More of an assembly area than a lab, the facility spanned the length of two football fields, the open space divided into twenty work stations. Each location encircled an 8,000 pound Zeus satellite, the monoliths lined up like giant dominoes.
Every fourth work station was separated from the next by an eight-foot-high, twenty-foot-long divider. From her vantage, Jessica could not see what these barriers were concealing.
Sarah frowned. “Look at them. They’re like twenty lost children, waiting for their mama to send them off into space. C’mon, I’ll introduce you to their keepers.”
Jessica followed her assistant to the partition situated between work stations four and five. On the other side of the divider was a combination supply depot and break area. Hanging from numbered hooks were tool belts, uniforms and an assortment of bulky orange vests that resembled life-jackets. There was a kitchenette, and a lounge area which consisted of several sofas and recliners, and eight nap pods — all but two of them vacant. Four port-o-potties were paired off by gender, the combination toilet and enema designed to evacuate and “refresh” the bowels.
Project Zeus’s station leaders were dressed in white jumpsuits, the extra padding around their knees and elbows stained dark from wear.
Lois “Lolly” Stern was the first to make an impression on Jessica. Strapped in one of the orange vests, the teal-eyed, forty-eight-year-old engineer was floating upside-down three feet off the ground, her long brown hair hanging below her face like a mop.
Jessica stared at the device strapped across her chest. “An anti-gravitics device? That’s impressive. How high—”
“—three hundred meters; excuse me, Dr. Marulli.” Sarah rushed over to the inverted woman whose face was flushed purple, the veins in her forehead popping out like tree roots. “Lolly, roll into a horizontal position at once before you pop an artery!”
“Dr. May? Did I fall asleep again?”
Sarah grabbed her by the ankles and dragged her into an upright position. Then she turned a harsh parental gaze upon the two men watching the spectacle from their leather recliners. “Mr. Mull… Mr. Mahurin, I thought I asked the two of you to keep an eye on her.”
Chris Mull was in his late forties, his brown hair worn long and tied in a tight ponytail despite a receding forehead. The upper torso of his orange jumpsuit was tied by the sleeves around his waist, exposing his gray Dallas Cowboy’s tee-shirt. “We were watching her, Ladybug. And in the course of watching her, we decided to kill time by wagering on when she’d pass out. I said nine minutes; Lukas went with fourteen.”
“And if she dies from an aneurism?”
“Then all bets are off.”
“No worries, Ladybug. Lolly has good veins.” Lukas Mahurin held a carrot in his mouth like a cigar, his attention focused on the guinea pig feeding from the other end. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Nibbles?”
“Ugh… do you see what I have to put up with, Dr. Marulli? Lolly, we agreed to a maximum of five minutes per session. Ignore my rules again and I’ll ban you from all gravitronic devices.”
“No you won’t.”
Jessica turned to the voice of dissension.
Jeffrey Emmette was in the kitchenette, working on his own assembly line, this one consisting of six deli subs. “Lolly has a herniated disc and frequent inversion is the only thing that takes the pressure off the nerves in her lumbar spine. Cut her off and we’ll have to listen to her whine all day.”
The self-appointed “Sandwich King” ran his eyes over Jessica. “What’re you having, boss lady? I’ve got Italian, turkey-off-the-bone, and two pounds of fresh roast beef that’s nice and bloody. We have another six hours before it starts to go bad.”
“Thank you… maybe later. It’s only nine-twenty in the morning.”
“Around here we eat when we can; you never know when Ladybug is going to call for an all-nighter.” Using a large carving knife, Jeffrey sliced a turkey sub in half, slid it onto a paper plate, then walked over to one of the sealed sleep pods and banged on top of the oval device with the palm of his free hand. “Wake-up, R.B. Eats!”
The pod opened, revealing Rachel Barry, a long-necked, frizzy-haired Caucasian woman in her late thirties. “Did you put mayo on it?”
“Did you ask for mayo?”
“In fact I specifically said no mayo.”
“Then there’s no mayo on it.”
Rachel accepted the sandwich and took a bite. “Asshole.”
Jeffrey Emmette grinned. “Turkey’s a little dry. With dry turkey you gotta add mayo. Ain’t that right, new boss lady? So what’s your poison?”
“Italian with oil and vinegar; hold the mayo and onions.”
“You must have grown up in the northeast… praise God. Not like the assistant boss lady, who kills every sandwich I make her with yellow mustard.”
Ignoring him, Sarah scanned the break area, doing a mental head count. Grimacing, she approached a man soldering scraps of copper at a work table, his Marist College sweatshirt stained in grease. “Ian, where’s Peter and Andrew?”
Ian Concannon never looked up from the ET figurine he was piecing together. “Pete’s trying to fix the leaking A/C duct. I lost track of Andrew. Maybe it’s tea time?”
“Grabowski’s on the shitter,” Lukas said, the guinea pig now feeding off carrot shards covering his groin. “Or should I say, the ‘port-o-loo.’ ”
Lois Stern stretched her back, her complexion having returned to normal. “Did you know in Russia they call it a unitas… as in, ‘You Need Ass.’ True story.”
A tall athletic man with a slight paunch emerged from the men’s port-o-potty, slamming the plastic door shut. “That’s not a story, Lolly, it’s more of an anecdote. A story is what our dear Ladybug will be spinning when I ask her — again — why maintenance still hasn’t drained the sludge out of the men’s shitter. What’s the point of ‘refreshing one’s colon’ if one has to smell it afterward? It’s been two bloody weeks.”
“I was told — again — that all maintenance services will revert to their normal schedules in the fall. Until then, and I quote, ‘your ten zoo keepers can make do,’ no pun intended.”
Andrew Grabowski snorted a reply. “Next turd I vacuum out of my intestines will be in the woman’s shitter; see how you like it then.”
“Enough. This is Dr. Marulli—”
“The new head zookeeper, we know, Ladybug.” Ian looked up from soldering. “Hey, boss lady, how long have you been a member of the Flat Earth Society?”
“I’m sorry?”
Jeffrey Emmette handed her a paper plate holding the two halves of an Italian sub. “What my esteemed colleague is referring to is this morning’s speech. It was a bit… antiquated.”
“It was bullshit.”
Jessica looked up as a powerfully-built man with piercing hazel eyes and a neatly trimmed mustache floated down from the ceiling, a heavy tool belt hanging below his anti-gravitics vest.
“Peter Niedzinski, this is our new—”
“Ops Director, I know. Will you be offing yourself like your predecessor?”
Jessica felt the blood rush from her face. “Scott Hopper committed suicide?”
“Suicide’s the ‘official’ report,” Chris Mull said, hopping off the recliner. “Everyone who saw the body knows he was TWEP-ed.”
“What’s TWEP-ed again?” Lolly asked as she moved into a downward-facing-dog yoga pose.
“Terminated With Extreme Prejudice,” Chris Mull answered. “You can bet the farm it was the bikers.”
“You’re wrong,” Peter said. “Scott was poisoned. Poison is CIA.”
“Yeah, well I spoke to his wife. After they poisoned him they yanked out one of his back molars. The dental calling card is strictly Devil’s Disiples.”