***** Vol.4 Chap.27 Welcome to headquarters *****

Dr. Schmidtiz rushed into the room. JB noticed a guard standing outside.

“JB, we did not notice that you were awake. How was your rest?”

“What…or where is this place?

“This is headquarters. You fell asleep on the plane ride and we did not want to wake you up. It seemed that you needed the rest anyway.”

“This is your headquarters? This feels more like a prison cell. Where is my hotel room with room service and large screen LCD TV?”

He smiled.

“Come. Let’s go to the lunch room. You must be starving by now. We can talk there.”

Hesitantly, she stood up and followed him out of her prison cell.

“We apologize for the locked door. This is standard practice at headquarters here. I hope you understand that due to the highly confidential nature of our work, security is always at a maximum. But don’t worry. We have a key card for you to go in and out of these rooms.”

“Here, let’s go this way.”

With kind gestures and soft speaking, he mollified the situation while apologizing profusely for the condition of the location.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

They turned the corner and arrived at a small door. No markings appeared anywhere on the door. He swiped his key card that JB noticed was bright red with lots of stickers on it.

Click. The door opened on its own.

“Please come in. We always have coffee and tea brewing in this lunch room. There is also a canteen for snack over there. And guess what, the snacks are free! You don’t find that privilege everywhere, eh? With your key card, you are always welcomed to come here.”

“Coffee?” He asked with a big smile, obviously delighted with the ‘first class’ arrangement.

“Yes, please.” JB half answered half nodded, though still miffed.

He poured two cups of coffee and placed them on the table. At the canteen, he looked over the selections.

“How about a chef salad?”

“That sounds good. Now that you mentioned it, I am a bit hungry now.”

Seeing a familiar face, she was feeling slightly better now.

He punched the selection buttons and two chef salads dropped at the bottom of the canteen. The chef salad was unusual with different kinds of olives and unrecognizable greens. Being too famished to ask questions, she chowed down and finished the salad in no time.

“Okay, I feel a little better now with some food in my stomach. Dr. Schmidtiz…”

JB began the conversation but he held up his hand to stop her.

“Please, call me Johan. We are colleagues now. We are all fellow employees of this great company. Call me Johan, please.”

“Okay, Johan. I am all ears.”

Johan explained to her that the company PPTSB stood for Perfect Progeny Through Selective Breeding. The long-term goal of the company is to produce desirable offspring to continue a perfect human gene pool. In other words, the company not only wanted to understand where the defective genes were but also to repair the defective genes. An immediate initiative was to rid of aggression in the human gene pool.

Johan said he himself had heard Dr. Abdulacizi’s initial presentation on the connection of the gene coding the violent behavior…

“That was my work, not his.” A sullen JB corrected him.

JB raised her hand to stop him. She was super sensitive about her work and her discovery, and was vehemently indignant about that.

“Of course it was. We found that out later. That was why we came to you…”

Nice recovery.

“Okay, I just want to set the record straight.”

“Yes, we must be accurate.”