A Tasty Little Bit of ASS
Copyright© 2025 by Pixymorph
Chapter 1
Forty year old John Kalinsky, a specialist in the field of in-vitro gametogenesis, surfaced in a damp patch of his own sweat. It wasn’t a pleasant awakening.
The room was stifling when it should not have been. It was also quieter. With a groan, he climbed from his bed and stumbled over to the air con unit. An angry fist descended, impacting on the silent unit.
“Fucking piece of shit.”
The AC unit rumbled into action. By the time the room cooled to something more pleasant, he would be at the research institute. He could have taken a shower to cool down, but they were currently on water restrictions and, unfortunately, all the houses, on the estate including his, were metered. He ran some cold water into the sink and used a cloth to wash and cool his skin. He had disconnected the U-bend under the sink and the water, when the plug was pulled, ran into a bucket. John used the bucket and its contents, to refill the cistern. He only flushed when he’d had a shit. Urine he just left.
Naked and wet, he padded into the living room of his company owned bungalow, where he lifted the TV remote and turned it on. The heat had killed his hunger, so he settled for a large glass of fresh orange from the fridge.
“Oh fuck yes.” The juice was delightfully cool in the heat. At least the lab would have working air con. A face he knew all too well, was where it should not be. “What the fuck!”
His boss, who was supposedly in Washington for funding talks, appeared to be in Laos, or at least a scarily similar doppelganger was. John turned up the volume.
:A US national has been arrested in Luang Prabang, charged with possession and transportation of restricted biological specimens. The unsafe carriage of biological specimens. The unsafe transportation of items likely to endanger public wellbeing. Visa discrepancies, failure to declare business activities under a tourist visa. Failure to comply with law enforcement, espionage, drug possession and sacrilegious behaviour in a place of worship... :
“What the fuck!”
:We have reached out to consular services, but they are not releasing a statement at this time, nor have they released the Identity of the accused, other than to say that he is a US citizen and embassy staff are liaising.:
Had the doppelganger been similar to anyone else in the lab other than Wallace, John would have mercilessly teased them all day, but Wallace was a total prick who’d had his sense of humour removed a long time ago and replaced with an obnoxious irritant, and the replacing had obviously been carried out via his ass.
Still, he was sure he could drop some snide comments about the doppelganger, when Wallace video called for a lab update from whatever luxury Washington hotel he had managed to wrangle onto his company expense account. The prick always video called when he was away from the lab for more than a day.
A potential moment of joy in what would otherwise be a repetitive day.
Security were being dicks again. Checking everyone’s ID. Slowly. And checking all bags. Even more slowly. Seemingly determined to keep everyone waiting out in the merciless morning sun.
All John had was his ID pass and his phone. He’d stopped taking bags onsite months ago. The hassle wasn’t worth it. A woman was complaining loudly about her handbag being searched.
Bad move.
The bag was upended on the counter and the contents spread out so everyone nearby could see.
“What’s this?” The security guard demanded.
“You know full well what it is you miserable prick. It’s a tampon.”
“I need you to remove the wrapping...”
The inside of the building was indeed, lovely and cool. John walked along a corridor, one side lined with office doors, the other with a glass wall, giving the corridor walkers a clear, ground level shot, of the backs of cars parked up in the car park. Fail to reverse park at your own peril.
Slapping his ID on the reader, he pushed against the door when the light turned green. He sat at his computer and logged on.
“Hey Arne?” John called out, “Did you see the news this morning? There’s a guy the spitting image of Breen, who has been arrested in Laos.”
“Not a spitting image. It’s actually Wallace.”
“What! No way Arne! I thought he was supposed to be in Washington?”
“Yeah, supposed to be.”
“What’s with all the charges?”
Arne scooted over from his desk in his wheeled chair, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper as he used a foot against a filing cabinet to stop himself.
“Well. I heard from someone who heard from a reliable source, that he was caught up in a brothel raid, and the other stuff was found when they searched his hotel room as part of the investigation.”
“A brothel? His wife Helena is going to be pissed.”
“That’s not the half of it. Apparently the sex workers were boys, like, really young boys. It was why it was raided in the first place.”
“Boys? Well that explains why he is such a royal pain in the ass.”
“Best not make any jokes about it. I heard HR are coming down hard on any one talking about it.”
The lab door opened and their IT liaison, Grigori, came in pushing a two tray trolley. The bottom tray was empty, but the top was stacked with hard drives. He looked like shit. Like he had been up all night.
“Turn off all your computers.” Grigori said to the room at large.
“Why?” Arne asked.
