The Mulligan Planet (7 page)

“Either of you know what time it
is?” Wolf looked at a small leather bound watch I hadn’t noticed
before, odd… I usually notice everything, anyway, “Quarter past
one.” Forty five minutes to kill, “I’m going to grab some water,
you guys want anything?” Kate brushed a stray piece of hair off her
forehead, “Water sounds good, Wolf?” Wolf shook his head. I walked
over to the counter where a tall man stood behind, his bright blue
eyes looking at me contrasting with his extremely dark skin, he was
bald with a thick black beard, “How can I help you?” his South
African accent was beautiful, accentuating each word in his
sentence unlike most clear English speakers whose sentences seem to
blur together into one word, “Two waters thanks.” He gave me a
thumbs up, spun around, grabbed two plastic bottles from a large
white refrigerator and put them on the counter in front of me,
“Name and room number?” I struggled to remember, “John Prince,
block… ten?” he gave me a big smile, revealing perfect white teeth,
his canines being exceptionally longer and sharper than the rest,
another vampire, “Ah, you're the new guy. I’ve heard a lot about
you Prince, you're a good man. You can come see me if you need any
help with anything at all.” I nodded politely and returned the
smile, “Thanks, you too.” I made my way back to the table to see
Kate, Wolf and someone new sitting where Kyle had, he had softness
about him yet strong features, brown eyes behind expensive looking
glasses, style cut brown hair, a five o’clock shadow that was
somehow not untidy, the man had stylised not shaving which only
further complemented his grey suit and black tie.

I took my seat and handed Kate
her water, “Marcus?” He was beaming, he nodded, “John, John Prince
if I’m not mistaken, oh it is such a pleasure to meet you.” He
spoke as if he would spontaneously combust if he didn’t get all of
the words out in time, his hand shot toward me and for a moment I
thought he was going to rip my heart out, I took his hand and shook
it cautiously, “Th… the pleasure is all mine.” He released my hand,
“I’m going to get a drink, I’ll be right back.” He stood, knocking
over his chair as he did, quickly straightened it and walked to the
counter. “Um, guys, is he always like this?” I looked over at Wolf
whose head was backed up past his chair with a confused expression
on it, he slowly shook his head, “Noooo…” Kate, with an equally
confused expression on her face looked at me, “Maybe he’s just a
little over excited, I’m sure he’ll calm down soon.” He bounded
back with a bottle in his hand and sat, “I have so many things to
show you, you’re going to love them, I heard you’ll be using C4 on
this mission for example, so I’ve made a signal based detonator,
you can set off all the explosives simultaneously with a single
press of a button. The best part is you can assign separate packs
to different channels, say you want two different explosions, you
change the knob on the detonator to alpha, scan a pack with it then
change the knob to bravo and scan another pack, at this point you
can detonate all packs in alpha by setting it to alpha and all of
bravo in the same way and so on. The final setting is sigma which
will detonate all of them at the same time regardless of code, wow
I’m talking a lot.” He drank the entire bottle in one hit. “I… I’m
very excited to see it. May I ask, why you’re so… talky?” he wiped
his mouth, “I’ve had twenty two coffees, keeps my brain active, I
don’t nod off this way, I haven’t slept since shortly after you got
here.” Wolf looked at him with concern, “Mark… He got here a week
ago, and he was in a coma for most of that, you haven’t slept in
six days?” he nodded wildly, “Yes,” he quickly looked at his watch,
“One hundred and forty eight hours and thirty seven minutes, I’ll
sleep soon. I’ve finished most of my work, I’ll sleep tonight, for
now do you require anything else? If not I will just show you what
I have so far.” He was still beaming, it was really quite worrying,
“Not that I can think of, why have you been awake that long? My
plan was only made yesterday, what have you been doing?” He
shrugged, “Recently? Making bits and pieces, helping fix the
defences and such. I’ve been expecting you for quite some time, I
couldn’t sleep until I met you.” I was actually very touched,
“Well, let’s go, I’d like to see what’s available and then you have
to sleep.” Marcus seemed to be thinking this over, “Fair, let’s go.
You guys want to tag along?” Kate shook her head, “I think I’ll try
to get some more sleep, broken sleep always leaves me feeling more
tired than ever.” Wolf shrugged, “I’ll come along, I always like
new toys.”

