Disclaimer: (God I'm sick of these!) Yeah, yeah. You all know by now that
I borrow characters and return them slightly the worse for wear. The ideas are
all mine, etc.
Title - Total Recall
Author - KB
E-mail address - gekbruce@melbpc.org.au
Rating - G
Category - Adventure
Series/Sequel - Part 1 of Total Recall
Spoilers - Maybe some. What do you think?
Summary - There's a new player in the game...(yes, I know it's
vague but any more would be telling you too much)
"Total Recall"
By KB
“And this is Jennifer. She’s our resident computer
expert.”
Jarod looked into eyes that were cool but not unfriendly. He
shook her hand and, led by his new manager, moved on. The girl
watched as they left the room and then, by hitting a few keys,
was able to use the security camera in the hallway to view their
progress. She smiled slightly before opening up the file she had
been using. Then, as the thought floated into her head, she
remembered where she had heard the name before. Of course. Jarod.
The ‘Good Samaritan’ that her friend had been talking
about last weekend had had that name. She would have to ask him
about it.
***
Jarod dropped an armful of papers onto Jennifer’s desk
and she looked up at him with a smile.
“Wait, don’t tell me. ASAP, right?” He grinned,
revealing a dimple in both cheeks and shiny, white teeth.
“Of course. Hey, it’s not as though you’ve got
anything else to do.” He turned to leave and had just opened
the door when she spoke again
“So, Jarod, I hear you like Albany.” He turned and
looked at her but her eyes had never left the screen.
“What makes you think I was in Oregon?”
“Oh, a little bird told me.” She smiled and watched him
leave the room and then, with a sigh, she began to look through
the papers he had left behind.
***
Jarod recalled the conversation as he sat in front of his
computer and he again winced inwardly. He knew that she would
immediately pick up on his slip about Oregon and he wondered if
she would ask him or just wait for him to make another mistake
like that one. She had the ability to make people say more than
they realised. He knew he had heard someone say something about
it earlier that day.
“Oh, it’s incredible. She just asks a question and,
before you know it, you’re spilling your guts.”
“You’re…doing what?”
“Spilling your guts. You know, telling her anything.
It’s just amazing. Even the boss can’t keep anything
from her. But getting anything out of her that she doesn’t
want you to know is like trying to break into an ATM with a
chopstick.”
“Huh?”
“Never mind. It’s hard, that’s all.”
He turned back to his computer and tried again to work out the
password which would allow him access to the Centre’s
computer mainframe and shook his head in frustration as he was
rejected again. Then he sealed an envelope and stuck on a stamp.
***
Jennifer went in Jarod’s empty office and dropped the papers onto his desk. Scanning the empty shelves and clear desktop, she wondered why he had no pictures or personal knick-knacks which most people left in their office, even if they were only temporary staff. There were plenty of secrets about Jarod to be discovered, she was sure.
***
Miss Parker picked up a book from her desk and threw it at the
door as the new sweeper fled. Grimly smiling, she listened to him
run down the corridor and she allowed herself a moment to enjoy
the power-rush. The smile fled from her face as Broots entered
the office.
“And what do you want?”
“Lyle says to tell you that there’s been a sighting of
Jarod in Albany.”
“Which one?”
“He doesn’t know. There was a paper delivered here with
a picture of Jarod on the front page. It was about him saving
some woman from being thrown out of her house. The paper was
called the Albany Express.”
“Well get on to it, Broots. We don’t have all
day.”
“Yes, Miss Parker.” He shuffled back out of the office
and Miss Parker turned in her chair and looked out of the window
with unseeing eyes.
***
Jarod looked down in amazement at the papers on his desk. By
his estimation, it should have taken at least three days to
finish all of the work that he had asked Jennifer to do and yet
here it was, the next morning, done.
“Coming for lunch?” He turned and looked at her, not
comprehending.
“How did…you’ve finished all this work
already?”
