“Well I’ve got something to tell you, Ronald McCormick,” she said, standing up. She licked her lips, determined after all the nagging from her family to see it through. “You quit. You quit right now, or I’m filing for divorce.”
“You’re not serious,” he said, looking at her levelly. He put Alex away from him.
Alex stood there, looking from one to the other.
“Listen, Carol, I love you guys, but—”
“But nothing, Ronald. Prove it. Quit.”
He took a deep breath, as if the air itself was painful. “Carol. Baby. Listen.”
“No!”
“Listen! I leave now, men die. Good men, men in as deep as I am. They’ve got families too, Carol. I can’t just desert them.”
“Them or us. Choose.”
“You bitch!” Dad said, getting up. “You cold, selfish bitch.”
“Fuck you, Ronald,” Mama cried, the tears overflowing as Daddy turned and walked toward the door.
“Fuck you!!” she screamed as he slammed it behind him.
She had the divorce papers sent to the precinct three days later, determined to call his bluff. It didn’t work. He didn’t call, but he didn’t sign them either.
Alex hated her for it. But, he told himself, it would all be okay again, once Daddy came back home. Daddy’d make it okay.
Two months later, they got a knock on the door. It was about 9 p.m. The Christmas tree was already up and decorated, a few early presents under the tree. Alex just knew Daddy would come home for Christmas. So when the knock came, he flew to answer it, sure it was his dad at last…so sure he yelled,
“Daddy!” as he flung open the door.
Only it wasn’t Daddy. Two men stood there in overcoats, hunched up against the cold. He vaguely recognized one of them from his visit to the police station six months earlier.
“Is your mother home, son?” the other one said.
Carol appeared behind him in the doorway. Alex looked up at her over his shoulder, and when he saw the fear in her eyes, he got cold.
“I’m afraid I have some bad news, ma’am,” the first man said. “Can we come in?”
* * *
30. It’s About Time
ALEX SQUATTED ON the frozen ground beneath the violet and orange sky; the tears pouring from his eyes onto a crust of ice, stained in places with rusty colored mineral deposits. His shoulders shook, his voice cracked as the sobs tore from his throat like ravenous harpies. He hated the sound of them, dining on his soul, making him weak.
Somehow, he’d forgotten all about his dad over the years.
At that moment, out of the corner of his eye he saw the white-robed aide appear from one of the hospital doorways, look over at him, and just as quickly disappear back inside. Alex made himself get up; he began to walk slowly out into the compound on the icy ground. It gave a little underfoot with each tentative step, cracking and groaning.
Above him, Io was moving slowly away from Europa, already on the right side of Jupiter, its multicolored, pockmarked surface still smoking in several places from the recent rain of meteorites. He lowered his gaze to the long smooth hill of ice that sloped steeply upward on the northwest side of the compound, tilting his head as he contemplated some unseen possibilities there.
He remembered another snow-covered hill, a wooden sled; Flexi-Flyer painted in red letters down its center. His dad was pulling it by a rope attached to the front. His other hand held tight to Alex’s mittened one, helping to pull the boy up the steep, icy slope. They paused to catch their breaths at the top, making puffs of fog in the cold mountain air. Then Dad put him on the sled, made him grab the steering bar tight, and pushed him off.
He was flying, breathless, the bits of snow whipped up by wind and runners making his eyes water. He held tight, alternately screaming and laughing, as Dad ran alongside him shouting encouragement all the way to the bottom of the hill.
Alex looked around him, once more under Jupiter’s glow. He turned slowly about, executing a full circle, to take in the entire compound, empty but for him. He stopped turning, caught on a thought. I can’t be the only dead guy here. Where’s everybody else? Again the white-robed aide appeared in the distance. Alex called out to him, waving.
“Hey! Hey, you there, wait a minute!” The aide didn’t acknowledge him, but once more hurriedly re-entered the hospital through a secret doorway, which immediately closed behind him into a seamless invisible joint.
“Wait!” Alex called, running toward the place where the aide had disappeared. “I only want to ask you something!”
Just as he got to that invisible doorway, a second aide—or perhaps the first again—came out of another door immediately behind him, barely missing a collision. Startled, he turned to go back inside but Alex stepped in front of the door to block his way.
“Hold it! I want to know…”
“We are not allowed,” the aide interrupted.
“Allowed what? All I wanted was…”
“Please, I must go,” the aide said nervously, trying to slip past. Alex made a grab for the aide’s arm, but his hand went right through the appendage, closing on itself into a fist. The aide turned in dismay, looking up into Alex’s eyes.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” he admonished.
“What the…! You’re not real either?”
The aide shook his head and disappeared through the wall. A moment later Uriel came out the same way into the compound.
“The aide tells me you wanted to ask him something. What is it, Alex? What do you want?”
