Day 299 - Perfectly Executed. - Chapter 2 (1256 Words)

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PERFECTLY EXECUTED

By Wayne Webb

CHAPTER 2

Eighteen months later.

The world had forgotten about Dr Edward Thompson, but he had not forgotten a single moment of his life since that day he had taken the taxi home from work. So many variables and options had occupied his time since then, opportunity had knocked more than once despite the prevailing wisdom that it was only ever once.

However, rash thought and not looking at all avenues and flow on effects was against his nature, and his training. The funding for his research was continuing, the benefactors contributing to his programmer were themselves very understanding of the situation he had been going through. It had a definite impact on his work, at first he had been unable to focus on anything, the problem was as out of touch and as far away as it could have ever been.

That was in the immediate aftermath, but very quickly after the shock of the event and the suspicion was cast on him a new paradigm had emerged. He had been a shut in, a recluse from attention and his mind would not leave the scenes in his living room, even after a repaint and refurbishment. He replaced the furniture, changed all the curtains and carpets, even with the stains gone he could still feel and see the violence. A new colour, a new look and a wall knocked through to change the entire feel of the room.

He could not stand to stay long in the room full of memory, and he could not push it away either. He didn’t know for sure if the house would have sold, it was well placed and in the right school zones, property values were high and the market buoyant. He could not bear the weight of letting it go and he could not sleep unassisted in his own home.

Sleeping pills were good for an uninterrupted nights sleep but they dulled his mind the next day and the hangover feeling he endured was not worth the rest for his body. The nightmares he had, the waking motions his limbs still pumping their movements in panic and defense woke him violently every time like it was the first time.

The devil he knew kept his focus.

Dr Thompson worked in a secure and remote facility, they had moved his lab to the satellite buildings where they could run the noisier equipment they needed to as they moved to an experimental phase. They had assumptions and they had theories that needed testing. He had ideas, things that kelp him awake at night and pushed aside the memories and demons that crowded him at home.

When he was at home he was never alone, and he wanted to be alone more than anything except to reverse the events of two and a half years before.  This was a different kind of companion he had when he was at work and away from the scene of the crime. The thoughts that would not leave him alone and poked at his conscious mind were productive and seductive to him, he wanted to spend time with them. He did not want to stop thinking about them and the potential they had for his future, the complete opposite of his problems at home.

He had a bedroom in the new lab, and he would spend most of the week there, but when given the chance to move anything there he could not bring himself to do so. A boundary still existed in his mind, a line that he did not cross. His place was at home, the home where he lived with the ghosts of his family and the spectre of the man that ended that, all in a messy ball of contradictions and feelings.

Every day after a night at work he would go home and shower, never washing or changing in the office, to do so would be an admission of how much it could have been his home. It was never going to be that to him, that would be too many steps he was not willing to take. He slept little, unable to at the lab or at his house, for differing reasons. Naps were his savior and his outlet, small micro sessions of sleep to recharge a flagging reserve of energy.

Occasional sparks of genius and inspiration in thirty-minute bursts. They helped but they never removed the haunted and frazzled look in his eyes, accentuated by the baggage of experience and lack of sleep.

It started to work and it became a habit, the process was becoming real and the potential it held was promising to everyone on the team. Only Edward Thompson saw the results that mattered, and he hid those from the watching eyes of interns, graduates, investors and academics. It was groundbreaking and new, it had no benchmark for success and no comparison so no one knew what was supposed to ‘in’ and what was ‘out’.

He kept his own records for his own side project off site, processing the data and analyzing the results on his own completely offline computer in his house. He did not need much else, he kept back ups but they were optical and not cloud based. No one knew what else he was doing, no one else ever could know, as it would affect the outcome.

If anyone knew what he was doing, then his research would be for nothing. That was the one outcome he could never afford, the one he knew could bring it all down and ensure that he would never finish his work. He had an end point in mind, and he spent long sleepless hours in his house preparing for that eventuality, then long sleepless hours in the lab making it a potential reality.

There was still much to do, many variables to figure out and problems to solve.

He needed to talk to people and that worried him, variables were an issue because they were by their nature, variable. The problem with people is that they thought they were smart. Smarter than the people around them and always wanting to twist or manipulate any situation the way they wanted. It all came down to this in the end, the bullies, and the geniuses, and the salesmen all suffered from the same delusion of intelligence.

The problem was never one of ability to process information situationally, everyone was capable of that to some degree and success or failure rode on that ability. The problem was not knowing the answers, but thinking they knew where those answers were and why Edward needed them.  It was near impossible for him to ask his questions, the ones he needed answering, without igniting a sense of understanding of the question.

That was the dangerous part; people unable to answer with zero bias were coloring the truth with the filter of their perception of the question.

He had considered getting a partner, a stooge who would take that job on and deliver him what he needed without knowing what it was. It seemed like a good idea, but his trust in other people and placing such a key and delicate role in the hands of a less than trustworthy, therefore human, variable was a risk.

If done right it would solve his problems, if done badly it would delay his progress and put his schedule back, and he would still need the answers to his questions.

If it were discovered what it was that he was doing?

That was a dilemma.