Craig Curtis plopped down in the lounge chair on his sprawling deck. He uncapped a bottle of protein drink, gulped down half of it and bit into the sweetest,
juiciest peach he had ever tasted. Life was good. He leaned back, his gaze
drifting contemplatively at the buffering expanse of beachfront leading to the
frothy shore of a sky blue ocean.
Craig was hardly winded after his five mile double-time run. He finished his drink, consumed the remainder of his
peach, and decided more activity was in order. Maybe he’d bring the bike out
for a jaunt along the cycling path behind his house. It felt good to be cut off
from the world, to not be bound by schedules and obligations, stress and
aggravation, hard choices and harder decisions.
His phone chirped a nursery rhyme melody. Craig froze, staring at the flat palm size device as if it had just materialized in front of him. In the three weeks he’d been here the
phone never rang. It was a secure phone. Only one person other than the president
and a couple of cabinet secretaries had the number to that secure phone.
Craig picked up the phone, glanced at the illuminated display screen and groaned. He could have simply turned the phone off and hopped on his bike. But he knew the
caller was not going to give up so easily. And if the caller couldn’t reach
Craig by phone, that person would find another means. Reluctantly, Craig thumbed the answer pad.
“Go ahead.”
“Craig, how are you?” an irritatingly cheerful voice boomed from the other end. Irritating and pleasantly infectious at the same time.
Craig could not help but to crack a smile. “I’m doing fantastic, Uncle Reese.”
“Are you really, Craig?” Uncle Reese’s tone was mildly skeptical. “Are you sure you’re not bored out of your wits? I mean what is it that you do day in and day out?
Running and strolling along the beach, frequent biking, lazing about in the
house or lounging on the deck for hours on end…”
Craig instinctively eyed the sky. He stepped away from his chair, backtracking toward the sliding door entrance to his house. “Have you got me under satellite
surveillance?”
Uncle Reese chuckled. “Standard procedure. No need to be alarmed. We have to keep our off duty ops under observation for their own protection. That way if a hit squad
invades your tropical abode we can call in a rapid response team.”
“I can handle my own security and I’m not an agency op, I’m a free lancer so you can divert your sky eyes elsewhere.”
“Touche’, but you’re still my nephew. Your mother would kill me if I let anything happen to you.”
Craig had one foot in his house the other planted on the deck. “That’s never stopped you from sending me into places where a thousand things could happen to me, none of
them good. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have some biking to do…but then you
probably already know that.”
As expected, Uncle Reese was not that easy to get rid of. “Craig, I think you know that my call is not a social one.”
“I figured that out from the start. My answer is no.”
“You haven’t heard me out.”
Craig retreated into the kitchen. “I’m a freelancer. I have the option of accepting or turning down assignments. I don’t have to hear you out. My answer is no.”
“Craig, in addition to my day job, I’ve been, for the past ten years, involved with a highly classified project. Every secret organ of the government is involved.”
Uncle Reese slipped into his back home vernacular. “Dis ting is big, mon ,
really, really big. We talkin’ national…no, world security big.”
Craig detected the underlying gravity beneath Uncle Reese’s lilting delivery and had no reason to dismiss the other’s claim as mere hyperbole. As ethically
ambiguous as his uncle could be at times, the former never needed to spice up a
presentation to get Craig to accept a mission.
Temptation tickled the back of Craig’s mind, until memories of his last goat-screw of a mission soured his curiosity.
“I need you on this one, Craig,” his uncle persisted, almost at the threshold of pleading. “I’m coming with a copter to pick you up.”
“Keep your copter, Uncle Reese. And find someone else for whatever scheme you’ve got cooking. I’m not going anywhere.”
Craig stared petulantly out the bubble-shaped copter window, pointedly ignoring the man sitting beside him.
Uncle Reese was glowingly fit and trim for his 60 plus years. He was dressed in white-- stark, gleaming,unblemished--white. White casual button down short sleeve
shirt. White creased slacks, a white Panama hat, even white dress sandals. His low cut hair and neatly trimmed beard
stood out like fresh snow against the contrasting sable of his skin. Uncle
Reese had clearly taken the time to cultivate the image of a carefree Caribbean
jet setter.
The pilot increased speed and in seconds Craig’s island paradise became a fading pimple on the ocean.
“Don’t feel so bad,” said Uncle Reese, plucking a prepared cigar from his shirt pocket. “You were wasting away back there. I saved you.”
Craig turned from the window, fixing his uncle with a seething look. “How considerate. Where are we going?” Craig glanced disapprovingly at the cigar. He
didn’t like tobacco. Uncle Reese knew that.
Uncle Reese lit up anyway. He took a pull and blew out a heavy puff of sweetly pungent smoke, which quickly dissipated through the overhead slits of the copter’s air
filtration vents.
“We’re going to our operations base.”
“And where is that?”
“A secret location.”
Craig staved off a bout of exasperation…barely. “I’m regretting this already.”
Uncle Reese looked at Craig with a smile that said he knew his nephew all too well. “No you’re not. You can’t wait to see what I have to show you.”
Craig exhaled a conceding sigh. His uncle knew him too well.
