Bad Jack ((Ascension: Book 1)) (3 page)

Billy dress
ed in civilian garb before they set out.

T
hey’d been frisked at every guard station they passed.

It was after two in the afternoon by the time they’d jumped through all the necessary hoops to leave the
facility, and four o’clock by the time they found a decent bookstore out in the middle of nowhere.

He
kept piling on the books, waiting for Billy to say he’d spent enough, but Billy just waved him on. With that in mind, he bought the most expensive coffee maker he saw and filled an entire grocery bag with gourmet coffee grounds.

He
tried to pepper Billy with questions the whole time, but it turned out that Billy was just a grunt, recruited only a couple months ago for menial duties like patrols and such.

Billy
thanked him for the shopping trip because it allowed him the luxury of venturing out into the real world, something that, as a lowly guard, he wasn’t cleared to do on his own.

He’d
been walled up for two months; that sucked.

Jack was told that, as a researcher,
he could leave whenever he wanted as long as he got clearance first and an escort while offsite.

That meant that if he wanted to go home at the end of the workday he'd be shadowed.

He told Billy that he didn’t have room for him at his apartment but Billy said not to worry about that. If Jack insisted on going home every night, he’d work something out.

They loaded up
the SUV and made it back to the facility before nightfall. When they were unloading the last of the books, Billy looked up at the oppressive building saying, “Welcome back to Hogwarts.”

He
helped him dump his books off at the office and then set the timer on the coffee pot. Jack asked if he wanted a cup, but he shook his head. “I’m back at 0500 for debriefing. I need to get some grub and get to bed. Are you hungry? Do you think you’ll be staying the night?”

“Well
I’m not hungry, probably just nerves, but let me check out my bunk and I’ll go from there.”

If it was a shit
-hole that just didn’t measure up he’d head home for the night. He wasn’t a snob, but he was particular about his sleeping arrangements; the coziest hotel kept him up all night.

He realized how put out Billy might be if he had to make the three hour drive to and from work with him every day but he couldn’t base his decision on that; he had
to make sure he was well rested. This was too important; the money was too great to jeopardize. Exhaustion was a researcher’s worst enemy and he didn't want to risk making mistakes because of it.

When they’
d traversed the labyrinthine corridors and finally arrived at a door marked ‘unit 16’ Jack was drained. The emotional turmoil of the day had caught up with him leaving him dead limbed and hollow. Billy handed him a key that he shoved in the lock.

Billy didn’t wait around.

“I’ll come get you at 0700. It was great to meet you.”

He
was around the corner before Jack could ask him to wait.

The sneaky bastard.

What if he hated the room? How was he going to find his way out of this place?

He turned the key and swung the door open. He reached his hand inside and felt along the wall for the switch. When he flipped it up he was awestruck.
It was a lot better than he’d expected.

He’d imagined a ten-by-
ten box with a cot, sterile walls and dangling strips of fly-paper
.
What he found was radically different. It was so big he couldn’t see it all from the doorway. He walked through and slipped the key onto the ring with his office key.

There was a hallway before him with
doors on both sides, and a single open doorway at the end. The switch had turned the light on in that room too.

He shut the
front door behind him and walked to the room on his right
.
When he opened the door, a light turned on by itself via motion detector. It was a bathroom and it gave him hope that his quarters would turn out to be less than squalid. There was a double sink set into a marble top with a Jacuzzi bathtub opposite, fitted with a triple shower head. At the far end was a toilet with a bidet. He’d never used a bidet before, and didn’t plan on using this one. The floor was tiled in granite. Everything was beige except the floor mats which were a bright burgundy. There were no windows but the soft hum of an exhaust fan would have to suffice for those more dramatic morning dumps.

He opened the medicine cabinet and saw that it was fully stocked. There was even a nose hair clipper inside. He saw two single serve packets of aspirin and wondered why they didn’t just leave a bottle. Maybe they were worried he’d eat them all at once.

