by C M Dancha
There was only one thing Rollie knew for sure. He wasn't going to tell Raul or Klaus about Slice's recommended solutions or comments about his personal life and family. He needed a lot more time to consider these things.
Raul turned and started for the lab exit. "I'll see you later. I suspect Klaus will want to see you two in the morning."
Rollie hated to see Raul leave pissed off but sometimes friends have disagreements. He knew their friendship was strong enough to survive this minor dispute. Besides, the two of them needed each other as an ally.
"Rollie, what did Slice mean by …?"
Rollie held up his hand to stop Claude from finishing his question. "Claude, we have too much work to do now. We can talk tomorrow about Slice and other things. By the way, did you hear Raul say he knew the monitoring systems were down?"
Claude got the hint and realized everything they said or did in the lab was being recorded or would be very soon. Raul made a major mistake by letting them know that he found out about their sabotage of the monitoring systems. If he had kept that fact to himself, he might have heard Rollie and Claude discussing all the other things Slice said during the lab visit. Now, the lab was off limits to any sensitive discussion topics.
"One question, Rollie. Are you coming in early tomorrow morning to meet with Klaus?"
"Claude, I don't know." With a certain amount of exasperation in his voice, Rollie added, "It seems to me that for the next two weeks we belong to Sedgewick Slice. Klaus, Phoenvartis, the executive committee and what we want are all secondary to what Slice wants."
Chapter Twenty-Four
Maybe We Have A Chance After All
"What do you mean Slice was here last night?"
Raul rubbed his face. It was a forced habit of disgust when he had to repeat himself.
"Klaus, Sedgewick Slice was here last night. Here, in Phoenvartis. Here in the CR47 lab. Here, talking with our cloning experts, Mr. Sweats and Claude. Right here, in good old Zurich, Switzerland."
Both men were on edge. Klaus had just come into work to be confronted with the Slice visit. Raul was getting irritated with everyone and everything related to Slice. They each had a million thoughts racing through their minds. Unfortunately, these thoughts ended up as questions rather than conclusions or facts which could be turned into constructive steps forward.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Ekstrom. I didn't mean to be disrespectful. I've been up since three this morning running around town chasing a ghost and then came here to play who's a liar with Rollie and Claude." Raul took a cigar from the wood box on Klaus's desk not wanting to smoke it but rather play with it. He had never done anything like that before without asking permission. But now, it didn't seem to matter if Klaus approved or not. Raul was fed up and in his own little world where he could do whatever he wanted.
Klaus could tell his security director was close to coming apart, so he reached over the desk and lit the cigar for Raul. After a couple of puffs, Raul seemed more relaxed, so Klaus began the conversation again.
In a fatherly tone, Klaus asked, "Raul, tell me what happened here last night."
For the next forty minutes, Raul took Klaus through the entire night, step-by-step, without any interruptions. He made a point of telling Klaus about the disabled lab monitoring systems even though his agents were complacent participants in Rollie's sabotage. By the time he was done, Klaus was upset with everything Raul said but hid his disgust well by lighting and smoking a cigar. Of all the things which pissed him off, Sedgewick Slice's snub and dismissive attitude were at the top of the list. He vowed to retaliate and get back at that little prick if it was the last thing he did in life.
"Raul, it's time to contact Rollie and Claude. I'd like to hear what those two have to say. Would you find them and get them in here, so we can all meet?"
"No problem, Mr. Ekstrom and again, I'm sorry for acting like such a jerk earlier."
Klaus gave Raul a limp salute indicating he accepted his apology and appreciated the effort he put into the entire Slice affair.
Raul headed to his office to catch up on his department's daily report and find Rollie and Claude. Unknown to him, the two cloning experts were still at Phoenvartis. They were in the cloning lab tinkering with the CR47.
"Claude, I think that son of a bitch Slice pointed us in the right direction to figure out why the incubator has been acting erratically. Come over here and look at this."
Rollie was ready to call it quits and head home to sleep when he noticed something peculiar about the gauge which measured pressure within the CR47 and the lab room. Each time he rebooted the CR47 to start its initiation sequence the pressure gauge, known as the AAC, gave the same reading regardless of what was going on in the lab. Rollie noticed this oddity when he started an initiation phase at the same time Claude opened the lab door to return from a visit to the men's room. When Claude came into the lab the AAC should have moved slightly to reflect a change in the room's pressure. It didn't. It stayed the same. Rollie then went through three or four more reboots with the same results. The AAC was giving false readings, which in turn might be affecting the operation of the CR47.
"Watch this, Claude."
Rollie started a reboot of the CR47 and then opened and closed the lab door several times. He then turned on the air-conditioning blower in the room. If that wasn't enough, he flooded the room with a fire suppressant which dissipated within thirty seconds. The AAC maintained its same reading no matter what Rollie did to intentionally change the pressure in the room.
Claude's eyes grew to the size of saucers. "Heilige scheibe." Anytime Claude spoke German all Rollie had to do was look at him. "Sorry, I mean holy shit. Do you know what this means Rollie? We've been using false data to tune the CR47 before each cloning experiment. No wonder some of the cloned animals came out of the incubator looking like monsters."
