3 Thank God it's Monday Read Free Page B

a captive audience. Literally,” she said, her voice
dripping sarcasm and irony.
    He sighed.
    “Yeah. Well, see. For the past two years you have been
subjected to tests.”
    “Like being in the company of fools like you?” she joked.
    “You are a guinea pig. My guinea pig, to be exact. Others
have been indoctrinated as well. Most of the subjects do not respond well to
the drugs. Or maybe it is the psychological strain or a rejection of the binary
codes...”
    “Wait. You are babbling. Drugs? Psychological strain? What
are you trying to tell me, Gary?”
    He shrugged and sighed.
    “Something that I have told you now forty-five times in two
years. Mostly out of guilt.” Gary looked back toward the door and lowered his
voice. “To be honest, I am beginning to suspect that my apologies played a part
in your rogue behavior.”
    “Oh, darling, you have not begun to see rogue behavior. Let
me out of this chair and I will show you,” she said. Her voice was calm and a
devilish grin spread across her face as she imagined her nails sinking into
Gary’s eyes.
    “I understand your anger and frustration. It is out of
character for you. You are usually calculating and cold, manipulative and
distant. The programing is changing your personality slowly but perceptibly. I
have noted this in my reports and I am preparing a study designed to document
this phenomenon,” he shrugged and shook his head, a look of disappointment
painted across his forehead. “Not that it matters. I just want to say to you
that all that I do here I do for science. Not for some political reason. Not
for the Consortium. Not even for me, really. What you are becoming is an act of
science.”
    “I have no idea what you are talking about, Gary. Frankly, I
don’t care. You can apologize or make your confessional, say your Hail Mary’s,
or throw yourself on a sword for all I care. Just. Get. Me. Out.”
    “I would love to, actually. You are essentially the third
subject we recruited and the first to be indoctrinated in the second wave. That
makes you special. But, your subconscious has rejected something in your
programming. We cannot find its source. My colleagues believe you have been
cross-programmed and the psychological scarring is rejecting subsets of the
code we implanted. Codes that are at the core of the control we have over your
memories and your emotions.”
    “What the Hell are you saying?”
    He blinked rapidly and hugged the clipboard across his chest.
His eyes were flitting around the room like he was trying to decide how to
respond.
    “Are you high?” she asked.
    “Of course not. It’s just that the outburst just now is
another side effect, you see? You are normally calm. Almost placid, really. You
have not been the same since we asked you to kill Jake.”
    “Me? Kill Jake Monday?” She almost laughed out loud.
    Gary nodded sadly.
    “He was resisting the programming. He would go off the grid
for days. The only thing that worked was the memory scour. The drugs only made
his instincts more acute. His abilities were off the charts.”
    “I would have liked to witness that,” she quipped.
    Gary gave her a disapproving look.
    “Perhaps this is why it failed. You were attracted to him. We
thought it would be the other way around.”
    “If Jake was a subject as well, then why did you want him
killed?”
    Gary smirked.
    “We needed a test. We needed to see if we could program one
subject to kill and the other to save. In our computer simulations, the
diagnosis was that the murderer would prevail. Of course, it would change
everything. Then, New Year’s Day happens and our study is broken.”
    “How does Sinegem fit into this?”
    “This was your father’s idea. He wanted to take hostile
corporate mergers and acquisitions to another level. Part of your success came
from the ruthlessness and cold calculation that we programmed into you. It was
part of your original DNA and experience, but we honed it and made it sharper,
made you