Making Friends (The Experiment Book 2) Read online

  Making Friends

  Book 2 of The Experiment

  Micah Edwards

  - Copyright -

  Cover art by Bruce Rolff via http://www.shutterstock.com.

  Copyright © Micah Edwards 2016.

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Basically what this boils down to is that if you steal my stuff that I worked hard on, I’ll be sad. And I’d rather not be sad. So help me out on this one, would you?

  First printing, 2016.

  ISBN-13: 978-1539368144

  ISBN-10: 1539368149

  Want to talk to the author? I want to talk to you! Send me your thoughts at [email protected]. If they’re not mean, I will respond. If they are mean, I will delete them; please see the above note about not wanting to be sad.

  The production of this book was made possible by CreateSpace (http://www.createspace.com), an Amazon company.

  - Table of Contents –

  - Prologue

  - Chapter One

  - Chapter Two

  - Chapter Three

  - Chapter Four

  - Chapter Five

  - Chapter Six

  - Chapter Seven

  - Chapter Eight

  - Chapter Nine

  - Chapter Ten

  - Chapter Eleven

  - Chapter Twelve

  - Chapter Thirteen

  - Chapter Fourteen

  - Chapter Fifteen

  - Chapter Sixteen

  - Chapter Seventeen

  - Chapter Eighteen

  - Chapter Nineteen

  - Afterword

  - About the Author

  - Prologue -

  I kind of want to start this story with, “So here I am, surrounded by fire.” It sounds tough, right? You don’t get to be surrounded by fire if you’re just some office drone. You’ve got to be doing exciting stuff — if you want to be telling the story afterwards, anyway. And here I am, so obviously exciting stuff was the order of the day. But there’s a lot that happens before that that’s important, and a fair bit afterward, too. So I think I’ve just got to get to it in order.

  I’m Dan Everton. Three months before this story starts, I would have called myself a lone wolf type: alone, aloof, uncaring. Other people might have chosen words like “dull,” “unmotivated” and “uninteresting,” but that’s just sour grapes. Everyone’s always jealous of Fonzie, right?

  That’s what I would have said three months ago, anyway. These days, I’m a little more introspective, and a little more willing to admit that a guy who works the security night shift in a fossil museum doesn’t actually have all that much going for him. I mean, I could have. I could have been writing plays in my down time, or making art, or coding up the next killer app. But I wasn’t. I, personally, was just sitting around, letting life pass me by.

  Also, I had a chance to catch up on Happy Days recently, and you know what? Turns out no one was jealous of Fonzie. Everyone always loved him, and no one ever seemed to mind how much cooler he was than them. I don’t know where I got that idea. Just one more thing I was wrong about, I suppose.

  Anyway, out of the blue I suddenly got hit with powers, honest-to-goodness superpowers. They showed up one at a time, without warning, and went away just as abruptly. And as with any good superhero, every power came with a ready-made nemesis. When I had super-strength and invulnerability, I went toe-to-toe with a mutated ape-man who was out for my blood. When I had super-smarts, I fought…well, another ape-man, actually, but that one was brain-to-brawn, and I made it work out in my favor.

  That specific pattern broke when I got the ability to influence my own magnetic field. With that one, instead of getting matched against a big hairy guy, I got a lady who could call down lightning and direct storms, which is frankly kind of skewed in her favor. I won in the end, but it cost me a couple of pints of blood and maybe a square foot or so of skin. And also my job, since the whole thing went down at the museum and my boss was less than happy about that.

  That all ended a couple of months ago, though. I got two months’ severance pay and I used that time wisely: sitting on the couch, sleeping late and luxuriating in my freedom. Honestly, it was a pretty good time to be me. I was rid of my obnoxious boss, I’d gotten the cast off of my foot, and although the superpowers had faded, each one of them had left me just a touch of their abilities. I’m not impossibly strong anymore, but I can bench just shy of 400 pounds, and do reps of almost 300. My cognition is significantly improved from what it had been. And I can still make metal stick to me, if I concentrate hard and it doesn’t weigh much. Not all that useful a skill, but a pretty great party trick.

  Unfortunately, all good things must come to an end, so let’s skip ahead to about two weeks back. Here’s my situation: I’m suddenly noticing that the numbers in my bank account are dwindling to uncomfortably low levels. I may be living in my parents’ spare house, but that doesn’t mean that there won’t be unpleasant questions if the rent checks are late, and so the job hunt begins.

  You know what doesn’t look good on a resume? Superheroism. I legitimately saved the city — basically saved it, anyway; it was taking a lot of water damage, so I saved a bunch of taxpayer dollars for infrastructure repair bills, if nothing else — but there’s no box to check for that on an application form. I have an idea of taking this opportunity to actually start a career path, instead of just getting into another dead-end job, but evidently people want actual related skills, background and experience, not long-forgotten schooling and a job that won’t provide a reference.