“Of course, Jarod. That’s easy stuff. It doesn’t
take long.”
“I’m stunned.”
“Obviously. Now are you coming or not?”
***
Jennifer was kneeling in front of her fireplace, about to
strike the match she held in her hand, when she heard a knock on
the door. Cursing under her breath and looking incredulously at
her watch, she moved through the kitchen and flung open the door.
Jarod, from the bottom step, grinned up at her.
“Hi. You left this in my office this afternoon and I thought
you might want it.” He opened his hand to reveal her keys
and Jennifer grinned and sighed with relief.
“Oh thank goodness! I thought I’d lost them for good
and I had to get a taxi back here to get my spare set so that I
could bring my car home. Do you want to come in?”
She moved aside as he entered the house before going across and
lighting the fire. After turning down the volume on the
television, she indicated one of the seats.
“Do you want something to drink?”
“Sure. What do you have?”
“Pretty much everything. My friends have a wide variety of
tastes.”
“Dr Pepper?”
“Tons of the stuff! Here, catch.” She passed over a can
and an empty glass and then, with her own drink in easy reach,
took one of the other chairs.
“How long have you been working there?”
“About two years. I like the work and the people are
friendly.”
“But don’t you get bored? I mean, if you find all the
stuff as easy as what I gave you then you must have a lot of
spare time.”
“Of course, but I spend a lot of time designing computer
packages to provide greater security or to enhance a
company’s image. The boss doesn’t mind as long as I
finish everything else first. I also have a few web-sites that I
work on. Other than that…” she laughed, miming the idea
of sleeping, and Jarod laughed with her.
“How about you, Jarod? Have you always been involved with
architecture?”
He was slow to respond, not seeing the light in Jennifer’s
eyes as she asked the question, wondering if she was about to
learn this man’s secret.
“Well, not really. I’ve been moving around a lot
recently.” Jarod stared into the fire, determined not to
look at Jennifer, concerned that she might be able to learn from
his eyes what he hadn’t told her verbally.
Another knock at the door made Jennifer jump out of her chair.
“Great! Dinner! Do you want to stay?”
“What are you…” Jarod’s voice died away as
Jennifer opened the door, her purse in her hand. Seconds later
she turned and, closing the door, put the steaming box down on
the table and got out two plates.
“I always order pizza on a Tuesday. It was a family
tradition and I’ve kept it up. Can’t help myself.”
She divided the pizza between the plates and handed one to Jarod.
In the other room, she got out napkins and handed him several.
“Sorry, but on pizza night I can’t really be bothered
being polite. Enjoy.”
***
“Syd? Hey, Sydney.” He looked up to see Miss
Parker, in her jacket, standing in the doorway. “Well?”
“Confirmed sighting of Jarod. We’re going to
Albany.” Sydney stood and snatched up his own coat, the
familiar excitement flooding through him at the thought of
possibly, finally, bringing Jarod back where he belonged.
***
Jennifer put the plate into the dishwasher, turned in on and smiled out into the darkness of the back garden as the machine hummed. Several slips which Jarod had made that night had given her an indication to his character and she was certain that, with a little more time and persuasion, she could find out all about him. The article which her friend had shown her had proved invaluable and Jennifer had been able to find out a little more about him from other articles in newspapers from across the country which had been available on the microfiche in the library. And of course Jennifer knew why he was at the company where she worked. She had been trying to gather the evidence which would convict the boss’s secretary of blackmail and fraud for months and, although she had not succeeded, she felt that Jarod, with a little help, just might.
***
As the jet circled above Albany airport, Miss Parker glared
out of the window at the storm which was preventing them from
landing.
“So, are we sure that Jarod is in New York State?”
“Of course not, Syd. We just have to hope he is, that’s
all.”
“And…and what if he’s not?” Miss Parker
turned her attention from the storm to Broots, who tried to hide
in his seat.
“Then we search through Albany in Georgia, Albany in Oregon
and any other Albany we can think of until we do find him,
that’s all.”
