by Adam Moon
A monotone, hypnotic female voice began to drone from the computer speakers. It was a recording made specifically for Jessie to hear:
“The earth’s in great peril. A weapon must be developed to ensure peace for mankind. The evildoers of the world need to be stopped. They can only be stopped with a weapon. Only someone of great courage can develop this weapon. The person who creates this weapon will be a hero for all of history. Jessie. Jessie. Save the world. We’re all counting on you. Jessie. Jessie. Help us.”
Melanie whispered, “This isn’t right. You can’t do this.”
The Doctor swiveled in his chair and leveled his gaze on her. “Dear. Need I remind you that you aren’t actually a key player in this? Jack’s necessary but you are not. Please don’t forget that.”
If Jack was paying attention he might have interjected with, “She goes where I go,” but he was too mesmerized by the droning voice coming from the computer.
“So that’s playing in his room?”
“Yep”
“Does it work?”
“Hasn’t so far but we’ve only just started to experiment with it. We thought a female voice might make a difference. I guess it was a stretch but we need to exhaust every possibility.”
Chapter 35: The Breakthrough
Jack watched the monitor intently. He saw the boy toss and turn restlessly. Just then a quick flicker of light emitted from beneath the bed.
Doc Collins clicked the mouse as he moved the arrow cursor across the screen and brought up a camera that showed the room from a different angle. This one showed the bottom of the bed. There was an object there where before had been empty space. It was a toy tractor with a little plastic guy behind the wheel. Jack half expected it to move of its own accord but it just sat there immobile. It was a regular toy.
“It’s always the same,” complained Oliver. “We ask for a weapon and he gives us a toy or a pillow or some jelly beans.”
“Has he ever succeeded with bringing back what you want?”
“Not really. He’s given us the deadly balls and a couple other things that we don’t yet understand but he’s never come through the way we need him to.”
The Doctor added, “Here, I’ll show you.”
He pulled a microphone out from behind the computer monitor. “Jessie, think about a nice book. It’s your favorite book in the whole world. The book’s about human suffering. While you’re reading this book you realize the only way to end the suffering is to design a device that will stop all warfare. The device is a weapon of great strength.”
Jack watched as another pinpoint of light flickered beneath the bed. The object materialized before their eyes but it wasn’t a weapon, it was an empty glass with a crack running through.
The Doctor shook his head. “It’s harder each time to stay motivated. It’s frustrating.”
Oliver nodded his agreement.
Intrigued, Jack bent toward the microphone and on a whim said into it, “Jessie, think of a shoe...”
The Doctor put his hand over the microphone and shot Jack a disgusted look.
“He’s a human being. We don’t just blurt out whatever we want. What if you do irreparable damage to his psyche? What if you say the wrong thing?”
Jack realized his arrogant foolishness and apologized to everyone in the room.
“I wasn’t thinking.”
A light strobed brighter this time and when it faded away, a worn sneaker with dirty laces lay on its side under the bed.
“You’ve got to be joking,” exclaimed the Doctor as his head moved closer to the monitor, his eyes wide. “It’s a shoe Oliver. I can’t believe it.”
The Doctor stood up and embraced Oliver in a bear hug and Oliver reciprocated. They bounced up and down like they’d just won the Super bowl.
Once separated, Oliver looked at Jack then at the Doctor. “This is big. We need to really think about this before we move forward.”
The Doctor nodded enthusiastically. “Jack, we’re going to come up with a script for you to read. Don’t deviate from the script. Give us a few minutes.”
The Doctor and Oliver rushed over to the little table that the guards had surrounded earlier. They started whispering frantically to one another. Oliver wrote everything down as they conferred.
When Melanie saw the look of exasperation on Jack’s face she sidled up to him and rubbed his forearm for reassurance.
Ever since her scolding from the Doctor she’d remained completely silent.
Jack instinctively put his arm around her shoulder and she didn’t stop him. He hadn’t meant to be so bold but now he was glad it happened and that she didn’t shrug him off.
Before they could get comfortable the Doc and Oliver came back. Oliver put a piece of scribbled on paper beside the monitor as he beckoned for Jack to sit.
Jack read it over. He cracked his neck from side to side.
“I won’t read that” he said, a little too sure of himself.
Melanie read it over quickly. “This is a joke. Jack’s a researcher. It says here you want him to get you a damned doomsday device.”
Doc Collins lashed back, “Clearly you are unable to read my dear. There’s nothing there about a doomsday device. All we want is a weapon that will inspire fear in the enemies of the United States. The wording’s plain enough. Please don’t sully this experiment any more with your uninformed opinions or unwanted commentary. This is truly your last chance to save your job and I pray you are wise enough to take the threat seriously.”
To Jack he said, “If we don’t conjure a weapon soon we may very well get shut down. We all know what that means. It means we might be asleep in our beds when all of a sudden this facility gets blown from the face of the earth without warning. The people we answer to don’t like to be let down. They’re all about covering their asses. They think ‘Why bother keeping the boy around when he just might be a threat to National Security?’ I’ll tell you why, because he can be of value to them. All we need in order to keep all of this going forward is to provide proof of his worth. As long as the value outweighs the concerns he’ll remain an asset and therefore remain alive, along with the rest of us.”