Before long we were in an
elevator, “So what else have you got in store for us?” Marcus
adjusted his tie and slipped a lanyard over his neck which had a
small picture of him dangling at the end, “Mostly standard weapons,
but I’ve also managed to scoop up some explosive rounds.” The
elevator doors slid open to reveal a large white room as well as a
few tables with assault rifles, bullets, round devices I couldn’t
identify and a mess of crushed drink cans. There was no one around
which made me wonder why Marcus put on that lanyard. Wolf started
fiddling with a bullet as soon as we stepped in, “Mark, where is
everyone?” Marcus looked around confused occasionally ducking and
checking under the tables, “I honestly have no idea…” I noticed
someone creeping up behind him, “Marcus!” there was a pop as he
spun around, they both screamed and Marcus punched his follower in
the face who recoiled as he grabbed his face. It was at that moment
I saw the party popper rolling around on the floor. “Ow! What the
Hell!? Seriously! Happy birthday, did you seriously forget?” blood
was quickly filling the follower's hands, “You broke my bloody
nose! That’s going to take ages to fix!” others began to come out,
some in lab coats, some in the standard jean and shirt ensemble.
The guy who got punched walked over to a sink and let the water
rinse his hands as he clicked his nose back into place.

I noticed that even with the
screams Wolf hadn’t stopped playing with the bullet, “Forgot to
tell you
mein
bruder, Alles Gute zum Geburtstag
!” I
stared at him questioningly, '
H
appy birthday
' he
mouthed in response and I nodded to convey my understanding as I
looked around as the others began to walk toward Marcus, one of
which was wielding a cake, “For he’s a jolly good fellow, for he’s
a jolly good fellow…” I let the voices leave my ears as I moved for
Wolf, the other scientists had surrounded Marcus who I occasionally
caught a glimpse of between the mass of people around him, “So
birthdays are a big deal around here?” Wolf looked up at the
conglomeration of lab coated men and women and smiled, “Yeah, we
don’t get a lot of chances to celebrate down here. We try to make
an event of something every chance we get.” He scooped up two more
of the bullets and started juggling them in one hand, I admired
this for a while before I heard a sound that replicated that of a
train stopping as a pair of hands shot out and snatched the bullets
from the air, “What are you trying to do!? Kill us all!?” the sound
I had heard came from a short, bald fat man, his nose looked
remarkably like a pig’s snout and his hands had sausages instead of
fingers, his voice wheezy and high pitched, “These haven’t been
fixed yet, you drop one, kaboom!” Wolf scratched the back of his
head, “Sorry, won’t happen again.” The fat man grunted and
proceeded to shuffle away, mumbling under his breath. “Who’s he?”
Wolf shrugged, “Human I guess, I don’t know all of the humans on
base.” Marcus moved through the crowd toward us, “I’m going
upstairs with the others Wolf, can you show John the rest? The guns
are in the range, and his car is in the garage, I made some
modifications last night.” He put his hand out which I shook,
“Happy birthday, I’ll see you later.” He smiled and turned to move
to the elevator with the other scientists.

Wolf tugged on my shirt, “Let’s
go, you’re going to like it down here.” I spun around and walked
with him, “Guns first?” he smiled and nodded, “The guns are pretty
cool, well, not really the guns, more the munitions. Smoke,
incendiary, explosive, tracer, and my personal favourite, guided;
super long distance, think guided RPG with a sniper rifle, you pull
the trigger then pick up this small monitor, fire a small rocket
attached to the back of the round and guide him to your target. Not
a whole lot available though. Something like $150000 per bullet.”
He tossed one in my direction and as soon as I caught it I could
picture the damage it would do with the sheer weight of it. I
rolled it around in my hand, it was about five inches long and felt
as heavy as a can of soft drink, “That’s … wow, this thing feels
like it’d rip through a tank.” Wolf smiled and shrugged, “Just
about. Oh, have you got the OLHUD?” He must’ve been able to sense
my feeling of immediate confusion, “Ocular Lens Heads Up Display,
gives you a mini-map which has a built in sensor, also, anyone who
has one shows as green on your mini-map and your standard map. You
can bring up your standard map by saying map, pretty basic really,”
We started walking, he led me to another white room filled with
small glass cubes, “Ah, there it is.”

