Reality Check, ch. 69
I haven't written this fast in a long time. Chapter Sixty-Nine: Some Kind Of Good
One good thing about being a project manager -- Harrison was finally qualified to give orders, rather than just follow them.
“That’s enough, Chris,” she said, as the simulation completed another run-through.
“Yes, Doctor,” the tech muttered, and hit the ‘STOP’ button. Onscreen, the helpful little animation came to a halt.
Harrison half-expected it to flash ‘WINNERS DON’T DO DRUGS’ over a pixelly FBI emblem, but shook the expectation from her head. The stress had to be getting to her -- that, and the lack of sleep.
“You’ve filed your reports?” For some godforsaken reason, someone on a much higher level in the project had decided that they should submit reports for every trial they completed. The simulations they were running here weren’t technically trials, since they didn’t involve a subject in the field, but Harrison had figured it was better to play things safe.
She did pity the poor schmuck who had to wade through all the reports being submitted, though. Had to be a hell of a job.
Chris grinned and rested his head in his hands. “I will have in a minute.”
“Good. Thank you.” The man was a treasure -- he’d run the simulation through some 200 iterations of this particular scenario.
“It’s no trouble,” he said, indicating the terminal in front of him, “considering that all this data’s going to help program a field model. Gimme a few minutes to write up this last one and I’ll send ‘em in. That good enough for you, Doc?”
“That would be fantastic,” Harrison said, shutting her eyes against a brief flare of acid clawing its way up her throat. They were going to meet their deadline to submit these reports, but it had been close. She couldn’t remember how many cups of coffee the two of them had gone through, staying awake to track each trial’s progression.
Well, technically speaking Harrison could’ve flaked out and left everything to Chris to finish, but she’d always hated it when people did that to her. So she’d at least done him the courtesy of hanging around -- had taken note-taking duties on a few of the trials while Chris fucked off to collapse for a well-deserved catnap, as a matter of fact.
And it had turned out to be worth it, in the end.
Harrison hid a small smile as she watched Chris translate the last few lines of his notes into the somewhat convoluted (but descriptive, you had to admit) language the higher-ups seemed to prefer in the reports submitted to them.
“That’s all,” he said at last. “Care to take a look, Doctor?”
“No,” she said. “Go ahead and submit it.”
“Yes, ma’am. And after that?”
“Take a break,” she told him. “You deserve one. We’ll start the next series of trials tomorrow.” She didn’t bother to add in the official ‘as your superior, I’m giving you the rest of today off’ line. It felt condescending and ridiculous.
“Thanks, Doc,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen. “I’ll be here at nine for those.”
“Good,” Harrison said, rather absently. “Now, if you’ll excuse me--”
“You have to go talk to Dr. Batchelder,” he said without looking up. “Yeah, you mentioned that earlier.”
She found herself momentarily nonplussed, but managed to stammer, “Uh, yes, that’s right -- I’m not sure when I’ll get done with him, so I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“’S cool,” Chris said as she hung her lab coat on a hook by the door. “Oh -- one more thing, Doctor.”
“Yes?” she said, hand poised by the keycard reader in preparation to leave.
“Do you know if Dr. ter Borcht is all right? I used to talk to him a bit, and I was kind of wondering -- I figured you might know--”
Good God. Was everyone at the School interested in Jeb’s freaky shenanigans? It was beginning to seem like that might be the case.
“He’s fine,” Harrison said curtly, and fled.Ari was feeling kind of nervous.
But it was a good nervous, not like how he felt right before he had a checkup. More like Christmas -- sort of excited -- combined with the nervousness.
He was feeling all weird like this because yesterday Doctor Harrison had come back to see him, even though he’d just had a checkup with her.
She hadn’t stayed for very long when she came yesterday -- “I just dropped in to tell you something”, she said, and he’d figured it was that he was going to have to get more tests done.
But she’d said someone was going to come visit Ari, and she couldn’t say who it was because that would spoil the surprise.
Maybe it’s going to be Wolverine, Ari had thought, even though he knew he wasn’t real. Wolverine was his favorite X-Man though, ‘cause even though the bad guys had done experiments on him, he still used his powers to do good stuff, not evil.
It would be so cool if it was Wolverine, but it was probably just going to be some icky old doctor. That would still be better than nobody, though.
Even the icky old doctors who sometimes came to “observe” him were kind of fun, in a way -- most of the whitecoats didn’t really like it when he talked to them, but the observer-doctors thought it was the coolest thing ever.
Ari kicked his legs back and forth under the table while he colored. When he was littler he’d had smaller furniture -- real-kid size furniture, in bright plastic, green and red and yellow, all his favorite colors.
