Celia raised her eyebrows. “Are they running experiments on humans or aliens?”
“I don’t know,” Jesse said. “I can’t really get inside and dig around without raising suspicion, but everywhere they build, the neighborhood shifts.”
“It’s called gentrification. As despicable as that can be, it’s not grounds for a segment on my show.”
Jesse pulled out one of the articles. “This is different. Where they build, suicide rates rise. Violence triples. This place in Boston? Over half the residents sought psychiatric care after a thunderstorm. And it’s not just humans who are affected. There are more dog attacks. Rabid raccoons. There’s at least one case of a squirrel throwing nuts at anyone too close to its tree.”
“I’m seeing correlation, not causation,” Celia replied.
Jesse was on the verge of spreading out the pages and reenacting the Pepe Silva gif. Why couldn’t she see it like he did? “Neighborhood prices go down, not up, and still no one wants the apartments. Whatever experiment they’re running messes with people’s mental health. I don’t know what their end goal is, but I do know that the government is looking the other way. Something wrong is happening here.”
“I think I need that on a T-shirt. Put an American flag behind it. See how that goes over.”
“I don’t understand why you’re so dismissive.”
Celia stacked the papers together. “Because mysterious experiments are nothing new. The government has been running them on people in this area since the nineteen-sixties, and on the country a lot longer than that. It’s disturbing that corporations can get away with it, but not surprising. And these documents aren’t proof of anything. They’re conjecture.”
“Last week’s podcast was about a guy’s encounter with Sasquatch,” Jesse replied. “This is something that is actually happening.”
“Sasquatch guy had a great story, and he was a fantastic storyteller. This?” Celia waved her hand at the folder. “Is nothing but scare tactics. Give me a story I can run with, and I’ll be glad to include it.”
Jesse had years’ worth of stories, but none of them his own. His great-uncle Ephraim had left behind decades’ worth of journals. They detailed his time as an FBI agent who coordinated with a secretive government agency called the Department of the Weird and Occult. Formally the DWO disbanded in the early nineteen-fifties, but Ephraim’s journals chronicled the DWO’s shift into obscurity. The department continued to investigate aliens from outer space and monsters from other realities. They were the first line of defense against terrors and nightmares.
Jesse longed to do his part, but as far as he could discover, the DWO didn’t have open recruitment. They might not even exist anymore. Meanwhile, monsters kept to the shadows. Big corporate CEOs hid behind walls of legal protection backed by incredible wealth. Being an FBI agent didn’t magically open the door to a new world of fighting crime and monsters. Hell, the greatest threat he faced at the office was cleaning the coffee machine. Descaling was definitely not part of the take-down-scumbag dreams he’d had since middle school.
But he hadn’t gotten this far only to give up.
“These corporations are manipulating people. Hurting them. That’s a story worth telling,” Jesse said.
“If you had a witness, or even an account from one, that could place the blame on the corporation, then I could run a segment on the big bad board of over-rich directors looking to profit off the rest of us. It’s not exactly in our usual wheelhouse, but it’s something I could swing.”
“No one else has put it together. They don’t know what’s happening to them. You have to tell people.”
Celia scoffed. “Do you have any idea how many times a day I hear that? What if you’re wrong? I can’t support an article of pure fiction. We’re not that kind of podcast.”
Spooky True Talesran stories on Area 51, lake monsters, demonic possessions, eldritch being sightings, and the latest theories involving government cover-ups of paranormal activity. She should have believed him, but she was blowing him off. Worse than that, she didn’t seem to care.
Jesse nodded at the building across from them. Crowley Construction signs hung on the metal fence surrounding the new structure. “We’re sitting inside a hot zone. Can’t you feel it?”
“Feel what?”
“When I came in three weeks ago, you couldn’t get the baristas to shut up.” Jesse gestured at the man in the corner. “That guy on his laptop? He used to chat them up. I thought they might get a poly relationship going. Now look at them.”
One barista was still on his phone, and the other attacked the spotless counter with an industrial cleaner. The man at his laptop moved his lips along with the words he typed while he consulted a journal.
“They could be having a bad day,” Celia said.
Jesse groaned. She seemed determined not to believe him. There had to be some way to convince her. He pulled out an article on the rise of rat populations. “If you just take a look—”
“I’ll go over it later.”
Her words sounded hollow and placating. He had to make one more plea. “The only way this problem will end is if we expose them. I don’t have the platform, but you do.”
“I appreciate the enthusiasm, but I’m one tiny podcast with a couple hundred subscribers. And those subscribers, as odd as it may seem to you, are extremely picky about what they believe,” Celia said. “I can’t fling any old information at them and have it take off. If that’s what you were hoping for, I’m sorry. It just isn’t going to happen.”
Damn it all. The comments posted all over the podcast’s social media had led Jesse to think the listeners would believe him and pick up the torch. If it took off, then the conspiracy could eventually hit other news outlets. With enough accusations and suspicions, Jesse could open a federal investigation into Crowley Construction and bring the bastards down.
But his plan started with Celia, and it looked like it was about to end with her.
