"PROJECT REGULUS: Epilogue"
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dochermes"PROJECT REGULUS EPILOGUE"
3/21/1993
I.
The tan Ford Escort slowed as its driver leaned toward the passenger side to read the road signs. Dr Gerald Salzmann had already gotten lost twice during the three hour drive up from Manhattan and had been forced to ask for directions at gas stations. This did nothing to improve his already sour disposition. All these years and he still disliked Americans and their bland surface helpfulness. As he drove, he kept unwrapping a packet of Tums from his jacket pocket and popping one of the antacids in his mouth to stop the constant heartburn.
Just past the age of sixty, Salzmann had become a spare, dried specimen well under average height. He had kept his hair and it was mostly still dark, but his pinched narrow face with the deepset eyes did not make him appealing. Here he was as the late afternoon approached and the sun was getting low, and he was just reaching his goal after driving all day. Outside the city of Watervliet, on a country road with miles of fields and stretches of woods between houses, he finally saw a intersection that read MORGAN LANE and pulled over onto it. Finally.
Here he hoped to find the three surviving clones of Project Regulus. If they were as bitter about what had happened as he was, he had the perfect way for them all to achieve a satisfying revenge.
The third house up Morgan Lane had a blue metal mailbox by the side of the road, and on it was painted the name REILLY. He found the family name chosen by the clones to be annoying. Tom Reilly had been the counselor at Project Regulus who specialized in showing the subjects how to move among the public without drawing attention. Salzmann had disliked Reilly from the start and could not understand why the clones would have taken that name.
At the end of the short driveway was a small white house with an attic and shingled roof. A black Oldsmobile was parked alongside it, and a bicycle leaned against one wall. The lawn was tended well enough, he grudgingly admitted, but there was a round trampoline set up in the back yard. What a waste of money, he thought, he did not expect the clones to be so frivolous.
As Salzmann parked his Ford next to the Olds, a boy about eleven years old came around the side of the house. He was a skinny kid with shaggy black hair, wearing jeans and a baggy maroon sweatshirt with the name of some rock band on it. As soon as he spotted the stranger, the boy called out, "Uncle Ted! Someone's here!" but did not approach any closer.
Getting out and closing the car door, Salzmann remembered that this subject had been initiated at the same time as the other two in the batch but his age had been tweaked so he would physically be seven when he emerged. That had been part of Karl Eldritch's plan. Immediately, the front door of the house opened and an elderly man with silvery white hair emerged, blinking in the sunlight. He was dressed in khaki pants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
"It's all right, Kenny," said the old man as the boy hurried over to join him by the front door. The front of the house had a lilac tree almost touching it but the buds had not opened yet. "Something we can help you with, mister?"
Salzmann walked over to meet them. "I thought you would remember me," he said.
"Oh. Yes, Dr Salzmann. It's only been a few years."
"A few years.. yet so much has happened." Salzmann openly stared at the two. "Your skin tones look normal. How did you achieve that?"
"I don't see where we owe you any answers," the old man called Uncle Ted snapped. "You treated us like guinea pigs."
"Here now, let's not start on bad terms," Salzmann said. "I've been searching for your unit for a year now. I can help you get revenge on our common enemy."
Before Uncle Ted could answer, a woman emerged from the door behind him. She was tall, about five feet eight, and as thin as Ted and the boy Kenny. The woman wore a black skirt and beige long-sleeved blouse but had taken off her shoes.
"Dr Salzmann," she said in a chilly tone. "I thought you were dead with the others."
"A few of us escaped the destruction of Project Regulus," he said. "I happened to be off-duty that day. Your designation was Lucinda, if I remember rightly. You were the closest of your unit to the donor, even though we had to drop the Y chromosome and duplicate X."
"That's my name, not my designation. And we are not a unit, we're a family." She took a deep breath and softened her tone. In the sunlight, her eyes were a pale grey that watched the visitor warily. "You seem to be under some misconceptions, doctor. Maybe you should come in for a minute."
"Very well," Salzmann said. "I have a proposal for your... family."
II.
The interior was filled with the warm aroma of tomato sauce and fresh bread baking. They escorted him in a living room with comfortable furniture and a certain amount of relaxed disorder. Some neatly folded laundry was piled on one chair, there was a half-empty two liter bottle of cola on the low coffee table with a red plastic cup next to it, and a disarrayed newspaper was on the floor. As they entered, Ted hurried to straighten up.
"Sorry, sorry," I've been keeping an eye on the spaghetti," he muttered. "It's almost ready."
