The Vespidian
Arc 8 Superficial
Chapter 3
A short car ride later we, and by we I mean Mark, Mr. Johnson and I, found ourselves arriving at the Bronson Atomic Industries Headquarters. It was located near the Slums and was more on the south eastern side of the city. Lucky for these guys, Enforcer’s base of operations was just down the street and as a result, there were tall concrete walls with electrified razor ribbon closing off the Slums from the rest of the city. For a good city block or two, all of the old buildings had been demolished to create a flat expanse with nowhere to hide. Enforcer didn’t take chances and if his plans ever came to fruition, then the Slums would be sealed off completely in a force field. I am not too sure if it would work. First of all, do we even have powerful force fields? It would be a start, but the sewers would have to be sealed as well or they would just go under the defenses, then again, most of the problem ones could simply jump over the wall, to begin with.
If I remember correctly, this area was plagued by the Sixes and Sevens as well as the Diablo De Chillar. The strange thing about the Sixes was that, well, they were a Union, not actually a gang. To be precise, they were the Railroad Workers Union. If I had to compare it to anything, I guess they were like the Mob. Originally, they were not even in the city, but then somebody had the smart idea of requesting them to come and set up shop. That was back when the Diablos were expanding too much. It was the whole fight fire with fire mentality and, oddly enough, it worked to a degree. The Diablos would have taken over this whole section of the city if the Sixes were not here. Now, though they have frequent clashes in the streets over turf. I hear Enforcer is having a hard time with it.
Other than that I have not heard too much since this is not the section of the city that I usually deal with. As a result, I have not paid too much attention to here. Although, I guess if I end up working for these guys then it will be my business what the villains are up to in the area. Still, the place was not as bad as the Slums from what I have heard the fighting is mostly taking place either in the plantation areas or the railway and warehouse district… speaking of which after all this time, I finally figured out where the hell I had come up around during my initial escape. It turns out I had been somewhere over in that area. Though, I am not sure about the specifics I was not exactly in the right mind set during that time to be paying attention to details if I ever wanted to return. Not that I would.
I let out a sigh and looked through the car door window. So this is their digs eh? It actually looks surprisingly nice. Not entirely sure what I had really been expecting. It was a clean, uniform in appearance building. A big BAI logo stood paramount atop the covered entranceway. An uprising of steps led to the front revolving doors and people walked in and out at a steady pace. Huge reinforced glass windows spanned the front of the building and perfectly manicured honey suckle hedges, palm trees, and even some flower beds broke the monotony of concrete, steel, and glass. Just seeing how green everything was showed how meticulous they were in the care of the appearance, we were in the worst drought that California had seen in over a decade. I enjoyed the smell, not sure what kind of flowers they were, but I found them rather soothing to the antennae.
“And here we have the Headquarters. As you can see, we pride ourselves on keeping a good appearance.”
“So I see,” I replied, idly looking him over. I had kind of filtered it out, but Johnson has a strong chin. It was not Admiral Moon status, but it was pretty good.
“Just follow me and we will get this tour underway.”
“I thought we were going to the main facility?”
“We are. Just want to show you around here, if you do take the Sponsorship then you will be coming here to get job requests.”
“Sounds simple enough.”
The glass doors opened up into a wide reception room. Across from us stood an oval shaped counter behind which stood five receptionists. Every last one of them could easily be a model for some swimsuit magazine, despite wearing navy blue business skirts and blouses rather than bikinis and thongs. Each of them had a different hair color, ginger, platinum blond, black, brunette and oddly enough the last had a dark green hair color, it must have been dyed. All of them noticed our entry and said in unison, “Welcome back Mr. Johnson, has your business concluded?”
“Not just yet. We are doing a little tour so would one of you be a dear and fetch my hazmat suit and a spare for Mr. Dirkstein?”
“Right away,” replied the green headed one, leaving the room.
The others returned to their work. At first, I thought that they had obviously been hired for their looks and eh, large assets, but they diligently typed away at their computers and being rather helpful to the visitors. There were a few lined up waiting for their turn. It appeared mostly to be job applicants.
“So,” I said, looking around the room, “Where are the orange midgets who sing and dance?”
John took a moment to understand exactly what I said, “You mean Oompa Loompas? Those are not real, you know.”
“Surely you got some weirdo creature or people running around here similar to that.”
He just shook his head, “No, not really. There is a cartoon thing we use on the tour, but that is about it. Unless you wanted to see the mutant animals we have captured for experimentation?”
“Does it sing and dance?”
“No.”
I sulked. Ah man, this place is going to be boring. Well, maybe not. “What sorts of animals you got?”
