“For whatever’s coming to come. It’s almost here.”
Cooper’s about to press this further, but he feels the anxious eyes of the crowd on him, nervous, combustible, so instead he turns and starts to walk again. He barks over his shoulder: “If anyone’s feeling uncomfortable, I suggest you stay in your bungalow until this blows over. As always, you can find me at the police trailer. Have a good day, everyone.”
He strides off, eager to shake the crowd, and annoyed at the pleading insistence of the townsfolk and the blatant insolence of Dietrich, not to mention this whole unannounced intrusion from the Institute. Dr. Holliday didn’t even warn him about this when they were sitting face-to-face a day ago? And six fucking agents? For what? No wonder Rigo’s got everyone in town shitting their drawers. This doesn’t look like an investigation; it looks like an invasion.
Cooper’s already at a low boil as he approaches the police trailer—and what he encounters there stops him dead.
One of the agents, a runty redhead, his brush cut the garish crimson of a dime-store lipstick, is standing by the entrance of the police trailer, crisscrossing the closed door with yellow tape that reads SECURITY LINE DO NOT CROSS.
“Excuse me?” says Cooper.
“This is an active crime scene,” says the agent.
“I know. I’m the shooter, remember?” says Cooper.
The agent doesn’t smile or even turn to look at Cooper, just keeps taping the doorway. With each tug of the roll, the tape screeches.
“I have to get in there—” says Cooper. “I have personal effects—”
“You’ll need clearance from Agent Rigo.”
“To access my own office?”
“You’ll need clearance from Agent Rigo.”
“You work for the Fell Institute, right? Do you even have legal jurisdiction here?”
The agent stops taping. “We both work for the Fell Institute, Sheriff. And this is a private facility on private land. If I were you, legal jurisdiction is the last thing I’d be worried about right now.”
“And what is the first thing I should worry about?”
The agent says nothing, just starts taping again.
“Look,” says Cooper, “I’d love to get a sense of the parameters of your investigation. Since we’ll be working together—”
“You’ll need clearance from Agent Rigo.”
“I’m thinking of taking a shit later. Will I need clearance from Agent Rigo for that?”
The agent keeps taping.
“Don’t worry, I’ll ask him myself.” Cooper turns and heads right back toward the intake trailer he just came from. Nothing about any of this feels right. He does take some consolation as he walks in the fact that the most important piece of evidence from the agent’s active crime scene behind him is still safely in Cooper’s possession. He rests the heel of his hand on the grip of that evidence, his pistol, still nestled in his holster.
Robinson shifts his admittedly ample ass in the uncomfortable plastic chair. He waits for this long-legged prick in the black suit to look up from the screen of the electronic tablet he’s so intently focused on. It’s not lost on Robinson that this is the exact position, in this exact building, in possibly even this exact chair, that new arrivals to Caesura sit and squirm while he, Walter Robinson, sits pretty much exactly where that long-legged, black-suited prick is sitting now, staring them down. Robinson’s never had to feel this way before—the way the new arrivals must feel on the other side of his desk. Asked to pick a new name. Asked to start from scratch. Feeling like you’re in a little rubber dinghy, and behind you rests your whole unremembered life, and Robinson sits before you holding a comically huge pair of scissors, and he’s about to cut the rope and let you drift.
He doesn’t love the feeling, to be honest.
But it’s not like he’s the one who goes in and scoops out all their memories—he’s just the one who welcomes them here after that’s done. So don’t blame him. He just answered an ad for a job. Sure, it’s true, he used to wonder about newcomers. He used to sit at the intake table and silently size people up, trying to guess, to speculate, even though you’re technically not supposed to. He’d think: Okay, what did you do, buddy? Where did you go wrong, lady? What brought your ass to the Blinds? But that phase only lasted maybe six months, tops. After that, he stopped wondering. What’s the point—you could never know, and they could never tell. So he decided just to take people as they come. And as had happened at many previous junctures in his life, Robinson ultimately came to understand that not asking questions is just a lot . . . easier. It’s even a kind of relief. Everything got simpler. Chase down noise complaints. Break up drunken fistfights. And at night, watch old movies on the TV they gave you, on the old VCR they let you have. Then go to sleep with earplugs and an eye mask, shut the world out, then wake up and do it all again.
Simple.
And Robinson’s been doing that for five years now, even though he never expected to stay that long. But when the first two-year contract was over he re-upped without a second thought, then re-upped again two years later. It’s quiet here. Peaceful. Not that he hasn’t had moments of boredom. He has a certain proficiency with small appliances, just hobbyist stuff, and, once, he took the back off his standard-issue walkie-talkie and tried fiddling with it to see if he could pick up a different signal—someone from the outside, some new person to talk to, some stray transmission from civilization drifting on the ether. But he abandoned that project pretty quick after he got worried that, if the Institute found out what he was doing, he’d be censured, fired, or worse. Maybe he’d even get wiped. Maybe they’d kick down his bungalow’s door in the night, shining flashlights, and take him away in leg irons and erase his memory, too. He’d considered the possibility. That they might erase someone’s memory without their consent. How would you even know if they had? Maybe it had already happened. It’s the kind of thing he used to read about a lot on the Internet, back in his other life. Black helicopters and chemtrails and secret government camps and all sorts of shit they never talk about. You don’t know the half of what’s going on in the world, is how he figures it. So why wouldn’t they wipe your memory, then wipe your memory of it being wiped? Who knows what the Institute is capable of?
So he stopped fiddling with the walkie-talkie.