Salzmann was shown to a chair and the boy and woman dropped down on the couch facing him. "Mom," said Kenny, "I remember this man. From the Project."
"You do realize she is not your mother, don't you-" Salzmann began but was cut off by Lucinda.
"Not that it's any of your business," she snapped. "But you don't decide what he calls me or Ted. For a man with as many degrees as you have, you haven't learned good manners."
Dr Salzmann took a moment to compose himself before continuing. "I don't see why we have gotten off to a bad start here. Please excuse me. Since the Project was destroyed, I have been working as consultant to a medical research lab. All this time, I have been trying to locate you three." He paused to glance around. "To be honest, I was worried that you were living as fugitives. On the run, as they say. But your family seems to be doing well."
"We're comfortable," Lucinda said carefully. She waited as the old man Ted went back out to the kitchen, wiping his hands on a washcloth he had been carrying. She turned her gaze back to the visitor. The other two members of her family had the same grey eyes.
"I have a plan to avenge ourselves on the man who destroyed the facility and was responsible for so many of the staff dying, not to mention the death of our Master...."
Lucinda snorted in unexpected amusement. "You still don't understand. We're glad Karl Eldritch is dead. He brought us to life to be used as living weapons. He was an evil evil man."
"But.. the Dire Wolf is the villain here. He destroyed the facility, the only home you knew. He killed the staff who raised you and he left you alone in a world you didn't know anything about. I have a plan to punish him but I will need your help."
Uncle Ted stuck his head in the doorway. "Another five minutes. We're going to have to ask you to get your business done with us."
"Very well," Salzmann said. "Now, I have devised a plan to catch the Dire Wolf when he is out in public..."
"Stop. Listen to me. The man you call Dire Wolf, Jeremy Bane, was the unknowing donor of the genetic material that was used to create us. And three years ago, we did lead him into a trap as we had been brainwashed to do. He faced a pack of the Antares fighters. We escaped."
"Yes, yes, I know all that."
"Stop and listen for a minute, doctor. A month after that, Jeremy tracked us down. We were terrified but it turned out he didn't mean us any harm. Look. Jeremy got us birth certificates and IDs from his sources, don't ask how. He set us up in this house with a trust fund to cover taxes and utilities for a few years. The house is in my name. Jeremy got me a job as a teller at the local credit union and said it was my responsibilty to earn it. Today, I'm assistant account manager but I sure worked to get that far." Lucinda folded her arms and stared coldly at the Project Regulus scientist.
"What... I don't understand. The Master told us all about this man Bane..."
"There's more. Jeremy asked the Trom to find a remedy for our dead white skin. They provided us with a vegetable-based dye we inject several times a year. Jeremy himself drives up here at the end of each month to visit for a day or so. Sometimes he brings his girlfriend Cindy. We tell everyone he's my brother. We usually go to a movie or a street fair or something and catch up on things."
"Last time, he took me hiking up in the mountains," Kenny interrupted, speaking for the first time. The boy's alarm seemed to have faded as he heard the confidence in Lucinda's voice. "I had the best time ever."
"This is the man you want to recruit us to attack," Lucinda said. "You're just another one of the Project's heartless scientists using us like.. like we're things instead of people."
For the longest moment, Gerald Salzmann did not speak. He looked as if he had been deflated of air as his head drooped. There was an unfamiliar pang in his chest. "I don't... the Dire Wolf did all of this for you? Why? What does he get out of it?"
"If you have to ask a question like that," Lucinda replied, "you would never understand the answer."
Salzmann was staring at his hands. "I.. I believed what the Master told us. He was our guiding force, he had all the answers. Could I have been that wrong?"
"It's hard to admit, isn't it? We were confused and afraid for all our lives but now things have worked out. Let it sink in, doctor. Just open up."
Getting uncertainly to his feet, Salzmann stared down at the floor as if unable to meet the stern pale eyes of the clones. "It's a lot to take in," he admitted as if under duress. "I don't know what to think. Have I wasted all these years?"
Appearing in the doorway again, Ted held up his hands imploringly. "Come on, Lucinda, Kenny... the table's set. The garlic bread is still steaming. Sorry to chase you out, mister."
Standing up herself, Lucinda sighed. "I can't believe I'm doing this. Join us for dinner, doctor. Ted's hobby is cooking and he's pretty good at it. Eat some home-cooked food and think things over before you leave."
"Yeah," Kenny interjected. "Uncle Ted always makes twice as much as we can finish anyway."
