Protocol 1337 (10 page)

This is all just a really twisted dream and soon I will wake up. I tell myself everything is gonna be fine. Yeah, it is all a drug induced dream. Eve is probably making coffee and injecting more drugs into my IV. The old hag is still there emptying my drainage bag. I prepare myself mentally and concentrate really hard to wake up. I can hear my heart beating again, and I feel reality grabbing my soul back. I slowly open one eye and I see white ceiling tiles. YES! I knew it! I am back in my bed, and this is all an illusion.

I sit up quickly, open both eyes, and stare forward. After my eyes focus a bit, I see the pine trees in the distance. Reality hits me hard and fast. I turn to my left and vomit on the floor. This nightmare is far from over, I tell myself. My army doctor comes in and looks me over. I ensure him that I am fine, it was just a lot of information to process so quickly, and I was just overwhelmed. I leave the infirmary with a bottle of anxiety pills and an anti-nausea shot in my rear end.

I need to find a priest. I am not exactly well versed in the bible, but I am confident that sleeping with your sister is bad. I grab a phone book and begin my search. What kind of clergy should I look for? I don’t have a religion that I claim. Which one would give me the best shot at redemption? Catholic! That is perfect, I say to myself. I go in, tell him what happened, say a few hail Mary’s, and all is forgiven! There are several listed and luckily one was right here in town. Father Randy McFeeley, I write down his number and walk over to Shirley's desk.

Shirley greets me with a flirtatious smile. “Feeling better? I hope so. You sure gave us a good scare.” She asks.

“Yeah... I am feeling a lot better, but I need to make a private phone call. I don’t have my cell on me, would it be possible to use a phone in a vacant office or something?” I say.

“Sure thing. You can use the conference room over there. Be sure to dial 8 before you dial out.” She says.

“Thank you so much Shirley! You truly are a real life saver. What would I do without you?” I reply as I sneak into the room. I lock the door behind me and close the shades. I pick the phone up and reluctantly dial the numbers. The phone rings a few times. I am about to hang up when the good father answers.

“I have been living a lie and no one knows what I have done. I know it is very wrong even though nobody knows about it. I think that God doesn’t approve of it.” I say.

“Well, sin is always tempting us, and often we succumb to it. In what regards are you sinning? There are two kinds of sin. Physical and mental sins.” He says.

“902 West Poplar Street, Lead, South Dakota. Just ring the buzzer and I will come out to greet you. May god bless you, my child.” Then the line goes dead. I write the address down and head over to Cox's office.

I walk into Cox's lab and he is busy working. He pretends not to notice my entry. I walk over to him and hover over his shoulder for a bit. He shuffles his glassware around in the fume hood. “That was the longest meeting I have yet to witness here. Must have been pretty important. Let me guess. Your services are no longer needed here and you feel obligated to say good bye.” Cox says.

“Sorry to disappoint you doc, but I am still here to stay. I came back here to ask a favor. Can I borrow your car?” I ask.

“That’s an odd request... I expected a very different response. I don’t know why you would need my car, and quite frankly, I don’t care. I consider you a friend now, and what is mine is yours. I will give you the keys under one condition.” He says.

“What is the catch, doc?” I reply.

“You have to hang with me every weekend. I think that’s what they call it. Or, maybe, it is chill every weekend. You get the idea, right?” He says.

“Are you asking me to be your brofriend?” I ask.

“What's a brofriend?” Cox replies.

“A brofriend is like your right hand man. The go to guy for hanging out and your wing-man for scoring with the chics. Think best friends forever kinda thing, except on a guy scale. We don’t share or relate, but we support each other.” I say.

“Yes, that’s exactly what I mean.” Cox says.

“Got yourself a deal there, doc. Every weekend, I will be there to help you score.” I say. Cox tosses me his keys and I am on the road in no time. It took the navigation skills of a maritime god to find the place, but I found 902 West Poplar. I pull into the drive-way and there is a hand written sign to press the button. I exit the car and proceed towards the garage door. I push the button and I can hear a doorbell chime inside the house. After a few minutes, a well weathered man exits the house. His short hair is completely gray, even his mustache has tasted old age. His face is surprisingly youthful, and I chalk it up to a case of premature gray.

“Sorry to keep you waiting, but I had to put the dogs up. Go ahead step inside. I gaze at the placard outside, and it reads AA Smoking every Tuesday/Thursday 8 PM. I walk inside what would appear to be a standard garage, but I see it has been renovated. There is a central altar and a whole host of chairs arranged in a semi-circular fashion. I watch the father walk to the back of the room and disappear behind curtains. I instinctively follow him and sit in the opposite side of the wall.

Father McFeeley slides back the divider leaving an ornate mesh between us. I shuffle around in the steel chair. ”Please forgive me father for I have sinned.” I say.

“There is no need to call me father anymore. I left the church years ago, but you can keep calling me that if you like. What is the nature of your sins?” He asks.

“I have sinned sexually, it was consensual, and out of love. We were not married when it happened, and we can never be married.” I reply.

“Humans are creatures of weakness. Sometimes we try to justify sin because we feel in our hearts that it is right. In Leviticus 18:22, it states that if a man lay with another man, as a man lay with a woman, then they shall be put to death...”

“Wait a minute, TIME OUT! I’m not gay! I didn’t sleep with a dude. I slept with my sister!” I exclaim.

“Your sister? Are you kidding me? What the hell were you thinking?” Father McFeeley storms out of his confession booth. I follow behind him and try to plead my case. “Wait a damn minute!” I yell as I drag him down by his robe.

