The knock at the door was soft, so soft I wasn’t even sure it was a knock. I concentrated and listened for it again, but it was difficult to hear anything over the industrial humming of the air filtration-cleansing-purifying-recycling apparatus in my office.
But there it was again, a soft tapping on the door.
I unbuckled my seat belt and stood, and was almost lifted off the floor. I quickly grabbed hold of the rope guides and made my way to the door. I opened it to see Wilson standing there wearing his Bob the Builder face mask. His eyebrows rose in what I believed to be horror as he peered at me, then glanced into the office.
“What the hell is going on in there?” he asked. “I’ve been banging on the door for ten minutes.”
I adjusted my lab googles to stop them from fogging, the condensation coming courtesy of my surgical mask. I tweaked the straw I had rigged through the mask and tried to remember to breath through it.
“Come in, quickly,” I said. “I don’t want my clean air commingling with the air in the hallway.”
Wilson stepped in and was immediately pinned against the wall by the force of the air purifying system.
“Use the rope guides,” I yelled. “They’re there for a reason.”
He followed along behind me like I was a corporate sherpa, as we made our way to my desk.
I motioned to the guest chair and said, “There’s a seatbelt there. Buckle in and you should be fine.”
Wilson pulled his mask down and yelled across the desk to me.
“What the hell is that thing?” he asked, pointing to the car engine type apparatus and accompanying tubes strewn about the office, two of which ran up a wall and into a ceiling tile.
“My air cleaning system. Got it from Tornadex, a little company in Omaha. It has the same propulsion system as the engines on the F-35 fighter jets.”
“Does it have a quiet mode?” he yelled
“Yes, this is it,” I said. “Please pull your mask back up.”
I sat at my desk and looked across at the poor man. This is what it had come to in late 2020. I looked like I was lost on my way to snorkeling, and Wilson appeared set to hold up a bank in a children’s cartoon face mask.
But the boss was demanding some of us be in the office, so here we were. I didn’t like it one bit, but if I had to be at work I was going to have the cleanest air on the planet. If a virus droplet slipped into my office, it was damn well going to wish it hadn’t. It would find itself sucked up and spit outside in a second flat.
I looked at Wilson as he studied me.
“Why are you wearing a hairnet?” he yelled.
“I don’t know.”
He nodded, and yelled again.
“I want to show you something, got a second?”
“A record of what?” I asked.
“What?” he asked back.
“No, I don’t have a record,” I said, hoping I had answered his strange question.
The Tornadex had somehow kicked into a louder mode and it was getting impossible to hear. Maybe one of the 73 filters needed to be changed.
Wilson motioned to a legal pad on the desk. It was being held down by a brick. Then he made a little writing motion. I put two and two together, and pushed across the pad, brick and all, and a pen. He scribbled something and slid it all back to me and I read his note.
“Ahh, ‘do I have a second?’ Okay, now I understand.”
I motioned to the door and we unbuckled our seatbelts, got up and used the rope guides to get to the door. I grabbed a bulky vest on my way out and slipped it over my head once in the hall.
“What’s that?” Wilson asked.
“I got it from my dentist,” I said, adjusting the straps and securing it around my waist. “He was replacing it with a new state of the art contraption.”
“Does it protect against anything?” Wilson asked.
“Radiation, I think.”
Wilson blinked rapidly like my reasoning was a little too advanced for him to comprehend. Or maybe he thought I was insane.
“Where are we going?” I asked, as we walked down the quiet, empty hallway.
“Ssshhh,” he said, putting his finger to his mouth.
I looked around as we passed another closed office door. There were maybe three other people scattered throughout the floor. I wasn’t sure why I was being shushed.
“Just follow me,” Wilson whispered as we walked to the end of the hall.
He pushed open a door to a stairwell and we went down a flight, then three more flights. We finally stopped descending and Wilson pushed open a door on a landing and led me down a hallway.
We walked on a bit, past doors with little squares on the wall identifying the rooms as “Storage,” or “Maintenance,” and other generic terms. I was expecting to see “Boiler Room” a some point. The hallway was silent, the carpet clean, and the place smelled of disinfectant.
We stopped at a door with no sign. Wilson glanced down the hall behind us, then looked off in the other direction.
“Coast is clear,” he said.
“Yes, I thought so too,” I said.
“You’re going to like this,” he said. “We call it the hideout.”
Wilson went to knock, then paused like he was trying to remember something. He rapped on the door in a burst of knocks.
“What is this, some kind of speakeasy?” I asked.
Then what sounded like a cat’s meow came from the other side. Wilson tapped three more times and the door opened slowly.
Then a hand reached out and grabbed Wilson, pulling him inside.
“Good heavens,” I yelled, reaching for him, but not very quickly given my protective gear.
Someone reached out and grabbed me, pulling me into the darkness.
“Where the hell are we?” I yelled though my face mask.
To be continued…