The Dane Commission (The Dane Chronicles) Read Online Free PDF Page A

emissions.”
    Slightly annoyed Jean asked, “Well,
what did it look like?”
    “Well I’m not exactly sure. It kind of
corkscrewed up out of the floor around me. The tech called me the man-in-the-can .”

Alex liked it already, “I want to do it too, Daddy!”
    Jean said, “That sounds like very
cutting-edge stuff. Ours still have beds that the patient lies on. So how many
scans did they do?”
    “Well, I don’t really know for sure.
The technician said each scan and analysis took about a minute.”
He got up to re-fill his tea, trying to remember the details.
    “I was in there for about three and a
half hours, so-”
    “What?” she said startled and a little concerned. She set her plate down.
    “Ryan, why would they do that? The
typical scans in my clinic last about 20 minutes, and only for the most complex
analysis. That’s a lot of looking around inside of you, if you ask me.”
    “Yeah, I was kind of surprised too, but
when I asked about it, they said that all IntelliHealth employees agree to
share their medical information with the research pool for use as reference
material.”
    “Oh, well that’s okay I guess,” she
said relaxing a little.
     
    Rising to take his dishes to the
kitchen sink, he added, “At least they said that I had no abnormalities.”
    “Yes, well no one asked me or Alex, did
they?”
She smiled at Alexander, who smiled back, happy to be in on the joke.
     
    Later that night Jean helped Alex with
some artwork for school, something about the important role of trees. There
were pictures of trees and a paragraph he had to write himself. Ryan listened
from the video room. The news was describing a weather formation somewhere off
the coast. His orientation was over, and tomorrow he would actually report for
work. He couldn’t help but smile.
    Things were getting better.
     
    Ryan fell asleep on the couch, and
stayed there until just before midnight when he woke to Jean calling him.
“Ryan, you better come to bed before you start to have nightmares.”
    He opened his eyes slowly and saw that
there was a horror movie playing on the vid. Some teen was shooting at an alien
with one eye.
’Always a bad move,’ he thought.
    He stood up, turned off the receiver
and went to bed.

CHAPTER 3 “Demonic figures and occult themes have disappeared from modern magic.”
  - David Copperfield

     
     
     
     
    It was 7:01 AM as Ryan pulled into the
IntelliHealth parking lot. Dropping Alex off at school and making it to work
this morning had been slowed due to some over-night rain. Hating to be late,
Ryan had overcompensated, and had arrived noticeably early, equally bad, but
better than being late. He parked and collected his things.
    Across the parking garage he saw the
elevators, waiting.
    Overly smart and belligerent, they
taunted him from across the lot.  
    More alert than last time and
determined to win, he held his identification chip in his hand and slowly
approached his shiny-metal adversaries. The doors opened on cue as he
approached. As he stepped inside Ryan quickly waved his chip near the door, and
like magic his numbers 1, 18, 75, 76, and 82 appeared. Before the doors closed,
he pressed the glowing number 75. With an audible, ‘Yeah!” he punched the air.
    He felt good all the way up.
     
    Dropped off at the 75 th floor, Ryan made his way through the cubicle forest, still quite empty at this
time, and headed towards his office. As he approached, he saw a group of young
men leaving, all dressed in matching grayish overalls. They were pushing an
empty cart ahead of them. The last of them shut and locked his door. He arrived
at his door just as they disappeared around a bend down the hall.
     
    Curious, he turned back to his door,
waved his ID ship, and the door opened. Inside he found a new computer monitor
on his desk.
     
    He sat down, unloaded his satchel, and
turned to look at his new computer. Aside from the monitor itself there were no
cables, with only the typical mouse and