Our first conversation was as we lay adjacent to one another strapped to the hard mattresses in the Failure Ward. It was not actually called The Failure Ward, but we called it that. He was the first to talk, describing to me his life's work, which had probed the disappearance of offices in favor of tiny cubicles situated in open spaces.

Then he asked rather suddenly, "Didn't see it coming did you?"

I told him, "No," to which he answered, "nobody does." So I recounted the evening before, which had begun as my evenings often did, with a walk through the center of town to the grocery store for the contents of my dinner, and that of the female companion with whom for some time I had shared an apartment on the bottom floor of an old house. They had been dragging the dead trees through the snow in the town square again. I had no idea who they were, though they looked official, as if they worked for the town itself in some capacity. I puzzled over what had killed the trees, where they had come from, where they were being taken, and why there were so many dead ones that continued to need dragging.

After dinner my companion and I felt the sensation, hardly justified as it turned out, of being fully and safely ensconced in our humble, but cozy quarters. In fact, overcome with drowsiness she had retired already for the evening.

I heard a knock while sitting as I customarily did in my large, soft chair under the hazy, yellow light from the tall, brass lamp beside the chair, reading the memoir of an exceedingly obscure Polish playwright. I put down the memoir of the exceedingly obscure Polish playwright and went to open the door.

"Who is there?" I asked before I opened it.

The man outside the door simply repeated my name in the form of a question. I asked him once again through the door to tell me precisely who he was. Then he did in fact provide identification of a kind, answering, "Town police."

It occurred to me that anyone of course could say the words, "Town police," even the town police, creating an entirely ambiguous set of possibilities for me to decipher.

When the voice once again announced, "Town police," in a tone some might have characterized as authoritative, even belligerent, I settled upon the presumption that in all likelihood it was indeed the town police, and proceeded, not with any degree of certainty by any means, nor particular confidence in my decision, to open the door.

Standing there were two official looking gentlemen. "Yes?" I asked.

"I am Detective Durkheim and this is Detective Spencer," the one on the right said.

"Detectives?" I asked with unconcealed astonishment, having perceived no reason why I should attempt to conceal my own astonishment.

"That's right," Detective Durkheim said. "May we please come in?"

"Is there a problem?" I asked.

Detective Durkheim asked me once again, "May we come inside Mr. Kostelecky?"

"Could I see some kind of identification?" I asked, at which point, complying quite readily, they opened their respective coats, under which badges with photo identification were present.

"All right," I said, stepping aside, even though I had read absolutely nothing of what was on the badges, not merely because I was rather lethargic due to the late hour and the heavy meal, but because the badges appeared to be in order, forgery still a possibility however.

"May we sit?" Detective Durkheim asked, though I could hardly imagine he expected I would object should they go ahead and sit.

Detective Spencer then removed some folded papers from the inner pocket of his jacket, and proceeded to unfold them.

"Let's see," he said, examining the papers as he spoke, "You've lived here seven years, correct?"

I forthrightly acknowledged that he was indeed correct, feeling it was only fair to give credit where credit was due.

"You're single Mr. Kostelecky?" Detective Durkheim asked, doing the questioning now.

"I'm unmarried, if that's what you mean," I patiently clarified for Detective Durkheim.

"Being unmarried is the definition of being single," he protested.

"But single seems to imply bachelorhood, which seems to imply lack of romantic companionship," I replied to Detective Durkheim.

Detective Durkheim responded, "I don't believe it implies that, but your qualification of the term 'single' as it applies to you is duly noted."

I nodded in recognition of this acknowledgement, leading Detective Spencer to utter a comment of his own, telling Detective Durkheim, "He wants us to know he isn't lacking in romantic companionship," to which I nodded as well.

Detective Durkheim asked, "Mr. Kostelecky, your work and your interests are somewhat unusual, are they not?"

"What kind of question is that," I asked in an obvious tone of protestation.

"The rhetorical kind of question," Detective Durkheim answered rather straightforwardly one would have to admit.

"Why would detectives ask me," I asked the detective, "whether I think my work and my interests are unusual?"

"One," Detective Spencer answered rather brusquely, "we aren't detectives. Two, as Detective Durkheim explained, the question was rhetorical. So we were not in fact asking you about the unusual nature of your work and your interests, but declaring them to be such. Would a definition of rhetorical be of help?"

"I know what rhetorical means," I answered, brusque myself, "Why would you say you aren't detectives?"

"Because we aren't," Detective Spencer told me flatly.

"So what you are telling me is that this has been a prank, and I have been the gullible victim, a laughingstock. You inform me you're detectives, show me badges in order to get inside. Then you tell me that I've been tricked. It's impossible to believe anyone I know would trot out such a pointless, inane joke," which wasn't entirely true.

