Chapter Text
"All clear, you're good to go!" I say to the elderly gentleman in his car, a plastic smile stapled to my face. To be entirely fair, I don't really know that he's good to go; I can barely tell what someone's picture looks like on their ID when they hold it up, and you can only lean so far out of the guard booth before you fall head first onto the concrete below.
If I were to stop every single person who passes through, physically grab their ID, then take the few seconds to verify that the thumbnail sized photo actually matched the person at the steering wheel, I'd just end up with a line of upset scientists and more work to do. Instead, I just do a vibe check.
Are they hold the ID up before they even get to the window, with the practiced motions of someone who's been through the routine 100's of times before? Are they creep forwarding before I have a chance to open the gate, because they already know I'm gonna let them through just like last time, and the time before that, and the time before that? Then they're probably good.
I hit the big red button on the wall with my elbow, while giving the driver a quick nod and a wave. He barely reacts, throwing his ID badge onto the seat next to him, his gaze focused on the road in front of him. "Thanks," he mumbles, his voice barely audible as he accelerates away from the gate. I watch through a mirror as his car idles momentarily at the empty intersection.
"Yeah, I'm not really getting 'corporate espionage' from that guy. More 'I really don't want to be here after 5pm'. Not really the type of misery you can fake," I think, as I watch him finally turn and vanish from view. "That's earned misery right there. That takes tens of thousands of hours of working the same job, day in, day out, with nothing ever changing. And honestly, if he is some sort of super spy? He can do whatever espionage he wants. He probably needs the money to pay his acting coach."
With a snort, I turn my attention back to the singular road in front of me, humming along to the funky tunes from J3N2000 as my imagination wanders. In my mind's eye, I watch as the older gentleman reaches the domed building near the back of the property, before reaching into his side console to pull out a set of lockpicks. He glances first to the left, then to the right, his eyes shining with an alertness that wasn't present in reality. He shuffles over to the door, slipping a rake into his palm. With the practiced movement of years of expertise, there's a click, and the door swings open, revealing a pitch black room, illuminated only by the glittering lights of the server racks. "Jackpot," he says under his breath, a smirk forming at the-
The gate in front of me starts to open by itself. I frown, a sigh slipping out of me at the sight. "Put-put-put your head out..." I half mumble, half sing. as I watch the automatic gate admit entry to yet another ghost. My finger moves up towards the red "Close" button that I'm not entirely convinced actually does anything, and I hold it down until the gate begins to trundle shut. Once it does, I reach over for the site phone, making one more entry into the app. Relevant parties? Facilities. Location? Front Gate. Description? "Same gate issue we've been having for 9 months now," I mutter as I write my report. A quick reread to make sure that it sounds professional, and I send it off.
Then, as my eyes rise up from the phone, I spot the glint from the setting sun bouncing off the roof of a car. "Huh, 30 minutes early," I think as I begin to pack up my laptop, one eye on the approaching vehicle. I watch the car as it slows to a crawl, much too slow to leave any momentum to reach the gate. Then it stops, roughly 50 feet away from the entrance, and idles. I stop placing stuff in my bag, my gaze locked onto the monitors. "Please leave," I think, attempting to send a psychic impression to the gray Cadillac Catera idling just within the range where it's my problem to deal with. "Your GPS is wrong, time to turn around. Figure it out."
My psychic training clearly needs more work, because the car doesn't move. I let out a groan and grab the site phone as I make my way over to the pedestrian gate, doing my best to keep my displeasure from showing in my body language. I can't see the person inside the car beyond a dark, shadowy blob, but it's enough to know that they're aware of me. And still not moving. "Fuck."
"Can I help you?" I ask, projecting my voice through the driver's rolled up window. I see the blob shift, then shake, as the window slowly begins to descend, revealing an old man's disgruntled gaze staring back at me. The window stops half way down, and I can't tell if he's trying for a power play, or just got bored waiting for the window to lower.
