John Gone (8 page)

Felix squinted and straightened his spine. “I
thought Harvard funded this program,” he yawned.

“Harvard doesn’t even know about this
program,” Linus continued. He walked back toward the chalkboard and
absently gazed at the equations unwritten. “At least not all of it.
The person, well, the
company
who finances this is
interested in finding people like you, Felix. We’ve had absolutely
no luck with it for the past two years, but this year we are going
to make up for that with you.”

“We?” Felix asked.

“Well, I do accept a stipend from them for my
own research. Did you think I ran this class out of the goodness of
my heart and a blanket love of academics?” Linus laughed. “Everyone
needs money, no matter what one wants to do with one’s life.” Linus
whirled back toward Felix and stuck his index finger at him
poignantly. “And it’s not like I’m doing anything illicit or
immoral. Just moonlighting.”

Felix chuckled at his professor’s defensive
explanation. “So, tell me, Professor, what’s this offer of
yours?”

“Do you remember when you first made the
decision to attend this school? It was an investment of four years
of your life. An investment that was made so you could leave with
debt, hoping to recoup it somehow, and get back into the black with
whatever it is you hypothetically gained from these self-described
hallowed halls. And what
are
you going to gain exactly? A
scrap of paper from a recognized institution proving something to
the world that you yourself already know?”

“No special insight there,” Felix responded.
“I think that’s what you’ll find in the O.E.D. when you look up the
word ‘college.’”

“What I am offering you is the chance to make
one more investment, four more years of science. And this time,
when you finish, you won’t have any debt. In fact,” Linus said
slyly, “you’ll come out on top.”

“How much on top?” Felix asked.

Linus answered rapidly, his voice like a
hammer against a board. “Six million dollars.”

Felix tried to look unimpressed by the
mention of such a figure, but containing the reaction welling
inside of him was difficult. “Can I finish my doctorate first?” he
asked, more weakly than he’d have liked.

“Yes,” Linus answered easily. “In fact, all
of your school loans will be paid, additional to the six
million.”

Felix let out a small hiccup of a laugh. “Is
that so?”

He sat quietly for another few moments before
letting the inevitable suspicions catch hold of him. “So what’s the
catch then?” Felix asked. “And if you say ‘no catch’ like they do
in film, then I’m forgetting we had this conversation.”

“The catch,” Linus said, “is that for these
four years that you work for them, you will be owned by them. You
will live on site, follow their regulations without question, and
have no contact with the outside world while you’re there. You can
tell no one where you are going and give no explanation as to where
you were when you come back.”

“Come back from where?” Felix asked, leaning
forward and bringing his eyebrows closer together.

“I don’t know,” Linus answered. “Wherever it
is that they put you.”

John awoke more pleasantly than he had from
his previous two journeys. Perhaps his body was growing accustomed
to the travel, or perhaps it was the gentle swaying of the floor
beneath him that comforted him, but regardless of reason, John’s
reentry was smooth, quiet, and dreamy. Slowly, he opened his
eyes.

The room around him was dark but for a few
thin bands of brash light shining through cracks in the door. As
John leaned forward to stand and investigate, the room and the
light tilted sharply left, knocking him back to his seat. The short
relief he’d felt upon arrival was gone, already replaced by stress
and worry. A moment later, the room was steady again, and he
allowed himself to calm.

John moved his hand low to touch where he was
seated, expecting the cold, slick feel of a porcelain toilet. He
found a toilet beneath him, however, this one felt as though it was
made of polished wood, smooth to his touch and lacking a lid.

He stood onto his feet and extended his arms.
His fingertips connected sharply with smooth, wooden-planked walls
closely surrounding him. He felt his way around the room with his
hands and discovered the entire space to be just three feet
deep.

The floor shifted again, and John put his
arms forward against the wall where the stripes of light broke
though. He ran his fingers and palms across it for a doorknob.
Soon, they touched a cold metal handle and pushed it down. The door
opened easily, and the small wooden bathroom flooded with afternoon
light.

