John Gone (19 page)

One, two, three, four, five--

“There isn’t much to say about the hub,”
Karen explained as they moved, “as it fails to concern you or your
work. As a researcher, you’re not encouraged to spend time here,
though you’re not prohibited from doing so.”

Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen--

“We understand that there will be times when
you need to look at something other than the walls of your lab,
though you’ll soon find that the atmosphere and décor of the hub is
not substantially antithetic enough to invoke any sort of
significant difference to your mental health.”

Twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one,
thirty-two--

“If you ever feel truly claustrophobic, we
have an area of the facility designed specifically to aid you.”

Felix paused his count. “Oh?” he said. “Is
there a field or sandy beachfront hiding in one of these back
rooms?”

“More like a series of experimental
injections,” she answered.

Felix thought about that for a moment. “Is
there a suggestion box around here? I’d be much more in favor of my
idea.” He looked behind him and quickly caught up with his count.
They’d passed forty-seven doors during their walk, having not even
completed one forth of the total wall.

“We’ll be at your lab soon,” Karen said.

“Wait,” Felix replied, stopping in place. He
reached out for Karen’s shoulder and touched it.

She paused and looked back to him. He was
facing the wall when she looked. “Yes?”

“There’s no door here,” he said.

“Is that so astounding?”

“It just seems odd. The room is patterned
precisely except for this particular section of the wall. In fact
... ”

Felix stepped back and held his arms out
wide, guessing the distance. “In fact, it seems like the exact
amount of space that the other doors occupy.”

“Not everything is symmetrical in--”

“Wait, look over there,” Felix interrupted.
He ran ahead twenty-one doors before Karen could catch up, and
halted at another empty space in the wall.

“It’s the same size as the last,” he
observed. “Is that odd to you?”

“No,” Karen answered sternly. “I don’t know
about you, but my background is in the applied sciences, not
architecture and interior design. It’s just a wall, Felix. Can we
move on please?”

Felix walked toward the blank space on the
wall and lightly knocked on the metal with his fist. It chimed at
his touch as expected. “Sure,” he answered her. “I’m sorry. Please
continue.”

“Thank you,” she said brusquely. “I’m sure
you’ll find much of interest in your lab and dormitory. Follow me
and I’ll show you.”

Felix followed Karen quietly, forgetting
about the doors lining the wall of the hub. It wasn’t long before
they reached their destination.

“Take note of our position relative to the
room,” Karen told Felix. “As you’ve seen, the doors are not
numbered or marked. You’ll need to remember precisely where the
entrance to your lab is if you wish to venture out into the hub
during the day and find your way back.”

Felix looked out across the room to its
single elevator. It was located 134 degrees west of his position if
his back was directly against the center of the doorway.

“Done,” he said.

“Good.”

Karen approached the door. It shook as she
stepped closer and raised open, revealing its thickness and design
to Felix’s curious eyes. He quickly estimated the width of the
metal composing it.
That’s at least a meter
, he thought.

“Steel?” he asked.

“A titanium alloy,” she answered.

“Are you trying to keep people in or out of
here?” he asked as they walked through the opening.

“It’s just a security measure,” she answered
plainly.

“You don’t say,” he said, looking up at
corridor they’d entered.

Stretching out for more than half a mile in
front of them was a large cavernous hallway leading to another
metal door down the way. The sides and top of the path were
uncovered stone, a large cylindrical hole cut roughly through the
Earth. Except for a few construction lights and some odd looking
plastic-covered wiring, the pathway was a cave, plain and
simple.

“I know!” Felix said. “You people drilled all
the way underground, building this massively expensive complex as
you went, only to run out of budget to finish this hallway at the
last moment.”

Karen giggled. “All of the hallways look like
this. We feel that having a solid conductive surface running
through the entire facility is unsafe considering much of the work
going on in the labs.”

The large door at the entrance slammed closed
behind them. The noise startled Felix.