"I'm sure no one you know would," replied Detective Durkheim. "This isn't a prank; we are here officially."

"Then why did you tell me you were detectives, and show me identification identifying you as such?"

It was Detective Spencer who answered now, telling me, "That was just a formality."

"What does that mean?"

To this Detective Spencer replied, "Are you asking us for a definition of the word: formality?"

"No. I'm not. Are we about done?"

Detective Spencer answered emphatically, "No we are not. Not by any stretch of the imagination," which angered me slightly, given that Detective Spencer, rudely in my opinion, had taken the liberty of adding the altogether unnecessary and superfluous phrase, not by any stretch of the imagination.

"I'm tired, and I'd like to get to bed," I told them then. "So I'm afraid I'm going to have to ask you to leave now. It was very amusing. HA HA. Tell whomever conceived this hilarious ruse that I was baffled, and then giddy with amusement once the caper was revealed as such."

"Your cooperation would speed the process along you know." Detective Spencer informed me.

"Then you won't be happy until you've forced me to call the police? The prank will not be complete, it won't be entirely satisfying until you've forced me to have you removed, is that right?"

"Normally, calling the police would be an understandable measure to take in a situation such as this," Detective Spencer said, "but for all intents and purposes, we are the police, Mr. Kostelecky."

At this point I proceeded to do as I had said I would, which was to use the telephone to summon police in order to remove the interlopers claiming either to be the police themselves, or in fact not the police.

But before I could make the call, Detective Durkheim and Detective Spencer grabbed hold of me, wrenching the phone from my hand as I protested and squirmed. Detective Spencer took a pair of handcuffs from inside his coat, as Detective Durkheim pinned my arms in such a way that Detective Spencer could lock me in the cuffs.

I was dragged out the door and into a waiting van, digging my heels deep into the snow as I was pulled away against my will, creating ruts not entirely unlike the ones created by the dead trees being dragged by the unidentified men through the town square.

The room into which I was placed, after being trundled down a long hall, was in the Processing Center according to Detective Durkheim.

Detective Spencer seated me in a chair in front of a wooden desk, turned to go, shutting the door behind him, and locking it from the outside.

The room was barren, though the walls were covered with photographs, in large part of people I recognized. Among those lining the walls were Cornelius Vanderbilt, Henry Ford, Ernest Hemingway, Michael Jordan, Bill Gates, Mother Teresa, Stephen Hawking, Steven Spielberg, Alan Greenspan, Meryl Streep, Sumner Redstone, J.P. Getty and Colin Powell.

After a short time a man entered, and greeted me with, "Hello," before proceeding to take his seat behind the large desk. He introduced himself to me as Dr. Occam, and informed me he was "familiar with " my "case."

"Are you a medical doctor?" I wanted to know.

"Merely a doctor," he answered nonchalantly.

He leaned back in his chair observing me with what I thought was the barest of smiles, though it was entirely possible I misinterpreted his expression as a bare smile, when in fact it was no such thing at all.

"I have been offered no access to legal representation, offered no explanation for my detention, nor have I even been given the opportunity to make a call," I told him.

"This is not," Dr. Occam replied, "a legal or criminal proceeding, Mr. Kostelecky."

"What is it then? An illegal proceeding?"

Much spryer than one would have guessed simply looking at him, Dr. Occam replied, "That's a good one, Mr. Kostelecky."

I asked Dr. Occam with the keenest curiosity imaginable, "Why have I never heard of this? I mean, this place, this process, these interrogations followed by removal from a person's home?"

"You couldn't be expected to," he told me quite sedately, "No one could."

I considered this for a moment, and asked, "Why?"

"You hadn't heard of it, had you?"

"No, of course not."

"Exactly. It is self-evident that you could not."

I looked at Dr. Occam for several seconds, before making a loud noise with an expulsion of my breath, something in the nature of, "Pfffffffffft"

"Let me ask you this," he continued. "When people encounter you or get to know you, do you believe that what is essential about you is readily perceptible? Is what is most important about you, you in your entirety more or less, readily evident to others? Easily observable and demonstrable to the world?"

"You're asking me what other people are thinking, and that is impossible to know."

"You must have an opinion," he answered crisply, "some sense of whether your, let's call them qualities, your essential value is mostly discernible or mostly not."

"For the sake of an answer I'll say about half the time it is mostly discernible, and half the time it is mostly not."

Dr. Occam continued speaking, but my thoughts had begun to drift back to the rooms I had been trundled away from in the dark of night, and to the female companion left behind and sleeping there, as well as to the snow that may still have been falling and blowing ferociously enough to drift high against the front of the building, enough to partially bury it. I pictured the female companion waking, and observing my absence from the bed, walking into the adjacent room to discover I no longer was there, the book about the Polish playwright I had been reading open and face down on the coffee table where it had been left when the men who said they were the police arrived, before telling me they were not the police, interrogating me and taking me away.

