Stranger Things

“Ughh…What…?”

“I think he’s coming around”

“You want me to hit him again?”

“I didn’t want you to hit him the first time.”

Julius’ vision started to focus; a vaguely familiar round face sat smiling at him, while two other people he didn’t recognize looked on with curiosity.

“I….ohh…Phil?”

“Jules! Good to see you man, sorry about that whack. Walt can get a little carried away.”

“What’s going on?” Julius said as he rubbed his swollen nose and tried to get to his feet. He was in a dimly lit room not much bigger than the supply closet. Phil sat on a large plastic foldable table in the center of the room. The others stood off in the shadows.

“We heard you calling from outside, but we didn’t want to show ourselves,” Phil said. “We lured you in here and checked you out with the camera—“

“And then you hit me.”

“No, then Walt hit you.”

“Who’s Walt?”

“I am.” A thin middle-aged man with a scruffy jaw and crazed beady eyes stepped forward. “Walter A. Stisher, janitor, red belt, Globinaut. Sorry about the mop, we had to be sure.”

“Sure? Sure of what?”

“First of all,” Phil chimed in, cutting a glance at Walt, “I told you we aren’t calling ourselves Globinauts. Second, if you would have listened to Jules’ message, you would have known he was safe.”

“Where are we? What do you mean by safe?”

“Calm down Jules, calm down. We’ll explain everything. Well, we’ll explain what we know. You’ll have to help us fill in the gaps,” Phil said.

“What? What do I know? One minute I’m typing in some numbers and the next minute everyone is spaced out.”

“What do you mean by ‘spaced out’?” Phil said, his air quotes hanging from his curled fingers.

Julius recounted his odd afternoon of work, omitting the bathroom emergency and nude bomb threats. Walt and Phil listened with intense seriousness, nodding their heads and throwing glances at each other every few seconds. Julius finished his story and they sat in uncomfortable silence. Walt and Phil seemed lost in deep thought, or confusion.

“So,” Julius said, when he couldn’t take the quiet stares anymore, “Who are you?” He tilted his head to the shadowy figure in the corner.

A serious woman stepped forward, a slightly annoyed expression on her face.

“I’m Tabitha Neily, the receptionist.”

“Of the Globinauts?” said Julius.

“It’s sticking!”

“Shut up Walt.”

“No,” Tabitha said with a huff. “I’m not a Globinaut, or whatever these guys want to call themselves. I know about as much as you do.”

“So how did you get here?” Julius said.

“I convinced her to join us early this morning,” Phil said quickly.

“By convinced, he means drugged,” Tabitha said, crossing her arms.

“Drugged? Phil, you drugged her?”

“I just slipped something into her coffee. It was harmless; I didn’t want her to get hurt.” Phil said.

“So far the only one that’s done any harm is you,” Tabitha said over her shoulder. “And to tell you the truth, I was going to try and slip out till you showed up, Julius.”

She made eye contact with Julius. A sweet smile flashed across her face. After seeing her straight emotionless visage every morning for two years, seeing her smile was like seeing a royal guard pick his nose, shocking. The smile shook her normally hard façade like when a rock hits a still pond. The ripples of the quick expression traveled through her body and caught her off guard, as if her mind wasn’t aware of what her face was doing. She turned away, surprised by herself.

The uncomfortable silence returned.

“Anyways,” she recovered, “If what you said is true, there’s definitely something strange going on…but I still want out of here,” she cut a sharp look at Phil.

For the first time, Julius realized Phil wasn’t the only thing resting on the table. A scattered assortment of charts, graphs, and schematics littered the surface. He took a step closer and picked up a loose paper. It looked like a poorly drawn blueprint of the lobby. According to the picture, they were in a room behind the supply closet.

“So, is this your secret lair or something?” Julius said.

“Lair? Now you’re sounding like Walt.” Phil said. He stood up and walked to the wall behind Julius. “We needed a place to meet in the building, in case things went downhill. Walt found this unusually large supply closet.”

Phil stuck his finger in a small hole in the wall and pulled it to the left. A short door silently slid open revealing the room where Julius got whacked. He stared at the hole and absently touched his nose.

“Basically, we put up a partition and split the room in two. Walt set it up in one night,” Phil said. “Told the other janitors Globitrex was downsizing, they needed to work more and hang out in the supply closet less.”

“I’m the custodial manager,” Walt said proudly to no one in particular. Julius wondered if they were related.

“Okay. That takes care of the where, now how about the why.” Tabitha said.

Phil looked at Walt, who nodded and approached the table.

“What do you know about Globitrex?” Walt said.

“Umm, it’s a super company, and it’s super rich.” Julius said.

“That’s an understatement.” Phil said. “You remember when the economy tanked in 2010?”

“Yeah. Didn’t they help the country with some debt or something?” Julius said.

“They did more than that,” Phil said, “They became the country.”

Phil shuffled around on the table and came up with a crinkled picture of a gas station. It looked kind of like the one near Julius’ home.

“Globitrex is a very, very large company. Their financial success is due in part to their international assets,” Phil said. “These guys have their fingers in almost every industry you can think of. They started with oil, during the gas crisis they made billions.”

“Not only that, but Globitrex is also connected to most mega companies.” He picked up a few random pieces of paper—print offs from websites, crinkled coffee stained documents—and threw them on the table as he spoke like a black jack player with a winning hand. “Microsoft, General Electric, Vivendi Universal, they’re dwarves in comparison, plus Globitrex is a majority shareholder in both of them. It’s that way with most major US companies. They have money in everything from high priced electronics to fuel-efficient automobiles. If Globitrex was to leave, this country would crumble.”

