The voice welcomes me.  “Welcome.”

Alright.

“Okay, ” I say.

“Yes.  Okay!”, it returns warmly.

Although the voice seems to respond to what I say as if it were alive, thinking, aware, I know it is recorded.  It wouldn’t take much to disrupt it’s simple progression.  I might do just that – for funzy-wunzy.  Would that queer the deal?  I don’t see how.  “Tell me what I am thinking right now, ” I ask.  The voice responds with a doodling buzz. “Stuff me full of coins,” I say.  The buzz rises in pitch and then abruptly cuts off.

The room is better than I expected.  This is probably used normally as a secret fuck-shed  for some religious executive.  I’ll bet the door has a placard  engraved with the name of a phony business, a crops analyst or hydraulics engineer.  But that’s outside and I’m not outside.  Inside, an electric ray of sunshine cuts through a slit in the curtains, a slanted blade stabbing the private darkness.  The furniture isn’t the latest wave of earthy cubes but rather it is made of pastel-hued composites bent into carnival-curves.   When was that popular?  Fifteen or twenty years ago?  I know the answer but I am forced to act as though I do not.  Still, the furniture looks new and not at all out of place against the silver-patterned wallpaper and cool blue carpet.

Set into the wall opposite the bed is the room’s only anomaly:  a steel ovaled plate hinged to the wall like a safe’s door: a strange machine.  He’ll come in through there.  I’ll wait.

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