At the appointed time, Ralph Beesal arrived at the appointed place, wearing his professional clothes. He carried a thrifted, yet still quite professional briefcase. The briefcase contained a very tidy peanut butter and jelly sandwich, made with a logical amount of peanut butter, a responsible portion of jelly, and a single, reasonable little kiss to confirm that it was made with love, just like his mother used to make.
His attire made him feel confident as he made his way from the closest bus stop to his new place of purported employment. It also made him stand out in the nearly abandoned industrial neighborhood. He attributed the lonely location to the minimalist precedent set by the ad and the phone call. It hadn't occurred to him that there could be nefarious reasons for the isolated facility, but in his professional attire, he could easily overcome any obstacle set in his path.
He entered the building through the only door that was visible on the side labeled 5117. Inside the door was a hallway that stretched deep into the heart of the building. There was no lobby, no directory, and no people. Even more strange, no doors stemming off to either side of the long hallway. As his professional, hard soled shoes echoed down the hall, he watched the liberally placed security cameras watch him in return as he passed, little motors buzzing as they turned to track his lonely march from the entrance.
At the end of the hallway was an elevator. There was a single summoning button and on the inside, there were no buttons at all, just a round camera where a panel of buttons would have been. The camera beheld him with its Cyclopean lens. The doors closed and the elevator shuddered subtly as it began to move. This unnerved Ralph, as he could not tell if he was going up or going down. This unsettling sensation was compounded due to the elevator occasionally stopping completely, though the doors never opened. After a few moments of mechanical clicking and clacking the elevator would resume its indeterminate movement. The Cyclopean eye never wavered.
The entire experience of the erratic elevator lasted only a minute but had managed to rattle Ralph's resolve. The door dinged and he stepped out of the elevator, his hands clinging to his professional briefcase and his toes gripping the inside of his professional shoes like a ship tossed sailor clinging to a buoy at sea.
The hallway he entered was much shorter than the one down/upstairs. It opened up into a small waiting area. There were chairs lining the walls to his left and to his right. The far wall opposite himself had a single service window, resembling one that a person might find at a bank, behind which sat a woman of resolute appearance that foretold of an equally resolute character. To Ralph she seemed as steadfast as a cliff face against the sea. There was nowhere else he could possibly go, so Ralph rode the current which deposited him in front of the bank teller-styled window.
"Um, hello. My name is Ral-"
"Name, please," said the woman without looking up from her ledger.
"Ralph Beesal."
The woman wrote his name in her ledger, her penmanship as resolute as her demeanor, the ink drying to a level of assuredness equal to that of chisel-carved stone. At the end of all things, all that will remain will be irradiated cockroaches and this ledger.
"How many fingers am I holding up?" asked the woman. Ralph looked up from being mesmerized by the ledger to see that the woman was staring resolutely at him and holding up three fingers, each finger a sentinel against all creation.
"Three?"
A check-mark appeared in the ledger next to his name, forevermore.
"And how many fingers do you see now?" she asked, both of her hands remained firmly on her desk, closed into fists.
"Um....”
Her eyes were fixed expectantly on Ralph.
"None?"
A second check-mark now accompanied the first. Ralph exhaled the breath he didn't know he was holding.
Next the woman dragged a heavy box, roughly the size of a lunch pail, to the center of the desk. Facing Ralph was a quarter-sized hole and at the base was a tray.
“Insert your finger into the designated slot," directed the woman. Unsure of himself but not wanting to risk an 'x' etched next to his name for all of time, Ralph inserted his pointer finger into the machine. The woman pressed a button on her side of the box and a soft, electrical whine spun from the machine, increasing in pitch and intensity. Ralph winced as the frequency rose to white noise, blocking out any other stimulus, until he felt a needle stab his trapped finger. He jerked his hand back, popping the assaulted digit into his mouth. It tasted of copper and watch batteries. The machine whined like a bee whose finger had been stabbed.
A thin, rectangular piece of plastic softly clattered to the tray at the base of the box. The woman handed it to Ralph. It appeared to be a generic plastic card, slate grey, with a magnetic strip along the back, like the bank cards Ralph had seen. This one had his name written across the lower corner of the front. There were no numbers printed on the card, though there was a red circle, about the size of an eraser head, next to his name.
"Do not lose this card," decreed the woman. "Present this card to the bank manager to withdraw your payment for services rendered."
"Ah, which bank?" asked Ralph as he carefully secured the bank card in his bill fold, the first denizen it had seen in a long while. He briefly worried about opening a bank account, but the woman continued.
"Any of them."
This surprised Ralph. Only by gripping the inside of his shoes with his toes was he able to maintain his professional demeanor in the face of such new and strange occurrences.
"Ah, what services were rendered?" he asked, carefully recalling the vocabulary the woman had used.
"Please enter the door to your right, Mr. Beesal," said the woman, declining to answer his question. She then pressed a button on her desk and a loud snap, followed by a droning buzz sounded. She continued looking at Ralph and holding down the button until he made his way over and entered through the door.
