3.
Mark looked over the folder that Sam had left on the table. He could understand a lot of what he was seeing of the printout, but bits of it were blanked out, as if by a censor, and without those bits he could not see exactly what the programme was for, he could just tell it was controlling power flow to something. Jane was thinking hard about something, and Mark decided to have the kids join in too, so he called them in and explained what little he knew. Lizzy, of course, was worried about leaving her friends, but then she would have a chance to be near her favourite Aunt (she didn't like Jane's sister) Tom actually looked quite interested, for Tom, anyway. He asked a few questions about schooling and where they would live. Both kids in the end knew it was really nothing much to do with them, they would have to do what Mark and Jane decided, but they both seemed OK with the idea anyway.
They ordered a Chinese and Lizzy went back to her books, while Tom went out into their tiny back garden, leaving the adults to talk.
"It's a good offer Mark" Jane pointed out.
"Yeah but they don't want ME, they want Sams brother, I would rather get a job because I earned it"
"I know love, but this way I could finish work AND we don't have to worry about medical, because it won't be tied to my job"
"Yeah but what if something goes wrong? I'll be throwing away over 20 years with the firm!"
"That severance package that Jack told us about would keep us for several years if you wanted, you wouldn't have to go looking for work unless you wanted to."
The more Mark looked at it, the better it looked. The better it looked, the more he knew there was a catch somewhere!
It took a week before Mark decided on what he wanted to do. In that time he learnt something disturbing at work, the web monitor, a man brought into the company from 'HQ' had made a pass at one of the secretaries and when she had turned the slime-ball down her terminal received a 'pornado' a programme that kept opening windows of porn on her machine no matter what she did. She was fired for misuse of web access. Mark contacted a couple more ex-employees, and found that at least one woman had had the same happen and one of the men had challenged the little git about it and ended up going the same route. Mark was getting more and more disillusioned with the whole thing. He wrote a special programme of his own, sent it to the monitors email and left the building, leaving his passes and an "I QUIT" notice on his monitor, once outside he rang 'HQ' and told them about their little spy and his dirty tricks, and then rang Sams cell
"I'll take it" he said.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
The day the Carter family went to move into their new home, a month later, was overcast and gloomy, the fact that it was in the mountains and so far inland meant that it felt a lot colder than it actually was to them.
The house was close to the end of a street that seemed to dead end in a forest. There was building work going on at the end, a huge house was almost completed there. They were next door but one to it, and from the back bedroom windows could see a swimming pool already dug and tiled, and landscapers were making a playground close by the trees. The house itself was actually on 2 plots of land, as if there were a couple of houses there that had been demolished before the work had started, there were 2 drives and 2 posts that used to have mail boxes on them, one of the posts, the farthest down the street said O'Neill on it.
Their house was a very nice four bedroom split level bungalow, with a large back garden, big enough for a patio and a barbeque and bench set and still have room for a tennis net or something, their next door neighbours were called Dixon and had only just moved in the week before themselves. They had 4 children and their house was on the same basic design as the Carters, but they had a couple of extra bedrooms in the attic. Mrs Dixon… Carol, seemed a nice woman, and she and Jane spent a happy half hour chatting about the houses. It seemed that her husband worked at the mountain too, but she couldn't, or wouldn't, say what he did, just that he had recently been promoted and the house was part of the promotion.
Over the road were a couple of smaller houses, three beds or so, one of the occupants was a young woman with a toddler, 18 months or 2 years old at most, she wandered up and down the street with a doll in a pushchair, smiling at everyone, her mother keeping a close eye on her and stopping her every time she headed for the road or the house being built at the end.
The place was lovely, and once the building work was finished at the end of the road, it would be a nice quiet neighbourhood.
Tom had already looked over the new school he was going to, and actually seemed excited about going, Lizzy was still too young for high schools but her mother had found a lovely junior for her, with very high marks when it came to pass rates.
Mark had already received a pay cheque from the AF, even though he had not yet gone to work! He was due to start first thing in the morning, he had yet to see his sister or her husband again, in fact everything had been sorted by phone and mail since that one meeting, and yet he STILL had no idea why Sam wanted him around! She would not say, just that she would tell him once he started work.
They spent the whole day sorting furniture, the kids, for once, didn't argue about anything, having sorted out which bedrooms they wanted early on, Mark also noticed that the bedroom Tom picked was almost soundproof, which pleased everyone! Jane went to lay down around 4pm, she really did look very tired and had bruises from knocking into the boxes on her legs that had come up very quickly. The neighbours came around at 7, and she got up again to greet them, they brought a picnic selection between them and the men offered a hand with anything that needed shifting, if the removal people had got anything wrong (which they had as it turned out) and they lifted and shifted the solid oak dresser from one wall to the other with absolutely no communication between them, Mark started to get a bit suspicious about them then.
He knew Dixon… Dave, his wife called him, but he said he preferred Dixon… was a typical military man, he was of the same type of build as Jack, not quite as tall, but just as muscled and slightly weather-beaten. The others were less obvious, until you saw them as a group, they seemed to … fit together.
The man who lived across the road with the toddler was Wells, Simon, and he introduced his wife as Marci, and their daughter as Janet, the man from the house next to his was called Balinsky and he had a girlfriend, but she was away somewhere, doing something, very vague, Mark dropped the subject when he realised the man didn't want to talk about it. The last of the group was called Bosworth and he had a wicked sense of humour, one his friends seemed to ignore most of the time. Mark liked him! He was single and had the third of the three houses opposite Marks. On the other side of Marks house from Dixons place a young man, maybe about Sams age, lived on his own, he had a girlfriend, but she was also working away, he was called Daniel, or Dr. Jackson if you listened to the others. Sarah was… with SG15 whatever THAT meant. The others seemed to know because they nodded.
All that left was the huge black man who had appeared out of nowhere and his sister and her husband who turned up at about 8 and left before 9 saying they had to get back to 'the shop'. Mark never did catch the mobile mountains name, and no one seemed in a hurry to enlighten the family either.
All in all it was a good day, hopefully tomorrow he would find out what all this was about and he hoped he would be able to cope with it!
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