Book I: Part 13: Arthur

     Arthur didn’t know how long he waited in the green room. 
     He kept himself occupied by bouncing the ball.  He focused on its travels, watching it as it hit the floor, then bounced up up up, reached it’s high point—that frozen moment of zero acceleration—then down down down, along the path it had just traced, until it reached its original point of impact.  It did this over and over, each time losing energy, rising just short of its height from the time before, until it finally just shuddered along the floor.  Then Arthur would pick the ball up and start the process all over again.     
     “An operative is ready to see you now, sir.”  It was the catwoman.  Spheeris, was her name?
     “What?  Uh, oh, thank you.”  Arthur snatched the bouncy ball from midair and slipped it into his jacket pocket. 
     “He’s waiting for you in room one-one-zero-zero-one-one.”
     Arthur blinked.  “Uh, I’m sorry, could you say that again?” 
     She did. 
     “Thanks.” 
     He wandered off down the hall, writing the number out in his head.  110011.  He passed room 110002, and room 110003.  Apparently the room was room eleven...on the 1,100th floor?  Could he really be that high up?  How many floors did the Sears Tower (or whatever they were calling it these days) have?  A hundred?  A hundred and ten?  Here he was, ten times as high in the air as the top floor of the tallest building in the country, his country, in what was probably nowhere near the top floor in what was probably not even the tallest building around.  
     He sighed.
     He took a right.  Walking down the hall, he felt as though there was something familiar about the experience, as if he had only just recently done the exact same thing.  The déjà vu intensified as he reached door eleven. 
     He paused, then, closing his eyes, twisted the handle and walked in. 
     Inside was a white room.  Along the back wall hung a pair of black curtains.  In the center of the room was a blue chair, facing away from the door.  Directly beyond this chair, about 10 or 11 feet away and framed by the curtains, was a small black table with a black chair positioned to its left side.  Sitting in the black chair was a man who had neatly arranged a stack of papers atop the desk.  He wore a plain black suit and had glowing red eyes. 
    The man with red eyes smiled.  “Hello,” he said.  “Mr. Walpole isn’t it?  Please, have a seat.”  He gestured  toward the blue chair. 
    With trepidation, Arthur walked to the center of the room and sat down.  The man with red eyes smiled again, showing teeth. 
     “Now, Mr. Walpole,” he began, “I am going to administer a test, in which I shall ask you a series of questions.  Each answer you give will determine the next question I ask.  I will be paying attention not just to what your answer is, but how you answer as well, so please, answer very carefully.”
    Suddenly realizing he could not see the ceiling, Arthur glanced up. 
    About thirty feet overhead,  slender apparatuses of white plastic and silver chrome were arranged, like a lotus blossom, directly over his head. 
     He laughed nervously.  “Uh, what’s all that stuff?” he asked. 
     The man with red eyes smiled again.  “It’s integral to the examination.  Are we ready to begin?”
     Arthur breathed out in spasms.  Butterflies entered his stomach.  His hands, clasped white in his lap, started shaking.  God, it felt like college finals all over again.  “As I’ll ever be.”
     “Good,” said the man with red eyes.  “What is your name?”
     “Uh, Arthur Luther Walpole,” he said deliberately.  “D-don’t you know that already?”
     “What is your job?”
     “Uh, I am an accountant.”  He pictured the offices of Edgars, Eggers and Edwards.  The rows and columns of cubicles, the heads of employees bobbing up occasionally like monks at work in their cells.  There was no ceiling above the office, and the faces of the three ancient founders loomed above the void.  Mr.  Edwards began to lecture Arthur on punctuality.  Mr.  Edwards was always lecturing Arthur on punctuality, because Arthur was never late.  Perhaps Mr. Edwards was always lecturing (lectured?) Arthur because he sensed a kindred soul, a fellow lover of punctuality, but somehow the lecture never ended up including any compliments. 
     “What is your favorite color?”
