Bad Jack ((Ascension: Book 1)) (18 page)

Chapter 48: Melanie’s theory

Melanie was waiting for him outside his apartment door.

Billy waved at her as they approached and said to Jack, “I guess you don’t need me anymore.”

“You broke two of Brett’s ribs,” said Melanie as they went inside. “I’m getting blamed for it; they think I should’ve stopped you.”

“They can’t blame you. The guy came at me
. He tried to take out his gun. You defended me. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

“I wouldn’t worry too much about it. They’re watching the tapes right now. I’m sure they’ll see what Brett did.”

She changed the subject. “So how was your little visit to the carnival?”

“It was ok. There’s a new creature. It has the torso of a bearded old philosopher and the body of, um, you ever see Starship Troopers? That’s what its lower body looks like, except it has a brushy
horse tail.”

“How big is it?”

“About six feet but the lower half’s as wide as a king sized bed. It likes the sound of its own voice too.”

“Weird. Did you get to
see Jessie? Did he make anything?”

“Better, I got to go in and talk to him alone. He’s a sweetheart. I had to have him make them another weapon but
we it out beforehand so it’s harmless.”

“You told Jessie about the weapon? I don’t think you’re allowed to do that.”

“He actually heard me the first time. He wasn’t really sleeping. He consciously gave me what I asked him for.”

She
stared off into space like that was the weirdest part of the story. “What do you think they’ll do when they’re done with him?”

“I don’t think
they’ll ever be done with him.”

“So his only options are to remain a prisoner for the rest of his life or to be executed. Thos
e aren’t healthy options Jack.”

“What makes you think they’ll exe
cute him when they’re through?”

“
Well they can’t afford to let an enemy get their hands on him. The easiest way to make sure that doesn’t happen is to kill him. It’s the military way.”

Jack felt like a dumbass for
not thinking about that before. “Then I guess we need to make sure he produces, right?”

“I guess. It’s a damn shame. That boy hasn’t hurt a fly and they’re treating him like a lab rat.”

“To be fair, some of his creations are dangerous. I’m not saying I think it’s ok to keep him a prisoner but someone has to make sure his imagination doesn’t kill again.”

“His creatures have killed. Was it the werewolf?”

“No, he made an apple that can render anyone who touches it unconscious; I ate the thing and nearly gave the General a heart attack when he saw the core sitting there. There are also these red balls that kill on contact. There are a few more objects that are encased so you can’t touch them but I don’t know for sure if they’re deadly. They probably are.”

“So the werewolf’
s safe but the apple will hurt you? None of this makes much sense.”

He
shrugged. He didn’t really know much more than she did. “You know Jessie has a dream that’s similar to one I used to have when I was young. He dreams his dad’s coming to get him except everyone’s trying to stop it from happening. I used to have the same dream.”

He
decided she didn’t need to know he pissed the bed whenever he had the dream. Then he wondered if Jessie did too.

“There has to be a connection between you two. He can create objects that only you can interact with.
He’s created two identical copies of you. He has a dream that’s just like your old dream. There’s something there.”

He
quickly countered, “I doubt it. I’m probably not the only one who can interact with his creations. Maybe I’m just the only one so far. There might be millions of people who can do it but they’ll never get a chance to try. And the dream’s a coincidence too. A lot of kids who lose a parent dream of the parent returning.”

He
said all of this with utter conviction. He didn’t believe in fate, intertwined souls, destiny or any other buzz words concocted by fantasy writers or new age hippies. He had newfound doubts about the validity of the supernatural based on his research over the past week but that wasn’t about to shake his faith in the natural order of the universe. Even nonsense will eventually make sense when you really dig in and discover the truth.

He assumed that because they were in disagreement over something that it meant there would be no sex later. Samantha had instilled this belief in him over the course of many arguments.

He was wrong though. There was passion to it this time around.

He could hardly believe his luck. He’d finally met a beautiful woman who was also a nice person who also wanted to have sex with him on a regular basis. He was starting to think it was getting more serious too. It didn’t feel like a fling or convenience sex. He was thinking he might be falling for her.

She sealed it when she whispered, “I love you
,” as he snuggled up to her afterwards.

Before he could stop himself he
replied, “You too.”

Chapter 49: Day Seven

Melanie was AWOL again when he woke. He knew she had each day planned out for her just like he did. Hers, like Billy’s just started before his.

He wondered if they got weekends off but he doubted it. It was already Sunday and they’d made him work yesterday; today would be no different.

She’d
left a handwritten card on his kitchen counter that said:

S
ee ya at two, and maybe later if you’re a good boy.

It had a bunch of cross-
kisses and hearts drawn all over it. Jack had never been sappy so he was a little surprised at himself when he folded it up and tucked it in his wallet.

He
was bummed he had to spend all morning working on the stupid artifacts. He wanted to spend the day with Melanie. Then he realized that he was taking the artifacts for granted. They should still hold the power to amaze him but he was way past that now. Against all logic, he’d already grown bored of them. He’d adjusted at an alarming rate.

He
decided to skip his biography and get right to work. He asked Billy to check with the General just to make sure it was ok. The General must have said it was fine because ten minutes later Billy returned with an hermetically sealed baggy.

Jack popped it open to Billy’s horror and pulled the contents out before Billy could stop him.

“Don’t worry man, I’m safe.”

In his palm was a shot glass with a little makeshift lid
on top. From the looks of it the lid was added later to keep the liquid inside from spilling. Jack snapped a picture and picked it up again.

Billy eyeballed the object
uncertainly and then took up his post outside the door.

Jack didn’t hesitate to peel the lid off. He sniffed the contents but whatever it was it was odorless. Like with the apple he had the overwhelming urge to try it.

