The woman at the reception desk gave him a welcoming smile.
Still a little shocked, he stood looking around. He felt light-headed and not at all sure about where he was. The surroundings were both strange yet peaceful at the same time. The woman was waving at him. She called out, “Please come forward. This won’t take long.” Wondering what wouldn’t take long, he approached the counter.
“Welcome,” she said again, tapping at her keyboard. “Let me see now, yes, there you are. It happened this morning, I see.”
“What did? I’m not sure what I’m doing here.”
She scrolled the screen. “Oh! Yes, I see. Bound to be some trauma.” She stared at the screen again. “Ah! Nasty!”
“Nasty?”
“Yes, machinery related ones often are.”
“What do you mean by machinery?”
She looked up with a frown. “I’m going to have to leave it there, sorry. It’s a policy. Besides, it is generally best if a person has it all come back to them naturally.”
“I only know I was out at the mine site doing maintenance work on the rock crusher, when…” he fell silent.
“Yes, well, as I say, let it come back naturally.” She stretched across to a printer and removed a small card. She handed it to him, saying, “This will get you through security.”
“Really?”
“Yes, we’ve had to tighten our screening process. Nothing for you to worry about, I’m sure.” In almost a whisper, she said, “Apparently, we had a couple of wrongens slipped through.”
He nodded and looked down at the card. “It doesn’t have my name on it.”
She smiled. “Quite right. We don’t use those here.”
He grimaced and flapped the card. “I don’t see any mention here that I’m a vegetarian. I’m pretty strict about that.”
“That’s not a problem. We don’t eat here either.”
“Oh! Really?”
She smiled politely and said, “Really. Anyway, this will all be explained later. I understand there’s a bit of a queue down there, because of the latest security upgrade.” She pointed to the door behind her. “If you make your way through there. Just keep going past the golf course…”
“Golf course?” he interrupted.
“Yes. Just follow the path,” she went on, “it’ll swing round to the right and you’ll see the gates, very large and pearly, you can’t miss them. Just hand over your card.”
“Of course. Eh, thank you.”
She nodded.
He was almost at the door, when he turned and went back. “My offsider,” he said, “It’s coming back to me now. Such a nice young lad. One of the new apprentices. He was right there, next to me.” He looked around.
She moved across to another screen. “You’re right, it seems that you went together.”
His eyebrows shot up in anticipation.
“Sorry!” she said with a sympathetic look, “he’s got history. I’m afraid he won’t be joining us.”