The New Hire(Joseth Moore) Hartford, Connecticut. West Hartford Community Center, USA. Present Day…
“Where’s that new guy,” Tommy asked curtly; sweat starting to bead on his rotund face as he looked around the small kitchen area.
“I saw him back in the back area—by the dock,” one of the Center’s long-time clients said from the other side of the service area. “I think he was putting away some of the canned food.”
Tommy pursed his lips and walked toward where the storage area was. He had always thought Adam was a bit on the weird side. He wasn’t into sports; never got into talks about pets, gardening…didn’t care about the local politics of Hartford, yet Adam could tell one about details of foreign policies that nobody else cared about. Just as he was able to break-down astronomical facts that, of course, no one else cared about. Yes, there was the internet search-engines to use, and yes, he was a sophomore at the local university, but for business. Tommy was just a mid-level supervisor at the Center and did not go further than one of Hartford’s local high schools, but even he understood that a lot of the topics that young-Adam knew about were not typical of most 19-year olds. All that said, Adam was still just a local guy…
“Hey, how’s it going in here,” Tommy asked as he opened the heavy industrial door to the storage area…and froze on spot.
“Hey, Tommy,” he greeted the middle-ager while finishing up breaking down cardboard boxes to recycle after organizing the canned foods, boxed-flatware, and miscellaneous items. He noticed how Tommy zoned out. “Did I do something wrong?”
“Uh, no, Adam…just not used to seeing anyone put so much work into organizing any section at the Center! Look, good job in doing the FIFO procedure here, but that should be good enough for today…Peter wants you to go to the office and finish up your new-hire paperwork since Nancy will be gone next week for vacation.”
“Ok…” An inquisitive look from Adam at the supervisor.
Tommy let the door close behind him as he left Adam. He made his way back to the kitchen, where all the other staffers were for the small kitchen crew. Peter, the manager of said-kitchen, was busy panning up food for the up-coming lunch for the low-income citizens of the Center. A couple of other employees scurried with their own tasks, whom Tommy had to meander around to get to his boss’s hearing range—a smartspeaker loudly playing some golden oldies music contributing to the noises of the kitchen.
“Ok, Pete, Adam will be heading off to the office in a couple of minutes.”
The elder of the whole kitchen staff frowned to himself while he kept placing thawed chicken into large pans. “What was he doing in there anyway? I thought he already cleaned in there!”
A bit of a chuckle from Tommy. Peter’s eyes darted at him—no smiling eyes on those eyes! Tommy quickly explained. “Adam has a knack for patterns…I’m surprised the kid’s not going to school for art instead of business!”
Again, Peter let his eyes do his talking. Tommy explained. “He, uh…he was doing it again…this time with the canned food. Got to hand it to him; this time his little creation looked like it should’ve been in a Lego competition for miniature cities!”
The manager tsked; unimpressed as he reached over to grab foil for covering the food he was working on and proceeded to place them into the nearby over. “He’s wasting my damn time is what he’s doing, Tom! I don’t see why Nancy hired him anyway…”
This time it was Peter that noticed Tommy communicating with his eyes. “I know it’s not politically correct to say this these days, Pete, but I think that kid is either autistic or he’s a genius! Couple of days ago, Sharon was putting away the truck order and Adam walks by…he looked at the pile of boxes, then told her the supplier had shorted us a couple of items!”
Now Peter took a few seconds to think, then shrugged. “Guess-work. Anybody can walk by a damn pile of bricks and say you are missing a couple of bricks!”
“Pete, that was the third time he’d done that while Sharon was putting away the truck order…the other two times—she was missing one box of toothpicks and he pointed that out just last week…the first time was when we had those two extra boxes of apples…”
Peter flinched. “But how could Adam have known that? We did that order before he was even hired!”
Now Tommy gave an inquisitive look with a slight shrug; the smallest of a grin on his face. Both men went silent as they thought on the matter.
“Well, ok, Mr. Baker,” Peter finally said, “when he get’s back from doing his paperwork just put him on dishes or something.”
“Ok.”

The Office…
“…kind of a pain in the ass when they want your residency from the past ten years, huh,” Paula conversationally put while she was finishing up copying some of Adam’s new-hire paperwork. “Don’t worry, it’s because of the kids with all these families why background checks here are so extra!”
“Tell me about it! Paula, I’m going to be honest with you, I don’t remember where I lived when I was nine!”
