Rise of the Fallen: Ascensionis
Chapter 7

Frank Garrison gazes, from his living room window, at the young man mowing his lawn while enjoying his usual morning coffee. He is more than capable of performing the task on his own, but he has known sixteen year old Adam Eastman ever since he was a little baby and has always held firm of his opinion that kids his age benefit from the experience of earning money with hard work. Besides, it’s better for him to do this rather than sell drugs to his classmates. He’s a good kid from the same neighborhood. Maybe a bit shy and not the most popular judging from his Clockwork Orange movie t-shirt and eyeglasses, but is very intelligent and actually prefers reading books over Facebook. Then again, he may not have many friends so he might replace the social network useless in his case.

An hour later, Adam wipes the sweat from his forehead and knocks on the front door of Frank’s home. Frank opens the door and immediately hands him a tall, frigid glass of iced tea.

“Thanks, Mr. Garrison.”

“No, thank you, Adam. That there is one heck of a good job.”

Adam grins in response to the compliment and is so thirsty, that he finishes the beverage in a matter of minutes. He hands the empty glass to Frank and shoves his well-earned money into his pocket. Frank asks, “How’s everything, kid?”

Adam shrugs his shoulders and replies, “Eh. Okay, I guess.”

“Did you ever ask that girl out? You know, what’s her name?”

“Melanie. She said that I’m a very nice guy and sees me more like brother. That’s a one way ticket to the friend zone.”

Frank is disgusted at the way current society has been molded in such a way that a man who shows respect, courtesy and emotional support to a woman is regarded as a friend with no foreseeable evolution of the relationship in the future.

“I’m not exactly a hunk, Mr. Garrison. See you next time.”

Frank doesn’t know what kind of advice to offer while watching him walk away. He’s sure the kid must have heard it all by now. It’s just a phase. You’ll grow out of it. The right girl is out there waiting for you. The best things come to those who wait. He shakes his head with a sense of regret and closes the front door.

Several hours later, Adam enters the Brunswick Square mall to buy a book and kill some time. All the while, he’s listening to a John Lennon song on his phone. Why Do You Sleep? He’s always had a fascination with the era of the hippies. Back in those days, the verb socializing didn’t have anything to do with posting status updates and waiting for people to like them. If people wanted to know how the other was doing, they would actually walk to his, or her, house and have a face to face conversation.

A few feet away from Adam is a very attractive girl holding a clipboard with both of her hands. Oh, Lord. She’s one of those people who request a moment of time to participate in a boring survey. The girl is just too beautiful to ignore, however, and he makes eye contact with her. She has long, straight dark brown hair with mesmerizing green eyes and has to be around his age. She smiles at him and begins moving her lips. This makes him remove his ear-buds knowing full well what she is going to ask of him.

“I’m sorry. What?”

“I just need a moment of your time to....”

“Yeah. No, thanks.”

The girl rolls her eyes with frustration and says to him in a low voice, “Okay, look...what’s your name?”

“Adam.”

“Abigail. I started yesterday and I haven’t done any.”

Adam moans with discomfort and begins scratching his head. He says honestly, “I don’t usually do these.”

“Imagine finishing this real quickly, Adam. You wouldn’t want me to get fired, would you?”

He has had his share of unbearable supervisors when he used to work at a retail store that sells computers and cell phones. The pressure to meet unrealistic goals is all too familiar to him and he did lose his job there for not achieving them.

“I’m doing this only because I know what it’s like.”

While touching his arm, Abigail says, “Awesome. You have no idea how much I appreciate this. Follow me, Adam.”

He follows her through the glass doors of the air conditioned office space. While walking past the receptionist, he reads the name of this particular research firm above her head. Rockford and Partners. They both walk down a hallway lined with doors on both sides. Abigail stops walking and turns around to look at Adam in the eyes. He did not expect her to stop so abruptly and almost collides into her. Her perfume smells as sweet as fully blossomed roses and he imagines kissing her deliriously while ripping off her clothes. Back to reality, Adam. As they are inches away from each other’s faces, she tells him while pointing at the door to the left, “Here’s our room, Adam.”

The door slowly opens and Abigail turns on the light. The shiny, linoleum floor is checkered with white and black squares and there is a fifty inch plasma television mounted on the wall ahead. There is also a table with one black leg in the center and a piece of circular glass on top of it. On both sides of the room, blood red curtains sway slightly as a result of the breeze caused by the air conditioner. This has to be the strangest choice of design he has ever seen but, at the same time, he feels comforted and safe. She pulls the chair and says softly, “Sit.”

