Episode 4: Resumes

JASMINE: So how much do you actually know about this place then, Scarlet? How did you get started here at the Department?

SCARLET: Well, Control, I wasn’t a weird kid, unlike a lot of the people here. I played soccer, ate ice cream, hated school like everyone else. 

JASMINE: I didn’t hate school. 

SCARLET: Somehow I figured that one out on my own.

JASMINE: Lunch wasn’t fun though.

SCARLET: What I’m getting at is, I was pretty normal for the most part. High school is when it all went to hell. Puberty didn’t help, neither did confusing sexuality and gender questions. Or all the weed. But there was something else. My friends and I took a trip out to the woods the July right after graduation. Daryll, me, a close friend, and somebody else. I had a crush on that close friend, and I’d just started to really confront those feelings. On that trip, I found out she’d be leaving in the fall. College out of state. I didn’t take it super well, to be honest.

JASMINE: Where’d she go?

SCARLET: Oberlin. She was always pretty good at drawing, did skulls on her notebooks and a lot of crows. Said she wanted to go to art school. Anyway, we saw some shit out there in the woods. Like some Department of Variance shit. We were trapped for a while, but we managed to get out. What we saw, though, that changed me. Changed everyone, I think. 

We got back home, summer ended, my friend went to college. But I couldn’t just jump back into life like nothing happened. After all that? I don’t know how she did it. I was in a daze for weeks. Everything felt fake. Like I was outside of myself watching a bad movie, starring me. I didn’t apply to any schools, I didn’t have a job. I kept thinking about my friend, about what had happened, about what we saw. I was probably depressed, or traumatized. Or both. 

My parents kicked me out not long after. 

JASMINE: What the hell! That’s so rude. I’m sorry.

SCARLET: It’s fine. It’s not because they hated me or anything, they thought it’d be good for me to stand up on my own two feet. Bootstraps and whatever. They had no idea what happened. Offered me twenty bucks a week to help keep me fed. I lived off that for a while. They were wrong about it of course, but their hearts were in the right place. 

I slept on a friend’s couch for a month or so while I saved up to rent a place. Spent a lot of late nights watching slashers and drinking the cheapest beer gas stations had to offer. I got a job at one of the supermarket chains in town though. Started working the register. Good news was, my soul was already crushed when I started. I was a perfect fit for minimum wage work. I wasn’t on the register long, though. Turns out what they’d really wanted was another person for the deli counter. They didn’t tell me that upfront though. So I was put to work in the meat zone for 30 hours a week.

I did a lot of the slicing. You know those big machines, where you push the chunk up against the blade and try to get it real thin?

JASMINE: Yeah, never used one though. It seems dangerous.

SCARLET: You’re telling me. Didn’t bother me at first, though. I was sleepwalking through every day by then. I’d gotten my own place with a roommate, but I still couldn’t talk to anyone about what went on. My friend was gone, the others had left or were too fucked up to help, and no one else would believe me. So I kept at it. Wake up, stumble to work. Slice and wrap meat for 8 hours, go home. Have nightmares, wake up again. You know when you wake up from a dream but you’re still in another one? That’s what every day felt like: just bad dreams, over and over.

JASMINE: “Is all that we see or seem / But a dream within a dream?”

SCARLET: What’s that?

JASMINE: Edgar Allan Poe. Dream Within a Dream. You like horror, right? You might like it.

SCARLET: I read some Poe in junior high. He wrote the one about the gorilla murderer, right?

JASMINE: Orangutan. But yes, Murders in the Rou Morgue.

SCARLET: Right. Well one day I nodded off at the slicer and my finger slipped. Cut part of it clean off. Right index. It’s shorter than the rest now. There was blood all over the machine, all over my apron. A torn glove, piles of meat sitting and stinking around me splattered with red. I almost passed out. A nice coworker drove me to the ER. I got it sewn up, but I’m still paying for it. 

I spent a few days recovering, then went in for my shift, but they told me not to bother. I was fired. 

JASMINE: I can’t believe that! They fired you for getting hurt? Could you like…file a complaint with the labor department or something?

SCARLET: Yeah, right. No chance of that. Michigan’s a right to work state. They can fire you for pretty much any reason, any time. Coworker fell and broke his back early on, was “let go” the same day. Technically, I did miss work. And as we all know, “technically” is corporate’s favorite phrase. 

I was pretty low then, not gonna lie. Unemployed, living on my parents’ couch again, in constant pain, alone. No prospects, no way out. There were a few things I considered. 