“Just fucking do it!” Grigori angrily snapped. A response of a man lacking sleep and even less patience.
Arne turned to John, made a face. John watched as Grigori consulted a clipboard and moved to one of the workstations and popped the side, removing all the hard drives inside, which he dumped on the empty bottom tray. He fitted new ones from the top, writing in his clip board as he did so.
John watched him work his way round the room. He moved his chair out of the way as Grigori took the side off his workstation and swapped out the drives and moved on. No-one had said not to, so John, for the second time that morning, fired up his workstation.
His username and password were accepted and he was faced with a slightly more cluttered desktop than usual. He looked at some of it. News articles. Some pictures of young, famous women in attire and poses that would definitely draw the ire of the HR department Gestapo’s. He quickly deleted those. There were pictures of sport personalities that John had absolutely no interest in.
“What the fuck is this shit Grigori?” Grigori had his head in a workstation and didn’t reply. He didn’t even turn round.
John started deleting all the alien content. At first, he had thought the drives were supposedly, or supposed to be, blank, but possibly had not been properly wiped and contained data from the previous workstations they had been installed in. But this didn’t appear to be the case, as his name and details were there, along with his current documents and files relating to the project they were all working on.
All very bizarre.
John called up the last file he had been working on, genome manipulation. The file was right, but the contents were gobbledygook. Pure gobbledygook. At first glance it looked technical enough, like actual research, but two things. First, it was complete nonsense, and secondly, it wasn’t what he had been working on, even though it was his file name.
He opened up some more files. It was the same, scientific looking, but the calculations were absolute garbage. He looked up searched for Grigori, ready to demand answers, but Grigori was not to be seen.
The door crashed open and uniformed officers quickly flooded inside. The three bright yellow letters they all wore prominently displayed on their identical jackets, was something of a giveaway. There was a lot of shouting. Some of it conflicting.
“Do not touch your keyboards, raise your hands and step away from your computer or any electronic device.”
They didn’t appear to be armed, but John raised his hands and pushed his chair back. He wasn’t paid anywhere near enough to be difficult. Following the agents was a member of HR and an expensively dressed looking individual who screamed company Lawyer. He was also shouting
“Do not speak to the agents. Say nothing unless in the presence of company approved legal counsel.”
It appeared that it was all kicking off.
John was finding it all rather amusing. He was sat in a small room, two government agents were sat across from him and a lawyer was sat to his right, answering every question the agents put to John. ‘Answering’ being a very misleading term. So far, John had mostly listened to multiple variations of “My client is not at liberty to discuss that.” “That question contravenes my clients exiting nondisclosure.” “Your question does not bear any relation to your warrant.”.
All that had been established, so far, in the last hour, was that he worked for the company and any questions as to what he actually did, were verbosely stepped round. John didn’t care. He was, in effect, being paid to sit in a chair and day-dream.
Eventually the agents gave up and turned off the camera. John was handed a card and sent home. All the card contained, was the direct line to the legal department and a list of ‘don’ts’.
Don’t speak to the press.
Don’t discuss it with colleagues.
Don’t speak to LEA under ANY circumstances without representation.
Don’t discuss the situation with family members...
He was home for one completely boring day, before a text arrived informing him that he was to return back at work.
Brand new workstations awaited and they all had to create new company logins. John did so and looked at the clean user interface. There were no files in his workgroup. New, old, or even the garbage files. There was nothing. He tried not to think about the decade of research wiped.
The company still hadn’t released a statement other than the original short one of, “We are
co-operating with the relevant authorities.” John’s boss had been identified quite quickly by the media and amateur detectives on Social Media. Currently, there was a large pack of reporters camped outside of the family home. Wallace’s wife Helena had made no statements or public appearance. John couldn’t blame her. He doubted many wives wanted to be so publicly informed that their husband preferred boys. If she kept quiet, she would ultimately be the financial winner when the divorce went through.
“John?” John looked up. “You are wanted in room thirty six.”
“Right now?”
“Yes.”
He looked at his project free screen. It wasn’t as if he was doing anything. John logged out of his computer and the lab, heading back down the eerily quiet corridors. No doubt word had got out to the facility in general, that a cull was in progress and no one wished to stick their head above the proverbial parapet. Finding room thirty six, John knocked and entered.
“John Kalinsky?”
“Yes.”
A man held out his hand and John automatically shook it.
“Please be seated. My name is Azian Vortigaunt and this is Caroline Crabb from legal.”
“Hi.” John shook the woman’s hand.
“I’ve been assigned,” Azian continued, “to overall control of this department, in lieu of recent events. There will be some changes going forward.”
