CHAPTER 4
John turned east next to the park and rounded into The Napoli, the large, mazelike apartment complex where he hoped to find his estranged friend. Inside and past the fence, the grounds were beautiful, if not somewhat tacky. Everything within The Napoli’s property had been painted, sculpted, and decorated in the styling of renaissance-era Italy. Small fountains adorned the courtyards between the blocks, featuring naked dice-white men and women balancing leaky satyrs, grapes, and pots. The attention to detail was encompassing, but nothing on the planet could make John forget that he was living in Florida on Longboard Key.
John circled the buildings of the complex on his scooter and desperately tried to remember which belonged to Ronika. It was a difficult task; all of the buildings looked the same, but John was convinced that if he just kept looking, something would jog his memory.
Soon the persistence paid off. As he passed the front of Block D, he caught sight of an armless cherub statue planted in the ground. It was the apartment association’s feeble attempt at creating the classical version of a lawn gnome. He remembered it from his sole previous trip to The Napoli, when his mother had tumbled carelessly over it, tearing a small hole across the knee of her jeans. John smiled at the memory.
First floor, 3-D, he suddenly remembered. 3-D! Of course! I should have remembered that.
Knowing what to search for, John found Ronika’s apartment easily. Hers was the only unit in the long concrete corridor of doors that had a welcome mat. It was the same one he remembered from his previous visit, and still looked just as clean and new as it had back then.
Not many people coming over, I guess, John thought. Or Ronika herself isn’t coming and going often. Probably both, knowing her.
John read its message, written starkly in black Helvetica: There’s No Place Like 127.0.0.1. The joke made him laugh, and briefly, only briefly, he forgot the grim circumstances that had brought him there. He closed his eyes and knocked.
Within seconds, the apartment door flew open, revealing Ronika standing wide-eyed in an A-shirt and pajama pants. The girl’s body was almost inhumanly slender, leaning effortlessly flush against the right side of the doorframe. As her body curled around its border, John remembered how strangely captivating he’d thought her movements had been during his first visit. Even in open spaces, she’d always seemed to move and flow like an ermine slipping deftly through a twisting maze or flexing through the slightest crack beneath a doorway.
The girl’s hair was October-pumpkin-orange, unique in its constancy, not changing even slightly in tone or hue between strands. Its front was styled into rounded bangs cut carefully in varying lengths to circle her pale face. The back lifted slightly before draping down long and straight beneath her shoulders.
Separating the two sections was a headband--at least, John thought it was a headband--that supported two orange, fuzzy fox ears with white tips on either side of her head. With her thick, similarly colored hair covering up her human ears, the fox ears seemed an almost natural addition to her face. The ears were simply a part of her, and she was infrequently seen without them.
Ronika slunk her way toward John’s body until their faces were separated by an inch. She held her right hand out flat and rested it on his head. From there, she tilted it dramatically upward and brought it to the top of her own. She smiled widely.
She’d always been a few inches taller than John--even without the added height of her headband--and she liked to remind him of it whenever possible. John had always considered her height to be a temporary advantage, one he blamed solely on their small difference in age. He hoped that someday she would finally stop growing so he could catch up.
“John,” she said.
“You recognized me,” he replied, backing away to widen the awkwardly small distance between them.
“What time is it?” she asked casually.
John looked at his watch. The sight of it gave him a stomachache. “4:15 A.M,” he said.
“Almost bedtime.”
John’s expression was pained. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” she answered smoothly. “You can take the couch.” She turned and moved back into her apartment with John following nervously.
The apartment was clean, but cluttered with carefully organized collectibles, action figures, stuffed animals, comic books, and novels. John looked over Ronika’s left shoulder and noted a medieval battle-axe hanging on the wall next to what could only be described as a pedestal holding some sort of science-fiction space-marine helmet on top of it.
“Where’s your mom?” she asked.
“Oh,” John began, unsure if this was the best part of the story with which to begin.