  Also, it turns out that I don’t know what I want to do, which I hadn’t even realized. I’m in the middle of an interview for an administrative assistant job at a law firm when I spot this, which is not a great time for deep personal revelations. I’ve come in for the interview with this vague idea that I can start there, learn how things work and get a feel for the flow, and then work my up to paralegal or something. Eventually I’ll be a partner and have shelves of leatherbound books in my office, which I’ll sit in front of and look seriously over my glasses at clients while I bill them a thousand dollars an hour.

  The dream has a couple of holes in it, I admit, but I figure I have time to work them out in the intervening years. But when the interviewer asks me, “So why do you want to work here?”, I’m caught totally flat-footed. I’d prepped an answer, of course, about the prestigious nature of this firm and the excellent opportunities it would provide me while I’m answering phones and arranging schedules, but when I open my mouth to respond, I abruptly realize that I really have no clue. I’m here because it seems like a good idea right now, and I have no idea where it’s going or even where I want to end up.

  I manage to get through my canned answer, but I can tell by the interviewer’s face that too much of my confusion has come through. The whole bus ride home, I’m spinning my gears trying to come up with a five-year plan, or even a one-year plan, but I’m getting nothing.

  When I get home, I spread out all of the jobs I’ve applied for and all of the night school classes I’ve been looking at on the table and look for a pattern — and there isn’t one. Every one of them, I’ve just marked down on a whim. And maybe they’ll turn out well, but maybe they won’t. And once I start down any one of these paths, I’m locking myself into it. I’m already 30. Whatever I pick now is what I’m doing, and if I pick wrong, it’s what I’m
going to hate doing. For the next three and a half decades.

  So I panic and retreat into what’s comfortable: low-level, low-commitment grunt jobs. I go out the next day and I apply at every sandwich shop, bowling alley and burger joint that’s within walking distance of my house. And after a few days, I’ve got a call back from one of the fast food places.

  I may not know where I’m going in life, but now I know where I’m going in the mornings, at least. And although I’m not looking forward to this job at all, that’s actually a weird source of comfort. I’m used to having a job I hate. I know how to deal with that. My panic subsides with this entry into a familiar pattern.

  So here it is, orientation day at Børger. And here I am, surrounded by fryers.

  I should’ve gone with the fire thing after all. It just sounds so much cooler.

  - Chapter One -

  I bet it would have sucked to be a medieval man-at-arms. You’re off there attacking a castle, climbing some rickety ladder to scale the battlements, and then just when you’re almost at the top, all of a sudden the big iron rim of a cauldron full of boiling oil appears above you. You’ve got plenty of time to see it coming, but you’ve got absolutely nowhere to go. Up won’t work; that’s straight into the oil. Down will take too long, and moving to the sides — well, gravity’s going to have some words to say about that. Plus the cauldron is pretty huge, so it’s basically oil no matter where you go. Frying’s not a pleasant way to go.

  “Dan, are you paying attention?”

  “What? Yes, absolutely. The, um, fryer timer goes off automatically at, uh, five minutes.”

  Matthew sighs, exasperated. “No, five minutes would be way too long! It cooks for 150 seconds. You’d burn all of the fries to a crisp long before five minutes.”

  “But a timer goes off, right? So when it buzzes, I get the fries out.”

  “Well, right, but if you don’t know when the timer’s going to go off, how can you plan what else to do in that time? There’s a rhythm to the restaurant,” Matthew tells me seriously.

  I suppress the urge to roll my eyes. Matthew’s a good kid, but it’s already clear that he and I aren’t going to see eye-to-eye on this job. I see this as a way to exchange my manual labor and minimal attention for cash, whereas he’s fully invested in the Børger brand. On the other hand, he’s a manager at age 24, while I’m 30 and don’t know what I’m doing, so maybe there’s something to be said for his viewpoint.

  “Give me time, Matt. I’m more of a ‘pick it up organically’ kind of guy. I’m getting the broad strokes right now, and it’ll all fall into place once I start to put it into practice.”

  Matt puffs his cheeks out and blows air distractedly through his lips, running one hand through his curly black hair. “Okay,” he tells me. “We all learn different ways, and I don’t want to shove this down your throat. But you understand that this is important, right?”

  I don’t, of course, but he looks so enthusiastic that I can’t help but agree with him. It’s infectious. I’ve never met anyone who was this invested in burgers before. Cows aren’t even this invested in burgers. Matt really, truly wants every Børger customer to have an excellent experience. Unfortunately, he’s got to make that happen through people like me.

  It’s not that I don’t care. It’s just that, at the end of the day, this is just a place to work, and it doesn’t matter to me if I do a spectacular job, or a job that’s just barely good enough to keep from getting fired. The pay’s the same, the people are the same, and by dinnertime, no one’s going to remember whether their lunchtime burger was excellent or only adequate.

  So actually, it is that I don’t care, I guess. But I’m right not to. No one cares.

  Except Matt, who is earnestly telling me about the art of the upsell. “When someone orders anything that’s not one of the combo meals, you ask them if they want to make that a Børger Bøx. No matter what it is! Even if it’s just a drink, you can still ask them if they want to make it a combo. Sometimes they do!”

