From the outside, the building looked like an ordinary house except for a sign near the door. The sign bore the same logo Reginald had seen online when he applied for the job: an open eye whose pupil contained a triad of smaller symbols he did not recognize, the name of the place forming a thick border around it.

Inside, he saw that the house had been extensively retrofitted. Two narrow desks formed an L-shape in the wide front hall, behind which sat a woman of indeterminate age with a sallow face and dirty hair. In the narrow hallway behind her, he could see several people darting in and out of rooms and whispering. The woman said, in a muted voice, “Can I help you?”

“Yes, hello—my name is Reginald. I have an interview today.”

“For the junior research assistant job?”

“Yes.”

“Well, welcome to BPIR”—she pronounced it “beeper”—“and please take a seat there. Leo will be with you in a moment. My name’s Rhonda. You can let me know if you have any questions.” She turned to face a computer monitor, which had a plastic filter affixed to it that rendered the screen completely opaque.

Reginald nodded and turned around. A row of three cheap plastic chairs sat across from the desk, positioned oddly close. He lowered himself into the furthest one and slid his messenger bag onto his lap.

For twenty minutes or so he shifted in his seat and glanced back and forth from the front door to Rhonda’s desk to an open door behind her. It seemed to lead to a conference room; he spied a long table and matching chairs in dark-grained wood. It could have been a sitting room or parlor in the building’s former life.

Suddenly a voice called out to Rhonda. “My interview?”

She smiled and gestured to Reginald. “He’s here.”

Reginald turned to face the man striding down the hall. He was in his fifties, shorter than Reginald by several inches, darkly tanned, with a grim-looking face arranged around a thick grey mustache that rested on his lip. He was not the kind of person Reginald had imagined working here, though, then again, he was unsure whom he did imagine.

The man barked, “Hello, come with me,” and began to walk down the hall from which he’d emerged. Reginald leaped to his feet and followed. “I’m Reginald,” he said.

“Yes, I’m Leo, nice to meet you.” Leo moved into a large office toward the back of the hall. Reginald admired the long desk and tall, very full bookshelves. Leo pointed to a chair that faced the desk, at which he sat down.

“So,” he said. “You wanna work for BPIR?”

Reginald widened his eyes and smiled. “I do,” he said. “Well. I do, but I’d like . . . I’d like to know a little bit more about the position.”

“BPIR,” Leo said. “Bureau of Perceptive Intelligence Research. We do studies for our clients, studies that measure extraordinary human perceptive capabilities.”

Reginald found the acronym a little awkward. “BPIR,” he said—the term emerging uneasily from his mouth—“does memory tests? Or vision tests?”

“No.” Leo shook his head. “Our clients are scientists, interested in people who claim to have experience with unusual phenomena. It’s not bullshit. Might sound like it, but, well, it’s important to measure and evaluate these claims. The surveys you’ll be doing are like follow-ups, check-ins. Caseworkers collect the files later. It’s all pretty straightforward. You get used to it.”

Reginald could not help but dwell on particular terms: unusual phenomena, caseworkers. He nodded along, unable to think of an intelligent question.

Leo said, “Can you type fast?”

Reginald agreed that he could.

“Honestly,” Leo continued, “it’s a simple job. You’re way overqualified. You’ve got a master’s degree in history. I don’t know what you’re doing here and I don’t care. But if you want the job, you’ve got it.”

“Then I’ll take it,” Reginald replied. “Thank you.”

Leo made a face; Reginald, who assumed Leo now expected more from him, felt unwilling to give anything further. He smiled and said, “Is there anything else I need to know?”

“Go talk to Rhonda. She’ll give you some paperwork. You’ll learn more when we train you. Good to have you aboard.” Leo stood up and held out a hand, which Reginald shook. Then Leo waved, dismissing his new employee. Reginald left the room and made his way outside.

*

“All right, kiddo! Sorry. I shouldn’t call you a kiddo. How old are you?”

The manager, Kathi, was tall and gangly and very very cheerful. Reginald smiled. “I’m twenty-six,” he said.

“All right, sir,” she said, clapping her hands together. “Let’s get training.”

