Alone

He didn’t want to feel disconnected, troubled, and alone. The seventy four thousand people in front of him would never know that.

“If I understand you,” she said disapprovingly, “You are saying that you will answer this dubious add.”

‘Yes, well, I intend to do that,” he answered her.

“Do you think that whoever this is that they are going to be able to make you feel better?”

“I want to feel better. Are you saying that there is something wrong with wanting to feel better? You’re not making me feel better.” He wasn’t really trying to be antagonistic. He was, after all, deeply in love with her, though she had already told him that that was not acceptable.

“I want to help you, Thomas. You know I do. I’m trying to reach out to you. I thought we were making progress.”

He couldn’t look at her. Her hair. Her eyes. He couldn’t, and he did.

“It’s, it’s so hard,” he said. “I can’t talk to anyone. I can’t meet anyone new, anymore. It’s just too hard to be turned away all the time.”

“Who’s turning you away?”

“Everyone.”

“I don’t think that’s true, Thomas. I don’t think we are working forward, like this. Do you remember what we talked about? Let’s work forward. Let’s talk about what we can do, together, not things that we are imagining are true but can’t prove.”

There was silence between them, a long silence, but it was neither awkward nor uncomfortable. It was the silence between two people deeply involved in each other whether they wanted to be or not.

“Sometimes,” Thomas said, “You know something is true even when you don’t have any proof.”

She didn’t react to what he said.

“Would it be alright with you if I read the ad?” She asked.

“Sure, yes, I mean why not,” he answered. He took out his phone, brought up the ad, and then turned the phone toward her, holding it in the way that said, ‘you can look, but you cannot touch.’

The first thing she noticed was that it wasn’t as dubious as he had her believe in the beginning.

“This is from the Interplanetary Relief Society, the IRS. This is real. But, didn’t you tell me you tried to enlist in the IRS after you graduated?”

“This isn’t the same as enlisting,” he said pulling the phone back and looking at the screen for a long time. “This is some kind of research, I guess. They are looking for volunteers to be isolated on these worlds for a short study, and it says that they will pay upon satisfactory completion of the test. I don’t know why they would reject me.”

“You can’t think of a reason why they would not accept you?” she asked.

“No,” he said and looked away from her for the first time since the session had begun.

“Maybe, this,” she said, making that circle with her hand in front of her, pointing at the floor between them, the way she always did when she was trying to remind him that he was here, not originally because he wanted to be, and he knew it. “Maybe, the people who helped you come to me would want to hear about this idea of yours, before you make any decisions.”

“I’ve made up my mind,” he said and looked back at her. He made eye contact with her and she did not look away. She was the only one that would not look away. “I’m going there tomorrow. I’m not required to come here anymore, you know that’s true. The only reason I keep coming back is…”

“Thomas, you know what we agreed,” she interrupted him.

He didn’t like being interrupted, but he let her do it. He would let her do anything. All she had to do was ask.

“I, know, I know, I understand,” he said with a sigh. “You’re right. I was wrong. I never meant to hurt anyone, you know that’s true. You told me so, you helped me get over all of that, and I know I said, and felt, and did some things but it was…”

“Thomas,” she said angrily.

“No, no just let me finish. I don’t want you to be angry with me. I know what I said, at the beginning was, was because of the things that I was afraid of, and I’m better now. I can tell you how I feel, and it doesn’t,” she lifted her hands as if to make a wall between them, “no, no, you don’t understand. I’m not bringing it up again. Look, just listen to me. I don’t fit in, I know I don’t. And I know I’m scared of being alone, and I know I hurt people before because I didn’t understand what I wanted, what people were asking of me, what they expected of me, and I’m getting better I know I am. I walked here all by myself. I didn’t need help this time. By myself, I walked past seventy four thousand, two hundred ninety three people, and I got here all on my own, with all of them in front of me, I did it. I did it because I am ready to be alone. I need to be alone. The ad says it is for four months. I can do it. I need to do it. I need to do this and I am going to do it with or without your approval.”

She let him get it all out. It spilled out of him in a tumble of rushed, but coherent words. It was a complete process from start to finish. It wasn’t easy, but he was able to tell her what he wanted without telling her he wanted her to be a part of the decision. He didn’t really know that he was going to be able to do it, but he was sitting there, staring at her incredible face and he did it. He told her he had a plan. He told her he would go away from her, and she was shocked. He could see it in her face. She was shocked.

She stared at him in disbelief. It was all over her face. She recovered, finally, and reached for the table beside her, lifting her glasses and placing them on her face gently, with both hands, only touching the edges of the frames with the tips of her fingers.

“You counted everyone in the street, on the station platform, and on the train, didn’t you?” She asked as she lifted the tablet and swiped the screen with her finger.

“Yes,” he said.

