Rick Carter's First Big Adventure (Pete's Barbecue Book 1) (15 page)

     “When have I been wrong about a major event, Pete?”  Mel asked.  “I was right about Tunguska.  I was right about Chernobyl.  And I was right about Roswell.” 

      Pete grunted a reply.  “You gonna do dis ain’t you?”  His voice was not comforting.   “You know dat place is guarded?  And it’s like a fortress?  What’s you plan for dealin’ with dat?  And what about you?  You can’t go waltzin’ up in dare anyway.  Who’s gonna run dis little op for you, Mr. Independent?”  Pete asked.

       Mel looked almost shame-faced over at Rick.  Rick suddenly had the very uncomfortable sensation that he had been brought to this place for more than just the barbecue.  A tingling sensation began to creep up the back of his neck as he realized he had been played by a friend who two days ago he thought was long dead.

       “Dat’s what I thought.  Dat’s why you need to tell him everyting.”  Pete frowned at Mel.

       “Mel, you better have a damn good explanation for what he’s saying.”  Rick stared at his old friend like a harpoon about to be released.  “Because I feel like I’ve been tricked here and I really, really don’t like being tricked, Mel.”

       Mel looked at Rick with a face filled with the sudden admission of guilt.  For a few seconds, he said nothing.  “I haven’t exactly told you everything, Rick.  I came here realizing we were going to have to get Roger out of his, um, current situation. You see, he’s not really accessible to anyone without strict clearance from the Managers.  He’s sort of in a special place.”

       “And what does ‘special place’ mean, Mel?”  Rick asked cautiously. 

       “Well, he’s locked up in an insane asylum, actually.”  Mel quickly replied.   “I tried to tell you some of this on the plane.  But, you weren’t listening.” 

      “Yeah, I know I wasn’t listening.  I wish I wasn’t here listening now.”  Rick retorted.  “What does all of this mean for us and me?”

       Pete interrupted Mel’s attempt at explaining.  “It means he wants to bust ole Rog out.  And he wants to use you to do it, bra.  Now, me, I’m used to dis sort of ting.  I been gettin’ dis kid outta scraps for years.  You, on de utter hand, I don’t tink you got much field time under you belt yet, do you Rick?”

      Rick looked nervously at him.  “I drive a cab, Pete, in Tampa.”

      “Mel, how you gonna do dis?”  Pete asked, looking back at Mel.  “Rick, he got no field time, no time wid de reality streams.  You know what happen to new people.  You gonna have poor Rick in a full blown reality crisis.”

      Mel thought for a moment.  “Pete, that’s why I thought you would help him.  Trust me.  I have this whole thing worked out.”

      “Me?”  Pete chuckled hard again.  “So, not only you wanna use ole Uncle Pete’s equipment you want him to go too?  Oh, and I’ve heard dis whole “I got it worked out” ting before.”  Pete laughed again.  “You one bad kid, Mel.  Someday you gonna show up and be respectful to your old uncle and treat him right, like de old days.”

    Silence fell between them.  Everything that could be said was already said, and all that remained was the formality of agreements, the acknowledgment that the plan was going to proceed and that all parties understood that inevitable thing.  Finally, Pete slapped the picnic table with one hand and took a deep breath.  “Well, it looks like ole Pete is gonna have to go back on de clock for a little while.  You know, Mel, I retired now and too old for dis junk.  But you just got to be you don’t you, boy?  Come on, finish up.  We got to go to de Honey Pot.”  He reached over and put a thick, hard and tanned hand on Rick’s shoulder.  “Come on Rick.  I’ll introduce you to some Company magic, Uncle Pete style.”

           Rick was not put at ease by Pete’s endearment.  He abstractly noticed for the first time that there were three numbers painted above the back doorway of Pete’s barbecue in old chipped blue paint.  It was 168.  He had no idea why he noticed it just then.  Pete stood up and untied his stained apron and crumbled it up on the table top.  He patted the pocket of his shorts for his truck keys and grunted.