The doctor was red in the face and wheezing.
Jack shook his head. He’d have loved to break into a speech about how maybe he wasn’t the greatest human being to ever live, he’d made mistakes and had regrets, but this was asking too much and he was going to make a righteous stand here and now and refuse to manipulate a child to get a weapon that could kill millions.
Instead he pulled the mic closer, cleared his throat and read from the short note. “Jessie, I want you to know how much this country loves you. And I know you love it too. When something you love is in danger you do what you have to to protect it. America’s in danger and only you can help. America can be safe again if it just had the right weapon; a weapon that will make its enemies think twice about attacking. I know you love America and I know you will give America the weapon it needs to stay safe. I need that weapon now.”
Melanie didn’t shoot him a disgusted look or run from the room weeping and for that he was grateful. She actually crowded the monitor along with the two old researchers, gaping in anticipation.
Chapter 36: A Weapon
A light flared bright blue, totally unlike the flickering flashes from before. The entire monitor went a bluish white and Jack flinched away from it.
The Doc barked an order into his walkie talkie, “Quarantine the room immediately.”
Jack felt uneasy about the order but the Doc helped fill him in.
“We’ve been desperate to get a weapon. If that’s it then we need to safeguard it.”
The light from the room went out instantly and Jack heard the heavy footfalls of the armed guards rushing past the office to set up security outside the boy’s door.
The Doc and Oliver rushed out the door leaving Melanie and Jack behind.
Melanie angrily asked, “Why’d you do that? You just made the new and imp
roved version of a nuke.”
Jack replied sheepishly, “The Doctor said the boy might be killed if I didn’t do it.”
“Is that boy’s life more important to you than the lives of millions?”
Melanie was getting angry but he answered as honestly as he could. He wanted her to understand.
“I guess it is. Listen, I know the boy now. I’ve seen him, met him, he’s just an innocent in all of this. The people that might die from whatever weapon he’s created, well, to tell you the truth, I don’t care about them the same way. They’re strangers to me. The boy isn’t anymore. That boy’s now well within my personal sphere so I obviously care more about what happens to him than I do about what happens to total strangers. I’m sorry if that’s not the answer you wanted from me but it’s the only excuse I have.”
Her tightly knotted expression loosened ever so slightly.
“I get it. I just thought you’d think that the welfare of the many outweighed the welfare of the few.”
He shook his head. “Those are words only a politician would use. My ideals are simpler than that.”
She stood still, staring at the floor. When she finally met his eyes, hers misty and elusive, she moved into him and kissed him full on the mouth.
His vision went wonky; he knew he must have botched the kiss like a teenage boy but she seemed happy enough when she put his face in her hands, pulling away to speak to him.
“I think you might have just taught me something.”
He didn’t have time to understand what the hell she was talking about before she moved in again. He couldn’t believe it. Her thigh was pressing firmly against his groin in a way that left no room to deny that it was intentional.
He pulled back saying, “If this is what you do when I disappoint you I’m pretty excited to see what’ll happen when I impress you.”
She kissed him again but this time he suspected it was to shut him up.
She was sliding her tongue against his lips just as the two old men returned.
“Oh for God’s sake,” exclaimed the Doctor.
Oliver rolled his eyes.
Jack wanted nothing more than to just bum-rush the two old goats into the corridor and lock them out but he thought that might be seen as inappropriate so instead he unfastened his lips from Melanie’s and waited for his hormones to fall back to their normal levels.
Oliver had something in his hands all wrapped up in a green towel that he rushed over to the break table and gingerly set down. The Doctor was right on his heals.
When Melanie whispered “Next time, no interruptions,” Jack’s head felt like it might just pop off and float away into the stratosphere. His pants did a little jig near the zipper. Melanie smiled when she noticed the tell-tale twitch.
It had been a very long time for him.
He regained his composure as Oliver yelled, “How in the hell does it work?”
He and Melanie joined them around the table.
The object that was bundled in the towel was about the size of a grapefruit. It was a dull black color with tiny wriggling spines all over it. It was in the shape of an icosahedron and seemed to emit miniscule vibrations but that might have been the swaying spines tricking the eye. It looked like an evil enlarged version of the dice that nerds used to play dungeons and dragons interbred with a sea anemone.
Oliver gingerly poked at it with the eraser end of a pencil. The Doc looked like he was coiled to spring out of his chair in self defense at any moment. Jack sat down to get a better look as Melanie took the seat beside him.
He asked, “Do you mind if I pick it up?”
Oliver raised his eyebrows. “You actually want to touch that thing? Just look at it. It took every ounce of courage for me to pick it up with the towel. It’ll probably kill you if you touch it.”
Jack felt self assured though. Sure the writhing thing looked menacing, but what no one else in the room knew was that Jack could interact with even the deadly objects without incurring personal harm. He imagined this object would be no different.