I was pissed off, too, though. I was determined not to let that store kill me. I went on long walks instead. Got some fresh air. Because of the stuff that happened up north…trees in general still made me uneasy then. But I went back into the woods anyway. Maybe I needed the exposure to help me get over it. Embraced my fear like a fucked up little batman. While I was walking the trails, I could hear weird birds, saw animals I’d never seen before. Something in my brain had been switched on that couldn’t be turned back off. But it didn’t hurt so much anymore.

I started martial arts training, too. A weekend class half full of kids. I wanted to get strong. I figured if I couldn’t talk to anyone, punching was a decent backup plan. 

JASMINE: You know, Scarlet, if you’re ever feeling that way again, you can talk to me. I know we’re not really friends yet, but still.

SCARLET: Thanks for the offer.

JASMINE: What happened next?

SCARLET: I got a job doing security at an art gallery. Better than joining the army or police academy. Shit hours, but it kept me fed and dry. Another year or more passed. I was in another routine, but this one was better. A little healthier. But there was still something missing.

JASMINE: Is that security job how you ended up here?

SCARLET: No. After I’d been on the job for a while, I got a call from my friend. The one I hadn’t spoken to since she left for college. She said a friend had an exhibition at a gallery and heard about me working it. She said I should come visit her in Ohio. Only about a two hour drive. She’d have graduated by then.

JASMINE: Funny that you were both in the art world but from opposite ends.

SCARLET: Never thought about it like that. 

JASMINE: Sorry, go on.

SCARLET: I thought about it for a while, but eventually I went. She didn’t invite me just to catch up, though we did do that. Or to meet her boyfriend, though I grudgingly did that too. She had a job for me. Government work, with real benefits and a decent wage. I asked her what the catch was. She said I’d have to tell her boyfriend everything we saw in those woods on that long night. There’s always a catch.

JASMINE: Oh. Who was this boyfriend that wanted to know about it?

SCARLET: He was a new professor at the school, and my friend had started doing TA work there. Different departments, though. He was a little older, but seemed nice enough. And he was fascinated by what had happened to us.

JASMINE: And he believed it? Why?

SCARLET: He had an in with a guy at this little-known state agency, the Department of Whatever, Bureau of Weird Shit. He was gonna transfer there next year. Sweetheart deal, he said. Pay raise, insurance, and he could run his own lab. Hard to turn down work like that when you’re an adjunct. He thought my friend would fit in perfectly there, too. Said it’s full of people like us.

JASMINE: People who have had that switch flipped in their brain.

SCARLET: Exactly. When my friend told him the story, she mentioned me, too. So he wanted to meet me and hear my story. He asked his contact in the agency if there were any more openings. There was one more. 

JASMINE: How convenient.

SCARLET: So we all started at the Department of Variance. It was hard, at first. Working with her. I still had a stupid crush on her. But I kept it to myself. I was a professional now, you know? And we were all in different branches, doing our own thing. The professor did his little experiments, my friend sent out her HR emails, and I got asked what I went to school for. 

JASMINE: Ouch.

SCARLET: They found out I wasn’t gonna be a good lab rat or accountant, but I had other skills. I’m good with my hands. I could fix up all the junk they had that didn’t quite work like it should. I’m quick on my feet, good at making decisions under pressure. So they sent me out to help people in certain kinds of trouble. 

JASMINE: The kind you’d found in the woods?

SCARLET: Yup. I was put face-to-face with spectral shit, bigfoot sightings, space worms, all kinds. The professor and I even collaborated a bit on a weapon after his partner…was gone. 

JASMINE: Is that the titular “jaunt” in Scarlet Jaunt?

SCARLET: Yeah. He had this incredible blueprint, but couldn’t actually put it together. So I messed with it a bit and got it working. As thanks, he named the weapon after me. Well, after the new name I’d been forced to take: Scarlet Jaunt. The name was whatever, but they got real lucky that I don’t mind the pronouns they gave me. We all had to take on new personas here anyway. Something about personal information causing issues. Same with phones. They were very insistent on those points. 

JASMINE: What happens if you do use your real name? Or a cell phone?

SCARLET, hesitant: I…I’m not sure. Anyway, that’s probably more than you wanted OR needed, but there it is: the Scarlet Story.

*pause*

SCARLET: Control, you there? 

JASMINE: I’m here. I’m just thinking. I know this is personal, maybe painful. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but I have to ask. What happened in those woods?

SCARLET: Maybe another time.

JASMINE: N-nevermind. Who’s the professor?

