Post by Kwan on Jan 12, 2012 13:16:01 GMT -5
* * * Entry One * * *
“You are now cleared for case NIGHTMARE GREEN. We figured it was about time you knew the truth after the attack this morning. You’re in deeper than we can help now. What you saw wasn’t just a chthonian defense.”
The board lean back in their chairs as my boss pushes a sealed envelope across the table. Boss-man doesn’t look too happy about having to change my clearance, like he’ll regret it later. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so weary or his wrinkles look so squashed together.
It’s the typical looking document when I open the brown envelope, with a red stamp clarifying it as ‘Top Secret.’ Shockingly tired, I try and read some of it but it’s difficult to even focus after the last ten hours of running and ducking. I’ll need an ad-boost before I attempt to travel again. I shove the document into my pocket and toss the now crumpled envelope aside. Looking up at my superiors I can see their growing impatience as they study me. “Right,” I say with hopefully no trace of fear, “so what exactly are my orders?”
They all start talking at once and Boss-man grumbles loudly as he stands to get their attention. Rapping his cane on the floor in three overly-dramatic bangs seems to do the trick and the old, quarrelsome men quiet down. “This is the first to attack us using something similar to our own methods. You are to find it, you are to study it, and you are to report back. Under no circumstances are you to engage until the full might of Red Ant is behind you.” His clouded right eye wanders about the room while his left peers directly into mine. “Understood?” I nod, come to attention and salute the men before taking my leave. Though I feel their eyes pressing into me, I do not turn again. They will never be happy with a Cygen rising to this level. No point in egging on their hatred. I will do my best for them and show them what an asset my enhancements can be.
It is said that in the early nineteen hundreds a gifted man once predicted that should mankind ever correlate the contents of its own mind it would doom us to either madness or a new dark age. With my mind enhanced through both eugenics and cybernetics, I am happy to report that this man was wrong. You see madness and darkness are not mutually exclusive and indeed the product of a fully correlated human brain has produced fantastically mad and dark wonders. Some would say that I and those like me should be included in that group, but they need us, so if they say it they do so in hushed whispers amongst friends.
I round the corner and turn into the closest boost-room. A perky redhead has her back turned and is busying herself by cleaning her instruments at the sink. I clear my throat and hop in the chair. She turns around with a smile that falls noticeably as she beholds her customer. I see the corners of her mouth upturn as she tries to recover her smile. “You’ll be needing an ad-boost I assume?” She crosses the room in three steps while waiting for my reply and then glances back to confirm.
I straighten myself up in the chair, trying to look my best. “Yes, yes. Have to go right back out,” I tap my pocket, “Orders.” She turns back to the cabinet and runs her hand along the vials until it lands on a bright orange one.
“Going far?”
“Further than I’ve ever been.” Her hand moves to the red vials and plucks the one furthest to the right. She crosses the room again and places the vial into the booster. I hear it click and power up with a high-pitched whine as she sets herself next to me. She presses the button to the chair and it slowly leans me back until my head is slightly below my knees.
“Now then, you know this will hurt for a moment. Do try and control yourself.” She leans over me and it is not the effect of the ad-boost that worries me. Cygen don’t get much play and the hint of her milky-white breasts beneath her lab-coat is enough to get my transistors gunning. I could take of her of course. It’s why they fear us. She wouldn’t even remember if I so chose. But when they found out, and they always find out, I would be done for. One of these days though, it may be worth it, just not today and not with her. My new assignment seems far too interesting. I click the recorder in my left eye on instead. She can at least join my harem of dream girls.
The ad-boost fires through my veins and my body tightens in response. The rush flows from my chest down to my toes and up through my brain. Every sense tingles and my mind is one again fully awake. I clench the arm rests and let out a long sigh. “Ahh, that’s the stuff.” I bound out of the chair and pat the redhead on the ass. “Thanks love. That was just right.” I’m out the door and down the hall before she can protest.
