Bad Jack ((Ascension: Book 1)) (14 page)

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 l
icking 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.

O
liver 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.”

Oli
ver 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?”

The
Doctor looked like he wanted to continue arguing but he decided against it.

Jack
looked from one old man to the next. “So let me in there then.”

Chapter 38:
Special Delivery

Oliver called for a guard over his walkie talkie.

T
he guard arrived in seconds and escorted Jack back around to the boy’s room. Jessie was now in the room next door to the one Jack had met him in earlier. That had to be confusing for the poor boy, like playing musical bedrooms or something.

The guard unlocked it and then left right away.

Jack lightly stepped inside the dark room on the balls of his feet. He walked over to the bed, sat down and leaned close to Jessie’s ear. He held the note up to read and started whispering.

When he was done, the
room erupted in a cascade of light.

Jack had to put his arm over his eyes.
The air around him chilled. When the light died down, he picked up the newly minted object and brought it back to the monitoring station.

The
Doctor seemed annoyed. “Why couldn’t we hear you? Why were you whispering?”

Jack already had an answer for this even though he knew it was bullshit
. “I didn’t want to wake him up.”

“You wouldn’t
have,” insisted the Doc as he beckoned Jack to place the object on the table.

The weapon
was tinted with yellow and black mottling and shaped like a half sphere with a flat bottom like a snow globe. It had a big red button right on top. Jack was surprised it didn’t have ACME written on it. It looked just that obvious.

They all gathered around it, staring.

Oliver shook his head after a full minute of silence.

“So what does it do?”

“Jack lifted it and felt its energy flow in and out of his fingertips. “It’ll do exactly what you wanted. When activated, it’ll kill everyone within a thousand square miles yet leave everything non human completely intact. You can test the energy inside with a meter. It also came with this handy-dandy manual.”

He
dropped a single printed sheet of paper on the table that had schematics and formulas scrawled all across it.

“So there you go. It’
ll do what you want. You have a working weapon. And if you can figure out the advanced physics behind how it works from the formulas then you have verification.”

The
Doctor asked him to make another, but just then Jessie stirred awake and asked for a glass of water. Jack was thankful.

The old men were satisfied
enough as it was. They decided they were done experimenting for now so they allowed Jack to retire for the night.

On the way up in the elevator Melanie
asked, “So what is it really?”

Jack smiled
as he answered. “An exact, verifiable weapon that won’t work when deployed. I asked Jessie to give me a benign replica of the weapon the old men asked for that would fool any tests to authenticate it. I wasn’t really sure it would work but when I held it I knew it had.”

That must have been misinterpreted as a convoluted come-on line
or something because Melanie threw herself at him. He actually stumbled back into the steel wall of the elevator. She started kissing him just as the doors of the elevator opened.

Billy peeked around
. He started to say, “Welcome back to the land of tomorrow,” but he whispered the last word at the sight of them. He hurried off down the corridor, unwilling to ruin the kiss by insisting upon procedure.

Jack saw this as a pretty perfect opportunity to get this beautiful woman to his
apartment.

“Join me for a drink
?”

“Yes.”

Chapter 39: Pillow talk

Surprisingly, the sex was mechanical, lacking any type of passion or eagerness. In a word, perfect. Too much passion sometimes made him finish too quickly and he didn’t need that for a first time encounter. Plus he liked to prolong his own enjoyment for as long as possible. It served as a release valve for both of them. Melanie was curvier than he’d expected which made her even more beautiful in his eyes. Only towards the end did he flip her over to let some of his animal urges take over. Either she came twice or she just enjoyed faking it.

Her eyes were glassy
. Stray strands of hair stuck to her forehead by the time she rolled over and kissed him.

He was glad she’d let him take the lead
with this. Up until that point she’d initiated all the contact. He sensed right away that this was just the first of many trysts still to come. He hoped he was right.

The pillow talk was actually more enjoyable than he expected. It wasn’t about feelings or past relationships or about getting hurt
, at least not at first.

Right as the heavy breathing slowed she asked
in a far away voice, “Where do you think all the objects and animals come from?”

“I’ve tried really hard not to dwell on that.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t believe in the supernatural. But there’s just no other explanation.”

She paused in thought. “I guess you’re right. I don’t think science could unravel that mystery. But if you were to believe in the supernatural, where would you say they came from?”

“From his dreams I guess. But that just leads to further questions like how
and why and those are unanswerable.”

“I wonder if anyone has ever asked Jessie.”

“I would imagine so. He must have shit-loads of questions about all of this.”

She changed the subject a bit.

“So when you say you don’t believe in the supernatural, does that include God?”

Oh, here we go, he thought. “Are you religious?”

“Not in the conventional sense. I was just curious.”

“
Good. I guess I don’t want to believe in God. If there was proof that God really did exist, I would do my best to deny it. If there’s a God then he has only stolen from me.”

“You’ve lost family too right? It seems like a common thread
around here.”

“I lost my family when I was young. Who did you lose?”

“My folks and two little brothers died in a fire at our house. I was at a sleep over otherwise the smoke would have killed me too. It’s funny though, I don’t appreciate it the way other people want me to. They say I’m lucky and that maybe God had a plan for me but I would only agree if that plan didn’t start out with the deaths of everyone I cared for.” She paused. “Sorry, I don’t normally get so preachy.”

“It’s ok. I think we have some things in common.
There’s a vicious part of me that wants there to be a God so I have someone to blame and hate. It was my uncle who took me in and taught me that if God does exist he doesn’t deserve our attention. He told me he turned atheist after what happened. After my teenage years when I was able to think for myself I became an atheist too. It’s weird because when I first realized that there was no afterlife, it became an obsession of mine the same way religion’s an obsession for other people. I became militant about it but I burned myself out pretty quick. I don’t think about it much these days.”

“That boy downstairs sure makes me think about it.”

Jack nodded grimly. “I suppose so.”

A couple of important things became apparent to
him right then. Those people at his apartment had mentioned their savior or messiah. He now understood they must have been referring to the boy. Those trigger happy goons were probably searching for the gifted child at this very moment.

Just thinking about the possibility that the boy was actually some kind of Christ child made him nauseous. Any explanation, no matter how bizarre
, was better than that. He realized that with everything that had happened to him these past few days, he’d nearly forgotten that just a couple days ago he was shot at and damn near kidnapped. He was about to brag about it to Melanie but she had something more important to say.

“Enough of the mushy pillow-talk you s
mooth Lothario. Wanna go again?”

He did.