SCARLET: Sterling Proof. Big brain and not much ego, surprisingly. Seems aloof, but that’s just because his head’s in the clouds and he talks like a dictionary. He does fold like a paper bag the second there’s a crisis though. That’s why he stays in the labs, and I go out and help people with the real problems.

JASMINE: What’s the wildest thing you’ve seen on the job?

SCARLET: What’s your access level again?

JASMINE: I have no idea. I think they said it once. I didn’t even get a badge. They gave me a visitor’s tag.

SCARLET: Then sorry, Control, I can’t tell you much. What I will say, is that all the bigfoot sightings you’ve heard about are fake–

JASMINE: Well, yeah. That’s not what I’d call a revelation.

SCARLET: Those sightings are fake because Yeti died out about two hundred years ago. Weren’t fucking enough, I guess. Like pandas. So devoid of horny that they went extinct. What those folks saw was actually a xenarthran descendent of the mapinguari. Native to Brazil, but they’ve spread to a lot of forests in the Americas. At least according to Sterling and Green.

JASMINE: I’m sorry?

SCARLET: Giant sloth, basically.

JASMINE: So does that mean all of the other–

SCARLET: Nessie? no. Aliens? maybe. Mothman? classified.

JASMINE: Wow. I’m speechless.SCARLET: But that’s not really my field. I deal more with stuff like the Larks. With the things that mess with your mind. Fakeouts and fiction.

JASMINE: Well I…I’m going to have to think on this. For a while. 

SCARLET: How did you start?

JASMINE: I opened what I thought was a phishing email. They had a lot of information on me that a scammer shouldn’t know, though. So I rolled with it.

SCARLET: So they’re scouting now, huh?

JASMINE: I suppose so. I had a meeting…I can’t remember too much about it. They said I would make a great addition to the team. I’d been trying to get editing work for a while but it’s tough out there. My dad used to write for the town paper, but it’s been shuttered for…jeez, two decades?

SCARLET: Where’d you go to school?

JASMINE: Ohio State.

SCARLET: Oof, fuck that. What was your qualification for the job?

JASMINE: Well, I do have some writing and proofreading experience, a relevant degree, some connections in the–

SCARLET: No, no. I mean…like the stuff I saw in the woods. Why did they want you and not some other editor?

JASMINE: Hmm. My mom says my great grandmother was psychic, kind of in the folk healer mode. Salting houses, finding lost keys, talking to the dead. And I remember having some strong deja vu when I was a kid. Maybe that’s it?

SCARLET: Maybe. So all of this is totally new to you? Nothing like this in your past?

JASMINE: Nothing else I can think of.

SCARLET: And your head hasn’t exploded yet. No hallucinations. No gaps in memory. No moving things without touching them.

JASMINE: …no.

SCARLET: Hmm. Really into sci-fi?

JASMINE: Not really. You’re worrying me now. Is something wrong with me?

SCARLET: No. Forget about it.  

JASMINE: All right.

*pause*

JASMINE: So bigfoot really–

SCARLET: Yup. Giant sloth. Really.

JASMINE: Huh. Well, I found the stairs. I’ll radio you if anything else comes up. Jasmine out.

*beep, pause, beep again*

SCARLET: Scarlet Jaunt, reporting. I’m sitting on 17 right now, haven’t heard from anyone since this whole thing started. Not sure if anyone’s listening to this channel, but if so I could use some uhh “technical support.” It’s getting a little hot here, like giallo-soundtrack-hot. Could use a Jaunt. Anyone there? Over.

*pause*

I’ll be dropping down soon. Is maintenance up? I didn’t realize we were in full full Asymmetry. Is Sterling okay? Violet? Where is everyone? Did you guys all get out already? That Lark got a little close for comfort. If you’re hearing this, please respond. Doesn’t matter who. Just drop a jaunt down the elevator shaft and I’ll catch it. Over.

*pause*

Well, I dumped pretty much my whole backstory on the newbie. Hope that’s okay. I think she’s cleared for that much at least. Oh, she broke the case in the concert hall. She can be a little rebel when she wants something. I admire that. I don’t know if that broken case is gonna mess with the people left here, but she seems fine. Just keep an eye out. She’s got a bit of an edge to her I didn’t see coming. What’s with the name, anyway? And she says she doesn’t have any variance in her past. Doesn’t seem like she has any defenses built up. This place could tear her to shreds. Are we sure she’s a good hire? Over.

*pause*

Red sucks, Yellow blows, and Blue’s a weenie…No response, huh? Ugh, whatever. I should save battery power. Dropping down a floor now. If any of you can hear me, I need an update and ETA on extraction. Scarlet Jaunt, over and out.