The girl in green got off of her bike. She had just arrived at a local café and would meet a small panel of people to discuss a potential contract.
So far, the complete details of the contract were unclear. She had read the qualifications online before she applied for the position. She must speak a minimum of three languages, at native or near-native fluency. She must have a background in social sciences and understand how to work globally, with people of diverse backgrounds. This much was clear.
She had submitted her application, with a cover letter, her resume and a recording of her voice speaking three different languages. Her languages of choice were English, Farsi and Swahili. She knew three other languages as well, but the rest were not as impressive as these. Many people have studied French, German and Russian.
She was locking her bike and a swell of suffocating heat encompassed her. Her hands were trembling as she tried to turn the key and she suddenly felt nauseous. She looked around, sensing that someone was watching her. “Why can’t I get this to work?” she thought.
She straightened her legs and took a small back bend. She inhaled and exhaled a couple times, trying to blow away the hot swelter. Her mind felt foggy.
She made another quick attempt at the lock before giving up and deciding to walk inside. She still had a sense that someone was around, secretly watching.
She opened the door and a cool breeze paraded past her from the interior. Once inside, there were only three customers, all sitting alone in chairs and reading the same book. She paused for a moment, wondering how this was possible, and each of them raised their gaze to meet her eyes. Were these the people on the panel she would meet?
She made her way to the counter for a cup of Joe, and noticed the nauseous feeling growing in her gut. The woman at the counter had a blank expression and stared at her with empty eyes. She said nothing.
“Umm…yeah, can I…” she waited for some sort of reaction from the woman behind the counter. Nothing. Only a blank stare and empty eyes.
“Can I get a…a cup of…a cup of coffee?” the girl in green continued.
The woman blinked. Suddenly, she gasped for air. A quick gasp, like she hadn’t breathed the entire time she was being spoken to. She turned around a poured a cup of coffee into a white Styrofoam cup from a simple slow drip machine. With a trembling hand, she reached the cup toward the girl in green, whose name was Crystal.
Again, the woman at the counter gasped. Crystal saw the tendons in her neck protrude sharply. The woman said nothing. Crystal took the coffee and waited for a price. The woman gasped.
“How much?” Crystal asked.
“$1.”
When Crystal turned around, all of the people reading the same book were still staring at her, but more startling was what she saw outside the window.
Upon an utterly blank and flat horizon, pale brown dust created a desert landscape. What? She had left her bike at a bike rack in front of a busy street. Her hands trembling again, the pit in her stomach deepening, Crystal glanced back at the woman who only gasped for air, in one big gulp.
Slowly, she began to approach the café door. She looked at the people reading the book, still staring at her, and she said quickly, “Are you from the panel?”
No one answered.
Crystal quickened her pace until she reached the door and pushed it open with more force than expected.
Outside was a dry heat, a hot breeze and a landscape engulfed in silence. She looked around and without warning, there was a man in a suit standing to her right.
He smiled at her; Crystal felt the warmth of the coffee in her hand.
“So, you’ve found it,” the man said, extending his hand for a shake, smiling. Crystal remained paralyzed with her cup of coffee. “It’s alright,” he continued, “the oxygen is just thin here.” His hand was cold, extremely cold and bony.
With a smirk, it was as if he answered for her the question of why the woman behind the counter gasped in sudden and quick successions.
“What did I find?” Crystal asked, after mustering the strength to speak.
“Don’t worry,” the man in the suit laughed. “You will be able to go back to where you started. This café just works as a sort of time warp. We can’t always do our work in the regular world. You must know that. The tests in time traveling have been repeatedly successful. We have never become stuck in our journey, at least not in the past 20 years. It’s quite alright. Soon, you will see everything.”
The hot breeze stopped blowing. The man stood still in smiling. Crystal looked around again. There was a dusty road to her left, a barren beaten down pathway, in case any car would ever need to pass through. She saw a speed limit sign covered in the pale brown earth, a rocky mountain just beyond and only one other sign visible in her line of vision.
“Area 52 Welcomes You”
She dropped her Styrofoam cup.
