“All the teas and coffees I’ve had in the last few weeks are starting to make me sick.” A hot drink was always a good way to keep my hands busy. Sipping on it gave one a seemingly important activity, as the world around started spinning out of control. But I couldn’t drink any more. “I’m hungry, I’ll go get something to eat.”
I reached for my handbag, wondering if there was a restaurant nearby. Or maybe just a quick sandwich at the café across the street.
“Would you mind if I joined you?” Mark said. “I could eat too.”
I was surprised. Since he’d invited me to that café for our business meeting, we’d only ever seen each other in the Association lounge. I didn’t seek out his company outside of it, there was no reason to… But what does it matter if we have lunch together?
“How come you’re suddenly so trusting?” I asked quietly on our way to a nearby place Mark had suggested. I used this opportunity to ask even more questions. The fact that we’d left Andrew and his curious ears behind in the lounge was a bonus. “We’re practically strangers.”
Mark was staring at the people passing by, deep in thought. “I’ve never been the kind of guy who trusts others implicitly. But when I started volunteering for the Association and The Collective, a lot of things started to change. I guess it might seem like we’re all super secretive, but that’s not actually the case. We’re just trying to keep things secret from the world, but there is complete honesty and trust between the members. The company promotes truthfulness and honesty among the employees, it’s incredibly effective. If you live in that for a while, it gets under your skin. And besides… it probably sounds really weird, but I’ve known you for a really long time and I know that I can trust you.”
I realised that I was just on my way to have lunch with a man who’d been stalking me and my family for five years. But I was so numb from the emotional pain of the loss I was about to suffer, I barely paid any attention to it. Anyway, Mark didn’t seem at all like a dangerous person, on the contrary, he looked mild, sensitive. A total gentleman.
We reached the restaurant two blocks away. Mark opened the door for me and pointed at a table in the far corner of the room.
“Who accepted you into The Collective?” I asked when we sat down and got some water.
“Andrew,” he confirmed my suspicions, and laughed. “It went nearly the same way as with you. At first I thought he’d run away from a madhouse.”
I almost laughed, but the momentary amusement didn’t manage to reach the surface.
“How long did it take before you believed…?”
He took a deep breath and opened the menu without looking at it. “I believed it much faster than you.”
I frowned. I’d thought that despite my initial protests, however strong, it didn’t take very long to convince me at all. “How come?”
“Try to understand, Connie, I don’t have a family… I don’t have anyone to worry about or to fight for. I have nothing to lose. And as far as my parents are concerned,” he paused and there was a very pained expression on his face, “and all the others… I…”
“You want them to die,” I finished his sentence quietly.
“I guess I wouldn’t have put it quite like that, but you’re right,” he admitted. “That same evening I wanted Andrew to tell me everything.”
I couldn’t imagine anybody accepting such a horrific piece of information all at once, I was still finding it difficult. How desperate do you have to be, mentally, for the end of the world to seem attractive? I moved on to another question, just in case.
“How do the individual Collective branches communicate?”
“With difficulties,” he said, and explained how careful they have to be when emailing each other. Using pre-planned ciphers or hints. Meeting at conferences once or twice a year to synchronize all the individual plans. A shiver ran down my spine when I imagined so many people ready to die and bring about the end of the human race. I might not be humanity’s biggest fan, but I still had a sense of self-preservation.
I was about to share that thought when two elderly ladies sat down at a table next to us. That put an end to our private, whispered conversation, Mark and I couldn’t risk any secret information reaching the wrong people.
I looked down at the menu and breathed with surprise. “This is a vegan restaurant?”
He raised his eyebrows and there was a smile playing at the corners of his lips. “You’ve only noticed it now?”
I nodded. “I guess I didn’t expect you to be vegan…”
“That might be because I’m not,” he smiled. “I believe that you don’t have to be a hundred percent vegan to not hurt animals. Just imagine how different the world would be if people treated meat and dairy products as a delicacy. Demand would drop massively, and so would the supply. Maybe then breeders would start treating their animals as they should.”
We kept talking about that for a while, but soon I was overcome by a heavy, terrifying gloom. I could deal with mentions of any kind of violence, working at the station had trained me enough, but when the conversation turned to small children or animals…
I tried switching the topic to more mundane ones, even though it seemed inappropriate. How could I comment on the weather and local strawberry harvest when we were about to be hit by an apocalypse?
The light conversation at lunch was just a momentary comfort and an escape from reality. As soon as I’d walked
