by Adam Moon
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 began 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.
Chapter 9: Forbidden Fruit
Billy returned with a glass cube that had a shiny red apple inside.
Before he put it down he said, “The General read your last report and he thinks you might want to take a break from this for a while. He said he understands how taxing it can be the first time.”
Jack shook his head. “I can do this. I’ll keep my smart assed remarks to myself from now on.”
Billy put the glass box down. “Good, I’ll go tell him. He didn’t seem all that happy so this should cheer him up.”
Jack watched him leave at a brisk military pace, what a kiss ass, and then he suddenly had the overwhelming urge to take a bite out of that apple even though he was still stuffed from breakfast and the faint smell of shit still hung limply in the air.
Instead of giving in to the unreasonable urge, he snapped the photos and got to work:
The apple’s an ancient symbol for fertility. The red apple signifies love. An apple stands for rewards on the horizon. In a biblical sense an apple stands for a forbidden longing, the forbidden fruit. A sweet apple stands for pleasure.
He really wanted to eat that apple now. He could always say it was part of his research.
He stood up and lifted the lid to the glass case. The apple was shiny new and looked every bit the store bought variety.
He picked it up and panicked immediately. Every nerve in his body was afire with pain. He tried to drop it but his hand was clutching it the way your grip tightens when grabbing a power line.
In his minds eye he could see that the apple was full of vast power that he could barely comprehend. He also knew instinctively that the only way to get the apple out of his hand was to eat the thing. It didn’t matter that that was crazy thinking to Jack; he simply wanted the pain to stop.
He bit into it. The inside was brown, sludgy, bitter, and worm infested. It was delicious.
He ate and ate, even devouring some of the core.
His grip finally loosened and the remains dropped back into the box.
He was overwhelmed with a feeling of accomplishment like he’d just done something amazing. Something life altering was now going to happen because of what he’d just done; he just knew it.
Billy screamed like a woman when he saw the core in the box and brown juice dripping down Jack’s chin.
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He said something into his walkie but Jack couldn’t make out the words. He was delirious from his meal.
Jack slumped to the floor and just let the beauty of the world wash over and through him.
The appearance of the General in his office helped to snap him back to reality as did the swift slap across the cheek the General delivered.
Jack stood up on fawn legs and heard the General say, “Where’s the artifact?”
This was the first time Jack had heard the objects referred to in such a way.
“I ate it.”
The General said, “I know you didn’t. Where’s the real artifact? William, steady your weapon on this man until he tells me the truth.”
Billy did as he was told and it nearly broke Jack’s heart.
The General bellowed, “Now! Tell me!”
Jack’s mouth moved but nothing came out. He hated when that happened, it made him look stupid. He waved at the glass container and the General picked up the rotten core within.
He immediately fell to the ground unconscious.
Billy holstered his pistol and helped the General come to his senses.
He then gingerly picked the core up with his sleeve and dropped it back in the box.
The General stood up slowly. He looked from Jack to the rotten apple core and back.
“How on earth did you eat that?” He knew Jack was telling the truth now because regular apples don’t make you black out on the spot.
He continued, “That thing was indestructible. We hit it with everything. You can’t even x-ray the dang thing.”
Jack just shook his head, not knowing what to say. He wasn’t entirely sure what had compelled him to eat the thing.
He didn’t think the General would believe him if he told his freaky version of the truth; that he had a feeling that if he ate it the pain would go away. Shit, maybe the apple made him do it.
The General turned to Billy and commanded, “Take this man to his quarters until I can get a handle on what has happened here.”
“Yes sir.”
Billy led a dumbstruck Jack back to his quarters in silence. He stood post outside the door as Jack slowly closed it behind him.
What the fuck had just happened?
If all the artifacts were equally priceless then Jack might as well have eaten that shoebox sized block of gold.
His stomach lurched as the realization hit him; he was in deep shit. He wanted to crawl off somewhere and just be left alone forever. He’d been a bad bad boy and the people responsible for meting out punishment around here had firearms.
Jack thought about Samantha for some stupid reason; maybe because the last time he was happy was when they were together and he needed some happy thoughts to combat the feeling of dread growing inside. It was an age old defense mechanism that really did him no good. Misery always won out in the end.
Sam was prettier than he deserved but she said she was attracted to his intelligence and depth. Then again, he lost her to a cat bed salesman so maybe she was lying.
She moved in with him after a few months of dating and he felt like he’d hit the jackpot.
She was good enough in the sack, about as good as any gorgeous woman can be and she just made him feel at peace with himself.
That all changed though and it wasn’t her fault. He had personal issues. Losing his family at such a young age was scarring. Sam watched him go down the rabbit hole one too many times and eventually couldn’t take it anymore.
His drinking increased after he took that butt-fucking job at Millworld. He became evasive and distant.
So she left.
Jack was doubly pissed at himself now; thinking about Sam was supposed to cheer him up, not make him more wretched.
He had an epiphany; he had to get away from this place and fast.
He was just starting to formulate a plan to escape, surely a plan destined for failure and bullet holes, when the General let himself in, trailed by an old fat guy in a lab coat.