"Let's not jump ahead of ourselves, Claude. We have a good lead on what's wrong with the CR47, but we still have a lot of experimentation to do to verify this theory. Let's face it, this might not be the only thing wrong with the incubator. If the AAC is malfunctioning, what else is wrong?"
"Good point, Rollie. But I must say, this looks very promising."
From behind them, someone asked, "What looks so promising Claude?"
Rollie and Claude stood up from crouching in front of the AAC gauge and found Raul and Klaus standing just inside the lab door.
Klaus didn't wait for his nephew to answer the question. He was more interested in what Slice was up to a few hours before. "I understand Mr. Slice met with you two last night. Would you mind telling me what he had to say?"
"He said we had two weeks to either get the CR47 working correctly or give up on the cloning project. And if we give up, then the project will be turned over to someone who can get the CR47 working. In other words, you, me and Claude are halfway out the door. Raul, you might survive, but the rest of us are gone unless cloning becomes a reality."
The conversation came to a screeching halt. All the questions Klaus thought of asking before getting to the lab vanished. His only concern now was his job. The great salary, cushy apartment, latest hover vehicle and fulfilling his peculiar sexual appetite would end with the loss of his job. It had taken him years to climb the corporate ladder and become a CEO. All the training, education, and backstabbing would amount to nothing if the ReLife project faltered under his watch. Before he could stop grieving for himself, Rollie added an encouraging comment.
"On a brighter note, Claude and I might have found out tonight why the CR47 is malfunctioning. That's what Claude was talking about when you two walked into the lab."
It was now evident that Rollie and Claude had been sabotaging the ReLife project. How would they know the CR47 had been malfunctioning? For weeks, they claimed two parts in the CR47 needed to be replaced. If the incubator needed parts and wasn't operational, how did they discover a problem with the CR47 during the night? Obviously, they had been lying for whatever reason. Klaus could have nailed t
hem on the lies and sabotage, but it didn't seem all that important now.
"Rollie, I have a couple of questions for you. How convinced are you that you found the problem and can get this goddamn thing working?"
"I'm 100% convinced that the AAC gauge has been malfunctioning and that has negatively affected our cloning experiments. What I'm not sure of yet is whether the AAC malfunction is the only thing wrong with the CR47. There might be other problems."
Rollie knew he had admitted to weeks of lying to his boss and sabotaging the ReLife project. But, like Klaus, it didn't seem to matter. The only thing which mattered was moving forward and getting done within the two-week time frame.
"Is two weeks enough time for you and Claude to get ReLife project working?"
"Mr. Ekstrom, it doesn't matter if two weeks is enough time or not. That's all Slice gave us."
"True, very true. What can I do to help you?"
What a shocking change in Klaus's management style. Rather than making demands he was asking an employee what he could do to help. Rollie had been formulating what needed to be done in the next two weeks so he answered Klaus's question immediately.
"Klaus, I need Raul to get a couple more recorders into the lab and I'll indicate where they should be focused. Claude and I need real-time access to all the lab and CR47 recordings any time of day. We need a full-time technician who has a mechanical engineering background. Don't give me anyone with less than ten years' experience. I also need someone to run errands. This person doesn't need any special training other than a track record of being 100% reliable. Also, he must be able to take orders without complaining and asking a bunch of questions. And I need you and Raul to be open to any other requests which might come up as we move forward."
"Those requests are all doable, Rollie. Is there anything else?"
Rollie debated whether to bring up the last thing on his list. It was going to sound ridiculous, but he decided to go ahead and ask for it. "Mr. Ekstrom, I need an animal trainer or scientist who has a lot of experience teaching apes or monkeys to communicate using sign language. I've read about a woman in central Africa who has devoted her life to this sort of thing. If you can have someone track her down, I want to talk with her before she comes to Phoenvartis."
Everyone in the room was confused by Rollie's last request. What possible connection could there be between talking apes and cloning? For now, it was good enough to let Rollie worry about that link.
"I'll do the best I can, Rollie. By the way, can I cancel the order for the two defective parts you placed with the CR47 manufacturer?"
Rollie chuckled at Klaus's smart-ass question. "I think we already did that, Mr. Ekstrom."
Now it was Klaus's turn to chuckle as he and Raul walked out of the lab. Unfortunately for Rollie and Claude, his chuckle wasn't humor based.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Three Women, A Dog, and One Bed
After almost twenty hours, Rollie left Phoenvartis and went home to get some sleep. It had been a long, eventful night and morning. First, Slice showed up with a boatload of suggestions, ideas, and threats. Then, the malfunctioning AAC gauge was discovered. Klaus followed with an appearance at the lab to ask stupid questions and plead for a quick resolution to the CR47 problems, so his job wasn't in jeopardy. And, before Rollie and Claude left Phoenvartis several requests including a talking monkey expert were assigned to Klaus and Raul.
To Rollie, it had been twenty incredible hours. On his walk home, he had replayed every crucial moment of the past day. As he put his palm to the door entry reader, Rollie couldn't help marveling at the number of lies and hidden agendas which were exposed within a short period. It was as though everyone wanted to play some of their best cards to display their power and authority. Even with all these admissions now in the open, Rollie couldn't help but think there were more buried below the surface waiting for the right time to be exposed.