The fantastic thing about ad-boost is that it can keep your body firing on all pistons for months on end without rest. Like any drug however, there is a price and with ad-boost, it’s a doozy. The world seems to go from slow-motion to a whirlwind of sights and sounds when you’re boosting. It’s like fast-forwarding through the boring parts. The problem being that eventually your body has to synch back up with the rest of the world. I have been boosting now for two months and I know that when I sleep it will be a long and tortured rest. The longer you boost the worse it feels to synch. I keep wondering what it’d be like to boost forever, to never synch. Surely it’s been tried because the warning labels are very clear about a three month maximum. I’d love to meet the man who proved the rule.
And just like that I find myself in Astral Chamber Four. See what I mean about skipping the boring parts? Oh, I’m sure I travelled through four levels of the base, talked to all the appropriate soldiers and waived my credentials about until they locked me in and closed the shutters. But really, who needs to clutter their brains with such mundane tasks? I’m here and it’s time to scout.
I pull the paper from my pocket and slowly review. Some of this I already know but I suppose some lackey in the briefing room has chosen to be particularly thorough today. The paper reads as follows:
As part of the Red Ant Brigade, formed in response to the threat posed by The Old Ones, your ongoing mission is to seek out entities dangerous to humanity and through your unique skills prevent such entities from harming our race. You are never to engage alone. Like a swarm you are to rally your fellow Ants and point their minds to the danger. Only in numbers can you defeat The Old Ones. Repeat, Do Not Engage Alone.
Details: Today at 02:00 Hours marks the first time that an Old One has used our methods to seek and attack us. Though they have in the past succeeded in killing us while being attacked, they have never to our knowledge been able to strike without warning. Two-Hundred and Fifty-Four Ants were crushed this morning whilst going about their normal routines. None were currently on duty. No mission correlation has as-yet been found. Victims were said to have screamed out in horror as a green substance flowed from all orifices on the cranium before expiring in spasms lasting approximately thirty seconds. Analysis of the substance is ongoing.
Mission: You are to find the Old One responsible for this attack and report back its coordinates.
Details: Today at 02:00 Hours marks the first time that an Old One has used our methods to seek and attack us. Though they have in the past succeeded in killing us while being attacked, they have never to our knowledge been able to strike without warning. Two-Hundred and Fifty-Four Ants were crushed this morning whilst going about their normal routines. None were currently on duty. No mission correlation has as-yet been found. Victims were said to have screamed out in horror as a green substance flowed from all orifices on the cranium before expiring in spasms lasting approximately thirty seconds. Analysis of the substance is ongoing.
Mission: You are to find the Old One responsible for this attack and report back its coordinates.
Now I see what all the fuss is about. As a Red Ant soldier, my primary duty is to use astral projection to reach into the depths of space and seek out The Old Ones where they sleep. Once there, we swarm their minds and kill them before they can awaken and bring about chaos in the universe. We always have some casualties but that’s expected in war. However, this is the first time that we have experienced casualties whilst not engaged in battle. If even one Old One has discovered us and managed a preemptive strike we could be in serious danger. I can see now why they raised my clearance. Only a Cygen can reach so far and travel so long without rest and only a Cygen is as easily expendable if discovered.
No point in dwelling on my expendability, I suppose. Three-Hundred Sixty-Two years is a pretty good run for a Cygen. I strap myself in and order the room to darken. The light slowly fades. The shadows swallow the edges of the room and within moments I am alone in a sea of darkness. It is time.
The universe is an astoundingly vast place. I have traveled to the outer reaches in many directions while strapped to a chair and I have yet to find all its hidden wonders. Many times I have inwardly thanked the genius who first thought of space travel through astral projection. We humans, after all, are quite limited by our physical weaknesses. We have, of course, travelled through physical space within our own solar system but reaching beyond the teat of our mother-sun still eludes us. By design or misfortune we are trapped by our mortality, each of us with a looming expiration date. Even I, with my extended Cygen lifespan shall eventually breathe my last.
Like all great discoveries, space-travel via astral projection was borne of war. Over the centuries humanity’s consciousness coalesced around a singular reality: We Are Not Alone. Moreover, in that discovery we found to our horror that we are also not superior. In fact, much as we might treat an insect, we have found many beings who regard our presence as a flitting nuisance at best. At worst, they regard us as fodder for their tortured games which for many years we had no defense against.
