“That means you setting me up to get into trouble. You itching to write me up.”
“Okay, I’m going to write you up. Now get out of here.”
“Whatever.”
Lester Wallace left the room.
PART TWO
Troubleshooting
Monica walked into NEOTAP. She went into the office and said hi to Lawrence and Imad. She didn’t know Imad and Lawrence like Mike did. She didn’t have to interact with them on a power basis. She would say hi to everyone, have small talk about sports, computers, or random life things. Everyone knew that Monica loved Arby’s and would eat Arby’s at least three times a week. Sometimes people called her Arby’s Girl.
Monica had been to work for an hour and she had not seen Mike. She took a walk out to where the residents were but she didn’t see him. She asked Lawrence, “Where’s Mike?”
“I don’t know,” Lawrence said.
“Did he call in sick?”
“No.”
Monica considered herself a troubleshooter. Her life was about fixing problems. Her dad had taught her the joy of solving problems. When something broke, they fixed it together. When the car broke, they fixed it together. When the roof leaked, they fixed it together. When the water heater needed to be replaced, they took it out and replaced it together.
When Monica got her first computer, she fell in love. She was twelve and learned all about HTML code and Run and all the strange things only computer geeks care about.
She wanted to solve the problem of Mike’s whereabouts. She kept asking people. She went into Heidelberg’s office and asked, “Where’s Mike? He should be here by now.”
Heidelberg looked at her and said, “Shouldn’t you be updating files or something?”
Monica focused on machines so much because she actually didn’t like people and their rudeness and to Heidelberg she responded, “No, I should be looking for Mike.”
“Get out of my office,” Heidelberg said.
“You can’t even tell me if he called off?”
“You aren’t allowed to ask that question.”
Monica considered ripping Heidelberg’s face off but decided to leave the office.
She walked by the employee mailboxes. Mike’s name was gone. She checked the schedule and his name was gone. She returned to her office and looked up Mike in the NEOTAP database and his name was gone from there as well.
She texted Mike, she called him twenty times, she called his grandfather and then his parents, but still nothing. No one knew where Mike was.
Mike had disappeared.
She sat in her office thinking about Mike. She thought about how he listened to her when she talked. How he listened for hours one night to her talking about working on cars with her dad. How Mike allowed her to fix the headlight on his car. How Mike made her laugh when she was sad. She also thought about having sex with Mike. She had grown fond of him, had begun to fall in love with him. She didn’t know about babies or getting a house in the suburbs, but she wanted to be with him. He seemed like a good guy. College-educated, presentable, courteous.
She packed up and left. She knew it was only a matter of time before she disappeared too. It was over for her.
Monica stopped by Mike’s house, hoping maybe there was something in his NEOTAP handbook that would direct her to where he’d gone.
Mike’s grandpa was sitting at the kitchen table. He was drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. He looked up at her and said, “Monica, have you heard from Mike?”
“No, have you?”
“No.”
“I think he disappeared.”
“What does that even mean — disappear? How does one disappear?”
“I don’t know, but people do at NEOTAP, they just disappear.”
“The government is the alpha and omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Remember that.”
Monica nodded. “I am coming to find that out. It didn’t really bother me that people were disappearing when it was people I didn’t know, but now it’s personal.”
Monica went into Mike’s room. Mike’s NEOTAP handbook was on the floor. She read through it page by page, but it never mentioned anyone disappearing.
Monica considered people to call. She thought of Choffin. She called him on her cellphone.
“Hello?” Choffin said.
“Yes, this is Monica.”
“Oh hi Monica. What would you like?”
“Where is Mike? He wasn’t at work today.”
“Mike? Mike who?”
“Michael Scipio.”
“I don’t know any Michael Scipio.”
“But he’s worked for NEOTAP for months.”
“I don’t really talk to employees.”
“Okay, where is Sherwood Burke, Armando, and the others?”
“I don’t know them either. I can’t recall any of those names.”
“None?”
“None.”
“Okay, goodbye.”
Monica ended the call.
She lay down on Mike’s bed, put her head on his pillow. It smelled like him. She could smell him a little.
She looked through the pile of NEOTAP materials again. She noticed there was a book called Reality Conversion by Dr. Charles Nevitsky. Monica remembered that Nevitsky had written the program for NEOTAP. He was the mastermind behind NEOTAP. If anyone had any idea why people were disappearing, it would be Nevitsky.
Monica went online and Googled Dr. Charles Nevitsky. Over sixty thousand pages turned up on him. He was considered one of the great minds of the 20th Century. You couldn’t graduate with a psychology degree without having to write at least one paper on him. He was the first person to take the works of Skinner and European Existentialism and combine them into one psychology — cognitive behavioral therapy. She read that he was still alive, living less than two hours away. She became excited, but also filled with anxiety. She thought it was a stupid lead but she had to do something. She kept thinking that it all seemed stupid. Why would NEOTAP make one of its own employees disappear? Why would the world of humans create buildings where people get treated like shit and if they have an opinion about how shitty they are being treated, they make them disappear?
She went into the kitchen and found the old man sitting there. He looked sad. “Do you have a gun?” Monica asked.
“Yeah, why?”
“I think I might need it to get Michael back.”
“Do you know how to shoot a gun?”
“Yes, my dad taught me. He would take me out to the woods and we would shoot pop cans. I wasn’t a bad shot.”
“Listen to me. Don’t forget to have fun.”
Monica was surprised. “How can this be fun?”
“You won’t find him unless you are having fun. Remember that the assholes who took him, the assholes who run this world, are having loads of fun being big and powerful, being assholes. You won’t defeat them unless you love this, unless you are also having fun, unless you are having more fun than them.”
Monica stood there. She had never thought about hunting down a fellow human, and she never thought of it as being fun. Then she remembered Benny Baradat in the coffee shop talking about fun. She wondered why all these crazy white men were talking about fun in the face of all these shitty things.
The old man walked into the living room and she followed him. He pulled a handgun, a small black revolver, from a chest. He held the gun along with some bullets. “Take it,” he said.
Monica held out her small hand and he placed the gun there. Then he pulled out a shoulder holster and said, “Put it on.”
Monica took off her coat and put it on. She fixed the straps so it fit nicely. She practiced taking out the gun a couple of times. She smiled and felt powerful holding the gun. She wanted Mike back. She wanted to end NEOTAP and all its stupid shit. She even wanted crazy Sherwood Burke back and all the criminals from NEOTAP. She started to feel strong and confident with the gun so close to heart.