The Xactilias Project

by RJ Lawrence

  He lifted his hat and scratched his head.

  "I want more than anything for you to find your way out of this," he said. "I don't care about myself or anyone else."

  They sat quietly for a moment, the birds behaving as birds behave, the wind gently sifting through the high up leaves above them.

  "Have you seen Nathan?" She asked.

  He smoked thoughtfully, his eyes looking off into the distance.

  "They took him away. We were in the cafeteria. He kept talking to someone. He was always talking, and they were always warning him to stop. But he kept talking. Always talking. A soldier told him to stop and he outright refused and they gathered him up and dragged him away, and that was the last I saw him."

  She lowered her head.

  "When was this?"

  "Nine months ago."

  They sat without speaking for several minutes, each trapped in the invisible spotlight that was the soldier's glare.

  "There's no way out of here," she said.

  Alfred smoked his pipe and exhaled.

  "You have a brilliant mind, but even you can't see around every corner."

  She looked at him.

  "What are you doing up here, Alfred?"

  He looked at her for as long as he could, before his eyes trickled away and held firm to something far away.

  "I'm told to urge you back to work," he said.

  She shook her head slowly and looked off.

  "I doubt they care what you say. They only want to remind me they can hurt you if I don’t."

  Alfred nodded slowly.

  "Yes, I believe you're right."

  They sat together silently as ominous thoughts wove tangles within their tired minds. Alfred smoked his pipe and watched the white smoke coil up and climb the still air, his chin tilting to trace its movements, revealing bruises around his neck. She reached out and traced them with a gentle touch.

  "Oh, Alfred. I'm so sorry."

  He collected her hand and held it in his.

  "Do you believe things happen for a reason?"

  "No," she whispered.

  He nodded once.

  "And when people offer examples in their lives that appear to prove it so?"

  She looked away at the pale green grass, each blade fat and full and samely-cut.

  "It's not really proof."

  He smoked his pipe and exhaled.

  "Explain it to me, if you will."

  She rubbed her head as if it hurt.

  "It's human nature to survive, to reach toward better things," she said. "When people suffer hardships, they inevitably move on with their lives, and some good things are apt to occur. When these good things happen, the person credits the hardship for them to award meaning and justify its existence. But even though a hardship can fork a life into another direction, it's not fate or planned. It's only human nature."

  Alfred looked at her.

  "How so?"

  "I hate these sorts of conversations, Alfred. What's the point?"

  "Please," he said. "Just humor me. Tell me what you really think."

  She squirmed about on the bench, her face pinched slightly, as if she feared judgment.

  "What I really think," she said. "Fine."

  She cleared her throat and straightened her back.

  "A person has no choice but to make the best of things," she said. "It's human nature. The person continues to breathe, even after the hardship. And, as time passes, the person is likely to encounter some new positive, a new job, a new relationship, the birth of a child. Of course, since this other thing would not have resulted without the original hardship, the person inevitably credits the hardship. To excuse its existence. To answer the question: why has this happened to me? And, so the person is apt to say: well, this bright, shiny thing in my life would not have occurred without that hardship or tragedy. If not for my breakup, I would not have met this person. If not for being fired, I would not have found this job. But it's really just a person's natural tendency to move forward that brought the new good thing. There was no reason behind the hardship. It just happens, and the person moves on to encounter some new positive along his or her timeline."

  "You sound as if you've answered this question before."

  She shrugged.

  "It confuses me, really. Why people choose to see it otherwise. If you have the strength to make something good out of something bad, why surrender the credit? If things work out for the best, it's because you make it so. Not because of some devised plan."

  He smoked and exhaled.

  "I feel I could offer a good defense against that way of thought, but I won't waste our time with debate. Instead, I'll adapt my words to your perspective by saying this to you: that things can happen for a reason, and your refusal to see it as such is due to your attribution of the cause."

  She turned to face him.

  "I knew a man once who endured a great injustice," he said. "He lost a young child to a poisoning sponsored by some type of corporate negligence. Some pollution. I cannot remember the details. What I do remember is the corporation used its resources to prevent justice. And this drove the man into rage and sorrow, as it would any caring person.

  "But instead of throwing his hands up, he chose to give the tragedy meaning by using his own personal wealth to provide for other young children in need. He founded organizations to see to their well-being, and those organizations continue to provide, even though he's been dead now for many years."

  He held up his finger.

  "You see, that tragedy did have meaning, but not because it was preordained. It had meaning, because he chose to make it so."

  She looked down.

  "I understand what you're saying, Alfred. I do. But it's not possible. Not here. Not for us."

  "Why not?" He asked.

  She started to cry.

  "Because we are never going to leave this place."

  He took a sip from his pipe and then cleared his lungs.

  "That doesn't matter, my dear." She turned to face him and he looked into her eyes. So young to look so tired, and much, much harder than he remembered.

