Hi there! You are currently browsing as a guest. Why not create an account? Then you get less ads, can thank creators, post feedback, keep a list of your favourites, and more!
Chapter 53, Part 4
Back to: Chapter 53, Part 3 Next: Chapter 53, Part 5

Gabby's Journal

I went to visit Jack several times, always when Elizabeth was at work. He seemed to be a really interesting person. He worked for the government, making propaganda posters and such. Before, he was a political cartoonist, with a side job doing portraits. I saw some of his older work-- he had managed to keep a few pictures of them-- and they were good, much better than his “forced work,” as he called it.

I was understandably reluctant to tell Elizabeth that Jack and I had become friends. I didn't know why. Given the nature of their relationship, it seemed doubtful that she would be jealous. And yet, somehow, the day after she had me drop off those papers, all I could do was tell her that I had given her “roommate,” as she had called him, the papers.


Elizabeth began talking about Project Lemon a lot more. I didn't understand it all, but she said it had something to do with genetics and enhancing innate abilities. She mentioned a previous study that Project Lemon was going to build upon, but when I looked it up, I couldn't see how it had anything to do with how she explained Project Lemon. The study she had mentioned involved a woman, identified only as D, who, when placed under extreme levels of stress, was able to project her thoughts so as to be heard by others. It all sounded like some kind of science fiction nonsense of the sort imagined by teenagers with no advanced knowledge of science or technology, but Elizabeth reassured me that the study was quite sound.

“If she says so,” I thought.


She suggested some additional reading, books and studies that had been influential. I didn't see what any of this had to do with the study in question, although there seemed to be a subtle theme that recurred throughout the books, which, surprisingly, was not highlighted or noted by Elizabeth. Several of the books suggested a possible time of peace and prosperity, which could potentially come about. An age of Aquarius, a time when Venus is in the blood... Call it what you will. But how?


______________________________

Angela's Journal






The next few pages consisted of a few words and phrases that had been scratched out, as though Angela had started to write, then changed her mind. Mona could only imagine what this could indicate.


___________________________________
Gabby's Journal


I showed some of the studies and books to Jack, and he seemed to understand them better than I did, surprisingly. As he explained it, the studies suggested there might be evidence of a genetic basis for certain “super powers,” so to speak. No, not invisibility or laser vision or the ability to fly, nothing quite so spectacular as that. But something more subtle, a milder form of mind reading or precognition, for lack of better words. A sort of “female intuition,” given that the studies had found females to be more likely to express the traits in question.

As Jack explained it, the idea was fairly straightforward: take people who are likely to carry this ability and enhance it, either through surgery or by forcing them into a high level of stress. The government would then be able to use said people for their own purposes. When he told me this, I became quite worried. Was I, then, to become some lab rat or guinea pig, to be experimented on and then dissected?

I began to panic, terrified for the first time in quite a while. I wasn't ready to die, especially not for the purposes of such a horrible government.

“I won't do it,” I blurted out. “I won't. They can't make me. I don't want to die. I'm not letting them kill me.”

Jack shook his head sadly and replied, “Trust me, Gabby, you're worth more to them alive than dead.”

Somehow, this seemed even worse and more ominous to me, and I began to cry.

And then, that's when it happened.

One of those things that can change your whole life.

Something that changed three lives, at least.


Jack kissed me.

And that's probably where all the problems started.

If it hadn't been for that, then what followed might have gone quite differently.

Click Next: Chapter 53, Part 5 to continue...

 
Back to: Chapter 53, Part 3 Next: Chapter 53, Part 5
Reply With Quote

Click here to view comments, or to add your own.