"This the monkey farm?" the man spits. It's clearly meant to be rhetorical; the PETA billboard lining the freeway refers to the research center as such, and ever since it went up a month ago, we were getting 1 to 3 "well meaning citizens" a week. I refuse to consider them protestors; that would insinuate some sort of collective effort. My customer service smile never slips, and I give the man a small, confused quirk of the eyebrows and a shake of the head.
"Farm? No sir, you must be lost. This is a research center. We're curing cancer here." His frown deepens, but I continue, preventing him from getting a word in edge wise. "Anyways, I'm pretty sure it's illegal to farm monkeys. State law. In fact-" I say, my voice picking up to drown out his words, chuckling as I do, "-this facility has state funding! Could you imagine how crazy it would be to try to illegally farm monkeys on the taxpayer's dime? We'd be shut down in a second if something like that were to happen." Then, I drop the smile, and shoot the man the most serious look I can, channeling the energy from one of my favorite headshots.
I imagine it all comes together to scream Authority™, but I only let pause for the briefest of moments to avoid giving him a chance to interject. "Though, sir, if you have a genuine belief that illegal activity is happening on site, then it's your duty to report it," I say with all the gravitas I can muster. Dropping my voice back into a masculine range causes the muscles in my throat to twinge at the uncommon usage, but I try to clear the feeling without coughing, since it would absolutely break kayfaybe. A snap of my fingers hopefully covers the odd vocal sound, and I begin to pull a pen and pad of sticky notes out of my pocket.
"In fact, I can make the report right now. I'll just need your name and phone number and address. Since OHSU is both a research center and a health facility, I believe it falls under HFLC regulation, so that would-"
"No, sorry, that's... sorry sir. I must've been mistaken. We don't need to report- there's nothing to report," he stammers, his jowls flapping as he shakes his head back and forth. "It was- I didn't hear, it was a billboard... along the freeway," he mumbles, as he begins to reverse away. I stay standing in the middle of the road, my eyes locked onto his car, and watch as he reaches the stoplight at the end of the street and makes a wildly sketchy right turn on red. I grimace at the near collision. "Fuck man, don't die," I say, as I turn back around and head into the guard shack.
I plop back down into the high seat with a sigh, pulling the site phone out of my pocket. While the guy was easy enough to get rid of and nothing of note actually happened, I'm still obligated to write a report on it. I sigh as I navigate the menu's, then jot down everything noteworthy for dispatch.
It's not a very long report.
Still, it kill a few more minutes, making the end of shift come around that much faster. I watch another car make their way down the street, and this time, it really is my relief. He shoots me a laid back grin and wave, and barely even needs to stop as he passes the gate arm, as I had hit the button the moment I clocked the Jo Jo's Bizarre Adventure stickers on his rearview window through the cameras. I watch his car park through the mirror, feeling every second tick by as I wait for him to grab his stuff and get out of his car. Eventually, he makes his way down the tiny sidewalk lining the building, and pulls open the door with flair.
"Howdy coworker of mine!" he says boisterously, dropping a bag of Taco Bell on the desk to his right and his backpack on the only other chair in the room. I mute my music, before giving him that "bro nod" that's been inscribed deep into my psyche, much to my chagrin.
"It 'dy's quite a lot, actually," I joke, before I cut myself off. "Or, wait, that's not right. 'Howdy' as in 'how do you do', so... uh... I 'dy's okay?" He looks at me, confusion clear on his face, and I quickly try to clarify. "Like, the phrase 'Howdy' means 'how do you do'? I think. I'm pretty sure. I was trying to say shit happened during shift. But then I realized that if 'how do you do' became 'howdy' then 'dy' just means 'you do', or maybe 'do', so what I ended up saying was 'it do's quite a lot', which just makes a confusing joke even more confusing."
"Did you write it down?"
"No, I just already knew what 'howdy' meant from, like, Wikipedia or whatever."
"No, I mean did you write a report? You said something happened?"
I feel like I popped the clutch wrong in my brain. Gears grind, and I do my best to reorient in the conversation. "Right, yeah, sorry. Something did happen. A ghost showed up near the end of shift. And a another billboard do-gooder." His eyes roll, and I can't even tell which one is more annoying.
