5.

The next day David woke up to loud knocking on the door. At first, he thought it was another colleague or admirer wanting to pay respect to the family so he didn’t respond and let the knocking go on. But after a solid 2 minutes of knocking, David could not bear the sound anymore and went downstairs to take a look. He looked through the peephole and saw a man in a lab coat, pacing back and forth before deciding to knock again.

Before his fist could reach the door, David opened the door. The man startled at the door opening and fixed his posture cartoonishly.

‘’Who are you and why are you knocking on my door so aggressively?’’ asked David in an assertive and annoyed tone.

‘’My apologies, but I hurried here with great concern. My name is John Gartner, and I was very close with your dad. I was one of the lucky few who got to work alongside your father in his lab and assisted him with several tasks.’’

‘’Another one who claims to be close with Gerald the Great. Amazing.’’ Responded David as he slammed the door shut. However, the door was met and stopped by John’s foot.

‘’I know you were at the lab yesterday night,’’ John protested in a voice that tried to hide the pain the door caused him.

David was speechless and decided to open the door once more.

‘’You don’t have to try and deny it. When your father was still alive, our morning routine started with checking the surveillance footage. He was very paranoid about people breaking in, especially closer to the time of his death. We kept this in our routine, strangely enough; force of habit I suppose.’’

David tried to avoid eye contact but accidentally met his gaze after deciding how to respond.

‘’Yes, I was in the lab yesterday night, what about it?’’ he blurted out, bluffing with overacted confidence, hoping that David hadn’t seen his activities inside the lab.

‘’Well, you have to understand I am not upset with you… You see, as paranoid as Gerald may have been, there were no cameras installed inside the lab. He did not want to take the slightest risk of the footage of his experiments spreading to the outside world.

Your father was working on transmitting consciousness to an inanimate object. This is all he would ever tell us. Whenever we asked about the severity of the experiments, for example addressing the usage of lab rats, he would always ask us not to follow through. One day he told us to stop ‘prying’ and even said he would have to resort to kicking us out if we kept asking about it. In the months before his death, many lab rats even died.’’

‘’Why are you telling me this?’’ David hissed, disgusted by what he was told.

‘’After discovering about your visit to the lab yesterday, I figured you’re our only hope of getting to the bottom of what your father, our closest friend, was working on. For what reason did you decide to visit, months after his passing, at 01:00 in the morning? Do you possibly know something that we don’t? Your father always spoke very highly of you, but he never once allowed you to visit. So why yesterday all of a sudden?’’

‘’I am very sorry to disappoint you, but I only came to the lab yesterday for closure. Like you said, I was never allowed to visit my father at the lab. Not after I grew up anyway, and considering that’s where he spent the majority of his time, I decided to pay my respects to the place sacred to my dad, and said my goodbyes there.’’

John met David’s faked confident gaze with a more sceptical one. ‘’Well yes, I understand. But at 01:00 in the morning?’’

‘’That’s when I was certain there would be no one around, so I could pay my respects without being disturbed,’’ David responded.

‘’Very well, my apologies for bothering you so early in the morning,’’ John replied at last, still unconvinced. He left immediately after, but not without looking back first. David assumed a second visit would follow soon enough.

6.

David closed the door behind him and wiped his sweat off his forehead. He ran up the stairs to his bag containing his dad, ‘The Crystal’, and emptied it on his bed. He grabbed it with haste and connected with his dad.

‘’What is it you want from me?!’’

‘’Morning, son.’’

‘’Your dear friend John just told me about your cruel experiments and started questioning me about the purpose of it all after 10 years of cooperation. Which is totally understandable after being left completely in the dark!’’

‘’Oh boy, that might turn into more trouble than I have accounted for, which is why we have to act fast. I will explain everything on the road, but we have to get going soon.’’

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‘’Go where?!’’ David shouted.

‘’This crystal cannot be found just anywhere, which I think you could already guess. I told you last night about the essence of you continuing my work, well this is where you start. I need you to travel to Southern Arizona, and hike towards Sonora, Mexico over and through the Patagonia Mountains. This is where you will find more life-preserving crystals like the one you’re holding right now.’’

‘’Do you really expect me to just leave Mom and go to Southern Arizona? What am I supposed to tell her? ‘Yeah so... I’m going on a trip to find some crystals Dad is telling me about. Oh and by the way, he is also not entirely dead and a crystal himself now.’ How ridiculous does that sound?’’