8/9/2016
3/21/1993
I.
The tan Ford Escort slowed as its driver leaned toward the passenger side to read the road signs. Dr Gerald Salzmann had already gotten lost twice during the three hour drive up from Manhattan and had been forced to ask for directions at gas stations. This did nothing to improve his already sour disposition. All these years and he still disliked Americans and their bland surface helpfulness. As he drove, he kept unwrapping a packet of Tums from his jacket pocket and popping one of the antacids in his mouth to stop the constant heartburn.
Just past the age of sixty, Salzmann had become a spare, dried specimen well under average height. He had kept his hair and it was mostly still dark, but his pinched narrow face with the deepset eyes did not make him appealing. Here he was as the late afternoon approached and the sun was getting low, and he was just reaching his goal after driving all day. Outside the city of Watervliet, on a country road with miles of fields and stretches of woods between houses, he finally saw a intersection that read MORGAN LANE and pulled over onto it. Finally.
Here he hoped to find the three surviving clones of Project Regulus. If they were as bitter about what had happened as he was, he had the perfect way for them all to achieve a satisfying revenge.
The third house up Morgan Lane had a blue metal mailbox by the side of the road, and on it was painted the name REILLY. He found the family name chosen by the clones to be annoying. Tom Reilly had been the counselor at Project Regulus who specialized in showing the subjects how to move among the public without drawing attention. Salzmann had disliked Reilly from the start and could not understand why the clones would have taken that name.
At the end of the short driveway was a small white house with an attic and shingled roof. A black Oldsmobile was parked alongside it, and a bicycle leaned against one wall. The lawn was tended well enough, he grudgingly admitted, but there was a round trampoline set up in the back yard. What a waste of money, he thought, he did not expect the clones to be so frivolous.
As Salzmann parked his Ford next to the Olds, a boy about eleven years old came around the side of the house. He was a skinny kid with shaggy black hair, wearing jeans and a baggy maroon sweatshirt with the name of some rock band on it. As soon as he spotted the stranger, the boy called out, "Uncle Ted! Someone's here!" but did not approach any closer.
Getting out and closing the car door, Salzmann remembered that this subject had been initiated at the same time as the other two in the batch but his age had been tweaked so he would physically be seven when he emerged. That had been part of Karl Eldritch's plan. Immediately, the front door of the house opened and an elderly man with silvery white hair emerged, blinking in the sunlight. He was dressed in khaki pants and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
"It's all right, Kenny," said the old man as the boy hurried over to join him by the front door. The front of the house had a lilac tree almost touching it but the buds had not opened yet. "Something we can help you with, mister?"
Salzmann walked over to meet them. "I thought you would remember me," he said.
"Oh. Yes, Dr Salzmann. It's only been a few years."
"A few years.. yet so much has happened." Salzmann openly stared at the two. "Your skin tones look normal. How did you achieve that?"
"I don't see where we owe you any answers," the old man called Uncle Ted snapped. "You treated us like guinea pigs."
"Here now, let's not start on bad terms," Salzmann said. "I've been searching for your unit for a year now. I can help you get revenge on our common enemy."
Before Uncle Ted could answer, a woman emerged from the door behind him. She was tall, about five feet eight, and as thin as Ted and the boy Kenny. The woman wore a black skirt and beige long-sleeved blouse but had taken off her shoes.
"Dr Salzmann," she said in a chilly tone. "I thought you were dead with the others."
"A few of us escaped the destruction of Project Regulus," he said. "I happened to be off-duty that day. Your designation was Lucinda, if I remember rightly. You were the closest of your unit to the donor, even though we had to drop the Y chromosome and duplicate X."
"That's my name, not my designation. And we are not a unit, we're a family." She took a deep breath and softened her tone. In the sunlight, her eyes were a pale grey that watched the visitor warily. "You seem to be under some misconceptions, doctor. Maybe you should come in for a minute."
"Very well," Salzmann said. "I have a proposal for your... family."
II.
The interior was filled with the warm aroma of tomato sauce and fresh bread baking. They escorted him in a living room with comfortable furniture and a certain amount of relaxed disorder. Some neatly folded laundry was piled on one chair, there was a half-empty two liter bottle of cola on the low coffee table with a red plastic cup next to it, and a disarrayed newspaper was on the floor. As they entered, Ted hurried to straighten up.
"Sorry, sorry," I've been keeping an eye on the spaghetti," he muttered. "It's almost ready."
