Virtual Destruction

CHAPTER 32

Carefully, very carefully, Duane Hopkins measured out a sample of hydrofluoric acid inside his glove box container.

Ronald or some of his buddies were full of bluster and bravado, not caring about the dangers to which they exposed themselves in their work. But Duane had a healthy respect for the terrible things he worked with. He knew the bad things radiation and poisonous chemicals could do to people. Stevie was living proof.

On his clipboard he made a careful note of the amount of acid he kept in his glove box, then added a little bit just to make sure no one thought he had lost any. Duane didn’t want to get into trouble.

Ronald had said an FBI man had been in that morning asking questions, and immediately the Plutonium Facility manager had ordered a full and complete inventory of all the controlled chemicals in all the glove boxes in Building 332.

Duane didn’t know what had prompted this extreme investigation, but he secretly hoped that something bad had happened, something bad enough to cause a full-scale crackdown. Maybe that would force the Lab to get rid of the dangerous substances like the ones that had made Stevie so sick. Duane didn’t know if it was radiation or poisonous chemicals that had given Stevie his cerebral palsy — maybe poisonous radioactive chemicals? — but people needed to be aware of the hazards. An FBI investigation might bring about a complete shakeup.

He had tried to telephone Mr. Lesserec over at the Virtual Reality program, but the man had not returned his calls. He wondered what this was all about.

Duane didn’t want to see his job disturbed, but maybe this would be worth it.

In the change room during the early afternoon break, Duane meticulously unbuttoned the front of his smock and changed into his street clothes, tucking in his green flannel shirt and sliding the jingling car keys in his pants.

With his voice raised against the loud background noise, Ronald barged into the change room with his cronies laughing about some crude joke; but Ronald stopped upon seeing Duane in his street clothes.

“Hey, Beavis! Where you think you’re going?”

Duane turned away and continued to get dressed, closing his locker door. “I have to go home. I’m taking the rest of the day off.”

Ronald scowled and took two steps toward him. “You didn’t ask me, Beavis. I didn’t say you could go home. You’ve got work to do, and some of my stuff too.”

“I can’t Ronald,” Duane said. “Stevie’s got a doctor’s appointment. He’s really sick. I have to take him in.”

One member of Ronald’s gang snorted. “The retard’s probably getting a brain transplant.” The others laughed.

“Yeah, Beavis here is donating his own brain. They need a microscope to find it, though.” Ronald guffawed.

Duane didn’t answer, but hurried out of the locker room. He didn’t know what else he could do to get even with Ronald, to get the bully off his back. It seemed everything he thought of went without notice, or he chickened out before carrying out his plans, knowing Ronald would catch him and beat him into a mashed pulp.

Maybe Duane could report him to that FBI man. Ronald had done so many things blatantly wrong that he must have been part of whatever the agent was investigating. Or maybe that nice man Gary Lesserec would help; Lesserec had said that he’d owe Duane one for that material he had provided.

But as Duane hurried out of the secure facility, past the checkpoints and the fence to his battered old Ford station wagon in the parking lot, he knew that all such thoughts were just fantasies.

He would never have the courage to stand up to Ronald Cobb, and nobody else would help him. He was doomed to be stepped on for the rest of his working life.