Thank you to /u/Nemin32 for the prompt!
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Thank you for reading! Parts 1-4 can be read together here.
Part 3
Greg wanted to run, but he noticed the door wasn't locked from the inside. The nurse must have locked it when they entered. Dr. Frunkensteen gestured his hand towards the chair.
“Listen, I'm only going to sit if you give me some answers,” Greg said. The doctor nodded moving towards the chair.
“First, why is this door locked?” Greg asked.
“Procedure is easy. Mhmm, but,” the doctor paused. “After, some try to leave when they aren't ready. They endanger themselves, yes, yes.” Greg didn't enjoy the doctor’s answer, but he couldn't think of a follow-up question. Still, Greg did not move.
“What was the point of that form if you aren't even looking at it?” he continued.
“Oh, requirements. Red tape everywhere, not just city hall,” smiled the doctor. He was dusting the chair and loosening the straps.
“And why are there straps?” asked Greg.
“Why? Have you any idea of how precise the eye is? One millimeter and your whole perception of the world can change. This ensures you stay put and all work is accurate,” the doctor answered. “Now come, yes. We will get you 20/20 vision for the rest of your life. Everything will become clear.”
Greg wasn't convinced. His co-workers may have survived this thing, but to Greg, it looked like the machine would blow his head off.
A phone rang behind the doctor. He excused himself and went through a white wooden door at the back of the room. It was probably an original door from when this place was an apartment and not a clinic. Greg briskly stepped across the room to listen through the door, careful not to trip on any of the chipped tiles.
He couldn't make out the first parts of the conversation. Afterwards, he heard the words, “soul”, “transport”, “store” and “procedure”. The last part of this conversation he heard clearly.
“Yes, tomorrow we’ll have a full batch of souls, yes. Just one more today and the tank is full,” said the doctors. After a few more “yes’s”, a hang-up tone sounded and a chair was pushed against the floor. Greg quickly skipped into the clinic chair and tried to relax.
The doctor came through the door and walked towards a sink between two cabinets ahead of Greg. He dried his hands and sunk them into a pair of gloves.
“Ready?” he smiled.
Greg hesitated. “How exactly does this machine work?” he asked.
“Oh, it simple. Machine extracts eye and gives new eye,” giggled the doctor. “And everything becomes clear.”
“Seems kind of simple.”
“Sometimes knowing more or less won't change the outcome,” replied the doctor, walking over to Greg. “My nurse wanted to know more too, but after the procedure, she realized what was important. And more productive.” A pan of scalpels lay between the doctor and Greg.
“And what are those for?” Greg asked.
“That?” the doctor picked up one of the scalpels. “Eyes aren't transplanting without cutting some ties. You don't change a tire by putting a new one on top, now do you?”
Dr. Frunkensteen placed the scalpel down and reached for the leather scraps at the base of the chair. Greg knew if he was strapped in, he'd be powerless. When the doctor brought up the first strap, Greg flailed his arms up into the air.
“Nope, I'm fine, thank you!” he said. “I have a fear of being bound. It causes me to…”
“To what?” asked the doctor, with a daring smile.
“Seizure,” said Greg.
“Seizure?” Greg thought. “The best you could come up with is seizure?”
“All the more reason to strap you in quickly then,” laughed the doctor, pulling the strap over Greg. Before he could clip it in, Greg pushed him off and grabbed a scalpel.
“Shit,” thought Greg. “That escalated quickly.”
The doctor stepped back and grabbed a scalpel as he did.
He let out a nervous giggle. “Sir, if you do not stop, I will have to charge you with deadly intent. Now, put it down.”
Greg realized this was the only way he would be getting and answers. He slowly crept up from the chair, holding the scalpel out in defense.
“Listen, I need some answers and you're going to give them to me,” Greg said. “I don’t know what you're doing here, but everyone I know that's come here has changed. Eye transplants have been around for years, this is something different. What are you doing differently?”