“That’s common, hon. We get a lot of military brats…a lot of you guys lived in more countries than I’ve lived in—”
“I’m sorry, you misunderstand, Paula; I have no memory where I was nine years ago and beyond that…”
That made the secretary stop dead in her tracks.
She looked at him, making sure he wasn’t joking. Paula then walked over to the tiny table where Adam was; in the background, more citizens were filing into the community center, rounding Paula’s cubical office. A couple of them greeting Paula as they passed by.
“What are you telling me, Adam? You were in so many foster homes that you lost track?”
The young man chuckled. “I know we’re so used to hearing that in society, but I lived with my parents until I moved into my college dorm, Paula…I know from what my mom and dad told me that we used to live out West somewhere…”
“And that’s it, huh?”
A pensive nod from Adam.
Paula craned to look what he wrote on his form. “So, the furthest out that you can remember is a Corona…New Mexico?”
“Right.”
“You know what, Adam, nine years is close enough. It’s not like we’re the CIA or something, right? Oh, before I forget, here are your id’s back…I’m guessing they’re going to need your help in the kitchen, after seeing all these people come in!”
“For sure…thanks, Paula.”
“Yup.” She smiled as Adam quickly walked off toward the kitchen area.
Truth was she was waiting for him to leave. Paula looked at the typical two-forms of identification that most places of employment demand upon hiring. Adam’s social security card and the number with it was legitimate she could tell before even running it through security, and, frankly, so was his Connecticut driver’s license though his image on it seemed…off. Not illegally photocopied or anything like that. Given that high-tech cameras had flashed-lights that were able to capture more details of a subject without drowning out the picture with too much light, one was able to see more features of the subjects’ driver’s license profile pics.
Upon closer inspection, to Paula, the shape of Adam’s eyes seemed a bit—oval. Plus, a little on the larger side. At first, Paula thought, perhaps he wore eye-makeup the day he had his driver’s license picture taken. Culturally speaking, a lot of men—especially those of the more Gothic-tendencies—wore eyeliner. But anyone that saw Adam could safely say he did not come across as a Gothic sort…. More importantly, Paula was concerned about Adam, apparently, not knowing where he lived as a child with his parents from birth to the age of nine—young, but old enough to clearly remember what city and state one resided in!

One Week Later…
Adam exited his old Blazer in the North end of West Hartford Community Center where he normally parked. He passed the Center’s circulation desk, where Paula was stationed.
“Happy Monday,” he sarcastically greeted.
“Yeah, right? Oh, hey, hon…Carla wanted to see you before you got started in the kitchen.”
He stopped dead in the hallway; his small lunch-pouch swinging in one hand while the other held his plastic, portable coffee mug. “Carla doesn’t normally work with me except during inventory…is there something wrong with our supplies?”
“Well, you know she fills in when Nancy isn’t here…I’m guessing something with your paperwork from last week.” A shrug while Paula continued to type.
“Ok, thanks, Paula.”
“Sure, hon…”
The Community Center served something like two hundred people most days, but the system of its workforce was still relatively meager enough that when the office manager, Nancy Hill, was away, administrative floater, Carla Endelson, had to share Nancy’s office in the meantime. Carla was checking emails for the day on Nancy’s company laptop as Adam walked in.
“Hey, Adam!”
“Hi, Carla…anything wrong?”
“Oh, no, but just for privacy-sake, could you shut the door?”
A pause from Adam. “Yeah, sure…” The door to the office lightly clicked upon him shutting it and then he took a seat.
She finished typing up something, minimized all the task-screens she was working on, then gently closed the laptop to show that she was giving Adam her full attention.
“What do you remember about Corona,” Carla asked as she placed her clasped hands atop the closed laptop.
“You mean in New Mexico? Not much…like I told Paula last week, I just remembered living out in the Western parts of the US—very small town, not much to do…I think we moved out here because of my mom’s job as an engineer.”
“With the state of Connecticut,” Carla asked.
“Right.”
“And you said that your father is a biologist?”
A pause from Adam. “Yup…ended up taking a teaching job at the university. You know the old saying: If you aren’t practicing your degree, then you might as well teach it, right?”
A smattering of laughter from both.
“Adam,” she continued, “you supplied your college transcript and I have to say, you’re off to a great start, kiddo… A-plus GPA in your first, freshman semester—with both of your parents’ smarts, I can definitely say you’re the apple that didn’t fall far from either tree, huh?”