We needed a way to reach them quickly and without discovery. Through many manipulations of our genome and some horrific wrong turns our savior came in the form of one Mr. Ralph Voceft. Father of astral travel, it was he who first slipped the bonds of his body, then our planet, and finally our mother-sun. If I have a God, it is him. A man with vision so large it broke the chains that tethered our souls. I ask for his help every time I close my eyes and drift into the dark unknown.
The mind is a funny thing. When I first learned to travel via astral projection I could not go very far at all. I was specifically bred to the task. Yet, despite my enhancements, my mind had to learn that it could go further and faster than the body that held it. It was a century before I could skip from one end of the universe to another in a single thought. It was another fifty years before I could travel to places without extensive prior study. (We had learned the hard way just how dangerous a wandering mind could be.) Even with all this experience under my belt, a search mission is no easy task. I must plumb the far reaches, travel into undiscovered country, and yet keep one foot planted on terra firma.
I bid goodbye to the familiar curves of our solar system and stretch my mind past oft-traveled paths. I listen for the call of an Old One. Their songs, an ancient and primal chant, permeate throughout the blackest corners of the universe. They beat into the minds of lesser beings and twist their thoughts to chaotic ends. They tickle at morality and chide righteousness. They rage against order and laugh at its false superiority. They sleep. They dream. They wait.
Their song is their weakness and their strength, both a weapon and bread-crumb trail for those who know how to look. I know and now I hear. I cannot say how long it has taken me to hear the song but I have found it. It pounds at my senses as I follow the siren deeper into the unknown. It whispers promises and half-truths as my mind flits from one rock to another in search of its bed. It shows me futures unrealized and dreams unfulfilled. It laughs at my physical needs; it taunts me with images from my digital harem. And all the while it calls, it sings, it leads me closer. Until at last I find it.
Clinging to the red, barren rock of a once great planet I find the giant in a terrible slumber. Its song blinds my thoughts and traces the wisp of cord that leads back to my corporeal essence. It beckons me closer and I obey, though whether my obedience is borne of duty or submission I cannot say. It is both as wondrous and terrible as the others I have faced. Its body lies curled into a mountain of gray flesh and snaking tentacles, warmed by the giant star that no doubt stripped the world of life eons ago. Its breath pushes and pulls the ground in pulses as it gusts in and out of the Old One’s twisting maw. Its claws flex and contract as it dreams, slicing deep ravines into the rock beneath. I touch down and form my essence into a semi-physical being. Walking along the surface I can feel the heat of this distant star as it burns through flesh that is not there.
I can only be sure that this is the one I seek if I delve inside. Doing so without waking him will be very difficult. I do as I have been taught, building walls around my sanity and armor around my essence. My mind must be a maze, a labyrinth of twists and turns that will occupy it long enough for me to get in and out of its dreams unscathed. I must let it mock my weaknesses and deride my triumphs. My mind must be its playground so that I can slip into the Old One’s thoughts and find what I seek.
“DO NOT ENGAGE,” they had said, but surely they did not mean this. They must have confirmation or what use are my tribulations? My maze complete, I take a final step towards the beast and place a transparent hand upon its throbbing head. The rush is instant. I see everything and nothing, the beginning and the end, but it is the middle that I seek; the now. I feel it searching, smashing through my maze as I race against Discordia.
And then I see it. The moment of its apathetic wrath crystallized in a lumbering beat of song. It is confirmation. This Old One had been wrested from slumber for one instance and, in reflex, had stretched across the cosmos and swatted at a fly. It was not calculated, it was not planned, and it was not a reaction. Two-Hundred and Fifty-Four Ants had died because chaos had an itch. The green substance had been a residue of psychic tentacles pulsing through the bodies of the unshielded. NIGHTMARE GREEN was random.
I pull back. I drop the lie of physicality and trace my way home again. I zoom past galaxies, quasars, nebulae, and black holes until The Old One’s song is a low murmur. I then turn home, retracting my soul into my body as if taking a deep breath. I am home.