Abigail places her clipboard in front of him and places a pen directly in the center of it. The loud clicking of her heels are heard as she makes her way to the chair on the opposite side. While gradually sitting down, she asks, “Do you feel okay in this room, Adam?”

“Uhhh...yeah, sure.”

“That’s good. I need you to fill that out for me.”

He begins writing his name and is slightly distracted by the sound of metal hitting each other and Abigail’s heel rhythmically tapping the floor. He looks up to replace her rotating three shiny, metallic spheres in her hand.

“You use those for stress?”

She grins and replies, “Oh, these? Yeah. They’re called baoding balls. Are they bothering you?”

“No, it’s all good.”

“I like to imagine it as therapy. You should try it.”

Adam nods and continues writing down his personal information. She’s way out of his league so why even continue the pointless conversation. But her voice sounds so soothing. He completes filling out the form and pushes the clipboard toward Abigail. She shoves the baoding balls into the pocket of her cardigan sweater and peruses the data carefully. She clears her throat and says, “Thanks, Adam. Wow. I’m thirsty. I’ll be right back, okay?”

Adam watches her leave the room and close the door behind her. What a bitch! She didn’t even ask him if he wanted something to drink. After all, it is pretty hot outside. Why are they all so selfish?

A few minutes pass and the door opens. Abigail enters the room carrying two cups of water. She closes the door with her hip and grins as she places the cup in front of him. Looks like he was wrong about her. He takes the cup and says, “Thanks.”

She gently taps his back and says, “You’re welcome. Just drink it and relax, Adam.”

She sits down on the chair and looks at Adam directly in his eyes while drinking the water from her cup. He looks down at her hand briefly and observes the movements of her slender fingers as they skillfully manipulate the baoding balls. The sound of a cup getting placed on the table makes him focus on her eyes again. He is utterly in a state of enchantment for some particular reason.

Abigail, once again, rhythmically taps the floor with her heel and uses a soft, monotone voice to tell him, “Let’s get started. Do you like science fiction movies, Adam?”

He shrugs his shoulders and replies, “Sure. Star Wars, Star Trek, Tron, Blade Runner, Serenity. I can go on and on.”

“I’m going to show you a trailer for an upcoming science fiction movie.” At this point, she yawns and says, “Oh, man. Sorry about that. I didn’t get much sleep. So...how’s that sound? Not too bad, right?”

Adam cannot resist and yawns while nodding in agreement. He then wearily says, “Damn. You gave it to me.”

Abigail rises to her feet and walks toward the door. He has always had a fetish of women that tap their high heels so the sound her pumps make causes him to take a quick glance at her feet. She twists the knob on the wall which makes the room gradually fades to a pitch black and says softly, “Imagine being in a movie theater, Adam.”

He has heard the door close many times but, on this occasion, it sends a slight chill up his spine. Oddly enough, the entire room feels colder. It is as if someone intentionally lowered the temperature of the room. After a minute passes, he begins tapping on the glass table, as if to emulate the sound of Abigail’s heels, in order to relax himself. The room becomes somewhat illuminated when the plasma television screen turns on and, afterwards, the usual green screen showing the approval of the movie trailer for all audiences fades into view. The narrator can now be heard introducing the film.

“Prepare yourself for an explosive science fiction experience. From the visionary director that gave you Cube and Splice, comes a film adaption of a literary masterpiece written by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.”

Arkady and Boris Strugatsky? Where has he heard those names before? They seem familiar but he can’t...of course! They’re making the movie version of Roadside Picnic! And directed by one of his favorite directors, Vincenzo Natali! The Stalker movie from 1979 can be considered the first adaption but was only loosely based on the classic novel. He is excited by this and can barely contain himself from cheering with the joy of a true geek. After several scenes, the name of the director appears followed by the narrator’s voice.

“Roadside Picnic.”

Then the actor playing Redrick Schuhart is seen saying, “Kirill! What if you had a full empty?” The other actor replies, “A full empty?”

The screen becomes black and there is nothing but an eerie silence. No release date? Maybe they’re trying to keep this hush-hush at Vincenzo’s request to keep the science fiction fanatics at bay. When it comes to a film adaption of this magnitude, it’s wise to avoid any kind of publicity during the preproduction phase. This wasn’t even listed on imdb.com as the director’s next project and there was nothing announced on his own website. The light from the hallway floods the room as Abigail opens the door. She then twists the knob on the wall and the lights slowly fade back on. She smiles at him while walking to her chair and asks, “Pretty cool, huh?”

“Hell...yes. I am stunned here, Abigail.”

While sitting herself down, she says seductively, “I bet you don’t regret it now.”

