Author's Suggestion: Daft Punk - Tron Soundtrack - "Recognizer"

Chapter 14 – "Beam Me Up Scotty"

"Can you put me back on with the big guy, hon," Wanda says.

I give him the phone.

I am not a telepath but I think Wanda's little band of merry men has just hired me to track down and kill the SOB.

Then Mr. Serious, I just decided that that is what I am calling him, does the oddest thing. He smiles and winks at me, which is pretty startling by itself, but he slides out from my legs as if they were wide open. (I did not mean it like that. Get your head out of the gutter).

He removes the chair from the door and opens it. Service member come in with two boxes. One box has my personal effects and the other box has new clothes to change into.

The contents of my apartment, another matter, are in storage at no expense to me. And when I find a new residence they will be transferred there if I desire, at no expense to me. At the end of the day there wasn't anything in there with any value.

He asks me in this thick Nigerian accent, if I want to change clothes or shower.

I say no.

This is my uniform, and I wear my vomit, feces, and mucus with pride. I want to stay in this uniform forever. I cannot dismiss the last few months with such cavalier. Take me to Wanda looking like this. I want to walk on the Avengers marble floors, imported from some crazy dimension, with my bare bloody feet. I want all those multi-colored uniformed f #$ to see.

His assistants grab the boxes and follow us to the release room. I scratch an "X" by all the lines. No one from the FBI or from anywhere comes down to apologize or present me with flowers and chocolates. Not that I would expect that.

The boxes are put in the back of the limo. And we drive off.

On the highway. I do not ask where we are going. I assume Wanda has her offices on K Street. Someone in her position must.

I am in his car. The car they gave him. He sits in the back with me. And even though no one says it I feel like there is more security built into this car than in the prison I just exited.

Why are we driving around the mall Smithsonian? I see all the memorials. This town feels like a tomb in remembrances of gods long gone. A Egyptian obelisk to signify the patron saint George Washington. It's overcast, and it feels like any second buckets will fall from the sky, but the radio announcer promises the contrary. We drive further out. And I will not give him the satisfaction of asking like some dumb blonde in a Hollywood movie "Uh, like, where are we, like, headed?" We seem to be hitting all the red lights. I am getting motion sickness and I cannot remember the last time I ate. My stomach acids are tearing up my esophagus from the excessive vomiting. But I suck it up. And swallow hard. It makes me stronger. I feel more alert. If need be I could recall every turn we just made.

An hour later we are parked next to a small non-discript home on the outskirts of Rockville, Maryland.

Mr. Serious opens a conversation with the neighbor as we get out. To my surprise none of it involves me.

"Those Rhododendron look lovely today Ms. Flores."

"Thank you Ken. Good to see you."

"You too. How is Henry with his health?"

"He has seen better days. You take care."

"You do likewise."

Mr. Serious sticks his thumb on a black scanner. The front door opens.

I feel something on the side of my mouth; saliva has been building up on the side of it.

Home looks like it was furnished in the 60's. Quaint. Rustic. Wood paneling. Weaves of potted plants. Flowers. Photos of family.

Mr. Serious grabs some food from the refrigerator.

"You want anything?"

Gives me a water.

"Very chummy with the neighbor."

"Ms. Flores is one of ours. She is the gatekeeper so to speak."

I look out the window.

"If I did not answer any of the replies correctly she has order to kill on site."

"If she was real white woman why didn't she ask me about you?

About this crack addict I am bringing into her suburbs."

"Maybe she is culturally aware enough not – to -"

He stares me down with one eye raised. And a smile waiting for me if I manage to pull of the end my sentence.

"I remember you a lot differently," I say.

I look out the window and Ms. Flores is away tending to her garden.

"So is this some safe house? Are you transferring me to some other facility?"

"You might say that."

He opens the thermostat – places his hand on a palm reader.

"Take me to the hen house," to me he says, "you might want to buckle up."

"Buckle who to what?"

But I do not even get to finish my sentence when some thin filament slides down to cover the windows. The room goes black.

Ms. Flores slowly disappears from my view, I see her legs and hands and to her shovel she says, "the condor is departing."

Blackness.

Mr. Serious finds a belt buckle in the sofa and snaps in. I find myself doing the same.

The living room - submerges – diagonally,

I see in the walls fall beneath me.

The lamps, table, carpeting comes with us along with the rest of the floor including the kitchen.

Like a submarine falling into the sea.

Going down. Down. It feels like forever. No windows just the sound of levers and pulleys. Doing their work. Whirling and ziging by, with precision clockmaker precision, before a locking sound snaps the floor into place. Wherever we were suppose to be, now we are there. Then a lock into tracks that go on into infinity. A protective glass dome appears above us.

Zooming at an inhuman speed. Neon lights from the roof of this tunnel cut into the living room every fraction of a second. Like lights in a tunnel.

My ears pop and I feel this pressure in my head, but then I see the pressure gauge right itself.

I watch as a sign says New York appears.

We rise slowly to the surface.

I unlock my belt.

"We are not getting off here," Mr. Serious says.

I look at him quizzically.

And what looks like ten or so administrative assistants, all-cute early twenty's kids come barging into the living room. The cold and snow gets tracked everywhere. They do not pay any mind to my guard or me. They are too busy talking amongst themselves as if they have done this a million times. Complaining about the traffic. And the fun times they had this weekend. This is just part of the grind for them, part of the commute, this is the most banal thing for them, entering a transported disguised as a living room in Brooklyn and being sent back out there.