“A sled.”
“A…sled?!”
“Yeah, you know, one of those old-fashioned wooden ones with the metal runners?” Alex said.
“A Flexi-Flyer,” Uriel nodded. “Fine. Done.”
The tall man clicked a button on the communication device hanging from his belt, and a split second later the mysterious aide reappeared, dragging a brand-new Flexi-Flyer behind him.
Alex took it from him without acknowledgement, pretty certain that from Uriel’s point of view he would be talking to himself. He raised an eyebrow at the robed man in acknowledgment of this fact, then turned and began to pull the sled by its rope up the long icy hill on the left side of the compound. When he got to the top end farthest from the hospital, he stood there a moment—a black silhouette against the orange blob of Jupiter, surrounded by the glowing wisps of vaporizing water coming off the ice around him. Then he flopped belly first on the little sled and began to glide forward, slowly at first, until the sled topped the crest of the ice ridge, then suddenly into an explosion of speed, hurtling down the slippery slope of ice at hair-raising velocity. Alex held on to the steering bars with the same look of dogged determination he’d worn when he’d brought his first sail plane under control, tested his first supersonic aircraft, rode his first rocket into space.
When he got to the bottom, gliding to a stop near the feet of the silently observing Uriel and his aide, Alex turned without a word and trudged back up the hill with his sled again. Once more he flew down the steep ice incline, this time his expression loosening into a tight-lipped grin as he went. At the bottom he gave Uriel a quick look, raising his eyebrow playfully, before turning and hurrying back up the long slope again.
The third time down the hill, he took a running jump onto the sled to pick up speed, and as he went airborne over the crest he yelled out in exhilaration. His laughter echoed down the hill like a happy avalanche, bouncing off the compound walls and making bubbles in the night. Alex jumped off the sled at the bottom one more time, running past Uriel and the aide without so much as a glance in their direction. Up towards the hill he ran, dragging the sled behind. They watched him go past, eyeing him oddly, then glancing at each other.
This time, at the top of the hill, he sat on the sled and put his feet against the crossbar so he could push off with his hands. As he went over the crest and down the steep incline he put his arms over his head, yelling and hooting in pure joy as he soa
red.
When he got to the bottom of the hill this time he stood up and handed the sled back to Uriel, a little out of breath.
“Done?” Uriel inquired.
“Yeah. Thanks. I needed that.”
“I know,” Uriel said.
“So, who are you guys anyway? A pair of walking talking holograms?” Alex panted. He made a playful swipe at the aide’s face as he said this, fully believing his hand would go right through it. To his surprise it didn’t, and he delivered the aide a smarting blow to the cheek, leaving a red mark on his face.
“Oh! Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry! I thought…What happened?”
“You simply caught him unaware the first time, Alex. As to what we are, I already told you. We’re helpers, we remain in this place to guide you through the transition.”
“To guide me. Yeah, well that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. To guide me, you say… But what about guiding all the others who died today? Who does that? And where are they, by the way?”
Uriel hesitated, then began to answer. “It’s not—”
“No, wait, let me finish,” Alex interrupted. “See, I’ve been thinking about it, and I figure there must be millions of people dying on Earth every single day; so by my reasoning this place should be teeming with souls ‘in transition,’ right? Yet I haven’t seen a single person other than you and a couple of these ‘helpers.”
“That can be explained,” Uriel assured him.
“And another thing that bothers me,” Alex went on as if the other man hadn’t spoken. “The world population increases by several million a year; every day more new people are born than die.”
“So?”
“So how do all these new babies get…souls, I guess you’d call them, if those of us already here are playing the same old roles over and over. It seems like…like you’d run out.”
“Let me answer your last question first, Alex,” Uriel said. “No matter how many new babies are created in our holographic world, it is still a finite number; and we have an infinite number of years to play all the roles, new and old. That’s time enough for each and every newly created identity to be occupied by an eternal spirit, for each life game to be played again and again…and again. Besides, they’re all just holograms, these ‘new babies’ remember?”
“Okay, I see that, I guess,” said Alex. “But my other question?”
“Which was?”
“Where are all the dead people…pardon me, the other souls in transition…right now?”
“Here. They’re here.”
“Where?” Alex said, looking around. “I’ve seen no one.”
“Well, they are not so numerous as you might imagine.”
“What do you mean? How numerous?”
“Let me see, how can I explain this,” Uriel mulled. “There is a slight degree of separation in Time-Space. It allows for—”
“Make sense, dammit!”
“Okay, I’ll cut to the chase. A body dies, game ends. Soul arrives, chooses new game, and is gone again. Simple. How long do you think that takes?”
“I don’t know. I’ve been here at least a day, haven’t I?”
“Have you? And how did you determine that ‘day’? Was it one rotation of the Earth? But you’re not on Earth anymore.”