***
Jarod stared in disbelief at the files which had appeared when
his computer was opened and quickly read through the material. It
was exactly what he needed. A sound from the doorway made his
look up and his stunned eyes beheld Jennifer, leaning on the
door-frame and grinning at him. After several seconds, she
stepped into the room and shut the door behind her.
“How much time do you need?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Oh, come on, Jarod. Everyone in this place knows that
something illegal’s going on. In fact, I’m willing to
bet that’s why you turned up so suddenly and without
warning. So, let’s do it. Let’s shut this place
down!”
Jarod glanced covertly up at a security camera, tucked away
behind the air conditioning vent in the room, but still
visible, and then back at Jennifer.
“The camera? Don’t worry. I fed it some dummy material
and it’s humming away up there, quite happily. As far as
they know, you’re working at your desk and I’m busy at
mine.”
“How do I know if I can trust you?”
“Do you think I would have given you those files if I
didn’t want to help you? If you really didn’t trust me,
you wouldn’t have stood in the doorway of my house, swinging
my keys in my face. You would have snuck in one night to try and
find something incriminating about the company. Now, can we get
on with it?” She stood back and, grinning, waited for his
response.
***
Sydney wearily trailed back onto the Centre jet behind Miss
Parker. The six days of fruitless searching had taken their toll
and he couldn’t wait to get back to Delaware.
“Where do you think he is now?”
“I don’t know, Broots. He could be just about
anywhere.” Sydney glanced at Miss Parker but she was still
giving directions to the pilot and Sydney took his seat with a
weary sigh.
“I didn’t know there were so many places called Albany
in the United States.”
“Do you think we’ll ever find him?” Sydney looked
out of the window.
“I don’t know, Broots. I really don’t.”
***
Jennifer carried a tray into the living room, where the flames
were creating a pleasant heat around the fireplace. A newspaper,
lying on the table, showed the result of the several days of hard
work which they had both put in and which had finally exposed the
company and shut it down. Jennifer took her steaming mug and
smiled at Jarod as she sat down.
“Well, I think we did rather well, don’t you?” He
smiled back.
“Superbly.” There was a lengthy pause. “Do you
know, we’ve been working together for about a month now and
I know as little about you as I did on the first day I met
you.”
“And what, exactly, did you want to find out?”
“Well, most people like to talk about their families and
have photos of them all over the house. I haven't seen any of
them here.”
“Maybe I just don’t like to display them.” Her
voice was very quiet and she stared into the fire. A lone tear
rolled slowly down her cheek but, as she had turned away from
Jarod, it went unseen and disappeared into the curl which touched
her cheek, just near her mouth.
“My parents died three years ago. I was really close to
them. They couldn’t have kids and so they adopted me when I
was two. All through my life, as I grew up, we always had
difficult kids living with us. We were a kind of ‘half-way
house’ for them, between the old life and the new, so to
speak, so I had heaps of company. We lived in a little town
called Townsend, in Nebraska. When I was twenty they adopted
another child. He was two years younger than I and he was
perfect. Because of missing a lot of school when he was younger,
my parents sent him back to High School to get a decent
education. He attended the Douglas High School for a few years
but left to go to a more advanced college before graduation. He
was funny and a great guy. When he started dating, he had more
girls chasing him than we could keep up with. We’d make a
joke out of it, “Hey, here’s another one”, and
he’d come to the phone and then we’d tease him for ages
afterwards. After we adopted him, we stopped taking in other
kids, so for a few years it was just the two of us and Mom and
Dad. Then, when I was thirty-five, after studying part-time and
working at other companies, I finished College and came to the
firm to work. That was in 1993. About two or three years later,
after he’d had work at a few places, building his resume, my
brother got a job at some place. He never told us which one but
he seemed to be doing really well and, as long as he was happy,
that was all that mattered to the rest of us. He sent us letters
and cards all the time, telling us how he was. I thought it was a
bit strange, when Mom and Dad died in September ‘96, that he
didn’t come to the funeral, but he said there was some sort
of crisis at the place where he worked and they wouldn’t let
him come.”