     “Blue,” said Arthur, raising his voice.  He had to resist the urge to shout “No, yellooow …”  What a weird coincidence.  Yes, the middle question was a little off, but still….  His mind summoned up images of smoke trails, a decaying rope bridge, and a wasteland beyond.  And Terry Gilliam in old man makeup and beggar costume. 
     “Date of birth?”
     “July 3rd, 1983.  Uh, AD, if you know what that means…by any chance.  Not sure how much good that will do you.  Sorry.”
     “Age?”
     “I am 33 years old, and …”—he did some quick calculations in his head—“…43 days.  I think.”
     “What is your height?”
     “About 5’9”, I think.  5’10”, maybe.”
     “Weight?”
     “Maybe 170?  I mean, I used to be about 185, uh, pounds, that is, but, I don’t know, I feel, uh, lighter, somehow, since I, uh, bled, as it were…”  Arthur’s butterflies regressed back into caterpillars.  He felt like he was doing horrible.
     “Place of creation?”
     “Uh, as in birth?  Chicago, Illinois, in the United States of America.  I don’t know what hospital, I can’t recall. Is that relevant?”
     “If you were an animal, what animal would you be?”
     This question threw him.  What did that have to do with anything?  “Oh, I don’t know … a dragon, maybe?  Can I say a dragon?  Or are mythological creatures not allowed?  If it has to be a real animal, I, I guess a coelacanth.” 
     He remembered reading a book once about coelacanths.  How they were once thought to have gone extinct millions of years ago, around the same times as the dinosaurs, and then they were found again, still alive.  Someone caught one in a fishing net, in the 1900s. 
     Well, that was kind of like what happened to him, wasn’t it? Disappeared and popped up again, across time or space and the changing world or whatever?  Except he hadn’t traveled nearly that far.  Surely not.  Still he thought it was a funny analogy, and it hadn’t occurred to him until after he answered the question.  How had he worked that out? 
     Had he worked that out?
     “Do you often feel worry about your loved ones?”
     He laughed nervously.  “Well, sure, doesn’t everyone?”  He tried smiling, but it soured  into a grimace.  Something that was not a memory passed through his head.  More of an imagining.  He had not seen it happen.  A car running a red light, an oncoming semi, the edge of the car colliding, metal twisting, the car lifting up into the air, spiraling in slow motion, glass shattering and flying everywhere, (being put back together again) the car’s side landing with a loud boom on the concrete, bouncing, landing, but upside down, the interior imploding.  A bloody suit-coated arm coming to rest on the pavement.  The semi and other cars screeching and stopping. 
     Memories now.  Snapshots.  His mother and sister crying, and holding each other, and him standing in the doorway, his hand on the open door, numb. Talking on the phone with his sister, angry.  Another door closing, a wave of blond hair disappearing behind it.  Another car, parked this time, with him inside it, staring through a gated steel fence at a courtyard, as figures dressed in black and white robes entered the abbey, trying to guess which ones were his mother and sister, based on their movements. 
     There were other memories too, fleeting, filling in the details, but they passed below the surface, not fully seen, subliminal flashes he couldn’t make out, but knew were being alluded to. 
     The man with red eyes smiled again.  Arthur felt a spasm in his left leg.  “Are you all right?”
     “Yes,”  said Arthur, willing out the spasm.  “I’m fine.” 
     The man with red eyes looked back down at his pile of papers.  “Does music have an emotional effect on you?”
     Arthur fidgeted. “Of course, doesn’t music have an emotional effect on everyone?  I mean, you would have to be a robot or something for it not to, wouldn’t you?  ...Are, uh, are robots effected by music?”  He tried to imagine C-1 sitting alone, listening to “Hey, Jude” on a stereo and humming along, but he couldn’t picture it happening.  Arthur tried playing the song in his head.  He couldn’t remember what the second line was.  Was it “under your skin,” or “into your heart” the first time?  He just couldn’t quite hear it. 
     And he would never hear it again. 
     “Do you ever sing or whistle to entertain yourself?”