“Come on,” Karen said warmly.

He followed the woman down the path, circling
the tunnel’s stones with his eyes as they walked. The lights in the
hallway had brightened as the door closed, washing the area with an
eerie dull yellow glow and bringing with it a vacuum silence. He
felt the need to speak to abate it.

“And what exactly is going on in these other
labs that could cause your company to electrically isolate each lab
space?” he asked.

Karen remained silent. He knew he wasn’t
going to get much information from her.
That’s alright
, he
thought,
I’ve got years to find the answers. Four long, long
years
, he thought, shuddering at the words in his head.
Just
remember the pay out, Felix.

“Generically, I can understand your
reservations about full metal paneling when dealing with large
quantities of dangerous energy,” he said aloud, “but, honestly,
maybe some fashionable nonconductive wood paneling in here would do
some good? It’s downright creepy in here with all of this ... ” He
paused and looked above him. “ ... stone and rock. That’s one more
free for the suggestion box if you ever find it.”

“The whole facility is laid out like this,”
Karen told him. “You already saw the hub; we call these the spokes.
The whole place is like a bike wheel without the tire. Each door
leading out of the hub connects to a tunnel like this one, and a
lab behind that. You’re only cleared to enter this one, by the
way.”

Karen and Felix approached the door at the
end of the tunnel. It was identical to the one they’d just entered
except for a small porthole window at what would be eye-level for
an average man. Felix had to lean down significantly to look
through it. Before he could see what was awaiting them on the other
side, the door rushed open past his face.

“How do you keep opening these doors?” Felix
asked, turning toward Karen with interest.

“There’s a chip implanted in my skin.”

“Your skin? Did I hear that correctly?”

“Yes. It transmits my security clearance to
the doors I’m allowed to open. It’s much safer than a key or card,
which could be easily lost or stolen,” she explained.

“And if someone was to steal your skin, I
doubt your priorities would include the little garage door opener
that was inside of it. I am, however, curious as to what happens
when you or this company chooses to terminate your employment,” he
said. “Are these people comfortable with allowing you permanent
clearance? And please don’t tell me they’d extract it
surgically.”

“If there was a reason for my clearance to
raise or lower,” she said, “then they would update my chip
remotely.”

“But how is that possible?” Felix asked.

“Through a network of computers run by the
facility that have the ability to transmit and receive data packets
wirelessly,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Amazing,” Felix responded genuinely, lifting
her arm and looking at it closely. He saw nothing out of the
norm.

Karen playfully jerked her arm away from
Felix’s curious grasp. “Each lab is set up to interact with the
network. I’m sure learning it won’t be a great difficulty for you,”
she said.

“I hope not,” Felix replied. He took a moment
to consider the implications of networked data transferral.
Fascinating.

Felix raised his eyes to the space before him
and gazed into the room in which he was to live and work for the
next four years.

“Well?” Karen asked. “Is it what you
expected?”

“No, but that’s not to imply my dismay,” he
replied.

The room was well furnished, with a couch and
a large, blue, comfortable-looking chair in its far side. Three
tables surrounded by stools were at its back.

Amazingly intricate paintings of framed and
curtained windows lined the walls, each with a different scene
beyond the glass. One showed a lush tropical rainforest with a
friendly jaguar stretching across a tall branch. Another showed
what appeared to be a middle-class neighborhood in December.
Snowflakes were falling lightly to the grass and someone had built
a funny-looking man from them with a carrot for a nose.

Twelve of these complex window paintings
adorned the room, and Felix decided to leave examining them in
depth for later, during those times when he would inevitably feel
the sting of boring confinement.

“Interesting decorations,” Felix
remarked.

“Their purpose shouldn’t be difficult for you
to ascertain. We are underground, after all.”

“You’ve thought of everything, haven’t
you?”

“Not me,” she said, almost defensively.