Finally the words ran out and Jennifer sat silent, tears filling
her eyes. Jarod moved over and sat next to her but she made no
move towards him. He placed an arm around her shoulder and spoke
softly. “I understand.”
***
Miss Parker stormed down the hall to Raines’ office but
stopped at a room which had previously been used for storage but
now seemed to be an office of some sort. Without knocking, she
threw open the door and stared at the woman sitting at the
computer.
“What are you doing here?”
“Oh, you must be Miss Parker! Raines told me a lot about
you.”
Miss Parker heard a squeak and step behind her and turned to see
Mr Raines standing there, oxygen tank in hand.
“Ah, Miss Parker! It’s about time you and the others
returned and stopped wasting time on that wild goose chase. Lyle
has been following several leads while you’ve been gone.
This is Jennifer. She’s a computer analyst. We’ve
brought her in to improve the security system and to complete
some other, trivial, secretarial tasks. You may give her any work
you require.” He turned to leave but was stopped.
“Mr Raines, these are the papers you wanted. And this
contains the files you asked me to look for.”
“Very good! Miss Parker, this woman is an excellent
worker.”
As he left, Miss Parker looked at the newcomer in amazement.
“How much are you paying him to talk about you like that?
He’s never nice - to anyone!”
“He’s been fine to me. I’ve been here three days
and he’s had nothing but pleasant things to say to and about
me.”
“Oh, Miss Parker…”
“Broots, get in here!”
“Oh, there you are. I have to tell you they’ve brought
in…”
“I know that, you moron. She’s sitting right in front
of you. Jennifer, this is Broots, he is a moron but he’s
pretty handy with a computer. I’ll leave you two to get
acquainted.”
She shut the door behind her and walked along the hall a little,
catching snatches of conversations which told her that, although
the new person had been installed in the Centre a few days, the
shock of her arrival and the change in Raines’ mannerisms
were still causing surprise among the other employees.
***
“This is Sydney.”
“I hear you’ve got a new workmate.”
“Jarod! Yes, she’s…how did you know?”
“Oh, I know everything, you know that.”
There was a pause
“I was disappointed to miss you in Albany.”
“You weren’t there!”
“Oh, I was. You just didn’t look hard enough.”
“Jarod - Jarod, don’t hang…”
***
Jennifer turned as her door opened as smiled as Miss Parker,
who stood in the doorway, walked into the room.
“Going home already?”
“No. I have to leave for a while. Jennifer, did Raines tell
you about Jarod?”
Jennifer’s deliberately neutral expression convinced Miss
Parker of her ignorance but, as Miss Parker faced the window and
began her explanation, Jennifer slipped her hand under her desk
and pressed a small button.
***
“’And so, for the last four years, we’ve been
trying to get him back.’” Jennifer pressed the stop
button on the small, hand-held tape recorder and smiled at Jarod.
“Can no-one keep anything from you?”
“Well, you couldn’t, could you?” He didn’t
answer the question but scooped up the last few noodles on his
plate and sat back against the sofa.
“What is it about you?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, why are you so special? You’re so different from
many of the people that I’ve met before. I’ve never
known someone who can get people to say anything without really
asking the necessary questions, or that can repeat so much
information without really trying.”
There was another pause.
“Well, I can’t give you an answer to the first question
because I really don’t know. Someone told me that I was just
a really friendly person and that they could know that, when I
said things, I meant them. As to the second, well…I have
eidetic memory. That means that I have a memory which can
remember things after only seeing them once or twice. Like, the
day that we met I remembered that my friend in Albany had
mentioned you. When I asked you how you liked the place, your
response confirmed what I already suspected. I did a little more
searching around for details before I gave you those files on the
computer. That’s how I knew I could trust you and why you
were there.”
