Lab C: Chapter 23 - Reality
“Please, please, please…”
John clutches his eyes tight. Dr. Tesla watches on in shock, awe, and something grotesque in between. A pool of dark burgundy seeps from Chuck’s still neck.
John’s right eye peaks just a crack, and then he lets out a deep breath.
“Ok. Good. Reality wasn’t based on him.” He looks down and takes in Chuck’s smiling visage. “I’m gonna miss you bud.”
“Our reality could have been “based” on him? What?” Dr. Tesla’s eyes flick to the cold, rocky feet of Chuck, but has to look away. He squats down, fixating on a spot on the floor. The Swarm oozes out of his shirt collar and takes off down the hall as fast as a swarm of flies can usually go.
Whimpers eek out of him as his face contorts into panic. He begins to sobs and looks to John for comfort. John doesn’t return the glance, pushing Dr. Tesla deeper into his panic. John notices and stands tall and begins breathing in for four seconds, holding it for four, out for four, hold, and continuing.
Through the sobs, Dr. Tesla can see John’s stoic pose, the intentionality in his being. He tries to mimic John, but his chest pushes into his knees and it’s uncomfortable. His whimpers are weaker.
“Stand, feel the floor. Your safe. It is secure.” John instructs.
Dr. Tesla follows, and after a few holds and few breaths, his sobs are sniffles. Each time he opens his eyes, he looks between Chuck and John, then closes them again.
By the time John is done, Dr. Tesla is also good. Well, he takes a few more after John, but close enough. He’s relaxed.
John looks over the Chuck’s body. A blissful smile covers his dead face. “For a minute there… I thought it might have been all about him.”
Dr. Tesla switches back to intentional breathing. John turns and meets his eyes.
“Chuck just suddenly appeared one day, wanting to kill Steve Jobs. We wanted to know what he is. We captured him, and I told him when Steve Jobs was done with the work he needed to do, I’d take him to kill him.
He believed, that if he killed him in this life, maybe it would sling back around and next time, he would have instead lost the will to gain true enlightenment and have chosen to live out that first mortal life, instead of… what ever the fuck he became.”
Dr. Tesla waits for more.
“We tested him on many many of one machine that is really good at detecting how old something is on him. Sometimes, it came back negative. Piece’s of Chuck were negative years old. No body programmed negative in to the machine’s, but they decided he was. Chuck was something else. We…”
John sighs, “well he’s dead.” He shakes off the feelings and returns to his stoic, happy go lucky self.
“Okay, uhhh. We need to uh, fix the store. Nope, no. I can’t do that. I need to write a report. So then, Dr. Tesla, you have to fix the store. Good luck. As Dr. Ambower’s assistant, you have special privileges.
Two pieces of warning: First, no one will ever tell you what your privileges are and you just have to try and hope you don’t over step your bounds. Second, don’t abuse them. If you can tell people what to do, don’t.”
Dr. Tesla pipes up, “Isn’t there a procedure in place for this? What about Chuck? Who do I talk to about clean up? What about the other destruction… what about… what… when you were in my position how did you figure anything out?!”
“No one’s ever been in your position before.”
Dr. Tesla waits, he’s learning to just let John talk sometimes.
“There’s no repeat positions. They’re all unique. And if you ever find the employee documentation, go ahead and let me know.” To himself, “Would be nice to remember how many years I’ve been here, or learn what my position title is.”
Dr. Tesla turns and looks at the massive hole in the wall and the destroyed area of what’s visible of the Special Requisitions Request Room. Dr. Tesla deflates. John puts a hand on his shoulder.
“I’ll make sure The Swarm is recaptured. They’re super cool. I am dying for us to get back on researching them. And bud…”
Dr. Tesla looks at him.
“You did a great job dude. I’m proud of you Dan.”
Dr. Tesla smirks, they give each other a manly nod.
John ruffles his hair, “Alright Dr. Tesla, I’ll be back to help you after my report, so long as nothing gets in the way. You got this?”
Dr. Tesla’s mouth gapes, and he motions too the destruction. John starts running down the hall.
John, “That’s the spirit! See you soon! Don’t forget to take care of yourself! No one else will!”
Dr. Tesla looks at the destruction. “What the fuck. Ok. Uhm…” and he pulls out an ipad and just starts hunting. The stress digs into his temple. He glances at Chuck’s corpse. To prevent a freak out, he walks into the Special Requisitions Request Room.
Down the hall, John opens a random door, and a garage forms next to it. He drives out in a golf cart, enjoying the wind in his hair.
Where ever he turns, people are only walking on one side of the every hallway so he has a space to drive down. He drives past a group of demon, lizard women who wave a him dreamily, he ignores them.