“But you came here on your own, and you have made this decision. I think that’s remarkable. I think you’ve made real progress Thomas, real progress,” she said as she tapped away at the screen of her tablet. “With your permission, I’d like to draft a letter for you to take with you when you go to the IRS. It will identify your case file, which is confidential, but they will know you were in treatment and that you are not under any court order that prevents you from volunteering. I’ll include the office as a point of contact, if you’d like, for any emergency should it come up while you are away. Would that be alright with you?”

“Yes, that would be, nice, really nice of you, Doctor Jane.”

“When you come back, Thomas, we don’t need to see each other. You can make an appointment, if you have any question about what your experiences were like, if you are having any troubles like before, but I don’t think you will. I think you are going to be alright Thomas, I really do. Good luck to you. I hope being alone for four months gives you what you are hoping to find. Now if you could just see Mary at the desk on the way out, she’ll make sure we have the right contact information to send the letter to you so you can transfer it to the IRS agents when you see them.”

“Thank you, Doctor Jane. You’ve meant a lot to me, and I don’t know if I can ever thank you.”

“Thank you, Thomas, you’ve worked hard. You deserve this. You’ve earned this.”

When he finally left her office, and stepped out into the street, he counted two hundred eighty nine people, seven dogs, forty three birds, and ninety seven different plants before he thought to himself, “She might not love me the way I love her, but there is time to change her mind. There is time.”

“I think we have all the information we need, Mr. Keck,” said the fresh faced young man in the crisp black and green uniform behind the tall desk.

Thomas’ heart beat like a machine that had been balanced incorrectly. He felt it in his chest and tried not to think about it.

“Is it going to take very long before I get some kind of answer regarding my application,” Thomas asked forcing each word out in what he hoped was a normal sounding voice.

The fresh faced young man smiled. He opened his mouth after a moment and was about to say something when the faint sound of a vibrating phone interrupted him. “Excuse me,” he said and while standing there on the other side of the tall desk, he glanced downward, reading a message quietly to himself.

Thomas stood there waiting for the fresh faced man to finish.

“Mr. Keck,” the fresh faced man said, “There is something the director would like to speak to you about. If you have a few minutes, could you please take a seat? He’ll be right with you.”

“Is there something wrong?” Thomas asked. His heartbeat slowed and he relaxed. There was always something wrong, Thomas knew it. He didn’t want it to feel like a comfort to finally be told.

“No sir,” the fresh faced man said.

Thomas turned away from the desk toward the nine chairs along the walls of the small office. He did not want to sit down.

“Thomas Benjamin Keck,” a man’s voiced said from behind him and Thomas turned around.

Another man, older, not fresh faced, but wearing a similar black and green uniform, was standing behind and to the right of the fresh faced young man. He had come through a door behind the desk. The door was still open and Thomas could see the clean, simple, undecorated, and well-lit hallway beyond.

“Yes, I’m Thomas Keck,” he said, and realized there wasn’t anyone else in the room, and that was odd.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Keck. If you have a little time, if you can spare some time, I have some things I’d like to talk to you about regarding your application. My name is Samuel Harrs, Director Harrs, and I am responsible for the programs here. Would you come with me, please?”

This older man, Harrs, had a hard look to him. He had a rough face, with deep lines of age. His brown eyes seem bright, which gave off mixed signals as to how old he might actually be. He had no hair, but he was not bald. Thomas could see that there was a fine, dark shadow on the man’s head that was the look of a shaved head with a few days of growth. Thomas wondered why a man with a head of hair would shave his head close like that.

“Yes, I have some time,” Thomas said and started walking toward Harrs as the older man stepped to the side and with one hand gestured to the hallway. As Thomas came closer to the desk, and had to maneuver around it to get to the doorway, he began to see that he could almost make out each individual, small, black hair on Harr’s head.

He began to count them.

Harrs moved quickly, for a man of his apparent age, moving across Thomas’ field of vision, from his left to his right, crossing through the doorway just a fraction of a second before Thomas reached it, and then he turned, smiled at Thomas, then lifted his arm and pointed to an open door just down the hall and on the right.

Thomas lost count.

“Is everything alright Mr. Keck?” Harrs asked as they stopped for a moment just through the door.

Thomas looked down at the ground, nodded his head a few times, and then walked ahead of Harrs toward the door on the right.

“Right in here, Mr. Keck. Please take a seat. This shouldn’t take long,” Harrs said as they moved through the door, Thomas first, into a small room with nothing but a plain little table between two hard, plastic chairs.

Thomas sat down.

