“Hi, Eve!” said a bright and cheery voice off to her right.
Eve was going to walk right past, but then realized on a normal day, she’d never be rude like that. She turned to respond to her greeter but stopped short, sheer terror freezing her expression solid.
The young girl’s face fell. “You don't remember me, do you?”
The girl.
Darkness.
The soul of darkness herself, standing before Eve.
The young girl’s hair was washed and carefully styled, she wore makeup that included sparkles on her lids, and her lab coat said that she worked somewhere nearby. But still…she was just standing there saying hello like it was no big deal that she was Darkness personified.
Eve cleared her throat and schooled her features to morph them into something much less horrified. “Nooo, I’m sorry, I don’t remember you.”
“I’m Ali. The intern? Working in Lab Eight just next door to you? I started last week and I introduced myself, but you were super busy.” She shrugged and kind of smiled. “I should have known you weren’t really paying attention. Scientists and engineers are always in their own worlds.”
“Actually, I’m pretty sure some part of my brain was paying attention.” Eve tried to laugh off the massive understatement. “Where do you work again?”
“Lab Eight. I inject the rats, clean their cages, dispose of the bodies.” Ali did a fake shiver. “They call my area the cremation station. Rude, right?” She rolled her eyes, making her seem much younger.
“Depressing,” Eve said, trying to commiserate in a way that seemed natural.
Ali shrugged. “Oh well. It’s dark business, but someone’s got to do it, right?” She winked at Eve and walked off.
Eve waited until the shiver worked its way through her entire body before she moved on. Just two more corridors and she’d be with the Lantern and finishing up the mission she’d created with Jared. No more thinking about college interns named Ali who came to her in dreams as failed science experiments.
Dark business, indeed. Eve shuddered again, goose bumps rising up all over her body.
“Eve! Wait up!” said a male voice behind her.
“Emerson. Hello.” Eve tried to act like it wasn’t completely awful to be standing near the man who had played the Devil incarnate in her dream last night.
“Hey, listen, I wanted to talk to you about the…project we’re working on. I was thinking that we should do away with the key, make…the thing…less dependent on a single device to operate. What do you think?” He rubbed his hands together, making him seem way too much like a maniacal megalomaniac.
“I’ll get right on that,” Eve said, thinking how ironic it was that this was exactly what she’d planned to do. Not exactly as he was, imagining but…“Today, in fact.”
“Good, so you agree.” He patted her on the shoulder, letting his hand rest there a little too long, or so it felt to Eve. “So great to have you on board, Eve. The future’s so bright, we’re going to have to wear shades.” His thousand-watt, heavily-veneered smile made her cringe.
Eve’s responsive laugh was the polite kind. The awkward you-are-freaking-me-out-because-I-can’t-tell-what’s-real-anymore kind.
“You have plans for lunch?” he asked, oblivious to her discomfort as he split off towards a new corridor that opened up on their left. “Rourke and I were going to grab a bite at Harvey’s.” He walked backwards, waiting for her answer.
“I have a date with Jared. Actually, I was thinking of making it a long lunch.”
“Fine, I'll catch you next time. Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” He turned away chuckling, leaving her standing at the end of the hallway that housed her workstation.
“No promises,” she muttered under her breath, using her keycard to start the process of unlocking her door.
* * *
Eve made quick work of destroying the Lantern’s key and making it appear as if she’d made modifications to its former ignition. While she was in there, she also made adjustments to the local magnetic field strength. Now any pulse emitted by the lantern would be just strong enough to be detectable by the new device Eve had already started designing in her head, the one she was bringing to the Pentagon as soon as she left on her “long lunch” with Jared.
She ignored the doubts creeping into her mind, the ones saying that she was sacrificing her entire life’s work, all because of a crazy dream.
* * *
Eve was almost out of the building when Ali stopped her by putting a hand on her shoulder from behind at the front door. When Eve turned around, she was facing not only Ali but Rourke, his face an angry mask.
“Not so fast,” Ali said.
“What's up?” Eve asked, fumbling around in her purse, pretending to tuck her ID badge away when really she was just looking for a way to hide her trembling fingers.
“Do you have a moment?” Rourke asked. “We noticed something a little unusual on the surveillance tapes.”
Eve frowned, looking up and hoping she appeared to be concerned but not out of guilt. “Surveillance tapes? What surveillance tapes?”