Ronika turned back toward him and smiled. Whenever she smiled, she tilted her head to the right. This was a habit, as she had explained to John years before, which stemmed from the colon-and-open-parentheses smiley face she so often typed online.
“I’m just kidding,” she said. “I figured she wouldn’t be here, it being four in the morning and all. I was just giving you a hard time. It’s nice to see you in person, though. For, like, the first time in six years or something.”
“Ronika,” John said, “please let me explain what I’m doing here so late.”
“It’s not late,” she answered. She scratched the back of her head as she stretched her torso, putting her spine at an almost ninety-degree angle backward. “For me, this is like ten o’clock in normal-person time.”
“Okay, but I need to--”
“Give me a second, Popielarski; let me tell my clan that I’m off for the night.” She turned away from him and moved back toward the large desk in the corner of her living room. After dropping lazily into the blue, fluffy recliner at its front, she slipped on a headset.
She craned her neck toward the left monitor of her dual-screen setup to read something too small for John to see.
“Just a second,” she mumbled. She started talking quietly to someone else through the microphone in her headset.
John walked slowly around her apartment while she finished, checking out the assorted treasures stashed around her living room. Some he recognized from different animé series, others from video games.
Soon, he brought his attention to a worktable in the far corner of the room. Its surface was littered with wires, clamps, bits of plastic, screws, tools, a microscope, solder, solar cells, and numerous half-built devices, the practical purposes of which were difficult to guess. It was the sort of table one usually saw in the lab of a mad scientist on television, even without the bubbling beakers and Bunsen burners.
John knew that Ronika had been offered an unsolicited scholarship to M.I.T. last year, and again this year, but had never really understood why until seeing the intricacies of the gadgets she’d presumably been working on in her spare time. He had no idea what good combining a blender with vacuum cleaner would do, but thought it was darned impressive all the same. Ronika had told John during one of their many online chats that she’d declined the scholarships, and decided against going to college at all, M.I.T. or otherwise. She’d said it was because of “people.” Ronika was convinced that she’d never learned how to interact with them properly and the thought of being isolated with a large group of them terrified her.
John heard a ticking noise that drew his eyes upward to a clock hanging on the wall above the table. It was large and analog, but without numerals circling its face. An assortment of math problems was printed in their stead. 630 divided by 126 for the 5 and -8=2-X for the 10.
“Weird clock, right?” Ronika asked from behind him.
“I’ve seen weirder,” John answered.
The next day John woke from a dream involving a zombie apocalypse, his mother doing laundry, and a secret steering wheel deep within the Earth that let him pilot the planet out from the solar system. He sat straight up, still wrapped in the feathery pink blanket Ronika had thrown at him, and wondered if the dream had any arcane wisdom to offer his current situation. He drew a blank.
John flicked at a piece of hardened sleep in his left eye and reacclimated to the wakened world. It was strange waking up somewhere other than his short, blue house on the shore. This was the first time he’d ever done it. He and his mother had never gone on vacation, and during the age when sleepovers are common, he hadn’t any friends other than Ronika, whom, at the time, he’d known only as a screen name online.
The night before, John had told Ronika everything. He’d told her about the glare on the beach, the embarrassing job at America Offline, and about how Virgil had died in front of him on an office floor. He told her about his experience in Tallahassee, the bus that was supposed to take him back home, and the thirteen deaths for which he felt responsible. He even told her about the note he’d scribbled to his mother on a tissue in eyeliner pencil.
To his great surprise, Ronika hadn’t second-guessed any part of it. She hadn’t said he was crazy and she hadn’t complained about, or even approached, his unexplained absence from her life for the past six months. She hadn’t asked if he was “sure he was remembering everything correctly,” or worse, if he’d been “abusing any substances.” She simply believed him, or at the very least seemed to, without reservation.
Ronika had just sat there for the remainder of their time awake last night, letting him speak, listening to the facts and his feeling about the facts, while holding his arm and gazing into the humming wires of the watch stuck to his wrist. They hadn’t gotten to sleep until the sun was first starting to shine through the vertical venetian blinds adorning her living room window.