  "You know what they want?" He asked.

  She nodded.

  "And, you know how they would use it? How it will affect the world? What it will do to people? Today's people and tomorrow's people, for generations on end? How it will change the course of everything?"

  She nodded and he took her hand.

  "They chose you for a reason, Claire. And when they did, this inevitably set a course in motion. A course which now we are bound to. And they, as well. A course which none of us can undo or rewrite. One which must play out. But even though this course may appear to fall in line with their wishes, it still in fact remains open-ended, despite their efforts to make it appear otherwise."

  He lifted his hand and pointed at the soldier, who straightened his body in response.

  "It is for their reasons you are here, my dear. And, yes, it was their choice to bring you here and not yours. But it is still within you to decide what that choice will ultimately mean. For them, for me, for yourself. For everyone. It is still up to you to write the ultimate reason for this. For everything that's happened and for everyone involved. If you can find a way."

  She looked up at the soldier, who gripped his rifle and flexed his jaw.

  "What if there is no way?"

  "You will find a way when you accept your fate and not before."

  He turned over his pipe and tapped it over his palm, spilling the contents out onto the ground.

  "That I'm going to die here."

  Alfred shrugged.

  "The possibility of escape constrains your mind. It is part of their manipulation. Hopeful people are more easily controlled, but the volume must be managed. Too much hope leaves a person emboldened and resistant. Too little leaves them disabled and useless. But just the right amount of hope subjugates them. They cradle it like a dying ember, and they'll do anything to keep the wind from extinguishing it. The
y'll serve."

  He removed his glasses and rubbed the pinch marks on his nose.

  "Resignation," she whispered.

  He nodded.

  "It starts there."

  She breathed in the air and slowly released it, the smell of flowers sweet within her nose.

  "Then what?" She asked.

  He pushed his glasses back in place and blinked until the world went clear again.

  "You have to get angry in the face of bad situations. It's the most effective way to escape the bridles of despair."

  They sat for a while longer, the birds chiming playfully in the trees. Careless and beautiful and exempt to the troubles beneath them.

  "What if there is no way?"

  He gave his pipe one last tap and slipped it back within his coat pocket.

  "Whoever is winning at the moment will always seem invincible."

  He stood up and she joined him, his old eyes looking up into hers and hers looking down into his.

  "I want to give you something."

  He reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew his lucky penny. She shook her head.

  "No Alfred, I can't. It's much too valuable."

  He smiled faintly.

  "I want you to have it." He reached out and took her hand. "It will bring you luck."

  She opened her fingers and he placed it gently into her palm.

  "I don't believe in luck," she whispered.

  He closed her hand around the coin.

  "It's bad luck not to believe in luck."

  He smiled.

  "I'm so very glad to have met you, Claire.”

  She reached out and took him in.

  "I am too."

  They held on for a few moments longer, until the soldier tapped his rifle against the steel railing, and then they surrendered each other to their fates, the two leaving the courtyard forever and without looking back, for it did not seem the thing to do.

  Chapter 18

  She spent the weeks that followed in the third level, moving between the lab and her quarters, a very large guard shadowing her the way entire. Everywhere she went, this man followed, a gun in his belt, a vacant expression on his stony face. While she worked, he studied her through a pair of bulbous gray eyes. When she used the bathroom, he tapped his boot outside the stall. Soon, she grew accustomed to this quiet man, his movements and manners like a white noise to her everyday routine.

  What she could not grow accustomed to, however, was the reaction of her colleagues, who would scatter like cockroaches when she approached them in the halls. Once friendly, now fearful, these people moved past hurriedly, their faces pointed down, as if her gaze might convert their supple bodies to stone.

  The cafeteria now off limits, she received her meals in a cold, empty room, where she sat alone at a table eating in silence before a very broad two-way mirror. This thing she tried to ignore, her eyes and mind fixed on her work, even as she chewed the bland meals that came cold and runny on flimsy aluminum trays.

  Stripped of pleasure and amusement, her life was now bleak and routine. And, yet, despite such gloom, her mind flourished, and soon, she'd put together a new serum, with new attributes that would demand new subjects and new trials.

  When all was right, she informed the guard who brought the information to the appropriate parties. And on the very next day, she was summoned through another maze of doors and pathways into a small room, where she found Demetri waiting at a table, two thin manila folders placed flat beneath his chin.

  "Please sit," he said, as she entered.

  She approached and sat, the two situated directly in front of one another, a wide steel table between them.

  "I've been informed we're ready for trials."

  "Yes," she said.

  "Before we begin, I want to make sure you understand the implications of these trials."

  He lifted a folder from the table and held it in his hands.

  "You've thoroughly read the results of the previous trials?" He asked.

  "Of course."

  "Good. Then you understand why we'd like things to go differently this time."

  "Yes."

