Purgatech: Aaron's Terrible Realization

Chapter 10

"What?" I said. "No. Absolutely not." Anna was asking for too much. No way I was kissing Jada.

"Hey, what do you mean? I'm not that bad!" Jada was pretending to pout again. She was right though, she wasn't that bad at all. That was the problem. She was way out of my league.

"What I mean is, I just can't. I have a girlfriend, you know."

Jada laughed. "No you don't. She broke up with you."

"Still, its the point of the thing. What kind of person would I be if I just immediately took up with some other woman?"

"What are you talking about? Dude, you aren't taking up with anyone. This is just a simple kiss for a little girl. It's not like she’s expecting a steamy romance scene."

My phone buzzed and I looked down to see Anna's message. "Do it!"

"Just think of it as part of the job if it makes you feel better. Actually, it really is part of the job if you think about it."

I looked between my phone and Jada a few times. I could feel my ears turning red before I even said anything.

"Fine."

Anna's next message said, "Yay!"

Jada smiled. She seemed very pleased with herself. "Good for you, scaredy cat," she said. Without any more hesitation, she took two steps and put her hands on my face. She leaned up and put her lips to mine. It wasn't s****l or anything, but it wasn't the way you would kiss your brother either. Her soft skin brushed against mine as she pulled away and for a moment, I was sorry to feel her go.

I opened my eyes and she was still smiling, but this time deliberately avoiding eye contact. We recovered after a moment and she looked back in what I assumed was Anna's direction.

"Alright Anna, what did you think?" I typed the message for Jada and Anna replied quickly.

"That was great. Now, I want to see you have sex." I read the sentence out loud to Jada with not a little fear in me. To my relief, she burst out laughing.

"What the hell? No! Of course not, Anna. How do you even know about s*x?"

"It was worth a shot," she said.

"We held up our end of the deal. Are you ready to make good on yours?"

"I guess. Go ahead, I'll stand still," Anna said.

"Alright," Jada said, turning to me, "are you ready?"

"Um, not really," I replied. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Sparks didn't tell you how to actually download a ghost?"

I shook my head.

"Great. These people have a pretty lame idea about how to run a company." She took her glasses off and showed them to me. "See this little purple button right here? That's how I do it. I haven't tried yet, of course, but Sparks said I just hold down this button while I have a ghost in site and it will begin the downloading process."

"She didn't say anything to me about it," I said.

"Well pull up that orb thing. Maybe there is something on that screen."

"The orb camera only has the etherchip symbol." I switched back to that function to prove it to her.

To my surprise, there was indeed a new button. There was no way that I hadn't seen it there before. I mean, I don't remember necessarily looking at the left corner, opposite the teardrop shaped button, but sure enough, there was a small purple button in the same hexagonal shape as the one on Jada's glasses.

"I swear, that wasn't there before."

"Whatever" She was grinning.

"No, really, I don't think it was there even five minutes ago."

"Well it's there now," she said, grin fading. "Just try it."

So I did. Jada got her glasses ready and gave us a count down. I held the orb in the center of the box on my camera and waited. When Jada reached one, I pressed the purple button.

A ball of blue light appeared. It was much bigger than the one that Bobby had emerged from, taking up the entirety of the camera screen. I looked up and could actually see the huge globe in front of us. Also, I could see the orb in its center, even without using my phone. Anna was beginning to be drawn through to this reality.

"Are you seeing this?" Jada asked.

"Yes," I said. In truth, I had no idea if Jada and I were seeing the same thing but I assumed that wasn't really what she meant. Whatever her glasses were showing her was probably even more spectacular than the show I was getting.

I glanced by down at the screen and saw that my camera screen had drifted somewhat so that Anna's orb form was no longer fully contained in its center. The box was blinking rapidly. I shifted the phone so that the orb was contained again and the blinking stopped.

The giant sphere of blue light began to shrink. Slowly, it came down to match the size of the Anna's orb, which was still inside of it.

"Wow," Jada said.

The sphere continued to shrink, going even smaller than the orb. When it was the size of a golf ball, there was a small pop and it disappeared altogether.

"Where did it go?" Jada was looking around wildly in search of Anna. "Did it work? Did we get her?"

"I don't know," I said.

She began tapping buttons on her glasses, looking away at nothing. I figured there was some sort of readout on the lens that only she could see.

"Wait, I've got her!" she said.

"What do you mean?"

"There is a menu now that shows my downloads. The only one on the list says 'Anna'."

I looked back to my phone and back out of the orb camera. There was now a third menu option: 'View Downloads'. When I tapped to open that feature, I too had an entry that read 'Anna'. Beside it was a time signature for a few minutes before and half of blue orb.

"Do you have half of an orb, too?" I asked.

