by Cole, Jason
Holy shit! Tank!
Kira felt a knot in the pit of her stomach.
She stepped inside and he was sitting, tongue out, nub-tail wagging, and it made her feel even worse.
“I’m back, I’m back! I hope I left you enough food and water. Let’s go get you some more, just in case.”
She ran over to the refrigerator and pulled out a big T-bone steak. She slapped it on the ground and filled up his bowl with water.
He started to consume the meat without taking a breath, like a four-legged vacuum.
"Tank, breathe. You're going to throw that shit back up. I don't want to clean it.”
She saw his ears go back at the sound of her voice, but he didn't stop eating.
A few seconds later, all that remained was the uncooked bone. He slurped down the water for twenty seconds, grabbed the bone and went down to claim his spot at the bottom of the couch. He chewed on it ever so slightly as his eyes began to close.
She set up her things on the kitchen table, the camera and vials. She had the lace DNA in the sequence genome. It was time to isolate it and ship it off.
The process for a plant required slightly different enzymes, but otherwise it was pretty straightforward. In just a few hours, she had the gene isolated and normalized.
She stepped outside, and again was welcomed by a warm and soothing sun. There's no place like home, she thought.
She took the gene inside the abandoned post office box, and left.
I wonder what kind of payment this will be, she thought. She didn't care if it was two dollars at that point – what she had done for those people was worth the trip alone. As much as she resented her job helping greedy corporations, the occasional family in need or incidental help she could offer, helped her justify continuing her work. Besides, she didn't know how to do anything else.
She made her way back, grabbed a few protein bars, and went over to the couch.
She turned on the TV, for no other reason than to have some background noise as she closed her eyes. The sleep on the plane was clearly not enough.
She lay down on the couch, let her arms fall off the side and landing on Tank’s back, this big old bear who wanted nothing than to spend time with her. As she pet him slowly, helping him fall asleep, she slipped under as well.
There they lay, Tank and Kira, safe and full, in limbo until the next mission was received.
Chapter 8
Tank jumped up and barked. The bass in his voice startled Kira. She shot up, and looked towards the door. Nothing.
"What is it Tank? What do you hear?"
Tank walked over to the window and started barking at it. Kira used two fingers to push up a single blind. There was a cat outside, walking along the edge of the windowsill.
She smiled as the cat made its way across, reminding her of herself. She turned around and looked at the big brute trying to get at what was outside.
She started to stroke his fat head and said, "It's okay, boy."
He sat back down, his little nub of a tail wagging back and forth.
She looked up and saw that the projector was beeping. She had a message.
As she approached it, her bank account sprung up. Graphically projected into thin air, her receipt for the work was being shown. It was one of the biggest payouts she had received to date. It made her sick. Over time, she had come to think that the biggest payouts came from the dirtiest people. More often than not, she was actually hoping for smaller payments, as it allowed her to tell herself she was doing genuine good in the world.
With the payout this big, with that many digits, there was no question that she had just helped some big conglomerate. If she really cared enough, she could watch the pharmaceutical market and see some pain relieving drugs appear in a year or two, maybe less if they rushed it. It depended on how much they wanted to pay the regulatory and compliance offices.
She sat down on the chair next to the projector, tilted her head back, closed her eyes and put her hand to her face. She wasn't physically exhausted, but she was emotionally and mentally exhausted. She was not sure how long she could keep this up.
She looked over, and Tank was laying on the ground with the remnants of a bone. He dropped the bone, opened up his mouth, and gave what looked to be a smile. She couldn't help but smile back.
In just a day or two, Tank had managed to steal her heart. He had created a soft spot, where she thought there was only ice.
In a hopeless situation, with a hopeless job, at least Tank offered some happiness and something to look forward to.
“Hey Tank, shall we go for a walk?" Something about her voice must have tipped him off, because there was no way he understood her. He shot up and ran over to her.
She took out two shoelaces and tied them together, and tied a knot around his neck, and headed for the door.
She looked back at the projector, at the account and the balance, and shook her head.
I don't know how much longer I can keep this up.
She looked down at the dog, his big eyes looking back up at her. It was at this moment that she realized how dependent he was on her. She was his lifeblood, whether she liked it or not.
Then, he started to fade, along with the rest of the room.
On no, not again.
This time it happened in the blink of an eye. She was teleported back to the little girl and her mother.
"Can I, can I?"
"Baby, I just don't think now is the right time. Your father and I don't think it's right to have a puppy running around the house while your sister is sick in bed. It would be torture for her not to be able to play with it."
The little girl was fiddling with her hair, as she knew her mother was right, but didn't want to accept it. She looked up at her mom, with her big eyes as they watered, and said, "Okay. I know it wouldn't be fair. I just saw a big dog, and I thought how nice it would be to hug him and kiss him."
"One day sweetie, I promise. We'll get you that big dog that you always wanted."
Kira blinked, and she was back in her apartment. Standing in the doorway with her keys in her hand, and Tank sitting staring at her.
Are you that big dog? The one in my memories?
She never knew if the little girl was her, her sister, and was her mother the woman? Or were these just random images, figments of her imagination, creating a semblance of childhood that had been lacking for all those years. A believable identity to hold on to and claim.
The fact that the memory of the dog came after Tank, made it all the more confusing. Which came first, the memory or the desire to have a big dog?
These haunting memories were getting more and more vivid, and more and more disturbing. She didn't know what to do with them, and lately they were becoming more frequent and unrelenting.
She was unable to tell if it was her brain rewiring itself and making sense of the madness that was her life, or if the neuron bridges were being strengthened, somehow making memories accessible once again. The missions alone drained Kira to exhaustion, and now if she added Tank to the mix, things were going to be more trying than ever. Kira hated the fact that these missions always managed to slap her in the face, an undeniable reminder to her that she has no past and no identity.
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