Harrs pulled the other chair a bit further away from the table and sat down across from Thomas. He placed a small folder, which Thomas had not noticed before, on the table close to him, and then he said, “I see that you attempted to enlist in the Interplanetary Relief Society while a senior at Bradford University, Mr. Keck. Your enlistment tests indicated you were not compatible with the mission of the IRS, and yet you came here today to volunteer. I found that a little odd at first, but then I looked a little closer at your history, the history you provided us, and I was intrigued. Mr. Keck, you seem to be uncomfortable, can I get anything? I want to assure you, there isn’t a problem here, and you aren’t in any trouble.”

Thomas leaned forward in his chair, holding his hands together low between his knees and said, looking down all the time, “Could you please call me Thomas. I don’t really like being addressed as Mr. Keck. If you could, I’d appreciate it.”

“Is there a problem with your name, Thomas?” Harrs leaned back and put his hands on his knees. “Look, I won’t waste your time. I’ll try to be honest with you, Thomas. We have access to the records of your situation, the trouble you were in, and I understand, I think, why you have trouble being called by that name. Let me try to get right to the point. First, many of the details about your exact situation are stilled sealed by court order, but from what I was able to learn, this matter didn’t seem all that serious, at all. You received a sentence of community service, ordered to attend counseling, and probation for six months, which ended a long time ago. We here at the IRS are more than ready to dismiss all of that, considering your application. Second,” Harrs leaned forward slowly, and flipped the folder open, “We have a letter here, a letter that you provided, from Doctor Annalyse Jane. I can only assume you’ve read it for yourself.”

“I haven’t,” Thomas said.

“Well, alright then. This letter is the reason I asked to see you, Thomas. Doctor Jane is highly regarded, highly respected. I’m not surprised you chose her for your therapy.”

“I didn’t. It was my family’s idea. They made it happen. I didn’t want to go, at first, but they, well they, with the help of the courts, took me to see her. “

Thomas looked up and into Harrs' eyes as he recalled the first time he was forced to meet with Doctor Annalyse Jane. Harrs’ eyes held Thomas’ stare, but only for a moment, and then Harrs looked down at the paper in the folder. Harrs seem to be reading the letter, but then he looked up at the ceiling and asked a question Thomas wasn’t expecting.

“Why didn’t you just change your name, after the incident? It wouldn’t have been hard, especially for a young man of your intelligence, and I’ll be frank, determination. If the name bothers you so much, leave it behind. This letter indicates you have made serious progress in adapting to the world you once tried to upset. It says you understand the scope of what you did and are perfectly capable of taking on a task like this this one. I’m genuinely impressed, Thomas, impressed. I think you’ll be perfect for this task. I want to cut out some of the delay and offer you the job directly, here and now. Oh, there are still some things that need to be discussed, medical evaluations, language assessments, adaptability issues, but if you really are the man this letter says you are, I think we can put you to work very soon. What do you think about that?”

“You asked me a couple of different questions in those one hundred fifty five words, Director Harrs,” Thomas said, returning his gaze to the floor. “I wanted to change my name, but originally Doctor Jane said I was only running away from a problem I didn’t want to face, so I didn’t. Though, I might still, someday, if it ever becomes a problem for me again, but I don’t really think it will. I just don’t need to be called Mr. Keck, Thomas works fine for me, and I don’t really, ever, spend any time around other people, until recently that is, so it doesn’t actually come up that often. As to my application, I’ll take the job. When can you tell me more about where I’m going and what I’ll be asked to do? It sounded, from the ad, like it was out on the fringes, remote planet under initial cataloging I imagine, very little danger, but isolated, is that right?”

“No, Thomas. It is not more than a few jumps from here, actually. A sparsely populated planet, under the jurisdiction and protection of the Joint Planetary Resource Conservation Act, protected by the combined efforts of the CoIT, the UCoIG, and the IRS working together. You wont be put down on the world anywhere near the local populations, and the tech level is low so there is no possibility of contact for you to be concerned about. We have a few data collecting stations hidden around on several continents there and every five years we send someone in with the right skills to take care of the maintenance, remove instruments we no longer need and install new equipment to continue the remote research we are doing. We like to use volunteers for this work because it isn’t frequent enough to train a regular IRS agent to the tasks. We send you down, pick you up four or five months later, compensate you for your work, and send you home.”

Harrs stood up, and took the folder from the table. He held out his right hand toward Thomas, and said, “When can we get started, Thomas? We need to schedule a couple of medical exams. It typically takes about three weeks of training to familiarize someone with the specifics of the work we need done on the station and with your background I think we’ll be able to cut that down to half or less. Just let me know when you are available, when you can see to your affairs here, take care of anything you need, and we’ll begin.”

“There isn’t anything to take care of,” Thomas said, and did not shake Harrs’ hand.

“I’m sorry, Thomas, did I offend you? Did you change your mind? You won’t shake my hand?”

“I don’t do well touching people. It makes me uncomfortable, I’d prefer not to, thank you, but also, no, I didn’t change my mind. Just tell me where to go, and when to be there. I’m ready to start right now.”

the end