“The ones aimed at your workstation,” Ali said, smiling smugly.
Visions of Ali with a dirtied face and knotted, greasy hair came to mind, making Eve's heart stop for a few precious seconds.
Relax, Eve! She's not a failed science experiment! She’s just a teenager for God's sake! A teenager with a bug up her butt to get some kind of messed up brownie points with the boss.
All the common sense in the world was not making Eve feel any better. She had to get out of there before she lost her mind and started yelling about Ali being the leader of the dark forces taking over the world.
“You know what, I’d love to, but Jared’s waiting for me. How about after lunch?” Eve smiled broadly, giving everything she had to her performance. It was make-or-break time; she was going to walk out a wanted woman with her conscience free or get stuck there explaining how she just destroyed a ten-million-dollar piece of equipment she was now almost one-hundred-percent sure was meant to destroy the world as she knew it.
“I was told you’d planned a long one.”
Eve waved Rourke’s concerns away with a careless gesture. “Oh, it’s no big deal. I can cut it short if you need me to.” She leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. “Come over for dinner this weekend?”
She tried not to cringe at the smell of his cologne. It used to smell woodsy to her. Now it only reminded her of her desperate run to the light, to hope, through the trees and into the arms of Ali, the queen of darkness. Eve refused to even look at the girl, certain her distrust would show.
“We’ll chat. When you get back.” Rourke turned to Ali and gestured for her to precede him. “After you, young lady.”
“But…I saw her…”
Eve didn’t stick around to hear the rest. She walked as fast as she dared to her car and sped out of the lot going ten miles over the speed limit.
* * *
“Are you absolutely sure you want to do this?” Jared asked, walking with Eve behind two armed guards in United States Marines uniforms. He leaned in closer. “All because of a dream?”
Eve stared straight ahead as she answered in a whisper. “It wasn’t just a regular dream. Like I said, I was picking up on subliminal things, things my subconscious had been seeing all along. Maybe some of it was a little fantastical, but not all of it. A lot of it was totally real. Totally possible.”
“I’m just glad my buddies’ contacts still existed at the Pentagon and we could get a flight over here so quickly.”
Eve shuddered, thinking of all the things that could have gone wrong, keeping her from giving this presentation. Thank goodness her name had some weight behind it too, or for sure her audience would have been some lackey on the bottom of the totem pole and not the assistant to the Deputy Director of Homeland Security.
The Marines in front of them stopped at a set of double doors, each taking up a post on either side.
“She’s supposed to just go in?” Jared asked, placing a hand on Eve’s lower back.
Eve stood as straight as she could, mimicking the bearing of the men wearing battle dress uniforms and carrying machine guns.
“Knock first,” one of them said, staring straight ahead.
“Well…” Eve said, looking up at her husband, “here goes nothing.”
“Knock ’em dead, babe.” Jared kissed the top of her head before rapping on the door twice firmly for her. “I believe in you. You’re the smartest woman I’ve ever known, and I trust your instincts.”
“Thanks, babe. Wait out here for me?”
“You bet. I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”
Eve pushed the door open and stepped inside, her briefcase carrying the presentation detailing the work she’d done at the Institute, the ramifications of that work, and the design she’d come up with for The Beacon of Light.
Eve stood at the end of a conference table filled with people, some in uniform and some in suits that looked like they cost as much money as she made in a month. Maybe someone more sophisticated or used to talking to people like this would know the proper way to start a conversation about weaponized science, but Eve wasn’t that person.
She took a deep breath and let it out in a huff, just before she began to speak.
“Mr. Richmond, ladies and gentlemen, I’m Dr. Eve Mansfield, and as I said in my email, I’m the engineer who built what’s called the Friar’s Lantern, the electromagnetic pulse weapon that could destroy our world. I’m here today to not only describe to you how I’ve disabled this weapon but also to share the design I’ve come up with that will one day identify and locate that machine or one like it, should it ever be used against us.”
The Dystoptimists
Joseph A. Turkot
Cary Caffrey
Deborah Rix
Katie French
Deirdre Gould
Sarah Dalton
Jenni Merritt
Megan Thomason
Shalini Boland
David Wright
Scott Cramer
TW Piperbrook
Samantha Durante
Saul Tanpepper
David Estes
Shelbi Wescott
Tony Bertauski
David Normoyle
Elle Casey
The Catastrophe Theory Page 9