‘’The beauty of it all is, you don’t even have to lie son,’’ Gerald responded. ‘’Tell her that you are going to hike the Patagonia Mountains to find peace of mind after your father’s passing. Leaving details out of a story is not considered a crime, not to my knowledge at least.’’

David was flustered and infuriated by the casual tone of his father. He was speechless.

‘’More people are going to start asking questions, son. If you succeed in my experiment, I will be able to answer them myself in due time. Or rather, you will. With me by your side, not as father and son but as partners. But only when the time is right. Please, son, it would mean the world to me. More importantly, it would mean the world to the world.’’

7.

David put his father back in his bag again and spent the following 2 days thinking about nothing but the conversation he had held with John, and then with his father. He was not planning on changing his mind until he read a certain headline. He had seen so many headlines that they rarely got to him anymore, but this one stung him so severely that he dropped his phone. He never even bothered to browse the websites these articles were posted on, but this one he received by text from his best mate Frank Brookes. They were close growing up, and even after moving to different cities and taking different career paths entirely, they kept in touch. Normally, Frank would never receive an article like this on his feed let alone share one, but this one seemed to have blown up.

The headline read:

‘Gerald Scant: Genius Pioneer or Total Fraud?’

David soon found that it was yet another article filled with blatant assumptions and lousy accusations, and decided to scan this sad attempt of commentary. According to David, there was no real need to worry until he reached the closing paragraph: ‘’Countless have supported Gerald Scant, many have admired him and some have even worked alongside him. One of these lucky few is John Gartner. We will interview him next Thursday on 87-Weekly to get to the bottom of Gerald Scant’s lost decade.’’

He threw his phone on his bed and once more emptied his bag. David reached for the crystal, baffled by how quickly he got accustomed to this anomaly and started speaking to his father. After summarizing the article Gerald didn’t seem to be too bothered. Then when he told him about his friend going on air to talk about his lab work the crystal seemed to glow brighter than ever before to David. ‘’Of course, John. Who else?’’ Gerald grunted, trying to hide his anger in the tone of his voice.

‘’Do you see the essence of haste now David?’’

‘’I do, however I still don’t agree with the sudden mission impossible you’re sending me on,’’ he replied angrily.

‘’That’s understandable, we will work on that. First things first: booking your flight ticket. Do you need any guidance?’’

‘’Just tell me where the most convenient starting point is to reach these damn crystals and get it over with. I’ll book the ticket first thing after dinner with Mom, then I can tell her about my sudden fascination and need for a big trek in the Patagonia Mountains.’’

‘’That would be Tucson International Airport. After your conversation with your mother, I will tell you all the essentials you need to know to proceed. How is she holding up anyways?’’

‘’How do you think she is holding up?’’ David hissed back after deciding to put away his dad once more.

8.

Before Gerald’s passing, David and his mother always enjoyed having dinner together. Back then, it was a rarity when they missed an evening of shared dining. But now, in their separate stages of mourning, they only had dinner together on special occasions, which were thus now only administrative and funerary obligations.

David felt that an old-fashioned dinner was long overdue, and decided to pull his mother out of bed after cooking an exquisite ready-to-cook schnitzel with store-bought fries and home-made pepper sauce.

It went rusty at first, but after a while, they laughed together for the first time in what felt like ages and reflected on their past weeks. As the evening was beginning to wear its nightly mask, the second wine bottle was filled only with drops. David forgot all about his breaking news for a few hours and got extremely nervous now that he was reminded of his mission again. He regretted not attempting to have an evening like this sooner and was ashamed of only organising one with an underlying objective. The guilt started eating him up, and he decided to get it over with.

‘’Mom, I have something to tell you.’’

Anne looked at him with a pending gaze. She didn’t reply but knew she didn’t have to either.

‘’I am going to hike the Patagonia Mountains. My mind has been all over the place since Dad passed away, and I can’t focus on or think of anything else. I think a trip in complete solitude will give me time to reflect and clear my mind.’’

That same pending gaze followed and David was certain his mother would protest. When he opened his mouth to elaborate further, she interrupted.

‘’Alright dear, if you think that’s best for you then I won’t stop you. It sounds like you have given it enough thought, and judging from your intensity of speaking there’s no changing your mind either. Where will you be starting your track? And when will you fly out? I’ll take the day off and drive you to the airport.’’

David was baffled by his mother's casualness regarding his journey. Relieved, but baffled nonetheless. When he told her he would like to set out the next day, she was equally surprised but again, not opposed. There was something in her eyes after the conversation. It was a face David could not read. He would ask about it any other day, but for now, he had to put it to rest.

There was a big journey ahead of him and only a little time to prepare.