The Freezer (Genesis Endeavor Book 1) (4 page)

After a meal of something that resembled sawdust mixed with Jello,
washed down with water that tasted somewhat of dead fish and old motor oil,
Jack started to feel human again. Despite the sensation of his body suspended
in thick grease, he felt better than he had since, well, since before he could
remember. His mind was incredibly clear, and his vision was clearing up every
minute. Most things were still out of focus, but he felt like he was picking up
details that he never would have noticed before.

“Well Jack, how are you feeling?” Teague walked into the
room, holding what Jack had thought was a notepad but now was looking... well,
not as much like a notepad. It appeared to be piece of mirrored glass a little
less than a quarter inch thick.

“Better Doc. Say, what is that thing you are writing on? It
doesn’t look like paper.”

Teague looked down at the object and after seeming to ponder
the question for a moment, said “It’s just a fancy clipboard,” and sat down in
a chair near the bed, crossed his legs, and placed the clipboard on his lap
which obscured it from Jack’s vision. “Your vision seems to be improving, that
is great.”

Jack just gave him a flat look and shrugged. He knew an
evasive answer when he heard one, and obviously there were things this man was
going to hide from him.

Teague continued, “Okay, I have done this more than a few
times, but I suspect it will be more difficult with you. Let me start with what
I know about you. You are Jack Taggart, born April 23rd 1928 in Bakersfield,
California. Joined the military July, 1944. Married Jennifer Williams in July,
1958. Gave birth to a daughter, Allissa Taggart in 1959, Retired from the
military July 1964. Diagnosed with Cancer August 1966. You are six feet, two
inches tall, black hair, blue eyes, Caucasian. Is all that correct?”

“You left out ‘ruggedly handsome’.” He meant it
sarcastically, he felt a dangerous mood coming on, and was ready to start being
just as evasive in his answers. If he could have seen clearly, he would have
caught the look of amusement on the doctor’s face. “Can you sit the bed up so I
can see you better?”

Teague reached across and worked some unseen controls,
moving the bed up to a sitting position. “Thank you. Now, tell me where the hell
you got that information. Aside from my mother-in-law, there is nobody alive,
other than me, who knows all that.” Most of that information would be pretty
easy to find, but one small detail revealed something that even the military
didn’t know about him. “Did you hire a private investigator to find all that
information? Or do you work for the military?”

Teague smiled a little. “Jack, come on, I told you I would
answer all your questions as we go. If it helps, then you could say that I am
involved in the military in some capacity. That is where I got your records.”

That explained a lot, but he still didn’t feel like he could
trust this guy, there was still something he was hiding. Jack filed it away for
later. “Does all this have to do with the project I was working on for the
military?”

Teague looked down at his ‘clipboard’ and appeared to be
drawing circles on it. After a moment he looked up and said, “Jack you are a
very perceptive person. That’s a good thing. Your mind is functioning very
well, which tells me a lot. Once again, to answer your question in a way you
can understand, I would say, yes, this does indeed have something to do with
the project you were working on for the military, but it is not relevant to the
current situation, nor is it relevant to the information I am about to give
you. Shall I continue?”

His frustration was building, this man was being evasive and
not completely honest, and Jack didn’t know why. But it was clear that he wasn’t
going to be able to control the conversation, and so far nobody else had shown
up with any answers. He sighed in resignation.
Best to let the man just
speak his piece
. “Okay doc, let’s have it.”

Teague stood up nervously, looking as if he were struggling
to find the words, which was another irritation as the man had been beating
around the bush for so long already. He paced back and forth from one end of
the bed to the other. “Okay, what I am about to tell you will be a shock, and
might be hard to take.”

Jack’s chest bounced once as he laughed derisively, “Doc,
two days ago I was told I have cancer, and it was pretty obvious that I wasn’t
going to survive it for very long. My wife and kids are dead, I am dying, and I
just woke up in a room that smells like a basement, I can’t move, I can barely
see, and I haven’t seen anyone I know or trust yet. I can’t think of a
situation that could be any worse than this, and you think that you can say
something that will be hard for me to take?” He hadn’t intended to just explode
like this but the frustration had peaked very quickly.

Teague took it all in and if anything, it seemed to bring
him to a conclusion. “Okay, you want it straight, here it is. In 1967, you died
as a result of the Cancer that spread through your body.”

Time seemed to stand still for perhaps ten seconds. Then, like
a blast from a shotgun, the irritation exploded into anger. “Oh Christ! What
kind of bullshit are you talking about now! Dammit, you said you were going to
give me answers, and all I am getting from you is evasive responses and now
some kind of cockamamie joke!” He nearly fell out of the bed trying to reach
out and grab the man and throttle some sense into him, which only served to
frustrate him more. With a roar he shouted out, “Goddammit! Is someone out
there who can tell me what the hell is going on!”