Abigail reaches into the pocket of her sweater. What she takes out is not the baoding balls, however, but instead a digital voice recorder and says while fiddling with it, “I’ll need to record our little session here, Adam. Just give me a minute.”

He was expecting for her to manipulate the metallic spheres again with her lovely fingers while also tapping her heel. He absolutely replaces her French manicure exquisite and imagines to himself what her bare feet may look like. Quite possibly as smooth as a baby’s bottom with similarly pampered toe nails. She places the voice recorder exactly in the middle of the glass table...she even stands up and looks at it from every angle to make one hundred percent sure that it is precisely in the middle. Adam realizes at this point that she may be one of those obsessive-compulsive types. That does not bother him in the least. No one in this world is perfect, after all. After two minutes of this, she finally sits back down.

“I bet you thought that was weird, huh?”

Adam shrugs his shoulders and replies, “No. I think everyone in the world has some kind of condition.”

“Hmmm...thanks, Adam. Too bad most people don’t think like you.”

Abigail begins recording and asks, “Do you give me permission to record your opinions for the purpose of this survey?”

“Yeah, sure.”

The moment he’s been waiting for arrives when she reaches into her pocket and takes out the baoding balls. While tapping her heel, she asks, “During the narration in the first few minutes of the trailer, what word caught your attention?”

“Ummm...explosive. It pretty much sums up the anticipation.”

She nods while staring into his eyes and decides to now raise one of her hands slightly which is holding two of the three spheres. She allows one sphere to drop to the other hand and then raises that hand to do the same thing. This goes on for two minutes until she tells him, “Adam. Would you prefer that he say the word prepare or get ready?”

The various sounds of the tapping and metal hitting each other makes him feel at ease. It is so soothing that he takes his time to answer. He finally says, “Get ready...definitely.”

She yawns and says, “Whoa. I feel so sleepy.”

“Awwwww, man. Me too. I guess it’s the air conditioning.”

“Are you sure, Adam? Get ready...or prepare?”

“Now that I think about it...I’ll go with prepare.”

Adam’s eyelids suddenly become unbearably heavy and he taps his cheek in order to maintain focused. What’s going on here? He just hopes that he doesn’t fall to the floor.

“So the two key words for you are...prepare and explosive.”

Adam now feels himself going into a trance right after she mentions those two words. He shakes his head rapidly to try and snap out of it. The rhythmic tapping of her heel along with the manipulation of the baoding balls are certainly not helping him to stay awake. Abigail tells him comfortingly, “You can rest your eyes for a minute, if you want. You know that, don’t you?”

“Okay.”

He closes his eyes and falls completely asleep while sitting in his chair. A middle-aged man wearing a lab coat opens the door and walks inside while carrying a large suitcase. His scarred face looks like it’s been burned by fire or disfigured by a horrible laboratory accident. Abigail cannot even bring herself to look at him for fear of vomiting in his presence. He stands behind Adam and says in an emotionless manner while pulling his head back, “The benzodiazepine has taken effect. Good.”

The frighteningly grotesque-looking man then opens the briefcase and takes out a syringe with a long needle. He roughly grabs Adam’s arm and immediately injects the serum into his vein. After that, the tiny puncture wound instantly heals and he says, “The scopolomine has now been administered. You may continue.”

Abigail still refuses to look at him and just nods. It is only until she hears the sound of the door opening and then closing that she decides to look up at Adam. He is now to be given instructions which is the true intention of this session. She thinks about the previous times that this has been done before with many other unwitting participants to execute domestic acts of terror for the sake of diverting public attention away from covert activities being perpetrated by the military-industrial-complex. They have been observing Adam ever since his childhood. Based on his experiences, he perfectly meets both the mental and physical criteria to perform this kind of heinous crime on American soil. They periodically need someone who is seemingly average with a high I.Q. and has an axe to grind with a society that has disenfranchised him. Someone that can be that weird kid next door who is devoid of any kind of social life.

“Sorry, Adam. Life is a bitch.”

Abigail rises to her feet and walks toward him while dragging her chair. She places her chair next to his, sits down and lays her head on his shoulder. She uses a tranquil vocal tone to describe what is needed from him upon hearing the words “Prepare” and “Explosive”.

CLAP! Adam opens his eyes and replaces himself standing several feet away of the Rockford and Partners office. He turns around to see that a familiar looking girl is asking people to participate in a survey as they walk past her. He is sure that he has seen her someplace before but just cannot, for the life of him, remember where or when. It is at that instance that he recalls the reason for coming to this mall in the first place. To purchase a book and kill some time. He turns around and makes his way toward the bookstore.