John considered just how late they’d stayed awake the night before and quickly covered the face of his watch from view. He closed his eyes. Please, let it be later than 3:14, he thought. If it’s later than 3:14 and I’m still here ...
He removed his hand from over his wrist and looked at the time. It read 2:55 P.M. John paled. His mind swam, fast muddling with thoughts of appearing back in Tallahassee with Adam. He also imagined himself in the warehouse again, being found by the police or the old, snooping women who’d betray him to them.
John ran in a flustered panic across the room to the back hallway of Ronika’s apartment. There were two doors at its end. John banged on the one to his right with his fists and did the same to the one on his left.
“Ronika,” he spoke loudly, “we don’t have a lot of time!” He turned back to the right door to bang on it again just as Ronika opened the left. She stood there in front of him, rolled into a large white comforter and wearing her fox ears. John whirled around to face her.
“Why are you banging on my spare bedroom’s door? No one’s in there,” she said though a yawn.
John turned back to the other door and opened it. There was a mostly empty room behind it, save a large, queen-sized bed and a small television set on a barstool.
“If you had another bedroom, why did you make me sleep on the couch?” he asked. The question had no anger in it, just confusion.
“Sometimes I switch beds in the middle of the night,” she answered casually. “Or the morning.” She took him by the shoulders and gave him a light shove back to the living room.
“I have to get dressed,” she informed him. “We don’t have a lot of time.”
“I know we don’t have a lot of time,” John grumbled.
“And no more shouting or banging, jeez,” she called out to him before closing her door.
John walked back into the living room and paced. He looked at the watch. Three o’clock. He checked the clock on Ronika’s wall to make sure. 198 divided by 66 o’clock. He was running out of time.
Ronika reappeared a moment later and leapt onto the couch in the living room. She grabbed the pink blanket John had used the night before and curled up into a ball. “So now what happens is you disappear, and if things go like they did on the bus, I pass out, or something. Right? I’m getting comfy.”
“This is serious,” John answered back, still walking back and forth across the room.
“I know that,” she said defensively. “Would you prefer I’m holding a knife or something when I go unconscious?”
“What? No. Sorry,” he said quickly. “I’m nervous.”
“I know,” Ronika said warmly. “But, hey! I just had an idea. Hold on.” She slid out from under the blanket and bounced to her feet. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this last night.”
She ran to her desk and leaned behind it to the back of her monstrous computer tower. Her head reappeared a few seconds later with an enormous grin slapped across the front of it.
“Check this out,” she said smugly. In her hand she held a small, boxy, humanoid machine. It was a robot.
“Mouse,” Ronika said.
“What?”
“This is Mouse. M-O-U-S-E. Multi-Option Universal Service Entity. I built him ... sort of,” she explained, handing it to John. “The casing, bipedal function, and so forth were already there when I bought the little guy. But I’ve made some significant modifications.” She tilted her head and smiled.
“Are you going to try and use it to remove the watch from my arm?” John asked excitedly.
“No!” Ronika reeled, shocked at the question. She took Mouse from John’s hands and held it defensively against her chest. “Not after what you told me happened to the last dude who tried it. Are you crazy?”
“No?” John replied, more a question than an answer.
Ronika reservedly handed him back the robot.
“Okay, check it.” Ronika bounced back to her desk and pulled out a pair of seemingly ordinary arm-length gloves that had been deliberately hand-marked in a rainbow of colors. She slid them over her hands and sat in front of a large, modified webcam sitting between her twin monitors. After a few clicks of her computer’s mouse, she held the gloves up to the camera. As she moved her arms to the left, John was surprised to find Mouse’s arms mimic the action precisely. Ronika grabbed the headset from next to her on the desk and put it over her head. She unhooked it from her computer and plugged it into the front of her webcam. Mouse continued to replicate her movements.
“Nice to meet you. I’m Mouse,” Ronika said into the headset’s microphone. Her voice played simultaneously out of a tiny speaker in the robot. She extended her hand toward the camera, as if to shake its hand. Mouse extended his pincher-style hand to John in tandem. John took it gingerly between his left pointer-finger and thumb. He shook it in introduction.
