Physical therapy sucks! It hurts. I’m back in bed now, with my spasms under control enough to keep writing to you, dear reader. One day soon, I’ll probably give you the details of my injuries, but I really don’t want to think about them right now any more than I have to. Writing to you will help keep my mind off the pain. Yes, they give me painkillers in this place, but they don’t block all of it. I’m also writing this time to keep myself awake until dinner gets here. I don’t want to miss dinner because I passed out from pain and exhaustion. Been there, done that. At least the food is good in this place, something to look forward to.

Last time, I told you about my encounter with Mr. X that fateful day and the card he left with me. It wasn’t long, maybe a couple of days later, during the weekend, when I called the number. I wanted to ask more questions.

To my surprise, Mr. X answered himself immediately after the first ring. I had expected to get some voicemail or an operator, but no, I got the man himself.

“Good day, Dr. Leighton!” I could hear that wonderful smile of his in his voice. If he wasn’t so creepy, he could do toothpaste commercials. He paused waiting for me to speak.

“I have a few questions about our conversation in my office this past week.”

“Excellent! I have the perfect way to answer all your questions. I believe you have vacation time for the next two weeks and won’t need to go into work. You had accumulated so much that according to your contract it was a use-it-or-lose-it situation?”

“Yes, but how did you know about…”

He cut me off. “I did say I have a way to answer all of your questions, including that one. We are prepared to offer you a one-time job for these next two weeks, a job that will pay you $50,000, with no further commitments after the two weeks. If working for us really isn’t something you want to do after finding out what it’s really like, you’ll be able to slide right back into the life you have now, and $50,000 richer. What do you say?”

“I’d say yes. If I don’t accept this now, I’ll wonder for the rest of my life what this was.”

“Of course you would. You’re that type of person.” Mr. X sounded pleased and impressed.

The rest of the weekend flew by. I caught up on some grades and generally got my affairs in order so that no job-work from the college would follow me into the two weeks vacation. I had originally planned for it to be a “staycation” and to do the workload at a more relaxed pace with smooth jazz on in the background and a glass of wine at my side on the desk, a bit at a time over several days, but instead I plugged away with hard rock synthwave and caffeine pushing me through it all in one day. I double checked my Rover.com arrangements for someone to check on Lucy, my cat, while I was away. All seemed ready for me to go.

Monday morning came. I took the St. Louis Metrolink downtown early. I walked to the corner of North Taylor Avenue and Pershing Avenue in the Central West End. The coffee shop there was rebranding…again. They had finished remodeling from their previous incarnation and were once again open. I grabbed a chai latte and sipped there on the corner while I looked out for my ride. Though there’s a bus stop at that corner, that’s not what I was there for. I was waiting for a dark tan Ford Expedition to come by with one of my fellow “agents of Control” (whatever that meant). I would be picked up and we’d trek across Missouri to Kansas City to pick up more of the team.

The drink had just had a chance to finally drink without it burning my tongue when the Expedition showed up, driven by a short, cute blonde twenty-something with wavy hair a little past her shoulders and wire frame glasses with perfectly round lenses. There was enough of a pause in the traffic for her to stop for me without getting honked at by impatient people. The passenger window came down and she greeted me.

“Throw your stuff in the back and let’s go.”

The back hatch of the vehicle slowly started to rise. I placed my stuff in the back. It didn’t look too crowded back there. I knew we’d be picking up a total of four more people along the way to our destination, which was somewhere out in Arizona. I was the first person picked up after the driver started the journey, so it was just my stuff and her stuff until Kansas City.

With my stuff situated in the back, I came around front to let myself in the front next to the driver.

“Hi, I’m Rachelle,” she said as she pulled away from the curb and headed for the Interstate.

“I’m Carl. Nice to meet you. How long have you been working with Control?”

“Four years. I was recruited when I was twenty.”

“Right out of college?’ I asked.

“During college actually. Once I learned what they do, I never looked back. The degree didn’t mean that much to me anymore after that.”

“It’s that exciting, huh?”

“Well….” Rachelle paused for a moment as if thinking of her answer.

Finally, she continued. “Why don’t you watch the mission briefing video and then you tell me. It’s on my laptop. You should be able to reach it there on the seat behind you.”

I looked back there. Sure enough, there was a laptop case.

I obliged. Once I had Rachelle’s laptop in front of me and it was booting up, she said, “Use the headset. I’ve already seen the briefing several times.”

I pulled the headset out of the case and plugged it into the machine. The computer had finished booting to a standard Windows login screen. Rachelle told me to login as Guest, which I did. Next there was a desktop screen with a video icon right in the middle labeled “Dust Bowl Arizona”. The laptop was a nice touch screen one. There was no stupid fingerpad. I hate those. I tapped the “Dust Bowl Arizona” icon and thought that I was ready for anything. Maybe I was. Maybe I wasn’t. I was determined to find out.