CHAPTER FIVE

Rick’s First Rodeo

       Everyone who was native to the island of Guam knew about the Honey Pot.  They might not have known everything that went on in the Honey Pot, or ‘the Pot’ as it was uncomfortably referred to, but they knew where it was and who owned it, despite the fact that it was supposed to be a secret.  There were no signs that said Honey Pot on the outside of the building, no indications that hundreds of millions of dollars of equipment sat just on the inside that could port people and things from one reality to another in a flash of light.  The Honey Pot was a very unassuming three-story white-washed, concrete structure that was just off Marine Corps Boulevard, tucked between an AT&T office building and a small bank.  The windows were the long office style with dark one-way tint.  Over the single, official style glass door there was a large sign that read Micronesia Emporium and Exchange, which was a very vague way of saying it was whatever Pete wanted it to be.  The building was as unassuming, unattractive and unexpressive as he could make it.  It was meant to look business like and therein to blend into the buildings around it.  There was nothing odd or fishy to catch the eye, except maybe the fact that no customers ever came or went from it, just Pete and his hired manager.   But, no one cared on the island about the Honey Pot. Pete was too well known, too well connected and too generous with his resources to catch the curiosity of anybody important.  And with the unofficial sanction of the Company itself, no one bothered him.  This gave him a lot of latitude to do things that were of the illegal nature, or, at the least, not of the standard operational parameter, depending on which side of the fence you were on.  All of this inattention afforded Pete one very valuable asset: anonymity.  And that was worth its weight in gold.  It also meant that hardly anyone ever saw the inside of this fabulous creation.   That was about to change with Rick Carter.  He had just been invited by Pete himself into the heart of the mysterious building, and he had no idea how fortunate an opportunity this was.  And he would have assuredly cared a lot more about it if he hadn’t been so preoccupied with the disturbing details of what Mel and Pete were about to attempt.  The tiny Japanese car was filled with the conversation on the way north to the Pot.

     The effort to fit back into the small car after finishing a tasty barbecue meal wasn’t going well for Rick or Mel.   As they followed behind Pete in his rusty old truck on the drive north toward the Honey Pot, Rick had already let out two glass shattering burps and filled the car with the noxious fumes of his stomach.  Mel was too deep in thought to notice, but he did try once to roll the window down to help the situation.  The windows would not go down. 

     “Mel, look I think you need to be explaining some things.”  Rick said, craning his neck to the side.

    
Mel was in a pensive mood, not at all happy over the victory he had just won back at the diner.  There were details bothering him that he didn’t feel like sharing with Rick.  “It’s complicated.”

     “I gathered from the last conversation.”  Rick pointed out.  “I just want all of the information here.”

      “Rick, I don’t have time to tell you everything.  You know that a bad tear is coming, I mean really bad.  We’re the only ones in the position to do something about it.  I was hoping you would be willing to help out, especially since it involves you too.”  Mel held the steering wheel firmly with both hands.

       “I didn’t say I wasn’t going to help out, Mel.  I’m here aren’t I?  And Roger is my friend, too.  I just want to be told what all I’m helping out with because it seems like you’re operating on your own agenda here.”  Rick put out a hand on the dashboard to steady himself from banging into it.

       Mel stared ahead at the road as his thin features seemed to boil with the emotion he was feeling.  Mel had always been one with his heart out on his sleeve.  He looked quickly over at his friend, his old friend from childhood and realized how tough it must be to keep up with this incredible new world that was being thrust on him.  He knew his friend deserved answers.  He just wasn’t sure how much more he could take in such a short period.  Rick had only been an employee of the Company for two days, and he was already directly involved in a rogue operation to save the universe.  That was a lot to expect someone to absorb in such a short time.  “I’m gonna tell you something, Rick.  Something that won’t make a lot of sense, but you’re going to have to trust me.  Can you do that?”  Mel looked at him expectantly.

   Rick nodded “Yeah.”  He solemnly replied. 

   Mel whetted his lips as he tried to figure the best way to lay out the whole story to his friend, at least as much of the whole story as they had time to tell on the short trip to the Honey Pot.  “There’s something you don’t know about Roger and me.”

