New Story: The Adjusters #23

Here is December's episode of The Adjusters, “Agent Shawbank”, wherein we meet a new player, and Kevin dodges a bullet.

As usual, comments welcome.

I'll also remind you that we have a Speculation Thread available for discussion. (A thread which I read but do not comment on.)


23 - Agent Shawbank

Daniel sat back in his chair, catching some sun, a large coffee before
him. So much for green tea. It's caffeine time, he reflected. The
temperature was a rather normal springtime temperature, giving some
hope that while the winter had been unseasonably warm—to the horror
of winter sports amateurs—the summer might not follow that trend. As
it was, he was nearly alone on the outdoor seating of the Darnell
Café, the campus still relatively quiet in the mid-morning hour.

The events of the previous night kept bouncing around in his head:
running into Jenn at the diner, fighting with Biff, having sex with
Cindy, talking to her afterwards. Amazing how much one can pack into
an evening. He had not yet entirely sorted his feelings about it all,
swimming instead within a numbness that undoubtedly hid deeper,
harsher feelings.

He had run the evening over and over in his head, returning again and
again to the post-coital conversation with Cindy that helped explain
not only the events earlier in the evening, but also much of what had
been happening to him and his friends since the previous autumn. And
after the shock of seeing Jenn again after two months—a Jenn almost
unrecognizable from the one he had know—what had floored him was that
he had been right. Incredibly, he had been right. Jenn was being
manipulated. Controlled. Mastered. Early on, he had latched onto the
mind-control idea simply to avoid looking at the uglier possibility
that she had dumped him because she was scared or confused or simply
did not love him. But that idea, as emotionally attractive as it
was—Jenn not in control of her action, therefore innocent—he had had
to dismiss intellectually as pure science fiction, especially after
looking into available techniques for his senior project. And yet, if
Cindy was to be believed, it was all true. Somehow, the boys of Delta
Iota Kappa had gotten their hands on a frighteningly effective way to
control girls, and had used it to ensnare Cindy, Serena, and now
Jenn. It was crazy. If not for having seen how Jenn herself had
behaved, he would not believe it even now.

Continue reading...


Next month, episode 24: “The Spring Amateur Show”.