  “Matt,” I interrupt, “I’ve got a question.”

  “Shoot.”

  “I’ve just about got a handle on how to pronounce Børger. You basically say a U while thinking about an O. But how do I pronounce Bøx the way you just did?”

  “The way I did? How did I say it? You can just say it as normal! The funny O is only important when it’s written, for branding–”

  Matt catches me grinning at him, and slides his speech to a stop. “Dan, come on. This is your first day, and we’ve got a lot to get through. This stuff is important.” But he’s smiling, too, so although I know he means it, it doesn’t come off as a reprimand.

  This kid’s actually a human being! It’s a heck of a departure from Edgar. I’m never going to be the kind of guy who knuckles under to authority, but it turns out that if they’re willing to meet me halfway, I get a lot more reasonable.

  - - -

  I’ll spare you the rest of the hours of training. You’re probably not going to start working at a Børger chain any time soon, and if you do, you’ll get your own orientation day. Suffice it to say that at the end of the day I have been taught the corporate-approved way to flip burgers, cook fries and box up meals. I have also seen videos on whether it’s appropriate to sexually harass coworkers (it’s not), whether it’s okay to show up late (it’s not), and whether it’s a good idea to tell your friends to visit you at work (it is, unless you socialize with them, and then it’s not).

  I won’t say that all of this information went in one ear and out the other, because that’s not exactly true. It went in one ear and into deep storage, to be retrieved if and when it became relevant. That may sound a lot like forgetting, but it’s different in certain important and hard-to-define ways.

  There is one line worth repeating from the training videos: “So where does the name Børger come from? It’s a burger with the flavor of foreign innovation!” In other words: much like Häagen-Dazs, our name is total nonsense, and we’re banking on the American public’s willingness to pay a premium for things that sound like they’re exotic.

  Matt, of course, has a much more positive spin on this. “Most people like to keep their life in the same comfortable pattern it’s been in. But they also like to add excitement, as long as it doesn’t challenge their routine. We’re able to give them that, all by putting a slash through an O. Pretty great, huh?”

  I’m not sure I agree with him, but it could just be because I’m bitter. I had a life in a nice comfortable pattern, and when it got slashed through, it affected way more than a single vowel. So why should everyone else get to pretend that they’re disrupting things with just a burger? Let them go through what I did!

  That sort of phrase probably isn’t going to win me employee of the month, so I keep it to myself. Not that it matters much; according to the wall, in five of the last twelve months, the employee of the month has been Matt. It’s pretty clear that I’d have to do a lot more than just not yell at people to measure up around here.

  If I hadn’t met the guy, I’d expect to hate him. He’s just so nice, though, that it doesn’t even cross my mind. He’s not winning me over to the customer-service side with his speeches or anything, but he is at least making me feel a bit bad that I’m never going to live up to his expectations.

  Leaving work, I check my phone and find a few texts from my friend Brian, an EMT and pretty much the only person who knows about my powers. I’d tried to surreptitiously look at my phone during the videos, but Matt caught me and gave me a half-annoyed, half-disappointed look.

  “Dan, come on. You’re watching training videos with your new manager. Can you put the phone down for today? I’m not going to tell you not to check it at work, because you’ll do it anyway when you think I’m not looking and it’ll just hurt our working relationship. But can you give me today?”

  It was a weird sort of motivational speech, but it got me to put my phone away until I was leaving the building, so it clearly worked. As it turns
out, Brian’s texts are only asking me how the first day of the new job went, so they weren’t time-sensitive.

  Looking back over the day, I’m surprised to realize that it went well. Matt and I have a deep and irreconcilable difference over how much a Børger employee is supposed to care about the job, but I like him and I’m not dreading working with him, which is already leaps and bounds more than I expected. I would have figured that having someone younger than me as a boss would bug me, but he’s just so enthusiastic and nice that there’s no way to resent him.

  “Pretty great,” I text Brian. “Could be fun job.”

  I get back, “Want to get burgers to celebrate haha”

  “Want me to put you in the hospital haha,” I write in response, which is not all that witty, but it’s a reference to where he works and it’s the best matching answer I’ve got. Look, I’m working at a burger joint. You can’t expect Shakespeare.

  - Chapter Two -

  Brian and I end up meeting at a hole-in-the-wall coffee shop called By the Beans. Their coffee is burnt, their clientele is questionable, and their decor is best described as “dumpster chic,” but they have two major advantages: they’re cheap, and they’re nearby. It took the insurance over a month to pay up after my car got totaled by the brawler who attacked me at the museum, and by then I’d already been fired and was living la vida lazy. At some point, I’m going to have to go get myself some new personal transportation, but applying for a car loan while jobless hadn’t seemed like the best way to go about things.

  I make a face as Brian adds sugar to his coffee from the table silo. He pours it with a practiced hand motion, starting with the container just over the top of his cup and moving it swiftly upwards, then reversing and bringing it back down to nearly touch the cup again, ending the whole thing with a quick upward flick of his wrist. The end result of this cascade of sugar raises the coffee level neatly to the brim of the cup.