Ralph returned to his apartment in a daze. His very perception of reality had suffered a serious blow. Anything and everything seemed suspect now.
Was the bus driver who automatically stopped outside of his apartment tracking his past movements or had Ralph simply forgotten that he had pulled the exit-signal cord?
Were the children shooting marbles on the sidewalk or were they all tiny adults communicating in some esoteric- possibly satanic- ritual?
Was the little old lady who lived across the hall from him, with her faded floral house dress, her hair perpetually in curlers, her mirrored sunglasses, and quirky habit of announcing his arrival into her sleeve in her deep baritone voice, just a regular sweet old lady or perhaps someone worthy of suspicion?
These questions and other paranoid thoughts kept him up much past his usual bedtime. He only managed to get seven hours of sleep that night instead of his usual twelve. Needless to say, his nerves were still quite frayed when he arrived at 5117 Roanoke Avenue at 0900 the next morning.
He entered the pale robin's egg blue room when the light turned green as always, mostly through muscle memory.
"Mr. Beesal. Do you see anyone else in the room with you?"
He felt his arm pulling up to point reflexively as his mind wondered why the boss-general's voice sounded different when his focus finally synced up with his senses.
There was no one else in the room with him.
Private Miller, his ever-present coworker, was gone. Had he called in sick? Or was there someone else in the room? Perhaps someone was. Maybe not Private Miller, but someone else.
He counted the number of people in the room. Zero. He counted a second time, then a third. Three times zero was still zero.
Or was it one? He was in the room, wasn't he? Could he be with himself? Was he someone else now?
He felt different, didn't he? Didn't he count? He counted again.
Zero. One. Always zero, always one.
A room filled with zeroes and ones, a building, a universe in a binary code he couldn't perceive, let alone conceive of, and was of even less use to him to communicate. He felt the ground under his feet pitch wildly. He looked to the observation window. It had always been filled with generals, with scientists. Now it was a single bored looking scientist and one solitary general; the one who always stared at him.
A giant eye looking through a magnifying glass at an ant on a sunny day. Ralph felt himself squirming.
"No."
"You're sure, Mr. Beesal? No one? No one at all?"
"Yes."
"Yes, what, Mr. Beesal?"
"Yes, I'm sure.”
"No one else is in the room with you?"
Ralph thought back to the thesaurus he had rented from the library.
"Correct."
The giant eye in the magnifying glass said nothing for an indeterminate number of zeroes and ones.
"Thank you, Mr. Beesal. Please have a seat outside."
Ralph obediently stepped out of the room and sat in the hard plastic chair and counted to one, repeatedly. Eventually the light turned green again and Ralph re-entered.
For the first time, the room was different. The tall potted plant was gone and there was a single wooden chair in the center of the room facing him.
The table to his right was still there, but now there was a pistol resting on its surface. Ralph looked at with distaste until the crackling voice of the magnifying glass spoke again.
"Mr. Beesal. Do you see anyone else in the room with you?"
"No," said Ralph.
"You're certain?"
"Yes," said Ralph.
"Pick up the weapon, Mr. Beesal."
He did, its weight now familiar to him.
"Aim at the chair, slightly above, Mr. Beesal."
He did.
The bored scientist was now attentively watching Ralph.
"Mr. Beesal. Do you see anyone else in the room with you?"
"No," said Ralph.
"Are you certain, Mr. Beesal?"
"No," said Ralph, not at all sure that he had said anything out loud.
"Then fire your weapon, Private Bee-"
And before the magnifying glass had finished saying the final syllable of Ralph's last name, Ralph pulled the trigger.
How could he not? He was a military man, after all. A professional.
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