He shrugged, “You’ve been in the sewers. We got rats, dogs, cats, raccoons, spiders, roaches, even got a centipede. On the nastier side of things, we managed to transplant a tubifex worm colony. You know the usual stuff. Oh, we did get in a squirrel that animal control caught in Bronson Park a while ago.”
“I kinda want to see the trash panda and maybe the squirrel.”
“We will be sure to make a stop by the mutation prevention department.”
“Mutation prevention?”
“I will tell you more about it when we get there.”
“Ok, why are we going to need suits?” I asked.
“You wanted a tour right? So I am going to take you through our various departments. Some of them are a bit volatile, to say the least.”
“Why didn’t I get a suit then?”
“I hear yours is better than what we have, so I think you will be fine.”
“How come you have access to all this stuff? You aren’t just some lawyer guy, are you?”
“You haven’t heard of me?”
“I don’t really pay attention to names too much.”
“John Johnson here, CEO and Founder of Bronson Atomic Industries. Here at BAI, we cover all the sciences from atomic, to the new Tachyon Energy Research.”
“Tachyon Energy? Never heard of that before.”
“Well, of course, you have not, it might not exist.”
“Wait, what? Then why are you researching it?”
“Tachyon particles are theoretical particles that move faster than light, assuming of course they exist. Well, at the least that is what the Eggheads down in the labs think. You would have to talk to them to get a better idea, I am not a scientist after all.”
I was about to reply when the elevator opened up and the secretary had returned, hauling a wheeled rack that had two thick suits hoisted from it. Vaguely they were reminiscent of diving suits. The helmet was domed glass, allowing for all around vision. I had seen something like this before… Nuclear Knight’s suit was very similar to these. Did he steal it from them? Well, he did raid their supply shipments from time to time, so it made sense. Wait a minute, didn’t Dr. Arbor give that suit to him? Then…
“You wouldn’t happen to have anything to do with Dr. Arbor would you?”
He replied rather peppy, “Well of course we do. At BAI we get only the best and brightest. She is one of our head consultants, though she typically sticks to her own private projects. She helped design our protective suits.”
So I see. It appears to be Dr. Arbor all the way down. It couldn’t be… did she set up this sponsorship for me? She is like my deranged fairy godmother or something. I am starting to wonder exactly what her goals are. What is this, a Cinderella story and this is my pumpkin carriage to the ball? I mean what does she want from me? There must be some sort of agenda or else nobody in their right mind would be showering somebody with so much attention. Of course, who said she was in her right mind to start with?
“Hey Johnson, I was wondering you are not a scientist, then how come you are in charge?”
He thought for a moment, tapping his chin, “What, you think scientists can run a business?”
“Isn’t that insulting? I mean I am sure they are smarter than you, so why wouldn’t they?”
He had a puzzled look for a moment, then it seemed to click with what I had said, “Oh, I said that wrong. I don’t think that they can’t do it, it is just they have better things to do than scrounge around for money. I think very highly of our Research and Development department. They come up with some pretty cool stuff. Problem is, money doesn’t just grow on trees you know, well not unless you know where to look anyway. It is very time-consuming to keep all our projects funded and staffed at all times. It would be a waste of their time if they had to run around worrying about how to pay for the next piece of equipment that they needed or how to procure a certain sample for an experiment. That is my job.”
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That made sense. I remember Neon Nurse complaining about funding.
I watched as they both got suited up, Dirkstein needed a little help. Not surprising, the first time he had put on such a thing as far as I knew. They were both still shorter than me even in those things. I guess I am pretty tall, depending on where I am, I do have to duck in order to not smack my head on the door frame or ceiling for that matter. It looked like we were ready to proceed.
“Now we will start the tour. If you will follow me, we will proceed to the main facility.”
“Wait, I thought this was the HQ how will we get to the main facility?”
“Simple, it is below us.”
“Isn’t that bad? What if something goes wrong and blows up? Won’t the city get destroyed?”
“The city is perfectly safe. It is down there pretty deep and as I will explain in a little while it is highly unlikely that anything bad would manage to get out if something did happen. We have containment protocols. and many counter measures, I assure you.”
That sounds reasonable. Oddly, I feel that I am just looking for some excuse to say no to this. It might have something to do with the sewer stuff since these guys are responsible. I should at the least give them a chance.
The three of us entered the lift over to the side and Johnson put his eye near a screen, it scanned him after a moment and a different set of buttons appeared on the touch screen. Oh? Seems that we are going where only authorized personnel get to go. Or maybe not… he touched a button that said Tour.
