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

Suddenly Imad appeared. “I’ll take this from here. Go search lockers,” he told me.

I had Clinton Walker sign the last few pages detailing his dental visit and Imad took him away.

I put on a pair of gloves and got a list of lockers that needed to be searched. Searching lockers was boring but for some reason I liked it a lot. I liked looking at the residents’ stuff, seeing what they were reading, looking through their notebooks.

I went into a room and opened a locker; I looked through their socks, put my hand into their shirts and pants, skimmed their notebooks and found a newspaper clipping reporting that Lester Wallace’s brother had died of a drug overdose. I thought about Lester Wallace. He could barely read. He got into trouble constantly for being a slow eater in the cafeteria. He couldn’t get along with the other residents. I checked the rest of Lester’s locker and found five magazines. I called for him over the walkie-talkie.

Lester Wallace came into the room. He stood there, a small, fragile man. I said, “Lester, you have five magazines. You can only have two.”

“I ain’t got no idea where they came from.”

“But Lester, this is your locker. You have to know where they came from. Somebody must have given you these magazines.”

“No, I don’t know.”

“But these magazines are in your locker.”

“I ain’t put no magazines in my locker.”

“Then where did they come from?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Listen, if you don’t admit that these are your magazines then I will have to write you up. Do you want that?”

“No.”

“Okay then, how did you get these magazines?”

“I don’t know, they ain’t mine.”

“Okay, I am going to write you up and put these magazines in storage.”

“You can throw them away.”

“Why would I throw them away?”

“I don’t know.”

He looked confused. He didn’t want to admit to anything. I bet if I’d asked him if he existed, he would have told me he didn’t.

“Okay Lester, go join the others.”

“Seriously, I ain’t got no idea where those magazines came from. Somebody must’ve put them in my locker.”

“To frame you?” I said.

“Yeah, something like that. I ain’t got no five magazines.”

“Seriously?”

“Man, you setting me up for the woo.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

“That means you setting me up to get into trouble. You itching to write me up.”

“Okay, I’m going to write you up. Now get out of here.”

“Whatever.”

Lester Wallace left the room.

Monica walked into NEOTAP. She went into the office and said hi to Lawrence and Imad. She didn’t know Imad and Lawrence like Mike did. She didn’t have to interact with them on a power basis. She would say hi to everyone, have small talk about sports, computers, or random life things. Everyone knew that Monica loved Arby’s and would eat Arby’s at least three times a week. Sometimes people called her Arby’s Girl.

Monica had been to work for an hour and she had not seen Mike. She took a walk out to where the residents were but she didn’t see him. She asked Lawrence, “Where’s Mike?”

“I don’t know,” Lawrence said.

“Did he call in sick?”

“No.”

Monica considered herself a troubleshooter. Her life was about fixing problems. Her dad had taught her the joy of solving problems. When something broke, they fixed it together. When the car broke, they fixed it together. When the roof leaked, they fixed it together. When the water heater needed to be replaced, they took it out and replaced it together.

When Monica got her first computer, she fell in love. She was twelve and learned all about HTML code and Run and all the strange things only computer geeks care about.

She wanted to solve the problem of Mike’s whereabouts. She kept asking people. She went into Heidelberg’s office and asked, “Where’s Mike? He should be here by now.”

Heidelberg looked at her and said, “Shouldn’t you be updating files or something?”

Monica focused on machines so much because she actually didn’t like people and their rudeness and to Heidelberg she responded, “No, I should be looking for Mike.”

“Get out of my office,” Heidelberg said.

“You can’t even tell me if he called off?”

“You aren’t allowed to ask that question.”

Monica considered ripping Heidelberg’s face off but decided to leave the office.

She walked by the employee mailboxes. Mike’s name was gone. She checked the schedule and his name was gone. She returned to her office and looked up Mike in the NEOTAP database and his name was gone from there as well.

She texted Mike, she called him twenty times, she called his grandfather and then his parents, but still nothing. No one knew where Mike was.

Mike had disappeared.

She sat in her office thinking about Mike. She thought about how he listened to her when she talked. How he listened for hours one night to her talking about working on cars with her dad. How Mike allowed her to fix the headlight on his car. How Mike made her laugh when she was sad. She also thought about having sex with Mike. She had grown fond of him, had begun to fall in love with him. She didn’t know about babies or getting a house in the suburbs, but she wanted to be with him. He seemed like a good guy. College-educated, presentable, courteous.

She packed up and left. She knew it was only a matter of time before she disappeared too. It was over for her.

Monica stopped by Mike’s house, hoping maybe there was something in his NEOTAP handbook that would direct her to where he’d gone.

Mike’s grandpa was sitting at the kitchen table. He was drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. He looked up at her and said, “Monica, have you heard from Mike?”

“No, have you?”

“No.”

“I think he disappeared.”

“What does that even mean — disappear? How does one disappear?”

“I don’t know, but people do at NEOTAP, they just disappear.”

“The government is the alpha and omega, the first and the last, the beginning and the end. Remember that.”

Monica nodded. “I am coming to find that out. It didn’t really bother me that people were disappearing when it was people I didn’t know, but now it’s personal.”

Monica went into Mike’s room. Mike’s NEOTAP handbook was on the floor. She read through it page by page, but it never mentioned anyone disappearing.

Monica considered people to call. She thought of Choffin. She called him on her cellphone.

“Hello?” Choffin said.

“Yes, this is Monica.”

“Oh hi Monica. What would you like?”

“Where is Mike? He wasn’t at work today.”

“Mike? Mike who?”

“Michael Scipio.”

“I don’t know any Michael Scipio.”

“But he’s worked for NEOTAP for months.”

“I don’t really talk to employees.”

“Okay, where is Sherwood Burke, Armando, and the others?”

“I don’t know them either. I can’t recall any of those names.”

“None?”

“None.”

“Okay, goodbye.”

Monica ended the call.

She lay down on Mike’s bed, put her head on his pillow. It smelled like him. She could smell him a little.

She looked through the pile of NEOTAP materials again. She noticed there was a book called Reality Conversion by Dr. Charles Nevitsky. Monica remembered that Nevitsky had written the program for NEOTAP. He was the mastermind behind NEOTAP. If anyone had any idea why people were disappearing, it would be Nevitsky.