“This is amazing,” John said.
Ronika beamed at the comment. “You really think so?” she asked.
“I really do,” John answered. “But, Ronika, how is this going to help?”
“Well, I can talk to you and stuff. Maybe help? Plus, I can see what Mouse sees, too. Look.”
John looked toward her monitor and saw himself from the robot’s perspective. He looked into the metal visor where Mouse’s eyes would be if it were human. He waved his hands in front of it and watched the live video of him doing so on Ronika’s monitor.
“This is great,” John began, losing volume as he spoke. A weakness was washing over him. It was almost time. He backed up and sat on the couch before his condition forced it.
“John!” Ronika yelled. “Is this it? Is it happening?”
“Put Mouse in my messenger bag so I don’t drop it. Get in your feathery blanket thing,” he said as calmly as possible, quickly losing the strength of his voice.
Ronika quickly followed his instructions. After securing Mouse, she curled tightly into her ball of fluff on the couch and watched in wonder at John’s arm as it began to spasm wildly.
“Amazing,” she whispered.
John groaned and tried to steady his arm.
“John,” Ronika said quietly, leaning into him, “would you be angry if I told you I was excited?”
John disappeared.
January 31st, 1972:
With each left step, Felix absently dragged the bottom of his foot across the floor as he made his way toward room B13. The friction of his sole against the freshly polished tile caused a choppy vibration that hummed down the corridor between his footsteps. The noise was a welcome one and, for him, oddly calming. He’d never liked the quiet, and certainly wasn’t likely to find much else down the long, lonely halls of Harvard University during this time of night.
He took a moment to look down at the partially cracked face of his wristwatch. In three minutes it would be precisely one thirty in the morning, which meant that come three minutes from now, he will have missed the entire class he was supposed to be arriving at one hour and fifty-seven minutes ago. He wasn’t particularly sure why he was still on his way to the soon-to-be-empty classroom after its dismissal, but assumed that he’d figure it out by the time he arrived.
Felix heard the professor speaking in his head: What’s the point of participating in the program if you refuse to apply yourself and take part in our discussion? It was the same tired objurgation he’d heard many times before. He could recite it backward by now and decided to do so in his head as he walked farther down the way.
A foreign noise echoed from the stretch of corridor ahead of him, interrupting his train of thought. Felix stopped for a moment and listened; it was a pair of footsteps trotting toward him, followed by a second. It wasn’t long before the soft light of the hallway’s faded bulbs revealed the culprits, Jenn and her boyfriend Bradley. At least, he thought Bradley was her boyfriend; they certainly spent enough time together. Since meeting them both at the start of the program three years ago, Felix had never been able to pinpoint the precise nature of their relationship.
He pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose toward his eyebrows and peered out at the pair. He wondered what sort of person goes by “Bradley.” “Brad” seemed so much more efficient.
“Felix!” Bradley shouted. The muscular, blond nineteen-year-old chuckled a bit before jogging ahead of Jenn to meet Felix head on.
“Why is it that no matter what the conversation, you always laugh before you speak?” Felix asked, not expecting an answer.
Bradley complied with the assessment. “What’s going on, bud?” he asked. “Where were you tonight?”
“Oh, you know me, Brad,” he replied. “Just busy, per usual.”
Bradley smirked. “It’s Bradley, actually. As I know you already know.”
“Well, if you’ll excuse me, Bradley,” Felix replied tiredly, “as you yourself have pointed out, I am quite late for class this evening.”
Bradley chuckled. “Late? You’re a bit more than late, pal. Class ended just a minute ago.”
“Then I suppose,” Felix said, “I am exceedingly early for tomorrow’s. Either way, if you’ll excuse me.”
“Huh?”