"At least they're not as bad as the actual protestors that had showed up that one time," he says, causing my attention to draw towards the tapped up picture of a mob of people near the destroyed gate. Without context, you could easily assume that they'd destroyed it themselves, but apparently some drunk teen had crashed through the gate a week prior. "Did he give you any trouble?"
I give him a quick shake. "Nah. I told him I would file a report, and I just needed all of his private information and that was enough to spook him off. Also, when is facilities going to fix the gate?"
"Well, they said they'd get around to it on Monday."
"So, in like 4 days?"
"No, last Monday," he says, giving me look.
I groan. "This is fucking stupid. If the gate happens to open when some rando protestor pulls up and I happen to be on patrol, what then? They'd literally be stuck on campus too! Like, I can't just sit in the shack all day. I have to go on patrol. But if the gate is randomly opening, that's, like... a huge security issue," I complain.
My coworker/supervisor gives me a shrug. "I can keep bothering them, but they already know."
"No, I know," I say, shaking my head. "Don't actually do that. I'm just... I wish facilities would do their job, ya know? Like, this is the facility? Maybe, fuckin'... I don't know? Facilitate?"
He chuckles. "Anything else?"
"Nope, we're all clear. No alarms, nothing to note. I'll see you in a weekish?" He gives me a wave and a small sound of affirmation, and I triple check my pockets to make sure that I'm not accidentally stealing the site phone. My 12 different pockets clear, I head to my car, excited to get home, the taste of Yuzu sake already on my lips. Sitting down in the driver's seat, I plug my phone into my adapter, which plugs into another adapter, which plugs into the aux cable, which is finally attached to a cassette, which I can throw into my cassette player.
My wife calls it "adapter-ception", but I call it "functional". A free car is a free car, no matter how out of date the audio equipment; besides, it's not like my grandfather could really take it with him. "Honestly, I should probably just get a new stereo at this point," I think, as I back out of the parking spot. I can probably actually afford a replacement now, though if I'm willing to lay down a chunk of cash, it'd probably be better to save up for speaker replacements instead. The bass of Infraliminal makes the car sound like it's doing it's best impression of a washing machine with a brick inside it.
I zone out on the drive home, and clock back in as I pull into the driveway. A quick glance shows one car missing, which tamps down my excitement a few notches. Still, I have hours and hours before I need to crawl into an empty bed, and at least a few glasses of alcohol in between then and now. As I open the door, I catch the glance of one of my roommates, who gives a half hearted wave.
"Is Celestial at Vampire?" I ask as I step into the kitchen.
"Huh?"
"Celeste?"
"She's at game."
"Aren't you in Vampire?"
He pauses his show, and looks over at me, a confused and slightly frustrated expression on his face. "Yes?"
I look at him. He looks at me. I fail to find the Yuzu sake, and decide to just snag a beer instead. I know I'm missing a piece of the puzzle but I'm too distracted by the lack of lemon flavored alcohol to puzzle it out. "So... uhm. Why aren't you playing with her right now?"
"Because today's not Vampire? Today's Mage," he responds, his voice a touch curt.
"Oh, right," I chuckle, the entire exchange feeling me off kilter. "Sorry," I say, a touch too late. He's already turned the TV back on, rewinding a minute or so to catch the dialogue he'd missed when I entered the house. For the briefest of moments, I consider repeating the apology, because I'm almost 100% sure he didn't catch it, but I discard that thought pretty much immediately. I snag my bag from the counter top, and quickly make my way over to the staircase, taking them two at a time until I reach the landing, the head straight forward into my room.
I can feel the weight slip off my shoulders as I enter, and I find a clear patch of floor to set my laptop back onto. With a smooth, practiced motion, I slide into my desk chair, kicking my feet up on the "wife" seat. One hand opens the IPA, the other navigates to Youtube, and my phone automatically connects to my computer, causing music to begin blaring out my speakers. The suddenness of it makes me flinch, and the overly carbonated beer takes the opportunity to go sightseeing across my chest.
