"Bob Waters, pleasure to meet you, Mister Haywood." The smile alone was enough to put anyone on edge. Combined with the round face, the Hollywood-caliber orthodontic work and the $200 haircut for the $5 worth of hair left on the man's head set off every alarm bell the colonel had. "Please, have a seat."

Justin seated himself in what looked very much like an imitation of 18th century Victorian parlor furniture. He resisted the urge to conclude everything in the room was fake. Considering this meeting had taken him nearly six months to engineer, he exerted considerable self-control to let the little things go and keep his eye on the ball.

The plump executive seated himself behind a desk that looked like it was trying too hard even without its occupant present. The rest of the room resembled a Buck Rogers set complete with space-age windows and curved surfaces in every direction reminiscent of an unnecessarily elaborate graphical interface on a mobile app. There was enough gray in the room to persuade a platoon of interior decorators to resign and take up fishing boat repair. It all looked very impressive, if someone were trying to build a sci-fi theme park attraction on the ninth floor of a metropolitan office building. As far as Justin was concerned all it accomplished was to make the chair look catastrophically out of place.

"I see you've done some solid work here, Mister Haywood." Bob said as he flippantly lifted one or two pages of Justin's heavily condensed and vigorously edited CV. "Were you applying for the management role or something else?"

The fact that Bob had now used the wrong name after flipping past it more than once on the pages of the CV and asked a question he already knew the answer to caused a pit in Justin's stomach. This was only the third interview he had managed in almost ten months of looking for work. If the man couldn't even get his name right, what chance was there he would understand the rest of the document?

"I responded to your ad for a project manager," Justin said. "I was intrigued by the work you are doing with modular components."

Bob stared. Justin wasn't sure if he was confused by his answer or by the news his company manufactured modular electronics. "That's-- that's fine, Mister--"

"Hayes. Justin Hayes."

"I see.." Bob replied. "You're former military?"

"Discharged two years ago."

"Uh huh. And it says here you did aircraft work?"

"I was a targeting systems integration officer for experimental autonomous airframes. I also worked as a technical writer and a planning and logistics coordinator for the regimental mobility command."

Bob stopped scanning the resume and let all the pages fall back into place. "We don't exactly build airplanes here."

Justin nodded, desperate to maintain his self-control. "I understand. I have roughly fifteen years experience with electronic systems design."

"What's your background? I take it you graduated from college some time ago?"

Justin tried to overlook the fact both questions had already been answered. "I have graduate degrees in mechanical engineering and robotics. I've been awarded two patents and I have recorded contributions to six others. All of my professional experience was at Fort Hood."

"And what makes you think you are qualified to manage projects for our company?"

Justin didn't miss a beat. "My job in the Army was to teach young men how to keep $40 million aircraft operational while being shot at."

Bob's face paled just a little. "Any health issues?"

The urge to chuckle was almost overwhelming.

"I've had a few surgeries."

"Really? How many?"

"Eight. The first seven were to remove pieces of a bomb that went off at an inconvenient time. The eighth was to treat a gunshot wound."

"Where did you get shot?"

"In the Philippines." A pause. "In the shoulder, Bob. You want to see the scar?" The colonel was operating with about 3% of his patience left.

"Not really. I'm very impressed, Mister Haywood. Your resume is-- well it's like nothing I've seen before."

Now it was Justin's turn to stare. "What does that mean? You think it's fictional or something?"

"Well I'm just wondering how a man your age--"

"My age? Is that part of the job requirements? I thought you were looking for a project manager."

"Well we are, but we weren't exactly expecting someone as--"

"As what?"

Bob's smile made Justin's skin crawl. "I'm afraid we don't have anything for you at this time."

It came as no surprise they didn't validate parking either.