Teague stood at the end of the bed, passively watching Jack
lose control. He didn’t react to the outburst, and even looked like he expected
it. He resumed pacing. “Jack, please, I understand your frustration, and given
your circumstances I can see that you are going to have an incredibly difficult
time coming to grips with this.”

This fueled his anger even more. “Bullshit doc! Look, I wake
up in a room I have never been in, surrounded by people I have never met, I can’t
see, I can’t move, and now you’re trying to tell me I’m dead! Tell me that I
was in an accident and I was in a coma, tell me something went wrong with my
biopsy and I didn’t wake up for a few months, but don’t sit here and tell me
that I’m dead... how can I even talk to you if I’m dead?!” He shouted out
again, “Hey! I need some GODDAMN ANSWERS IN HERE!”

Teague sighed heavily, and stopped pacing for a moment. “Please
Jack, calm down. If you don’t calm down I will have to sedate you and let you
rest for a bit. I can explain this to you if you want to listen.”

From the doorway to the room, just out of Jack’s line of
sight, a woman’s voice said “Doc, do you want me to bring a sedative?”

“No, that won’t be necessary, will it Jack?”

The voice was like ice water on his rage, cooling it
instantly and allowing a chance to get himself under control. He sat there
panting from the tirade, shaking from the adrenaline, and started counting
slowly to ten in his head. By the time he reached ten, he had not only taken
control of his emotions once again, but also started analyzing the situation. He
really had little choice here. He was practically an invalid, and aside from
the woman outside the room, there was only one person he could get answers
from. But despite the anger cooling, he wasn’t ready to start believing this
man. “Am I in a loony bin? Is that it? I went nuts and you are just another
kook trying to mess with my mind?”

“Jack I can assure you that you are not crazy, even though
it might very well seem that way. If you let me explain, it will start to make
sense.” Teague was incredibly calm this entire time.
Either he’s had a lot
of practice laying this lame prank on other people or he thinks he’s telling
the truth.

The adrenaline spent, he suddenly felt the weight of the
situation on his shoulders. It pushed him down into the bed as if it was a
physical weight. He realized he was acting like a hot-headed kid, and that
thought sobered him up a little. He sternly said to himself,
you’re a
military officer, Taggart, start acting like one!
This guy obviously wasn’t
going to go away, so he might as well humor him. He took a few long slow
breaths, and said in his ‘officer’ voice, “Okay, continue.”

“Tell me Jack, do you know what DNA is?”

Jack shrugged, thought for a moment, then said, “Yeah, I
read an article in Life about it.” The outburst of anger had somehow relieved
the pressure of the frustration and anxiety he had felt just minutes before,
and with that gone he was starting to feel like he could put up with this guy’s
BS long enough to maybe get some answers.

Teague’s brow wrinkled as he looked down at his clipboard,
scribbled something, then said, “Ah... Life magazine, Okay. Well, DNA is the
biological ‘blueprint’ that all life is based on. It contains all the
information about how your body is built, from the way the cells form for your
heart, to the color of your eyes. Are you following me so far?”

Jack rolled his eyes and said, “Yes, I follow. Like I said,
I read an article on it. Scientists said that it will prove that Darwin was
right and that all living things evolved.” Jack rolled his finger signaling for
him to continue.

“Yes. Well, in the – um, let’s just say that at some point
in time, scientists figured out that by using DNA, they could re-create an
organism that was already alive. Make an exact duplicate. They called it ‘cloning’
and they had some success in proving that it worked. However, for many years,
it was considered immoral to try to recreate God’s work –”

Jack blurted out, “They were right, scientists playing God
are what brought about the nuclear bomb.” Jack was not a particularly religious
man, but he believed in God, and had seen enough war to know that God was
nowhere to be found when man started taking God’s work into his own hands. “I’ve
seen first-hand the destruction something like that can cause doc, trust me,
people were not meant to meddle with those kinds of power.” Jack watched the expression
on Teague’s face change. It was the first time he had truly seen some emotion
out of this man.
Is that guilt? Fear? Both?
Perhaps the man was just
irritated at being interrupted, but Jack didn’t care about that; if he was
going to have to listen to this quack’s spiel, he was doing it on his terms.

Jack was hardly a scientist, but he had an analytical side
that always served him very well both in the field an when dealing with
politics. “What you are talking about is only theory, though. Unless the
military was dabbling in it...” This thought created a sudden flood of insight.
“Wait a minute, is that what I am building out by the air…” He cut himself off.
Teague had said he was involved in the military, but he had never shown any
credentials, never proven anything. Sure, this whole situation screamed
military – the evasiveness, the vague answers, the windowless room. But Jack
had to tread carefully here, for all he knew someone had set this whole thing
up to get information out of him, information that required some very top
secret clearances to even discuss. But the train of thought was not stopping. Perhaps
the underground facility he was building was some experimental lab that the
military will use to conduct experiments with DNA and ‘cloning’. If it was
possible, the military would go to any length to take the best soldiers and
make an army of exact duplicates. It was a chilling thought. Jack had seen first-hand
what some Nazi “scientists” had been doing when he was helping to liberate the
death camps only reinforced that there wasn’t too many things governments would
not attempt to do to gain the upper hand in military force.

