"Oh, come on!" I said while ripping my buzzing phone from my pocket. This was the third call I'd received since arriving on this godforsaken island. I worked for the U.S. government, and my job was to inspect some of the government… facilities, to ensure they were progressing along as expected. I decided if they deserved the budget they were requesting, or if they were not worth the taxpayers' dollars. Believe it or not, we didn't try to waste too much of the taxpayers' money.
I'm the decider! I chuckled to myself. God, I needed sleep.
These were not typical government programs. The facilities contained highly classified, and honestly, highly illegal programs. Programs that must remain unbeknownst to the public. Today I was on a small island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, which I was pretty positive did not appear on most maps. The only things on this island were a ridiculous number of trees and a fortified building where cloning experiments took place.
Thank the Lord it was so fortified. Who knew what would happen if a group of the small, island-native monkeys decided to wage war against the United States?
Oh, there was also the dirt landing strip where the pilot had just tried to destroy our plane on approach to the island. Idiot. I was already nervous enough about this trip without the threat of crashing into the ocean.
I balanced the buzzing phone in one hand and my luggage in the other as I made my way down the steep stairs.
"Let's just get this visit over with," I mumbled to myself and took a deep breath to calm my nerves.
All my assignments were a little mysterious and sketchy, but something had seemed off about this one ever since I had been briefed on this job. I got the feeling there was a lot more going on at this facility than I was supposed to know. So, I was either sent here to figure out what, or sent here to do my job and ignore everything else.
I couldn't wait to find out which it was.
I slipped my phone into my shirt pocket and contemplated the consequences of ignoring the call. I tried to fix my thick brown hair, which I had damn near pulled out during the plane's horrific landing attempt. I swapped my usual glasses for my way too expensive, goofy-looking, aviator sunglasses to hide my eyes from the undeterred sunlight. I slid my glasses into a pocket inside my briefcase.
I brought minimal luggage with me on these trips. I shouldn't stay on this island more than one night, so I just carried a single briefcase containing a change of clothes, my laptop, and contacts so I didn't have to worry about breaking my glasses inside the facility. I kept my cell phone and a special flash drive on my person at all times. The flash drive was one of the perks of working for the government. This tiny thing could hold more information than a single person would ever need in a lifetime. I could store years' worth of round-the-clock video surveillance on this thing without making a dent in the storage.
I made sure everything in my briefcase was secure and straightened the sunglasses on my face. The last thing I needed was them slipping off and breaking. I had spent more money than any sane person should on these sunglasses.
If there was one thing I had learned from working in the U.S. government: you have to own expensive sunglasses, or you just won't fit in.
The buzzing phone reached maximum annoyance, and I ripped it out of my pocket.
Since arriving five minutes ago, I've had two different government officials call and try to convince me of their various points of view on these experiments. I never listened to those fools, but every visit I went on, several tried to call and sway my opinion. So understandably, in my opinion, when I got my third call within those five minutes, my temper flared.
"What!" I flipped my phone open and yelled.
Yes, I had a flip phone; old school for life. All these young kids burying their faces in their fancy internet phones and looking at those moving gif pictures disturbed me. They should be outside throwing rocks at cars or breaking sticks on each other, but that's just my opinion.
"Excuse me?" said a gruff voice from the other end.
Oops.
"Oh, I'm sorry, sir. I was getting a lot of calls from other higher-ups, and I didn't expect a call from..." My voice faded. I could hear his lack of caring in the silence. I finished in a whisper, "you."
"You have caller I.D. I suggest you USE IT!" he screamed. I held the phone away from my ear so his yelling didn't bust an eardrum. The pilot walking next to me raised an eyebrow and smirked.
"Oh, go learn how to land without breaking the plane," I hissed at him with the receiver covered by my hand. The pilot scoffed, looking hurt and offended, and walked away.
"I do apologize, sir. What can I do for you?" I said, hoping I wouldn't get another screamed response.
"Those nerds in that lab are requesting a ludicrous amount of money. You tell them if they even want HALF of their current budget, we want that damn mammoth walking around by Christmas!" the gruff voice shouted through the phone. I could almost feel the spit flying from his mouth as he spoke. He was a hardcore spit-talker. His mouth fluids would rain down upon you as he roared and screamed; it was smelly and repulsive.
"Yes, si--"
"And if you EVER answer the phone like you did before, you'll be answering your phone through your ass!" Once he finished painting that image with his words, he hung up.
"Well, that's a bit kinky for my taste, but okay," I said to the phone, his voice still buzzing in my head.
Truth be told, I wasn't for all this crazy cloning nonsense. What's dead was dead and should stay that way. Have the movies taught us nothing? Don't play God. I did not agree with what these facilities were up to. This kind of power should not be in the hands of humans.
But, if I had to be honest, it would be freaking cool to see a woolly mammoth stomping around. I mean, it's not like we would be taking people to an island full of vicious, bloodthirsty, people-devouring dinosaurs or something insane like that. These gigantic beauties hadn't even been extinct that long. They were still around when the early man was walking and grunting.
A black SUV came speeding onto the landing strip where I was waiting. It screeched to a stop a few feet from me. A large, muscled-up man with light skin, dressed in a black suit and sunglasses, stepped out. He was rocking those shades, the government would be proud. I wasn't a small man; I worked out and kept in shape, but this guy made me feel like a scrawny teenager again.
"Could you look more government agent-ish?" I asked him and offered out my hand.
He ignored it. Instead, he put a finger to his ear and held up another finger to signal me to keep silent.
"So that's a yes to my previous question," I muttered under my breath.
"Dr. Jail?" he asked. I rolled my eyes. Come on, dude.
"Dr. Gale," I said with a forced smile.
"Sure," he said and opened the SUV's side door. "In."