The envelope between sky and earth, was blood-red. Smoke had settled over the past few months after the giant storm in Bor, refusing to leave its partner behind. Sandwiched between these elements, a truck, with a blood red-color even more potent than the sky itself, was roaring on a granite highway, swerving its long exterior around the smaller vehicles on the road. Things were smooth, except for the occasional collision with a car or moped that sent them flying off course. The truck refused to stop or show any care. On the cargo side was a gray-eyed logo with blood-red text below it reading, “Truck of the Extraordinary” written as if a child spray-canned it. If not for the fog, no car or moped would come within two meters of this vehicle. In its half-open rear compartment, flapping polychrome tubules whipped around, posing a deadly hazard to any driver on the road. Soon the truck slid and turned, ignoring the red traffic light and passing straight into the thick fog of the vehicle herds.

In this fog, perhaps at the far end of it, was the ever-elusive Bureau of Extraordinary Affairs. Myth says you don’t find this place; it finds you. Exceptions existed only for this truck, by the virtue of its blood-red coat. As if it owned this graveyard of untold things, hard steel cut through the white blanket to reveal a clear blue sky surrounding a black skyscraper. The skyscraper was a single piece of obsidian ore without any blemish or marking on its outer surface. Even if someone figured out how to reach the location, how could anyone gain entry?

The driver stepped out of his idling truck and pulled out his loudspeaker.

“I am driver Koscez, here for a special delivery. Let me in, I am Koscez.”

For a moment or two it felt as if the words had dissipated into thin air without reaching their destination. The driver answered the silence with something louder,

“Driver Koscez! The material I have will change form or I don’t….”

Then a shrill cry emanated from the tower, followed by a mouth opening dozens of meters wide on the facade. There simply was no other way. Koscez stepped into the driver’s seat, revved his engine, shifted into first gear, and slowly shoved his truck inside the mouth.

The soft darkness from outside gave way to yellow-hued lighting mounted high on unimaginably tall brown walls. As Koscez brought the truck to a halt, a group in hazmat suits surrounded the vehicle and sprayed something onto it.

“The stabilizer liquid, already? Let me get out of the truck first. I am going through decontamination anyway!” Koscez roared from inside.

Someone among the suits announced in a dead tone,

“Please stay inside the vehicle. We don’t want to risk a bio-hazard.”

The driver tried to calm himself down by turning on the radio, but he had simply forgotten. There was static all over the radio frequency range. Nothing gets inside the tower without its permission.

“Oh shit, the frequency is blocked. How could I forget?”

He took out his phone and found that it showed no signal either. Grunting, he played “La Camara” from the internal memory, an artist whose albums he collected. The lead singer howled incomprehensible Spanish chants from inside the glove-box, the same place he howled from when the truck was whirring through the roads of Bor. As always, it soothed his nerves, especially easing the claustrophobia he felt.

Minutes later, when the singer Jorge reached the zenith of his performance and dropped into complete silence, drawing a shriek from someone in the audience on the recording, the suits replied,

“You may get out now.”

Koscez fumbled while opening the glove-box and turned off the music. After grabbing hold of his other possessions, cap, jacket and notepad, he swung the door open and dropped.

“Took you long enough.”

After a second or two he signaled towards the back,

“You guys wanna take a look at the specimen?”

The leader of the pack spoke,

“That is not our job. Give it to the assessment team. Go into the office and walk through handling, assessment and processing forms.”

“Ah, enough of this handling blah-blah. Just get it processed.”

“Nope. None of our problems.” The suits turned around and walked towards a locked entrance. One of them tapped a keycard and the others followed him through the door.

“What bullshit. Today I am surely getting this through processing.”

The lift carried him up to a decontamination facility on Floor 10, through a curtain of plastic sheets, and he dragged his wet feet into a white locker room. He reached into the darkness of locker 19 after opening it with his thumbprint, grabbed a set of white clothes and put them on without missing a beat. Beside the locker, a slanted mirror reflected a patient about to receive a terminal cancer treatment, doing his best not to get any blood on his shirt. He smirked after looking himself in the eye, and swung the large door open.

It was a regular day at the bureau. The clock hanging on the south wall read 3:30 pm.

“Two hours left,” he thought while cruising through the office aisles, which echoed with the regular clattering of typewriters, scribbling on paper, hazy mutterings and phone conversations to God knew where. The cubicles were parted by thin cardboard walls meters high, repeating ad-infinitum and enclosing the eye in narrow spaces.

Koscez navigated his way to his supervisor. At first he had needed a novice’s directions; now he breezed through. A third right, a fifth left, a double u-turn and a seventh left, and there it was: a glass-walled office. Encasing the glass room was a fish tank that partially magnified a spectacled bald man in a black coat sitting inside. He was hunched over his papers with a magnifying glass.

Koscez knocked on the door, to which the man replied, “Come in.”

“Koscez, where have you been?”

“Nowhere. Just collecting some samples from the sites.”

“Koscez, you are a regular contractor. You ask the bureau first if it is to be collected.”