   “Really?”  Rick looked at him blankly.  “What are you two gay or something?”

    Mel chuckled.  “No, not hardly.  It’s something else.  This whole event, this tear involves me and Roger.  At least, I think it does.  Roger and I are definitely involved in it.”

    “I don’t understand,”  Rick stated.  “Did you cause it?”

    “No, not exactly.  At least, I hope we didn’t.”  Mel looked unsure. “Do you remember back in 1984 when I had to leave?”

    “You mean when you vanished and had everyone believing you were dead in a ditch somewhere? Yeah, I sorta remember something about that.”  Rick replied sarcastically.

   “Yeah, that.  Well, there was a very strong reason I had to go.  Look, I’m just going to be blunt and say it.”  Mel tried to sound firm.

    “I wish you would.”  Rick pleaded.

    “Roger and me, we’re twins.”  Mel blurted out.

     Rick tried to look at him blankly but his neck was hurting from the effort, and he had to make do with staring at the dashboard instead.  “What do you mean twins?  You weren’t twins.  You had different families, different birthdays.  How could you be twins?”

   “I don’t mean twins as in the same mother.  Well, sorta I do, but not in the classic sense.  Roger and I are the same person.”  Mel tried to go straight for the target but after hearing himself say the words he realized how terribly odd and stupid they sounded.  He had to stop and switch gears as they came to a red light and almost hit Pete’s dirty red truck.

     Rick let the moments pass, not saying anything.

    “What?”  Mel asked.  “We are.  We are the SAME person.  We are two people split from a single person.”  Mel tried to explain.

     “Uh, huh.  Just how does that sort of things happen, Mel?”  Rick wasn’t buying it.

     “Well, no one is sure.”  Mel admitted.  “I mean, no one that I know of has been able to find out exactly what caused it.   But, sometime in 1968 we were both split from a single person, a single fertilized ovum.  We are a reality anomaly, Rick, the kind of thing I get paid big money to fix every day.”

     “Reality anomaly?  You two come from the same person?  How did you find this out?”  Rick decided to play along.

      Mel smiled at him.  “Pete told me.  It was back in 1984.  He was the one that showed up in my bedroom that night.  He found me, told me what was going on and he took me away.”

      “He kidnapped you?”  Rick quickly asked.

      “No,” Mel laughed again. “Not kidnapped.  I went with him.  Look, this is how it works.  Roger and I are the same person, born from different mothers in separate places, but the same.  We’re an anomaly.  That means we cause friction on the reality streams.  The two of us being together was seriously warping the streams almost to the point of causing something really bad.  But, the affect wasn’t that dramatic in the beginning.  It took time before it began to be noticeable.  The Company didn’t even pick up on it until we were sixteen.  That’s when they sent Pete to take care of the problem.”

    “So, Pete taking you away solved the problem?  Everything was okay?”  Rick tried to follow.

    “Well, not exactly so much.  Pete wasn’t sent to take me with him.  He was sent to eliminate me.”  Mel reservedly admitted.

    Rick looked at him stunned.  “What do you mean eliminate?”

     “I mean get rid of, to wipe out of existence.  One of us had to go to balance the reality streams back out.  I was the lucky winner.”  Mel tried to smile.

      Rick tried to turn but couldn’t.  “Let me get this straight.  The Company sent Pete to kill you?  Do they do that sort of thing?”

     “Yeah, they do.  WHEN they have to.  You have to understand, Rick.  Reality is a dirty business and sometimes it calls for drastic measures.  Things like this can’t be allowed to go unchecked, or everyone pays the price for it.”  Mel tried to justify the harsh sound of what he was saying.

     “So, I take it Pete didn’t do that?”  He decided to state the obvious.

   “No, he didn’t.  He disobeyed orders and took me in and put me under his wing and the Company umbrella.  The Prime Sphere serves a lot more purposes than just protecting agents from reality distortions.  It protected me from Roger.  Well, protected us from destroying all of reality that is.  Roger was another matter.  Things didn’t go so well for him.”