As he flipped the light on in the next room he discovered it was a large bedroom. There was a king sized bed with an oak headboard and plush comforter against the far wall. He walked up to it, turning around slowly to take it all in. There was the usual, a large dresser, a bedside table, a closet.

He opened the closet door and saw it was full of uniforms. They had his name sewn into the breast
pocket. That unnerved him a bit. He’d only agreed on taking the job yesterday (they must have known the money they offered was too good to pass up, or that he was desperate). One side of the closet was lined with button down shirts and sweaters, all in his size, the other had slacks and even a few pairs of jeans but when he tried a pair on they were the right length but too loose. He’d have to gain a few pounds or wear a belt, no big deal. There was a shelf at the end that had stacks of t-shirts and boxer shorts and socks, black and white.

As he left the room he noticed a flat screen TV
beside the door that he’d be able to watch from bed. He’d be able to sleep in this room, he decided. It was perfect.

He went to the open door at the end of the hall and wasn’t surprised to see it was a living room and it was awesome too. The flat screen in here was bigger and it was surrounded by a couch and loveseat. The
high pile carpeting gave beneath his feet and he had the sudden urge to take off his socks and shoes and wriggle his toes in it.

To his right was a small kitchenette with a sink and fridge and oven but no counter space, the bastards.

There was a faux fireplace at the opposite wall that he immediately switched on even though the room was already warm. The fake plastic logs glowed in a mesmerizing way that put his mind at ease. He flopped down on the couch and snatched the remote off of the coffee table. Then he got up and went to the fridge. He was starving but decided he was thirsty instead when he saw all the imported beers in the door. The food inside was mostly snack stuff anyway; yogurts and juices and fruits. He popped the top off the beer and flopped down on the sofa again. The TV was rigged with the craziest surround sound he’d ever heard once he’d figured out the remote. He had all the premium cable channels but just to be a dick he ordered a pay-per-view movie and settled in.

He noticed some additional buttons on the remote and experimented with them. One was for the fireplace so he turned it off. Another was for the ceiling fan overhead and he switched it on. There was a call button too and he wondered if a butler would show up at his door if he pressed it. The wafting sweet scented air from the
overhead fan, the comfortable sofa and the beer in his belly eased him to sleep.

Chapter 8:
Day Two – The Artifacts

He was ready when Billy showed up at 0700 on the dot. He hadn’t slept so well in years. He didn’t even remember his dreams which were generally lucid enough to wake him up several times a night.

For sleeping on a couch, his back felt realigned and his neck was loose. He felt pretty great.

“So you like the digs?”

Jack nodded dreamily and Billy laughed out loud.

“Thought you might. Mine aren’t quite as nice but it’s shit loads better than how I used to live.”

“Yeah, me too. This is something else.”

Billy stepped back to allow Jack to lock the door, “Wait ‘til you get a load of the grub.”

Billy was right of course. The food in the community kitchen was Michelin star quality, not that Jack had ever tasted food from a Michelin star chef but he couldn’t imagine anything tasting better.

He got a made to order omelet, some fresh diced fruit, some of which he couldn’t quite identify and two freshly poured waffles. Then he went back for bacon, sausage, a coffee and eggs benedict. He didn’t ever worry about what he ate. His metabolism always seemed to make the right adjustments.

He noticed the tables were mostly empty with only a dozen people scattered around in pairs, scientists seated with their escorts. Everyone seemed pleasant although no one approached their table to greet them.

When Jack was finished with his peach cobbler Billy smirked, “The kitchen’s open all day and night. We need to get you to work.”

Jack gulped down his coffee, pocketed two
macadamia nut cookies and followed after Billy.

When they got to the office, all the chemistry equipment was gone, stuffed in the cabinets no doubt and his books were all put away on the book shelf.

On one of the work surfaces was a camera and in the middle of the floor was a tripod with a camera fitted atop that as well.