Koscez stammered,

“But boss, something supernatural…. I got a tip.”

“How do you know it is supernatural? Anybody can come up with a tip these days. That is why we have the veracity department.”

“It is visually confirmed alien material Z, ultra rare kind, glowing sort of thing. I even brought it into the building.”

The boss let out a hard sniff. “Sit down, Koscez.”

Koscez complied.

“How long has it been since you worked?”

“6 months.”

“That’s right. 6 months. And already, you are doing field work. That is for the big boys. Upper management stuff.”

“Boss, I am just a driver. My job is to drive. ”

“That is right. You drive when you are told to.”

“I got a tip from the mines that something was blinding the miners. BEA’s job is to process them, right?”

“Yes and no. BEA processes only if it knows it can process it.”

“I have it downstairs, boss. It is waiting in my truck. What should I do now?”

The boss was losing his cool by the second, realized it and finally gave up on the reprimand.

“Alright, here you go. Take these forms.”

From underneath his desk he took out perhaps five to seven forms.

“Fill out all of them and give each one to its respective department. Then it gets processed.”

Just as he was handing over the sheets of paper, someone barged into the office and spoke briskly.

“Dimitri, you’re here. We have an urgent task.”

It was a man of towering stature, one who probably had to duck beneath the doorway. His eyebrows met in a single arch above a pointed nose, and beneath the nose sat wide lips that seemed capable of producing a grin one could never forget. He stopped short when he saw the gathering.

“Oh Sorry. Am I interrupting something?”

“No, boss. He was about to leave. Meet Mr. Koscez, our driver.”

“Hello, Koscez. This is Andrei Malashenko. Glad to meet you.”

Andrei whipped out his bony hand, which Koscez took in a firm grip.

“Always happy to meet people who have their hands on the ground.”

“Thank you, Mr. Andrei. I have been driving my truck since my twenties. It’s only natural for me.”

“Good. So what brings you here from the outside? We don’t call for drivers until we need them.”

“I have an alien specimen with me.”

The vein in Dimitri’s forehead was pulsing harder by the second.

“Sorry, Boss. He broke the chain of command.”

“Oh no, Dimitri. Don’t worry about it. I like energetic people who take initiative. We need people like you, Koscez.”

Surely the words between them were not heated, but the atmosphere surely was. Koscez did not intend to stoke the inferno that was brewing inside.

“No, sir. Please, just process the alien material.”

Andrei turned his head towards Dimitri. “Look at him. This is what I am talking about. If anything, I will take him under my wing.”

“No, boss. He is new to the company.”

“Don’t worry, Dimitri, I will take good care of him. Now, Koscez, follow me.”

Recognizing who was above whom, Koscez tailed Andrei like a good mutt, a reflection on the glass pane showed Dimitri shaking his head with his eyes half-closed.

‘Was it disappointment, or something else?’ Koscez wondered, ‘Didn’t expect flexibility from this department,’.

Andrei’s tall frame ambled across the aisles, stopping at cubicles, laughing while discussing things Koscez’s ears could hardly decipher, and making sharp turns until the partitions fell away and their destination stood in front of them. It was a metallic room with no windows, and yet it looked as though the office labyrinth had sprouted from it, just as it had from Dimitri’s.

“Come in,” Andrei said, flicking the light switch. “So tell me. What is this alien material you picked up?”

The room was surprisingly banal for a big shot, with a couple of drawers bulging with papers behind a brown teak desk.

“Sir, I’m glad you asked. I got a tip from one of our mines. A few workers found a polychromatic rock underground. With prolonged exposure, the miners were losing their sight. Some” Koscez lowered his voice as if avoiding eavesdroppers, “even saw visions.”

“Visions? That is definitely a good start for something supernatural. Subterranean, alien, could be both. Don’t you think? Do you have your forms?”

“Yes, sir.” Koscez held up the forms he clutched.

“You need new forms. Fill out both the subterranean and the alien forms. You need to make an airtight case for approval.”

Koscez stared at the pileup of paperwork. Holding himself back from erupting, he asked in a dry voice, “You think so?”

“Yes. Then we can start to understand this material.”

“What forms do I need?”

“Here you go,” Andrei said, pulling sheets from his desk drawer. “B224, B256, B278, and some more of these. Each needs to be submitted to its respective department, listed at the bottom.”

Koscez checked his pockets to see if he had a map. He found none, only the impression of a small round object.

“Sir, do you have a map of the office?”

“Do you even need one, Koscez? This office itself would lead you.”

After Andrei’s remark he realized he didn’t need one after all. The office definitely had its ways. Koscez glanced up at the clock, which read 4:15 p.m.

‘Ah, shit. I need to hurry up.’

x………………………………………………………………………………………………………x

Inside a cubicle, stacks of books and documents formed a fort around the interior. A spectacled, middle-aged woman sat with her legs crossed over the desk, smoking a long thin cigarette. The smoke rose and dispersed as a slow wall-mounted fan slashed its momentum from her flank. Behind the woman was a multicolored paper windmill held between two thick books, rotating in tandem.

