“Untz~~~untz~~~untz~~~,” John was waked up by the familiar sound of music. It was from his mobile phone. He picked up the phone and heard the voice of Dick. “Hi boss, it’s half past 5 o’clock, I figured that I might need to give you a buzz.”
“Yeaaah…thanks. I fell asleep…I was kinda drowsy…now I am feeling much better,” John was still in the phase of waking up from his dream back to the reality. “Are you guys ready for the party?”
“Yeah,” Dick replied, “I just talked to Tom over the phone. He also took a nap in his room.”
“How about you?”
“I am okay. I don’t feel like need a sleep right now. I spent some time to review all the documents.” Dick’s tone was full of energy and joy as usual. He was the youngest among the three. He joined John’s group not long ago and this is his first overseas trip with John. Actually, he was an alumna of the H University, where John was graduated almost a quarter century ago. John liked this smart and vigorous young fellow. This time when Steve, then the CEO of K Corp proposed that he might take Dick with him for this trip, he agreed without any hesitation.
“That’s great.” John looked at his watch to estimate how much time they still had before Sergeant Y came to pick them up. “Could you come to my room with Tom in 20 minutes? We might be waiting here for Sergeant Y calling us.”
“Sure thing.”
……
Half an hour later John and his team met Sergeant Y at the gate of the hotel. The same limo that they rode in the morning was waiting outside the lobby. This time John did not insist that Sergeant Y sit in the back with him since he knew Sergeant Y would not talk much anyway. So Sergeant Y took the seat beside the chauffeur.
Even though John and his team were not familiar with the local environment at all, they still could sense that the car was not driving toward where they came that morning. The sky was still not dark yet, but the street already became very quiet. Most stores had been closed. A few minutes after they left the hotel, the street view became very different from what they could see in the neighborhood of the hotel. The buildings all looked very old. Some broken windows were patched with paper, and some entrance doors were hanging on the hinges.
A few more minutes later, they left the city and entered a rural road. The quality of the road was far from the road between the airport and the hotel. Although it was the traditional harvest season in most other parts of this hemisphere, the crops in the field beside road did not look like ready yet.
On his right side, John could see from afar a stretching and undulating long hill. As the road approached the foot of the hill, John saw a long cemented wall on the hill. There was a heavily guarded gate in the middle of the wall, and a truck full of men and women happened to be slowly driving into the gate. Tom, who was sitting on the seat before John, turned his head back over the seat and exchanged a look with John. Both of them knew what the other was thinking, but they didn’t say anything.
After driving along the hillside for a while, the car entered the mountainous area on a road between tall crags, and then very soon came to a thicket of coniferous trees which were not very common in that tropical climate region. They could hear birds singing in the thicket when their car passed by. A few minutes later, the car stopped in front of a gate with a guardroom on its side. A man in uniform came out of the room to open the gate, and then the car drove into a yard. The house of Colonel X’s residence was ahead of them.
It was a two story brick mansion, which was painted in snow-white on its side walls from outside, and the mansard roof was covered with black clay tiles. In front of the red wood double doors was a four-meters-long and three-meter-wide marble doorstep, under a dark wood overhang supported by two carved wood pillars.
The car had to drive around an artificial pond in front of the house to stop before the door entrance.
Colonel X came out of the house waiting at the doorstep with his wife, and their only son was standing between them. After John and his men stepped out of the car, Colonel X introduced them to his family. John handed a pack of gift to Colonel X, which was prepared by his secretary before they left for this country.
Colonel X and his wife led John and his men into the house. Right after stepped into the door, John was attracted by the exuberant local folk music played by a small band in the corner of the hall. Colonel X introduced John to a few other guests who were already in the house.
Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.
~.~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The food was nice, but John did not eat much. Not only because he was not hungry, but more importantly, his mind was full of concerns about what might be awaiting him for the coming days.
Colonel X came to John passing him a glass of French Champagne, “how do you like our food?”
“Delicious. I like it very much,” John said that not just as a courtesy but because he really liked the food.
“You didn’t seem to eat much,” Colonel X said with concern. “Maybe you are not used to our food?”
“I really like it,” John replied with a wry smile. “We had a very heavy lunch in the hotel so that I don’t have much space for your delicious food.”
“Oh. That’s too bad,” Colonel X said. “But we will have the chance to have you here for another time.”
