uncontainable

UNCONTAINABLE By Michael Carter (c) 2013 Smashwords Edition License Notes: This free ebook may be copied, distributed, reposted, reprinted and shared, provided it appears in its entirety without alteration, and the reader is not charged to access it. @@@ SELECTED MAILS FROM SENDER: Stanley James RECIEVED BY MAJESTIC SECTION 44- {TOP SECRET, TOP CLEARANCE ONLY, READ ONLY ENABLED] ORIGINAL SOURCE DOCUMENT – [37 EMAILS – 1 ATTACHMENT] – CORRUPTED MAIL#00 1 – received 15 October 2029 Ok, well here’s my report that you’ve been waiting for. I’m not really sure what’s gonna happen in the next few days. I don’t know what you’ve got lined up for me, but I’m gonna play my part well, I know that for sure. I’m mentioning my part, so I can mention the money, upfront, just to remind you, whoever it is that’s reading this, whichever representative of Majestic it is that’s dealing with me, to not forget about it. I’ve gotten the first chunk – very generous, thank you very much – but just don’t forget the balance, ok. Remember, you said one of the reasons you hired me above the other candidates, apart from being a fantastic coder, is for my straight-talking. Well, I’m straight-talking now. I’ll tell you everything you want to know in these mails, but don’t forget the cash, lads; don’t forget my money. Well, I’ve read through the “Briefing” that you supplied and I understand what it is you want from me, what you want me to find out. But I ain’t gonna answer every point you make in a numbered list like that one you gave me. No sir, far too boring; I’m just gonna write. I’m in the city, as I write this, in Carthage Bar; the ale is real and expensive, but I can afford it now. I needed a stiff drink after the day I’ve had. But that’s what you want to know about, ain’t it? My day. Well, sorry if I’m boring you with irrelevancy, but that’s the way its gonna be. I’m gonna take the time to get down everything I remember, so I’m getting in the mood. And I hope you’re pleased with my writing; you wanted someone young, but someone old enough to not write in that bloody lay-z, awfl qikspeek shyt tht al th yuns ryt thees dayz. God, if I had to write like that, I’d go crazy. Anyway, if some new admin guy at your place can’t read my reports then I suggest you fire them and hire someone else who can, someone old-school. Anyway, lets get on. I was scheduled to start work at STAR at three o’clock in the afternoon, my first shift, but one of them came by my place to pick me up a couple of hours earlier. “Hey there. You Stanley James?” he said at the door, and didn’t wait for an answer. “I’m O’Brien from STAR. Now I know you weren’t expecting me coming for you but the thing is we’ve got a job on now and could do with the hands, buddy.” “I ain’t had my training or anything yet. I wouldn’t know what I was doing.” I said. “Training on the job, dude. No time to start like right now. Listen, I’m parked on the bottom in the black Smile. I wanna get back to it before someone takes my wheels.” He grimaced then, and his gaze moved around the floor, looking at the scratched graffiti and the patchy paintwork, the knackered elevator and the general grey decorum. “You know, I used to live in a pit like this in Borough” said O’Brien. “I know, it’s depressing, man. Wait till you get your first pay check buddy and you’ll be away from this shithole.” “I don’t mind it really. It’s pretty quiet. I-” But he was away towards the stairs. “Ten mins, buddy,” he called back at me, “I’ll be outside. Get a shifty on, yeah.” Then he was gone, giving me no chance at all to argue with him. I got myself quickly sorted and put on the uniform they’d sent me, with its thousands of pockets and belts and stuff, and rushed down to the carport to find the black Smile. It was easy to spot as there were only a few other cars in there, mostly old dustbuckets with their ClickLox flashing. The front passenger door of the Smile popped open and I got in. I’ve never been in a Smile before, but Wow, what a machine! Eight seats with programmable padding and memory foam, anti-glare touchscreen on the windows, TechniDash system, even a drinks cabinet in the side. Wow. I’m not at all a car person but just Wow! “Forget about moving from my flat,” I said to O’Brien, “I’m getting one of these babies with my first money.” “Hey that’s great. You can drive her on the way back, if you want.” he said, while he fiddled about with contraptions and gizmos by his seat. “Er, no, not yet.” I laughed. “I’ll have to learn first. I don’t drive. No-one at the interview asked about that. Its not a problem is it?” O’Brien grinned again, that seemed to be his trademark, and pressed and swiped some display on the window. There was no sound or sense of movement but the scenery outside started drifting away. O’Brien continued to fiddle with his devices, attaching them to the belts and buttons on his suit. “You can drive her back later, buddy. You can even steer if you want. She’s uncrashable.” And he broke into a loud laughter. The Smile sped up, and before long we were racing through the streets, heading out of the city. “So, erm, I was supposed to report in at three.” “Yeah, forget that, you’ll be finished early today to make up for it. Okay, I’ve got to link you in, so listen. What do you know about STAR?” “Well, really just your public persona. What everyone knows. You’re Spirit Tracking And Retrieval; people call you when they have paranormal problems; you catch ghosts.” “We’re the REAL Ghostbusters, man.” He grinned. “But we don’t just catch ‘em, we identify, classify, hold, store, and maintain them. There are tonnes of organisations like ours all over the world, some public, like us, some covert; there are huge plans for the future, buddy. Ghosts are better than gold, man, they’re the new oil. In ten years time every rich kid in the world will demand their own “Ghost” for Christmas. Cats and dogs are out. You don’t need to feed a ghost, it doesn’t destroy your house if you leave it home alone. Well, most of them don’t, but anyway- the future is positively ectoplasmic, buddy.” He was rummaging in a storage cache under my seat now and pulled out another device