Jesse 2.0 by Annabelle Jay

Author:Annabelle Jay [Jay, Annabelle]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: young adult
ISBN: 978-1-64080-196-7
Publisher: Dreamspinner Press
Published: 2018-06-10T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Sixteen

Jesse

DURING OUR walk, the old woman told me her name was Darlene, and that before she’d come to Hidden Treasure Campground, she had been a secretary for a man like Dr. Reed who’d experimented on animals to train them for specific government operations. That’s how she had become so “suspicious,” a word she repeated over and over again. Apparently she’d known just enough to be dangerous, and before she left, she’d managed to set over fifty enhanced animals free.

“They’re still looking for ten of them,” she said proudly as we rounded the corner of a road dominated by trailers. “This one in particular gave them quite a chase before he found me.”

I looked where she pointed and met the eyes of a gray parrot perched on a wooden sign that said “Permanent Residences.” Most of the creature’s feathers were the color of ash, but its tail was bright red. Its head tilted as it observed me, and then it said, “Sad man.”

“Did that bird just talk?” I asked Darlene.

“Sad man. Sad man. Sad man.” Now the parrot was bobbing its head in accompaniment.

“That’s Long John,” Darlene explained. “You know, like Long John Silver? He used to have a parrot that perched on his shoulder?”

I looked at her blankly.

“Maddy would know,” Darlene said, as though she knew him personally. “It’s from Treasure Island. Anyway, most African Grey Parrots can learn up to five hundred words, but Long John here knows at least two thousand. He doesn’t talk in complete sentences, but—”

“Maddy would know. Maddy would know.” Head bob, head bob, head bob.

“There’s no need to repeat, Long John,” Darlene scolded. “You’re better than that.”

Properly chastised, Long John flapped away from us and found a new perch in a nearby tree. As we walked past a few trailers, I could still hear him mumbling to himself: “Sad man. Maddy would know. Sad man.”

“What did they want him for?” I asked Darlene as I took in the run-down road ahead. The trailers were definitely “permanent;” they were about twelve feet by thirty feet, and almost all had built-out patios with vines snaking up the sides.

“Delivering messages, I think. Passwords, instructions, hits… whatever the government needed. Just a glorified mailman, kept in a cage the rest of the time with no human interaction so his language wouldn’t be ‘corrupted.’ Poor thing.”

Darlene turned at the fifth trailer and walked up the dirt path to the door. Now that I looked at it, this trailer stood out from the others. In fact, on closer inspection, it was all silver, with several bumps on the roof that turned out to be machines of some kind and a bunch of antennas poking up like caterpillar bristles.

“Tommy?” Darlene called as she knocked insistently on the door. “Tommy, are you in there?”

“I’m working!” a young voice yelled back.

“Well, stop working for a minute and let us in,” Darlene said. “I want you to meet someone.”

Though I didn’t hear footsteps, the door opened. Perhaps this hacking genius had engineered his

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.