After what seemed an eternity of silence Little Miss Blue Eyes started to giggle. “Ah, Dr. Spencer, while I do work for the government it’s not as any kind of agent. I’m an inspector for the Fish and Game Commission. My daddy sits on the Board of Regents at your university and asked me if I wouldn’t mind collecting you on my way back from a conference in San Juan—apparently your Department Head has been trying to track you down for two weeks. I guess they do want to talk to you, but I don’t have the slightest idea why. The plane is my daddy’s and he sometimes lets me use it for long trips—and for the record, it’s a Citation.
That was this morning and as I sat waiting in the Dean’s office I found my mind equally divided between: trying to remember what I’d been drinking that would still leave me with a pounding headache 24 hours later, trying to figure out why I’d been called to this meeting, and resigning myself to the fact that it would be professional suicide to call the phone number Little Miss Blue Eyes had slipped into my coverall pocket.
It was right about this time that the door opened and Dean Richards walked in along with two other people. “Dr. Spencer, it’s about time you showed up. Keep disappearing like that and people are going to think you’ve gone crazy like all the other lunatics out there.”
I had to admit there was a lot of truth to what the Dean was saying. The revelation that we were not alone in the universe, that our technology was inferior in just about every way, and all the now incumbent questions of our true origins had driven quite a few otherwise stable people over the top. Our society wasn’t quite in disarray, but thank God there were a fair amount of well-grounded people like myself to keep things going.
“Dr. Spencer, I want you to meet agent Mulley and agent Sculder. They’re here to brief you and I just want to say that the university is mighty proud to have you on faculty. Damn proud. It takes a lot of courage to volunteer for an assignment like this and I just want you to know that your position here at the university will be held open for you in perpetuity; you’ll always have a home to come back to. Now I have a pressing appointment so I’m going to leave you in the good hands of these two agents.”
As Dean Richards walked out the door, my mind was racing. What did I volunteer for? When did I volunteer? Why would they need to hold open my position indefinitely? Come back from where? What would Little Miss Blue Eyes look like in a bikini?
It wasn’t until the next night that the truth came out. Agents Mulley and Sculder (if that were their real names) had grilled me for hours and had been very helpful when it came to informing me of exactly where I’d need to be at what time and what day, of what I would need to bring, and of exactly who I could (or more realistically, couldn’t) talk to this about. Other than some vague reference to the remote possibility of permanent quarantine, nothing was said about the length of my absence or where I was going.
I have found that my best insights often occur in that twilight state between waking and dreaming. It was early that next morning when I was laying in just such a contented state that I had a brilliant flash of intuition; all of the pieces suddenly came together for me. I rolled over and said, “Say that again.”
Little Miss Blue Eyes responded, “They’re sending you off planet.”
A few hours later she kissed me on the cheek and patted me on the rump as she loaded me and my one allowed bag into the backseat of a limousine and I sped off to yet again another private airport. This time I’m sure it was a Gulfstream IIX and I would’ve confirmed it if I hadn’t slept the entire trip.
Upon landing, I disembarked and nearly lost my lunch so intense was the heat and brilliance of the sun. After a short bus ride we entered a warehouse and I was loaded into a large freight elevator and again nearly lost it when the floor literally fell out from underneath me. Deep in what was apparently an empty underground complex I was assigned a room, shown the ‘head’ at the end of a deserted hall and told about the adjoining commissary. With instructions not to venture out of this area I was blissfully ignored and somehow managed to find my bed all on my own.
I awoke and stumbled out of my room 12, 24, or 36 hours later (my watch was an antique analog). I had vague recollections of making my way to the bathroom at the end of the hall once (several times?) but this was the first time I’d felt coherent in recent memory—and the smell of bacon was driving me crazy.
The hallways were no longer empty and the commissary was especially busy. I grabbed a tray and plied two plates high with eggs, pancakes, bacon, and everything else I could find. It was only then, as I turned away from the buffet line, that I realized a lot of people were staring at me. Ok, so maybe I was the only person in the room without a shirt and come to think of it I didn’t see anyone else wearing boxers either (at least that I could tell). I am too enlightened and accepting of the universe to ever feel self-conscious but, I rationalized, my legs were still weak and I probably should quickly find a place to sit down—except there weren’t any empty tables. After several false starts I surprised myself with the amount of gratitude I felt when several people from across the room started waving me over.
“I told you it was him,” Julie said. We'd made quick introductions before I'd launched into my breakfast. Of the three people already at the table, two were women and one of them was gorgeous. I'm not normally wowed by beauty, but Julie was beautiful in a way I'd never seen before. It wasn’t just the small gold cross necklace that gave me an excuse to study her perfect cleavage; she had a wholesome, youthful look that could have graced the cover of any college recruiting brochure worldwide. She looked fresh, healthy, and happy—and was therefore irresistible. Unfortunately she was also giving me a hard time.
“Do you always come to breakfast in your underwear, or do you just have an aversion to khaki?” was the first thing she’d said to me after shaking my hand. Apparently, we had all been issued government clothing but I hadn't bothered to open my closet. Actually, I hadn't bothered to even think about it but I didn't believe this would be the most circumspect time to admit it. Instead I rightly pointed out that I'd been spending a lot of time in the islands lately and that this was perfectly acceptable dress there. From Julie’s incredulous look I realized she wasn't tracking so I did the most diplomatic thing I could think of - I dove into my breakfast.
It turns out that all of us at the table were assigned to the same field team (squad). That's how Julie knew who I was; she’d reviewed my file. Apparently we were all being divided up into teams of specialists and were expected to get to know each other and form a working relationship. For that reason, we'd all been given team member files downloaded onto our government issued smartpads (mine was in my room, with my bag, in that same closet that I'd never bothered to open). It occurred to me that it might be a good idea to go look at it. After all it contained our mission brief and (since I had no idea what I was doing here) it probably contained things I needed to know…
It was about at this point that my reality kind of started snapping back into place. I’d spent the last number of months in a mental fog (could it have really been three months since I’d left the University?), and for months prior to that I’d felt a hopeless sense of dread as I watched many of the normally sane people around me give in to The Crazies.
That’s what they were calling it: the tendency for otherwise normal people to just stop doing what they were doing and start doing something else. In an eighteen-month period as much as 17% of the working adults in North America, Europe, and much of Asia changed careers. My banker became my gardener and Uncle Jim decided he wanted to be an Alaskan tour guide—not that there’s anything wrong with that but he was a stock broker from Manhattan and had never been to Alaska. I wasn’t terribly surprised to hear he’d accidently shot off his foot some time later. Auto racing seemingly overnight became the largest sport in the country (with the majority of races utilizing street legal vehicles). Turn on ESPN4 and you’d have a good chance of catching Mini-Vans fighting for position or SUVs bouncing through a Moto-Cross track. It wasn’t that people weren’t working (they still had to eat), it’s just that they were working on less productive things in a less than organized manner. I seem to remember the President addressing the nation urging people to think through their career decisions carefully before making a change.