CHAPTER 244: JUST PUSH IT!

When the last man appeared, the captain turned to Smith and said, "Why don’t you show Jack where we keep the goodies. I’m gonna to talk to West about what kind of surprises we can leave behind for the Nov’s."

Jack showed Smith the snapshot, and Smith gave him directions to a stash of supplies they had in a safe house over a hundred kilometers away.

Jack templatized each item as Smith pointed out what items they needed.

When Smith was done, Jack asked, "Where do you want the items to appear in the warehouse? It needs to be a container that weighs more than these items."

"You need to bring the truck over to our warehouse, so can you just put the items in it before teleporting it to us?" asked Smith.

"Yep. I can do that."

He instantiated and linked the items, then synced them to the truck.

When the items appeared, Smith hollered, "West! Maldonado! Get your asses over here and help move your shit to the bed of that truck."

Two men rushed over to the pile of items Jack had just linked, and one of them said, "Hot damn. We’re gonna make a big boom."

The other just grinned and started grabbing items.

By the time the truck was loaded up, most of the contents of the shipping containers had been shuffled and one last pallet was being moved across the room towards a container.

The man driving the forklift maneuvered the pallet into the shipping container, lowered it, then backed up before jumping out of the forklift.

One of the men climbed into the truck and tried to start it, but nothing happened.

Another man popped the hood, looked inside, then said, "Fucking distributor cap is missing!"

"Just push the damned thing!" yelled Smith.

All the men got behind the truck and pushed while the man inside steered.

Once the truck was inside the container, Jack yelled, "Close the container doors."

The men rushed to comply, and as soon as the doors were closed, Jack exported all the changes.

There was a long pause as everyone just stared at Jack expectantly.

"Fuck me!"

"Holy shit!"

"Hot damn, that shit worked!"

Several men exclaimed after about fifteen seconds of waiting.

"Circle up!" yelled the captain, and soon all the men were standing in a circle facing each other.

"West, unload the truck except for what Maldonado needs to rig the other side of the collapse. Maldonado, you, Max, and Abbot get in the truck as soon as it’s unloaded. You’re going over first."

Several men nodded.

"The rest of you, help West when he asks for it, but drop whatever you’re doing and get in the truck as soon as it’s your turn to go over. I want to leave the Nov’s a surprise, but I don’t want any of you risking your lives to make it happen."

"RA!" yelled all the men at once.

Jack looked at the man the captain had called West, and said, "Point out the items that need to stay behind, so I can unlink them. Otherwise, they’ll disappear when I teleport the truck."

"Right. Let’s do that.," said West, then turned and jogged towards the truck that was still inside the shipping container.

Jack followed behind West and the rest of the men followed behind Jack, since they would need to pull the truck out of one shipping container and push it into the other.

When he got to the truck, West had hopped into the bed and was moving items around, creating a pile in one corner.

The man the captain had called Maldonado got into a brief argument with West about what items he would need, but they soon had it sorted.

Once they were done, West pointed at the larger pile and said, "These need to stay." Then pointed at the smaller pile, "And these need to go back to the other side."

Jack unlinked all the items from the larger pile, then deleted the copies from his soul space.

When the items disappeared, West jumped and yelled, "Fuck! What-" then stopped.

Looking a little sheepish, he said, "Sorry, for a moment there I thought you’d disappeared the stuff in the real world as well."

"No problem. It takes a while to wrap your head around all this."

The rest of the men moved in, and Jack stepped back so they could pull the truck out of the container and push it into the container on the other side of the room.

Maldonado came up to Jack and asked, "Do we need to get in the truck here as well?"

"No, just in the physical world."

"Good to know. By the way. Why do you say ’physical world’ instead of ’real world’?"

"Because this," Jack waved his hand around the room, "also feels real, and I don’t think this is a virtual world. At least not in the sense we are used to thinking about virtual reality. It just feels too real to be virtual."

"Ah. I guess that makes sense."

Another man came up to Jack and stuck out his hand and said, "Parker. Brandon Parker. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate what you are doing for us."

Jack shook the man’s hand. "Jack. Jack Waldron. To be honest, I was on the fence about doing this until Katie begged me to help."

"How do you know Katie?" asked Brandon.

Before Jack could answer, Smith yelled, "Jack, we’re ready."

Jack checked and saw that the truck was in the other container. He looked at Maldonado, who nodded, then exported the changes.

A few moments later, Maldonado whooped, "YES!" then turned to talk to West about something.

Turning back to Brandon, Jack said, "I met Katie in chemistry class almost two years ago, but didn’t interact much until recently when we reconnected. She is now one of my soul bonded girlfriends."

"Girlfriends. Plural?" asked Brandon.

"Yep. Seven total, five are soul bonded. The other two are still on the fence about sharing."

"And Orin’s okay with this?" asked Brandon.

"Yes, according to Katie. Though I suspect that if Orin had any reservations before, he probably doesn’t have any now."

"No, I guess not." Then in a thoughtful tone, but with a twinkle in his eye, Brandan said, "You know, I have a daughter about your age."