Decay (Book 1): Civilization Read Online Free PDF Page B

Jonathan made the decision to pry it open. After all it was only a briefcase. Using a hammer and a couple of screwdrivers he grabbed from the toolbox in the garage, Jonathan was able to break the lock off and open it. Inside sat several documents, a voice recorder, and his father’s green leather bound journal. He watched his father on many afternoons listening to his day’s work on the recorder and taking notes in the journal.
    Nothing else mattered at the moment, so he tossed the briefcase aside and left the room with the recorder and journal. Jonathan settled into the big tan leather couch in “the room” and opened the journal. Most of the pages were filled with chemical formulas written in scribbles with a few notes on the side. Further into the journal was a log written by his father about the work that he had been doing.
    “After my promotion last week I have seen some things that I’m not sure about,” Brian had written in an entry dated over three years earlier. “My new security clearance has me working on the fifth floor. A floor that none of the employees are allowed to acknowledge the existence of. The design of the building tricks anyone viewing it from the outside into thinking that it is only four stories tall,” he crossed this last part out, probably with the intention of removing it from writing.
    “The work that takes place up here is top secret, and most of it is contracted work for our government. What we are working on now could change the world entirely. Our perception of life could be shattered, and death could become meaningless. After looking through the reports regarding what we are trying to accomplish with our research I have decided that the repercussions of what we are doing will be disastrous. I have also decided to prepare my family for what this could possibly lead to.”
    The rest of the writing remained vague. Many other sentences had been crossed out also, but this explained why they spent so much time learning how to survive through any situation. He could see that his father predicted a horrible outcome to what they had been working on there. Unless he could piece together these scribbles he didn’t think there would be much left in the journal that could help him.
    Listening to the recorder proved unproductive, yet it was soothing to listen to his father’s voice. It had taken almost two days to listen to every file on the recorder. Nothing stood out to him as odd or out of place. Walking back through the house he stepped through his parent’s bedroom door and walked up to the bed where the briefcase lay. He opened it back up and quickly glanced through some of the documents that were stored inside. Thanks to his studies most of this stuff made sense to him, and none of it seemed to be anything other than basic medical research. Than he noticed that there was a pocket along the lining of the briefcase. Nestled safely inside was his father’s ASUS netbook.
    Sliding the small computer out of the pocket, Jonathan opened it and pressed the power button to boot it up. Lying on the keyboard was a missing child flyer. A nine year old boy named Samuel Kinsler appeared to have been kidnapped. Written on the bottom of the page in his father’s handwriting was a quote.
    “In the struggle for survival, the fittest win out at the expense of their rivals because they succeed in adapting themselves best to their environment.” – Martin Kruskal
    “Martin Kruskal did not say that. Charles Darwin did,” Jonathan said with confusion. This was one of his father’s favorite quotes. There was no way he would make that mistake. His confusion was put on hold as the computer screen came on with a prompt that instructed him to press ctrl-alt-delete to login. He pressed the button combination and watched as the login screen came up asking for his password.
    Once again Jonathan found himself typing in the obvious passwords to no avail. He didn’t know enough about hacking to work his way in,