Felix left Karen’s side and sat in the large
black chair near the couch. It faced back toward the entrance. He
noticed two small wooden doors along the same wall. He pointed
randomly at the left one and asked, “Bedroom?”

Karen shook her head no and pointed to the
right.

“Bathroom?” Kala asked.

“In the bedroom,” Karen answered.

“Then what’s over there?” he asked.

“Why don’t you try the scientific method
here?” she suggested. “You’ve already constructed your hypothesis;
why not test it with an experiment?”

Felix peered at her quizzically.

“In other words, get off your ass and go look
for yourself.”

Felix stood from the chair and walked toward
the left door. “Some host you are,” he mumbled.

Karen giggled and followed him.

Felix opened the plain-looking door in front
of him. “Impressive,” he said at its contents.

“I’m sure you’re going to hate it all before
long,” she said.

Thousands, if not tens of thousands, of
foil-wrapped pre-made food packages were shelved and racked before
him. The egg-shaped room bowed three meters deep with, as Felix had
counted, twenty-seven horizontal shelves. A tiny stepstool stood at
the base of the wall.

“This is enough sustenance for a lifetime,
maybe two,” Felix said. “I couldn’t consume this much food in four
years even if I was foolish enough to attempt it.” He read the
labels on some of the packages, trying to get a sense for the
variety, or lack thereof, awaiting his future meals.

“We don’t like making shipments from the
outside,” Karen explained. “As you can imagine, construction of
this facility was already difficult enough to carve out without
unwanted detection. Meals Ready to Eat are extremely lightweight
with an extraordinary shelf life. And so, unsurprisingly, the
company decided to bring them in all at once. You’ll find that, if
you stop and think about things long enough before asking
questions, there’s usually an extremely practical and logical
answer to be found. There’s a reason for everything the company
does here. Everything.”

Felix noticed a slight change in tone and
cadence as she finished the statement. For a fleeting moment, he
wondered if she was trying to tell him something.
Probably
not
, he decided quickly.

“You’ll find the water store below,” Karen
continued quickly. She gestured toward a wide metal door seated in
the center of the floor. There was a small, knotted yellow rope
attached to it. Felix pulled the rope toward him and looked down
beneath the hatch.

“Ah, my own swimming pool,” he commented.
“How thoughtful of you. And such a lovely location.”

The water beneath him pooled up to the brim
of the small reservoir. It sparkled a faint green glow.

“I wouldn’t recommend diving in there. That’d
likely contaminate your drinking supply,” Karen said.

“Drinking supply?” Felix replied. “Why is it
glowing?”

“We’ve bred a special sub-species
dinoflagellate which inhabits the water,” she explained. “This
colony is already into the hundreds of thousands. They keep the
water hyper-oxygenated, and interestingly, chilled.”

Felix touched the surface of the water with
the tip of his finger. It was cold to his touch. “And they’re safe
to drink?” he asked.

“Not only are they safe to drink,” she
explained smugly, “they’re actually highly beneficial to your
physical well-being. Imbibing them will provide your brain with a
heightened level of oxygen and a regulated temperature balance.
They also provide aid in digestion and maintenance of your
telomeres.”

“Maintenance of my telomeres? You surely
aren’t implying--”

“Yes,” she answered. “They slow their
shrinking.”

“Impossible,” Felix responded.

“You’ll physically age less quickly while
drinking from this culture,” she said.

He looked toward Karen and ran his eyes
quickly over her face and body. While beautiful, he now wondered if
a wrinkled crone was lurking just beneath the surface.

“How old are you?” he asked suspiciously.

“Seventy-six,” she answered.

Felix’s eyes bulged.

Karen laughed. “I’m only kidding. It isn’t as
drastic as all that. Think about it like this; you’re giving us
four years of your life. When you leave here, you won’t have
actually lost them from your aggregate lifespan. Maybe two point
five at most.”

“I’m not sure whether I should be impressed
or horrified,” Felix said, closing the hatch. He turned and left
the room. Karen followed him to the workroom.