Hi everyone! I was watching Pretender the other day and suddenly I thought this was a good idea and decided to write it down. This may not turn into anything, but I thought it was worth a shot.
Simulation 47
By jediapprentice6700
"What do I do Sydney?"
"Just concentrate, Jarod."
"I can't do it! It doesn't make sense!"
"Just TRY Jarod!"
The small boy was encased in a large glass tube stuck in the ground near the door. There was a weapon in his hands.
"How do I get out?" the boy was nervous. There were small wires poking out of his head, surrounding his cranium. Sydney stood, looking at the boy with determination. He looked around, surveying the area around him.
Suddenly, the boy crouched, pointing the gun. "But why? There's too much noise. I might hit someone. No human being can do it…"
"They have to Jarod; otherwise, that man wouldn't be dead."
"Uh……"
He aimed slowly, staring at the digital crowd below him. There was one man there that was his target. It seemed that he wouldn't get a shot off. Too many civilians were in his way. There was no way he could do this.
"That's it! He wouldn't have gotten a shot off, he would have hit someone! Something about the whole thing is off. This whole thing is a setup. He was firing blanks to induce paranoia and cast off suspicion. The bullet came from elsewhere!"
"Are you sure?"
"Well….almost…"
"You have to be 100% sure."
"Well….I….."
They both craned their necks to look at the old man staring at them from the background.
Jarod stopped the tape there. "Hmmm….." As if to help straighten his thoughts, he reached for a Darth Vader PEZ dispenser on the table, dropping a couple into his mouth. The taste of sugar gave him a rush to make him twitch.
He sat for a moment, staring at the screen, almost smiling at the people on the screen, that same stupendous grin on his face. Classical music floated from the radio as a smooth mellow sensation that calmed him a good deal.
Jarod typed in a few more variables and the image of his face increased. In the simulation, he had stone-cold murder written in the explanation. It scared him, frankly.
Jarod ate some more PEZ and stood up, dialing the number for Sydney's private line.
"This is Sydney," the small voice crackled over the line.
"Sydney! How are you today?"
"Jarod? Um, good, you?"
"Just looking over some old tapes, caught some ZZZs."
"Where'd you hear that?"
"TV."
"You watch a lot of that don't you?"
"Well, there's not much you can do back at the Centre." He put extra emphasis on "Centre".
"Yes…yes…anyways, I was wondering if you could come in and talk, Jarod. Maybe we could strike a deal…"
"I don't think so, Sydney, I remember how that worked out last time," he thought of Ms. Parker, most likely listening to this on the other side of the line.
"Well," he seemed hesitant, almost sighing, "take care of yourself, Jarod."
Jarod stood for a moment, frozen in place, "You too." He finally choked out.
Jarod hung up, biting the inside of his cheek. What was the Centre up to? He didn't like to think about it. With a shrug, Jarod stepped out of his apartment, pulling his jacket on, struggling with it like a child.
Dr. John Fredricks stepped into the surgery room and took one look at the patient. He had been dead for a while. It was a wonder they got anything done here with all of the slow-moving medical traffic.
"…Nurse!" A young blonde girl hurried into the room, her bright red high heels clacking on the floor noisily. She took one look at the body and frowned. Another one dead.
What now? They get the corpse out of here. "I'm going to say…maybe twenty minutes, don't you think?" Fredricks said. The nurse nodded grimly, almost saddened by these developments.
"10:13 AM, let's go nurse."
Fredricks stepped into the hall momentarily, and as luck might have it, an orderly was pushing by with a laundry cart. If he had looked closer, he would have noticed a rather odd lump in the sheets.
The orderly turned his head and stared at the doctor. "May I help you, sir?" his British accent pushed through faintly.
"Yes. We have a dead patient, and we'd like for you to cart him out."
The orderly's face suddenly relaxed a little. "Ok, show me where."
The two both walked through the door, the orderly carefully closing the door behind him. "Well, he was about 30 years old, he had Leukemia, and died about 20 minutes ago. That sums it up pretty well. Even someone of your nature can understand that, can't you?"
The indirect insult seemed lost on the orderly. Fredricks grunted slightly, and reached his hand to the sheets. "That may scare some of the patients, doctor, maybe we should cover it up."
Fredricks, annoyed, solemnly agreed. His hands grasped the sheets and with a fluid, mournful motion, draped the bedding over the man's face. "Hm?"
His elbow grazed something prickly. He turned his head to look. A cord was pulled out of the machine. Had he accidentally knocked it out? Fredricks bent over to check it out. He was a bit surprised to see it was connected to the monitors on his arm. "What the hell?"
That was when the cold steel of a poison syringe pierced his neck, and the doctor dropped dead. The comatose patient, sedated mildly, lay on the bed, sleeping quietly. The only thing the supposed "orderly" left with on that cart was the body of Doctor John Fredricks.
And nobody paid any attention to the barcode tattooed across the crown of his head.
A short chapter, but I did it in about an hour, and off the top of my head, so just let me know if this was a good idea. Thanks for reading!