He was certain.
Chapter 37: Communing with the Bomb
He picked it up before anyone could argue further against it. It felt cool to the touch. He could feel the spines licking his palm. His mind slid away from him and he let it go without resisting. It slid right into the writhing object like quicksilver. The object’s presence embraced his own as a friend. It was more intimate than the kiss of a few minutes ago.
The Doc yelled at him but he barely noticed.
Jack whispered, “I can feel it. I know it as well as it knows me. It’s alive. It’s biological but not in any way we would understand.”
Oliver reached out to stroke it but Jack pulled away.
“It’ll affect you if you touch it. It doesn’t mean to but it will. You won’t die but it won’t be good for you either”
He put it back on the towel. It was only then that he noticed he was shaking and clammy.
Oliver asked, “How do we use it?”
Jack knew the answer instinctively. “It’s full of a spoor like substance. Put it somewhere with a lot of human traffic and let it explode. It’ll infect everyone it comes into contact with.”
Oliver inquired quickly, “Infect? With what?”
“They’ll be rendered sterile and anyone they try to mate with will become sterile too. Within a century the infected enemy will no longer exist.”
The Doctor looked horrified. “That’s genocide. That’s terrible. How do we contain it though? What’s to stop it from contaminating U.S. citizens?”
“It’ll know,” is what Jack said but the longer he was separated from the thing the less he understood it.
He picked it up again to regain that connection.
“It was designed to only eliminate the enemies of America and it is conscious of this fact. When America’s enemies are fully defeated it will accept death. It’ll die pleased, knowing it has performed its function.”
“Holy shit,” yelped the Doctor. “We can’t go to the brass with this. There are too many intangibles. For starters, we can’t just take Jack’s word that he knows how it works and that it knows what we want it to do for us.”
Oliver stood up as Jack replaced the writhing mass on the towel. “It’s a start Doc. We can give our report and see what they say. If nothing else, this is the first truly encouraging development albeit, an unverifiable one.”
Jack insisted, “If you trust me and you trust it, it’ll do exactly what you expect.”
The Doctor interrupted, “The issue at hand isn’t about trust. It’s about verifying results in a controlled setting before unleashing a possible extinction causing weapon upon humanity.”
Oliver chimed in, “You know, just because we have our reservations doesn’t mean the brass will consider the ramifications of using it. They might just take it on faith and deploy the thing.”
“I see that as the problem,” replied the Doctor. “It’s still within our power to keep this to ourselves. It frightens me to think what it might do if it’s unleashed.”
Before Oliver could respond Jack interjected, “Why don’t we just call this particular weapon a failed attempt? I can have Jessie make a better one? We can design whatever we want. Shit, we could have it pop out with its own user’s manual.”
Oliver nestled back into the chair. “You know Doc, for being so damn smart we sure are idiots. He’s right. Let’s try again.”
The Doctor nodded. “What do we do with this thing though?”
Jack dropped his fist down on it hard and fast. It squelched against the table upon impact, oozing a black tar like residue.
“There, it’s dead and therefore useless as a weapon.”
“Why did you do that? How did you do that?” whispered the Doctor.
“I can interact with these things and I let it know we no longer needed it. It let me do it.”
He was startled by his own explanation even as it was pouring from his mouth, but it was all true. He
had communicated with the creature on the most intimate level and then moments later destroyed it, and it didn’t bother him. He told the thing it was no longer necessary so it gave itself to him and it was content when he smashed it to death. Normally that would seem strange but he was acting on a kind of newly acquired instinct that made it all perfectly normal.
He hoped Melanie didn’t think he was some kind of freak though.
The Doc and Oliver busied themselves writing up the new script for a weapon they might actually understand.
Melanie and Jack wandered over to the monitor array. Melanie whispered, “I don’t know why you’re doing this. They got what they wanted and it would have been enough to keep Jessie safe. Why volunteer to get even better weapons for them?”
He winked at her and explained, “I saw into the heart of that weapon. It had to be destroyed. This next one, well it’ll be a little tamer. Just watch.”
The Doctor rushed over and thrust the new script into his hand. Jack stifled his enthusiasm when he said, “I’ll do this but not over a microphone. I‘ll do it in person only. Let me into the room with him.”
The Doctor shook his head. Oliver said, “We can’t do that Jack. You could die in there if the wrong kind of thing pops out.”
Jack bent to the mic. “Jessie, give me an ice cream cone.”
A flash of light later, the cone appeared on the dresser.
“There you go then. So far he’s done exactly as asked. As long as I don’t ask him for something that will kill me on contact I’ll be safe.”
“Why not just use the mic? This doesn’t make any sense,” said the Doc.
“Because I want to see this with my own two eyes to make sure it’s not some trick.”
He knew this wasn’t true but they’d believe it. Plus, it was his only demand. He was fairly confident they’d cave in and they did.
Oliver shrugged. “Ah, what does it matter Collins? If he gets results who are we to question his methods?”