“Let go of me!” He says.

“Just hear me out, father, that is all I am asking.” I scream. He stops fighting with me and I stand up.

“I didn’t know she was my sister. I never knew my dad. I was working on a case file. I got hurt and ended up in the hospital. Completely different state, miles away from home, and she just happened to be my nurse. We hit it off from the beginning and things snow balled from there. It wasn’t until much later that I found out she was my sister. After talking to some military friends of my dads. I had no idea, and neither did she.” I explain.

“You know there isn’t a guide book for this sort of thing. I am used to helping addicts find the light at the end of the tunnel. I can relate with you a little bit. I left the church because I fell in love. It used to haunt me every night but then I had children. It taught me more about life in three months than ten years in the cloth. My advice to you is to admit to god that you made a mistake. After that, let time be the judge. Time has a way of sorting all the details out.” He says.

“I guess I can't hope for much more than that. Thank you for your time, Father.” I walk out of the make shift chapel and head for the car. I drive away with my head filled with mixed emotions. Even a priest thinks I am some kind of monster. The real problem now is what to do in the future. I cant carry on any kind of relationship with Eve, and expect even a remote sense of being normal. Will she shun me once she finds out? Did Reese tell her, now that I am gone?

Did Reese figure out what happened between us, send me on a bogus mission, so he could tell her and be rid of the problem? He did seem very uncomfortable lately, and now that I think of it, he was starting to lose his cool about the whole operation. I continue to toss questions into the air. My mind goes numb and any attempt at rational thinking already jumped ship hours ago. I can't even recall the drive back to the base, but somehow I managed to find my way back. The last clear thought I had was when I pulled into Cox's parking spot. I decide that all of this is beyond my control and that just maybe the priest was right. I should let time sort it out because it is obvious that I can't.

It's pretty late in the evening when I drive back onto base. Most people are gone by now but I head down to doc's lab. I know he is still up playing with his beakers and naming genetic markers as if they were pets. I exit the elevator and proceed toward the lab. Just as expected, doc is completely absorbed into his work and doesn’t even notice me enter the room. “Doc, I admire your dedication but I thought we both agreed that you need a life.” I say.

“A life? Who needs a life when you can create one? It is high time you find your way back here. I finally did it! More importantly, you are here to witness it.” Cox replies.

“Well, it sure didn’t happen in three hours. It has taken me countless hours to replicate the DNA and then to introduce it to a host cell. Then to have it replicate itself, is just short of a miracle!” He says.

“Let me just try to digest this, doc. Your telling me that your little green men from Mars are alive and currently making babies?” I ask.

“Well, to put it so simply... Yes. Millions of babies to be exact, and the fourth generation is well on its way to adulthood.” Cox replies.

“I don’t know if this is good news or bad news, doc. I am happy for you. Your name is going to go down in history. I am a bit afraid of the alien beings. We don’t even know what they do. When I said your name is going down in history, I was hoping it wouldn’t go down in history as the man who killed the whole damn planet.” I say.

“It will be fine. You have nothing to worry about. I saved the first and second generation. I put them in a liquid nitrogen freeze. They are in a semi-permanent state of limbo. The liquid nitrogen keeps them cold enough that they won't want to reproduce but keeps them warm enough that their cell structure stays in-tact. The first two generations will go into my personal archives.” Cox explains.

“Nice of you to keep a fail-safe sample, but in all seriousness, doc we are dealing with a very different creature.” I say.

“I can understand your apprehension to the unknown. From my experience, this microbe is rather harmless. To put your mind at ease, I will inject this rat with it. Tomorrow morning, they will be fine, and I am sure you could agree with me that there is no reason for alarm.” Cox replies.

I take his word for it and head to the mess hall for some food. It was called roast beef with mash potatoes and gravy. Tasted more like cardboard and road tar with slime in my book. I can't complain much, it was at least warm. I head back to my bunk and attempt to get some sleep. I don’t know why I even bothered. I spent most of the night a victim of my own memories. I tossed most of the night and anything that resembled sleep was outside my reach.

The next morning I met up with Cox for some coffee at the mess hall. We chatted a bit, and he informed me that his relationship with Angela was more than a one-time deal. I gave him a victory fist bump and we went back to the lab. When we opened the door to the lab, it was clear that things didn’t go as planned over-night. I stared at the rat cage in disbelief. Not a single one was alive, and it was evident it wasn’t an easy exit for them. “What the hell happened here doc?” I ask.

“It doesn’t make sense. One thing is for certain, those two died from trauma. You can tell by the way the bodies are ravaged. The third took a lot longer to die. You can see the blood all over the place, and only one significant wound.” Cox says.

“So, you are saying that one of them killed the others and then killed itself?” I say.

“From what I see, yes. That would make the most sense. The most disturbing thing I see so far is that the rat I injected was the last to die.” Cox explains.

“So, we need to find out what happened while we were gone last night.” I say.

“Exactly. We need a control experiment to eliminate any variables. First, we have to eliminate the possibility of contamination. I will incinerate these subjects and set up a test group. Fresh rats, new aquarium, and a fresh generation of microbes,” Cox says.

It took a few hours to clean everything up and get the experiment in order. I watch as Cox injects the subject rat. It squirms a little after the needle poke. We sit down in our labs chairs, eyes glued to the rats inside the clean room. An hour passes without any noticeable change. Then, subject zero starts to show hostility towards the others.