1. Wake Up, Please.

Jasper woke up handcuffed to the side rails of a hospital bed with a headache, an IV in his arm, and no memory of how he had gotten there.

His body felt heavy and when he tried to lift his limbs, they tingled and tickled but didn’t move. He rolled his head and rested it against his shoulder. He could see that he was wearing a hospital gown but beyond the silhouette of his body under the light blue of his hospital blanket everything was a shapeless blur.

His eyes opened and closed without his consent – the benign taupe of the hospital walls mixing imperceptibly with the back of his eyelids. Jasper fruitlessly willed his body to move for a few more moments before giving up. His mouth fell open a dab of saliva slid down side of his cheek as a reward for his efforts. He watched it fade from view.

A door swung open.

A nurse walked hurriedly into the room. She pressed a button on the wall then went to the side of Jasper’s bed and he could hear her adjusting his IV. He couldn’t move his head to follow her. When the nurse was done she stood at the foot of Jasper’s bed and looked at him with disapproval.

“Mr. Harris!” She said loudly and slowly. “Do you know where you are?”

Jasper mumbled non-syllabically in reply.

“You are St. Mary’s Hospital. You have been here for about three days, now. We have been keeping you sedated but we are weaning you off of the drugs now. Do you understand?”

Jasper nodded weakly.

“Very good! It’s almost night time now and so I’m going to put you out for the night. The police are going to be here to talk to you in the morning.” The nurse said.

Jasper shook his head and tried to protest. He opened his mouth to ask what the police needed to speak with him about but the darkness came before he could make a noise.

He drifted into a black abyss that slowly gave way to a procession of reds, yellows, and whites – all floating past his eyes and vibrating in the air. A small idea in the back of his mind chewed at him in the darkness.

‘You’ll never be happy again.’ The lonely thought said. ‘Better enjoy it while it lasts, you jackass.’

When he opened his eyes again, his vision was clearer and it was morning. The IV had been removed from his arm but the handcuffs remained.

He could make out the rest of the sparse hospital room was lying in. It was a small room outlined in the pale blue and white light of an early winter morning outside. The shades of his single window were drawn but they were cheap. They let too much outside light filter through. The TV was still on but it was muted;  a family was sitting down to dinner and smiling at one another.

The only other inhabitant of his room was a small, ratty chair shoved into the corner. It looked cold. Jasper doubted anybody had been to visit.

Still, Jasper felt groggy. According to the nurse, he had been out for four days. How was that possible?

The last thing he could remember was driving down I-91 in the middle of the night singing about his right to party. He had been on his way home. Jasper visualized himself in the car. He tried willing his memories to return but, in his head, they drove off into the darkness without him.

“Mr. Harris.”

Jasper was jolted back to the present. A tired-looking and balding man was standing over him; wearing a forest-green Land’s End jacket zipped up to his neck and worn brown khakis. Behind him was a state trooper, replete with a ridiculous wide-brimmed hat.

“Uhh, yes?” Jasper replied warily.

The man in the Land’s End jacket made a face that managed to make him look even more tired. Jasper felt a pang of guilt.

“I’m Detective Long. This is Officer Restadt. He’s – uh, well, he’s the one who found you.”

Officer Restadt was a heavyset man whom Jasper judged to be somewhere in his sixties. He had a pencil thin mustache and buttery, flushed cheeks. He didn’t introduce himself.

Detective Long continued: “Listen here, Mr. Harris. We’re here to get your side of the story about the- about the events of February the 29th, as it were.”

“Sir, I don’t actually know why I’m even here.” Jasper replied. His handcuffs rattled against the side rails as he tried to sit up in bed. Detective Long pulled out a small notepad and worn pencil from his pants pocket and wrote something down.

“Uh huh. Ok, then. Why don’t you start by telling us the first thing you remember, then?” the Detective said.

“Well, the last thing I can remember is driving down the highway; I-91, I mean. I was alone in the car and there was nobody else on the road and I had to pee.” Jasper replied, wincing as he said it. Did he really have to mention his bladder? Always a foot in the mouth.

The officers seemed not to notice.

“Right. And where were you coming from?”

“Stratton. I was skiing for the weekend with a friend of mine.”

“Ok, then. Does this friend have a name?”

“Diana Farber. She lives in Albany.” Jasper replied. “What does this have to do with anything? Why am I here?”

Officer Restadt sat down heavily in the chair in the corner of Jasper’s room and put his head in his hands. Detective Long watched him sit.

“You OK, Dan?”