For the third time that morning, Ralph found himself in a hallway. As far as hallways go (from door to door typically), this was the shortest one of the morning and possibly his favorite of the three. Much like the others, this hallway had only the one door he had entered through and a single exit on the opposite end. This hallway featured a single chair against one wall and a single, circular light above the far door glowing bright red. Utilizing his lifetime of experience with red lights, he sat in the chair and waited.
Though there was no ostentatious display of video cameras, Ralph could not shake the feeling that he was being watched, so he maintained his professional facade. He set his professional briefcase next to his seat, perfectly parallel. He sat with his back straight and feet equidistant to each other, his hands his lap. It occurred to him he might look too rigid. He experimented crossing his legs. First with one ankle resting on the opposite knee, then the other.
Deciding he didn't like how much of his socks were visible, he tried crossing one leg completely over the other. As he was trying to make a decision as to whether left-leg-over-right conveyed his ability to rise to challenges more than right-leg-over-left conveyed his strong work ethic, he remembered his very tidy peanut and jelly sandwich. Worried that it may not retain its integrity in a vertical position, he placed his professional briefcase flat over his lap, which also resolved his quandary on leg position. The light over the door turned green.
Taking into account his lifetime of experience with lights, Ralph, carrying his professional briefcase (and realizing that his sandwich might have been compromised by being held vertically much of the day already), entered through the door.
On the other side of the door, Ralph saw a medium-sized room. It was illuminated by overhead fluorescent lights, the same he had seen used throughout the building. The walls, ceiling, and floor were all painted the same color, a pale robin's egg blue, which was different from the sterile egg white everywhere else in the facility.
The room did share the spartan-minimalist theme that seemed the order de jour; there was a rectangular table, the same painted robin's egg blue, pushed up lengthwise against the wall to his right and a slightly taller than person-sized plant in the far left corner of the room, the only permanent fixture of the room that wasn't painted robin's-egg blue.
There was also a person-sized person in the room. He was dressed in army-green camouflaged fatigues and standing stock still at attention directly across from Ralph, which was not what he was expecting to see. It was, however, the first sign that Ralph was now working for the military, and it was quickly followed by the second, though neither would occur to him as of yet.
The wall to his left was dominated by a large glass window that went from just over waist height to nearly the ceiling and stretched nearly the length of the room. Behind this observation window was another room. This room was not nearly as illuminated as the room Ralph was in, but he could clearly see that it was packed with people. Front and center were several older men who, based on his lifetime of experience with films and television, were dressed as high- ranking officers, with stiff and severe expressions and stiff and severe haircuts. Squeezing around the much bigger military men of varying rank and severity, were many scientists, at least according to Ralph's understanding of people in white lab coats. They were either scientists or dentists, but using context clues, he was fairly certain they were the former.
The glass window must have been soundproofed because Ralph could see several months moving along with severe arm gestures. Among the varying conversations, he noticed that only one of the officers was staring unwaveringly at him. He had no idea of military rank but in his head the man seemed like a junior general or maybe one of the general's personal assistants? Ralph squeezed the handle of his briefcase, quite nervous and thoroughly confused.
Ralph looked pleadingly to the only other human in the room, the soldier standing at attention as if his job depended on it.
"Uh, hi there," he said to the soldier, trying to establish some sort of communication. Maybe the soldier could fill him in on what was going on. At his greeting, the soldier remained silent, though his eyes did dart ever-so-briefly to his superiors. Ralph continued.
"My name is Ral-"
Through a loudspeaker came a sudden authoritative voice and Ralph nearly dropped his briefcase in surprise.
"Mr. Beesley." He looked over at the window. The oldest and tallest of the generals was holding in his hand an older-style desktop paging microphone, pausing to lean over so a much shorter scientist could whisper in his ear. The general frowned then stood back up to his full height. With an air of frustration, he brought the paging microphone in one hand up and activated the button at the base with his other hand. The loudspeaker crackled to life.
"Mr. Beesal. We need to take some baseline readings. Do you see anyone else in the room with you?"
The general let go of the microphone button and the ambient crackling of the loudspeaker died. In the silence that followed, Ralph's thoughts abandoned him. Surely this was another test. Why did they need him to point out the plainly obvious soldier in the room? What could they possibly be trying to find out? Was this a trick of some kind? If this was a test and he failed, would he be fired? Those men were clearly military and more than likely high up at that, would they put him in jail if he didn't get the right answer? Or worse, would he receive an ‘x’ in the ledger that would last well past the heat death of the universe?
All of these questions were bouncing around his head like a dropped basket of ping-pong balls. Almost without him realizing it himself, with furrowed brow, he felt his arm raise at the elbow and silently pointed at the soldier clearly in front of him.
"Verbal confirmation, please, Mr. Beesal."
"Yes," responded Ralph, just barely keeping a rising terminal from his voice.
"Thank you, Mr. Beesal. Please take a seat on the other side of the door."