He held it up and tipped a tiny drop into his mouth before his brain had a chance to raise any objections. He felt an immediate surge like adrenaline mixed with LSD and cocaine and hormones. He felt like he might lose balance. He knocked the shot back and swallowed it down hard. It tasted like ordinary tap water but it was anything but.

He staggered against his desk. His vision was going in and out. He felt as though he was inhaling but not exhaling. All his senses rose and rose into
a euphoric miasma. And then everything became still and clear. It was eerie. The shot was like a magical truth elixir. He could feel things that normally would have escaped him.

He knew he loved Melanie
but he knew she was keeping a secret from him, and it was a big one. He tried to concentrate on what it was but it was elusive. Finally a picture popped into his mind. He saw the boy, Jessie in his minds eye. Then he saw Melanie smiling at him lovingly. That was the secret, if only he could decode the message. The boy and Melanie were linked somehow. He didn’t know how he came to this conclusion. It was like the shot had straightened out his thoughts and put them in the proper order. He realized that Melanie spent a lot of time asking about Jessie. She was the one who inferred there was a link between him and the boy. She’d asked him a bunch of questions last night that she wasn’t supposed to be asking and he wasn’t supposed to be answering. But, at the same time, he realized she was not being elusive to hurt him but to shield him from something, maybe from himself. She cared for him as much as she cared for Jessie, maybe more so.

He
saw a tiny wormlike creature wriggle around on the ‘D’ key on his keyboard. He realized that that creature had survived on that key for days, through all of his typing because it was too microscopic for him to affect. It had no eyes or ears. Jack felt pity for the thing.

Then he realized his entire body was full of its bacterial cousins.

He picked up a vague, unformed sense that it was like the teeming billions upon billions of bacteria within his body were all driving a Jack-mobile. And when the vessel (his body) was of no more use after he died, they’d devour him completely. They kept him alive and he kept them safe from exposure to the sun and oxygen that would otherwise kill them on contact. He was a good car and they changed his oil whenever it was necessary, meaning they kept him running efficiently for as long as possible. It was a mutually beneficial relationship.

He wondered how far back this symbiotic relationship developed. He wondered if larger life forms were
specifically designed by these lower forms of life to aid in the propagation of their own species. After all, bacteria predate all other forms of life. Maybe billions of years ago Mr. bacteria discovered naked, barely formed archaic DNA floating around like a soup and said to itself, “We could build a vehicle with that shit; a vehicle that carries us around the world and keeps us sealed away from all the junk that kills us. If we build a good enough, smart enough model, it’ll even take us off this planet and let us eventually spread throughout the universe.” But then the question was - was Jack their God or were they Jack’s?

He
realized at that moment that unless he read more books, this elixir was wasted on him. He fully understood his own mental limitations now. He knew nothing about biology and yet his brain was trying to solve biological mysteries. The answers would be wrong because all the data he had available in his meager brain to input into the equation was lacking.

His mind was picking things apart for him even as he concentrated elsewhere.
It was bringing the important stuff to the foreground and trash canning the useless junk. It was defragging his brain. He knew that he’d have to drink the stuff for about a million years to completely fix his screwed up head though.

He knew the shot gl
ass would refill as if by magic. Then he watched as it filled up before his eyes. He’d have been surprised if it hadn’t.

The glass and the contents had traveled a greater distance than he could fathom. And its purpose was clear. It was Jack’s. It had been created for him.
It was created for this very moment.

He
started to feel the effects waning. He felt truths slipping away no matter how hard he tried to grasp at them.

He knew he’
d drink from the glass again. He put the lid back on because suddenly the realization frightened him. This kind of clarity could not be good. Sometimes the mind ignores truth to protect itself. He slipped it back in the baggy as a further deterrent.

But he
was immediately overcome with a desperate need to drink. The truth was addictive.

He wasn’t going to let Billy take the truth serum from him. He had to
drink it again but if Billy took it back to the warehouse he’d never get at it.

He
sensed that Billy was about to enter in less than two seconds and that he’d say the General wants to see him. It came to him like a prophecy. From this, he deduced that he’d be able to keep the shot glass for himself if he quickly smashed a beaker on the floor and hid the real glass. Billy would wrongly assume that it was the shot glass smashed of the floor. The General would be pissed about it but he’d believe it. He saw Jack affect the artifacts; he knew Jack could break it just like he broke that butterfly. It was the perfect ruse.

The handle
on his office door was starting to turn. Jack snatched the shot glass out of the baggy and put it in his desk drawer. He rifled through the cabinet with the beakers and pulled out the smallest one. He lifted it above his head and brought it down hard against the floor, shattering it to cascading bits. He’d accomplished all of this in less than two seconds. Physically, he must have been moving as fast as he was moving mentally.

Billy
exclaimed, “What’d you do that for?”

Jack, confusion hardening his features said, “What do you mean?”

“Why are you breaking lab equipment? Those beakers aren’t cheap.” Billy reached out for the baggy and asked, “Where’s the glass?”

It wa
s only then that Jack knew he’d gotten something wrong. All of his newfound insight was bullshit. It was a delusion concocted by his mind. If he was wrong about this then he was wrong about everything the shot had shown him.

“Never mind, the General wants to see you.”

Jack thought, well that part was right. Maybe I just need to get used to it. Maybe the effects are wearing off.

Billy continued, “I’ll come and get
the artifact later.”

The General wasn’t entirely unpleasant when he said, “They want you downstairs right away.” He must have realized
this would eventually happen.

“I’m not supposed to go until two. It’s only eight. What’s up?”

“You know they wouldn’t tell me. I’m just the messenger it turns out.”

There was definitely some hostility coming through now, or maybe the go-juice in Jack’s belly was still playing tricks on him.