Office Restadt nodded, took a breath, and then looked up at Jasper. Jasper glanced away.

“OK, then.” Detective Long continued “Well, Mr. Harris. You’re being looked at for the murder of misters Kevin and Peter Amata; brothers, as it were.”

The world spun. The room shrank. That couldn’t possibly be true. He’d just been skiing! His skis were in the back of his car! He hadn’t murdered anybody – that would have been totally impossible.

For a long time Jasper’s mouth opened and closed like a stranded fish. Detective Long politely looked away.

“What? Mis- uhh, Detective Long. This can’t be right. I didn’t kill anybody!”

Detective Long sighed and half-laughed. He rubbed his left hand with his right and slowly shook his head. “Son, you were found at the scene. Nobody else around for miles. Your clothes; they were covered in blood.” He said.

Jasper felt very far away, as if watching his life happen from the other side of a television set.

Officer Restadt broke this second silence.

“It wasn’t just a murder! The boys were in pieces. Pieces! I’ve never seen anything like it. It was just monstrous!” Officer Restadt was staring at Jasper now. “This man was the only one for miles! Like you said!”

The accusation hung in the air.

“OK, thank you Officer. Why don’t you step outside for a moment?” Detective Long replied.

Officer Restadt walked quickly out of the room, shutting the door firmly behind him.

Detective Long looked at Jasper with a mix of embarrassment and reproach. He didn’t seem to be sure whose fault that outburst really was: Jasper’s or Officer Restadt’s.

“They were in – uhh, they were in pieces? He said they were in pieces?” Jasper asked. His voice cracked.

The detective looked at Jasper curiously for a moment and then sighed. “Yeah, kid. They were in pieces. I’ve never seen anything like it. If you can remember what happened, now, it’d sure help your case out. Without any kind of story from you, this really only has one explanation.”

Jasper was barely over five-and-a-half feet tall and weighed an even 140 lbs. Those were most certainly not the kind of stats that would have enabled him to dismember anybody. He racked his brain for an explanation – any possible scenario. But he couldn’t remember a fucking thing. Everything in his mind was blank. He had no idea who the Amatas were, where he had been for the past three days, or how he had even gotten to the hospital. He had absolutely nothing to offer the detective. A cold weight settled at the bottom of his stomach.

“I think I’m going to need a lawyer.” Jasper said, at last.

“Yeah, I’m guessing you will. Do you have one you can call?”

Jasper didn’t. Long nodded his head as if he’d expected that.

“OK, then. We’re going to call the DA – they’ll find somebody to plead your case for you. Until then, we’ll be moving you over to County.”

“You mean prison?”

“Yeah, kid. I mean prison.”

Within the hour, they took Jasper across town to the Windham County Jail; conveniently located nearby. It was the middle of the night so Jasper couldn’t see anything - just the trees that huddled against the winding country roads with their bare branches traced against the sky.

His intake was surprisingly quick and just as dehumanizing as it always seemed to be on TV. He surrendered the meager contents of his pockets and squatted and coughed and when he was done being catalogued and dispassionately examined, he was given a blue prison uniform, a bedroll, and a toothbrush and told to follow a guard to his cell.

The room was small and spare. The bed was a cot with a flimsy, yellow-stained mattress and a rough wool blanket. It was bolted to the floor. A toilet jutted out from the wall in the far corner, nearly touching the side of the bed. Jasper imagined he would have to splay his legs out on the bed if he wanted to shit. Just then, he noticed the vague smell of feces, as if the room itself were confirming that thought for him.

As they shut his cell behind him, the guard told him: “DA is real busy this time of year. You probably won’t be seeing him too soon.”

Jasper didn’t sleep at all the night. The drugs had worn off and left him feeling fuzzy and hungover, but not tired. Despite himself, Jasper cried; a passing guard, trying to console him, told him that he wouldn’t have to worry about being general population until after a trial.

He wondered if he was allowed a phone call. He was pretty sure that was policy, but the sad fact was that Jasper had nobody worth calling. Diane Farber was just a fuck-buddy. She was fun and funny and sexy, but she wasn’t a friend. He couldn’t rely on her – and that was the whole point of the arrangement.

His adoptive parents, the Harris’, were even more distant. Jasper had been a designer solution for a designer couple that wanted children but couldn’t have them. When he turned out to be a disappointment, they lost interest. He hadn’t seen them in over a decade. They’d likely find the whole idea of Jasper in jail as both offensive and singularly unsurprising.