“I am trying to ... ”
Felix paused his response, interrupted by Jenn’s noisy approach. He looked past Bradley to her feet and watched her clonk briskly toward their conversation in those purple high-heeled shoes she so often wore. She strolled up to Bradley’s backside and parked herself directly behind him, peering from over his left shoulder at Felix. Her slender body was completely concealed by Bradley’s large frame, giving Felix the illusion that Bradley now had two heads, albeit one much more attractive than the other.
Felix had always found Jenn appealing, but her physicality was where any thought of interest halted. She was attractive enough--good complexion, light eyes, athletic build--but something was off.
What’s wrong with this one? he wondered. It’s the way she always says my name, he immediately decided, like she’s spitting out something unexpectedly pickle-flavored. Or perhaps it’s simply that insufferable Bradley who’s always hanging from her bodice like a vestigial appendage. And the hair, he added. Yes, her hair is just a bit too short. Five centimeters, perhaps.
“Felix?” Jenn asked, a puzzled look on her face.
“Oh, sorry,” Felix stumbled. “Did you just say something?”
“Yes,” she said, a smile forced across thin lips. “I was asking where you were tonight. I would really have liked to hear your input on the relationship between the quantum state and cellular mitosis.”
“Is that so?” Felix wasn’t sure whether to feel complimented by the comment or annoyed about the delay that came packaged with it. He wasn’t sure why but, at that exact moment, he felt an increasing urgency to speak with the professor. He had no logical reasoning behind the impulse, but didn’t like to be stopped from doing something he wanted to do, even if he didn’t know why he wanted to do it.
“Well, I’m sure the professor had much to say on the subject. Perhaps if I hurry now I can catch him before he turns in for the evening.”
Jenn spoke quickly, seeming to take the hint. “Yes, well, I truly hope to see you next class. I expect you understand how much everyone benefits from full attendance by all members of Curriculum B. Especially you. It would be good of you to think about the rest of us every once in awhile, and what we’re trying to accomplish in there.”
So much for subtlety, thought Felix. “I’m just a colleague, Jenn. A peer, nothing more,” he said aloud.
“I know.” She nodded and turned her attention. “Come, Bradley.” Jenn lifted her arms behind the muscular teen and gave him a gentle two-handed push forward. Bradley said goodbye and Felix watched the two of them as they walked off down the corridor, speaking about something or other, with about half a meter between them.
This was the sort of thing that bothered Felix. He was almost sure that they were a couple, but if so, then shouldn’t his arm be around her shoulders, or their hands be held together? Shouldn’t they be doing anything other than just walking half a meter apart?
I guess it really doesn’t matter, he thought. I won’t see them again anyway. Felix stopped walking. Won’t see them again? Why did I just think that? he pondered. Maybe I subconsciously want to leave the program. Is that why I feel like speaking with Professor Linus tonight? Felix continued his walk down the hallway toward room B13.
A few minutes later, Felix passed another group of students leaving the classroom. Some ignored him, others shot a quick and disapproving glance.
It’s not like the institution is paying me, Felix thought. I should be the angry one.
Soon, Felix arrived at B13’s door and knocked against its old thick wood three times. He wasn’t surprised by the, as he presumed, intentional lack of response. After all, the professor had to know it was he. Who else would be arriving at this hour?
He sighed and cracked the door open slowly. As predicted, Professor Linus was standing on the other side, well within audible range of the earlier knocks, erasing various equations from his oversized chalkboard.
Linus was an extremely tall man, only a few inches short of Felix himself. He looked enough like what one might expect from a prominent Ivy League professor, except for, perhaps, his infamous hairdo. The gray-speckled brown mane he sported looked more like the nesting place of an Amazonian bird than the quaff of a prominent academic. Yet, somehow, as many students had pointed out to the professor in the past, the look oddly seemed to fit him.
If the professor heard Felix enter the room, he didn’t betray it.
“Professor,” Felix said. He waited patiently for a response before trying again. “Professor Linus, I’d like to speak with you.”
“And I with you,” Linus quipped, “about two hours ago.”
“I know. You have my apologies.” Felix entered the room and walked toward one of the desks at its center.
