Black Balloon

Chapter 7

I was jolted from this contemplative state by the door bursting open and a military guard walking in, not Sergeant Dickhead but someone who looked just like him. (They all looked alike.)

"Come with me," he demanded.

I was beginning to feel like the family dog: "Sit, stay, lay down. Good boy."

I was taken to the same conference room from yesterday, or what I thought was yesterday. Who could know? An older man with distinguished salt-and-pepper hair was waiting for me. He gestured towards one of the empty chairs:

"Please. Sit," the man said in a German accent.

He wore a black suit and glasses, and was positioned opposite me at the long end of the table.

"You can leave us now," he instructed the guard, who then stepped outside and closed the door.

"Miles, I am Dr. Frank Gendelman. I'm the project manager and lead engineer here. I'd like to ask you a few questions, if you'd allow me?"

"That would be fine."

He held a brown folder identical to the one the previous interrogator had taken notes in.

"I want to start by admitting to you that my colleague, Mr. Barnett, he thinks you are telling us a fiction, but I...I think you are being truthful. We had a lively debate on the subject and most of my colleagues disagreed with me. But that's okay, I am used to that."

He's the good-cop to Barnett's bad-cop, I thought. He's trying to put me at ease so I'll talk.

"Everything I've said is the God's honest truth. I swear," I insisted.

"Can I call you Miles? Or do you prefer Mr. Vandergriff?"

"Miles is fine."

"Miles, I, like everyone else around here, am very curious as to how you ended up inside of the equipment."

"I already told the other guy all of this."

"Yes, and I have read his report. Very interesting. But I'd like to explore it further, if you'd allow me."

"Ok."

"Well, regardless of whether or not you are lying, it is an undeniable fact that when Edmund opened that door, he found you inside. That unto itself is baffling to me. And I would hardly have believed him, except it was witnessed by a dozen men who swear there is no way you could have gotten inside unnoticed. 'Impossible', they say. They had been surrounding that machine for hours, and if you'd been inside it that long you would have suffocated. My team performs a thorough inspection before every test, and if that test wasn't capable of revealing a full-grown man hiding inside the collection chamber, then...well theun, we wouldn't be worth the salary we are paid. There is absolutely no way you were inside when the hatch was closed and yet, you were there when it was opened. Perplexing."

"They are wrong," I objected. "I did climb inside but nobody saw me, at least I don't think so. There was nobody around. It was stupid and trust me, I regret it very much."

"No offense, but you do not look like a sophisticated 'secret agent' person...James Bond."

"None taken."

"And yet, you WERE in the chamber and nobody seems to know how you got there."

"I told you how and you said you believed me. Your men didn't do their stupid test. They lied to you I guess. 'Cuz there was nobody there."

"I do believe you, but perhaps it's more complicated than even you realize. You described your year of birth as 1988, is that correct?" he asked.

"Yes."