     What?  How?  How did he know what he was thinking about?  Or was this a coincidence?  For some reason the red eyes suddenly felt incredibly familiar to him, but he couldn’t figure why.
     He had waited too long to speak.  The man was staring at him expectantly, only smiling a little bit, not blinking.  He tried to think of an answer.  He didn’t know how to whistle, and he had a horrible singing voice.  He never tried to sing; he was too afraid too.  “I hum sometimes,”  he said, “When I daydream.”
     “What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two at noon, and three in the evening?”
     “Really?” thought Arthur.  “Is he really asking this question?” 
     “Uh, man,” he answered. 
     “Huh,” said the man with red eyes.  He seemed amused, and wrote something down on a sheet of paper.  “Never heard that one before.  Most  people say a transmorphopod.”
     A what?
     The man with red eyes took a deep breath. “A flying car leaves a port and flies west at 760 klamatters  per hour.  After waiting fifteen minutes, another flying car at a port 250 klamatters to the west of the first starts flying east at only 440 klamatters per hour. How long after the second car leaves will the two cars pass each other?”
     Arthur stared straight at the man with red eyes.  A word problem?  He was getting asked a word problem now?  “No, no,” he thought.  “Stick to the test.  You need to do well on the test.”  He ran his fingers through his hair, and thought. 
     “Three minutes,”  he said. 
     “How many angles fit on the head of a pin?”
     What?  “Did, did you say angles?  Don’t you mean angels?  Because an infinite number of angels fit on the head of a pin.  They don’t have mass or dimension, see, they are, uh, points, just like angles, I guess, come to think of it, so, uh same number?  An infinite number of angles fit on the head of a pin.”  He paused for a second.  Did they still have pins?  “Look, why are you asking me this, what does it have to do with anything?”
     “If a spaceship explodes in space, does it make a sound?”
     “Huh? Of course not! I mean, it’s in space.  There’s no air!  Sound can’t travel!  Soundwaves are air vibrations, that’s simple, why are you asking me that?  Why are you asking me any of this?” 
     “What is the sound of fingernails on a frictionless surface?”
     “What?  That’s practically the same question!  It’s oh, you know, uh…no, no.  The sound would be disruption, uh….  There is silence.  Besides, a frictionless surface can’t exist.  So no sound.  Or nothing.” 
     “Who are you?”
     “What?  I already told you that!  Wait, I mean, uh, I don’t know, it’s too broad.  I mean, how can anyone really know who they are, how do you sum up who you are?  I-I’m me, whatever that is.”
     “Is it bigger than a breadbox?”
     “Is what bigger than a bread box?  How can I even answer that?  It needs context!  I … wait, this isn’t really the test, is it?  It hasn’t started yet, has it?  This is just some preliminary thing?”
     He pointed at the white and chrome lotus blossoms emerging from the ceiling.  “I mean, you haven’t even used those things up there, have you?” 
     The man with red eyes wrote something down.  “Thank you, Mr. Walpole.  Your examination is complete.”
     Arthur froze.  “It is?”
     “Oh, yes.  I have gathered all that I need.”
     “You, you have?  How?”
     The man with red eyes pointed up, at the lotus blossom, and went back to writing.
     “But, but they haven’t done anything.”
     The man with red eyes ripped off a sheet of paper.  “Take this down to room one-one-oh-oh-nine-nine.  We have gathered all the information pertinent to your Integration, and are ready to begin the process itself.”  He held out the sheet of paper. 
     Arthur walked over and took it, his hand shaking. 
     The man smiled, with teeth.  “Have an entrancing afternoon.”
     Arthur felt the door click shut behind him.  A keen inkling that he had failed gripped at his throat.
     But failed at what?  He had no idea what he was doing, he was just following other people’s suggestions, carrying a flickering hope they would pan out in the end, getting out of this completely ridiculous situation he had somehow wandered into.  Whatever it was.  He wished to run, flee the building, out into the street.  But to where?  Where could he go?  He had nowhere else to turn, nothing to do but continue along the path he had been set on. 