“All right, so what does that have to do with the spacers upstairs and your fortress of solitude here?” Julius said, skeptical.

“Globitrex is wealthier than any country on the planet, but they’re lacking in one area.” Phil said.

“Customer service?” Julius said. Nobody laughed.

“A military.” Walt said.

“Are you saying Globitrex wants to buy a military?”

“Not buy,” Phil said, “Create.”

“This is ridiculous,” Tabitha said. “How could a company create a military? Mercenary groups are one thing, but a fully functioning military? The government wouldn’t allow it.”

“The government won’t know. They can’t know, that was part of the deal Globitrex made when they bailed us out.” Phil said. “In exchange for saving the country from complete meltdown, Globitrex was given a business version of diplomatic immunity. They can do whatever they want. Not that that matters, since most of Washington is on their payroll.”

“Right.” Julius looked at Tabitha; she rolled her eyes. “Let’s say this is true, who’s gonna enlist in a mega company’s military?” Julius said.

“You already have.” Walt said.

“What?”

“You’re not a data processor, you’re a soldier in training.”

Julius looked at Walt, his sharp eyes unblinking, his thin lips drawn tight. Walt took a step away from the table, as if he were giving Julius some space to digest this supposedly earth-shattering revelation.

“This is crazy. I’m in a secret army? I think you guys have read one too many conspiracy theories.” Julius said.

Walt let out a gruff sigh and turned around. Phil went back to shuffling through the papers on the table. Julius glanced at Tabitha again. This time he smiled.

“Here it is!” Phil said holding up a thick set of papers held together by a purple paperclip. “In 2006, there was a study in South America by Rykon Biogenics that involved memory and mind control. Subjects were kept in a strictly controlled environment and were tasked with completing sequences of numbers and pictures and inputting them into a database. Though they were instructed to pay close attention to detail, they had no idea what the data, or the details meant.”

“What does mind-numbing labor have to do with mind control?” Tabitha asked.

“Each chunk of data was like a piece to a complex puzzle. The subjects were unknowingly arranging sequenced fragments of an intricate message.”

Phil waved the papers in Julius’ face, like an old 1920s paperboy with a breaking story. It was clear he had read this study numerous times.

“Through subtle repetition, the fragments were eventually ingrained in each subject’s mind. The purpose of the study was to see if these fragments could be rapidly assembled with the right stimulant. So they split the subjects into three groups and tried different stimulants on each. Some got pictures, others got sounds, while the third received both. In the end, the third group appeared to have the best response.”

“And what response was that?” Tabitha said.

“Assembly.” Phil said. “After the message, they were given raw materials and a picture of a small remote transmitter. Their task was to recreate it as quickly as possible. None of these people had any prior experience in electrical engineering, yet most of the subjects were able to construct the transmitter.”

“Most of the subjects? Sounds like it didn’t work.” Tabitha said, crossing her arms.

“The people in the study only worked on this for weeks, so their knowledge of the end message was more like a faint memory, or a dream. Most people at Globitrex have been here for years.” Phil said. “Have you ever wondered why Globitrex hires a new batch of people every two years?”

“New recruits.” Walt said. “That’s how long it takes to encode the message.”

“This is too much—“ Julius started.

“Still don’t believe me? Look at this.”

Phil picked up another stack of papers and shoved them at Julius. The papers had rows and columns of seemingly random numbers and words. Julius’ eyes went wide.

“You recognize some of those don’t you?” Phil said.

“These…these are the invoices…but how?”

“I recorded every single keystroke of every single day for the last four years. I wrote them down in a notebook under my desk and transferred them to this spreadsheet at night. Here, check this out.”

Phil flipped through the spreadsheets and pulled out the seventh page. He placed it next to the first on the table.

“These…these are exactly the same.” Julius’ mouth hung open.

“Yep. Subtle repetition, just like the Rykon Biogenics study. There’s more here if you want to flip through it. The invoices repeat every three to four months.”

Julius flipped through the pages in disbelief. This can’t be true!

“So that sound…” Julius said slowly, his mind struggling to comprehend what was happening. “It was like some kind of a stimulant?”

“We think so.” Phil replied.

“Come on, you’re not believing this are you?” Tabitha said to Julius, who was still lost in the numbers.

“What could it have activated? I mean they were all zoned out.”

“We’re not sure. That ‘zone out’ could have been a response to the stimulant. Sort of like a mental reboot.”

Tabitha stepped forward and rifled through the documents.

“Well, I have to admit, you’ve got some pretty compelling evidence boys,” Tabitha said holding a pair of matching invoices, the sarcastic tone of her voice lost on the two conspiracy theorists and their new convert. “Why don’t you go to the police?”

“Are you crazy?” Walt barked. “Were you listening? Globitrex is a giant. No one can be trusted. They must be taken down from within!”

“And you two are going to do that?”

“Yes. Right Phil?”

“Well, we were hoping to recruit a few more to our cause.” Phil said, sheepishly looking at Julius and Tabitha.

Tabitha started laughing.

“If what you say is true, do you honestly think the four of us could take down Globitrex? This is ludicrous. Where’s that secret door? I’m leaving.”

Tabitha headed for the wall and groped around for the finger hole.

“The doors are all locked.” Julius said before she could duck out. “The phones are dead, and my cell can’t pick up anything. We’re stuck here”

Tabitha turned around, her shoulders weighed with disappointment.

“So?” She said.

“So it looks like we’ve got a meeting with the floating heads.” Phil said.