Purgatech: Aaron's Terrible Realization

Chapter 5

I gapped at the door. There was no way that it had come open on its own. I was afraid to even get out of bed, let alone go check it out.

A loud knock sounded out of nowhere and I dove under the covers. The dream was coming through into reality. I tried to lie still, hoping that the screaming wouldn't begin.

"Are you still asleep?" said a muffled voice.

I almost laughed. Omri. He was knocking on the door.

"I'm up, hang on a second." I grabbed a shirt and pulled it on. Making my way to the door, I made sure to give the closet a wide berth. The strip of black showing through the cracked door seemed menacing.

I pulled the door to the hall open and Omri walked in with a tray of basic breakfast food. "Here you go man, grub down. You'll need the energy." He turned and walked out.

As munched on corn flakes and a flavorless pastry, I began to get excited. Sure, the closet door was creepy as hell but again, I was in a haunted house. Things were bound to get stranger as time went on. I had no idea what Turner had in store for me but it was bound to be out of this world (no pun intended).

After finishing up breakfast and a quick shower, I grabbed the tray and carried it downstairs with me. I found Turner in the sitting room, right were he'd been the night before. He looked up from his tablet.

"Good morning, Aaron. Did you sleep well?"

"Great," I lied.

"Glad to here it." He turned and yelled through a doorway in the far side of the room. "Omri!" The young man popped his head around the corner.

"Yes, Mr. Turner?"

"Why is Aaron holding his breakfast tray?"

"Um, I'm not sure what you..."

"What is his job?" Turner seemed very tense.

"Uh, he's a tester, right?"

"Yes, you simple boy, he is a tester. That means that he is not a housekeeper, doesn't it?"

Omri looked away from his boss. "Yes, sir."

"And who, Omri, is our housekeeper?"

"I guess I am."

"That's right, you are. Because you couldn't find another job, could you?"

"No, sir."

"No. Not with that unfortunate little condition of yours." Omri was fidgeting with his hands and shuffling his feet.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Turner."

"Good. I'm glad to here that. However, rather than your apology, I would prefer an employee who fulfills his duties. Do you think you can handle that?" Turner’s face wore an inquisitive look.

"Yes, sir."

"Excellent, now take that try from our new friend and get on with your work. From here out, you do the cleaning. Not Aaron."

"Yes, sir." Omri hung his head and crossed the room to take the tray from me. I tried to catch his eye so I could try and apologize for getting him in trouble but he didn’t look up. I felt terrible but it was the first day of my new job and I would have to wait for another time to make amends. Turner did not seem interested in such things.

When Omri had disappeared toward the dining room, Turner clapped his hands together and rose to his feet. "Well," he said, "with that bit of business behind us, let's move on, shall we?" He walked past me without waiting for an answer.

I moved quickly to keep up with his long stride as we passed through the dining room. I couldn't see much as we rushed past but there were curio cabinets lining the walls and a massive dining set in the middle of the room. It was beautiful but poorly maintained, scuffed and dented from years of use. Two oil paintings glared from opposite walls but I didn't have time to study them.

Turner led me through a door on the other side of the dining room. I was starting to get the impression that if all of the doors in the house were open, I could run in a continuous lap for miles. The place was huge and every room had multiple exits.

I found myself passing quickly through a kitchen. It wasn't quite as dated as the other rooms I'd seen and I assumed that it had been renovated at some point. Maybe the forties, judging by the garish wallpaper.

Turner walked to yet another door on the far side of the kitchen. This one was shut. He gave it a soft knock and whispered something I couldn't here. Moments later, he pulled out a key and unlocked the door.

"Come, Aaron. Let me introduce you to Simone."

I heard a voice from within the room. "Sparks! I told you, man, I go by Sparks."

"Yes, well, I prefer the name your parents gave you, Simone." Turner motioned me over. "Meet Aaron, he is our first official tester."

The room was very dim, lit by the glow of computer monitors. A short woman with red hair came emerged from the gloom. She took off her glasses and rubbed her eyes before reaching out to shake my hand.

"Nice to meet you, Aaron."

"You too," I said, but she'd already withdrawn into her lair.

Tuner turned to me with a smirk on his face. "I'm sorry, she's not the most social, prefers her alone time. But she's the best techie we've ever had so we indulge her little idiosyncrasies."

I laughed. "Yeah, we had some folks like that at the pizza restaurant. This one guy, Terri, he wouldn't make eye contact with any customer ever but holy crap, could he..."

"That's nice, Aaron. Go ahead in and get ready for your tech briefing. Pay attention. You'll need the information when the hunting begins." He turned around and walked away without another word.

I took a deep breath and swallowed my annoyance.

"Let's go," came Sparks' voice from in the room. "I don't have all day."

Walking into the room was like walking into a NASA control deck with its overhead lights turned off. Not that I've ever walked into a NASA control deck with the lights off, but you get the idea. Everywhere I turned there was something electronic. Heaps of metal and wires were strewn about the floor.