A humbled shrug. “Thanks…”
“It, it just kind of puzzles me, Adam, that you’d take a job with the Center. With your academic and family background, you could get any professional job you try for, even at your young age…”
She left room for him to respond. Adam merely shrugged. Carla took that as a sign to move on. “Did you know we can’t seem to find a birth certificate on you?”
A slight jerk of surprise from Adam. “Really? I was able to get my social security card, and you can’t get that without your birth certificate, right?”
She was already nodding her head. “You are correct on that, Adam. And your sosh checks out with our official checkup, so we know you’re legit there…just kind of seems weird with that, and from what you told Paula about not being able to remember anything from before you were nine.”
A shrugging nod from Adam. “Just being honest.”
“And Nancy really appreciates that, Adam…Adam, were you illegally brought into the US?”
A totally unexpected question for him. But given that he looked very Latino—from the US Southwest, no less, it wasn’t totally out of the question. But given the very Anglo names of all three family members of Adam Vice, it did seem a bit incongruent!
“I don’t believe so. But if I’m telling you I don’t remember the first nine years of my life, then I can see where you’re coming from.”
Nancy’s office went uncomfortably quiet now… Carla seemed to be mauling something over in her own head, then suddenly flipped the laptop open and began to bring up whatever task-windows she had minimized previously. After about thirty seconds, she swiveled the laptop around so that it faced Adam.
On the monitor was a grouping of videos taken by smartphones—and the videos were all of Adam while he was working on various tasks in the kitchen or storage areas. The way the videos were curated, there was no way of identifying from whom they came from, though there were plenty of telemetry. Carla clicked on the five videos, all mere seconds each…
Adam arranging small bowls of fruit in what could only be called crop circles in domestic form!
Adam doing a similar, though different, design in another video but this time in the storage area with large cans of food!
Adam quickly rearranging oranges left out to form not domestic crop circles, but what looked most likely letters that were very unrecognizable within any of the human lineages of languages!
Adam making a request to the smartspeaker in the kitchen when (he thought!) no one else was there…he seemed to be playing around while speaking in a very guttural, seemingly unknown language—which, of course, the speaker could not accommodate.
And especially one in particular, when one of the brooms dropped on the floor during closing time for the kitchen and made a loud, clanking noise…very similar to a cat, Adam leapt from the kitchen floor and effortlessly landed atop the towering stainless steel oven…
After Carla let all five, short videos play, she leaned back in the office chair and looked upon Adam with a very unreadable countenance.
“I’m going to rephrase a question I asked earlier: Adam, were you brought onto Earth?”
For the longest Adam said nothing. Indeed, his own countenance was even more unreadable than Carla’s!
Carla retrieved the laptop, once again minimized the tasks, and collapsed the laptop—the cherry on top being her re-visited clasped hands. “These kinds of jobs you and your parents all knew you could get without a lot of people watching you…I think that’s why you are working here at the Center, Adam. Had you taken a job, say, in Silicon Valley, or some call center, with as socially-centric those jobs tend to be you would’ve stuck out and those kinds of jobs tend to attract smart people…they would’ve pegged you a long time ago.
“You see, Adam, I’m educated, too. Didn’t quite finish my PhD in astrophysics…I guess I have too much of that Hippy in me from my youth—figured I’d go into the work field of helping the poor and society at large…thing is, Adam, I’m still a scientist, and forgive me, sir, if I don’t fall for the act you’re playing.
“Now, what I don’t know is if your parents are the same as you, or they either found some seedling version of you or, perhaps—given their scientific backgrounds—they basically created you! That town in New Mexico, Adam? Corona…see, most people don’t know that the Roswell phenomenon did not actually happen there, but a few miles from Corona! My, what a coincidence, huh?
“This is what’s going to happen, Adam: you and I are going to play like we’ve always done before. I don’t see the point in upsetting the apple cart if none of the apples are bad, right? I don’t know how you got here or if there are even more of others like you, but so long as you don’t hurt any of us nor our planet, I don’t see the need to—social media this thing, do you?”
Carla said the last words as she lightly rubbed the closed laptop with the videos uploaded onto it. No doubt, a smart person like her would have backed up the videos, so either way it was checkmate.
Adam solemnly nodded. There was a long silence…
The phone to the Center’s manager’s office chimed.
“Well, Adam, I better take this…” She extended her hand in order to shake his! Adam, at first, gave a scoffing look, but under the circumstances went ahead and shook her hand—apparently “sealing” the deal!
The door was shut after Adam left the office.
“Yeah, Nancy,” Carla answered over the cordless phone, “…yep, I just had my talk with him…”
Fin

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