“Lights,” I hear the sensors click and open my eyes slowly to adjust to the light. I unstrap my hands and stand up. “How long,” I ask aloud, assuming my minder will answer.
The speaker crackles on and I get my answer. “It has been seventy-two hours…sir.” The sir seems a bit forced. I can only assume my minder is another lover of Cygens.
“Very well, I shall report immediately.” I step out of the room and make my way to the command level. I don’t bother to look at my minder or say another word to him on my way out.
At command I relay the facts of my mission as quickly as possible. Boss-man does not look pleased, his sagging face trembling as his wandering, clouded eye weeps. Command is never pleased when deaths result from cosmic shrugs. It is their burden to see our universe as it is, a game of chance, and to know that humanity is clinging to the wheel as the ball bounces precipitously closer. Of course smarter fellows who have been around awhile, like me, puzzle it out eventually but it is their duty to hold and guard this truth. We humans thrive on order. It is our paper armor and our mirrored shield. We have built such wonders to maintain this façade!
Their orders are quickly given. “The Red Ants will mount an attack immediately. You will tell them that this Old One has retaliated for the death of its kind not two nights ago. You will say that it is the only one who has discovered a way to attack us from afar.” With his good eye Boss-man glares at me and in a commanding tone says “And you will not under any circumstances relay what you have learned today.” I nod, stand at attention, salute, and exit as before. Serving chaos would only serve them and I’d like to get laid before I lose my mind to the black.
I know that soon we'll be heading out and I will need another boost. I am hopeful that the redhead is on duty again and I pop my head in each boost-room along the corridor as I make my way towards the lift. As I travel I wonder over the symbiosis of truths and lies, chaos and order, duty and will. But mostly…mostly, I am wondering about YOU.
You see, I have existed long enough to know when someone is poking around in my mind and I have to wonder what possible lesson you can learn from a sexually frustrated boosted-up tri-centenarian such as myself. I mean, if you have this ability you most certainly already know about astral projection and are most likely a Cygen yourself. So what is it, buddy? You get off walking around in someone else’s head?
*******************************************************************************************************
Tesla-Vy quickly retreats out of the Cygen’s mind and slips through time until she is once again back within the confines of her own body.
She presses the button on her ear and begins to speak, “Psychic Archaeological mission log number four-hundred thirty-three. Target identified. Further study needed to discern moment of time travel discovery.” Scribbling her notes she flips through the records of the era. “Oh, Dagon, you are too smart by half,” she sighs. “Subject has become aware of my investigation and I am beginning to think this study is creating a paradox. Is it my astral time travel, made possible by Dagon's discovery, that will ultimately the catalyst to his discovery of astral time travel?”
Flicking the recorder off, Tesla-Vy closes up her things and prepares to leave. For a moment she pauses at the case that holds Dagon’s remains. Touching the lid she whispers, “I was born too late. You could have had me, no tricks, no worries. Think of that when you slip through time.” The door clicks behind her as she leaves the old bones to rest in her lab. She does not know they are smiling.
* * * Entry Two * * *
“You are now cleared for case NIGHTMARE GREEN. We figured it was about time you knew the truth after the attack this morning. You’re in deeper than we can help now. What you saw wasn’t just a chthonian defense.”
The board lean back in their chairs as my boss pushes a sealed envelop across the table. Boss-man doesn’t look too happy about having to change my clearance, like he’ll regret it later. I don’t think I’ve ever seen him look so weary or his wrinkles look so squashed together.
It’s the typical looking document when I open the brown envelope, with a red stamp clarifying it as ‘Top Secret.’ Shockingly tired I try and read some of it but it’s difficult to even focus after the last ten hours of running and ducking.
I reach into my suit pocket and pull out my pack of Camels. I really don't care that the building has a strict 'no smoking' rule and reinforces said rule every other wall on every floor. Nicotine is a godsend right now and I'm sure as hell not about to switch to the patch.
I light up without any second thought to the board members and take a long drag.
"Cthonian?" I ask with an exhale of smoke. "I don't know Latin."