Teague recovered from whatever had come over him and smiled.
“I think I see where your line of thought is headed Jack. The military probably
was
working on cloning in secret, somewhere, but what I am talking about
was very public, and a lot of people were not happy about it.”

“Doc, you’re talking like a quack again. I would have heard
if these experiments were going on, and I never heard anything about it, except
for maybe in a sci-fi book.” Annoyance was building again and he struggled to
keep it in check. This guy is clearly deranged but something about this whole
conversation rang true and until the real doctors showed up, he wanted to get
as much as he could out of it.

“Jack, cloning experiments started hitting the mainstream in
about the year 1980, and moved on until – well until about the year 2012.” Jack
blinked a couple times. The statement took him by surprise, but he quickly
recovered.
Does it ever end with this guy?

He let out a short laugh, shook his head, and sat there for
a few moments trying to figure out how to start getting some truth out of this
conversation. “Look, I can’t help but think that what you are telling me is
pure bullshit. You’re just messing with my head. Come on, you’re sitting here
trying to convince me that I died and was remade in an experiment years later. Next
thing you will try to tell me that it is the year 2020 and Martians took over
the planet.”

Teague smiled. “No Jack, as far as we know, there are no
Martians, or any other ‘alien’ life, although this world might seem very alien
to you now.” Teague’s smile went away, and he said, “And it is not the year
2020, more like the year 2320, near as we can tell.”

Jack leaned back and closed his eyes. He wanted to start
laughing hysterically. “So what is this, some kind of time travel thing? I have
read some science fiction in my time doc, and you sir, could author a
bestseller. Now let’s go back to the beginning and you can tell me the
real
truth.” Jack opened his eyes and fixed him with a stare.

Teague’s shoulders dropped as if he was finally giving up
trying to pull of this practical joke, and for the next minute he wouldn’t meet
Jack’s eyes as he appeared to be lost in thought. Suddenly his eyes lit up and
he said, “Do you want to see what I have been writing? Has your vision cleared
to the point that you can see it clearly?”

Jack had been so preoccupied with this crazy conversation,
he hadn’t noticed at what point his vision had cleared. Now, not only was he
seeing things without the haze, he realized he could see much more clearly than
ever before. He had always been a little near-sighted in his left eye, but
every detail was sharp and clear now. As he looked around the room, testing his
vision, he saw some things that only added to the confusion. There was a square
sheet of glass on a stand next to his bed that had what looked like colored
text and symbols written on it, but they were moving! Like a television screen
only a quarter inch thick! Furthermore there were no wires going to it! On one
side of the room there were some devices that looked to be machined from all
sorts of different metals, but it kind of resembled a chemistry set with all
sorts of tubes and pipes twisting around in a seeming random fashion. The room
had a ‘medical’ feel to it, but the walls were raw concrete, and the lighting
had a slight bluish tint to it. Jack looked back at Teague, completely
befuddled by what he was seeing and nodded.

“Are you okay to hold something in your hand yet?” Teague
said motioning to his hands. After having to be fed at dinner, or breakfast, or
whatever meal it was, Jack had been wiggling his fingers and making fists. He
lifted his hand to see how it was working. He could lift his arm fairly well,
and could turn his hand around at the wrist, open and close his hand, pretty
much at will.

“I think so, give me something to lift”. Teague set the ‘clipboard’
in his lap, and Jack immediately noticed it weighed a lot less than he
expected, even though it appeared to be made of glass and should have weighed
at least a couple pounds. He was able to lift it without much difficulty and he
picked it up with both hands, examined it front and back. It did indeed look
like square sheet of glass that was mirrored on one side, or maybe was shiny
metal, reflective but the reflections were dull and blurry. On the other side
however, it was like a two way mirror and he could see through it to the
blanket beneath. That wasn’t the confusing part though, seeming to be printed
directly on the surface of the glass was some typed text, laid out similar to a
newspaper. He started to read.

Life Magazine
- a publication that started as
a humor and general interest magazine in 1883 and was purchased by another
publication company in 1936, at which time it became a weekly magazine with a
strong emphasis on photojournalism. In 1972 it became a special publication
that was only occasionally released, and in 1978 it became a monthly
publication until 2000. From 2000 on it was an occasional special publication
that appeared in Time magazine and in some newspapers until 2012.

Teague tapped the glass, which then changed before his eyes
to be a document containing all of Jack’s biological information, history, and
even a color photo. The photo was from Jack’s retirement, and looked faded, like
a very old photo that had been well preserved. That, like everything else, didn’t
make sense because he had never seen an ‘old’ color photo. Teague then reached
down with the pen and tapped again. This time, a detailed history of Jack’s
cancer appeared, from August of 1966 to June of 1967, when according to the
document, he passed away as a result of the cancer.