Koscez was facing her with a sheet of paper in his hand, “I am here to submit the alien recognition form, B256.”

She spoke without looking. “What alien?”

“I don’t know what it is. But I call it alien for now.”

The woman stood up, took the sheet from his hands, and scanned the details.

“Hmm, I see. So this one is a polychromatic jelly with the ability to blind. Who knows if it’s really polychromatic, though? How did you get the visual information?”

Koscez clarified, “The miners went blind because they were around it too long. I only gave it a brief look.”

Her nose stayed stuck to the sheet until she set it down on the desk.

“So, repeated exposure. I will write it down.” She scribbled more details with her red pen. “Good job. This is a great update.”

With thirty minutes left on the clock, Koscez thought, ‘I will get the rest done tomorrow.’ Koscez felt a wave of relief.

Something had sat in his mind like a burr ever since he set foot in the cubicle, and with the worry lifted, even temporarily, it worked its way up. He could not resist the urge to enquire,

“How is the paper windmill spinning? Even though the wall-fan is looking the other way.”

Her spectacles slid down her sweaty nose, “You mean that thing behind me?”

“Yes.”

“Why does the paper windmill spin? It spins because it can spin. Nothing to explain here.”, She hunched her shoulders as if that settled it.

“I guess.” Koscez reminded himself that dwelling got a man nowhere, not with the rest of the forms still ahead of him. He chose to take this as an overall win. The relief, which had let in a useless curiosity, soon fermented into sweet jubilation. He had rarely experienced such smooth sailing in this department, and his spirits rose.

x———————————————————————————x

Outside a grayish cuboid building, factory workers, baristas, fishermen and strangers of every trade crowded into a crooked line, shuffling, squeezing and pushing forward whenever a space opened. All of it was a worthy wait for the only Menza, where green soup, porridge and some unidentifiable sausage stew sat in steaming pots behind glass, waiting to be ladled onto steel plates by plastic-clad staff. On one of the steel benches sat a group of truckers, hunched over their plates. Some sipped their soup straight from the bowls, while one of them gnawed at a piece of stale bread.

The one chewing the bread opened his mouth mid-chew.

“Koscez, you got some balls.”

Koscez, spooning soup with his face close to the bowl, looked up, baffled.

“What the hell are you talking about, Lauka?”

Lauka swallowed and spoke.

“You, out of all of us, get invited by those pompous bastards, the BEA, and you try your best to fuck it all up.”

“I didn’t fuck up anything. Lauka, watch your words.”

“Then why do you take a sample to them? For these guys? Giving them something out of nowhere.”

“It is my job, Lauka. Instead of saying bad things, do yours better.”

The largest of the men opened his mouth, this time not to eat,

“Lauka, why are you getting on Koscez like this?”

“Berez, you see, we are all struggling to keep our jobs in this shithole. But the ideal driver here does not want his job anymore.”

Koscez, unable to bear the words ‘ideal driver,’ erupted in anger.

“Lauka, shut the hell up! All of those BEA bastards keep delaying every shipment I give them. It is either handling this or processing that. They never clear anything. Not even the magnetic crystals I se…”

Lauka interjected.

“Yeah, we know. How many times will you say it? Do you even know where you work? B… E… A… While I work at the cement factory. Dude, your guys work with aliens. Do you even understand what I am saying? And here you are, complaining all the time.”

Berez interceded.

“Lauka, don’t speak like this, man. You are upsetting him.”

“Buddy, Berez, you always take his side. I guess I cannot beat a childhood friend…”

“Enough!”

The fourth man, average in height but with broad shoulders and long arms, finally spoke.

“Lauka, it is none of your business. Koscez, next time, speak less about work. Let’s have a peaceful evening, boys.”

Peace fell over the table afterwards. After finishing their plates and gossiping about women, gambling, and other matters, a few of the truckers began to head out.

Koscez took the opportunity to speak with the fourth man. “Mirek, thanks for that tip you gave me.”

“You are welcome. I only told you what the whole mine was talking about.”

“Thanks anyway. How are the guys who found the slime?”

“Buddy, I keep a strict boundary there. I don’t want to know more about those people.”

“Wait, that’s a first. You don’t care?”

“Koscez, don’t expect others to be like you. Driven and courageous. I can help you, but I cannot indulge in things the way you do. I stick to my routine, like an ant blindly following its path. That is how I keep it together, Koscez. That’s my happiness.”

“Mirek, you have always been the strange one. But I respect you for being clear in your ways.”

Mirek offered a smile, perhaps the first one in a long time.

“I appreciate it, Koscez.”

After a brief exchange of niceties, Koscez stood up and made for the exit. Before he could leave, Mirek interrupted him.

“Koscez, be careful. The BEA is not a normal organization. You can’t go around breaking order.”

“I am simply doing my job, Mirek.”

“I am just saying. Be careful.”

Those last two words remained stuck to the ear cavities of Koscez for the entire evening.

x ——————————————————————————- x