"Can I leave?" I asked.
"It's your loss." The man sitting in the wooden chair in a small hotel room replied.
I couldn't decide what to do.
Being kidnapped and sitting on a bed in a hotel room next to highway, my mind and body were in a state of emergency.
Yet, I had jumped into in many extreme situations willingly before and had a strong nerve.
Additionally, the man, who was still wearing a cap, didn't make me feel scared.
He was offering me something interesting.
"Look I picked you because you're the coolest out of the people I've been studying and monitoring." He said.
"I even read your work from your school years. At the age of 9 you complained that the real world is extremely boring."
"You've been monitoring me since I was a kid?" I stood up, alerted.
"No, miss. Rita, please sit down.
I only started volunteering for the order four years ago. And I located you as a potential cracker three years ago. Since then, yeah."
"Cracker?"
"Oh, not a whip cracker. A case cracker, a discoverer."
"A discoverer of what?"
"Of everything too interesting and magical to be real, but is indeed real."
I gasped. Had he been reading my thoughts?
"Don't fuck with me; whoever you are."
"My name is Babu, and I'm not fucking with you.
It seems you already know what I'm talking about."
I stayed silent, my heart beating hard.
It can't be.
I sat back down on the bed, looking intently at Babu.
"Ms. Rita you've always known that the world cannot be this boring. At least since the age of 9."
"Yes.." I started quietly, cautiously. "Yes, since I discovered that Santa Klaus is a lie, the mythologies are a lie. The world outside my cartoons is filled with tax forms and fuel injectors. I didn't want to accept it."
"Well, what if I told you that the world contains far more interesting things than your wildest imaginations?"
"My wildest imaginations?"
"Agreed that you are famous for your mystical surreal books and you have an extraordinary imagination; yet everything you can come up with is limited to the box of what we called the borders for the ordinary."
I was a little appalled for being ordinary.
My eyebrows must have shown that.
"No, it's not your fault. The greatest poets from the past couldn't have imagined the stupid games we play on our phones today. It's a matter of exposure."
The man, apparently named Babu, stood up.
He removed his cap and set it on the table beneath the mirror next to his dark sunglasses.
He ran his hands through his hair, went in the bathroom, and came back drying his face with a towel.
I remained seated in confusion on the bed.
He took a deep breath and started speaking again.
"I volunteer for an ancient, a very ancient order called in modern English as "The gatekeepers of infinite good things". We are the ones who keep the world boring for most people, on purpose."
I immediately believed him. I knew it. I had suspected it for years.
"You! I hate you. Why would you do something like that?."
"For MOST people. The good things are reserved for people who deserve to enjoy it. We have a society.
Things leak from time to time, yes.
Dinosaurs and the Indus Valley civilisation were major screw ups."
He sat back into the chair.
"How do you join this society? How much do you guys know?" I asked eagerly.
"It's complicated. Firstly everyone is prohibited from revealing a good thing to anyone else, even through indirect means. Trust me, we shall know. The algorithm has been in development for a very long time, and it's actually a good thing itself."
"But then how does anyone know it?" I interjected.
"If you're smart enough to spot inconsistencies in the popular understanding, to follow up on it, and crazy enough to believe the only conclusion facts lead you; you figure it out.
Once you do, we reach out to you, as we would have been monitoring you, and congratulate you, and connect you with others who did."
"But what's the point? Why won't you share these fun things with the rest of the world?"
"It's always been this way. I think they are better enjoyed in peace. The ordinary world already has many amusements, and those who are unsatisfied with it manage to figure out at least one good thing in their life. It's not really an unfair system in my personal opinion."
"What if someone wants to tell the world?"
"You're not supposed to."
"But if someone does?"
"They typically don't."
"In case someone does?"
Babu looked frustrated.
He stared back at me.
"Look if you reveal your Antarctica thing, you'll never find out other good things, okay? The other volunteers will ensure you never come close. Are you going to be satisfied with just one good thing?"
"Fuck, yeah. I get it. I suppose not."
"Do you have a list of things?" I continued, "How many are there?"
"Everyone only knows a subset of them all. There's a man in Uruguay who claims to have found 57, which is extreme to be honest. With the knowledge and secrecy of 1 good thing, you're already peculiar. With 5, your Wikipedia biography will describe you as eccentric."
"But how many?"
"Conjectured to be infinite."
"There are infinite good things in the world. That's what we believe."
"I believe it too." I replied.
"What's the Antarctica thing? No way, the Edgar Allan Poe thing?" I suddenly remembered.
"Yes, that project of yours. If you asked me what the thing is, you've not been paying attention.
I read the drafts on your drive, you're on the right track about what Poe got himself involved in.
Yes, he was in Antarctica the week before his death.
Yes you're correct that he had access to a futuristic party of people or beings."
"Holy shit, I'm not crazy." I thought to myself.
"Look I can't provide any answers to you, and I cannot tell you whether your guesses are incorrect as well."
Babu had some water.
"You started suspecting at the right place. A poet figuring out the existence of other galaxies and expanding universe many decades before physicists did is indeed curious.
He couldn't hold it in, he wrapped it in fantastical and delirious writing and published it. " Babu shrugged.
"Everything makes sense now, you guys must have cut him off. Maybe that's why he was so frustrated." I remarked.
I laid down flat on the bed and started connecting the dots furiously in my head. Babu stayed silent meanwhile.
"Wait, what is this?" I suddenly remembered I was kidnapped and sat up.
"Is this initiation?"
"No, not really. You'll be initiated when you figure it out completely. Volunteering is of course optional, but if you want to be connected to other crackers, then it's mandatory. If you choose to volunteer, I'll get you all the gear.
You're really close, so I decided to ease you in."
"Right, okay."
This was turning out to be the most extraordinary evening of my life. I looked at Babu. He looked like he wanted to order a sandwich and nap while watching a film on the TV.
"You can leave now, this is all." Babu said, getting up.
I grabbed my rucksack from the floor and stepped out of the door.
I jumped down the stairs happily and walked towards the highway, looking for someone to give me a ride back to the city.
I had cancelled my camping plans. Finally, life was interesting and I couldn't wait to crack the mystery. I couldn't wait to meet other crackers. I smiled from ear to ear, imagining myself with my new friends, as I held up my thumb asking for a ride.