He was in the laundromat when they came for him.  Going through the motions, washing, drying, folding.  He had considered just dropping everything back into the basket, going home and stuffing his clothes unfolded into his chest of drawers.  But that wasn’t how things were done. That wouldn’t make his mother proud. So he went through the motions, did his laundry as was expected, went to work and made dinner and slept.  All the things that were expected of him, in the fog.

They still came for him.

They wore masks.  They wore white masks like cloth made out of the fog that hid their features.  Their coats were white, too, rendering them almost invisible in the fog. Even under the yellow fluorescent lights of the laundromat, their coats and masks blended with the fog almost seamlessly.  He barely noticed when they entered; and no one else looked up from their cleaning, either. He only noticed when they surrounded him, making the fog seem even thicker. Then he looked up and saw them.  Saw their long white coats and their featureless white masks. Shiny chrome digits stuck out from their cuffs, the surgical glint cutting through the fog in a way he’d not seen light behave in so many years.

One of them standing behind him put its hand on his shoulder, and the gleaming metal digits were cold in a way he’d not known since he had been a child.  It was a cold that cut through the condensed droplets on his sweater, that seemed almost to cut his skin. Their masks betrayed no emotion, of course, and their movements as they ushered him out of the laundromat were as languid and obscure as any citizen’s.  But then, the average citizen had never interacted with him as they were.

The two in front seemed almost to be beckoning; of course, it was only the fog that made it seem so. And the two on either side of him seemed to be watching him as they walked, but how could he tell what they were looking at, under their masks.  The two behind served to keep him moving, although they never actually touched him.

They showed him a box, sitting on the sidewalk.  It was white, like their coats, like their masks.  Almost indistinguishable from the fog. Perhaps a meter on each side.  It glowed, faintly, in the fog, an obscure and oddly attractive luminosity.  He didn’t even mind when they ushered him into the box, as white and faintly glowing and foggy inside as out.  He sat cross-legged on the floor of the box, and could barely tell when they closed it on him.

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