Some go into the kitchen and some into the bedroom. As the transported moves apparently further north. I am still not giving him any satisfaction of asking where we are going.

Nova Scotia. Again slowly rising to the surface.

I look at him and he just shakes his head.

The assistants now appear to be working, teleconferencing with their supervisors.

They murmur on their phones about another stop.

"Probably picking up some cadets in training." They murmur.

The floor lifts up into a wood cabin and fifteen or so spandexed cadets all pile in. I can feel their military testosterone hit me like garlic in the kitchen. They all have red spandex with a large white star on their body's. Their names are apparently on the back.

"Roger's unit." I overhear someone say.

They are bursting with energy and waste no time hitting on some of the assistants.

"Give it a rest," they reply back with New York moxie, which does not injure the cadets' pride one bit.

We submerge again.

"We go any further north and we will run out of land."

"Who says we are going north?"

See the compass turn as we change course, moving east at lightning speed.

And out of nowhere we are making our way through a transparent tube, looking out into the ocean. Flying at speeds I did not know we had the capacity to move. This is all business as usual for the cadets and assistants, but I cannot take my eyes off the tunnel and I can feel him looking at me. I am too tired to care.

Schools of fish become more exotic as we transcend further depths and the pressure increases.

Some of the cadets wrestle playfully in the living room. Until they see my escort and back away.

I see whale after gigantic whale. Their sizes astound me in relation to myself. I suddenly feel so small and the blackness of the water makes me feel so insignificant. Small. Nothing. Seeing a whale's fin grace the side of the tube.

They appear as dots in the distance then they come into startling view and it is shocking that something so massive is alive and lives on the same planet.

Reminds me of going to the Natural History Museum in NY. Seeing the squid and the whale there and feeling lost and scared that somehow they would come alive and I would fall off of the railing and their battle would continue right in front of me.

We are skating the floor of the ocean. An area I thought no man had reached and these young kids sitting next to me have probably done this dozens of times and are sick of it. But I cannot believe it. The compass still reads east.

He and I look are looking at the same things with the same fascination.

"I never get tired of looking at it no matter how many times I've done it."

Tension – flush – heat between the two of us, before I look away and he moves back in his seat.

Then out of nowhere the floor drops from under us, a massive ridge fills our view dwarfing the size of the Grand Canyon, and making these whales become insignificant in its mouth.

I hear a distant motor humming. I look to my left and right and see similar vessels as ours all homing into the same area. Off into the blackness I see their tunnels coming towards ours.

We must be close but – to what.

Then deep in the canyon a huge mountain appears out of nowhere like Kilimanjaro.

Suddenly I realize how fast we are all traveling. We are headed straight for it. Any second now we are going to be a tiny bloodstain on this thing.

Right before we slam into it – it disappears. We are miraculously inside some station. Metallic - titanium, something stronger than titanium. What is stronger than titanium?

I think I screamed, but I am not sure. The only evidence is that everyone in my transport is looking right at me.

After a beat:

"She's with me," he says.

I hear radio transmission in our haul dictate our parking.

"Zero, epsilon, tango, Charlie, Gama you are scheduled to disembark at port 554-R, prepare for pressurizing time – T- minuet two hours starting in thirty seconds. How is everyone in your pod?"

Mr. Serious responds, "everyone is well, thanks Grace. How is everything over by you?"

"Same as you left it T."

"T" as in T'Challa.

"Was that a password exchange as well?"

"No just a friend."

All the kids aboard groan at the time to pressurize, complaining about the technology. Mr. Serious mentions how it used to be double or triple the time. Still does not make them feel any better.

Kids.

Two hours pass and the door slides open – smooth like Star Trek.

A man surrounded by ten advisors walks up to the cadets. Old man in his seventies, but looks like his fifties, white hair. In a suit and tie. Seems so old fashion to see a traditional suit, I expected everyone to be all spandexed-up.

I do not have to get close to his face to realize who this is.

"Cadet leader report?"

The leader of the Nova Scotia cadets starts gibbering off in military speak about the progress of the platoon.

I watch him watch his team. And I catch him turning his head towards me and extending his hand.

"Excuse me gentlemen. Ms. Munroe I am sorry for your loss, my condolences."

I feel so small to him. Grey hair, wrinkles but he is still a mountain. No facelift thank G-d, but still the handsomest straight man on the planet. I feel like that frightened teenager watching the squid and the whale next to him.

Mr. Serious and Rogers exchange looks -

"Resume cadet leader."

Roger's cadet leader bursts out a bugle of status reports figures as we exit the main terminal.

The maintenance staff rolls in the cleaning equipment and vacuums the pod.

As we walk Mr. Serious and I follow a black line on the floor beneath us guiding us through the corridors.

We take an elevator line mark "Cronos I." We take it to 44th floor.

We get out go up an escalator to another set of elevators "Cronos II" and take that to 82nd floor.

There is only one other building, a long time ago, that I had to that kind of dance to get to the top. And my eyes get watery just thinking about those Towers. F$#%$# I am not going to cry. I am not going to cry. I am not going to cr-s#$$%.

- ping - doors open.

Air is noticeably colder. The décor is 70's, dark maple wood walls, engraved and chiseled, feels so homely with maroon plush chairs complete with gold nail accents. I am not going to lie, it smells like Endust. The bottom of the Atlantic smells like Endust.

I stare at Mr. Serious for an explanation, and he just nods his head forward.

"Ms. Fields just usher them in, if you would be so kind," the intercom coldly states.

The assistant at the front desk stands and walks Mr. Serious and myself into the office.

An office with a man with red skin and yellow eyes…