His boss at McNulty’s Tavern and Restaurant had probably already fired Jasper and pocketed his back-pay by now. Jasper smiled bitterly at the idea of that fat asshole ripping Jasper’s paycheck up and diligently, exactly, transferring that money to his own account.

On the second day, Jasper asked when the District Attorney would be able to see him. He got a disinterested grunt in response.

On the third day, he was led up to the visitor’s area to meet with Detective Long for some more questions. The meeting was short. Jasper wouldn’t say anything without a lawyer.

It wasn’t until the morning of the fourth day that Jasper had a visitor, however unexpected.

He was bitterly tired that morning. He had woken up in the night in a cold sweat and spent most of the dark hours of the early morning shivering in his bed, staring up at a spot on the wall dimly lit by the moon shining through his window. When the dawn finally came, he felt his eyes getting heavier and was sure he’d manage to sleep before breakfast. As he began to feel more comfortable and drifted off into the garbed thoughts of half-sleep, the door to his holding cell clanked open and a paunch-faced guard he’d never seen before was standing in the doorway.

“Harris. Visitor.” he said. He seemed mildly annoyed that he had to speak to any prisoners today.

“Who is it?” Jasper asked. The guard made no reply.

Jasper pulled himself out of bed and followed the guard through the long hallways of the cells. Whoever had come to see him was not keeping regular hours. It was no earlier than 6 o’clock, at best, by Jasper’s reckoning. When they got to the stairwell at the end of the hall, they went up a floor instead of down. He wasn’t going to the visitor’s area.

Jasper began to get nervous. He asked who had come to see him a second time but only got a rough, disinterested grunt as an answer. They walked down a long hallway with closed, steel doors until the guard stopped, pulled out his keys, opened a door on the right, and motioned for Jasper to enter.

His visitor was waiting for him in a room ripped straight from a movie scene. Two metal chairs sat on either side of a small rectangular table bolted to the ground. Three walls were nothing more than bare concrete but the one to the visitor’s back was mirror from the middle all the way to the ceiling. A lonely light hung from the ceiling.

Jasper was led in by the guard, who pushed him into the opposite chair firmly but not roughly.

The man who sat across from Jasper was at least 5 inches taller than him and had a gym rat’s physique. His bright green designer shirt was tight across his chest. He had a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper goatee but his hair was jet black and slicked back with just the right amount of hair gel. The man oozed confidence in a way that only the kind of man who openly refers to himself as an ‘alpha male’ can. He must have been in his mid-forties but he, excepting for his beard, looked a full decade younger.

Jasper leaned forward on the table and clasped his hands together. His handcuffs rattled against the steel. They continued to clank as Jasper fiddled with his hands nervously.

The man let a comfortable smile rest on his face and looked Jasper directly in the eye for a long while - saying nothing. The was silence was unsettling and Jasper wondered if there was something he was supposed to be saying; his gaze flitted around the room, checking every few seconds to see if the man in the suit was still watching him.

He was.

“I’m Jasper Harris.” Jasper began

“I know that, Jasper.” The man said. His smile grew slightly.

“So, what are you- who are you?” Jasper asked. He felt a heat building in his face.

“Don’t be nervous, Jasper. There’s nothing this meeting can net you that would be worse than the situation you’re already in. I’m here to talk options, not chastise you or pile more charges onto the hefty pile you have in front of you already.” The man spoke so easily Jasper wondered if this had been rehearsed beforehand. “My name is Niels Anders Vos and I head a small consultancy that specializes in niche solutions for discerning clients. I’d like to talk to you about a job opportunity, if you’re interested.”

Jasper stared stupidly across the table in silence.

“I can understand if you’re surprised to hear that.” Niels offered.

Jasper blinked and glanced at the mirror which he could only assume was one way. Niels caught the glance and chuckled.

“Don’t worry. Nobody’s on the other side of the glass. This isn’t a trick.”

Niels produced a business card so quickly that Jasper thought he had conjured it out of thin air. He slid the card across the table.

Niels Anders Vos

Managing Partner, Client Solutions and Operations

Solutions@Caelinus.com

The paper was smooth, weighty, and egg-colored. Jasper flipped the card over. Nothing was printed on the other side. “Caelinus? I’m sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I wouldn’t expect you to, Jasper. We’ve just set up the organizational structure and listed in the appropriate legal jurisdictions. We’re currently privately-owned and, as such, have been able to avoid making the usual amount of waves that come with early investors.” Niels continued on. He seemed oblivious to the fact that this conversation was happening in an interrogation cell, not a board room. “I’m going to be honest with you. We have a limited client base at the moment. But that’s to be expected in a business as young as ours is. What I can promise you is that I truly believe that our business model will allow for astonishing growth in a very rapid timeframe. I think you’d be making a wise choice considering the opportunity I have for you.”