Now he was too big for his old chair and coloring table. So he had to use this dumb grownup-size chair and dumb grownup-size table instead. The whitecoats acted like it was so great when he had to get rid of his old stuff, like it was some big awesome thing, but it just sucked.
It was nice getting a new table that was all clean on top, not scribbled on, but his old stuff had been so much better.
Ari kept coloring until he heard the hiss of a door opening not very far away. Someone really was coming to visit him. He put down his crayon and just listened. Doctor Harrison was always trying to teach him how to be patient and sit still. He could practice right now.
He sat very still and listened as someone came walking down the hall, then as the door behind him hissed open, and then as someone knocked hesitantly. Sounded to him like just another yucky old scientist who wanted to look at him, make sure he was really a kid, not some kind of alien.
But then a familiar voice spoke, and it sounded exactly the same as he remembered -- just like it always used to, when Ari was little.
“Hey, kiddo.”
Ari knocked over his chair when he scrambled up and went barreling towards the door, but who cared about the lousy old chair?
“Dad!” he shouted, even though the whitecoats hated it when he was loud. Who cared about them?
Ari’s dad was back.Jeb didn’t feel a thing.
Or -- to be more precise, he didn’t know what to feel.
The last time he’d seen Ari, he’d been sleeping, the night before Jeb left with the flock. Ari had been barely three then, and now he was just a few months away from six.
“When did you get so tall?” he said. Somehow, while Jeb wasn’t there, Ari had gone from toddler to gangly teenager.
Jeb hadn’t thought he’d miss so much of Ari’s life while he was gone -- he hadn’t really thought at all before running off and leaving him here, and therein lay the problem.
“Dunno,” Ari mumbled into the front of Jeb’s shirt.
What hurt was how normal it felt -- sometimes Jeb had had to work a little late, back before he’d left with the flock, but he’d always tried to make it home before Ari’s bedtime. Coming home had been his favorite part of the day.
Ari had met him at the door, he remembered -- usually with Harrison not far behind him. (Back when Jeb had trusted her -- a long time ago.) He’d ask for a bedtime story, sometimes before Jeb had even made it inside.
“When are you gonna leave?” Ari asked.
“I’m not,” Jeb told him.
“Good. I’d miss you,” he said, his arms still wrapped around Jeb’s chest. “You were gone a long time.”
“I know.” He ruffled Ari’s hair. “I... some things came up and it took me a while to get done with everything. But I’m back now.”
Christ, it was all so familiar-seeming -- as if nothing had changed since the last time Jeb saw him. And yet everything was different -- Ari was so much older.
Does he even remember me? he wondered for a moment, then reassured himself that Ari did. He had to.
“I didn’t think you were coming back,” he said.
“I had to come back.” He hugged Ari extra tight for a moment. “You’re here, right?”
“Right.” Ari giggled. “I think I am.”
“I think you are too.”
For just a moment, Jeb allowed himself to think that maybe things could be all right again. Maybe there was hope.
And maybe the moon was made of blue cheese.
“Ari,” he began, feeling his way to the right words, or something like them. “I’m sorry I was gone so long.”
“’S OK,” Ari said, sounding far too matter-of-fact, too adult, too unlike the son Jeb had left behind.
Can you ever forgive me?
He couldn’t say he’d never leave, so he tried to get close.
“I’m right here,” he said, falling back on words that weren’t quite right, trying to express things he couldn’t quite say aloud.
“Don’t go,” Ari muttered, and the illusion of a gawky teenager vanished. He might look far older, but Ari was still a very young boy.
“I won’t,” Jeb promised.
“Good.” He sniffled a little, leaned his head against Jeb’s chest.
For all that he’d been gone almost three years, Ari’s mannerisms were still the same, and he still remembered them. He knew them well -- they were engraved on part of his heart, it felt like, as if he could never forget them.
In his mind, Jeb had all but buried Ari a long time ago -- now he was trying, slowly, to convince himself that his son wasn’t dead at all, but alive. Alive, and right here with him.
There were so many things Jeb had meant to do for his son -- teach him to read, teach him to write, every little thing he’d dreamt of doing. Ari should be in school right now, not locked up here. He’d wanted to do that for him too -- watch him grow up enough that Jeb could let him go.
And someday, Jeb meant to introduce Ari to his little sister.
There was going to be time for that, Jeb promised himself. There would be time to make things right between the two of them. There had to be.
If there wasn’t, he would damn well make time.
Jeb was a rational man, but he’d do anything -- anything -- for his son. Because his son was alive, and that... right now that meant the world to him.In other news, I have an appointment in like six hours and forty-five minutes, and I have to be awake and civil for it.
But that's why we invented coffee.
