“That’s today.” He looked at his watch, 9:32. Picking up the envelope again he took another look at the seal before getting out of his chair and heading toward the study. The long hallway that led to the back of the house was devoid of pictures and the empty, taupe walls made the distance seem far longer than it was. He turned right, into a doorway, and arrived in the middle of a modest library with a comfortable chair and end table on one side and a computer desk on the other. He moved to the computer and set the envelope down on the desk next to the only pictures in the house, his young parents with their epitaphs. Rousing the computer from its sleep he typed in the search bar, sun with an arrow. The results came back: a song, a book, tattoos. He searched for a while, changing the search terms around but couldn’t come up with anything that matched the seal on the envelope.
He leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling. He liked a good mystery, but not when it pertained to his own life. He had a tendency to avoid people for the same reasons. Humans are a mystery on their own and could be unstable or difficult to read, especially in a social context. He took so readily to anthropology because the people he was studying were long dead, no interaction required. As a result he’d gained a reputation in his field as being hard to work with, often declining offers to teach or go on expeditions; even so, he was still a brilliant researcher with a number of published papers.
The rest of the day he didn’t give the letter much thought aside from the occasional glance at his watch. As it stood, his only interest was seeing if the car really would pull up at precisely 5:43 and wait for precisely three minutes. As the day progressed, it had begun to rain heavily, but the sound of the downpour was lessened in his study where there were no windows, less distraction that way. He finished another paragraph for his latest paper and looked at his watch again, 5:41. He thought for a moment before rising from his chair and heading for the door. He leaned against the wall in the entryway, watching the street through a rain covered window. 5:42. One minute left, he thought, glancing up at the sky, he didn’t want to go out into this rain anyway. Just then he spotted an unassuming town car coming down his street. Well I’ll be. He held up his watch in front of him and the car pulled over next to the sidewalk just as the minute ticked over. A moment later, the rain broke and streams of sunlight began to appear between the clouds. That has to be a coincidence.
The doctor looked over the car. It was a simple design, basic black, the kind of car you’d never notice unless you were looking for it. The windows were tinted more than usual but through the windshield he could see the silhouette of the driver. By the build he guessed it was a man wearing a chauffeur’s cap, the bill pointed directly forward. He’s not even looking up here to see if I’m coming. In fact, the driver didn’t seem to be moving at all. A minute passed and the rain had properly ended, the clouds slowly surrendering their hold on the sky to the late afternoon sunshine. I want to talk to that driver, he thought, his curiosity eating at him. Bradigan left his townhouse, locking the door behind him, and went down to the car.
“Hey, I’ve got some questions for you,” he said, pecking on the driver’s window with his knuckles.
The driver still didn’t move but the back door of the car opened. Bradigan glanced at the driver again before craning his head and ineffectually trying to peer into the car; he moved around the open door to get a better view. The interior of the car was just as uninteresting as the outside.
“Please, Doctor Bradigan, come in.” A young woman’s voice spoke.
“Who are you?” he asked.
The answer came back, “Doctor, you have 37 seconds.”
Getting more than a little exasperated at all the mystery he began to climb into the car. “I want to know what this is all about!” he demanded. As he sat down the door closed behind him, he reached for the handle in surprise but didn’t find one. “Let me out of here!” he shouted, banging on the door.
“Please relax, Doctor,” the voice said again.
He turned to address the source of the voice but there was no one with him in the back of the car. “Open this door and I’ll relax!”
“I can’t do that just yet, Doctor.” The car began to move. “You read the letter, did you not?”
“I did but . . . ”
“If you didn’t want to be a part of this you should have simply stayed in your house.”
“How could I possibly make any decision without information?”
The car turned left.
“I’m afraid information about this project isn’t something we can give out easily.”
“Why, is it something illegal? Black market antiques or something?”
The woman laughed. “Rest assured, Doctor, it’s nothing illegal. Though, I guess it’s not explicitly legal either.”
The car turned right.
“Why all the secrecy then?” he asked.
“I’m sorry, Doctor, but I’ve humored you too much as it is. I’ll tell you more when you arrive at our secure location.”
Bradigan tried to goad the voice into speaking with him again to no avail, so he resigned himself to sitting in silence and waiting. He felt the car making more turns and stopping at intersections; somehow the windows were darker from the inside so he couldn’t see where he was being taken. After maybe forty minutes he felt the car take a sharp right and come to a stop, no doubt they had pulled into somewhere. Next he heard the sounds of machinery and felt the car descending. They had parked on an elevator and he was being taken underground.
Writer by Grace 