John carefully peered out from the door and
found that he was standing at the end of a small hallway connecting
to the deck of what seemed to be a large boat. Beyond the deck,
John saw only the water, and above it, dark clouds swelling in the
sky. There was a light drizzle coming from them, but not enough to
force one indoors.

“Excuse me, sir?” a voice asked impatiently
from his side. The accent it carried held a slight twang. John
turned to find a young man of about his age dressed as a waiter,
holding a tray of champagne flutes sloppily splashing their
contents as the boat swayed lightly from side to side. Behind the
young man were double doors in the hallway, swinging lightly open
and closed, intermittently revealing a kitchen behind them.

“Sir?” the teenaged waiter asked pointedly
once more, sounding his frustration at serving someone his own age.
Without much thought, John accepted one of the drinks from the
silver tray and nodded. The waiter shot one of his eyebrows up and
walked back toward the main deck.

John smelled the drink, then tasted it.
Cool
, he thought. Drinking alcohol was a first for John,
champagne or otherwise. He enjoyed both the taste and the feeling
of the bubbly brew as he swished it around his mouth with his
tongue.

John looked out toward the noisy deck by the
water and ambled casually after it, flute in hand. After all, the
waiter had thought he belonged here. Maybe he could get lucky with
any others he encountered.

“John,” a familiar voice called from his bag.
“Can you hear me?”

John stopped.
Mouse
, he thought.
I
completely forgot
. John swiveled his messenger bag to his front
and took Mouse out into his hands.

“John!” it said. “You’re alright.”

“For now.”

“I just woke up. That was crazy-pants!” Mouse
exclaimed.

“What happened?” John asked the question
quietly, knowing that any chance he had of blending in would soon
be dashed if caught speaking with a pint-sized robot.

“Just like you said, things got really blue
really fast, and the next thing I remember, I woke up on the couch
without you next to me. Dude!”

“You’re okay?”

“Fine! Where are we?”

“A boat.”

“Let me see,” Mouse said, pointing its arm
upward. John lifted the small robot above his head and swiveled its
body like a periscope around their surroundings.

“Yeah. It’s a boat, alright. Maybe a yacht,”
Mouse concluded.

“Glad we agree.” John rolled his eyes.

“If it’s still docked, I bet we can make a
break for it and get back onto shore.”

“Okay, good idea,” John said. “I’m going to
put you back in the bag for a moment. Stay quiet while I sneak out
there and see where we are.”

“10-4, commander.”

John lowered the robot into the front pocket
of his bag. As he walked toward the deck, Mouse climbed to the edge
of the pocket and lifted the cover-flap behind its head so it could
see.

John reached the yacht’s railing and followed
it toward the back of the craft. They weren’t docked. In fact, John
couldn’t so much as see shore in any direction around him. They
were at sea, surrounded by endless blue, and too far from land to
have an honest hope of docking anytime soon.

“John,” Mouse called.

“There are people ahead,” John said back,
hushing it. “Stay quiet and hide.”

Mouse pulled the pocket’s flap over its head
like a hood.

John traveled farther toward the back of the
yacht and saw nearly a hundred people milling about, drinking
drinks and picking from a well-decorated buffet table set up near
the aft cabin entrance. A low-volume jazz track floated between
their conversations.

The women were in semi-formal attire, most
wearing elegant sundresses and holding large, paper hand fans or
parasols. The men were under suits and sport coats, mostly white in
color, with some of the more rebellious among them sporting just a
dress shirt with rolled up sleeves.

John slowly approached the party from its
side, but stopped behind the back corner before continuing around
it. He chose a small bench leaned against the outside of the
yacht’s main cabin to sit down on.

“Why did we stop? Go talk to someone and find
out where we are,” Mouse urged.

“We’re on the ocean?” John answered. “Why
does it matter where we are?”

“The more data we have, the better chance we
have at solving this thing.”

John looked left and right to make sure of
their privacy. “I can’t go back there.”

“Why not?”

“Look,” he said, lifting Mouse around the
corner and pointing it toward the crowd. “I’m in jeans and a
T-shirt.”

“Put me down.”