  He opened the file and removed a sheet of paper.

  "Subjects demonstrate immediate effects upon injection," he read. "Visual evidence of skin regeneration within one hour. Evidence of organ rejuvenation within two hours. Marked improvement of muscle strength and physical vitality within 24 hours. Etcetera, etcetera."

  He removed several photographs from the back of the file.

  "And, then."

  He slid the photos across the table.

  "Please, have a look."

  She collected the photos and went through them: a medley of agonized faces, ungoverned hair growth throughout entire bodies, flesh riddled with grotesque tumors and lesions. Death.

  She swallowed hard, as he watched the images tear through her.

  "You haven't seen these, correct?"

  She placed the images face down on the table.

  "You know I haven't."

  He nodded.

  "Is it different to see their faces? Once it is no longer just data on a report?"

  "Yes," she said.

  He leaned forward. He rested his forearms on the table.

  "Does it make you doubt your work?"

  She looked at him, his black, depthless eyes like boiling wells of oil.

  "No."

  He smiled.

  "Good."

  He set the folder aside and took hold the second one. He thumbed it open.

  "On to the second order of business."

  He removed a sheet of paper and scanned it.

  "Your stint here is ending," he said. "Tomorrow, you'll be leaving the facility."

  She sat quietly, despite her heart.

  "I'm appointed to provide the terms of the dissolution agreement as it's written here."

  He cleared his throat.

  "Tomorrow morning, you will travel off-site under the protection of our personnel. Once you've arrived at the withdrawal point, you'll board a plane, which will take you to your intermediate destination. This will be a hotel in one of three geographic locations to be determined by the on-board security staff. There, you will stay for three months, at which point, you will receive commercial airline tickets to a primary city within the continental United States. From there, you'll be responsible for your own travel."

  He looked up from the paper.

  "Is that clear?"

  She nodded. He looked at the paper.

  "For your contributions to the Xactilias project, your compensation will be three million American dollars. These funds will be deposited in a Swiss banking account made available to you. All relevant information will be transferred along with your plane tickets at the conclusion of your three-month stay in the intermediate location."

  He slipped the papers back within the folder and set it flat on the table.

  "Now," he said," as part of your dissolution, you'll be required to agree to numerous non-disclosure agreements. I'm sure you can imagine the details of these. Regardless of what they say, you should understand that you'll be legally required to forfeit your earnings should you disclose any aspects of your activity here or the actual existence of this facility and the Xactilias project itself. Do you understand?"

  She nodded.

  "Speak," he said flatly.

  "I understand."

  He looked at her hard and long.

  "Do you really understand?"

  "Completely."

  He nodded once.

  "Good."

  He collected both files and stood.

  “That's very good."

  He turned and walked toward the door.

  "You'll wait here for the time being," he said, as he pulled it open. "Soon someone will come to guide you to the trial room, where you'll administer the injections."

  She turned.

  "Me?"

  He smiled.

  "Yes. You should be honored."


  She shook her head.

  "Anyone can do it. Why me?"

  He pinched his eyebrows together.

  "Don't worry. It will be your final contribution to the project."

  She started to speak, but before she could, he opened the door and stepped from the room. She turned and looked at the photos, each one still face down on the table. He'd left them intentionally, she thought. Another game. All of it a game. Just a game. Right?

  She looked around the room, her mind fighting off all the what-ifs that squirmed within her head. She thought of her mother and her father, of Alfred and all his words. Of Nathan. His face, his voice, his smile. Was he alive? What if he was? Nothing to do about it either way.

  The photos sat before her, each one silently beckoning to be seen once more. She gathered them up and shuffled through the faces. Her fault. Her doing. Her legacy.

  Someone pounded the door.

  She stood and turned as it opened to reveal another faceless soldier.

  "Ms. Foley," he said. "If you'll please come with me, I'll escort you to the trial room."

  She nodded and followed him through the door and down the hallway, his belt jingling with an assortment of metallic objects, the likes of which she had never seen. They moved through the usual pattern of deliberate confusion. In one door, out another, sometimes back through the same doors and down the same hallways. They passed through rooms filled with unfamiliar people, places that seemed like classrooms, where men and women sat straight and attentive at little individual desks, pale, unhappy expressions on their faces, men spitting out lectures, while the others scribbled notes on bright orange legal pads.

  Minutes later, they moved down a very long hallway, where the soldier finally stopped at one door in particular and gestured her toward it. Without looking at his face, she worked the handle and entered into a room. Inside, she found three women dressed in lab coats and goggles. Behind them stood two armed soldiers of equal size and stature.

  "Welcome," one of the women said. "We're ready to begin."

  Another woman collected a metal tray, which held a tourniquet, a pair of latex gloves, a surgical mask and a syringe.

  She advanced toward Claire and held out the tray.

  "You'll need to wear a mask."