At this the generals and the scientists immediately lost interest in Ralph. All except a single junior general who was observing Ralph like a pinned butterfly. With a quick nod to the soldier in the room with him, who made no sign of acknowledging him at all, he exited the room.
Closing the door behind him and taking the seat beside it, the light changed from green back to red. He patiently waited in the chair, briefcase across his lap. He wondered about what had just occurred. He knew the military ran experiments. He had never given any thought to what those experiments might look like, however. He had a flash of worry that they would experiment on him. This worry was soon forgotten, replaced by daydreaming about purchasing a professional watch to go with his professional outfit. Perhaps one of those classy watches on a chain. He waited a long time before the light turned green once more.
The second time he entered the room, the only aspect of the room that had changed was that the soldier in his fatigues was no longer standing opposite Ralph at the center of the room and staring at him. This time he was standing at attention behind the tall plant in the far-left corner of the room. The spherical foliage at the top of the narrow trunk obscured his face, but Ralph assumed the soldier was still staring at him. Ralph noticed all of this within two seconds of entering the room. The loudspeaker crackled to life followed by the lead general's stern, strident tone as the eyes of those in the separated room bore into him.
"Mr. Beesal. Do you see anyone else in the room with you?"
The eyes of the military men never wavered from Ralph, the scientists' attention honed to a razor's edge, pencils poised over their clipboards. All of the intense attention unnerved him for a second time. This must be some trick being played on him. But he had a hard time believing that some of those faces behind the glass had ever played anything in their lives. Or smiled.
They had to know how ridiculous the situation would seem to him, right? To anyone, for that matter? Maybe they thought that if they scowled hard enough, the ridiculousness could be frowned into submission.
“Mr. Beesal,” said the voice like a thunderclap.
“Yes? I mean, yes. Behind the, uh, tree.”
There was a flurry of furious scribbling on clipboards.
“Thank you. Please have a seat outside.”
Seated once again in the hall outside of the room and under the red light’s glow, Ralph felt like the floor beneath his feet could drop at any moment. Thinking he might be having trouble understanding what was going on because his blood-sugar was low, he ate his slightly accordioned peanut butter and jelly sandwich. He wasn’t exactly clear what his blood-sugar was supposed to feel like, but the sandwich tasted fine regardless.
The sandwich, the hard plastic molded chair in the hall, the fear-of-a-loving-God scolding voice, and simply the general feeling of uncertainty brought on a severe sense memory of being in grade school. Ralph swallowed that particular sensation, as well as the sticky peanut butter, as definitively as he could. The sandwich was helpful; the feeling of helplessness was not. He was a professional now. He had almost convinced himself of this when the light turned green for a third time. Brushing away any breadcrumbs that remained, Ralph entered the room once more.
Anticipating what would be asked of him, he quickly scanned the room as he walked into the robins’-egg-blue room. This time the soldier was to his right, seated under the table. Only his tucked in legs and his arms wrapped around his knees were visible from where Ralph stood. Even as obscured as the soldier was, it only took Ralph about a second-and-a-half to spot him. The loudspeaker crackled.
"Mr. Beesal. Do you see anyone else in the room with you?"
It was through repetition alone that Ralph actually felt confident in answering. He was still terrified of the incredibly stern men in military uniforms, but he reminded himself they were on the other side of the glass and couldn’t hit him for a wrong answer, at least not immediately. He began to respond but found that his words caught on the residual peanut butter still in his throat. He felt embarrassed by this. Clearing his throat, he was successful on his second attempt at answering.
"Ahem, yes."
There was a clattering sound as the paging microphone was frantically wrenched from the hands of the lead general by a scientist with wildly unkempt hair and bent glasses that threatened to fall forward off his nose. He forcefully pushed them further up his face and activated the speaker, the lead general staring military-grade daggers down at the much smaller and frailer scientist.
"You hesitated. You-you-you hesitated. Did you not see the man at first?" The scientist sounded desperate.
"I, uh, had to clear my throat. Peanut butter. I had a peanut butter sandwich. And jelly. Sandwich."
The ambient crackling cut off as the lead general person grabbed the paging microphone back. He motioned severely to some unseen soldiers who came into view and dragged the desperate scientist away. The glass partition must be soundproof. Based on the level of gesticulating, the scientist was not being calm as he was escorted out, a bit more forcibly than necessary Ralph thought as he guiltily watched through the glass. The lead general turned his attention back to Ralph.
"Thank you for your service, Mr. Beesal. Return to the premises at 0900 hours tomorrow."
"Oh, uh, you're welcome. I hope I was of some ... help," said Ralph, but the fancy military men and the note-taking scientists were already filing out of the door on their side of the glass partition. If they heard him, they gave no indication. Ralph looked down at where the soldier had been hiding tucked under the table.
He was mildly surprised to see the soldier was leaning forward, making immediate eye contact while remaining tucked under the table. "See you tomorrow," Ralph said to him, feeling a little silly. The soldier said nothing and maintained the expectant eye contact. Ralph got the impression that he was waiting for him to leave before getting out from under the table. Ralph gave a pressed lip nod and exited.
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