All Downhill From Here

He walked over to the living room, looking back at Reese with a bit of judgment in his gaze while commenting, " There's a real strong smell of marijuana in here. " "Yeah, I've kinda been smoking a lot lately because of everything that's been going on, " Reese replied sheepishly while closing the front door before going over to join Garrett in the living room. Sitting down on the couch, Garrett asked " So what's been going on with you? " Reese told Garrett everything that had been going on the last couple weeks, pouring out all his frustrations on Garrett. His difficulties finding a job, getting into an accident with an instructor at a tech school, how he blackmailed said instructor to get a job at Modern Solutions, and how deep in over his head he was after realizing what little bit of knowledge he had with programming wasn't close to the amount needed to be able to keep his job. " And now I have to send in a copy of my code for the company to review, by tomorrow at the latest. If I wait any longer, I don't know what will happen. "

" And how much progress have you made on the coding," asked Garrett. " I have the icons for the screen done, but nothing else. No matter what I try, I can't get the software to connect with the AI. I can get the software to run for some of the simpler things, but when I try to connect to the AI to use the Internet browser and other more complicated procedures the AI completely overrides the software. And the AI isn't meant to be able to run all the processes of the AuxCom by itself, so I have to find a way to for the two to be able to coexist at the same time in the same code without an error popping up, but I just can't seem to do it, and I'm worried how the supervisor will react. I've had damn near two months in total to try and make some headway on this and I guarantee they're doing a lot better with this. "

" Well it seems like you've got some progress on it, right? Like you said, you've got all the icon things down, so that's better than nothing. " " I had those done my first week and a half I was at MS, and they're already aware that I had those done. " " Fuckkkkkkk dude, " said Garrett with a conflicted look on his face, " I, honestly don't know what to tell you man. " " It's all good man, don't even worry about it. Just talking to you has kind of helped me destress, so I appreciate you listening to me bitch," Reese said, waving his hands while shaking his head in disagreement. "You wanna kick it for a bit while your here? " " Yeah, I'll kick it. You still got some reefer(1)?" "I always got weed man, gimme a sec to grab my pipe."

While Reese went to grab his pipe and weed from his bedroom, Garrett grabbed up the remote to the TV from the coffee table and turns it on before flipping the channel to BBC news, where two people were talking about how because of overseas groups buying up land in Africa farmers didn't have enough arable land to prevent starvation. " Its because the major superpowers like the US and China have bought up all the land that food shortage is an issue. With the size of Africa, food wouldn't be an issue if even 5% of Africa's landmass was turned into farmland and they grew the right crops(2), " a small Asian woman passionately said.

" You know what I've noticed Garrett," Reese said while going back to the couch, " Every time you come over the news always gets turned on. I swear, the only thing you old people like to watch is the news." Reese opened the baggie of weed then started to break it up, pulling the stems off the bud in preparation for smoking it while Garrett defended himself. " I like to watch the news, first of all, and so do a lot of other people. Knowledge is always important, both now and in the past. And second, I'm not old, I'm only 34."

Indeed, Garrett was only 34 years old. But because of his shiny bald head and the wrinkles he had on his forehead, he looked closer to his forties, something Reese never failed to get on him about. If it weren't for his baldness, the smile lines around his mouth and the wrinkles on his forehead, Garrett would look a lot more youthful as he took care of himself well. He was a tall white guy, 6'1", hazel eyes and clean shaven, and well defined muscles from constant exercise and his job at a warehouse where he had to move pallets and boxes filled with cargo and other laborious tasks.

As Reese started to load a bowl into his pipe and Garrett had just started paying attention to the TV again, the news changed from the talk of famine in Africa to another story. "Iran has declared a quarantine in Nishapur after a leak from a chemical weapons facility nearby, potentially contaminating hundreds of citizens. As of right now we are unsure as to what exactly has been leaked and the Iranian government has not given any details as to what was being produced at that facility."

Reese had just finished loading the bowl and they were hitting off of it, so neither of them paid any attention to it. Unbeknownst to them however, that same story was a prelude to the terrifying events that would occur in a few weeks to come.