Lost and Found

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Book: Read Lost and Found for Free Online
Authors: Alan Dean Foster
welcoming smile for him when he arrived at the office. Of Early Hawthorne, who while as somber and staid in appearance as an undertaker, was never without a new risqué joke to tell. Of Tyrone “Ty one on” Davis, with whom he would argue the merits of the current Bears and Bulls rosters during frenetic, hastily gobbled midday meals in one of the three restaurants located on the same block as their offices.
    Initially concerned when he failed to return to work, they would then have become fearful, then frantic, and finally resigned. By now they were all probably certain that he was dead. Stumbled off a mountain trail into some impenetrable ravine, his twisted and broken remains devoured by scavengers. That was what they would think, and who could blame them? Thank God he wasn’t married. Thank God he had no children. His mother had died of cancer several years ago, but his father was still alive, healthy and remarried. Thoughts of how the old man would react to the news of his only son’s disappearance and probable demise set him to sobbing all over again.
    When he finally emerged from his extended lament, exhausted and unable to cry any more, he saw that the aliens had departed. Good. Damn good. Futile as he knew the gesture would be, and likely as well to result in the withholding of another day’s food bricks, or worse, he had determined to try throwing in their patronizing direction a few of the biggest rocks he could find. Though defense had been his position of choice on the teams he had played on, he had a good throwing arm. Maybe bouncing some fist-sized rocks off a few of those pointy heads would provoke some sort of reaction. Far sooner than expected, he was approaching the point where he no longer much cared what that might consist of.
    Straightening from picking up another good throwing stone to add to his growing collection, he happened to look up and off to his right. What he saw made him drop the couple of rocks he had already accumulated.
    The wonderfully convincing lakeshore and distant mountains that had filled that portion of his enclosure had vanished. In their place was, incongruously, a slice of what appeared to be an urban alley. Not a very clean or prosperous one, either. Garbage cans, some vertical and some not, shared space with high dilapidated fences of concrete block and wood slat. Graffiti covered both. Telephone and power poles with lines leading nowhere lined one side of the alley. Like a dead rhino, the rusted and scavenged-out hulk of a thirty-year-old Cadillac dominated the classically urban scene.
    Captivated, he rose and moved toward it. Noting the spot on the ground where the restraining field normally flowed, he halted. Extending a cautious hand, he reached out toward the nearest piece of wooden fence that now magically adjoined his own enclosure. Nothing shocked him; nothing stopped him. Here, and for now, the field had been deactivated. The fence felt real beneath his fingers: old, weathered wood, full of splinters and bent nails. There was more graffiti, crude and challenging, far from the spray-paint chic favored by the bored and self-indulgent New York arts intelligentsia. He recognized but could not interpret the gang code.
    In the depths of the dead Cadillac, something moved. Walker hesitated, wanting to rush forward, to embrace whomever it was who might also have been abducted along with him. Natural caution held him back. A glance to his right showed that the corridor was still empty. But they had to be watching, or at least recording what was happening. Of one thing he was certain: this section of restraining field had not been deactivated accidentally. Therefore this imminent encounter had been planned. An experiment of some sort, he decided bitterly. Or perhaps, just perhaps, a reaction to his extended crying jag and visible depression.
    A shape began to emerge from the rusting skeletal hulk of the decrepit luxury car. Let it be a homeless woman, he entreated silently.

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