“We're guaranteeing lifetime change from a one-time procedure. No need for follow-ups in the future, unlike those other primitive clinics.” The doctor laughed, lowering his scalpel. “Please sit, yes, sit down and we can begin your new life.”
“New life?” Greg questioned. “What about the phone call? You were talking about souls and a batch of them or something.”
The doctor’s eyes went wide. He knew Greg knew too much. He ran for the door to the back room. Greg raced after him. As the doctor reached for the handle, Greg pushed him up against the door. The doctor let out a painful gasp.
“Listen, you're going to answer my questions, okay? What is going here?” Greg demanded. The doctor let out another groan and Greg let go.
The doctor turns around. His coat had a patch of red growing in his abdomen and a silver piece of metal stuck into his flesh.
“Shit. Shit. Shit,” muttered Greg, dropping his scalpel. His hands began to shake. The doctor smiled.
“You’ve done yourself in now,” the doctor laughed. “Silly man. You've no idea of anything.”
“What is it you're doing? What happens with the eye transplants? Why are all my co-workers different now?” Greg asked feverishly. His anger was getting the best of him. Angry that things never worked out as he planned. Anger that he never seemed to find the right answers. He hated what he had done and he channeled that hate towards the doctor.
“My, my, so many questions. And…” the doctor paused to look at his wound. “And so very little time. Heh, yes. Very little.”
“Why are you doing this? Why did you do this?!” Greg yelled, pacing back and forth in front the doctor. Trails of red began to spread along the tile floor.
“I did this? Why did I this? My, my. You truly know nothing,” the doctor tried to laugh, but it had become too painful. “As if I was the mastermind. Hmph. No, no. I was going to be great, though. And now that's gone. Gone, gone away.”
The doctor’s face turned crude and evil. His hand reached towards the scalpel and in one motion he removed it from his abdomen and lunged towards Greg. Greg took a step back and the doctor’s body landed flat against the tile. Dr. Frunkensteen was dead.
Part 4
Greg paced around the room.
“What have I done?” he asked himself repeatedly. “This is bad, this is worse than bad. This is a disaster. This is a catastrophe.”
He gently tried to open the steel door. It was still locked. The doctor’s body lay in front of the other door. Greg decided to try and open it.
Begrudgingly, he pressed his foot against the doctor to slide the body over while opening the door. He tried not to touch any blood, but it was inevitable. A streak of blood smeared across the tile. Greg shuttered.
When he opened the door he saw a desk with a small lamp and a computer with a phone beside the keyboard. The lamp lit the area surrounding the desk, but there was also an illumination coming from the far end of the room. As Greg peered his head further in he saw where the light was coming from.
A large tank took up the entire width of the far wall. Within the tank swarmed small wisps of light, no bigger than a baseball. At first, Greg thought they may be jellyfish, but as he approached it became clear that they were unlike anything he had ever seen.
The wisps danced and circled around each other, though, they seemed to never touch. Greg looked for signs on the tank, but there was nothing posted on the glass surface. He tapped the glass and the wisps tried to clump together where Greg was tapping, taking turns to get closer. The little bit of light shone softly on Greg’s hand.
He stepped back and walked towards the computer. He saw at the other end of the room a small bed and refrigerator rested. The computer was sleeping until Greg pressed “ESC" and it awoke. The desktop screen had numerous Notepad files all dated within the last week on the left side of the screen. He sat down and clicked on “02_24_16”, which was last Wednesday.
376/688 COMPLETED.
JEAN RYSER_COMPLETE
PATRICK NOX_COMPLETE
FIONA SUMMER_COMPLETE
And the list went on. Greg was about to close it when he saw:
HOWARD CLUVETS_COMPLETE
Greg's pupils dilated and his hands began to sweat. “Howie…” he whispered. After a moment he noticed a file for today. Greg clicked on it.
687/688 COMPLETED
GREG TRUDER_PENDING
“Holy shit,” Greg whispered.
