By R. John Quisenberry
In a hidden room deep in the office building, an argument was going on. “What do you mean we have an applicant? We aren’t even listed anywhere as a business!!! Explain to me how a person comes in ‘off of the street’ to a business that isn’t listed and is in a dead office park in the middle of nowhere?”
“I don’t know Senior Acolyte! We have to hire him though. He knows where we are. If he leaves now, it will bring unwanted attention.”
“We can dodge attention. We can evacuate the entire area in less than three hours once the experiment is done. Send him on his way. If he tells anyone and it causes trouble, we can blow up the office park and all evidence, then start at another site.”
“Sir, this is our last test phase. Our orders are to do the experiment at all costs, but the project is already in motion. In seventy two hours, the dispersal will happen.”
“If we have to, I guess we have to. But why should we include this person?”
“Two reasons, he would provide the function of a control group in the experiment, and he is already contaminated.”
“WHAT?! How could he be contaminated? He just came in the building a few minutes ago!”
“We suspect that a small breach may have happened. One of our shipments was sent to a grocery store by mistake. One bottle was broken before it could be accounted for. We were told it was broken in the stock room. We burned down the store after we altered the memories of the staff. Something could have been sold that had been exposed.”
” I want a full study of the potential exposure when we are done here! We should never have used their infrastructure to move our materials. This could have been avoided if we were not trying so hard to hide our operation.”