Chapter 2: Building Tension
Nico jumped back up from his desk, rubbing his hands together excitedly. "Did you know that in the 80's and 90's, the government was working on a number of mind control projects? There were a few big ones, like MKUltra and Project Monarch. It's all declassified now, but the tech they were playing with... it's insane. And by that, I mean it was crazy amd never gonna work. But they used things like LSD to open the mind of their subjects to prepare it for reprogramming."
Jaxon laughed at Vorcka's skeptical look. "Hey, man. He isn't lying. You can look it up l. It's pretty fun stuff."
"I know about MKUltra, I'm just worried about where you guys think this conversation is going."
"Hey," Nico said, looking offended. "If you don't want my help, that's fine, but let me finish talking first. Now as I was saying, they were never gonna crack it. Not in the 80's and 90's. The complex calculations and precise colors necessary to crack that nut just weren't possible back then." Nico reached into his pocket, pulling out a slim usb drive.
"Nowadays, though." Nico chuckled. 'Well, let's just say that I know for certain that a certain someone has the very best computer, with way more power than anything she will ever use it for. And she also just recently insisted on an upgraded, super spiffy new monitor capable of producing highly detailed, wide ranges of colors. If someone were to get this thumb drive inserted into her PC...well, let's just say we might be able to test my theory. No one else has really been volunteering, as you might imagine. What do you think, boy?" He asked, holding out the drive.
Vorcka looked at the drive skeptically. "You want me to further jeopardize my job by convincing my boss to look at what's on that thumb drive. And what's the worse case scenario, besides me getting fired."
"Well, best worse case scenario, it flashes a bunch of lights and nothing happens, you tell Yezbit you gave her the wrong thumb drive."
"And worse worse case scenario?" Vorcka asked through narrowed eyes.
Nico chuckled. "Worse worse case scenario, you destroy your bosses brain and leave her a vegetable. No one ever learns what happened, and your problem is still solved. But don't worry, your buddy here said he's "pretty sure" that won't happen."
"Hey," Jaxon yelled. "You swore you'd leave my connection out of this. This is all on you. You and whoever finally agrees to test out your crazy program."
"Yeah," Vorcka said, backing up towards the door. "I don't think I'm the guinea pig you are looking for. I was supposed to be back five minutes ago."
"Here ya go." Nico said, tossing him the thumb drive. "Just hold on to it in case you change your mind. I've got more. Just remember, her mental defenses have to be down before you try to use it on her. You could drug her, or just make sure she's tired or really stressed out. The government wasn't wrong when they thought the first step was acid."
Vorcka pocketed the drive, and quickly left the IT department to the sounds of more things being thrown. For all his complaints, Jaxon really did seem to enjoy the older man's company. As for their solution, we'll, Vorcka tried to forget about the drive as he walked back to his desk. The idea was tempting, but he didn't want to be a guinea pig, especially with such a wild idea. Besides, with those two, chances were good he'd connect the drive and it would pop up photos of dancing cats in pajamas.
Vorcka sat down and got to work on the mountain of assignments unfairly assigned to him. Complaints would do no good, and besides, he'd always been taught to work hard. With a little effort, he'd have it all caught up by the end of the weekend. Even Yezbit couldn't find this much work to give him every week. Eventually someone would have to realize that Vorcka was the only one doing any actual work. Unless Yezbit managed to fire him first, then fix the work load after.
As he began to dig into the work, he glanced over at Yezbit's office. Inside, he saw Yezbit speaking to a blonde haired woman he didn't recognize. She could be someone fro. This office, but by the way Yezbit was smiling, he suspected it was the friend. She was attractive, tall and slender with round features and a large, natural smile. Even from here, Vorcka could sense that she was a genuinely nice person. No wonder Yezbit wanted her near. It must help with offsetting her own sphere of negativity.
An hour and a half later, he finally saw the office door open, and out walked the pretty blonde. Yezbit seemed sad to see her friend leaving, but as the door closed behind her, Vorcka was surprised to see her glance across the workspace, then zero in on him.
Vorcka lowered his head, trying not to draw attention to himself, but a few moments later, he sensed her, standing over his shoulder. Vorcka tried to ignore her, but after several minutes of feeling her loom, she sighed loudly, and he finally turned to look up at her.
Unsure what he was about to experience, Vorcka stuck with a neutral tone as he looked at her and said "hello? How can I help you?"
The attractive blonde shoved her hand in his face and, with all the bubbliness of a child, said "hello. I'm Emika. A friend of Yezbit." She pauses a second while he ignored her proffered hand. "I've heard about you. Vorcka." She stretched out the first syllable.
"All good things, I'm sure." He mumbled, turning back to his desk, leaving her hand unshaken. "Well, as you can see, I'm busy."
The smile finally faded to a sardonic grin. "I'm sorry. I've heard what she's been doing to you. She's never handled not getting her way very well. There was this one time in college. Well, let's just say at least two people ended up at the hospital that night." Emika sat against the desk behind her.
After a long pause, Vorcka finally swiveled to look at her. "So she admitted to you that she's making my life a nightmare? I bet that conversation wasn't secretly being shared with her boss."
Emika winced softly. "Incriminating conversations while on speakerphone worked really well for her once in college, too. She really doesn't ever change." She sighed, thinking for a moment. "Look. I just spoke with her, and I told her I got another job offer. I told her to leave you alone. Well, I told her that months ago, back when she first told me what she was doing. I never even wanted this job. It didn't feel right. I told her that, but Yezbit is just who she is. Maybe she thought she was helping me out, or maybe she actually wanted me around, but either way, I'm happy with the job I found."
Emika looked down at her hands embarrassed. "I just had this conversation with Yezbit, so maybe it will help. But honestly, she has never been very good at admitting she was wrong about anything." Emika looked up at him again. "Well, that's all I wanted to say. Good luck. She's prickly, but if you stick with it, eventually, she'll come around." She flashed Vorcka one more bright smile, then she dashed away, leaving before he could respond to anything she'd said.
Vorcka just stared, stunned. That was not how he'd expected that to go. She was incredibly upbeat, and he was positive now that his suffering was all solely Yezbit's doing. But maybe now it would finally all stop.
He still intended to work through the weekend and finish all of his assignments. If he got everything done, and proved he was reliable, Yezbit wouldn't have to admit she'd overworked him out of spite and she would accept the olive branch, allowing them to start over on Monday.
For the next few hours, he continued to toil away. At the end of the day, he got an email from IT. It just read "you need to establish dominance first thing, she can only have one master. when you try it out, here's a list of words that should provide interesting results. Please take notes." What followed was a list of nearly 50 single word prompts. It was easy to guess what some of the words were meant to do, such as sleep or freeze, but some of the other words, such as gift and bitch, were a little less obvious. The one at the bottom of the list that made him most concerned, though, was reset. He hoped it just undid the programming, but it had much darker connotations. He shuddered, then closed the email. He wasn't going to use the program. By Monday, hopefully there wouldn't be a need to do so anyways.
He looked at the clock. Nearly everyone else was gone, so he'd expected it to be late, but when he saw that it was 6:30, it reminded him that he'd told Yezbit he would show her some progress by the end of the day, he panicked.
Looking around, he saw that there was still a light on in Yezbit's office. She always worked late, so it was good to see she hadn't made an exception today. He saved everything to a flash drive and headed to Yezbit's office. He kept the flash drive in the palm of his hands. He had no intention of getting it confused with the one in his pocket Nico had given him. He stopped in front of Yezbit's door and took a deep breath. He knocked on the door.
"Come in," he heard Yezbit call from the other side of the door.