Normally, the puppy greeted Rollie with panting, jumping and a few mad dashes around the apartment. This time, he was nowhere to be seen or heard. He could feel someone else in the apartment and hoped this person wouldn't interfere with his planned nap. He didn't have enough energy to entertain or contend with whoever was waiting for him in the bedroom.
"Hi. You don't look so good." A nude Sophia was lying crosswise on the bed with her head and chest slightly elevated and supported with a crooked arm. Next to her was the puppy, half asleep and enjoying Sophia's gentle petting. The sunlight shining through the bedroom's one window was just enough to highlight her long and lean body, jet black hair and porcelain skin. Rollie thought how perfectly she was posed. Professional advertising people would pay a lot of world credits to replicate a sensual image like this to help sell their product.
"Hi to you, too. Yeah, I don't feel real great either." Rollie let his clothes fall to the floor and laid down next to her and the dog.
"How long have you been here? And aren't you supposed to be at work?"
"I told the boss I haven't been taking lunch breaks every day, so I was going to take a couple of hours off this afternoon. I'll have to go back in about an hour."
Sophia could feel Rollie's body starting to relax and feared he would fall asleep before she could ask him a few questions about the ReLife project.
"I hear you had a visitor last night. The rumor mill has it that the guy from the World Council showed up again and you and Claude spent time with him."
Rollie was too tired to discuss Slice's visit with Sophia but the mere fact that she brought it up raised a red flag and put him on the defensive. Even in his weary state he immediately thought about Slice's warning to be careful of the people he associated with outside of work. Was he referring to Sophia or someone else? He didn't like the answer he provided to his own question.
Slice had to be referring to Sophia. There was no one else he saw on a regular basis. But why was Sophia a threat? Yes, she had some odd beliefs like reincarnation and was obviously hiding parts of her background, but those things were circumstantial and didn't make her a threat to his life or career. Or did they? Slice's observations about other things had been too accurate to ignore the warning about Sophia. He needed to put his feelings for Sophia aside and admit she might be an operative who wanted something from him. The physical intimacy with her was great but it couldn't squash his overriding feeling that something was wrong with her and their relationship.
"Yeah, Mr. Slice showed up last night. I got to say he's quite a character. He had Claude and I laughing our asses off."
"About what?"
"I don't know. He's just a really funny guy. Damn near everything that comes out of his mouth is funny."
"So he didn't ask you about the cloning project?"
"He asked about the cloning project, but he also wanted to be updated on several other projects."
"Wow. That's a lot different than the way the rumor mill has painted his visit. What I've heard is that Slice only wanted to know about the cloning project and that's why he met with you and Claude and no one else."
"The rumor mill has it wrong, Sophia." Rollie paused for a moment thinking of a way to end this conversation and move on to something important, like sleep.
"The only negative thing I told him was the girl in the Archives department is doing a lousy job and needs to be fired."
At first, she didn't know if she heard Rollie correctly. Why would he tell Slice to fire her? She rolled over, so she could see his face. The broad smile on his face told her the comment was nothing other than more of his sarcastic wit. It was a type of humor she didn't understand. What was with these North Americans and their love of teasing people? For now, she had to ignore his stupid remarks and play along.
Sophia gave Rollie a light slap on the chest and said, "That's really funny, Rollie. Thank you so much for mentioning me to the World Council guy."
"It was the least I could do for my favorite girl. Hey, I hate to be a killjoy, but I've got to get some sleep. Can I contact you later tonight?"
"Make it tomorrow, Rollie. You need a lot of rest so let's talk tomorrow."
Even though he was exhausted, he had led her away from questions about Slice and the ReLife project. As he squeezed one of her ass cheeks he leaned over and kissed her with as much passion as he could muster. She pretended to be concerned with his welfare and returned his kiss. As Rollie passed into dreamland she crawled out of bed, got dressed and left the apartment. It was now almost three in the afternoon and she would have to act fast to arrange seeing Klaus this evening.
For some reason, Rollie chose to answer all her questions with a lie. He either didn't trust her or was too tired to explain the encounter with Slice. There wasn't much of a choice. She believed that Rollie intentionally avoided her probing questions. In the next few days, she would need to determine if he was still a viable source of information. If not, their relationship would change to something other than what it was now. For now, she had only one source of information about Slice and the ReLife project. It was Klaus, the pervert. And the thought of sleeping with him to get straight answers about ReLife made her want to puke.
As Sophia sent Klaus Ekstrom a coded message to rendezvous at his apartment after work, Rollie was in a trance-like sleep carrying on a garbled communication with Grandma LeeLee. She sat on her porch in rural Macon, Georgia, staring into the cornfields which surrounded her house. Although her eyes were open, she was oblivious to the sights and sounds around her. The only thing she could see and hear was her grandson Rollie, half-a-world away. In her mind's eye, she saw him in a bed with a small, four-legged creature. There was a red, wispy stain next to him in the bed. From its size and curves, Grandma LeeLee knew it was a woman. An evil woman who intended to use and harm her grandson.