     He wandered through the hallway, following wall-signs directing him to room 99, through a long series of turns, first going one way, then another, until he had lost all sense of direction, and came at last to room 110099, the last room in the hallway.  He knocked, and the door opened on its own. 
     He saw another blue chair, this one shaped like a dentist’s.  An apparatus like an adjustable x-ray machine was attached to it. 
     “Ah, Maysrrrwawrpaul, yu’re he’rr,” said a voice, deep and rich.  A creature stepped out of the corner, towering over Arthur.  It wore a blue apron and blue gloves.  Its head was shaped like a goat’s, with long floppy ears and snout and two black horns sprouting from the top of it’s head, but its skin was hairless, pallid and white. 
      All the blood fled from Arthur’s face.
     “Iyam D’glass Yeones, yu’er encowwderrr,” it said.  It bared it’s teeth.  Arthur had no idea what it had just said.  He had seen stranger creatures on the street, but none of them had been this close to him, and with the thing breathing down on him, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he had just entered some kind of nightmare.  The devil could look like this. 
     Baring it’s teeth, the creature gently took the sheet of paper out of his hands, examined it carefully.  “Ah, Yeass, Ev-raytheng ah-pee-arse do bay en ar’derr.  Roughteaswah.”  It took him by the arm, lead him into the chair.  Arthur sat down without thinking, panicking slightly inside, too afraid to think about what, exactly, was happening. 
     The next thing he realized the creature had clasped chrome manacles over his arms and legs. 
     “What?”  Though the manacles left plenty of room for his hands to move or free themselves, for some reason he could not budge them. 
     “Plays, oh-pin you’err eiss, Maysrrrwawrpaul.”  The creature pried Arthur’s right eye open with a small speculum, then did the same to his left. 
     The creature said something further, but Arthur couldn’t hear him.  He was too busy panicking inside.  The creature adjusted  the apparatus that was like an x-ray, until it was directly in front of him.  Two cylinders opened, and two beams of white light shot into his eyes. 
     Everything stopped, and for a moment Arthur seemed to pass outside himself.  Time and space fell away, and in that moment, he remembered everything. 
     And then he was back, and the memories stayed behind.  He awoke with a sense of loss, uncertain of time and place, and briefly thought he had just had his wisdom teeth pulled.  His tongue moved instinctively over and back, and felt the phantom depressions behind his molars, still there after all these years. 
     He blinked, and the details sunk back in, and he recalled the diner and the lobby and the hallway and sitting in the chair, and the two beams of white light.  The specula and restraints were gone, and the apparatus had been moved aside.  What had been done to him?  How long had he been sitting here?
     The creature moved into his field of vision.  “Ah, there you are, Messer Walpole?  All done.  Not so bad, was it?” 
     He could understand the creature now.  The strange sounds were words.  He just wasn’t used to hearing them so distorted.  It’s tone even sounded kind.  He understood now.  The creature was named D’glass Yeones.  He was an encoder. 
     And he belonged to the Fetonair species. 
     How did he know that? 
     “A large amount of information has just been downloaded into your long-term memory , Messer Walpole.  You might feel no different now, but it is all there now, and can be easily accessed just by you wanting to know something.”  D’glass Yeones  smiled.  “Provided you know it, of course.  Also, while you were out, we registered an identity for you.”  He handed Arthur two thin clear cards.  “This is your id card, and this is your crown card.  The id card explains who you are, your qualifications, your history.  The crown card is for economic transactions mostly, although the id card can be used for that as well.  The id card shows that you are now trained as an Executor, First Class.  Keep the id and crown card with you, but more can be ordered if these are lost.  You know how to contact us, of course.” 
     He offered his hand to shake, and Arthur returned the gesture.  D’glass Yeones hands were long, thing, and bony. 
     Arthur smiled nervously. 
     D’glass Yeones smiled back.  “Have a joyous afternoon,”  he said.