He had arrived at BPIR around a quarter to three, a little bit early for his first shift. He was assigned to work every weekday, three to eight, and one alternating weekend shift—Saturday morning or Sunday afternoon. Kathi, who had informed Reginald of his schedule over the phone, had emphasized these times as crucial for contacting respondents. “We want people to pick up the phone and have time to talk!” she’d said. “Studies have shown that these are the optimal times.”

Now Kathi led Reginald up the stairs to a large room; most of its former walls had been collapsed to create an open space full of rows of computers and rolling desk chairs. All chairs were vacant save two.

“It’s really pretty simple,” she said, lowering her voice and heading into one of a number of tiny offices around the room. This cubbyhole was lined with cabinets for filing and storage. Kathi crossed her arms and leaned against the nearest cabinet. She continued, gesturing emphatically with her hands: “The software we use guides you through pretty much everything you need to do. When you come into work, ask the supervisor what project you should work on that day. After you log in, select the project. The software randomizes all available phone numbers, so all you have to do is click the button that says “Begin survey” and read your script. It guides you through everything. If they say yes, you move onto the questions. If they say no, you’re back at the beginning. You choose your own adventure!”

“Seems easy enough,” said Reginald.

“Yup! We’re gonna get you started on checking case files for IPS.”

Reginald nodded, having no idea what “IPS” meant or what its case files involved. Kathi did not explain.

She said, “Pick any computer you want. Go ahead and get started. And you can let the supervisor, Chelsea, know if you have any questions.” She waved at a girl, younger than both of them, who sat at an isolated computer in one corner. Chelsea waved back and returned to what she was doing—not making calls but perusing a large textbook.

Kathi smiled at Reginald. “Are you ready?” Before he could answer, she moved swiftly toward the stairs and left.

Reginald took a seat in a far corner and stared at the computer. An unusual sense of trepidation preoccupied him, unusual because, if he thought about it very much, the act of merely talking to people over the phone, should not have disturbed him very much. His long-nurtured callousness and voyeurism made him feel ready and, even, eager to pry into strangers’ secrets, particularly secrets that had to do with perceptive intelligence, whatever that was.

He logged in. The outdated software before him—hideous—featured a bright blue background and a simple sans serif font. He clicked the large grey button that initiated his first call and saw, at the top, two lines of text, labeled PROJECT and NUMBER. The first displayed a further string of letters, “INST STUD PARA,” and the second a string of numerals: a phone number. Beneath the number he saw a name. He realized he did not know how to make the call—where the actual telephonic apparatus was—and looked around until he saw a cheap set of headphones with a mic. He put on the headset and clicked the next button on the screen and began the call.

The phone rang three times. A woman answered, saying, “Hello?”

“Hi, am I speaking to Mary?”

“Yep.”

“Hi, my name is Reginald, and I am calling on behalf of the Bureau of Perceptive Intelligence Research, and I—”

“Damn it, you’re talkin’ too fast for me to follow. Slow down!”

“I apologize, ma’am. I am calling you on behalf of the Bureau of Perceptive Intelligence Research, and we would like to do a survey with you regarding the study you did with the IPS last summer. Are you available at the moment to do a twenty-minute survey?”

“Twenty minutes? No, I don’t have time for that.”

“Okay, well—” The call ended.

Reginald marveled at the opacity of the survey materials, not to mention the woman’s rudeness. He sighed and began another call. “Hello, am I speaking to Jerome?”

A deep voice answered. “Yeah?”

Reginald gave his opening gambit. 

“What’s this?” he replied. “Some survey?”

“Yes. It regards the study you did with the IPS last summer,” he repeated.

“Yeah, I don’t know if I wanna do that. Y’all really fucked me up good,” he said. He sounded impatient.

“I’m sorry to hear that, sir. Just to clarify, I do not work for the IPS but am—”

“Then what the hell are you callin’ me for? What business is it of yours?”

“This is a survey—”

“Yeah, I know it’s a survey. You already said that. What I wanna know is what you’re gonna do for me now that I have this useless fuckin’ arm! It’s not even an arm anymore. It’s, what is it, a fuckin’ fin? I’m sittin’ here with this melted piece of shit hangin’ offa my shoulder, and now you call to ask”—here his voice rose into a crude imitation of Reginald—“‘Hello, I’d like to do a survey with you today.’”

