Context

One of the strangest things about this whole “disappearing act” is the last conversation I had with George. The last conversation any of us had with George. Notorious for my lack of exacting memory (particularly in contrast to the other authors…) I will attempt to recreate the gist of the conversation.

In my conversation with George I sensed a hesitation or reticence to come to the point of what was bothering him, as something clearly was. As I probed over the phone, George finally admitted that he had recently had some kind of epiphany about who he was and the “type of person” he had been in the past (we were in our very early twenties then). George expressed remorse for the person he’d been in high school, for the things he had done that now made him uncomfortable and for the attitude he’d had spiritually.

Context: George was one of the nicest guys I knew in high school. He was kind to his juniors well beyond most of his peers, he easily crossed boundaries between groups, and frankly was just the kind of guy I wanted to be one of my closest friends. I think I can speak for Mike and Nathan in that they felt the same way. He treated people well, didn’t pillage the local populace, and seemed to genuinely care about his fellow human beings. George is a great guy, no doubt about it.

In my continuing conversation with George, I couldn’t get him to pinpoint his deep regrets. We all have regrets, we all have things we hope nobody ever finds out, but I was struck with how hard George was taking all of it. As the conversation finished, George intimated that he really couldn’t continue in his “old lifestyle” and that he was really turning over a new leaf. Recently married and hinting that he was getting more interested in his spiritual side, we ended the conversation on a very strange note (at least from my perspective) with George saying something like, “I just don’t know, I just don’t know”.

And that is the last any of us have heard from him.

So now there is some more context to this mission. These closest friends, these guys that I’ve known since I was barely me, we all are missing a chunk from the past – one of the four that disappeared.