Billy said, “I got rid of all the junk and put your stuff away. Let me know if you need anything and I’ll take care of it for you. The cameras are to help you keep records of the objects you study.”

He stepped around Jack and turned on the coffee maker ahead of schedule.

“The coffee’s all loaded up and I’ll get you a clean mug. Get comfortable and in a few minutes I’ll bring in the first
specimen.”

Jack stifled a smile.
The young soldier was thorough.

He
logged on to the computer and double clicked the cloud icon. What opened up was basically nothing. It was a place for him to log information about his findings. He’d have to enter dates and times, give descriptions and theories and note anything unusual. A pad of legal paper would have sufficed.

Billy returned with a
heavy mug and filled it up from the coffee maker, handing it to Jack.

“Keep the mug. I’ll be back in a minute.”

A few minutes later he returned with a cloth wrapped object cradled in both arms. It was about the size of a shoebox.

He
put it down in front of the camera on the workbench with a thud. “They said we can touch it.” He lifted the cloth back and inhaled deeply. It was a huge block of gold.

Jack stood up and took a step back. “You need to take that back. That thing must be worth over a million bucks. I don’t want to be responsible for it.”

Billy shrugged, “That’s basically what I told the guards but they said it didn’t matter. They said everything in their inventory’s priceless and they have several more just like this.”

Jack
shook his head but he took a step closer out of sheer curiosity. He let out a breath and snapped a picture with the tripod.

Then he took another with the handheld, “That’s all we need. Take it back.”

Billy sighed. He hefted the chunk into his arms and set out for the warehouse.

Jack knew what gold stood for. For the second time he wondered why someone would be interested in an object’s symbolic meaning when the object actually existed
in the real world. Symbolism was for novels and poems and dreams. Real life objects didn’t normally carry any symbolic importance and the ones that did were common knowledge like a rabbit’s foot or a noose.

Whatever, he started typing, he didn’t need a manual for gold, it was too prominent in dreams and he’d written a section on it in his book.

Gold is a symbol for immortality. It’s masculine in energy. In a dream, losing gold stands for a need to be careful so as not to show others what you have. To dream of finding gold means you’ve discovered a hidden talent or knowledge about yourself.

He read over what he’d written and decided it wasn’t enough.

Words associated with gold are: healing, spirituality, love, longevity, corruption, and temptation.

He was about to reach for one of the manuals
just to add a few more descriptive words to the list when Billy appeared with another cloth shrouded object.

“I hope you’re done because they want you to keep moving through the list and there are twelve objects on the list just for today.”

He put the object on the counter and removed the cloth. This time Billy snapped the pictures.

It was a single turd, still steaming.

Jack’s face screwed into a tight knot, “What the fuck’s that?”

“It’s a lump of shit. I asked if I could hold off until it cooled
down and they told me it would never stop steaming. They said it’s been steaming like this for weeks.”

Jack laughed but not because he found any of this humorous. He was beginning to suspect he was being tricked. Maybe this was a fucking joke to someone. Maybe some huge dork would run around the corner with a video camera and tell him he’d been pranked and none of this was real. Now he was pissed. But what an elaborate prank
it would be.

He shook his head in disgust, “Take it back.”

On his way out the door Billy absently said to no one in particular, “It doesn’t squish.”

Jack loaded the pictures up in a new file and bega
n to annotate:

Feces symbolize loss according to Freud. Feces indicate a negative, repulsive, shameful aspect of character. Feces can symbolize aggressive acts. To play with feces in a dream means the subject is fearful of their security but since this piece of shit don’t squish, it symbolizes ultimate security. The steam indicates intense, bullheaded determination to follow through with a plan or force an issue and denotes an intense anger. Please don’t make me scrutinize poop again, kind sirs.

He sat back and rubbed his temples and wondered what force of God had led him to this office where he was analyzing foreign fecal matter as though it were no big deal.