“Sir, are you saying you would prefer not to do the survey?”

“What do you think? Fuck you!” Jerome hung up.

Reginald blinked several times and stared at the screen. Reginald sat gazing at the computer for several minutes, feeling a sense of unease. Then he looked around the room. Distraction came in the form of thoughts about his coworkers. All of them appeared younger than he. A greasy-haired teenage girl in sweatpants sat further down the same row. A boy about her age with a backward baseball cap sat in the row ahead. He looked quite stupid, with his mouth agape and his eyes staring dully forward. For a second Reginald wondered whether he should extend more sympathy to the boy. Then he shook his head and clicked some buttons on the screen.

He began his third call—someone named Calvin. Another man answered, this one with a slight, gentle twang. He sounded friendly. Reginald took care to begin his speech at a slower pace.

“Hello, my name is Reginald. I am calling from the Bureau of Perceptive Intelligence, and we would like to do a phone survey with you regarding the study you did with the IPS last summer. Are you available at the moment to do a twenty-minute survey?”

“Sure, why not.”

“Excellent, thank you.” Reginald clicked onward.

“Okay,” he said. “I’m going to ask you a series of questions, and I would like you to provide the most accurate answers possible.”

“Got it.”

“Okay. Question one. Can you confirm that your name is Calvin Cleary?”

“Yes, I’m Calvin.”

“And can you confirm that you were a voluntary participant in a research study with the IPS in the summer of 20—?”

“Yessir.”

“Can you identify whether you were in the Island group or the Nebula group?”

“It was, uh, Island.”

“Great. And have you experienced either a) physical or b) mental symptoms following the study?”

“Um. Both.”

“Okay. I would now like to ask you some questions about your physical symptoms. In the past thirty days, have you experienced any instances of liquefactive necrosis?” Reginald had trouble reading the term aloud, stuttering on the l. He began to feel another wave of anxiety as he waited for Calvin to reply.

“What’s that?”

Reginald peered at the screen. He could click on certain phrases to summon informative pop-up windows. “Um—melting. Of flesh.”

“Yes, I have.”

“Has that occurred in either arm?”

“Left arm, mostly.”

Reginald ticked the appropriate box. “Thank you. Have you experienced any of the same in your legs?”

“No.”

“Thank you. Have you experienced any instances of frostbite and/or hypothermia?”

“Both.”

Once again Reginald clicked on the relevant boxes. He continued to ask a short series of questions about various bodily ailments before probing Calvin with questions about his mental wellbeing.

He asked, “Would you say that your current mental state, compared to your state immediately after the study, is better, the same, or worse?”

“Oh, it’s much better. I’m doin’ much better than I was, for sure.” He sounded quite chipper. Reginald wondered what Calvin was like before the study.

“That’s great. Okay, it looks like we have just a few more questions. In the past thirty days, have you experienced any hallucinogenic episodes?”

“Like, did I hallucinate?”

“Yes.”

“I sure did.”

“Thanks. In this section, I would like you to describe, very briefly, the subject of your hallucinations.”

“I was on the island again. I went back there. That’s all.”

“Okay. Well, Calvin, we have reached the end of our survey. I would like to thank you for spending your time completing the survey, and I hope you have a great day.”

“Wait,” Calvin said. He sounded dismayed. “What’re you all gonna do about it? Are you gonna help me? I don’t wanna go back there. I don’t wanna see it again.”

Reginald took in a deep breath and slowly expelled it.

“I’m sorry, um, I don’t work for ISP. We’re just doing a survey on their behalf.”

“Well do you know how I can contact them I need help! I don’t wanna go back there!”

“I’m very sorry, sir. I’m afraid we can’t help you.”

The call ended.

Reginald blinked. He muttered, “What the fuck.” Then he stood up to stretch his legs, waking to the bathroom. He stood in a stall and played on his phone for fifteen minutes and then made his way back to his seat. Then he started a new call.

