Snippet #1652710

Roy had just spend two hours in a local tea house with some colleagues and he was more than ready to relax. He liked the tea house, as it was the epitome of Turkish culture, but discussing the reliability of dating methods and the meanings of some recently discovered inscriptions in Egypt could be very tiring. Although he loved his job, he lately couldn’t help thinking that he needed a break from all of it. Maybe it was a good time to visit his parents and oldest sister in London. Or he could go to his other sister in Germany, who had married the mayor of a small village near the Alps. Contemplating the possibility of a small vacation, he opened the front door of the building he was currently living in.

He was greeted in the hallway by the landlady, a frail looking woman, but one that didn’t take no for an answer. “Good evening Mrs. Polat”. He was about to go upstairs, when the woman grabbed him by the coat. “You wait,” she said to him in broken English. She walked towards a small table and picked up a couple of envelopes. After mumbling to herself a bit, she took the third one and placed the rest back on the table. She showed him the envelope and looked rather unhappy. Roy could see it was addressed to him. Pointing towards it, she said “Man came. I paying. You pay me.” He then noticed the stamp in the right corner. The man must have been some kind of special courier, which means the delivery service wasn’t free. After paying Mrs. Polat the money, though Roy was sure she asked for more than she had originally paid, he took the envelope and went to his apartment.

After pouring himself a cold drink, he opened the envelope. Inside were a plastic keycard and a letter. The card itself was already strange, as it had no logo of a company (or at least one that he knew off) and on one side there was the depiction of a fingerprint. This was, however, nothing compared to the strangeness of the letter. Roy couldn’t really make sense of it. It had a Dan Brown-like feel to it, though much darker. The meaning of the eye in the pyramid was very obvious and some Hindu gods were mentioned, but how all of that was connected, or why it should matter to him, he didn’t know. He was about to throw the letter away, when he realised he had to pay for the damn thing.

Ow well, I could at least see what it’s about.

He picked up the phone in order to dial the number on the key card. Only then he realized that there was no number mentioned, only that it can be found. Roy took another look at the letter. He had already noticed that the date was wrong, but discarded it as a typo earlier. Those seven numbers aren’t enough though. He read the letter again and laughed when he saw the other two numbers. Dialling 18082011316.

Roy listened to the message, perplexed. Denver? He listened to the message once again, then threw the phone away. No way he was going to Denver. He stood up and took off his clothes in order to take a shower. When the hot water fell down on his body, he felt completely at peace for a moment. Then the letter and the phone message got back into his thoughts. It all sounded so crazy, so unreal. And yet he couldn’t shake off the feeling that it was worth checking out.

In a moment of unexplainable impulsiveness, although nobody would hear him, he said: “Roy, you were planning on going away for a while anyway, so why not go to Denver?” He always wanted to go the Colorado. Or was it Nebraska?

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After a long flight, including a transfer in Chicago, Roy finally arrived at Denver International. While he was waiting for his luggage, the same backpack that he always took with him for the last ten years, he caught himself checking if his passport was still in his pocket for the sixth time. I must be quite nervous. He was already regretting his decision to come to this place. On the plane he had done some research into both the airport as the things mentioned in the letter, and he became more and more convinced that he had fallen victim to some elaborate joke.

He reached the westside carousels, however, before he could change his mind. Seeing the world logo on one of the sleeves of a security guard, Roy was surprised the man actually existed. “Excuse me,” he said to the guard, unsure what to do, “my name is Roy Halliday. Uhm... Are you the one that I’m supposed to talk to? About the train?” He fumbled around in his pockets and showed the man his keycard. “You know where I can catch the train?”