"Yeah. And the time. Do you think that we should try and bring her through?"

I really wanted to. I was dying to actually see Anna, to know what she looked like and talk to her in person. But for some reason, I didn't feel like we should.

"Let's wait," I said.

"Wait for what?"

"I don't know. Turner said to catch her. He didn't say anything about bringing her through yet. Maybe there are more steps. You know, something else to the process."

"Whatever," she said. "You're just scared. Watch this."

"Jada..."

But it was too late, she had her finger poised over a button on the side of her goggles. She took a deep breath. After holding it for a couple of seconds, she tapped the button.

Nothing happened.

"What the hell?" she said. I let out a breath that I hadn't realized I'd been holding.

"Nothing happened? Do you see anything?"

"Nothing at all. Anna's name and the half circle flashed a couple of times but that was it." She was very disappointed. I didn't like the way it made her voice sound. Of course, I felt like I had to fix it for her.

"Hang on, let me try." I tapped Anna's name in my phone. It blinked several times, but other than that, nothing happened.

"Great," Jada said. "Something else confusing. Why does nothing around here work like you think it should?"

"Maybe they have it set up so that we could only download the ghost, not bring her through. You know, like to make sure that we didn't do anything wrong the first time we tried."

"But they didn't even supervise us hunting. They can't care too much about what we do or how."

"I don't know Jada, but I'm sure there is a reasonable explanation."

Before now, it seemed like Jada mostly rolled with the punches. She took the news about the microphone way better than I did. For some reason though, she was really upset about not being able to see Anna.

Jada had her arms crossed and she was staring up into the canopy of the tree.

"Are you okay?" I asked.

"Yeah. Fine. Let's go tell them we did what they wanted." She stormed off in the direction of the house without another word.

Jada threw open the backdoor and marched into the kitchen. I followed quickly after her. She made her way across the room, toward the dining area, but stopped dead when we both heard the sound of something smashing against a wall. We looked at each other and then to the door that opened into Spark's computer room.

The sound came again and there was no mistaking where it was coming from. Jada started to open her mouth. I put my finger up to my lips. She closed her mouth again and c****d her head to the side, asking what was wrong. Then a voice came through the door.

"Patient? I am Patient. I have been very tolerant thus far."

"Just awhile longer, now." This was a voice we knew well. It was Turner.

"I can't promise how much longer my tolerance is going to hold out, young man," said the stranger. Young man? Turner wasn't young. Turner was at least as old as my dad.

"I'm sorry, Slade. The software isn't quite right." Jada looked at me, eyebrows wrinkled.

"Don't speak to me about these things. I've told you, I have no interest in your witchcraft." This Slade character seemed like quite a strange guy. Referring to software as witchcraft? Even the oldest people I knew had embraced technology a little better than that.

"All I'm saying is that we need more time. But the ones we have this time, I think they really might be the ones," said Turner.

"You've said that before. I do not like repetition. I've told you time and time again." He laughed a little, I guess at his own joke. There wasn't a bit of warmth in it. It was very strange to listen to someone speaking down to Turner so directly. He seemed like such an intimidating guy.

"The other's failed because the program was not ready. We feel like we have worked out all of the bugs this time. If we get the kids fully onboard with the program, we should be able to proceed with the entire plan."

"And these kids, why do you think that they will work?" Slade asked.

"The are bright. The girl, in particular. You should have seen her test scores." Jada smirked a little at me.

"And the boy," said Turner. "He is close to your side. He wasn't even in the house a full twenty four hours when she reached out to him."

"Who?"

"Who do you think?"

"No," his voice was suddenly full of rage. "Tell me that woman is not up to it again. God, what a willful creature."

"Yes, Mary. We had to move him from her room before..."

There was a sudden voice in the kitchen, very low and coming from behind us. "If you value your life, you will not scream."

My heart sunk in my chest. Jada and I both turned around, keeping our mouths shut, and saw Sparks standing in the dining room with her arms folded across her chest. I couldn't read the look on her face.

She waved her hand, motioning for us to follow her. We did, having no other choice. She marched us into the living room and pointed to the couch. After we sat down, she reached under the lampshade and pulled out a small box that matched the one attached to the dresser in our bunkroom. She flipped the switch off on the light died.

"Listen to me and listen good. I'm only going to say this once and we are never going to speak about it again. Forget anything you think you just heard. Forget the man that you think you heard talking to Turner. Believe me when I say that speaking about either of those things will result in your deaths. Do you understand?"

We both nodded. My heart was pounding in my chest.

Sparks gave us a hard look and then slowly replaced the black box in its hiding place. I heard the click as she switched it back on. Then she straightened up and her face transformed to hold a bright smile.

"You guys must be starving. Let's grab some food. You have to tell me all about your first hunt!"