For about four hours, the software pulled up fresh numbers from the void, and Reginald pumped his respondents for information about their melting flesh, their frostbitten feet, their strokes; he learned of their ongoing hallucinations of an island—which nearly all of them continued to experience, despite whatever the ISP’s involvement. Some of them mentioned a sky or a sea. Reginald dutifully recorded their replies. By the time his first shift was over, he felt shocked and utterly drained, exhausted. He wanted to fall on the floor and go to sleep. Instead he stood up and moved toward the opposite corner, where Chelsea sat working on homework. Her open textbook and a tablet lay in front of her. Her dark hair was pulled into a bun atop her head, and currently a finger dug around there, scratching it. She looked up at him and smiled. “Hey,” she said.

“Hello,” Reginald said. “I’m new here. I just wanted to ask: how familiar are you with the IPS survey?”

“Oh, I’ve done them all. What about it?”

“Well. It’s pretty intense, isn’t it? I mean, the things those people talked about.” Mortimer lowered his voice to a whisper and said, “Melting flesh? Seizures?”

The girl laughed and said, “I mean, yeah. It’s pretty crazy. But that stuff didn’t really happen. The study was all about things people perceived, right? It’s stuff they imagined happening to them.”

“But what would cause them to imagine things like that?”

Chelsea shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t have any more information than you do. Anyway, my advice would be—don’t think about it too much. Just ask the questions.”

Reginald nodded. “Okay. I can do that. Anyway, shift’s over. Thanks.”

“Sure! See ya.” She bent over her textbook once more.

“Bye.”

*

Reginald’s days proceeded in a blur. His evening shifts—hours’ worth of obscure and frightening traumas—left him drained. After work, he stayed up late, doing little of substance, distracting himself with television or porn, and then sleeping late before heading into work in the afternoon. His peculiar hours meant that he rarely saw anyone else but his coworkers. After only a few weeks, he realized that the situation was intolerable. He struggled to understand how his coworkers—all those college students—managed it. Then again, the simplistic reasoning passed down by management seemed clear and satisfying enough. Any time he brought up a weird comment or an uncomfortable situation, a coworker or a supervisor would react with amusement: “I know—this shit is crazy!”

While he could not disagree, still he had not fully numbed himself to what he heard. Some of the surveys he was assigned were, it is true, fairly mundane. He did not fully grasp the connection between BPIR’s stated mission—to investigate perceptive intelligence, however fuzzily defined—and a survey that involved calling families to ask about their contact with their caseworkers, on behalf of what seemed to be an organization for social work. The questions asked about children’s individualized learning plans and their schools’ success in implementing them. He had less trouble dealing with this one; these families’ apparently mundane dramas paled, for him, in comparison to the baffling strangeness associated with the INST STUD PARA, the survey on which he spent by far spent the greatest amount of time. 

One evening, he spent nearly an entire shift—four hours—carefully listening to the reports of a woman named Lisa, not of her own experiences but her child’s, as she expounded on her daughter’s frequent claims of having spent her nights wandering a blighted and desolate landscape and of having witnessed another child’s transformation from boy to rabbit and back again, several times, a child she identified as someone she knew.

She told Reginald of how, when she would check on her daughter at night, she would find her awake in the dark and, soon, would hear a double-voiced chanting: her daughter’s voice as well as another, lower-pitched, resounding underneath. At one point the woman in fact reproduced it, the double-voiced chanting, so that Reginald felt unsure as to whether the primary issue at hand was the daughter’s experience or the mother’s. He sat in his chair, utterly horrified, as Lisa relayed her daughter’s speech: “He was consigned to the pit. (You were consigned to the pit.) Does the barren waste not stretch for miles on either side (does the barren waste . . .), and will the seeker not be lost forever in the waste (and will the seeker not be lost . . .), and where he walked, did he not leave behind (and where you walked, did you not leave behind . . .) the scorch marks of the blazing soles of his wicked feet (the scorch marks of the blazing soles . . .)?” 

After the recital, she said, “Did you get it down? Did you write it all down? Did you?” Lying, Reginald averred that he did and then tried to divert the conversation to the next topic. As it turned out, Lisa was dutiful, willing to see the survey through to the end, patiently listening to every question he asked and providing detailed responses. But then she would break down once more, having prodded the open wound a little too deeply, and set off on another journey of mind and spirit, taking Reginald in tow, uttering evidently spontaneous reflections about that desolate landscape in which, she said, her daughter had found herself wandering. “But not me, never me,” she would say, “and I was never chosen and I don’t know why, and I don’t know how to get there to see what it is my daughter sees, so I can only see it through what she tells me, and that’s the worst thing about it all. Do you know what I mean?”

