Chapter Eighteen
Oliver was sitting in his own office.
Some people might wonder how or why did he got one.
He deserved it, he alone took out plenty of the crap the E.A.G.L.E. didn't care to solve or didn't want to get directly involved with.
Mainly, the bizarre ones.
In this distant future there wasn't a word for paranormal nor a care to investigate it.
However, where people go the strange will follow.
He remembers the whispers and the snickering of his fellow agents.
Who could blame them?
By the time Oliver became the head and only active body of his own division most people had forgot or died to the strange horrors that inhabited the planet.
The beasts that scared even the natives, both the ones the human colonizers had lead to extinction or hiding in the bad lands has well as the ones the colonizers had come to an agreement with.
The Preacher.
What a strange nickname for a man without faith.
The soldiers needed to believe in something, even he needed to believe in something. He preached about courage and destiny and miraculously that held most of the troops together.
It was so easy, just a matter of getting a hold of the closest religious book and reading the right parts. skip the ones that talk about damnation, regret and compel the believers to xenophobia.
Margaret was late.
They had to meet Doctor Sunday or what was left of him and she was rarely late.
Oliver smiled as he calculated what she might be doing.
Planing a way to push him against a wall, force the facts out of him.
"Sigh.... Young people can be so impatient."
Soon she would learn all his secret but it would bring her no joy.
Distracted, he picked up the good book.
Kolltah, the holy book of the religion of the Blue Comet.
A compendium of nonsense.
A hundred years ago, a science fiction writer had put it together.
Some say he was mad, others that he was proving a point or pulling a joke.
He shuffled through the pages, distracted.
To think it took so little for people to start passing it as an actual religious book.
It wasn't even his idea, someone had started doing it just thirty years after the book was released.
It absorbed some of the actual believes of the planet's native races or so he hoped.
Maybe this one day all races could coexist, truly live together instead of just being oppressed.
Most of the planet's habitants used to be wild, blood crazed monsters.
A Darwinian nightmare come true, humanoids that evolved of creatures similar to the fish and reptiles on Earth, the original one that had cradled his long dead ancestors.
Oliver wasn't THAT old.
That had been thousands of years ago.
He was just a hundred and something.
"The old world, the new world. They are all the same." Someone told him once.
"Trust me, I read the files with the unaltered data. I even read some of it printed in real paper."
A different time. Oliver dropped the book on his desk.
It felt heavy with guilt and remorse.
Heavy with sin.
He had done things, before he was allowed to have his eccentricities.
Terrible things.
He wasn't truly a Preacher and his fascination with the unusual didn't made a paranormal investigator.
He was a murderer. Killing when he was told to.
"Wake up old man. We're late for a meeting."
It was Margaret at the door.
She looked tired,her face barely holding any of her usually stiff demeanour.
The Preacher knew that look, one he had seen amongst the soldiers every day on campaigns.
It was fear. Hid under a mask of discipline, hard as steel.
he took a deep breath and as she left, so did he.
They had a meeting with truth.
He wore his sun glasses has they walked down the corridor.
"Take those of, you look ridiculous with them."
"This lights are too strong for my old, weary eyes."
She grunted, perhaps her way of laughing when she looked down on someone.
He often noted this, how amongst every knew generation people seemed to keep forgetting how smile naturally or laugh!
How long had it been since he last heard laughter, real laughter instead of something forced.
Any laughter, any smiles were all trained reactions, something forced to be when they were expected or to make people more at ease.
"Where is he?" Oliver asked.
"Up. In the restricted floor."
"Mh. I shouldn't be surprised. He wants to make himself look big.
What better way than using the one floor reserved to the highest E.A.G.L.E. patents?"
Margaret let out another of her grunts.
She didn't look amused but then again. she never did.
"His arrogance will be his downfall. One day."
They entered the lift and it went up, swift and silent.
"I would do the same thing if I wanted to show who's in charge."
Margaret said and quickly added "Or if I looked like a walking corpse."
Oliver smiled a real smile, instead of one of those people had to train themselves to have.
"You have very keen eye and a natural talent for empathy."
Margaret side glanced at him, her left eye brow raised in disbelief.
The door of the lift opened and she quickly stepped out.
He sighed once again at the hurried pacing of his fellow agent.
"Young people, always in a hurry."
Monday Delirium Community Member 
|
|