He gets to his room and flops on his bed. He looks straight to the picture of the galaxy spiral above his bed unblinking for a solid 3 minutes. “How the fuck do I get out of here this time?”.
His eyes close, and he takes a nap for almost exactly 20 minutes. On the dot, he leaps off the bed and lands on the floor. A side bend to the left, to the right, he taps a hidden button with his big toe, and a section of floor flips over revealing a yoga mat. He falls to the floor and finds himself gracefully in child’s pose.
He does some upward dog, into downward dog. Lily walks under him, nuzzling his arm and face. He can’t help but giggle and falls to the floor, petting her like she’s really there. “We’ll figure it out, won’t be pup?”
She reaches her limit of loving and lays down out of reach. John goes through an intricate, mega advanced yoga flow that involves some alternating pistol squats. Some intense plank positions. There’s some hand stands and pushes up atop his finger tips, then alternates hands, holding himself up on two fingers.
He loses balance and falls towards Lily, who jumps out of the way. She comes over and licks his face. When she knows he’s ok, she goes over to his couch and plops onto it.
John looks from her to the ceiling, “I just needed a bit more time…”
A pull bar comes down in the center of the room and he jumps to his feet from laying down. He jumps from the floor to the pull up bar and just starts doing full body ups.
They don’t seem to affect him.
He hangs with one hand. His watch beeps, and he switches hands. He dangles, his forearms like steel. He could fall asleep like this, but instead, nonchalantly throws himself over to a work computer tucked between some plants.
He plops in the seat and turns it on. There are only three icons on his desktop, “Email. Database. News.” He clicks the email and sends this to “Dr. Ambower”. No “@” or anything. Just the name.
”Chuck got out. Found out Steve Jobs is dead and made threats to the lab. I put him down. Unsure if “dead” dead. Regrets, Dr. Grimsen”
He gets up and rolls his shoulders around. Goes to the fridge and eats some food. He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes again for more like 45 minutes after that. He opens his eyes and taps the table in front of him, a screen pops up with the same three icons. This time he hits news.
The interface is boring. He clicks around, there’s some updates about how they’re pursuing new ways of ghost capture and containment. John ignores it. He sees a picture of Dr. Ambower, smiling, holding up her new id badge like a trophy. Then an obituary for her former boss, Dr. Smalls.
He takes another cat nap then he heads out right back into his golf cart. In a minute, he’s right back to Dr. Tesla who is slamming his tablet with his fingers.
Chuck is gone.
“BUT THAT DOESN’T TELL ME ANYTHING ABOUT MAINTENANCE!”
“That one’s useless, here…” John heads into the Special Requisitions Request Room. He speaks to the guard whose just sitting dumbly. “Got any sledge hammers?”
The guard produces two without a word, John takes them. He hands one to Dr. Tesla. “Let’s just see what happens.”
Dr. Tesla throws it to the ground. “NO! DUDE! I’m not.. I’m a lab guy, look at my coat! Look at your coat! I’m not about to SLEDGE rocks. What are you even on about?”
John takes a second, then checks his watch.
“YEAH?! Just disappear for a few hours and then ignore me for your WATCH?!”
“It says here you haven’t been back to your room in 27 hours.”
“THESE TELL TIME TOO?!”
“They’re computers bud.”
In rage, Dr. Tesla runs over, grabs the sledge he threw down and just starts wailing at the wall.
“THIS PLACE, FUCKING, SUCKS! LET! ME! OUT!”
John hangs his head for a moment, he’s been here before.
“Go to your room, and take care of yourself.”
“NO! I need to get this done, so I can get back to the Swarm which is I don’t even know where-”
“-Back in containment.”
Perturbed, Dr. Tesla looks at him. John shrugs. “We can just shut off areas and flood it with gas. Probably the same gas they used when they snatched you up. Works. On. Everything.”
Dr. Tesla squints at him. “Then why, didn’t we just, DO THAT WITH CHUCK?!”
John considers this, “You need to go to sleep.”
Dr. Tesla tilts his head over, “No. YOU don’t get to define what I do and don’t need. YOU are the only who answers anything, so I NEED you to answer me when I ask you a question.”
John stays stoic. “When you first saw Chuck, what happened?”
Dr. Tesla is offended, “I didn’t say, I needed a Socratic method or whatever, to teach me about what happened. Just tell me.”
“He phases through-”
“-phased through the wall and so can’t be contained like that. Right. Shit. I do need to go to sleep. Ok. I see your point now. Good bye, and thank you for your grace.”
He bows deeply to John and walks away. Past the golf cart.
“You can take the golf cart, I’ll get a new one.”
Dr. Tesla turns on his heel, gets in, and takes off. John looks at the hole in the wall and the store where you can’t really tell if it keeps going or if its a wall. Well, for John, he can see the whole thing, but we don’t have access to that.
