Chapter 31: 31. A Poster from God

Albert slams back the last bit of their third drink. They go for a breath, but their steady, carefree demeanor devolves into a fit of coughs and rasps. "Gah. One more for me if you would, Jacob."

Waylon's stomach turns over itself: why do people drink that stuff? The silent bartender performs the same flurry of intricate, elegant movements: shaking metal canisters filled with ice and various alcohols like a seasoned maraca player. After pouring the mixture into Albert's waiting glass, he brandishes a water pitcher to Waylon with a raise of a single bushy, white eyebrow.

Waylon dismisses the water with a shake of his head. "No thanks. So what's special about this prototype beyond the guy that made it? Why'd the aquarium need it?"

Albert coughs a few more times into the nook of their elbow. "It's this — at the time — revolutionary heat pump design." Another cough. "I'm not going to pretend to understand the science and throw some technobabble at you, but it became the new standard for industrial heat pumps. The specifics that the research teams could put together are in the information packet if you end up needing them."

"Okay. Why would an aquarium file for a prototype instead of buying one? Heat pumps can't be that expensive."

Albert hovers a lazy hand near Waylon. "Hold that thought. What's the time, Jacob?"

A shuffle of a sleeve reveals a watch of deceptive simplicity around Jacob's wrist. Like a glossy, blank brick. He raises the device into view and taps its face. Lights flitter into existence on the surface, revealing a clock amid an odd array of statistics and measurements. Standard stuff that Waylon can guess by the icons near the numbers: humidity, ambient oxygen levels, the current weather. Then there are more obscure symbols that'd look more at home adorning the wrist of an actor in the next Bond movie, certainly imparting more information than any bartender would need. Jacob studies the screen for a moment and looks to Albert. "Approximately twelve thirty."

Downing the fresh drink, Albert slams the glass back down and pushes up to their feet. "That's our time, lad. Would you mind seeing yourself out? I've got a meeting coming up that I need to make preparations for and it'd be best if you make yourself scarce." They stride to a door behind the bar and begin to push through, but they pause and jerk their porcelain-covered face toward Waylon. "Quickly, lad."

Confusion rips Waylon out of an odd comfort, as if time stood still in this liminal space. It's been two and a half hours since he left? Packet in hand, he swivels out of his chair and rushes toward the exit. "Right."

Outside the bar, the black, unmarked car that brought Waylon here spews white-tinted vapor out of its exhaust pipe. The rear window rolls down and Joel's ugly sweater appears. "Where to, mister Ishii? Back to your apartment?" He says.

Waylon yanks open the door, slides into his seat, and unfurls the packet of papers in his lap. "Yeah. That works."

Joel's knock on the glass divider to signal the driver to go fades into the background amid too-small black text and elaborate diagrams. Specifications of the prototype that go beyond anything Waylon would ever need to know, neatly labeled layouts of every floor, employee schedules. All lain bare in excruciating detail in the first half of the packet. Waylon flips another page and a face stares back up at him that definitely isn't an aquarium employee. "Excuse me, Joel."

"One moment..." Joel taps a few more meaty fingers on his tablet and looks up. "Yes, mister Ishii?"

Waylon flashes the page to Joel. "These people don't look like aquarium employees to me, what are they doing in here? I thought I was putting together my own team."

"Oh, apologies for the confusion, mister Ishii! Those are team member recommendations that Albert had us put together with profiles that were already in our databases. No expectations of including them, just recommendations."

What types of people does he need? Heist movies flash through his mind: the brawn, the brain, the — well, too many types of people to list out. Stop thinking about movies. He tabs through the recommendations, making note of each person's power.

Tons of enhanced strength, what sounds like a human version of a Russian nesting doll, and a short range teleporter. They're all only able to help with one thing: moving the equipment. "Is this really all of the recommendations you could put together?" Waylon says.

Joel glances away from his tablet for a moment. "Not exactly, but they are all the ones that the research team has deemed relevant for this job. Do you want different ones? I'd be happy to put in an order, but I'd also caution against the added noise, personally."

"Well, what about a tracking power? There's a licensee that patrols that area, shouldn't you all recommend someone that can make sure he isn't nearby?"

Joel scratches at his scalp somewhere underneath a frizzy sphere of brown hair. "Yeah, that's a great point mister Ishii. Unfortunately this job doesn't have the kind of payout that'd draw in someone like that. Those types of powers are rare after all. Sorry."

Without a conscious thought, Waylon chews at raised bits of skin on the inside of his lips. Clenching teeth tug here and there to leave behind a burning, raw pain. He turns back to the packet. "That's going to make this harder."

They sit in silence for a while as the car stops and starts at city intersections. Nausea steadily builds in Waylon's stomach, like a rising tide until the text of the profiles wiggle away from his comprehension and out to open ocean. He straightens up and closes his eyes. Darkness and light flitter on the other side of his eyelids, Joel taps along on his tablet, the car stops at another intersection.

Waylon's stomach wrenches forward with the inertia, sending a wave of fresh nausea cresting his head. Don't puke. He opens his eyes and tries to find something to distract himself with. Outside his window, the sidewalk buzzes with a weekend menagerie. Church goers, grocery shoppers, sightseers.

Shit, he needs groceries. "Sorry, can you drop me off at the grocery store instead?" He says.

Joel pauses mid-tap on his tablet. "Which one?"