“Am I being let go.” John interrupted, eager to skip all the managerial bullshit.
Azian did not respond immediately. “Re-assigned. If you choose not to be, then your continued employment would be under review.”
“And the release clauses in your contract would be activated. Including not being able to be employed by any of our competitors for a minimum of five years from the date of your employment end.” Caroline interjected.
Which was standard for those in John’s line of work.
“So, if I wished to stay at this facility in a similar or preferably, the same role?” Neither of the two replied but their impassive faces told John, clear as day, that his preferred scenario was not on the table. “Where would I be reassigned to?” Again silence. “Look, how can I agree if I don’t know what I am agreeing too?”
Azian and Caroline shared a look.
“Seriously?” John looked down to Caroline’s hand. “Miss Crabb, you of all people should be aware that agreeing to terms you do not know or understand, is a really bad idea and you expect me just to jump in with both feet? I don’t know who is dafter.”
John paused, leaned back in his chair to regain his composure.
“What about my research? I know you have it as you removed all our hard-drives and swapped them for dummies.”
“There may be an option for you to continue your research at your new facility.”
“Not good enough. I either continue or I don’t.”
“There are issues with your previous projects origins.” Caroline pointed out.
“Not my problem Miss Crabb. That’s your department, not mine. I make proverbial tools, I don’t decide how they are used. That’s up to other people.”
“I can guarantee nothing.” Azian stated simply.
“Pff.” John stood. This meeting was pointless. He turned and walked out without another word.
Back in the lab office, several others were already packing possessions into boxes. Their facial expressions telling all that their employment was at an end, not a transfer. In fact it seemed to be that most of the team were packing boxes.
Sophia Rosenberg, who had been the research lead, was angrily speaking into a phone. Her English accent and perfect pronunciation cutting through the jumble of tearfully hugged goodbyes and the growing conflagration that was the office rumour mill.
He could understand Sophia’s anger. She had been working on a prototype mechanical womb, the results of which were promising. He had helped out a few times with the calculations and some of the theory both on the artificial germination of embryos and on the construction of the womb. It sounded like they were shutting her pet project down, since it was, or could have been now, instrumental to the main project.
Given the impact such a device could have for humanity, especially for career orientated women, it seemed a little short sighted to cancel the project. Even if it had been tainted by the actual project.
At least he now knew where some, if not all, of that weird unknown DNA had come from. China, of all fucking places.
“Wallace, a fucking Chinese spy. Who would have thought.” John muttered, mostly to himself.
The office, with the majority of the staff gone, most for good, felt empty. John looked at his screen. He really couldn’t be bothered. The wind had been taken from his sails and he had the sneaky suspicion the lab would now be on someone in the government’s ‘Shit list’ and that there was bound to be another raid.
Even more so, if, or when, they realised that they had been duped when they took the workstations with the drives inside. The entire IT department must have been up all night fabricating those drives. He wouldn’t have been surprised if someone in government hadn’t already done a deal for those drives to fall into the hands of a competitor. Some political fucker has just received a new boat or a house... His internal company messenger pinged, disturbing his mental ire. John navigated to it in his email folder full of emptiness where there had once been years of un responded to messages. Seeing it empty just didn’t look right. It was offensive deep down in his psyche.
The new message that had destroyed his e-mail’s virginity, was from his new boss, Azian, wanting his answer by tomorrow. What little enthusiasm John had, evaporated and he shut his computer down. Fuck it. He was going home.
John made his decision as he left the lab. It was easier than he had expected and the pressure he had been struggling under melted away. He stopped off at warehouse stores before he left the building and had them deliver packing boxes to his company house, cadging a lift home in the vehicle at the same time.
There wasn’t much point in delaying it and he worked solid, packing all his possessions away, only stopping for toilet breaks. He teared off the last strip of packing tape, labelled and numbered the box. He lifted his phone off a box swiped through the contacts list and dialled the newly installed number without even looking at the time.
“Yes John?” Came the slightly tired voice of Azian.
“Okay. I’ll do it. I’m all packed up ready.”
“Okay.” The phone went dead.
John looked down at the screen, nonplussed at such an anticlimactic response.
2:30
Oh.
He hadn’t thought it was that late. Half eleven at the latest. That was going to be problematic as he had boxed all his bedding. The chair would have to do. He wandered into the bare kitchen to make himself a cup of tea. No kettle. It was packed.
“Fuck sake.”
The TV was packed as well. Luckily he had kept its packaging. The chairs and sofa in the living room belonged to the company, as did all the carpets. So he slumped down in one, realizing that he had barely sat in it the whole time he had been here. Most of his time had been spent in the computer chair in his bedroom, gaming when he wasn’t working. If he had felt tired, he simply moved the two feet from chair to bed.
