Cobalt Slave by Walker Jon

Author:Walker, Jon [Walker, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Jon Walker
Published: 2016-01-11T18:30:00+00:00

CHAPTER 14

The following morning is excruciating for Mark. The combination of excitement, anticipation and having absolutely nothing at all to do is extremely unpleasant. All he can think about is his upcoming journey to Goliath, but there is not a thing he can do to prepare for it. He can’t even talk to his father about it, so he just replays the conversation with Mr. Snider over and over again in his mind.

Mark feels energized to change the world, but first he has to visit ever more businesses and continue to feign interest in what they do. The task was boring before, but after his meeting yesterday it is downright painful. Mark is a man ready to embrace a great destiny, but right now he needs to pretend to care about the running of a local butcher shop. Mark’s one saving grace is that his official placement exam is tomorrow, so after Mark and his father grab a quick lunch of street meat, he has an excuse to go back to his cousin’s apartment for the rest of the afternoon to “study” for the exam.

It is back in the privacy of the empty apartment that Mark informs his father that he has been instructed to fail the exam but can’t say why. David is instinctively disappointed to hear the news at first. After a lifetime of telling your children to do well in school, the mantra is too ingrained in his mind to let go of immediately, but David quickly comes around to accept it must be necessary, even if he can’t know why. They then spend the rest of the day mostly in an awkward silence, watching two very old wilderness survival movies. One is set in the Australian outback, the other set in the frozen forests of Canada. Mark gives his father the excuse that he wants to watch something that won’t make him feel trapped in by all the people in the city. The real reason he selected these movies is two-fold. First, it pains Mark to not tell his father what he is going to do, but he hopes to give him a clue. If David picks up on it, he is too reserved to indicate it to his son. The second reason is that Mark hopes to possibly get some useful survival tips from the movies. Unfortunately, they both turn out to be mostly useless. It is either stuff Mark already knew, Earth-specific information that will do him no good, or obviously stupid ideas added for dramatic value.

The awkward afternoon transitions into an even more awkward evening when cousin Paul comes home from work. All three of them share a simple and very awkward last dinner together during which they fill the silence with polite, meaningless conversation. Afterwards Mark spends another restless night tossing around in the small guest bed, since his father made a big show of taking the couch, assuring Mark would be well rested for his big exam the next day. Mark can’t stop thinking about the secret tunnel, the bugs, his mission, and the exam.

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.