He stood back as the elevator started to move and a screen appeared in front of us. A weird little cartoon guy appeared… it looked kinda like Johnson and the moment it spoke I knew that it was. “Greetings and salvations ladies and gentlemen, John Johnson here and boy do we have a treat for you! We at Bronson Atomic Industries are excited to have you!”
I just blankly looked between him and the caricature, he did his own voice acting for this thing? Well, I guess if he just recorded it once rather than having to explain it over and over again every time you take some people down here. To be honest, I was actually excited to see where this was going. What sorts of high tech gizmos were they concocting down here?
“At Bronson Atomic Industries, we pride ourselves on our clean and safe facilities. It has been-” the voice cut out and a mechanical voice said “Three days since the last work place injury.”
Johnson looked a little embarrassed, “There was a little mishap with our disposal unit, they got attacked by some mutants when they were taking a shipment over to the processing plant. It was only minor injuries and one of them got cancer… of course, one of the others did get half his face melted off. Those sewer mutants sure do have some scary powers.”
“Getting your face melted off is a minor injury?” asked Mark.
“Compared to some of the things I have seen, the man is lucky. Plastic surgery is pretty good these days you know. He will get a new face and it will be fine. We have a very generous health care plan.”
“Three days ago? We just cleared out the sewers last week.” I replied, looking him over.
“Well, sure you broke up the gang, but you guys didn’t get everything. The lowest levels are still infested with mutant animals and even subhumans.”
“Shit, I guess we didn’t get them all.”
“It is understandable, we have been combating the sewer life for years and still haven’t been able to eradicate it all. Best we can do is keep it contained down there. At any rate, don’t worry about it, our facility is safe other than external activities the track record is very good in here.”
He tapped a button and the cartoon continued. “Bronson Atomic Industries is the leading producer of clean energy in the world. Why our patented Geothermal Nuclear Reactor Plant supplies all the power for Bronson city and that is just a little one. Together with our recent partnerships with Chronic Tonic, Industrial Construction Incorporated, and Stellar Space we are going to make a brighter future for all mankind, on Mars!”
I looked at him, “Mars? You guys are trying to go to Mars?”
“Yeah, actually, it is our long term project. We are going to Terraform it and colonize it.”
“How the hell are you going to do that?”
“Well, I did say long term. From our estimates, it is going to be another twenty years before we launch the first mission. We are mostly waiting for Stellar Space to design and build a spacecraft capable of the trip. Then we can begin testing it on shorter flights. We will probably end up making our own space stations before embarking on the grand adventure.”
“Chronic Tonic? Why does that sound familiar?”
“Oh, they are a pharmaceutical company. Their corporate headquarters is over on the North West side of the city. Save your questions for the end of the tour I will be happy to answer them.”
I am not entirely sure how long we have been in this elevator, but it felt like it had been ten minutes. Just how deep are we going? Just when I started getting paranoid we came to a stop and the doors opened to a white washed room that branched out down different corridors. A few people with lab coats walked about and there was another reception desk with only one girl at it. She gave us a little nod and went back to her own work.
“This is our RnD department. In front of us is the special restricted area and to the left is our Green Energy Team, and to our right is the Experimental Materials division. The next floor down is the Mutation Prevention Department.”
“Experimental Materials?”
“Yes, we are constantly trying to formulate new, stronger, lighter metals for building purposes. Our partner Industrial Construction Incorporated has been building up the city with the new materials. For instance, they made the Hero League bases with our state of the art polycarbonate concrete.”
I started to come to a realization, “You guys are eh… well connected.”
“Well of course we are. We have been here for twenty years. I remember back when this place was hardly even a city. Over the years our Super friendly attitude has helped draw in all sorts of young, bright-eyed heroes and build up this great city. We like up and comers, and from what we have heard that is you. Which is why we want you to take our offer. It is a win, win. We have lots of connections to help your career and all we want really is for you to do a couple of commercials, slap a sticker on your suit and do a few promotional events. Not bad for a six figure salary is it?”
“Six… six figures? Like how much exactly are we talking here?”
“You didn’t read all of the contract did you?” asked Mark.
“Well, maybe not all of it. But I remember it not being that much.”
“Let’s see,” said Mark pulling out the contract and looking it over, “You get paid twenty thousand up front and ten thousand per commercial and promotion. Since it looks like they have eight planned for you, that would be one hundred thousand all added up, plus bonuses like food expenses and hotel fees. Granted this is the old contract, the new one should be better.”
“So upfront I get paid almost as much as I do for a whole year of working as a junior hero and every two things after that is the same amount?”
“That is the entry level. Once your name gets out there and you get more popular or you fulfill your contract we can renegotiate at a higher rate since it will be worth more for both of us.” Said Johnson.
