the piece of nail, carefully and without opening the locked. "Let's hope the bio-capsule did not crack. Get this piece of nail to the testing lab, we want to make sure."

The shadowy businessmen soon figured out that the bio-capsule did get cracked. The bio-agent did leak. Portland, Oregon, was ground zero of an epidemic of the Swine Flu. The epidemic took years to bring under control. Martial law was enacted. The United States fell under an unprecendented recession, and lost the war in Asia. Even science was sent back fifty years.

The times have changed. Sixty-year-old me opens the mail box. The usual junk mail, bills, and a letter to me. The letter tells me to contact somebody. I contact somebody by smart phone. I'm told I've been tracked down by my DNA from a piece of a thumb nail. The scientists had at last solved the mystery of where the Swine Flu first broke out, and why. A nondescript piece of jewelry. A peculiar locket, with a tiny capsule inside it. A capsule with a biological specimen being smuggled in secret from one laboratory to another. A plan that proved fallible.

Too bad none of my family are still around to hear about it. They might have found it amusing.