A young man wakes up in the desert. The wreckage of an ambulance lies smashed against a boulder and charred to a crisp. By the stitches on his head and face, he assumes he was the patient. But why was an ambulance driving through a desert? Where wa...
"There may be variables missing, or maybe we just gotta recalibrate the stock solutions," she said to herself as she paced to the lab, her eyes stuck to the folder, "or maybe these formulas are not correct..."
"Watch out!"
She barely had time to look up before she ran into one of the security guards. Papers flew through the air, the folder fell to the ground, and if it hadn't been for the chivalrous reflexes of the guard, she would have thudded to the linoleum, too.
"Oh! I'm sorry, my bad!"
"It's OK; it's OK."
The guard helped her collect the papers and folder. A black man in his forties with a horseshoe mustache which insulated a paternal half-smile.
"Thank you," Light looked at the ID card on his chest, "Alkali. Hmm...That's not a very common name."
The man smiled.
"It's not actually a name. My parents named me that to remember—"
"That they met at Alkali Lake, right?" she interrupted.
"How do you know?"
"Well, it would be strange to name someone after alkalinity, and there are many Alkali lakes, so...it's just a matter of statistics. Which one did they meet at? The one in Oregon?"
"The one in Glacier County, Montana. That's why my middle name is Glacier." Colt stared at her oddly. "Wait...We know each other...we've met before, right?"
Light looked back at him with the same strange look.
"Of course, we've met before. We work in the same place."
"No, I don't mean that. It's just...seems like we know each other from somewhere."
"I don't know what to say."
"Maybe I got it wrong. My bad, I guess. It's just weird, you know...it's just...just..." Alkali's eyes lit up suddenly, like two blazing sparks straight out of hell. "Just you."
Those last two words made her feel unexpectedly uncomfortable, prompting her to put her hand on her belly in an instinct to protect herself.
"I don't think I'm following."
Alkali tried to answer, only to realize he didn't know what to say. Instead, he pulled that ancient lighter from his pocket.
"Here," he said, putting it in her hands.
"Why are you giving me this?"
Alkali printed an aura of rationality to his words, as if he were balancing an equation.
"It's just a gift; a memento of us having met."
She accepted it without pretension or any attempt to understand.
"Oh...thank you, I guess."
"Hurry," replied the man with an unexpectedly warm smile, "you're gonna be late."
And the guard went on his way, leaving her alone, stunned, with the unique and strange certainty that, even though he was a flamboyant man, he wasn't crazy at all. She had definitely seen him before.
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