Secret locations always brought to Craig’s mind isolated hideaways tucked in the middle of deserts, inside mountains or miles beneath oceans. Goodness knows, he
had been inside more than a few of those types of places. He fully expected to
arrive at a distant under populated locale. What better place to house a
project as secretive as the one his uncle described?
Craig was surprised to find himself in the in bustling heart of a major Midwestern American city. So many people. The sheer volume of activity after so much
solitude was a veritable shock to his senses. Craig had to readjust and fast.
He was sitting in the back seat of a white sport utility with dark tinted windows.
His uncle sat beside him, silent, deep in whatever ruminations occupied him at
the moment.
Traffic was stop and go. Skyscrapers towered above, proud, preening, mirror reflective tributes to modern architecture, to American prestige, to the cutting edge
wonders of a civilization reaching for the stars.
The driver wore the look of a dutiful agency functionary as easily as he donned the dark sunglasses wrapped around his eyes.
The sport utility pulled in front of a huge block long building and stopped.
Uncle Reese reached for the door handle. “Ah, here we are.”
Craig grabbed Uncle Reese’s arm. “Here we are where?”
“The secret location.”
Craig peered out the window on his uncle’s side, taking in the expanse of a landmark structure with an art deco façade framing the entryway. “An opera house?”
“What better front?” Uncle Reese smiled, opened the door, and stepped out of the vehicle.
Craig watched the sport utility pull off until it blended into the afternoon traffic. Then he followed his uncle to the entrance.
They walked through the lobby into an atrium ablaze with red carpets and decorative wall carvings coated in gold. A multitude of doors inlaid with similar gold colored
patterning led to the theatre. Marble columns of Greco-Roman design flanked the
atrium.
Uncle Reese passed the theatre, heading toward a staircase leading to a lower level.
The lower floor was not as extravagant as the top level. Presumably it had an administrative function.
The two men walked by an assortment of rooms with closed doors.
Craig assumed one of those rooms to be their destination. But his uncle took him to an open elevator just around
the corner at the farthest end of the floor. Craig remained silent when Uncle
Reese pressed the LL button and the elevator doors closed. What’s another level
down? Large buildings typically had more than one basement level floor.
Fifteen seconds later—Craig kept count—the doors opened. Craig was the first to step out at his uncle’s beckoning. He looked around, beheld a vast office space, replete
with desks and cubicles. There was even
a water cooler outside a glass enclosed interior Craig presumed to be a break
room. People were sitting at desks peering intently at terminal screens. The
clickity-clack of tapped keyboards reverberated across the floor.
Unassuming types in casual slacks, wearing loosened ties, circulated from desk to desk with paperwork in hand.
Typical office environment, typical office activity. Nothing remarkable to catch Craig’s eye. The only thing about the place was that very few people outside
this room knew it existed.
“Nice mockup,” Craig remarked insincerely. “Now you can tell me why I’m here.”
Uncle Reese flashed a circus master smile.
Craigs heard a tiny alarm bell pinging in the back of his head.
“It would be better if I showed you,” Uncle Reese said a little too enthusiastically.
He led Craig past the mild commotion of the larger office area down a narrow corridor flanked by vacant office spaces.
All the doors to the vacant spaces were wide open, except for one.
Uncle Reese stopped in front of the closed door. He opened the door, gesturing his nephew to follow and stepped inside.
Craig was assaulted by darkness the second he entered the room. It was a stygian blackness that bypassed his normal lack of wariness of dark places to claw into
his soul. Layers of courage were peeled away in strips, revealing tender welts
of childhood fears. Another layer exposed and panic would rise to the fore.
Craig struggled to remain calm, at a loss to explain his sudden, uncharacteristic feeling of faint heartedness. “Uncle Reese, can you, uh, turn the lights on, please?”
The lights did come on in a manner of speaking. What Craig saw when the darkness passed had him questioning his very senses. He was not in a room. He was outside, somewhere,
standing on black tarmac. He saw buildings, short squat industrial gray
structures, overlooked by three taller bubble topped buildings that resembled
air traffic control towers. He saw aircraft parked in rows next to the
shortest, widest of the structures. Their designs were like nothing he had ever
seen before. Some craft were shaped like bullets, others swept winged with turtle
shell bodies. One craft had a flat, elegantly curved design that brought to
Craig’s mind that of a stingray. He looked up into the sky, saw that it was
clear, but strangely, not blue. The sky was a colorless gruel painted by an unusually
bright sun. Craig shaded his eyes,
examining the sky a little more closely…sun? Suns? Impossible! Must have been some sort of climate related
optical illusion. This whole setup must
have been an illusion.
Then, he noticed the air. It felt lighter, like he was at a higher altitude. He had to breathe a little harder. “Uncle Reese, is this some kind of prank? Where the
hell are we?”
“No prank, Craig. Welcome to the headquarters of Project Illusion.” Uncle Reese took Craig’s elbow, gently directing his dumbfounded nephew toward one of those odd
buildings in the near distance. “When I explain to you what Project Illusion is
you’re going to wish I was pulling a prank. Trust me.”
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