and thrust it towards me. “Here, put this on. Right hand.” It was a little grey square object, paper thin and two inches square, grey and sheeny on one side and sandpaper-like on the other. When I felt it I realised it was flexible too. “Some kind of graft?” “Yeah, it’s a compatch. We sort of work with the government, although we’re autonomous and independent, but, like the military we get all the new tech a year or two before it’s commonly known about. We’ve got all kinds of clever stuff, but lots of it’s just junk, you know. Just press it gently onto your palm and you’ll feel it graft on. It won’t hurt you.” I did as he said, and I felt a little buzzing sensation on my palm, like pins and needles, just for a second, then the pain was gone and the grey surface of the patch faded into the whitey-pink colour of my hand. Within five seconds I barely knew it was there, and it moved and flexed with my muscles as I moved my hand. “Pretty neat, eh?” O’Brien said. “You came from the agency, right?” “Right. Er- Well, I don’t work for an agency, but they were the ones that interviewed me. They never really said much though, didn’t say much about what I’d actually be doing.” Obviously, I wasn’t to let on to O’Brien or anyone else about my secret agenda. I knew exactly what I was doing, but not really what STAR had in store for me. As far as I knew O’Brien might have been the one that was causing the trouble. He did seem quite eager to talk about ‘ghosts’ and how they would be big bucks in a few years time; maybe he was the one that was stealing them. “Aw, hey buddy, don’t worry about that. It’s easy money. Anyway, for the first few weeks you’ll be the bait, mate.” He looked over at me with an earnest face and nodded, as if to say: Well, of course you’ll be the bait, did no-one tell you? After five or ten seconds of watching me fluster, he burst out his raucous laugh again. “Sorry, sorry. I can’t help it. That’s my favourite gag.” If I hadn’t entirely disliked him before then I did now. He isn’t the sort of person I’d enjoy spending time with, and I ain’t looking forward to working with him. He’s loud, obnoxious, too much “buddy” for me; for what it’s worth, I hope he is the one you’re trying to nab. “Sorry, no, you’re just making up the numbers, really. We need five on the team to keep it efficient. You’ll monitor a few stats, press a few buttons, carry the tech stuff. Can you make coffee?” “Not very well. I’ve got a machine.” “No sweat. There’s a Starbucks on every street. Basically, just hang about and do what we tell you; you’ll learn the tricks. Are you into us, by the way? You like the paranormal, the afterlife, that stuff?” “Not particularly. I watch the news programmes though, and if science says it’s all real, then fair enough, but I’m really just a coder who likes reading mystery novels.” “You’re not into vampires, are you? God, those people depress me.” “No, I’m coming into this pretty cold. I don’t even really know the latest science on ghosts and stuff like that.” O’Brien winced. “You really are cold, aren’t you, in fact you’re freezing buddy.” He manipulated some images on the window-screen, and a little zipstik popped out of a compartment in the side of my seat. “Spirit Science 101, take it home, read the basics. If you stay with us longer you can read the tech stuff later. But I’ll fill you in briefly, otherwise you won’t have a clue.” He looked over at me again – I remember wishing the Smile wasn’t an autodrive so he’d have to keep his attention on the road – and winked. “And we’ve got no use for you if you crap your pants.” I put the zipstik in one of my many pockets and fiddled with its button, while O’Brien talked. He’d stopped fiddling about with stuff now and just sat in his seat and gesticulated while he talked. I had already got the idea that he liked the sound of his own voice. “Okay, generally people get scared by ghosts. That’s the way it’s always been. But it’s just the unknown that people are really scared of. It’s a natural base instinct. It’s like how when you’re scared, and the hair on your body stands on end; you’re just going back to when we were covered in fur, and trying to make yourself look bigger. So, then, if you understand what ghosts are, they’re not scary, right. For the most part, they can’t hurt you, and they can only affect you by your own fear. Ok?” I nodded. “Right. In the business we call them Trace-Energy-Salient-Spirit Apparitions, so if you hear us talking about Tessa, and you’re wondering who the hell she is, she’s the ghost, ok. Now, most ghosts are memories, echoes if you like, sort of recordings on the environment. Powerful emotions, love, hate, fear and so on are stored over a period of time on certain tiny particles in the immediate area, smaller than Quarks, ok.” “Right.” “And often, the process of bodily death can somehow magnify and project these particles, much like a prism reflects and magnifies light photons, giving a coloured scope of light. Now we don’t know precisely what happens at the time of death yet, but the point is that sometimes, over the course of years, repeated emotions or sudden intense emotive blasts are stored on the atoms, and can later manifest themselves within a small area of the initial recording. Someone dies after years of torture and madness in an 18th century asylum; their pain and suffering is recorded on the particles – Emoticles, we call them – and three hundred years later you’ve got a haunted house where the asylum was. It’s “The Stone Tape Theory”, its on your zipstik, its easy. Geddit?” “Got it.” “Now, usually, these Tessa’s stay as recordings and are played every so often, like a movie. They get witnessed; bang, there’s your ghost. But occasionally there’s more form to them, and in a way we don’t quite understand yet, they become almost sentient. They have no information about your dead uncle or where Patricia’s secret will is, and have no angels at their sides; that’s all charlatan stuff, tricks and phonies, but in a limited fashion they can seem to interact and can scare the shit out of people. Then they call us and we go and catch them. Simple as that.” ... - tailieumienphi.vn