Weekend crowds mill about the aisles of BuntsMart. Carts groan as they pass, stacked to their wire brims with branded goods aplenty, but Waylon's own flits though the maze of mobile obstacles with only a generic gallon of fortified milk and two boxes of oat circle cereal. Wringing his hands around the hard shell of plastic around the handle, he brings his cart to a stop in the checkout line.

Three customers between now and heading home. Three separate stacks of groceries that tower over the toddler grasping her mother's hand directly in front of him. The little girl runs up to a nefariously placed candy display and wiggles her arms about at her sides. "Can I have a chocolate bar, please mommy?"

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Her mother reaches out a hand for her to grab. "I'm sorry dear, not today. We've got some at home if you can wait."

Her smile flattens in an instant and a transparent disappointment tints her voice. "Okay."

The moment sits in Waylon's head, time ever ticking. Each second passing let's his thoughts wander deeper into foreboding, existential frontiers, but he keeps centering his mind back to that girls face. The disappointment, the immediate understanding. A good kid even if she didn't want to be. Better than he ever was.

Before he knows it, it's his turn and the cashier scans all his groceries. "Bags?" She says, brushing a coil of brown hair behind her ear.

Waylon doesn't hear the actual words, but he's pretty sure that's what it was. He digs out his wallet and tabs through it. "No bags, thanks."

The cashier leans over and lowers his milk and cereal boxes into his cart. "Will that be all, sir?"

He plucks out a lonely twenty dollar bill. "Yes, thank —"

Out of the corner of his eye, the mother and her daughter sit on a bench near the store's ice dispenser. Waiting for something? The girl's disappointed face flashes in his mind and his heart stalls. He leans down and picks through the candy display, trying to find the one that girl was looking at. "One second —" He can't remember and this lady is staring at him, so he grabs one at random. "Can I get a candy bar? Sorry."

The cashier yanks the bar out of his hand, scans it, and holds it out to him without a change of expression. "No problem. Will that be all?"

He replaces the candy bar in her hand with the bill. "Keep the change."

At the bench, the mother looks down at her phone; the daughter leaps to her feet and spins around trying to make herself dizzy. Probably. Waylon drags his cart over to the pair and addresses the mother, holding the candy bar aloft. "Sorry to disturb you two, but is it alright if I give your daughter this? I overheard you in line and I saw you waiting over here so I —"

The girl wrenches her spinning body to a halt and her eye's light up through her certainly dizzy stupor. "Please! Can he?"

Now, for the final obstacle on his walk out the door: the store's bulletin board. All those times waiting for Phil to finish checking through the latest community events or him trying to convince Waylon to pick up some new local service because the flyer was pretty. Waylon's heart crumbles at the memory. It wouldn't hurt to give it a look... to feel a little closer to him, just for a moment. So he does. Waylon hovers near the cork board and he dismisses bulletin after bulletin with a shift of his eyes to the next, but the curling corner of a poster fixing to fall catches his attention. It's just a picture of a parking lot, a list of bullet-point services, and some scrawls in red color pencil — clearly added after the fact.

Lightening strikes his mind. A tingle of excitement runs all the way to his finger tips and he rips a paper tab with a phone number off the poster. "This — this could work." People shuffle around him, expressions of disdain painting their face for the man blocking the cart traffic, but he doesn't pay them any attention. He stares down at the little tab of paper like a winning lottery ticket and taps the number into his phone.

Professional. That describes the woman across the desk from Thea in succinct detail. Pressed business suit complete with matching tie and nail polish, straight black hair pulled back into a pony tail, her own office. Thea's never had an office to herself. Or a suit.

The woman — Monica, was it? Sure. Monica interlocks her fingers above a manila folder. "Next question. What would you say — in a few words — is your biggest weakness?"

Thea's heart races with panic; nails scratch against the rough weave of her cassock. Upending tables full of scripture and baseball statistics, she scrambles through her mind for the right answer amid the noise. "I, uh — I would say that my biggest weakness is —"

Her phone rings. Chimes bounce around the room, smacking Thea's cheeks raw with embarrassment on every pass. She fumbles at folds of cloth, trying to get through her cassock's bunched up skirt to her pockets. "S-sorry, let me just —" There, a pocket. She yanks the phone out and looks over the display.

Private caller. No number, just two buttons: green, accept or red, decline.

Nerves wrestle Thea's heart between the green and red: between the work she chose and the work that amounts to selling cigarettes for some gas station franchisee owner she'll never meet. There's a chance she'll be able to take whatever request waits for her on the other side of the phone, and there's no chance that she's going get past this interview, right? She lowers a trembling finger to the screen.

Monica's eyes spear Thea through. "This isn't a great look for you, miss. Do you conduct all your interviews like this or are we a special case for you?"

Thea's heart screams out for that sweet, green button. Her only way out of this. What the heck is wrong with this woman; are all interviews like this? She steadies herself up to her feet with the help of her cane and backs toward the office door. "Ha. Eh — s-sorry. I've got to take this really quick. Emergency."

"You're not going to get the job if you walk out that door."

Thea slips out, letting her head stick behind for a last word. "Yeah, that makes sense."

With a click, the door latches behind her and the hallway of the recruitment agency stretches ahead. Closed doors line the passage and voices seep into the hallway from within each office. Voices of cold, calculating interviewers; voices of fellow interviewees desperate for one more chance. Striding to the exit that stands ajar at the end of the hallway, Thea slides her finger on that green button and brings her phone up to the side of her head. "Thea Aalberg, priest-for-hire."

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