By Eli DiPaolo
Grant Smith knew he was smart. He had spent his entire life studying animals: their motivations and ways of living, the differences in their behavior, and how that corresponds to their environment. His studies went even beyond that. He studied animals at their molecular level, and understood almost everything there was to know about the way that animals had developed since the beginning of time. He was sure of his knowledge in the way that a mother is sure a child is hers. This was how he had easily secured his position of biology professor at Rolling Hills University in Michigan. So, in a way, he was not surprised when government officials showed up in his office asking him to study a number of newly discovered species. The part they left out was that he would have to be the one to discover them.
That day, he had been giving a lecture on the behaviors of wolves within the Arctic Circle when three men and a woman dressed in dark suits entered the room.
“Can we speak to you in your office?” one of the men asked. His voice was harsh, and it sounded as if he were covering had an accent of some kind, but was trying to cover it up.
“Just a moment please, I’m in the middle of a lecture,” Grant responded, a prickle of annoyance rising on the back of his neck.
“Of course sir, we’ll be just outside,” one of the other men answered. This one had a distinctive scar on his cheek, and it looked as though perhaps part of his earlobe was missing. When he smiled at Grant, the professor felt his vocal cords tighten and felt a primal urge to run and hide. Instead, he coughed and turned to his class, who by now had completely lost interest in the hunting tactics of the arctic wolf. In the front row of his class, a boy had turned nearly all the way around in his seat to look at the four darkly clad agents currently exiting the lecture hall. Grant gave the rest of his lecture, but he too had also lost interest in the subject, only thinking about the meeting following his class.
He finished the lecture and ushered his students out, ignoring their ridiculous questions, and opened his door to the agents. They filed into the room. The last one to enter, the one with the accent, shut the door behind him.
After that, Grant’s memory faded into a blur with only trace memories left: a woman pulling a folder out of her briefcase she had been carrying; someone telling him that the government was asking for his help; being driven to the airport by a man who never spoke; and finally, landing in D.C. and being greeted by a man in a t-shirt bearing the legend ‘Devils for the win!’ Grant, an avid hockey fan, knew that the Devils were not, in fact, for the win. Finally, he was driven to a hotel and shown his room, where he lay in his overly fancy bed and fell asleep immediately.
The next morning, Grant woke up and forgot where he was for a moment before the previous day’s events started rushing towards him. He sat up with a start and walked through his massive hotel room, taking in the wonderful enormity of it all. He opened a door into what appeared to be a large common room furnished completely in whites and deep blues. On one wall, a massive window spanned the distance from floor to ceiling and gave a disarming view of the nation’s capital. He stared at it for only a moment before turning his attention to the rest of the wonderfully constructed room. In its center, a slab of quartz on bronze legs sat still, piled high with of all kinds of fruits of all kinds and, pastries Grant had never seen before, as well as and a small mountain of breakfast meats. Around the table sat six chairs, all covered in deep blue upholstery. Only one of these chairs was occupied. When Grant saw who occupied it, he became intimately aware of the fact that he had not changed his clothes or, come to think of it, showered since the previous day.
Seated in one of the chairs was the world renowned author Janet Nai, who was known for her journalistic work with The Gold City Times, a San Francisco newspaper widely read across America. She was most well known for a book she wrote about the nature of Native American reservations; she had spent a year living with an indigenous tribe and recording everything she had encountered. Grant had read the book himself and understood why it was so successful.
“Are you just going to stare?” she asked, popping a cube of pineapple into her mouth.
“I’m sorry,” Grant said nervously, and to him, his words sounded as graceful as a three year old’s crayon scribbling.
“So, who are you?” She popped more pineapple into her mouth.
“I’m Dr. Grant Smith. I teach biology at Rolling Hills University, but I also study zoology.” The words were starting to sound less clumsy, and he was becoming more sure of himself.
“I don’t want to assume you know who I am, but I am going to.” She pops more pineapple into her mouth. “You can call me Janet.”
“Okay Janet, you can call me Grant.” For a moment, a silence hung between the two of them, and Grant fell into the absolute beauty of Janet’s dark brown eyes. Janet broke the silence.
“I don’t even like pineapple that much, I don’t know why I’m eating it.”
On the other side of the room, a door clicked open, and a tall man with flaming red hair walked in, wrapped in a towel. Immediately, his face turned a dark red and he stammered, “I-I thought I was the only one here.” He dashed out of the common room, slamming his door behind him.
“I’m assuming you don’t know who that was,” Janice stated.
“Your assumption would be correct,” Grant responded, and he took a piece of sliced melon from the table and ate it.
Within the next fifteen minutes, two other people walked into the room. The first person to join them wore a flannel, blue jeans, boots, and the biggest belt buckle Grant had ever seen. He was impressively muscular, from working on the farm, he would tell Grant later. The man could not sit still for even a second; he paced around the room, occasionally sitting down but immediately jumping back up to his feet. As he did this, he explained that his name was Beau Gardner. He had been born and raised in the great state of Alabama, and although he didn’t have advanced schooling (or schoolin’ if you asked him), he was still very skilled in field medicine, having been in the army for a while. He stopped speaking when another person joined them.
The other person to come was an impressive woman with a dark complexion who talked as if she already knew everything that the others in the room were going to say. She sat down at the large white table, on the same side as Janice, and made a plate piled high with fruit and pastries.
“I am Nora Jackson. Can you remember why we are here?” The question was directed to the room as a whole, but Beau did not hear it,and Janice was too busy eating pineapple to respond.
“I can’t quite remember why we are here either. At least, nothing clear,” Grant responded, and Janice nodded in agreement. Beau seemed to find this conversation interesting and came to sit at the long white table, no longer pacing.
“I can’t recall either,” Beau contributed, and then ate a bit of bacon. He put it back on his plate after one bite. At that moment, the fifth and final person who was to dine with this group entered the room. It was the tall, red haired man that Janice and Grant had seen earlier, only now he was wearing a perfectly tailored suit. He walked into the room and made his way directly to the table, completely unfazed by the grandeur of the room. He picked up a plate and went about filling it with assorted foods. When he appeared satisfied by the portion, he took a seat at the head of the table. He did not introduce himself, just dug into his breakfast.
The other four at the table watched him until Janice said, “And who might you be?”
The man looked up, his mouth filled with food, and began to turn red once more. He chewed the food in his mouth, swallowed, and then dabbed at his lips with a cloth napkin.
“My apologies,” he said, the red in his face intensifying as he made eye contact with each of the others. “I am Preston O’Conner. Mainly, I work with my father’s company surveying land across the United States. Do you happen to know where we are?” After this question, Grant realized he only knew the city they were in, and the looks on the others’ faces told him all he needed to know.
They had all completely forgotten why they were here, and where here even was.
To Be Continued. . .