"Damn it!" I snap, setting the drink down. I take a breath, then stand up out of my chair. "Honestly, I'm so chill about this. I'm fine, it's totally not a big deal," I say, doing my best to convince myself. As I peel off the sticky button up, tossing it into the laundry basket, I lean over to my computer mic. "PRISM? Play... uh. Fuck. I don't know." I quickly try to wrack my brain for a song, before a synthetic voice emanates from my speakers.
"Playing 'I Don't Know' by Alessandro Cortini," it says, causing me to start. I start to open my mouth, then close it... then open it again.
"Actually, PRISM, can you play 'Amore Amaro'?"
"I can't find that song in your library."
I frown, then reach over to my mouse and keyboard, opening up the overly extensive logs. "I didn't say 'A more Mario'," I mutter, before writing a quick TODO comment in PRISM's internals. I stop the first song, and manually set the next one going. Then, standing up from my awkwardly hunched position, I take a second to try to remember what it was I was actually doing. The breeze from the vent in the ceiling across my bare chest is quick to remind me. A peek in the hallway to make sure my roommate won't catch me streaking, and then I step over into the bathroom to wipe off the quickly drying liquid. A minute or two later, I step out of the bathroom and bump into the only other person in the house taller than me. I watch his eyes dip down, then back up. He quirks an eyebrow, and I shoot him a cheeky grin.
"Why do you smell like beer?" he asks me.
"Trying a new perfume," I respond, before wrapping my arms around his neck and planting a smooch on his lips. "Thought you were at work."
"I don't work today. I was just out with the boys."
I give a solemn nod. "Of course. The boys."
"The BOYS."
"Did you have fun with The Boys?"
"Yup!" He smooches me a few more times, before quickly shuffling past me towards his room. I watch him go, before I'm once more reminded that at least one person in this house probably wouldn't appreciate me walking around topless, and scurry back to my space of privacy, shutting the door behind me. I briefly consider putting another shirt on, but don't really want to dirty more laundry. Still, it's just a touch too cold to go without something, so I put my work jacket back on and zip it up, before sitting back down at my desk.
I give the offending beverage a glare. "Alright trouble maker," I say, as I pick up the stylized can. "You better at least taste good." The second the drink hits my stomach, every part of my body lights up from the warmth of the alcohol. While not the Yuzu sake I'd been hoping for, it's still exactly the sort of drink I had been wanting after work; tart, but not too much so, with a sweet aftertaste that lingers on the back of my tongue. I can feel my shoulders relax, and I give the can a second glance.
"Huh," I mutter, looking it over. "I wonder if Cole bought this. This is a lot less hoppy than I'd normally get," I think, my eyes scanning for a brand. In true IPA fashion, the labeling is beautiful graphic design nightmare, and it almost an entire minute to actually spot the name.
V O I D T R I P
I snort as I read the label. It's good, but it's not that good. Voidtrip sounds like the name of a drug combo, or an awesome electronic band. Using it as the name for an IPA feels... pretentious, for lack of a better word. Still, while I can find the name, I can't spot the actual company's name anywhere. With a frown, I move to walk over to my boyfriend's room, intending to ask him where he got the drink from. I barely make it out of my chair. The process is... difficult. Sluggish. As though the air has suddenly gotten thick and hard to move through.
My hands aren't quite responding, and my muscles feel like they've got input lag; they don't respond when I want them too, and carry on attempting to move long after I've stopped attempting to move them. I try to open my mouth to say something, anything, but I can't- I can't get control of my lungs. My breathing feels heavy and labored.
"Oh. Fuck. I'm dying." I can feel the though crystallize in my mind, and a shock of adrenaline shoot through to every nerve ending; a last ditch effort by our automatic processes to save myself from whatever's happening. It doesn't help.
"FUCK!" I think. The distance to the door is less than 6 feet, but it might as well be on the other end of the country.
"I'm going to die," I think. The realization is like a knife, and I feel a single tear inch down my face, my skin tingling from the salt left behind.
"I'm not ready to die," I think.
And then I don't think anything else.