"It's Greek," Boss points out as he sits down in his chair from far across the black marble table. "It means "beneath the Earth"."
Greek or Latin, this was still a mess. No. "Mess" didn't quite describe it. Probably, it could more accurately be called "a metric fuck-ton of bad news". And most of that is piled on me right now.
"Fine, but what in the name of hell was in that warehouse? The shit I saw... you try explaining that to me, okay."
Anger and fear were something I had used up in the past hours. Now all I can feel is only a sharp amount of annoyance.
"The name of hell? That's a pretty decent summary of it," my boss mumbles with just enough audibility for me to hear. "But, you are here to answer our questions, Mr. Jenson."
Several members of the board grunt, which I can only assume was how the wealthy and the powerful communicate between each other.
"First off... how is it that you came to wander into that warehouse? You aren't in any sort of structure within this company to have access to information like that."
I grimace. The cat was out of the bag now.
"Well," I start to say before I go to put out my cigarette, only to miss the nearby ashtray out of nervousness and plant the lit cig right into the hard marble of the table. I immediately withdraw another cigarette and lit it when the thought occurs to me that an ashtray in the board room of a building with strict 'non-smoking' rules seems quite contradictory.
"Mr. Jenson?"
"Oh y-yeah!" I stammer, coming back out of my ashtray induced daydream. "You see... as you all know... I'm an accountant."
"Yes... I know. I hired you."
Boss-man's expression became ever more agitated. I gulp hard, almost swallowing the cloud of smoke in my mouth.
"Well, you hired me for a specific task, right? I mean, keeping the money orders of your stocks and bonds was the easy stuff. It was all those undisclosed accounts you guys entrusted me with that tipped me off."
I sift through the pictures and papers in the envelope. I can't help but look away from some of it.
Every member of the board sits up a little more. I had their attention now and that bodes well for me in this circumstance.
"How so?" my boss asks, his tone becoming less aggressive. He too is obviously more than a little intrigued now. "Those accounts were nothing more than private bank accounts to act as savings for board retirement."
"Board retirement?!" I guffaw. After all I had been through, he expects me to believe that this all for retirement. What a load of bullshit and a half!
Still, I have to keep on track. If I explain everything out in perfect detail, maybe I can still save some semblance of a job.
"Okay... so when I went through the accounts, everything seemed in order. The only thing that was out of place were the money amounts coming in. They were high amounts, but that wasn't anything special for a company like this that has so many fingers in so many pies. What stood out was that some of these amounts were coming in with three decimal places."
There is a sudden flood of furrowed and confused brows in front of me. Of course I lost them at the decimal places.
I sigh as I try to make things more clear. "Look, when you go and buy your soy-mocha-machi-whatevers every morning, and you pay that poor minimum wage kid for it, does he give change that has a third number to it?"
Still the brows are pressed down so hard I think a few of these old guys can't see through their bushy eyebrows. I can't help to notice that my nervousness and fear have subsided quite a bit and are being replaced by a steadily increasing amount of irritation.
"Have any of you ever seen a one-tenth cent piece?!" I blurt loudly. "No?! Well the reason is because there isn't a one-tenth cent piece! Banks don't work on tenths of a cent! They use elementary school math. If it's above half a cent, they round up. If it's below half a cent, they round down."
I put out my second cig right next to the first, but not accidentally this time.
"Except... they don't. See, when you draw out of your account you only draw out dollar amounts to the second decimal place. However, there are always going to be percent amounts leftover that are less than a cent. While they do round up when it's over a half cent, anytime it's below it's left behind. And that's where I was getting the third decimal amounts."
I look up at the board as I light up yet again.
"Those "retirement" accounts are trapdoor accounts. Banks don't keep track of those third decimals very well. So those tenth of a cent are being siphoned right into your pockets. Doesn't seem like a lot... until I started adding up all the varying account numbers I was seeing in the forms. I lost track somewhere around a thousand before I realized that the daily incomes were so high that the number of people you were effectively stealing from came a lot closer to the millions or even billions margin."
