John Gone (13 page)

“What’s happening?” John exclaimed.

“I ... I don’t know,” Ronika answered. She
melted from her seat and crawled across the floor to John. After
sniffing and blowing at it, she poked at the light with her
fingertip. “It’s light, not energy,” she said. “Well, light is
energy; I meant electricity. You know what I mean.”

The projection finished taking shape, and
soon the image of a tall man with glasses was standing on top of
the watch’s face.

“Not a magical creature, huh?” John said
without taking his eyes from the man.

“I think it’s a hologram. Maybe a recording,”
she replied, bringing her face closer.

“Karen? Is that you? Where’s Karen?” the
hologram demanded.

“It’s got to be some sort of recording,” John
said. “I saw this in Star Wars.”

“I’m not a God damned recording,” the
hologram retorted. “Now where the hell is Karen?”

The car ride had been long and without break.
Felix sat crookedly, too tall for the back seat. His head cocked
awkwardly to the left as it pushed against the torn, brown fabric
of the car’s ceiling. Each bump in the road made his neck feel
worse, and there were a lot of bumps on this long, blind ride.

We must be out West now
, he thought.
The roads can only be this bad out West
.

“Is this truly necessary?” Felix asked
abruptly. He knew that whining wouldn’t take him anywhere of
relevance, but he was bored and it was the sort of thing he thought
people typically asked in similar situations.

“Of course it’s necessary, Doctor,” a man’s
voice answered through a slight Southern accent. “If you weren’t
blindfolded, then where we’re headed wouldn’t be much of a secret,
now would it?”

Hick
, Felix thought. He wasn’t sure
which was worse, the slight, unrefined twang in the man’s voice or
the fact that he was trying to cover it up.

“I understand the concept of blindfolding
just fine,” Felix answered. “It’s the means by which it’s executed
that is presently baffling me.” He waited for a reply. He got none.
“What I mean to say is that I assume this is a technology company,
correct? There are multiple types of innovative, unobtrusive, and
at the very least, less malodorous ways to blindfold a man than
using what’s, presumably, the old necktie wrapped around my
face.”

The car stumbled through another pothole,
forcing the side of Felix’s face to push against the ceiling again.
He released a loud and pronounced groan.

The man with the Southern accent chuckled.
“Would you like to hear a joke?” he asked.

Felix closed his eyes beneath the blindfold
and exhaled loudly through his nose. “No, I would not,” he replied
definitively.

“A shame,” the man said. “It was a real boot
stomper.”

“To be sure,” Felix responded curtly.

“Just as well. We’ll be gettin’ where we’re
goin’ in a minute.”

“Thank goodness.”

Twenty minutes later, the car slowed. Felix
could hear the sound of dirt kicking out from below its tires as it
curved to a halt.

Please, invisible super-being that people
pray to
, Felix thought,
let this place at least resemble
some semblance of a laboratory and not be some Podunk shed in the
desert. And let not this hillbilly in the seat across from me rape
me out here in the middle of nowhere. And if that does happen, then
let there be a bar nearby where I can at least have a brandy after.
Amen.

The doors opened, and a few moments later,
Felix was led softly from the automobile by his elbow. Two cool
palms brushed against his heated cheeks and slowly lifted the
necktie from his face. The light of the afternoon sun was harsh on
his eyes, having just spent the last sixteen hours in darkness. As
his pupils slowly contracted, Felix found himself looking into the
eyes someone he’d never seen before. She was beautiful.

“Well, you certainly look different than you
sound,” he said, cupping his hand over his eyes as he examined her.
She seemed mildly confused by the comment, but only for a moment.
Her eyes darted left to the man standing by the open car door. He
was busy rubbing an oil of some type into the brim of his cowboy
hat. Its turpentine scent wafted across the thin air to her
nostrils, causing them to crinkle.

The Southerner looked up at her and grinned.
“And here we are,” he said, placing the small container of oil back
into his pocket. “On time and everythin’.” He put his hands on his
hips and stuck out his ribs as he looked back and forth between
Felix and the woman, fishing, perhaps, for some further
instruction. There was none. “Best get back to HQ then,” he finally
said. He deflated his chest and got into the back seat of the van.
The van coughed to life and quickly sped toward the horizon,
leaving a dusty haze trailing behind it.