Wolf picked up one of the glass
cubes which had my name etched into the side, pulled the top off
and reached inside to grab two small, clear circles, “Put these in
your eyes.” He extended his hand and I scooped up the lens and
followed his direction, “Ok, so those will immediately bond with
your body and run on your body heat, no changing batteries. They’re
voice activated, so let’s get you to turn them on, say activate.” I
was still blinking them in, “Activate.” There was a flash of white
before a map appeared in the bottom left hand corner of my vision.
“Woah… This is amazing!” Wolf was chuckling, “Let’s continue with
the tutorial. There are two modes, both of which have the ability
to switch from infra-red to low light to standard. The first is
exploration or passive, in this mode your vision will have the
mini-map, a compass and health monitor. Your health monitor is
invisible but will start beeping if you’re in immediate danger of
dying, whether from bullet wounds or radioactive exposure or
anything like that. The second mode is combat or aggressive, when
in this mode you will have everything from the passive mode, but
you will have a reticule which will change depending on what type
of weapon you’re carrying provided it’s scanned it. As well as this
it will put a red arrow above any target that you’ve recently fired
upon, unless they hide in cover for an extended period,” Wolf spun
around, pulled out a pen and wrote something on his hand, he showed
me it and clearly written on his palm was the word ‘brother’, “What
did I write?” I felt this a weird question, “Brother?” he gave me a
thumbs up, “Yep, that’s another cool feature, in-built translator,
this is written in German, you look at any writing and it will
translate it into English for you, or any other language,
personally I use German, makes my life a little bit easier.”

Wolf began rubbing the ink off
his hand, “What else, ah yes, ears,” he grabbed the glass container
again and produced a small vial with a silver powder inside, “This
is the LAP, Life and Audio Program. You have to inhale this
nasally, lay down on the bench there.” He gestured to an empty
white bench next to me which I proceeded to lay on, Wolf walked
over and uncorked the vial, “This will help us hear you, you hear
us as well as that we can check your vitals, you can check ours and
as an extra bonus it translates all audio. It will latch to your
blood stream and pass to your brain, heart, all that. Easiest way
to do that is injection, but for some reason it messes up and gets
scrambled when liquefied. Now, when I say breathe in just… do it.
If you don’t this will be quite uncomfortable.” He brought the vial
to my face, I felt myself beginning to panic, “On three, One. Two.
Three!” he pushed the vial to my left nostril and I breathed in
with all that I could, “There we go, all done.” I began to sit up,
“I wouldn’t do that.” I felt pain shoot through the back of my head
like I’d been hit with a lightning bolt. I couldn’t help but growl
in pain, “It’ll pass, in a few seconds.” It wasn’t dimming, it was
the same constant pain, my eyes squeezed shut while my body was
writhed and constricted, and then the pain disappeared. Literally,
it didn’t fade or loosen, it just vanished, I opened my eyes and
saw Wolf standing over me, watching me with concern, “You alright?”
I nodded, “It’s gone, nothing, no residual, just gone.” Wolf smiled
down at me, “What’d I tell you?” I sat up and the pain hit again,
“You see that, that I wouldn’t have done John.”

After the pain subsided I waited
and watched Wolf, waiting for his word, he looked down at his
watch, “Ok, you should be alright to sit up now.” I cautiously
began to sit up and when I felt comfortable that the pain was well
and truly gone I shuffled off the desk and stood up. “That was an
experience.” I shook myself loose, “So, can we see my car now?”
Wolf nodded, “Sure, let’s go,” We turned and began walking to the
elevator from where we came, “I hear he worked on this thing all
night after you got back, he had everything ready, just had to fit
it,” we squeezed through the crowd, “Is his car just in the lot
Mark?” Wolf yelled into the air as we continued to the elevator,
“Yeah! Furthest from the entrance, keys are in the glove
compartment!” there was no real sound to these words as we finally
managed to climb inside another elevator, “Thanks! I’ll see you
later, happy birthday!” The doors slid shut and I felt my stomach
drop as we moved up. Before long we were in the garage looking at
my car, it had a new glossy black paint cover, a set of chrome
wheels attached to beautiful white-wall tires, chrome mix side
skirts and bumpers that were millimetres from the ground snuggled
the base of my monstrous vehicle as well as the windows now
exceptionally darker. My mouth dangled open, “It’s… beautiful.” I
looked over to Wolf, looking similarly impressed, “Yeah… want to
have a look inside?” I nodded feverishly, I grabbed the handle and
pulled, it wouldn’t budge, I tried again, “It won’t open.” I looked
at Wolf again, “What do you mean it won’t open?” I threw my hands
in the air, “It won’t open, I think Marcus must’ve locked it.”
There was a click sound from the car and the indicators flashed, I
tried the handle again, “Unlock.” The door popped open when I
pulled, “Oh that’s cool.” I climbed in and felt the seats, which
were noticeably softer, there was a small tablet in the middle of
the console now, Wolf was climbing in next to me while I gripped
the hard steering wheel, “I don’t have to give this back now do I?”
Wolf seemed as marvelled about the car as I did, “I’m going to go
with… no. Yeah, no, definitely not.”