The Mind Virus

Chapter 4 - Part 1

Terry hadn't been feeling well lately, but he arrived at the hotel all the same. When the company hired him, they'd held the meeting at his college. Now they were meeting him in a rented conference room at the Pine Springs airport hotel. He assumed their permanent offices were out of state, but he had never bothered to ask.

12:43 – he was early. It hadn't taken him as long to find the place nor to find a parking spot as he expected. For an airport, the parking lot was strangely desolate. He locked his car and walked across the seemingly abandoned asphalt. The sliding automatic door at the front of the hotel opened as he approached it. The lobby was as quiet as the parking lot, save for a receptionist sitting near the entrance.

"Are you here for the 1 o'clock meeting with Mr. Bach?" the receptionist said cheerfully.

"Uh, yeah, I am, actually." Terry was mildly surprised that they seemed to have so little going on that he was their only appointment at this time, but decided not to question it.

"Through the hallway, take your first left, and you'll see the Willow Room on the right. Mr. Bach will be with you in a moment."

And so he went. As he walked, he wondered whether the hotel had any customers at all. Few cars outside, no one but the receptionist working – he found it odd. And when had they done away with staff uniforms? He'd been to this hotel just a few years ago, and all the staff wore those tacky red blazers. He didn't think too much on it. He tried not to think too much about anything, least of all old memories. So many old times filled him with an unpleasant sensation when he recalled them. It must have to do with the flu he's caught, he thought, although he'd never been sick quite like this before.

The elegant door opened before him, revealing a medium-sized room that oozed luxury. A long table sat in the middle. It was surrounded by eight comfortable-looking chairs. The blinds were all closed, but given their size and location, Terry imagined the wall behind them was all glass.

He sat on one of the chairs and took a sip from the glass of water that was placed on the table. The digital clock on the wall read 12:47 – almost fifteen minutes to go. The room was too dingy, Terry decided. He got up and walked toward the blinds, looking for the cord that opened them. There didn't seem to be one, not on the left, not on the right, and not anywhere in between. Maybe they were electronically controlled, but upon inspecting the remote control in the middle of the table, Terry found that that was for the big screen at the front of the room. Maybe he could roll them up manually. He tried to do just that, but they seemed too tight to move.

"Not enjoying the romantic atmosphere, Mr. Howell?" a jovial voice came from behind him.

"Sorry, I was just –"

"No worries, no worries. Come sit down." Mr. Bach gestured toward one of the chairs. He seemed almost cartoonishly happy. If Terry hadn't met him before, he would have guessed the man had just won the lottery. That giant Hollywood-white smile never removed itself from his face, not even when he was talking, somehow. "Do you know why I called you in, Mr. Howell?"

"I was actually wondering that. You never said when we spoke on the phone. Some sort of a debriefing, I guess." Terry had eased himself into a chair.

"You could think of it like that." Mr. Bach too sat down in a chair, just next to Terry. "You see, Terrence, you have done us and our client a huge favor."

"Uh, thanks, I guess. I was just doing what I was hired to do, if I'm being honest."

"And you did it tremendously. The stakes were very high here, Terrence, and you pulled through."

"Were they? All I did was intercept the –"

"And you did that very well. I knew you would too. You know, it's not easy finding good help these days."

"Not even to filter incoming mail?" Terry was a little surprised at the praise he was getting. His job hadn't been that difficult. It hadn't been any degree of difficult.

"The truth is, Terrence, I couldn't explain this to you if I wanted to. There's far more going on behind the scenes than you're aware of, and, with respect, I need to keep it that way."

"All right, fair enough."

"Here I am rambling. You must forgive me. Let's get to why I called you here in the first place – to pay you."

"Already been paid, actually. Checked my bank account the other day. It's all in there."

"I don't mean your hourly rate. I'm talking about your bonus."

Terry perked up. "I don't remember reading anything about that in the contract."

"That's because it wasn't in the contract. We want to take care of you. Like I said, the stakes were very high and you pulled through."

Terry wanted to address the apparent high stakes that Bach had made reference to twice, but he was a bit too mesmerized by the idea of getting a bonus. He let the grinning man carry on instead.

"I'm here to offer you $50 000."

Terry's mouth went dry. "I – I don't know what to say."

"You don't need to say anything. Just sign this form, and the money will be in your account within three working days." Bach slid a form across the table to Terry.

"What's in this?"

"Just a few conditions. Feel free to give it a read now. It's not too long."

"Can you give me the short version?" In spite of his better instincts, Terry was itching to sign the form and collect the money.

"Yeah. It's a non-disclosure agreement of sorts. Basically, in exchange for the bonus, you don't tell anyone about anything to do with the job you did. Nothing about the item you intercepted, nothing about where you worked, nothing about us, nothing about our client, nothing at all."

"Didn't I sign one of these when I started?"

"No, you didn't."

"Are you sure? I could have sworn it was impressed upon me that I'm not to tell anyone anything about the job."

"It was indeed, but we didn't give you a non-disclosure agreement to sign."

"I don't mean to tell you how to do your job, but wouldn't it have been more prudent to get me to sign this kind of form before I'd done the job?"

Mr. Bach's smile didn't falter in the slightest, but Terry could swear his eyes were getting more and more hostile. "Perhaps it would have, Mr. Howell, but that was not done, so here we are now."