« Bundle panic », dated February 12th 1988. A hunter and his son. The authenticity of this photograph has not been verified.
https://youtu.be/ojvB7ZNtMVQ

Historically, the existence of this entity might be partially responsible for the myth of the Boogeyman : although the nature of the fictional monster as a cautionary tale to keep children in line is not disputed, the Bundle is a creature that people encounter mostly at a young age, and it is attracted to misbehavior like a shark follows a trail of blood. Some argue that it could be the other way around, and thousands of years of collective fear caused by fear-mongering storytelling have given birth to the mysterious creature.

In 1965, the government conducted a controversial experiment in the small, poor mining town of Mortar. After capturing a huge number of wild Bundles (in sting-like operations the detail of which has yet to be declassified, and which themselves, turned out to have a high risk level), they "domesticated" them using undisclosed methods, then released them on the crime-ridden town.

To this day, the detail of the experiment is unknown, but it was discontinued in spite of tremendous results : after just one generation of the creatures being set loose on the street, the crime rates had dropped by over 80%. This drop, were the experiment to continue, were expected to reach 99% by second generation.

What made them discontinue the experiment, and to our knowledge, not replicate
it in any other problem area of the country, was ethical concerns regarding how the Bundle is poised to operate. Leading psychologists already at the time, theorized that personality type is formed in early childhood and extremely difficult to fix as soon as puberty hits in most cases; thus the Bundle would strike predominantly the subjects aged between 3 and 13. It would stalk them wherever it could find them, looking for signs that one subject would grow to become a problematic adult. Demonologists were quoted saying that external signs of problematic personality (antisocial behavior : violence, theft, etc) were only the tip of the iceberg : much like how certain individuals give others a "vibe" that something may be wrong with them, the Bundle could pretty much read any subject's behavior and predict with accuracy, who was likely to offend.

Once a subject was targeted, he or she would be abducted by the Bundle, then replaced by an exact copy, minus the antisocial traits that had been observed. What it did with the real children, is unknown. The government has been dragging its feet on this matter, and accused of not even knowing this pretty important detail.

The press only ever had access to limited information regarding the Bundle experiment, but what they, and subsequently the public, did learn about it when the scandal broke in December 1987, was enough to create a backlash, especially when it emerged that Mortar, although now virtually crime-free, was pretty much under quarantine. Immediately, the authorities were called out on the fact they did not control the supposedly domesticated entities.

A wave of panic swiped the country. Traits that otherwise were appreciated by teachers and parents, like kindness and calm, were seen as suspect; a huge number of parents reported that their child had been replaced, and was no longer theirs. Parents associations filed many lawsuits against the government, which never reached any form of conclusion since none of them were addressed to the correct government agency. Consistent, insurmontable difficulties to obtain the correct information was called out as deliberate. Distrust and paranoia reached their peak the next year, an election year. Militias were formed to patrol the streets day and night, on the lookout for the demonic entities, while record numbers of children were pulled from government schools, where the Bundles were assumed to run amok. Churches, pediatrician cabinets and daycare centers were also deserted. The reluctance to use vaccines led to historically high infant mortality rates.

Multiple shootings were reported, as well as demonstrations, riots, confrontations with police and other cases of civil unrest. Tragically, several children were murdered by their own parents who had grown convinced they weren't their real children. The media was quick to turn against "conspiracy nutters", some of which had started to turn to terrorism and plots to overthrow the government. Moral and religious figures called for a calm down. An implicit open season on the demonic creatures was observed.

Things seemed to slowly resume back to normal after the elections of Summer 1988, as the party in charge at the time was unsurprisingly blown out of the water and replaced by the opposition party in an unprecedented landslide despite questions on whether or not the president's administration was even aware of the Bundle program, and press and parents alike started to move on. Only conspiracy theorists would keep dissecting the election results, especially those coming from Mortar, trying to interpret them to decipher what a Bundle-led electoral victory would look like, and what it would entail. There are many theories on this topic. They found out in a panic that no discernable difference from the usual voting habits of the blue collar town could be observed ; if anything, it seemed to reject the party pegged as responsible for the crisis with a fervor greater than national average. The angry and anxious asked if this meant both parties were similarly involved, or, more terrifying still, if it was proof that the Bundle had been part of life for much longer than they thought, maybe since ancient times.

To this day, nobody has ever been able to come out exposing the full scope of the Bundle incident. Mortar is still almost crime-free, and the quality of life, as well as average income in this town have substantially increased. But nobody knows how much of this state of affair is directly linked to the controversial experiment. By large, nobody really wants to know. The few people in the know are more interested in how many of the "domesticated" creatures are still around, and a potential risk to their family.

Few people have been heard discussing the topic and asking whether or not the Bundle was the future of civilization, on some philosophy talk shows that fewer and fewer people listened to, and always referring to it in terms too vague to directly associate the argument with the now half legendary event.