There were at least fifteen monitors with all sorts of displays. Some showed normal desktops that you would see on any Windows computer. Others showed bright green strings of binary, bringing the Matrix to mind.

"Are you going to offer me two pills?" I asked. Sparks looked up at me from the keyboard she was clattering away on.

"What?"

"You know," I motioning to the green digits on the screen next to me. "Like from the Matrix?" She looked confused.

"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.

"That movie with the people jumping around on buildings and shooting each other in slow motion."

She only blinked at me. "I don't watch movies."

"Oh. Alright then. Where should I sit?"

"Don't care. Make sure you can see the screen."

"Which screen?" I asked, looking around at the sea of monitors all around me.

Rather than answer, Sparks tapped a key and sat back. A projector I hadn't noticed illuminated a huge part of the wall while it warmed up.

I found a swivel chair next to a computer showing only snow. Sparks looked over her shoulder.

"Don't let that monitor surprise you."

I opened my mouth to ask what she meant but almost jumped out of my skin as the snow suddenly assumed the shape of a screaming face. It looked like it was jumping out at me. I fell over backward, out of my chair.

Sparks laughed and walked over to offer me a hand up. "Sorry, man. It does that. My name is Sparks. Sorry I was a little rude a minute. Turner makes me that way. I don't have much patience for his pompous ass."

I laughed as well as I could, willing my heartbeat to slow back down to a normal pace. "What's the deal with this monitor?"

"Something new I'm working on. Couldn't really explain it until you get the briefing and take a look at my toys." I saw excitement flash in her eyes. She was like a cute little mad scientist.

The projector had warmed up all the way and I saw the same screen that Turner had shown me on his tablet the night before. Purgatech was still across the top in blue. Below it were some different options for navigating the site.

"Before we really take a look at anything on the site, I guess we need to give you a basic idea of how this whole thing works." I nodded my head, eager to understand the strange things I'd been seeing.

"Last night, you met Billy. He was one of the first ghosts we captured. Now, captured isn't a great word to use because we don't actually have him contained. A better term would be downloaded." Already, I was confused.

"You downloaded a ghost?" I asked. "From where?"

"You'll probably need to let me finish before you ask questions. I might clear some things up as we go along."

"Fair enough."

"So, we have created a computer program that is able to access the 'other side'. We aren't one hundred percent sure how it works but we know that there is another version of reality that is very close to our own. It is closer in some places than in others. We aren't necessarily in this house because it is 'haunted'. That's more of a side effect. We used our program to determine that the border between our reality and theirs is especially thin here. We are very close to ghosts, even as we sit in this room. Sometimes they can even make themselves known without the help of technology."

"Tell me about it," I said. Sparks laughed and went on.

"Basically the computer program is able to reach out to the other side and allow ghosts to communicate with us, even travel through after the proper steps have been taken.

"Imagine that you are in a prison cell, separated from the next guy by a concrete wall. You might take a spoon or something and begin to dig into that concrete and eventually make a hole just large enough so you and your neighbor could talk to each other. The Purgatech program is the spoon. Thankfully it works much more quickly.

"So when you activate certain parts of the program, a communication line is opened between our reality and theirs. Sometimes they don't want to talk, but most often, someone will appear. If you decide to bring them in, you will widen the hole between realities enough to allow them access. This is the part we call downloading. The portal that you create is unique to you and the ghost you are communicating with. If I stole your phone or tablet and tried to access the ghosts that you have downloaded, it wouldn't work.

"There is another method of locating ghosts that we call hunting. This one involves using our special equipment to actually view the ghosts, even before they have been downloaded. It is especially handy if you have a trickster around that doesn't care to talk. You can download it anyway and try and negotiate a little peace. That's how we got Billy. Little bastard kept throwing things around the house. Hit me in the head with a book once and that was it. I tracked him down and convinced him to come to his senses."

"You must have caught up with him in the closet upstairs," I said. "He's been giving me a hard time since I got here."

Sparks frowned. "No, he was under the oak tree in the backyard. Are you talking about the closet in the bunk room?"

"Yeah, there has been all kinds of banging from inside. I had a dream last night that really freaked me out."

Sparks' jaw tightened. "You heard something hitting the door?" she asked. "But nothing else strange, other than the dream?"

"Well, it was weird, I tried the door last night when I was settling in but it was locked up tight. This morning though, it was open just a bit."

"Excuse me for a moment." Sparks pulled a phone from her pocket and retreated to a dark corner of the room. I heard whispering but couldn't really make out the words. Moments later, she was back.

"Everything okay?" I asked.

"Oh yeah, everything is fine."

"You sure? You seem a little high strung."

"I'm sure, Aaron. But, just so you know, you're going to be changing rooms for the remainder of your time with us."