There is a sense of both surprise and completion that come over the faces of the board. Boss rests his head in his closed hands with a look of intent at me so strong I feel like his eyes could drill a hole straight through my head. It was as if...
"Wait! None of you knew about this?!" I exclaim, standing up from my chair.
"We knew of the accounts, of course, but we hadn't any idea on how the money was being acquired." Boss answers.
"But... but it's your accounts! You had to have someone put them together for you! Who knows about this other then me then!"
"The man whose position you are, ironically, filling for."
The board begin a lot of vigorous nodding and somewhat happier grunts among each other.
Boss lifts his head. "He was an astounding member of this company, but he needed to be terminated due to certain actions."
"What did he do?" I ask. I point at the cigarette in my mouth and chuckle a little. "Let me guess: he got fired for smoking on the job?"
My joke is apparently not coming across to well, as no one else in the room was making a peep. A tough crowd for sure.
"I never said he was fired."
Now I'm the one confused. If he wasn't fired, then how could he be ter-
I suddenly find myself speechless as the realization takes hold. A suddenly cold shiver runs straight up my spine. My stomach no longer feels as though it's there and is replaced by a painfully empty void.
The cigarette falls out of my mouth and bounces on the table before coming to a stop just under the lip of the ashtray.
Missed again.
I grab the documents and begin shuffling through them as fast as I can. The words that pop out at me are ones I have never put any stock into before. The pictures were all too familiar from the sights I had seen in that god damn building. But why? What the hell could all that research be for?
"Mr. Jenson. If you would please continue."
My eyes are blaring with a burning heat. It was anger and fear all muddled together into something indescribable. I glare at my boss, the apparent headsman of this group of sociopaths, with the kind of determination a dying man gives an enemy. After all, that seems to be the case.
"WHAT THE HELL DO YOU WANT?!" I yell as loud as I can.
There was nothing but silence from the others. With those eyes trained on me, my body felt like a quivering pile. The only thing that seemed autonomous at the moment was, of all things, my addiction.
A cigarette slid into my mouth without any sort of thought put into it. Maybe it was time for the patch.
"Okay... okay.." I whisper to myself. I had to get out, but how? I'm in a fucking skyscraper, security on every floor. No! I had to make them know my position! Make them understand!
"I wasn't going to do anything with the information! I just thought it was some white collar affair! Hell, I was impressed even! I just... you hired me to cover your accounts, right? Make things legit? Well I have to go back to see where the money is flowing! It's part of my job! You pay me to do this! I found offshore accounts, payments to subsidiaries, a land grant, construction companies... why the hell was there even an address on that place?!"
"I see," says my boss as he gets up from his chair and begins to walk around the table toward me. "You found all this out on your own?"
Was he trying to make me slip?! Implicate a fellow coworker or a family member?! My God! They're after everyone around me!
"Y-yes!" I said through shaking teeth. My fear was too strong to hide anymore. "I did it all on my own!"
"You did? So... you backtracked our accounts, found our suppliers, found even our building... and didn't notify anyone of your actions?"
"Yes! I mean... why would I?! I would have been lied to!"
Boss-man's eyes glisten a little. The bastard's probably getting a rise out of me now as I stumble over my words out of sheer terror. Damn him! Damn them all!
"You were more interested in the truth than getting fired?"
"I don't know!" I replied. I was smelling the lavatory soap in my hands as I had them over my face. I had enough view to see my boss look down at me sternly, then look behind me and give a quick nod.
I try to turn around to see it coming, but a black hand grabs me by the head and slams my face into the table. Even through my brain is topsy-turvy and my cheek is being gently burned by my crumpled cigarette, I can still make out the feeling of the cold, round end of what I could assume is a gun barrel shoved in the pocket of where my skull and neck meet.
Damn. I always told myself I'd never go out crying, but here I am blubbering like a little girl. My tears are making the smooth surface of the table slippery and my head keeps sliding on it from the pressure of both the hand and the gun.
"Mr. Jenson," I can hear my boss say. "You never actually answered my first question: Why did you go to that warehouse?"
