Jiro wasn't sure why Sanders was just sitting on the hood. He wasn't sure why he was sitting on the hood with Sanders watching the traffic go by. He wasn't even sure how they had gotten where they were. He'd thought that Massachusetts was less than six hours across.. at the rate that his strange companion liked to drive.
Talking to him didn't seem to work. He was still not sure why this was so either. I mean.. he spoke English, and Japanese, but that didn't help.
Jiro was in the process wondering if this was some sort of dream and that he was really still aboard the flight to Logan Airport. He thought that if he could close his eyes he'd be asleep again, then when he opened them he'd wake up. But he seemed to have the remarkable problem of not being able to close his eyes. This had been the case since he'd accepted the drink. Spring-loaded eyes were not a pleasant experience, Jiro had decided since then.
Jiro's mind wandered back to the year before. There had been an unpleasant incident with a girl and for some reason the memory had kept returning to his mind since he left the airport. Jiro's reverie was interrupted by the arrival of something unpleasantly rubbery and sticky and flying directly into Jiro's face. This resulted in Jiro taking a fall for the second time today. He had a brief impression of an automobile passing at high speed before the ground took his consciousness from him.
The brief second or two of unconsciousness did absolutely nothing to revive Jiro, especially since his eyes (although he did not realize it at the time) remained stubbornly open. He became slowly aware that the peculiar young man in front of whose car he had fallen was bending over him with a tremendous Cheshire cat grin on his face.
"Well, lad, it looks like we're in the game now."
If Jiro had found his new acquaintance's driving fast before, it was nothing compared to how they were moving down the road two minutes later. Jiro suddenly realized he didn't know his companion's name. "Please call me Sanders." It was several minutes before Jiro realized that Sanders had responded before Jiro asked. He went back to hoping it was all a dream.
Return to the control division.
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