He leaned back in the chair and took a deep breath. His eyes wandered around the screen. In the top right corner, there were two .exe files, one labeled, “Alarm(EMERGENCY).exe” and the other “Nurse.exe”. At the bottom right corner, another Notepad filed rested, this one named, “Setup”. Greg clicked on it. The file opened displaying:
Instructions:
The SoulEx Procedure follows an easy 3 step process.
Step 1:
Welcome!: Yes, welcome your clients. Make them feel safe and at home. 20/20 vision for free?! How could this possibly go wrong? As long as they feel comfortable, your work will be incredibly easy. Answer questions, initiate conventional small talk, ask them about their ambitions in life (the more you ask about them, the more they can talk about themselves and the more they talk about themselves, the more they will think you care).
Step 2:
Restraint: SoulEx is not a violent experience, but may cause violent reactions as the body reworks its neural networks to accommodate its soulless shell. Therefore, it is imperative that you restrain your clients with our quality leather straps. These have a tensile strength 100 MPa (Wow!), so don’t fear if your clients get violent, they aren’t going anywhere.
Step 3:
Extraction: Though we advertise ourselves as an eye transplanter, we do not transplant the eye (Do not remove any client’s eyes!). In essence, because we are removing something and replacing it and it involves the eye, we are an eye transplanter. In this process, the SoulEx will remove the energy, LIFE, from the individual. LIFE is a new electromagnetic energy we discovered in our lab and that our SoulEx machine can directly manipulate. By extracting LIFE out of the individual, they are now open to being fed our laboratory-grade LIFE energy, which is tweaked to increase productivity by removing any distracting instincts and intrusive thoughts. Through our rigorous research, the eye was found to be the gateway to an individual’s LIFE energy, therefore, we target the eye to extract and replace their LIFE energy with ours. When the SoulEx machine sounds three equal tones, the process is complete. Clients will take a minimum of 10 minutes to fully recover. (Do not alert your nurse to unlock the door until the 10 minutes is over!) When the patient appears to have recovered, send for the nurse and you will never hear from your client again. That is our SoulEx guarantee!
When the Soulrage Tank (storage tank) is full, give us a call at 555-656-5655. You will be required to give your personal identification number, which you will have to memorize. (DO NOT KEEP NUMBER IN PERSONAL POSSESSION!!!) We will come next day to pick them up and you will receive your payment instantly.
Thank you for your investment in SoulEx Co. We will continue to build a better tomorrow, today!
Greg kept reading through the file, which detailed how to operate the SoulEx machine, calibrations and optimal parameters for soul storage. When he was finished, his gut felt twisted and his mind was frightened.
He wasn't sure what answers he would find when he started his journey for the truth, but now his questions led him to a machine that replaces people's souls with artificial ones. And worst of all, he was now a murderer, though accidental, the doctor would not be dead had Greg ignored the questions in his head. A knocking came from the other room—someone was trying to get in through the steel door. Greg cautiously went into the room as the pounding intensified.
“If someone's in there, open up!” it was a man's voice, loud and commanding.
“Police?” Greg thought. He began to panic, looking back at the dead doctor’s body. There was too much blood to clean, there was not enough space to hide it and Greg was the only person that could have done it. The pounding continued.
“Joyce, get the hammer,” Greg heard the man say.
“Maybe if I cooperate,” thought Greg, “they won’t charge me. Technically, my fingerprints aren’t on the weapon.” The pounding seized, which likely meant the man was waiting for the hammer. Greg walked towards the door.
“It locks from your side,” Greg yelled through the door. He was initially met with silence and then there was a click. The door opened and a man in a black suit, bald head, and Herculean musculature walked in.
“Fabio Contelli, FBI,” he said and glanced past Greg, seeing the doctor’s body. He looked back at Greg, stern and expressionless.
“You’re going to have to come with us.”
Submitted December 21, 2016 at 11:14PM by It_s_pronounced_gif http://ift.tt/2i1tRq6 WritingPrompts
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