Salzmann was shown to a chair and the boy and woman dropped down on the couch facing him. "Mom," said Kenny, "I remember this man. From the Project."
"You do realize she is not your mother, don't you-" Salzmann began but was cut off by Lucinda.
"Not that it's any of your business," she snapped. "But you don't decide what he calls me or Ted. For a man with as many degrees as you have, you haven't learned good manners."
Dr Salzmann took a moment to compose himself before continuing. "I don't see why we have gotten off to a bad start here. Please excuse me. Since the Project was destroyed, I have been working as consultant to a medical research lab. All this time, I have been trying to locate you three." He paused to glance around. "To be honest, I was worried that you were living as fugitives. On the run, as they say. But your family seems to be doing well."
"We're comfortable," Lucinda said carefully. She waited as the old man Ted went back out to the kitchen, wiping his hands on a washcloth he had been carrying. She turned her gaze back to the visitor. The other two members of her family had the same grey eyes.
"I have a plan to avenge ourselves on the man who destroyed the facility and was responsible for so many of the staff dying, not to mention the death of our Master...."
Lucinda snorted in unexpected amusement. "You still don't understand. We're glad Karl Eldritch is dead. He brought us to life to be used as living weapons. He was an evil evil man."
"But.. the Dire Wolf is the villain here. He destroyed the facility, the only home you knew. He killed the staff who raised you and he left you alone in a world you didn't know anything about. I have a plan to punish him but I will need your help."
Uncle Ted stuck his head in the doorway. "Another five minutes. We're going to have to ask you to get your business done with us."
"Very well," Salzmann said. "Now, I have devised a plan to catch the Dire Wolf when he is out in public..."
"Stop. Listen to me. The man you call Dire Wolf, Jeremy Bane, was the unknowing donor of the genetic material that was used to create us. And three years ago, we did lead him into a trap as we had been brainwashed to do. He faced a pack of the Antares fighters. We escaped."
"Yes, yes, I know all that."
"Stop and listen for a minute, doctor. A month after that, Jeremy tracked us down. We were terrified but it turned out he didn't mean us any harm. Look. Jeremy got us birth certificates and IDs from his sources, don't ask how. He set us up in this house with a trust fund to cover taxes and utilities for a few years. The house is in my name. Jeremy got me a job as a teller at the local credit union and said it was my responsibilty to earn it. Today, I'm assistant account manager but I sure worked to get that far." Lucinda folded her arms and stared coldly at the Project Regulus scientist.
"What... I don't understand. The Master told us all about this man Bane..."
"There's more. Jeremy asked the Trom to find a remedy for our dead white skin. They provided us with a vegetable-based dye we inject several times a year. Jeremy himself drives up here at the end of each month to visit for a day or so. Sometimes he brings his girlfriend Cindy. We tell everyone he's my brother. We usually go to a movie or a street fair or something and catch up on things."
"Last time, he took me hiking up in the mountains," Kenny interrupted, speaking for the first time. The boy's alarm seemed to have faded as he heard the confidence in Lucinda's voice. "I had the best time ever."
"This is the man you want to recruit us to attack," Lucinda said. "You're just another one of the Project's heartless scientists using us like.. like we're things instead of people."
For the longest moment, Gerald Salzmann did not speak. He looked as if he had been deflated of air as his head drooped. There was an unfamiliar pang in his chest. "I don't... the Dire Wolf did all of this for you? Why? What does he get out of it?"
"If you have to ask a question like that," Lucinda replied, "you would never understand the answer."
Salzmann was staring at his hands. "I.. I believed what the Master told us. He was our guiding force, he had all the answers. Could I have been that wrong?"
"It's hard to admit, isn't it? We were confused and afraid for all our lives but now things have worked out. Let it sink in, doctor. Just open up."
Getting uncertainly to his feet, Salzmann stared down at the floor as if unable to meet the stern pale eyes of the clones. "It's a lot to take in," he admitted as if under duress. "I don't know what to think. Have I wasted all these years?"
Appearing in the doorway again, Ted held up his hands imploringly. "Come on, Lucinda, Kenny... the table's set. The garlic bread is still steaming. Sorry to chase you out, mister."
Standing up herself, Lucinda sighed. "I can't believe I'm doing this. Join us for dinner, doctor. Ted's hobby is cooking and he's pretty good at it. Eat some home-cooked food and think things over before you leave."
"Yeah," Kenny interjected. "Uncle Ted always makes twice as much as we can finish anyway."
8/9/2016