“Of course,” he said. He had, truthfully, come to the end of the survey at this point and told her so. “Okay,” she said. “Will there be another follow-up?”

“I’m sorry,” he replied. “I don’t actually work for ISP; BPIR contracts with them, so . . .”

“So,” she repeated.” “So what?”

“And so.” He cleared his throat. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t know who to put you in touch with.”

“Okay,” she said. “Well, can you ask?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Can you ask whether there might be a follow-up? Do you have a manager?” She sounded utterly agreeable. After all, Reginald considered, she had made an utterly agreeable request. He had, suddenly, a bleak sense of his abetting in some sort of exploitation, of Lisa and countless others. He blinked and pushed the feeling aside and said, “Can you hold for just a second, ma’am?”

“Of course!”

He stood up and walked over to where Chelsea sat. “Hi Chelsea,” he said.

“Hey, what’s up?”

“I’ve been on the phone with a client for—for about four hours now. And she, um, she wants to speak to a manager about whether ISP is going to follow up with her.”

“Wait, four hours? You’ve been talking to one woman for four hours?”

“Um, yes. I have.”

“Wow.” She shook her head. “That’s wild. Just have her call Leo.” She took a notepad from her desk and scribbled a phone number on the first sheet. Peeling it off, she stuck it to one finger and held it out to Reginald, who took it.

“Thanks,” he said.

Returning quickly to his seat, he picked up and said, “Hello?”

“Yes? Still here!”

“Hi, I have the phone number of our manager, Leo. Why don’t you call him and follow up about—about ISP,” he said.

“Great, let me grab a pen. I’ll call him tomorrow.”

Reginald repeated the number, and, after thanking him, she said goodbye and hung up the phone.

Reginald logged off his computer and left early. Nobody said anything, and it seems likely that nobody noticed.

On the way downstairs and out the door, he dwelled on Lisa. What astounded him was that they were all like that; her tale was as harrowing as it was ubiquitous. As much as he would prefer to revel in the strangeness and horror and then to hide it all away, he could not help but piece things together. It was less that he had consciously begun to map out the possibilities and more, he felt, that he could not help but do so; his mind labored in the background, nudging this jagged bit of landscape next to that reported seizure. Lisa’s daughter, as well as Lisa herself, had experienced visions of a desert—an island. The daughter had been in the “Island” group, as had everyone Reginald had spoken to; he’d never interviewed anyone from the “Nebula” group. Whatever this island was, its topography seemed remarkably consistent among all those who hallucinated it. It featured vivid, unreal colors, which Reginald thought of as lysergic: violet sea, orange sand, hot-pink sky. Sometimes people referred to particular buildings and, less commonly, beings, such as the boy/rabbit. Those who visited the island—who hallucinated it—explained their experiences as seizures, but they also laid claim to physical symptoms such as frostbite. Many of them agreed that they’d experienced melting flesh, the detail that most horrified him. Every case included some variation on the same set of experiences.

All of it rapidly swirled through his mind, refusing to settle into a coherent picture. Now, at the foot of the stairs, he looked around him. The first floor was empty at this time, shortly after eight o’clock. He headed toward the door but then stopped, turning around. He moved toward Leo’s office, tugging the doorknob and finding it locked. He tried the next door over—likewise barred to him. The third door opened. He wondered whose office it was as he slid into the darkened room. It occurred to him to check: he pulled out his phone and shone its light on the nameplate next to the door. It was the office of one of the project managers, Mandy, a dreary woman with pale eyes, pale hair, and a reserved demeanor (pale everything, Reginald thought). Once inside, he quietly closed the door and flicked on the lights. The office, tidy and utilitarian, harbored a plain wooden desk and chairs arranged at precise angles. It had neither decorations nor personal touches. Reginald moved toward a filing cabinet in one corner and tried the drawers: unlocked. Mandy’s evident carelessness about security surprised him.

