3
I don’t know if it was another one of his tricks, but before I knew what had happened, he was standing beside me with his hand on my shoulder. He dug his thumb gently into my skin and rubbed it in a circle. I sighed momentarily, and then stood up as quickly as I could. The room seemed to spin before I was steady on my feet.
“I’d like to know why you haven’t been using the amenities around the building, and then I’d like to show you something.” Sam spoke as though he was talking to himself, and the words came out like a whisper.
Part of me thought that it wouldn’t be such a bad thing to indulge Sam just a little, but mostly I couldn’t resist his charm. I was beginning to think that he was the one who had created all of the signs that hung around the building; Sam the expert propagandist. I suddenly spoke up without considering whether or not he was beginning to subdue me.
“You know what I’d change first around here?” Sam’s eyes squinted, and he looked up and down my face.
“What’s that?” he asked in a happy voice.
“I’d put in some ventilation to fix the dingy air. You non-scientific fools don’t realize how it could be. I’ve been studying the cosmos for years and know that the air outside our atmosphere is perfect. There’s no hazy fog or worry of contaminants. If we send something up there, it just goes on forever as though nothing could affect it.”
“Why don’t you to take off your sunglasses?” Sam didn’t flinch in his response. His tone was bold, yet flavored with the innocence I’d perceived in him.
“What sunglasses?” I asked.
“The ones that you’ve been wearing ever since I was assigned to you. You’ve had them on since you left your position.”
“Assigned to me? Left my position?” I almost stammered before I continued, “What is this . . . ?’
I couldn’t believe what he had said and was suddenly paralyzed by the complexity of the situation. Could it be possible that Sam, the letters, the cult, and the signs were due to my colleagues. The university where I had been a professor was prestigious and had deep pockets, but this?
Envy can be a vicious toxin that poisons normally highly functioning individuals, and my colleagues were no exception to this sad truth. The fellowship knew my work was exquisite, and that’s why they had kicked me out. Were they now trying to get the research papers that I hadn’t handed in? If they couldn’t understand the truth then, they surely wouldn’t now. I knew the faculty had a certain amount of reach and that they would sometimes use underhanded tactics to get what they wanted, but this seemed far-fetched by any stretch of the imagination.
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