“Why?” John asked suspiciously.

“Just do it, man,” Mouse answered. “I’m
helping.”

John put Mouse down on the deck near his
feet. As he let go of its body, the robot bent its knees slowly and
tumbled clumsily onto its back, ending stiffly in a prone position
on the deck. He quickly leaned down to lift it back to its feet,
assuming the fall was accidental.

Before John could reach it, Mouse rolled away
from his hand like a small go-kart and raced around the corner
using four small wheels on its backside. John stood up quickly and
chased after the bot, but stopped suddenly at the corner, afraid to
be seen by the mob of people on its opposite side.

With Mouse gone, he sat back down on the
bench and lowered his head into his hands.

Maybe if I just sit here for twelve hours
I’ll pop home again
, he thought.
Maybe this time I’ll appear
in my own bathroom and come out to find Mom fretting over some tea
in the kitchen. She’ll see me, get excited, and drop her mug on the
ground as she runs over and hugs me. She doesn’t ask me anything,
and we go to the police department where everything gets explained
to them, and they have some sort of specialist who gets this watch
off my arm. We find out that Virgil isn’t dead, just a bit injured,
and Molly hears that I’m back and comes to the police station to
meet me. She cries and tells me she’s sorry she ever accused me
of--

John’s fantasy stopped abruptly when he spied
a white jacket sliding across the floor between the fingers of his
hand. He raised his head and stared at the possessed jacket in
confusion.

“Take it,” the jacket said. John lifted the
white coat to find Mouse underneath, standing back to its feet once
the weight of the jacket was removed from its body.

“Where did you get this?” John whispered
loudly.

“Put it on,” Mouse answered. “Get out
there.”

John sat defiantly.

“Oh. My. Gosh. A bedroom in the cabin, okay?
There were a bunch of jackets there. No one will miss it. Put it
on!”

John stood and put the jacket over his
T-shirt. It fit, but had obviously been intended for a slightly
taller man than he. The tails dipped low to his mid-thigh, and the
sleeves extended past his wrists to his fingernails.

“Good enough,” Mouse said, tugging on his
pant leg. “Let’s roll.”

John picked up the robot and placed it back
into his bag’s pocket. With a deep breath he walked around the
corner toward the party.

“I look way more suspicious than before,”
John said under his breath toward his bag. “This is a bad
plan.”

John made his way to the large buffet and
looked at the amazing variety of food lying across it. Other than
the vegetable and cheese platters, John was having trouble even
recognizing the options. At least the caviar and escargot he knew
from a show he’d once seen on the Food Channel. Most everything
else on the table was an alien concoction to him, made of varying
colors and smells with which he wasn’t familiar.

“Snails!” Mouse shouted suddenly. It must
have noticed the escargot at the end of the table

“Excuse me?” replied a large,
Southern-sounding female attendant on the other side of the buffet.
John quickly grabbed at Mouse’s head and shoved it down to the
bottom of his bag’s pocket.

“Sorry, nothing,” John mumbled, grabbing a
small plate from the side of the table.

“You know,” the attendant said, leaning in
toward John, “ya’ll’re paying for it, so if you want to keep
stuffing it in your bag there, you don’t have to try and hide it
from me. This ain’t the free breakfast bar at the Charleston church
now, hear me?” She smiled mischievously.

“Thanks,” John replied. “I’m just a little
hungry,” he said, adding his own version of a Southern accent to
the back half of the sentence. The woman looked at him
suspiciously, perhaps deciding if he was trying to make fun of
her.

“And just who in the hell are you?” a man
yelled from the party behind John. John’s heart raced, but he kept
his attention rapt on the table ahead of him.

“Don’t touch me,” the man yelled again
loudly.

“Now what in the hell’s going on back there?”
the attendant asked, looking out past John.

John turned to see two men in worn gray suits
and thin leather gloves confronting a portly gentleman about twenty
yards aft of the buffet. One had dark hair, the other had blond.
Both wore a strange-looking, flat black bag across their chests.
John thought they looked like diagonally seated fanny-packs, but
wider and shallower.