The top drawer held files related to the social work project. He skimmed past those. The next drawer yielded several folders labeled “ISP.” Reginald’s stomach dropped, but he pulled out the files and began to flip through them. He recognized several names, including Calvin and Laney. Laney’s folder was thick. The first files he found were transcripts of his recent survey with Lisa, all her responses laid out numerically. Further back, there was correspondence indicating Lisa’s willingness to participate in the survey with and on behalf of her daughter. The correspondence was printed on paper with IPS letterhead. Reginald wondered why IPS documentation was stored here: did BPIR really need it to do the surveys?

The same question lingered as he found reports from the study last summer. Transcripts of the initial interviews with Lisa and Laney supplied Reginald with some backstory. He read, “At which point did you or your daughter first experience the hallucinations?” Lisa responded, “It was shortly after a, um, a party we went to. Laney told me that’s where it started. I didn’t experience anything unusual myself, but Laney told me she saw a certain friend of hers—he’s the son of one of our friends, a bit younger than she is—she saw him transform into a rabbit. That’s what she told me. And it was soon after that that she started to have certain nightmares.”

Reginald stopped reading and looked up. He thought he heard a noise. Standing, quietly listening, he tried to focus on the sounds of the building, but he could detect no further sound. His vision seemed blurred; briefly, improbably, he wondered whether sudden motion had caused a dizzy spell.

Prompted by a fresh wave of anxiety, he changed course. He removed the paper-clipped printout of the transcript from the file and laid out the sheets of paper on Mandy’s desk, and then he snapped photos of each page with his phone. After slipping the folder back into the drawer, he rifled through the remainder of the files and noticed one toward the back labeled “Island.” Pulling it out and flipping through it, he found rosters of patient names, descriptions of activities, and photographs. Despite feeling increasingly sick, he documented these, too, with his phone. Stuffing the sheets of paper in his bag, he returned the files to the drawer and quietly sneaked out the door. He hoped that nobody saw him as he left the building. 

Stepping into the night, he looked ahead and saw not the usual row of darkened buildings but, somehow, a stretch of lurid orange sand beneath a violently bright sky. He blinked. The sands had no visible end—nor did the sky. He gasped. Immediately he recognized it as the place described in the files. He began to back away and rubbed his eyes harshly. When he opened them again, he saw the same familiar street. Both sand and sky had vanished. 

*

In a few delirious moments, in the night’s deepest and loneliest corners, atop teetering towers of theories and speculation, Reginald fancied himself a sort of spy, a mole, whose position at BPIR would enable him to crack the case open from the inside. If it is a case, he thought. Too many pieces remained out of view, yet he felt determined to piece the puzzle together. What he would do with these pieces he did not know: go to the police, act as a whistleblower, publicize his findings? No, at the moment his goal remained simply to find out. His curiosity intertwined with, was further stoked by, his fear of whatever he’d seen when he left the building. 

A few days later, he headed into work for his Saturday shift. On the weekends, BPIR was only open for the two windows of time during which its employees made their calls. On those days, supervisors dragged themselves to the building to unlock it for the callers, taking their seats in the corner to fritter away their time that they, in theory, spent supervising, but in practice spent playing with their phones or doing homework. Reginald had come to regard them with contempt, from his place on the bottom rung of BPIR’s ladder, those who seemed scarcely even to remember how to do the calls, though he had gathered that all supervisors had worked their way up. Sometimes he would remind himself that they were college students, working part-time—an attempt to temper his sourness—and that he could try to find a different job if the situation so upset him. More often he took the low road, finding it less difficult and more satisfying.

He figured that, if he were to try to peruse more records on his own, the weekend would present the best opportunity. But he needed a key. To steal one would, he thought, seem too suspicious; but he also knew himself to be too impatient to wait for a promotion. He had to keep his eyes open.

Today, he approached the building and found it was locked; he had arrived first. He wandered around the building’s perimeter in search of other entrances. He found several, but these too were locked. By the time he had completed the circle and returned to the front door, he could see Mandy walking toward the building.

“Oh hello,” he said.

“Afternoon,” she mumbled, barely making eye contact before breaking away to rummage through her purse.

“I didn’t realize that the managers came in on weekends.”

“We all take our turns,” she said, pulling out a set of keys and unlocking the door. “You should work on Social Services today. I’ll be in my office,” she said, shuffling down the first-floor hallway and leaving Reginald to his own devices.

