Morning all. Hope your week is going well. I did too many arm exercises yesterday so as long as I keep my arms close to my body and maybe move like a T-Rex I should be okay. Definitely over did it. But I can still type, so timers set for fifteen minutes and off we go.
My brain really has leaned into Sci-Fi this week. Oddly this feels like it might be part of the same story as yesterday.
Wednesday, June 18th: There were no signs of life.
There were no signs of life. He ran the tests several times on each sample to be certain. The air contained no pollen, spores or airborne anything. The water was the standard H2O molecule and in some samples there were trace elements of other minerals. But there was not a single microscopic anything. The land was the same. Dirt, broken down into varying elements, but no life. Jeffrey frowned. He marked his findings on this last sample into the ledger. He then set his pen down and carefully returned the sample to the storage area with the others.
Jeffrey paused to check the list even though he knew what he would find. Sure enough, this was the final sample. There were no others to check.
‘Every sample devoid of life.’
It was bizarre. He shook his head. The details of the samples were classified. He was allowed to work with them and to analyze them. His records were to be kept in this lab only and when he left each night he was searched to make certain he was not smuggling information out.
He didn’t take it personally. After all it had only been three months since the Garrison Affair. Jeffry shook his head. How William Garrison and his cohorts managed to sneak so much out of the top secret labs for so long was astounding. Jeffrey knew the security was tight. He never planned to take things out of the lab so he never really thought much about it. He made certain all of his reports and materials were contained in his lab before he left and that everything was sealed. In his mind it was to thwart cross contamination.
‘I also don’t work with the kinds of things other companies pay big bucks for,’ he thought as he closed the storage area, making sure it was sealed. He wasn’t certain if his record of not working with the most profitable sections of the labs was what caused him to be given this top secret project. There was certainly far more security than usual.
Part was of course a reaction to recent events. Part was that he was not usually given this sort of project. He found the extra scrutiny amusing in it’s dichotomy. While he was thoroughly searched when he left, as was everyone these days, the intense scrutiny on the project was surreptitious instead of direct. In the other labs known to work with the more sensitive and potentially highly lucrative projects the security was tight and obvious. While the security had been upgraded in his labs, it was done quietly, with no exterior marks to show the upgrades. In addition instead of large uniformed guards, he had guards who wore lab coats.
He knew they weren’t scientists and when they moved he saw the weapons, but they were trying to be more discrete. It wasn’t their strong suit.
‘I’m betting someone doesn’t want anyone else to know my lab is working on this.’ It was not a new thought and he let it go with his own usual dark amusement. The thought didn’t get him any closer to what he was working on. He knew that the samples he was given were completely devoid of life, but they were also devoid of any life killing radiation or anything obvious that could have caused the lack of life in the samples. It was as if the samples came from a place that was completely sucked dry of life.
As he walked back to his desk he wondered if this had anything to do with the intergalactic project. He knew that the study of colonizing other planets had ratcheted up in the past few years, but it wasn’t his sector.
Ten til Midnight 