She shifted her gaze from the leaping flames to his face and
smiled at him. After a moment, he smiled back.
***
Sydney flipped through the papers in the folder in front of
him. The neatly typed notes were a record of the recent
experiments he had performed on sets of twins within the Centre
and which had been made up for him by Jennifer. When his door
flew open, he looked up in shock.
“Syd, have you seen Lyle?”
“Not for a few days. Why?”
“It’s just that we can’t find him again. He’s
gone off on some new project or other. And now, even though
someone thinks they’ve seen Jarod, we still can’t find
him.”
“Does that matter? We could go ourselves.” Miss Parker
turned and glared at Broots, who had appeared behind her in the
hall but, after a second, decided that he was right.
“Well, what are we waiting for? Let’s go!”
***
Jennifer glanced back over her shoulder at the door but it
remained tightly closed. Still she couldn’t shake the
feeling that she was being watched. Surreptitiously she pressed a
small button under her desk and waited for several seconds. She
remembered explaining the concept of her security system to Jarod
the day before she had begun working at the Centre.
“It’s simple. I’ve set this program so that when I
press this button a piece of film threads itself into the
security monitor and shows the occupant of the office working
quietly away. It only takes a few minutes to install and I
actually did it last week, from home. I’ve also put a ten
second delay on the camera so that as soon as the button is
pressed the film starts up and, even if I had to leave my desk
for some reason, it would still look as though I was working
there.”
She was thankful that she had had the foresight to install it and
now looked around the office more openly. A tiny flash of light
made her move over to the air duct in the corner and she was
about to press the alarm button when the vent cover moved and
Angelo’s head appeared. Having met him on several previous
occasions, although never in this situation, she returned to her
desk. However she was not permitted to work.
“Jen-ni-fer…come.”
“Angelo, I’m busy. Can it wait?”
“Jen-ni-fer come now…must see.”
With a sigh she rose from her chair and moved over to the open
vent, pausing only to lock the door to her office, so that no-one
could come in and see her not working. Squatting down, her eyes
widened as she saw papers, rolled and tied up in six bundles,
lying on the floor of the vent.
“Angelo, what’s this?”
“Read…” She unrolled the paper closest to her and
scanned it quickly.
“Dara Andrews? Who’s that? I’ve never…hang
on, yes I have!” She moved quickly across to her computer
and ran a quick search of the entire Centre mainframe.
“Bingo! But this is in the very depths of Raines’
files. Why would he hide this here?” She turned back to
Angelo. “Who is she? And why is she so important to
Raines?” Angelo picked up two other rolls and, moving across
the room, handed the first one to her. She unrolled it and, after
looking at it for several seconds, looked up in shock.
“Kyle? And that one?” She pointed to the papers he
still held. “Is it Jarod? It is? Then these are - all
Pretenders?” There was a long pause, during which she looked
over Kyle’s papers again. “Has anyone else read these?
Sydney? Miss Parker? No? Then why are you showing them to
me?”
“You…help…Ja-rod. I…help…you.”
“How do you know I help Jarod? Who told you?”
“I…feel it. You are…friends.”
“Do you want me to take these - or should I leave them
here?”
“Copy…for Jarod.”
“But wouldn’t it be better for Jarod to have his own
file, rather than Kyle’s?”
“Needs part of Kyle…for himself. Has guilt.”
“I know. He told me. Okay, let me copy this and then you can
have them back. Have you got a good hiding place?”
“I keep…for years.”
“True. I guess you must have. Okay, here, that’s done.
I’m going to see what I can find out about Dara in the
Centre’s files, down in SL-25. You keep them safe and give
back to Jarod and the others later.”
***
Jennifer was examining the small amount of information about
Dara which she had been able to discover when Miss Parker
appeared in the doorway.
“Are you doing anything important?”
“Actually I was just about to leave. Why?”
“My car died and I was hoping you could give me a lift
home.”
“Sure thing. I’ll be ready in ten minutes.”