Cheers. Previous chapter. Index. Next chapter.
One good thing about being a project manager -- Harrison was finally qualified to give orders, rather than just follow them.
“That’s enough, Chris,” she said, as the simulation completed another run-through.
“Yes, Doctor,” the tech muttered, and hit the ‘STOP’ button. Onscreen, the helpful little animation came to a halt.
Harrison half-expected it to flash ‘WINNERS DON’T DO DRUGS’ over a pixelly FBI emblem, but shook the expectation from her head. The stress had to be getting to her -- that, and the lack of sleep.
“You’ve filed your reports?” For some godforsaken reason, someone on a much higher level in the project had decided that they should submit reports for every trial they completed. The simulations they were running here weren’t technically trials, since they didn’t involve a subject in the field, but Harrison had figured it was better to play things safe.
She did pity the poor schmuck who had to wade through all the reports being submitted, though. Had to be a hell of a job.
Chris grinned and rested his head in his hands. “I will have in a minute.”
“Good. Thank you.” The man was a treasure -- he’d run the simulation through some 200 iterations of this particular scenario.
“It’s no trouble,” he said, indicating the terminal in front of him, “considering that all this data’s going to help program a field model. Gimme a few minutes to write up this last one and I’ll send ‘em in. That good enough for you, Doc?”
“That would be fantastic,” Harrison said, shutting her eyes against a brief flare of acid clawing its way up her throat. They were going to meet their deadline to submit these reports, but it had been close. She couldn’t remember how many cups of coffee the two of them had gone through, staying awake to track each trial’s progression.
Well, technically speaking Harrison could’ve flaked out and left everything to Chris to finish, but she’d always hated it when people did that to her. So she’d at least done him the courtesy of hanging around -- had taken note-taking duties on a few of the trials while Chris fucked off to collapse for a well-deserved catnap, as a matter of fact.
And it had turned out to be worth it, in the end.
Harrison hid a small smile as she watched Chris translate the last few lines of his notes into the somewhat convoluted (but descriptive, you had to admit) language the higher-ups seemed to prefer in the reports submitted to them.
“That’s all,” he said at last. “Care to take a look, Doctor?”
“No,” she said. “Go ahead and submit it.”
“Yes, ma’am. And after that?”
“Take a break,” she told him. “You deserve one. We’ll start the next series of trials tomorrow.” She didn’t bother to add in the official ‘as your superior, I’m giving you the rest of today off’ line. It felt condescending and ridiculous.
“Thanks, Doc,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on the screen. “I’ll be here at nine for those.”
“Good,” Harrison said, rather absently. “Now, if you’ll excuse me--”
“You have to go talk to Dr. Batchelder,” he said without looking up. “Yeah, you mentioned that earlier.”
She found herself momentarily nonplussed, but managed to stammer, “Uh, yes, that’s right -- I’m not sure when I’ll get done with him, so I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“’S cool,” Chris said as she hung her lab coat on a hook by the door. “Oh -- one more thing, Doctor.”
“Yes?” she said, hand poised by the keycard reader in preparation to leave.
“Do you know if Dr. ter Borcht is all right? I used to talk to him a bit, and I was kind of wondering -- I figured you might know--”
Good God. Was everyone at the School interested in Jeb’s freaky shenanigans? It was beginning to seem like that might be the case.
“He’s fine,” Harrison said curtly, and fled.Ari was feeling kind of nervous.
But it was a good nervous, not like how he felt right before he had a checkup. More like Christmas -- sort of excited -- combined with the nervousness.
He was feeling all weird like this because yesterday Doctor Harrison had come back to see him, even though he’d just had a checkup with her.
She hadn’t stayed for very long when she came yesterday -- “I just dropped in to tell you something”, she said, and he’d figured it was that he was going to have to get more tests done.
But she’d said someone was going to come visit Ari, and she couldn’t say who it was because that would spoil the surprise.
Maybe it’s going to be Wolverine, Ari had thought, even though he knew he wasn’t real. Wolverine was his favorite X-Man though, ‘cause even though the bad guys had done experiments on him, he still used his powers to do good stuff, not evil.
It would be so cool if it was Wolverine, but it was probably just going to be some icky old doctor. That would still be better than nobody, though.
Even the icky old doctors who sometimes came to “observe” him were kind of fun, in a way -- most of the whitecoats didn’t really like it when he talked to them, but the observer-doctors thought it was the coolest thing ever.
Ari kicked his legs back and forth under the table while he colored. When he was littler he’d had smaller furniture -- real-kid size furniture, in bright plastic, green and red and yellow, all his favorite colors.