“No, I know that,” Alex acceded. “It was more…intrinsic, a feeling…”
“Perhaps some minute degree of aging, some metabolic cycle in your body that keys an internal clock?”
Alex almost nodded, then caught himself just as Uriel said, “But you’re dead. There’s no metabolism, no aging in a dead man. You’re not really in a body anymore at all, remember? That’s just a sensory hologram around you, a kind of security blanket during transition.”
“So, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying—again—that time has no meaning here. A million million souls could pass through this place on any given ‘day’ and never meet. Eternity allows this.”
“Did…did my dad pass through here?” Alex asked.
Uriel put his hand on the astronaut’s shoulder. “Maybe we should go back inside, son. I think you need a little more time to review and reflect on some other issues in your life before we go farther with this, don’t you?”
“I guess…if you say so.”
* * *
31. Past Choices
AT ONCE THEY were back inside the auditorium again, sitting side by side in plush chairs near the control console at the center of the room. With the push of a button by Uriel, the movie screen in front of the stage came down, another button and the lights dimmed, as a scene from Alex’s childhood appeared on the screen.
It was the interior of a nicely furnished, middle-class home.
A pretty woman in her late thirties, Alex’s mother, grabbed her purse from the sofa in the family room, then paused a moment to look over at Alex. Nearly 17 already, he was big boned and thin, the framework of the handsome man he soon would become, just waiting for the artist’s final touches. Yet her mother’s eyes reflected the image of the little boy who’d once sat on her lap watching The Simpsons, back when they still laughed together.
At the moment he was immersed in a computer game, oblivious to her presence.
“You sure you don’t want to go?” she said.
When he didn’t answer, she thought he was just being rude again. Then she noticed the headphones, and tapped him gently on the shoulder to get his attention. He put the game on pause, pulled down the headphones and waited.
“You sure you don’t want to come along with us, honey? Dad’s meeting us there.”
“He’s not my dad. Anyway, I’ve got homework.”
“So I see,” she said, nodding at the computer, the action game paused mid-kill stroke on the screen.
“I’m going to start it in a couple of minutes, Mom,” he said, looking up at her. As he did so, a worried frown suddenly creased his brow, a cloud shadow racing across his face.
She looked at him more closely. “You feeling okay, kiddo? You’re not getting sick, are you?” She put the back of her hand against his brow, and for a moment he closed his eyes, allowing the touch.
“I’m okay, Mom. I just thought for a minute….”
A towheaded little boy of about four popped his head around the door from the kitchen just then.
“Mo-om! Come on!” he yelled.
Alex’s mother slid her hand down to Alex’s cheek, giving it a fond little pat. The younger boy ran up and grabbed her arm, pulling her away impatiently.
“Come on! The show going to staht withou’ us!”
Alex leaned around his mom to give his little half-brother the finger. “I hope you choke on a popcorn kernel and when the fat, bald usher gives you mouth to mouth, he slips you the tongue.”
“He’s mean, Mommy!”
“Okay, okay, we’re going,” Mom laughed, allowing herself to be pulled all the way to the door by the rambunctious preschooler.
Alex stared after her, looking as if there was something on his mind he was reluctant to voice. As she opened the door he called after her.
“Hey, Mom?”
She paused, holding onto the doorjamb as the younger boy continued to tug at her.
“Yes, Alex?”
“Ah, nothing…just, have a good time, okay?”
She looked at him fondly, then her grip on the doorjamb was yanked free and she disappeared from view.
“Love you!” she called, as the door slammed closed behind her.
“Love you back,” Alex said quietly to the door.
Alex, in the auditorium, leaned forward tensely, gripping the empty seat in front of him as he concentrated on the movie screen below.
The scene was now a four-lane business street, just about sunset. A small red economy car raced down the street, zipping in and out of the rush hour traffic. Within the car Alex saw his mother, so intent on getting to the theater on time she was driving a little faster than the speed limit and common sense might dictate. The l
ittle towheaded boy was strapped into his car seat right beside the driver, tapping on the yellow horn in the center of his plastic steering wheel. Music blared at top volume from the car radio.
The movie suddenly switched to an aerial shot of the intersection, wide angle.
A police car pursued a fleeing pickup truck, both heading for the intersection Mom was about to cross. Its lights were flashing, sirens screaming; but the loud rock music from the car was louder still, drowning out the sound of the sirens completely.
“No,” Alex breathed.
The little red car entered the intersection just as the pickup truck came in from its left at 90 mph. There was a tremendous impact which smashed in the driver’s side of the red car and sent it spinning across the intersection. On the third revolution the braking police car slammed into the passenger side, folding the little car like a pocketbook. The rock music abruptly stopped. Then the movie screen went black.