“May I ask you a question?”
“Of course, please go ahead,” Colonel X responded.
“On our way to your house, I saw a long wall on a hill. There was a gate with heavy guards. A truck was driving into that gate, and it happened that its back was not covered so that we could see many people on that truck. What kind of place is that?” After a few glasses of wine, John felt more courageous with the spirits of alcohol in his blood.
“It’s good that you are asking about this because we would mention that place to you during your visit anyway. But since you have brought it up, we can talk a bit about it now.”
Colonel X glanced at the expecting look on John’s slightly reddish face. “That place is called ‘the Inferior World’ which is basically for those who do not belong to this civilized world,” his words rang out on a note of contempt.
“Is that the slum area?” John asked. He knew that in some metropolitan cities around the world, some low end residential areas of poor people, or so called slums, were separated from the rest part of the urban areas by some physical barriers, but they normally would not be heavily guarded as he witnessed on their way to the party.
“Kind of…but it is different from a slum you might have thought of if you were referring to the poor residential areas around world that we could see from the TV,” Colonel X replied.
“What’s the difference?”
“Those who are behind that wall are put into it by us, not just live there because of poverty,” Colonel X replied.
John got the confirmation from Colonel X about what he had been suspecting since he saw the truck moving into that gate on the hill. He asked, “Are they criminals?”
“Yes or no,” Colonel X gulped a big half glass of wine and looked at John with his bloodshot eyes. “Some of them were caught because of their crimes, but most of them are criminal not because they violated any law but because their existence is criminal.”
“That sounds scary. How could their existence be criminal?” John asked.
“Because they are useless,” Colonel X replied in a contemptuous tone.
John was about to ask him to further explain the meaning of ‘useless’, but Colonel X said to John, “You will know that better tomorrow,” and then turned his head away to look around for something.
“Excuse me for a moment. I need to get some wine,” Colonel X said to John.
“Sure.” John was a bit disappointed for the change of subject. He found a chair behind him, and walked to the chair. He did not want to walk away and wished that Colonel X would come back to continue with that subject after he filled up his glass. Once he sat down, John found a man in uniform was collecting the glasses and dishes with a tray. It was Sergeant Y.
John greeted him, “Hi, Sergeant.”
But that man did not respond. He looked at John when he passed by him. John lifted his glass to salute him again. But that man still did not respond to him and just walked away.
John did not have time to feel embarrassed before Colonel X came back with a bottle of wine and two empty glasses. After pouring the wine into those two glasses, he handed one glass of wine to John, “Without looking at the bottle, could you tell how old this wine is?”
John had a sip of the wine. “It should be about 20 years.”
“Impressive. You could be a very good sommelier,” Colonel X complimented. He handed the bottle to John and it was printed on the bottle 2035. It was a 22 year old wine.
Colonel X was very knowledgeable about various types of wine around the world, and the subject was then focused on wine and never came back to the question John asked earlier.
When it came to the time that the guests needed to leave, Sergeant Y came to tell John that the limo was waiting outside. When his eyes contacted John’s, it looked as if he was not aware of anything unusual happened between them. John was confused because somehow he did feel that the Sergeant Y in front of him did not look exactly the same as the Sergeant Y who was collecting the glasses and dishes.
When they arrived at the hotel, Sergeant Y said goodbye to John in the lobby hall, and John gave thanks to his service. Sergeant Y told him that he would come to pick them up for the tour of the New Generation Factory next morning.
After they entered the elevator, Tom said to John, “You won’t believe what I found today.”
“What did you find?” John asked.
“I saw another three men looked almost the same as Sergeant Y in the party,” Tom said.
“No wonder. I was greeting a man whom I thought to be Sergeant Y, but he didn’t seem to know me at all,” John responded.
“Maybe they are quadruplets,” Dick commented.
“It’s possible. But would that be something unusual that the quadruplets serve in the army under the same Colonel?” Tom replied with a question.
“It is something special,” John remarked.
“More than that,” Tom added, “I did not see any of them eating or drinking at the party.”
“They must be eating in the kitchen or somewhere,” Dick guessed.
“Could be…but they must have eaten very fast since I noticed that all four of them were around for most of the time,” Tom said.
“Really? I didn’t pay attention to that. I guess I had too much wine,” John sounded a bit regretful for missing the important details. “Anyway, we might know more after tomorrow’s tour.”