Felix looked around his surroundings. Other
than an old wooden fence that didn’t seem to serve any particular
purpose, he saw nothing ahead but a sea of brown dirt. His brow
furrowed.

“Are we waiting for another transport?” he
asked. The attractive woman smiled and pointed directly behind him.
Felix turned around and saw what seemed to be an old farm silo. It
was the only significant break in the horizon for miles. “Oh,” he
replied, “and there that is.”

“Let’s go inside,” the woman said, turning
him by the shoulder.

“She speaks!” Felix exclaimed in an
exaggerated tone. The pair began their stroll toward the
building.

“Yes,” she replied. “Quite frequently, if you
must know.”

“Well, you weren’t doing any of it in the car
during our trip, now were you?”

She didn’t respond.

“I spent hours deflecting off-color stories
and jokes about hillbillies, of all people, for hours,” Felix
whined. “I can only imagine how much more stimulating a trip it may
have been had you chosen to grace us with your voice. I’m sure
you’re filled with a novel’s worth of interesting things to say. At
the very least, maybe you could have given me a primer on what’s
exactly going on here. Do you realize that you just wasted half a
day’s time not explaining what I’m sure you’re about to begin to
explain?”

He paused for a moment and stopped walking.
“Unless, of course, the reason you didn’t speak for that entire
trip is because you weren’t in the car and were simply waiting for
us to arrive here. Oh dear, being around that man in the cowboy hat
seems to have lowered my I.Q. by osmosis.” Felix clenched his mouth
closed and resumed following the woman.

She snickered. “Yes, all signs do seem to
point toward that conclusion. Here we are.” She pulled a small key
ring from her pocket and opened the two-dollar padlock on the silo
door. It creaked open loudly. A sharp gleam quickly escaped from
the building, its brash light causing Felix to shield his eyes
again. The woman took his left hand and guided him inside.

The silo’s interior was rotting and dusty. It
looked precisely as one would expect it to, save the oversized and
obtrusive giant metal cylinder at its center. The woman walked
toward it and entered numbers into a touchpad on its face. The
cylinder split apart vertically, revealing a small area inside with
three red upholstered chairs surrounding a small lacquered
table.

“If you tell me that’s my office for the next
four years, I’m leaving,” Felix said, unsure if he was kidding.

The woman laughed. “You’ve never seen an
elevator before?” She put her hand softly against the small of his
back and guided him forward into the little room. Felix mumbled
something inaudible and followed her to the inside of the
cylinder.

“Have a seat,” the woman said.

Felix did as he was asked. “Thank goodness
you all thought far enough ahead to put chairs in your elevator.
After a sixteen hour car ride I don’t think I could actually stand
on my feet for thirty seconds,” he said sarcastically.

The woman laughed.

“You’re a giggle-box, you know that?”

“The elevator ride is going to be
substantially longer than thirty seconds. Faster than to what
you’re accustomed as well. Ipso Facto, chairs,” she said
smugly.

“Lady, you blindfolded me inside of a car
with a provincial, and made me sport a dirty necktie around my face
for more than half a day’s time. Then, you led me to a farm silo in
the middle of the desert with a huge futuristic elevator
inside.”

“Yes, I’m quite on top of current events, Mr.
Kala,” she responded.

“It’s
Doctor
, actually, and all I’m
trying to communicate is that you keep laughing at me for either
making perfectly reasonable assumptions or having perfectly
reasonable confusions.”

“And that’s the first thing I’ll teach you
about where you’re going,” she said. “Leave all of your assumptions
here. They’re of no use where we’re going.” She raised her eyebrows
at Felix and smiled. “Ready?”

“Yes?” he responded, more a question than an
answer.

“Good.” She ran her hand over the left wall
of the elevator. Multiple blue illuminated circles the size of
quarters appeared on the metal’s surface. The rows of lights were
identical in size and shape, but the woman knew exactly which to
press and in what order.

