ftm9

Breakfast was always his favorite meal of the day. For his adult life, it had been ghettoized into the Sunday morning slot because there was simply no time for it during the other six days of the week. As he and his guide entered the facility's coffee shop, the rich, intoxicating aroma of freshly ground Colombian combined with the buttery smell of hotcakes pulled both of them in like a tractor beam. The place was, in fact, an immaculately clean replica of a neighborhood greasy spoon circa 1970 suburbia. Sort of on the order of the way K-Mart creates those mega-size Pseudo-Lower-West-Side bookstore cafes. The cappuccino smells genuine, but the prefab construction and dull stare of the patrons, clearly uncertain of how to behave in a manufactured environment, give the place a slightly Westworld vibe. Here, the counters gleamed in boomerang mica and the signs that hung overhead announced "Hot Oatmeal" and "Chocolate Egg Creams" in a postscript font that closely approximated the handwriting of a ham-fisted short-order cook. The first sign that all was not utopian was finding out that the potent java smell at the door was coming from an orange-rimmed pot. Their waitress had the look he remembered so clearly from his childhood: Rubinesque with thick strawberry blonde hair piled high over long eyelashes and thick thighs sausaged into highly complementary nude pantyhose. The only difference was that the white apron around her slightly convex middle was completely devoid of gravy stains.

"No caffeine, huh."

"You've had enough caffeine in your lifetime to keep Cincinnati awake for a year. What you need is fiber. You have the gastro-intestinal tract of someone twice your age."

"If you keep up this romantic talk, I'm going to want to go right back to the room. Okay, I'll have the oatmeal and a banana...You know about my constipation?"

"Unfortunately, yes. You're profile is quite detailed and I've read it carefully. It's a great job really. You get the complete, warts-and-all bio on someone you know...in your case, back in elementary school. Really compelling reading."

"All of the...patients...inmates...what's the term here?"

"Inmates. No, I don't think there is any specific term like that here. You're just you. You can leave if you want you know. Do you want to leave?"

"No, I was just wondering. Do all of the people like me here have escorts that knew them earlier in their life?"

"It doesn't have to be when they were children. They just have to know them in some fashion. It's supposed to help. The people who work here come from all over the east coast. There are other facilities outside Chicago and in Silicon Valley. Sometimes we know people who come here from our present lives and those are the ones you usually get the best reaction from. One day you're sitting across a boardroom table from someone and the next you're here. It usually takes a little longer to sink in."

I don't know how much of this has really sunk in for me but so far it's cool. It definitely beats being at work. And it's nice to see you after all this time and everything.

Same here, Bill. As much as I'd like to stay, I've got some office work that must be done. Let's meet back at your room at five. Why don't you just go exploring today. There's a lot to see and do. You just have to look around. And relax. Oh, and if you still can't find your glasses, there should be a pair made up with your prescription in your personal facility "survival kit". They're made up in advance just for reasons like that. You can ask the waitress for yours.

As Barbara exited, the waitress came over with a steaming bowl of oatmeal and a fresh, blemish-free banana. He looked up a wonderful surgically altered nose with flaring nostrils. "My escort there said I should ask you for my personal survival kit."