Now he was too big for his old chair and coloring table. So he had to use this dumb grownup-size chair and dumb grownup-size table instead. The whitecoats acted like it was so great when he had to get rid of his old stuff, like it was some big awesome thing, but it just sucked.
It was nice getting a new table that was all clean on top, not scribbled on, but his old stuff had been so much better.
Ari kept coloring until he heard the hiss of a door opening not very far away. Someone really was coming to visit him. He put down his crayon and just listened. Doctor Harrison was always trying to teach him how to be patient and sit still. He could practice right now.
He sat very still and listened as someone came walking down the hall, then as the door behind him hissed open, and then as someone knocked hesitantly. Sounded to him like just another yucky old scientist who wanted to look at him, make sure he was really a kid, not some kind of alien.
But then a familiar voice spoke, and it sounded exactly the same as he remembered -- just like it always used to, when Ari was little.
“Hey, kiddo.”
Ari knocked over his chair when he scrambled up and went barreling towards the door, but who cared about the lousy old chair?
“Dad!” he shouted, even though the whitecoats hated it when he was loud. Who cared about them?
Ari’s dad was back.Jeb didn’t feel a thing.
Or -- to be more precise, he didn’t know what to feel.
The last time he’d seen Ari, he’d been sleeping, the night before Jeb left with the flock. Ari had been barely three then, and now he was just a few months away from six.
“When did you get so tall?” he said. Somehow, while Jeb wasn’t there, Ari had gone from toddler to gangly teenager.
Jeb hadn’t thought he’d miss so much of Ari’s life while he was gone -- he hadn’t really thought at all before running off and leaving him here, and therein lay the problem.
“Dunno,” Ari mumbled into the front of Jeb’s shirt.
What hurt was how normal it felt -- sometimes Jeb had had to work a little late, back before he’d left with the flock, but he’d always tried to make it home before Ari’s bedtime. Coming home had been his favorite part of the day.
Ari had met him at the door, he remembered -- usually with Harrison not far behind him. (Back when Jeb had trusted her -- a long time ago.) He’d ask for a bedtime story, sometimes before Jeb had even made it inside.
“When are you gonna leave?” Ari asked.
“I’m not,” Jeb told him.
“Good. I’d miss you,” he said, his arms still wrapped around Jeb’s chest. “You were gone a long time.”
“I know.” He ruffled Ari’s hair. “I... some things came up and it took me a while to get done with everything. But I’m back now.”
Christ, it was all so familiar-seeming -- as if nothing had changed since the last time Jeb saw him. And yet everything was different -- Ari was so much older.
Does he even remember me? he wondered for a moment, then reassured himself that Ari did. He had to.
“I didn’t think you were coming back,” he said.
“I had to come back.” He hugged Ari extra tight for a moment. “You’re here, right?”
“Right.” Ari giggled. “I think I am.”
“I think you are too.”
For just a moment, Jeb allowed himself to think that maybe things could be all right again. Maybe there was hope.
And maybe the moon was made of blue cheese.
“Ari,” he began, feeling his way to the right words, or something like them. “I’m sorry I was gone so long.”
“’S OK,” Ari said, sounding far too matter-of-fact, too adult, too unlike the son Jeb had left behind.
Can you ever forgive me?
He couldn’t say he’d never leave, so he tried to get close.
“I’m right here,” he said, falling back on words that weren’t quite right, trying to express things he couldn’t quite say aloud.
“Don’t go,” Ari muttered, and the illusion of a gawky teenager vanished. He might look far older, but Ari was still a very young boy.
“I won’t,” Jeb promised.
“Good.” He sniffled a little, leaned his head against Jeb’s chest.
For all that he’d been gone almost three years, Ari’s mannerisms were still the same, and he still remembered them. He knew them well -- they were engraved on part of his heart, it felt like, as if he could never forget them.
In his mind, Jeb had all but buried Ari a long time ago -- now he was trying, slowly, to convince himself that his son wasn’t dead at all, but alive. Alive, and right here with him.
There were so many things Jeb had meant to do for his son -- teach him to read, teach him to write, every little thing he’d dreamt of doing. Ari should be in school right now, not locked up here. He’d wanted to do that for him too -- watch him grow up enough that Jeb could let him go.
And someday, Jeb meant to introduce Ari to his little sister.
There was going to be time for that, Jeb promised himself. There would be time to make things right between the two of them. There had to be.
If there wasn’t, he would damn well make time.
Jeb was a rational man, but he’d do anything -- anything -- for his son. Because his son was alive, and that... right now that meant the world to him.In other news, I have an appointment in like six hours and forty-five minutes, and I have to be awake and civil for it.
But that's why we invented coffee.
Cheers. Previous chapter. Index. Next chapter.