The front door bell rang. John looked at his phone. Five to three. He stood, slowly. His body starting to make its displeasure known about the unwanted burst of activity over the preceding few hours.
Opening the door, he looked down at the twenty or so year old woman looking up at him from the bottom of the steps.
“John?”
“Yes.”
“Can I enter?”
“Err sure. Who are you?”
“Kathy. I deal with logistics.” She flashed him a company ID.
He turned and headed back inside. Kathy followed, but she didn’t close the door.
“I’d offer you a coffee, or something, but...” He waved at the empty shelves and all the sealed boxes.
“No that’s fine.” Kathy was scribbling a stylus across a tablet screen, her motions precise and brisk. John found her movements remarkably similar to that of a plotter. He was tempted to make little ‘bzz’ noises as her hand and arm moved. She looked up occasionally to count boxes.
“Is there more upstairs?”
John nodded and she marched purposefully back into the hallway. He listened to her climb the stairs. He could track her progress by the creaks from the ceiling. It was a strange sound, as he had never been one for house guests, and hearing the ceiling creak from movement was a little disconcerting. He wasn’t the sociable type. Even in gaming, he preferred the single player games.
The stairs creaked again.
“I’m sorry,” John apologised “it could have waited till the morning. Sorry for keeping, well, getting you out of your bed.” She waved the apology away.
“Night is easier. Less eyes, less hassle.”
Something large quietly pulled up outside. He only heard it because the door was open. Footsteps. Many footsteps.
A man in his forties appeared, glanced at John, turned to Kathy.
“All packed?”
She nodded.
A stream of men followed the first. They didn’t speak, just loaded the boxes onto single axle sack trucks. He counted ten of them, working away silently as Kathy tapped away at her tablet. There was no getting in the way, or dropping of boxes, or jovial laughter or good, - or bad - natured jibes. Just heavy breathing and the squeak of wheels.
“Do you have the keys?”
“Oh, shit! Forgot about them.” He fished in a pocked and pulled out a bunch of keys. Pulling off the house keys, he handed them over.
“Just these?”
“No, sorry, there is a key for the back door under a plant pot at the side of the garage.” A garage he had never used. He doubted the door even worked, probably rusted solid.
More scribbles on the tablet.
“That’s everything.” The first man said to Kathy.
“Final check, make sure everything of yours is gone.”
John nodded, walked through the house that had been his home for almost the last fifteen years. It looked weird all empty. The rooms echoed as well.
“Happy?” John nodded “Sign here.” She handed him the stylus and tablet.
He pulled the screen down, reading what he was signing for. Just a simple declaration that all his possessions had been removed. He signed in the marked box and handed both back.
“I’ll give you a lift in.”
He stepped out outside. The lorry was quietly pulling away, the driver using minimum revs and full gears. The rest of the men were quietly climbing into a minibus, which pulled away after the van. The surrounding houses were dark, no curtains twitching that John could see. Kathy let the lock snib drop and quietly shut the door.
Her car was obviously a company one, a large sign across the passenger dash reminding those sat in the seat not to smoke. She placed the tablet on the dash above the instrument panel and after fastening her seatbelt, put the automatic into drive.
She didn’t invite conversation, so he kept his thoughts to himself. The streetlights above strobed the car as he wondered if he was going to get a hire car or the bus. He hoped it was a bus. He wasn’t a fan of driving and the thought of doing so for several days, was not very appealing. But being in a bus with people was also an undesired situation.
Although her car followed the minibus and the small box truck, he expected her to pull off and head through the research institutes main entrance. She didn’t, following the road for deliveries.
The delivery entrance was out of sight of the main one and was similar in layout and build, but just bigger to accommodate the larger vehicles. The gates opened and they were waved through by smiling guards. Which annoyed John somewhat.
Almost every day, at almost the same time, he met the same guards, who insisted on visually checking his ID and the contents of his person and anything he carried. Without fail. And here they were, just driving through without a care. He could be a terrorist with a moving van sized bomb, or a thief with an empty van and a desire to fill it.
Yes, on you go, we don’t care.
Kathy skirted round the main building and all its labs to the buildings behind, which housed the boring stuff like stores, heating and cooling plants. Including, no doubt, the offices of the building maintenance guys who always promised to be round that afternoon, next day at the latest, but you could guarantee it being at least a month. She pulled up in front of a small building he had never seen before, but then, he had never gone looking for it. She collected her tablet and headed for the double doors which were manually opened at her approach.
