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“Mr. Swanson? What can you tell me about Professor Sexton?” I ask, wondering what the word among the faculty might be.
He’s thoughtful for a moment, old man cogs turning, and then he makes a sound of exclamation which sets off an alarm, signaling his heart rate’s too high.
“You really mustn’t excite yourself,” The nurse chides him after coming over and making some adjustments, giving me another queer look.
“Sexton. Yes. Brute of a man, nearly seven feet and strong as an ox by the looks. Never seen anything like him, not at his age anyhow,” he remarks.
“How old is he?” I ask, remembering Xander said he was forty-two.
“Dunno exactly, but with all those letters at the end of his name, he must be closer to my age. They don’t just hand out professorships and doctorates. They never used to anyhow,” he says to himself gruffly.
Something seems to flash in the old scholar’s mind and he starts to wag his finger in front of himself.
“He’s not in any trouble is he?” he finally asks, nearly whispering.
I lean in as much as I can, worried for Xander now, and dying to know what the old Professor does too.
“Years ago now, before he started with all that black hole stuff. He was up in those hills sending some sort of magic beam, trying to signal UFOs.”
For some reason, I get a chill when he says that.
“Ha,” I exclaim halfheartedly. “Who’d believe in that stuff,” I add.
But the old man grows very serious, giving me the sternest look in the four years I’ve known him.
“Plenty do my dear, plenty do,” he says gravely. “Matter of fact up until only a few years ago was anyone allowed up in those hills except Sexton and all his gadgetry.”
I’m almost falling out of my seat by now, hoping he’ll hurry and tell me his story before he gets whisked off for his own tests.
“Military got involved, then it all went quiet. Then it was just men in suits and dark glasses. Took the professor in the night some say, but he was back on campus a few weeks later.”
“What happened?” I ask, astonished I’d never heard the story in all my years on campus and I tell him as much.
“You’d have to ask the man himself,” is his only reply. “And I wouldn’t go making too much noise about it either, very strange business when you get that end of the government involved.”
“Sexton,” he hums to himself again. “May interest you that apart from old Irish ancestry it’s also Swedish for the number sixteen. I was reading something about it just now before this bloody heart of mine decided to give out.”
The nurse reappears and as quickly as he came, Mr. Swanson is off, breathless from our chat and I feel like it might be the last I see of him again too.
Sexton… The number sixteen.
I sit reeling, remembering the first words Xander said when he introduced himself.
“You’re Gillian Parker, from the campus. And I’m Xander. Xander Sixteen.”
It begs the question, whoever or whatever he might be if not a regular guy who just happens to tick every box.
If he’s really Xander Sixteen, does that mean there’s at least fifteen more just like him.
The thought makes my head ache, and then something else pulse with heat.
One is incredible. But a room, a whole house filled with a dozen or more Xanders?
I shudder in the best possible way, jumping when the nurse touches my arm gently.
“I heard what the old man was saying,” she whispers, squatting down in front of me, pretending to adjust my bandage.
“Years ago, we had case after case of homeless people or drugged up students coming in, all telling the same story…”
My eyes grow wide with the question.
Can’t people just tell each other stuff anymore, why all the damned suspense?
“…Not all flying saucers and little green men. No,” she says firmly, glancing around to make sure no one else can hear.
“But a—”
There’s a piercing alarm that hurts my ears, followed by a loud intercom announcement.
‘Code blue in x-ray. Code blue in x-ray. All available staff and crash cart to x-ray. Code Blue’
“Shit,” The nurse mutters, hurrying to her feet without telling me anything else. “That’s your professor,” she calls back to me, making me sadder than I’ve been in a long time.
Not sure if it’s because he’s so sick or because it feels like Xander’s only said so much about himself, what exactly he does. Who he even is.
I hear his voice in my mind again, a sheepish look on his face as I imagine what he would say.
“I’ve known you for like one day, Gillian. Gimme a break. One Earth day too,” he reminds me. “On Jupiter, one day is only about ten earth hours…”
I smile at the thought, but find myself suddenly crying.
Crying for Mr. Swanson. Crying for myself and crying for knowing the lengths I somehow know Xander would go to protect me, including never telling me certain things.