I imagined her returning to the other room again, putting a sweater on over the top of her bed clothes, wrapping a scarf around her neck, and picking her boots up off the floor and pulling them on. From there she would walk to the closet in the other room and remove her heaviest coat, putting it on and taking the gloves out of the coat's pockets, putting them on as well. Then she would go to the door, intending to look for me, opening it only to discover that the snow had piled up to several feet, blocking her way, and sealing her in the building.

"Mr. Kostelecky," Dr. Occam said, loudly clearing his throat first in order to gain my attention again, "what are your feelings about your present job?"

I told him bluntly, "The pay is fair, and the workday isn't unbearable," to which Dr. Occam simply nodded and said, "I see."

"Let me ask you this: Do you feel challenged by your current employment?"

Eventually it occurred to me that the only thing I could possibly think to tell him was simply, "I'm often drowsy after lunch."

"I'm not quite sure I understand."

"You asked if I am challenged by my current employment. It is challenging trying to stay awake after I have eaten lunch."

Dr. Occam then proceeded to ask, "Are you religious in any way?"

"No," I said. Whether Dr. Occam welcomed this introduction of brevity, I had no way of knowing of course.

"You don't consider yourself in any sense, even vaguely spiritual?" Dr. Occam asked.

Reflecting on the question duly, I realized that except for the addition of the words "even vaguely" it very much resembled the question before. Therefore, my answer was fairly similar, telling Dr. Occam, "Not even vaguely," with less brevity than the previous answer, but hardly loquacious either.

"Do you understand the opposing concepts of the worldly and the non-worldly?" he asked, the impertinent implication in the question being that I did not in fact understand the difference, or perhaps worse, had no idea what he was talking about.

"Do you think I do, or do you think I don't?" I asked, somewhat impertinent myself.

"It was not my intention to be insulting, although obviously you may have found it so, even if that was the furthest possible thing from my intention."

"Then I have no choice I suppose than to accept you at your word that you had no intention of being insulting, though it would be dishonest of me not to point out that I did in fact feel insulted."

"Now that we have reached, what for lack of a better term, we will call an accord, I would very much like to hear your answer."

"What I would tell you," I began, not completely agreeing that in fact we had reached an accord, though keeping it to myself, "is that I live, if not fully, then substantially in the world, having only limited choice in the matter as I can see it, though I also would say, to put it another way, I do not retreat from the world in any extreme way. On the other hand, I have a somewhat low regard, for lack of a better term, for how the world, let us say, operates, in large part, for its values, as they are actually practiced. And I would tell you with no hesitation whatsoever, that a great deal of what takes place in it bores me to be perfectly frank, somewhat tragically so, according to my own view."

"Then, Mr. Kostelecky, might we say that as a person in less than full retreat from the world, or perhaps in partial retreat, or let us say even fractional retreat, would you not consider yourself present in what we might call, for lack of a better term, the non-material world?"

"If," I replied, somewhat unimpressed by his relative lack of felicity, "non-material is intended to be the equivalent of vaguely spiritual in your estimation, if that is what you're getting at, then I would say no, I am in no way present in what you have identified as the non-material world. "

"Then Mr. Kostelecky, perhaps I will ask you one additional question in conclusion, as they say."

Reading too much, I would soon learn, into use of the word conclusion, I answered somewhat cheerily, "Absolutely."

"What is your monthly rent payment Mr. Kostelecky?"

It was then that I was taken away to another part of the building. One of the idiosyncrasies of the hallways was the absence of any signage, no directional signs of any kind, no identifying signage of any sort, neither on the doors nor on the walls next to the doors. This absence extended even to the elevators, for which there was no writing, nor any numbers next to the buttons in the carriage, or on the walls outside the doors.

After standing for quite some time waiting for an elevator with the uniformed attendant assigned to accompany me, the door to the elevator opened, revealing that the elevator was in fact occupied, a man dressed in a tuxedo standing looking out. At first it appeared the man had no intention whatsoever of moving at all, standing quite erect and entirely motionless, as though he were a figure made of wax or of marble placed there on display, and requiring the assistance of others to be moved from place to place according to their own discretion. When the man wearing the tuxedo finally began to move, the steps he took were rapid, and his strides emphatic, and he nodded slightly to the man in the uniform as he passed by, very rapidly turning the corner and disappearing, even if the sound of his shoes pattering down the shiny hallway continued for quite a while, diminishing gradually the farther away he got of course.

