Noah Cicero - Go to work and do your job. Care for your children. Pay your bills. Obey the law. Buy products.

“I don’t know,” she said.

We got into Monica’s Honda Civic and drove over to Lawrence’s house. The house he lived in was small. It was nothing to be proud of.

We walked up to the door and knocked. A man — maybe a friend, maybe a roommate, maybe Lawrence’s brother — came to the door. He was in his mid-thirties and didn’t look like a serious person. He was wearing jogging pants and a ripped New England Patriots jersey. We looked at him standing there in his New England Patriots jersey. He looked at us and said, “Hi.”

“Is Lawrence here?” I asked.

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Can we talk to him?”

“If you want,” the man said in a sad monotone voice.

The man led us into the house, which was messy. It didn’t smell bad, but there were clothes piled up in a corner, magazines and newspapers in tumbling stacks, and the furniture looked old and dirty. There were barely any pictures on the walls. It didn’t look like a happy place to live. The word ‘pathetic’ occurred to me.

The man knocked on Lawrence’s door and said, “Hey Lawrence, there are some people here for you.”

“What!” Lawrence screamed from the bedroom.

“People, Lawrence, people.”

“Who are they?”

He looked at us and said, “Who are you?”

“Tell him it’s Monica and Mike from work,” Monica said.

“Monica and Mike from work.”

Lawrence yelled back, “NEOTAP employees can’t talk to other NEOTAP employees outside of work. It’s against the rules.”

Monica said, “Tell him we just want to talk for a minute.”

“They just want to talk to you for a minute, goddamn it. Open the fucking door. What the fuck is wrong with you?”

Lawrence opened the door. We stared at Lawrence and he stared at us. He looked insane.

Lawrence waved us into his room.

Lawrence’s room looked like the room of a fourteen-year-old boy. There were posters of women in bikinis on the wall, several football trophies from the early 2000s, a twin bed, clothes scattered on the floor, and virtually nothing that signified an adult male lived in the room.

Lawrence sat on the bed and said, “Hi guys.”

We stood in the room. There were no chairs and the floor was too covered in clothes to sit down.

“Lawrence, do you know where people go when they disappear?” Monica said.

“Disappear from where?”

“From NEOTAP.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Monica responded forcefully. “Lawrence, I know you know what I’m talking about. You know that Sherwood Burke and several others have disappeared. Even Jay Riddick disappeared and he was an employee. Where did they go?”

Lawrence put his hands over his face and said, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”

I stood there. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t an aggressive person but Monica was. She continued, “Lawrence, quit fucking around. At least admit that you know people are disappearing.”

Lawrence got into the fetal position on the bed, then he started to cry a little. “Heidelberg would kill me. Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Heidelberg, she brings me into her office every week and tells me I’m doing a horrible job, she hates me, she hates me, she walks by me and whispers to me that I’m doing everything wrong, then she gives me a raise and even a promotion but she doesn’t say why, she keeps telling me I’m doing a horrible job. She brought me into the office yesterday and told me I didn’t know how to take care of the residents, she told me I didn’t know how to run the cafeteria, I thought I was good at running the cafeteria, she told me I needed to yell more at the residents, then she told me two hours later never to yell at the residents, I don’t know, I don’t understand anything, I’ve worked twenty-two days in a row, this is my first day off in twenty-two days, but I can’t stop thinking about Heidelberg, I can never stop thinking about Heidelberg. All I wanted to be growing up was a cop, but they aren’t hiring, so I stay at NEOTAP. I am so afraid of Heidelberg, I am so much more afraid of Heidelberg than you.”

We stood there.

“Maybe we can help you,” Monica said.

“You can’t help me!” Lawrence screamed, still lying in the fetal position, crying.

I asked him, “Why don’t you just quit?”

“I’m afraid of Heidelberg.”

“If you get another job, Heidelberg won’t be there,” I said.

“Heidelberg is everywhere, she sees everything.”

“That is insane,” Monica said.

“Lawrence, why won’t you tell us where people go?” I said.

“I don’t know where they go. I don’t know. I asked once and they told me I wasn’t allowed to ask that question, so I never asked again.”

Monica and I looked at each other, disappointed. I said, “Lawrence, we’re going to leave now, okay?”

“You better leave before Heidelberg finds you here. She might have the room bugged.”

“Why would you think she has your room bugged?” Monica said.

“One time she came up to me and said, ‘I know you were talking shit about me to a girl on the phone.’ Then she walked away.”

“Was it true?” I asked.

“Yeah, I was trying to date a girl, and I talked shit about Heidelberg while on the phone with her.”

Monica said, “Holy shit, Heidelberg has the power to bug phones?”

“Let’s go,” I said, “before we get Lawrence into trouble.”

We didn’t say bye to Lawrence. All he wanted was for us to leave anyway.

We got into Monica’s car and I said, “I think this is Stockholm Syndrome.”

“What the fuck is that?”

“I learned about it in college. It’s when a hostage has compassion for their kidnapper, but it can work with bosses and employees. A boss is terribly cruel ninety percent of the time but ten percent of the time gives them little things like raises and promotions to keep them thinking that the boss actually loves them and is being cruel to them for their own good.”

“Oh god, that is NEOTAP, that is Heidelberg.”

“Yeah, that is totally Heidelberg.”

“Yeah, but how does Heidelberg have the power to bug Lawrence’s phone?”

“I don’t know. Maybe NEOTAP isn’t just NEOTAP. Maybe it’s connected to something bigger like the CIA or FBI.”

“Oh man, this is screwed up,” Monica said.

We talked for hours trying to figure it all out. We went back on the NEOTAP website and looked up Heidelberg’s profile but it said nothing about having the power to wiretap people. Then we wondered if Lawrence would snitch on us for asking him about the disappearing people. I started to feel stressed out. Nothing made any sense. I felt like I was soon going to be gone myself.

I had to sign in Clinton Walker after he came back from the dentist. Clinton Walker was an obese man with an ugly face. We sat at a small round table across from each other. I had to sign several papers and date them. It was essential that documentation was perfect. If documentation was inaccurate I would have to visit Heidelberg and get scolded. I looked at Clinton Walker. His face was pockmarked. His nose was too big. His skin was alabaster and sickly looking.

“What happened at the dentist?”

“They took two teeth out.”

“What was wrong with them?”

“They were rotted.”

“How did they get them out.”

“They just pulled them?”

“Damn.”

“I have to go back next week to get some more pulled.”

“Damn.”

Then he looked right at me and said, “I know you hate this place. I know that everyone who acts like you disappears, gets fired, who the fuck knows, so I will tell you the truth about what NEOTAP has taught me, because I know you won’t tell.”