John kept silent and close. No desire to be separated. He didn’t meet the gaze of the door guard in the same way he never met the gaze of customs officials at an airport. Praying internally that if he ignored them, they would ignore him. There was another guard behind a counter, who only gave them a cursory glance before doing something that made the door Kathy was heading to, click.
“You’re not allowed on during fuelling, but we can sort out your new ID in the meantime.”
Fuelling?
She led him down a corridor that had no names on the doors, only numbers. Kathy opened one and he followed her inside. A man behind a counter looked up expectantly as Kathy stopped in front of him and turned to John.
“ID?” she commanded of him.
John fished it out, separated it from its carrier and handed it to her. She handed it to the man who pointed a hand held reader at it, which beeped before he handed it back. Kathy reached over the counter to pick up a pair of scissors and cut it into two pieces. She handed both pieces to the man who dropped them into a slot which suddenly came alive with shredding noises.
“If you would like to sit on the chair to your left. Place both hands palm down on the glass, look at the screen and read the words displayed in your usual voice.” John followed the man’s instructions.
He had done this before, when he had last had his clearance upgraded, necessitating a new ID and building pass. Not in this room, but at the security station in the main building. He’d had to book the meeting in week in advance, bring three separate pieces of identification, one of which had to display his picture, and no, his old ID did not count, and bring along at least one colleague of the same clearance level, but preferably higher to vouch for him. Then it was back the next day to collect it and surrender the old one.
He sat, placed his hands palm down on the glass, looked straight at the screen and recited the same passage from Alice in Wonderland that he had recited when he had first started working for the company all those years ago. A light below his hands moved across, so bright that his fingers and palms momentarily appeared to be translucent. The light stopped and he finished the passage. Something bright flashed, making him blink repeatedly as his eyes watered. He much preferred the older way of simply putting your chin on a rest as your retina image was captured. That was progress for you.
The man typed away as the machine next to him hummed a way and spat out anther ID card. John caught the colour, quashed the excitement when he saw that his clearance had jumped two levels. Then common sense kicked in and mentally pointed out that the new facility probably had a different colour security grading. The man slid it over. The picture on the card was terrible. Looking very much like the man displayed had been snapped at four am in the morning after being up for the last twenty four hours.
Part of him urged himself to speak out, ask for his picture to be taken again. Possibly with a smile and an expression that didn’t look as though he had just been arrested for improper sexual behaviour towards children.
He kept his silence.
Kathy did not allow time for dawdling and upon receipt of his new ID, led him back out into the corridor. Which was a surprisingly long walk. She pushed on the fire door handle opening the corridor onto a flat concrete apron on which sat a small mixed cargo jet. The plane was devoid of markings and logo, just an aviation required ID on the tail fin. The back cargo ramp was down and bridging the load beds between aircraft and van, was a raised belt of rollers which a couple of men from earlier in his house, were pushing standard air freight cages in which his boxes had obviously been loaded into in the back of the van at his house. A woman patiently stood at the bottom of the side steps into the front third of the plane
“The bus would have been fine.”
Kathy didn’t look up from what she was writing on her slate. “The pilots need the hours.”
The men jumped down, one pulling the roller door down with him. He latched the door and slapped the side of the van twice. The van pulled away as the other men took hold of the roller belt and pushed it away from the plane as it tailgate door started to raise.
“That’s you. Have a safe flight.” Kathy turned and started to walk away.
“I...” John shut his mouth, opened it again. “Thanks.”
She raised her right hand above her shoulder in a single wave, not even looking back.
“Good morning sir. Will you be needing breakfast?”
John turned to the immaculately turned out woman as his stomach rumbled loudly. He smiled ruefully. “A snack or something would be great.” He peered at her polished copper, finger mark free name tag. “Emma.”
“Do you have any dietary requirements?”
“No, no I’m good.”
“If you would like to board and be seated. Can I ask you to fasten your seatbelt as we will be departing immediately.”
“Uh, yeah, sure.” He climbed aboard and took a seat in one of the spacious seats around a table. A quick glance informed him that there was room for ten passengers. Emma pressed a button next to the door and the steps rose, sealing the fuselage. As soon as the seal was made, the engines whined into life. Emma made her way past him, looking down at him to ensure that he had indeed fastened the lap belt. She carried on past and through the cabin door, quietly shutting the door behind her.
I hope this is not coming out of my salary...
Dawn was coming over the horizon as they taxied out onto the short runway travelling to one end before turning around. There was a moment of inactivity as the engines built in crescendo and then the plane shot forward, increasing in velocity until the gentle vibrations from below gave way to stillness.