I bit my lip. Damn it, this was certainly tempting. I could literally buy all the food that I wanted. Hopefully, Mark can even get it to be even more. Of course, that is probably just greedy, but hey. I think that I deserve it after what I have done and been through.
Johnson smirked a little. Oh god dammit, this fucking helmet has emoji faces on it linked to mine. He must have seen the stupid grin I was wearing. He turned away and motioned, “Let’s continue on with the tour, once we are done down here we will write up a new contract in my office, depending on if you want to take the sponsorship or not.”
First, we went into the Green Energy wing. It was a long corridor that had several intersections farther ahead. To our sides were large concave windows revealing researchers and their varied projects. The first section we arrived to had something to do with solar energy. They were testing different panels and even if the pattern that they were used in would change the energy output.
“This is our solar project. Currently, the panels are not efficient enough for what we have planned.”
“Why are you doing it under ground? Solar needs the sun right?”
“For testing, we are trying to find a better absorption rate, currently they are only about twenty percent efficiency and we have some of the most advanced ones.”
“That doesn’t sound like much.”
“It is not. Currently, the cost to manufacture and then install and maintain them is not worth it. Which is why we are trying to make it better before marketing them. All those other solar companies are just a bunch of crooks, their panels are fifteen percent tops. That is not even enough to cover the energy requirements for a household. Our minimum would be fifty percent, but we are aiming for a hundred.”
“Wait then solar energy is no good?”
“Currently, no. Only reason we are even doing it because of all the government subsidies. If it was not for those, we would not even touch the stuff.”
“It is that bad?”
“It is not cost effective. Not to mention bad for the environment and we have enough problems from the eco regulations and fines.”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa. Bad for the environment? Says the guy who runs nuclear power plants and has literally ruined the slums? How so?” I asked.
“First off the Melt Down was sabotaged by a bunch of idiotic Eco-terrorists. Was not our fault, but we are still cleaning up the mess, unlike them. As for the panels, making the things creates lots of emissions and then once you actually set them up, depending on how many there are, they make the temperature in the immediate area go up sometimes tens of degrees. Also since they are usually in the desert sand erodes the panels faster, meaning they have to be replaced more often, which means you gotta make more of them.”
“So what your nuclear power plant is better?”
“It is certainly better in terms of sheer power output. However, what we think is the best energy source would be Geothermal mixed with Nuclear. We got a plant about the size of a football field deeper down and it creates so much power we have a surplus.”
“How does that work?”
“Well, I don’t know the specifics, but basically we use radioactive lava and continually keep it flowing between the two reactors so that it doesn’t have a chance to cool and solidify. The heat generates the energy. If you really wanted to know more you gotta ask one of the eggheads on the project.”
“So if that is so good, why are you even bothering with other stuff?”
“You can’t take that into space. Which is why we need alternative sources for the Mars mission to be successful.”
“You seem oddly obsessed with going to Mars.”
“Of course I am. It is my dream to be the first man on Mars.”
“Well, that would certainly explain it.”
We continued on. The next section of windowed laboratories was kinetic energy or so the signs said. Long slabs of metal shock absorber things under them. The scientists had a machine that would walk on top of it at varied paces. It seemed simple enough the energy from the machine walking was transferred into the springs and then harvested.
“So what are your plans with that?”
“Well, currently we are testing out a new sidewalk to use in more densely populated areas. People walking on it will generate lots of power since there will be near constant foot traffic. We are also developing a version that would replace roads and use cars to generate energy.”
“You mean like how Nicki Mouse Land uses its roller coasters to generate power?”
“Ah, that is the older design. It was more of an experiment, but it yielded good results.”
He didn’t have much else to say about that and so we moved on. The last section appeared to be bio fuels or so the signs on the doors and labels said. Not entirely sure what they were making it out of, but it was glowing. All of the scientists were wearing suits like Mark and Johnson while they worked.
“This section here is researching the sewer waters and trying to figure out if there is a way to convert it into a fuel source that is no longer so dangerous to human health. It is looking like a slow process.”
I nodded, so they are trying to clean up the city.
“Did you want to get a closer look?”
“No, I am good.”
“Well, that is about it for this section.”
“I think I have seen about enough. Let’s get that contract made up,” I said.
“I thought you wanted to see the animals, though?”
“Nah, I changed my mind. They are probably all weird and gross anyway.”
“Alright well, just follow me and we will head on up,” said Johnson leading the way.
It mostly seemed on the up and up. I kind of just feel like I am wasting my time checking the place out. Not really as exciting as I thought it would be. I was expecting there to be some super sketchy stuff, but not really. The only thing bugging me would be what was in that secret area. However, I can assume that it is that Tachyon thing since it should have been in the energy department but was not.