Felix heard a quiet mechanical buzzing and
the doors of the elevator moved toward each other. As they shut, he
leaned his head to its side to catch a final glimpse of the outside
world he was leaving behind. The light of the evening sun began to
shrink between the hulking doors, thinner and thinner against their
edges until completely locked from the elevator. Though most of his
life had been spent indoors, Felix began to miss the sun’s light,
just moments following its absence.

The tiny room began to descend, and he kept
his eyes fixed on the doors as the woman sat in the chair across
from him.

“Don’t worry about that,” she said. The
question broke his train of thought.

“Hmm?” he mumbled, shifting his attention
back to her.

“The sun,” she said. “Don’t worry about
it.”

“Oh, I’m not worried about the sun,” he
replied. “I’m fairly certain it can handle itself just fine without
me for at least a short while.”

“I meant, don’t worry about a lack of
exposure to the sun. The facility is equipped with special solar
bulbs which serve to process your Vitamin D even more efficiently
than that big star they’re designed after.”

“That puts my mind at ease about damn near
everything then.” Felix sighed and leaned his chair back on two
legs without lifting his feet from the floor.

The pair sat in silence for a few seconds
before the woman spoke again. “So, there are a few things we need
to go over before arriving at the lab.”

“Speaking of which, when is that going to
be?” he asked. “This thing feels as though it’s moving at about two
meters per second. Where are we going, the center of the
Earth?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she replied.

“Oh, sure, now I’m being ridiculous.”

“There are a few things--”

“Stop.”

“Yes?”

“What’s your name?”

“My name?”

“I’m sorry for assuming you have one,” he
said, “but at least where I hail from, you know, the surface of the
Earth, it’s considered polite to introduce one’s self before
engaging in any sort of meaningful conversation.”

“It’s Karen,” she said.

“Now that was easy,” he replied.

“As I was saying,” she continued, “there are
a few things I would like to go over with you before we
arrive.”

“I assure you that you have my rapt
attention,” he said, “unless, of course, the table has something to
say.” Felix poked the small table at the center of the room with
his index finger as if trying to wake it.

“You’re dead,” she said.

“Someone’s a bit sensitive,” he replied. “I’m
sorry about the table jab, I didn’t realize you legitimately
believed yourself in competition with your own furniture.”

“I meant,
Felix
,” she said, “that you
are legally dead. The police have already found your body in what
remains of your apartment, which burned down this morning.”

“And they think it was me in that apartment?”
he asked.

“Yes, they found your teeth, which match
perfectly with your dental record,” she answered. “Felix Kala was
pronounced legally dead as of 3:14 P.M. this afternoon.”

Felix started to respond, but instead,
quickly jammed his hand into his mouth to feel for any missing
teeth.

“They’re all still there,” Karen assured him.
“Just who exactly who do you think we are, anyway?”

“I don’t know who you people are,” he
answered, removing the hand from his mouth. “All I know is that you
are well-funded and tricky. Possibly amoral. I know you probably
don’t have much regard for the law, but if you used fake teeth,
aren’t you concerned that the police might notice something like
that?”

“Oh, they aren’t fake,” she said. Felix stuck
his hand back inside of his mouth and began counting aloud as he
felt each tooth.

“They’re real,” she said, “but not from your
mouth. We grew them.”

Felix pulled the hand from his mouth. “Ew,”
he said. “Let’s stop taking the conversation in this direction,
shall we? Let’s get back to the fact that you killed me today. I
want to know why this was done, and what makes you think you can
get away with it. I still have to worry about coming out after this
odd affair is said and done, and being dead will likely have an
adverse effect on any attempt to reintegrate with the populace,
wouldn’t you say?”

“Don’t worry,” Karen replied, “it’s just so
that no one needlessly searches for you. As you know, our work is
confidential. Any contact with--”

“Yes, yes,” Felix answered, “I suppose I
shouldn’t have asked the ‘why’ part. I’m mainly just curious about
what happens to me in four years. I don’t want to assume some other
identity. I do have a life, you know.”