He called out, “Thanks!” and then headed upstairs. He checked his mailbox and glanced at the shift calendar. Only he and one other person were scheduled to work today, a fact he hoped to put to good use.

He checked the cubbyholes that ringed the main room, finding each locked except one: the storage room where Kathi had hastily explained his duties. He ducked inside and rattled the cabinet doors: locked. He looked around for anything else of interest. A low bookcase, mostly empty, held an old dictionary and some phone books. With a sigh, he moved toward the doorway.

A sense of vertigo overtook him. He grasped the doorframe and waited for it to pass. Then he no longer stood in the old BPIR building but in the desert. He thought he could see, faraway, a calm sea. Neither buildings nor creatures broke up the bigness of it, the purity of color that overwhelmed him but likewise felt hypnotic. He thought he could have stood there, still and calm, and dwelled on it forever.

Then the landscape receded in an instant. He stood against the doorframe and, soon, noticed someone staring at him: the boy he’d formerly thought of as stupid, who made a habit of openmouthed staring. Reginald jumped.

The boy—Peter—said, “Are you okay? You were really spacing out there.”

“Oh, I’m fine,” Reginald said. “Just . . . really tired!” He tried to laugh.

Peter’s eyes narrowed, but then he headed toward his seat. Reginald followed and began to make his calls.

*

“I wouldn’t worry too much. It’s happened to a lot of us at one point or another!” Kathi said. She was smiling. “It’s weird, but it’s just part of the job.”

“Part of the job?” Reginald asked. He’d been shocked by Kathi’s nonchalance when he’d tentatively brought up not feeling well at work.

“Oh, definitely,” she said. Then her chipper voice became lower; she spoke more slowly. “Wait. You work on ISP. Are you saying . . . did you see the island? The orange sand and everything?”

His eyes widened. He nodded.

Her face twitched into a frown, but then she seemed to correct herself and forced a chuckle. “You’ve been working on ISP too long, buddy. It gets under your skin. Why don’t you just work on a different one today?”

“Okay. Well, thanks. It just seemed a little weird.”

“I get it. It is weird. But I need you to let me know if it happens again, okay? And thank you!

Reginald left and took his seat. The hallucinations had become more frequent—about every other day, now. They formed part of his routine: he went to work and did his calls, at some point saw the island, and then, dazed and dazzled, went back to whatever he was doing. Truth be told, few chances for further investigation had presented themselves, and the hallucinations’ frequency made him less interested in the pursuit. And he was keenly aware that his fear, which had previously given him an appetite for learning more, now left him diminished, hollow.

Today he had not yet seen anything. He was relieved that his task today had nothing to do with making calls; instead, he’d been asked to stuff paper surveys into envelopes, along with five-dollar bills that accompanied the packets. The packets bore the ISP logo in one corner and included questions similar to those he asked on the phone, though they were written more ambiguously, as though addressed to individuals less familiar with the horrors into which they had been plunged. (“Have you ever experienced a brief episode in which you seemed to see something that was not there, for instance an unfamiliar landscape?”)

He sat in one of the small empty offices before stacks of large pre-stamped envelopes, packets, address labels, and crisp five-dollar bills, along with a small bottle of water and sponge he could use to seal the envelopes shut. He worked for about an hour, headphones in his ears, until the room wavered. He felt funny; he realized his hands were stinging, as though he’d been standing in a cold wind. He looked at them and saw they were stained the black color of frostbite. “What the fuck?” he said. He looked away and once again saw the landscape. Some part of him wished to scream, but that part felt restrained by the mesmerizing sight. He peered into the landscape, and it seemed he could do nothing else.

Later, who knows how much, someone was shouting. “Take him away!” he thought he heard Kathi say. Hands grabbed him from behind and led him away.

*

Many months afterward, after the job ended and after his time with the ISP, he sat alone at home. He drooped on the couch, eyes listless, doing nothing. His mind, as always these days, was elsewhere.

His phone buzzed, jolting him to alertness. It rang several times as he pulled himself together, fished it out from the couch cushions where it had fallen.

He glanced at an unfamiliar number, accepted the call, and said, “Hello?”

“Hi, this is Jane calling from the Bureau of Perceptive Intelligence Research, and we would like to do a phone survey with you regarding the study you did with the ISP. Would now be a good time to talk?”