“Wait. Sorry, but I’m in prison right now. I’m being charged with murder. Murder.” Jasper said. “Is this some kind of joke? Consulting? I’m about to be a fucking felon.”

“Indeed. That seems to be the direction your current arrangement is running. However, we at Caelinus are prepared to make efforts to absolve your current legal difficulties in the event you decide to take employment with us.”

The room was silent for a beat.

“You’ll get me out of jail? How?”

Niels coughed lightly. “We’d like to do a few things to ameliorate this situation. Firstly, we’d like to provide you an advance in your salary to pay for legal fees - we’re confident this should secure excellent representation. We’ll also provide you with access to our own legal resources. I assure you, they’re top notch. Caelinus will, additionally, exert our considerable influence over law enforcement officials in this district to revisit your charges and possibly secure an exit ramp for you in the immediate future.”

Exit. Immediate future. The words rang so loudly that Jasper forgot the rest of what he’d heard.

“Jasper?”

“Listen, I - I’m responsible for what I did. I killed those people. It may have been temporary insanity or toxic rage syndrome or whatever but those guys are still dead. And they’re not just dead.” Jasper shuttered. “They’re in pieces. I wish I could even remember what I did at all! I’m not sure that it’s safe for me to be out there. I appreciate your money and all -”

“You have a unique genetic marker in your genome. Did you know that?” Niels interrupted.

“A unique what?”

“A genetic marker. It indicates, amongst other things, the way in which your cells physically structure themselves and behave under certain circumstances. The parlance for this expression is ‘phenotype.’ In any event, your phenotype is very very rare. It indicates a very particular bloodline and gives you a very impressive set of natural talents. It makes you a singular person.”

“So you’re saying my genes made me kill those people?” The flush moved from Jasper’s face down to his neck and shoulders.

“Very insightful. Exactly correct! Caelinus would like offer you employment because of that exact qualification. I’m being uncouth when I say this, but you’d be filling a role we can’t hire anybody else for. I should also mention that your compensation would more-than-accurately reflect that reality.”

“What kind of job? Guinea pig?”

Niels chuckled again. “We don’t hire Guinea Pigs. If we needed one, we’d simply buy it – and for much less than we are proposing to compensate you with. You’ll be doing work that is both challenging and highly rewarding. We’re going to change the way the world works, Jasper, and I think you’re going to be a key part of that. I’d like to and fully intend on telling you more but there are Nondisclosure Agreements and other waivers and contracts you need to sign before I do. All of that notwithstanding, what are your thoughts so far?”

“You want my thoughts? Honestly? You sound fucking crazy. I murdered two guys with my bare hands. I’m going to jail for the rest of my life, mister. The trial is just a pit stop.”

“And if you didn’t go to jail for the rest of your life? Please bear in mind that your advance would need to be repaid over the course of your first few months at Caelinus.”

“You’re not listening. I’m staying in prison. And even if I had met you in my old normal life, I don’t think I’d take you seriously. I’m not a consultant - I don’t have any skills. I don’t make speeches or presentations. I can’t balance a checkbook. You’re talking about genes but it sounds like sci-fi bullsh- it sounds like it’s not real.”

“Fortunately, you haven’t put forth any issues that have a bearing on our offer.”

“Listen, Niels. Sir. I need time to get my head on straight and come to terms with what I’ve done and what’s going to happen next. I’m hoping I find enough peace of mind to even hope I don’t get the death penalty. This isn’t helping.”

“Not to worry! Vermont does not have the death penalty. You will die in prison if you go to trial.”

“Uh, thanks. That’s great.”

Niels hadn’t dropped his formal tone or his relentless grin from the moment he’d started talking. Jasper would have given anything, in that moment, to knock that grin down into Niel’s throat. That sentiment simultaneously surprised and concerned Jasper.

“Listen, Jasper. You are not understanding me. I’m letting you know that you don’t have to go to prison. And that’s only one of the many benefits of coming to work with us at Caelinus. You can die somewhere else, if you’d like.”

Suddenly, Jasper was looking at Niels through tears. When had he started crying? Jasper never cried.

Niels let his grin soften into a look of concern. “Just say ‘yes.’ This can be a memory - bitter but in the past.”

What else could Jasper say?

“Yes.”