The surface of the walls in the room in which I was next placed were made of wood, or a kind of paneling that resembled wood, the back wall behind the desk covered with hunting trophies of every sort: mounted deer, bear, moose, buffalo as well as boar heads, along with sets of antlers and tusks, while against the wall on one side stood a floor to ceiling trophy case filled with trophies of every conceivable size, shape or metal, the wall across from it filled as densely as one imagined walls possibly could be filled, with a variety of plaques, framed diplomas and certificates documenting credentials and proclaiming recognition.

I was instructed by the man who entered the room to address him either as Professor Weber, or simply Professor, and I chose the latter. Having recently been subjected to the crucible of Dr. Occam, I was not, shall we say, highly receptive to yet another barrage of inquiry, though the method employed by Professor Weber was decidedly different.

The method utilized by Professor Weber was to hold a card up, on which would be a photograph, or a pictorial representation of a thing or place, and which one was instructed to identify, and if able to do so, then, as Professor Weber put it, "elaborate as you see fit."

The initial result of this method was something considerably less than auspicious. If I were shown a photograph of an automobile for instance, while I quite obviously could identify it as an automobile, I could not discern the make or model, or any other specific information about it. Naturally my repeated failure to properly identify an item or a place became increasingly tiresome, certainly to myself, and in all likelihood to Professor Weber as well.

Therefore, at a certain point, when Professor Weber held up a photograph of Baked Alaska, not only did I nod by head indicating lack of recognition, but also put my hands up in frustration, sighed, and even rolled my eyes, telling Professor Weber rather bluntly, "It's dessert."

Professor Weber next held up a card with a photograph of pan-roasted monkfish.

"Looks very appetizing. But I have no idea under the sun what it could actually be," I said.

I was shown a photograph by Professor Weber of what I soon would learn was Aspen, Colorado.

"Lake Tahoe?" was the best that I was able to guess.

When Professor Weber next showed me another photograph of a similar place, which I was soon to later learn was Vail, Colorado, I shook my head in agitation, took on a rather glum expression, sighed loudly and at great length, before telling Professor Weber. "The Poconos?"

Professor Weber shook his head in disappointment, even with a sort of glumness of his own it would be fair to say.

Professor Weber would say from time to time after a series of questions and answers, "I think I've made my point." Yet, at other times the pronoun would be altered, and rather than say, "I think I've made my point," Professor Weber would say instead, "I think we've made our point."

When I was finished recounting what had preceded my arrival in what apparently was the medical wing of the Failure Ward, the man lying strapped to the mattress adjacent to mine explained what he had slowly begun to infer about the reason for our presence in the medical unit of the Failure Ward, whether we called it the Failure Ward or not.

"They're extremely interested in our blood," he said.

I replied that I couldn't possibly fathom why. He told me he would go so far as to say they in fact were obsessed with what might or might not reside in the blood. He added, seeing my baffled expression, "in order to identify something, a marker of some kind perhaps."

Admitting I was no scientist, I guessed that the odds against finding any such thing would have to be astronomical.

"My sincere hunch," he told me, "is that should they locate such a thing, they won't be looking to replicate it."

With that I agreed, and said I in fact was certain they would not. He continued, telling me he believed it abundantly clear that "neither fate smiles, nor do they smile upon us it is quite obvious."

I told him I was not so quick to judge fate, but obviously we had not been well understood or well appreciated by them, to which he replied that his estimation of them had never been particularly high either. With that I told him I could not agree more whole-heartedly and enthusiastically.

Indeed, the man lying next to me that day strapped to a hard mattress in the medical wing would become what some might describe as my dearest friend over our thirty years in the Failure Ward. Each of us grew long flowing gray hair, hair of such length it reached almost to the small of our backs. Our long gray beards were of such huge mass that some might have mistaken us for wise men, though in fact, we had learned during a variety of effective and thorough procedures in the Failure Ward that we were in fact idiots.

It was only natural that at times I would think back to walking through the town square as I had so often done, on my way to the grocery store, buying the dinner for the female companion and I, where more often than not I would encounter the men dragging the dead trees through the snow in the town square, wondering to myself why there were so many of them, and what had killed them, noting with a certain degree of astonishment how the ruts that were made in the snow by the trees being dragged across the square were so quickly filled in by the falling snow.

Perhaps my fondest memory of all was of walks to the town's lake. As I stood in the rather frigid wind, surveying all of my surroundings, one could say, I became aware of what only could be described as an acute, or overwhelming sense of freedom, of immense distance, far from constriction or interference or claustrophobia or pressing humanity, something about the metallic sky, the icy lake and the pale northern light causing me to feel what I felt intensely. Even as it began to snow, I remained standing there, next to the lake, savoring the sense of relief, the feeling of release, out of reach of grasping by those inclined to impinge or to crowd, or let us say, encroach, flakes of snow tickling me on my face as the wind blew them against my skin.