I can't answer. Not with the way I'm crying. I feel like such a bitch.
"You went through a lot of effort. To find the accounts. To trace them down. To find the lab and actually manage to get inside... a feat I'm sure we'd all like to hear, but is irrelevant right now."
"God! Please!" I scream. God never helped me before, but it was worth a shot.
Boss seems unfazed. "So... why did you go there? Thought you could blackmail us?"
"No!"
"Thought you might be able to sell our secrets to a competitor?"
"NO!"
"Then why, of all places, would you head out to a rather rusty looking warehouse, covered in guards that you somehow got by, and finally proceeded into our scientific departments research facility at the risk of death itself?"
"I DON'T KNOW!!!"
"You don't know what?"
"ANYTHING!!!"
The room is silent now. Though I can't see anything through my smeared eyes, I can feel everyone looking at me.
"You don't know anything? Can you understand just how correct you are, Mr Jenson?" Boss said. I can feel his breath on my ear, so he must have bent down to me. "I bet you went there to find out the truth. Am I correct?"
"... yes." I sniffed.
"You have a longing for the truth? The kind of deep hunger for knowledge that drives men to do very, very stupid things?"
"Y-yes... yes?"
"How much are you willing to give to find the truth? Everything? Nothing? One thing or another?"
My face contours into pure rage now. I was gong to die and all that this guy wanted to do was talk! Yes... I didn't want to die, but I didn't want to give this fucker the satisfaction of being right first.
Yes. I had always wanted to know the truth. About everything. Everything in this world. Beyond this world even. But that kind of thinking doesn't pay bills or buy the groceries. You have to give that kind of dream up just to get by.
But... when I slipped into that lab... when I saw those things rip out of thin air and savage those doctors... I was afraid but... I couldn't help but feel...
... alive.
"The truth," I muttered into the marble. I push back against the firm hand on my scalp and turned so I could look at my boss and growl. "I could give my soul for it."
The old man's weathered face is emotionless as he turns away from me and goes back to his seat. He pulls a small gavel out of nowhere and places it gently on the table.
"Gentlemen... members of the board. We stand at electoral vote. All in favor?"
A slew of hands flopped into the air as several happy grunts lilted through the room.
"All against?"
Not a single noise or motion was made amongst these wealthy men, all set at staring at me coldly.
"Then it is decided. By the authority as leading member of the Board of Trustees, I welcome Mr. Jenson to our happy little fold."
I can feel the gun barrel lift from my neck and surely it was the greatest feeling I have ever had. Yet, the hand is still firm and is still holding me on the table.
"Welcome to the Board." was all I hear my boss say as another cold thing, this time exceptionally slimy, graces the back of my neck and suddenly everything goes dark.
-------------------------
My phone has always been the cheap variety. I should really get a new one.
"Hey Dad?" I say cheerily into my device as I exit the elevator into the main lobby. "I got some really good news!"
I slip past my other coworkers as in a less than subtle manner. I can tell that most of them are surprised I wasn't carrying a cardboard box filled with my office supplies right now. But, hey, why not gloat a little bit in their faces?
"I got promoted!" I exclaim as I get out of the building, still within earshot of what I can assume are my now confused and flustered colleagues. "Yeah, it definitely took me by surprise. Never saw it coming!"
I reach into my pocket and pull out my smokes. Fortunately, I still have one left and light it without hesitation. The smoke settles in my lungs and I can already feel the charcoal smog taking away every last ounce of stress.
Patch be damned! I felt great like this!
My hand raises high at a passing cab. The taxi pulls up expertly and I hop inside. The smell was like that of curry and latex, but right now I was in too good of a mood to give the driver a sarcastic rasping.
"I tell you what. I'm taking you and Mom out to dinner. Hell, I 'll even invite Samantha along. I know we don't get along too well, but I'm just in a giving mood tonight. Yeah, yeah. Oh... what? Perks? Oh there are quite a few perks with it for sure. Better medical, dental, insurance... but you know what the best part is Dad?"
I reach back to my neck and touch a freshly hardened cyst gently with my smoking hand.
"Now I know everything."