Chapter 10: The Doctor
The General looked ready to explode but he restrained himself as the fat man stood over Jack and scrutinized him.
“Uncanny” he mumbled to himself. “I can’t believe …”
The Doctor stopped himself short, straightened his lab coat and sat beside Jack on the sofa.
He said, “I’m the head of research in warehouse A. I understand you may have physically interacted with an artifact.”
Jack mumbled in agreement, sure that a guard would slip behind him and plant a bullet in his brainpan while he was distracted.
The fat man said “My name’s Doctor Jim Collins but you can just call me Jim. Here, take this.”
The Doctor handed him a small glass box with a tiny butterfly inside.
Jack let it rest on his lap and took a quick peek behind him for that sneaky imaginary guard.
The Doctor reached into the box and plucked the butterfly out, wincing from some unknown pain and took each of its wings between the thumb and forefinger of each hand.
Jack wanted to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing but he stayed his tongue. The Doctor’s elbows cocked outwards as he pulled those wings apart with all his might but the butterfly just sat there, unimpressed and unharmed.
The General gasped ever so slightly.
The butterfly was probably a living artifact, Jack mused, and the General had never seen one like it before.
The Doctor handed it to Jack and said, “Now you try.”
He did the same as the Doctor, a wing in each hand, and was getting ready to be amazed by how indestructible the little bugger would turn out to be but with just a little exertion he pulled the right wing clean off.
“You fuckin bastards” he hollered, “That was uncalled for you God damn animal torturers.”
The Doctor looked scared but by something besides Jack’s outburst.
The butterfly died in Jack’s hand and he slapped it down in the Doctor’s outstretched hands in disgust. The Doctor daintily placed it back in the box with its orphaned wing.
Jack stood up and paced. He didn’t like to kill anything. If he had to hunt for his own food he’d become a vegetarian. He was the type who trapped houseflies in cups and put them outside. His stomach churned.
The General barked, “Sit down now.”
Jack sat without question, his anger temporarily stunned.
The Doctor held the glass box over his head and the General took it away.
Before he was out the door, the Doctor said, “Remember Dave, no talking about this.”
The General said in a put out, gruff voice, “I know that sir.”
To Jack the Doctor said, “We tried everything we could think of to affect that butterfly. I won’t go into the details as you are obviously sensitive about cruelty to animals but the gist of it is that little guy was indestructible and you pulled it apart like it was a regular old Monarch. This is exciting. You may just have a promotion in your future.”
The Doctor stood up and took Jack’s hand in both of his, “I would like you to continue interpreting the artifacts but I’d like you to make time for me at 1400 hours tomorrow. I’ll come fetch you if you’re agreeable to this.”
Jack nodded his overburdened, dumbfounded head and the Doctor exited with a little spring in his step.
Billy sheepishly peeked his head inside, “The General says you get to take the rest of the day off for some R & R. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Jack scowled and waved him away without a word. He was increasingly upset that Billy had pointed a gun at him.
He vaguely realized he might be focusing his frustrations and insecurities into a newfound hatred for a man he barely knew, but whatever, Billy deserved a fair share of his anger.
Billy had a hangdog look as he left and Jack was glad for it; for the small victories.
Instead of trying to understand what had happened to him in the past forty eight hours he decided to test his alcohol consumption limits. There was enough beer i
n the fridge to kill an elephant.
Jack thought, If only I was an elephant.
Chapter 11: Day Three
He awoke on the couch, his mouth tasted like death and his dry eyes stung from the alcohol abuse. His skin felt clammy and it took all his willpower to force himself to shower off last nights booze stench.
Today was really going to suck.
He found an energy drink in the fridge door and slammed it down his throat. He heard his front door whisper shut and braced himself for whatever nonsense was heading his way.
General Dave saw him and cracked a smile.
“I see you’ve discovered the liquor cabinet.”
Jack shook his head, “No, I found some beers in the fridge though.”
The General picked his remote control off the coffee table and pressed a button. A hidden drawer opened underneath the kitchenette counter and an array of liquor bottles greeted Jack.
“Ugh” was all Jack could say.
The General said “I’ll have someone come and empty it out. I don’t want you killing yourself on my dime.”
Jack was almost thankful for that. He was thankful too that the General’s demeanor was much improved from last night.
The General put the remote down and said, “Listen, you are to meet with Doc Collins at 1400 today and I want you on your best behavior. I know we haven’t established a rapport of any kind but you must understand that because you are under my leadership, you represent me. Don’t embarrass me please.”
Self serving prick.
“What will the Doctor have me do?” Jack asked afraid of what the answer might be.
“No idea. He runs the research teams in this entire facility. I’m head of inventory in warehouse A. I command all personnel from this floor up but the real research goes on below us where the Doctor works. By the end of the day today, you’ll know more about what goes on around here than anyone you’ve met so far besides the Doctor.”
Jack furrowed his brow. Normally he’d be proud of something like this, rising in the ranks so quickly, but he was apprehensive to say the least.