“Pressing business at eleven thirty on a Wednesday, have we?” Linus asked without turning to face his absentee pupil.
“No, it isn’t that.”
“Then,” Linus took on the voice he normally reserved for lectures, “would it be safe to assume that we’ve made an active decision to not attend class tonight?”
“I suppose that would be a practical assumption.”
“Of course it’s a practical assumption,” Linus quipped, “but is it accurate?”
Felix lifted his glasses above his forehead and rubbed his eyes between his right index finger and thumb. “Yes,” he admitted.
“I thought so,” Linus said, quieting. “And would it then also be safe to conclude that the only reason you would be coming here tonight at one-thirty in the morning, after class has already concluded, is to ask me for permission to leave the program at a time when I’m clearly exhausted and therefore less likely to have the stamina to try to talk you out of it?”
“Yes,” Felix responded curtly, “that appears to be the long and short of it.”
Linus finished erasing the board and turned to face Felix for the first time since he’d arrived. “Good,” he said. “I’ve been waiting for it.”
“A little harsh, don’t you think, Professor?” Felix asked, slightly annoyed by the man’s reaction.
“No, no, don’t misunderstand me.” Linus took a step toward Felix and gestured at the chair behind his desk. “Take a seat.”
Felix, unsure of what to make of this unexpected line of discussion, cautiously sat in the professor’s puffy leather chair. Linus walked to the other side of his desk and pulled one of the loose plastic chairs from the main classroom to the front of it. He sat down.
“Listen, Felix,” Linus said, “you aren’t a humble man, but you aren’t a prideful one either, so this might be a slightly awkward conversation for both of us. I’m going to be completely honest with you, and I would like you to take what I am about to tell you seriously.” Felix nodded, his curiosity rising with each of the professor’s words.
“There are three things important to any scientist who wishes to affect his or her field. The first is breadth of knowledge, a collection of facts, theories and equations that exist in your brain-space instead of your textbooks. It’s the ability to answer relevant questions on the fly and reference your memory like an encyclopedia.
“The second is genuine ingenuity. This is something that can’t be achieved through mere hard work. It’s a raw talent that most people show before the age of four if they have it to begin with. If you weren’t born with it, then there isn’t anything you can do to achieve it.”
Felix skillfully internalized a yawn. This discussion was turning out to be a lot less intriguing and a lot more clichéd than he’d previously hoped. After all, it was almost two in the morning; almost time for bed.
“The first two,” the professor continued, “are something that everyone who was invited to participate in Curriculum B share. Each student who attends this private late night course is one of the brightest scientific minds alive in the world today. But you, Felix, are something more. You are the only one of my students who shows the third quality, the ability to synthesize that wide knowledgebase with ingenuity on an enlightened level: true, genius-level thinking and comprehension. And I’m not talking about some six-year-old with an early penchant for chess. What I reference is the combination of a genius thought-process and a practical understanding of science. It’s the ability to produce and manipulate what we like to call ‘super science.’”
Felix stood out of Linus’ chair and stretched his lengthy arms toward the ceiling. “Very well, Professor. You’ve convinced me to stay. No need to keep us both awake any longer for the needless coddling of my ego. We’ll see each other tomorrow.”
Linus jumped from his chair and confronted Felix before he could move.
“You aren’t listening to me, Felix.” Linus placed his hands on the sides on Felix’s arms just below his shoulders and guided him back down into his seat. “I’m trying to say that your abilities are beyond anyone’s in the classroom.” Felix started to stand again, but was stopped once more by the professor’s grip, this time, pressing him down into the chair with more force than before. “Felix, your aptitude in quantum biology, theoretical and applied both, surpasses even my own. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it surpasses anyone known to us here, in Europe, Asia, or beyond. And I have an offer for you.”
“An offer?” Felix asked. The professor sharply released his hold on Felix’s arms and took a step backward. The hook was set.
Felix shook out the wrinkles Linus had caused in his shirtsleeves and brought his glasses back down to his face. “What sort of offer?”
“An offer from the funders of this program,” Linus replied.
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.”