PM 17: Sleep

Ierod called to Check, and the two together, lifted my head and trunk and placed me into a sitting position.

"Feeling great?" Check said, gruffly. I was silent. "You got great scores. Great things ahead for you. Its quantifiable!"

I turned to face Ierod. He was smiling. Then I looked at Pamille. She seemed less strange to me. She seemed, not grotesque and freakish, but normal and almost natural. Her expression, before an expressionless mask, now clearly bore the signs of a nervous guilt. The weight that had been such a burden, though sensible, was not unbearable any longer. My stomach, which had been twisted in knots, now seemed steady.

"I'm thirsty."

"Tired too, no doubt." Ierod added. " Training isn't rest." I was tired. "And, it's not really over anyway. It will take a few shifts and sleep will help out."

I was tired, but I was also determined not to show any weakness anymore. These people who had seized control of my life, must be resisted if I was to preserve it.

When Ierod, stepped over to Check and pulled him aside as if to say something in private. I swung my legs over the side of the table. I dropped down and walked over to them as assertively as I could. Confidence was welling up within me from some unknown source.

"Can we go back to the canteen?"

Ieroed and Check looked at me in some surprise.

"Sure, hold on. Pamille needs to discharge you. Would you please?"

"Already done." She said.

Ierod's eyes lit up. "Fantastic! Come on. Let's go!" He gestured for Check to follow him, but the troll shook his head.

"I have to put together a team. Pamille and I need to look at the current allocations and whose overloaded. Shortage of people. Everyone is lazy. No one wants to work anymore. Especially those n-gen goons. Rotten, squeamish, miserable lot."

"We'll continue our discussion later. Come with me... Peter right?" I nodded. "You probably remember the way. " I followed him out the door steadily, this time paying more attention.

"How long was it?"

"The training?"

"Yes."

"You mean how much time did it take?"

"Yes."

"I don't know. Maybe a little over a half shift. I don't follow timers. I just run around and when I get tired I find some hole to lie down in and sleep until I wake up and start running around again. You're probably a little confused by all this. But you've had plenty of sleep, plenty of rest. You'll find you don't need so much. Well except to let those chips finish doing whatever they do up there.

"You'll find that the problem really is staying clean and hydrated. Everything is always so dry, and the n-gen don't like the way you'll smell when you get dirty. Nin-folk don't care really. They hate us whatever we smell like. All except the 'intellectual' disenfranchised type like Pamille. But even she doesn't really like us.

"Your suit and the food will take care of a good part of the smell. If you feel the need to defecate or urinate, find a hole like one of those," he pointed to a narrow door, hardly larger than a locker. It was marked by a red circle. "It shouldn't happen too often. But perhaps this is all coming to you. I don't what they teach you in training now. It used to be that the Nin-folk left most of the training to other humans, but now, they like to control it. They aren't squeamish so they probably implant all sorts of things, all sorts of hidden motivations." He said the last two words with thick irony.

"Where am I?"

"In what sense."

"What am I doing here?"

"Don't get philosophical. By the way, I don't like the name 'Peter,' It's too... abrupt. Two syllables, but too hard. I don't like the sound of long e's myself. They pierce my eardrums, like a shriek. I like quiet things more. So, I'm going to call you something else. Your surname was something Irish or Scottish, right? McLane?"

"MacLeinn"

"Not a lot of Irish or Scotch up here surprisingly enough. Or if there are they all long since forgot about it. They don't usually like native English speakers you see." We passed through the doors of the canteen. "I hate this place." He said. "But get yourself something to drink. Go ahead and get something to eat too while your at it." I did as he told and he went and sat down at a bench. The canteen was almost entirely empty. I provisioned myself and returned. "But you'll be different I bet." He said enigmatically, "You won't be like these other things."

"What does that mean."

"I don't like things too clean." He said. "Not meaning I like things dirty, but I think you have to throw the dice every now and then. They like rules, that's what being a Nin-folk is all about. Making lots and lots of rules. They want everything to fit in its own particular hole and stay in the hole. That's why they don't like native English speakers. And that's why Bud and I recruit them. You have messy thoughts, I can tell. You have dark, dirty, nasty, rotten, thoughts." The seriousness of his tone frightened me. "Which is why we are going to get along. You and me and Check and Bud. We are going to shake things up and make it a little less predictable."

"What am I supposed to be doing?"

"Oh.. you'll figure it out. You're a smart kid Macko, and it will come to you soon enough."

PM 16: Aside

I feel the temptation again, to step away from the story and simply explain things from the vantage of experience. But this would not be fair. Not to me. I feel that you should suffer, with me or rather, I think you should suffer like me. Perhaps that's not what I mean either.

Honestly, it is remote now, and I strive to relive it. That's why I am writing. For who is reading? Who is caring? Who does my story concern? Only me.

But if there were a you... an invisible reader. How different things could be.

You could feel my uncertainty and disorientation. You would say, "Yes, I can see how it was painful. That was more painful than anything I ever had to deal with." Or. "How did you endure it? I don't think I could." Then we could agree that I suffered. And we could agree that it was meaningless. "The tragedy is that it was all for nothing."

How many groans of mankind are left unstudied? The vast majority of them to be sure. No one pauses or reflects on the inherent absurdity of the vast majority of awkward confrontations or embarrassments. No one thinks about the freakish absurdity of an accidental crossing of the Styx. The gargling cry in the night from a man dying of some nameless disease in some nameless place.

I survived my own near encounter. I saw the boatman, and nearly paid the coin. I stepped back, but there is a dark future ahead. I will step on that boat and no one will mark my point of departure from this world with a gravestone. If I could write my own epitaph, it would say "and no man afterward remembered that poor man."

So, tell me. Why should I skip forward a single moment or omit a single pang of being from my narrative? I should describe describe the growth of the hairs on my neck.

But I will be merciful. I will say no more of my despair, but this: something within me snapped in that moment on the table, and regardless of what lies beyond, only death can heal me.

PM15: Training

Looking back at that strange walk back down the corridor to the reclamation room, I now find my inaction difficult to fathom. I was certainly weak, tired, and confused. But that is not why I did not try and fight them as they led me towards an unknown but certain danger. I did not try and fight them because I was, at last, moving again. Something was happening. Does a condemned man without hope find some relief when the guards come and get him and start the slow progression towards the gallows? Or did he learn to live with the uncertainty and build up a false hope that death would never come?


I had only been left in suspense a few minutes, perhaps an hour. But it had been enough in this disorienting realm to put my mind in a frenetic state. The slow walk, supported by Ierod and Check had restored order and acted upon me like an opiate. But that false calm was not to last long. We returned to the morgue and they carefully laid me back upon the gurney. As soon as my back touched the cold metal, an almost animal like desire for self-preeservation returned and I strove to sit up.

"Hold on there fellow. This is nothing!" Ierod said as he strapped one of my arms down. "All we are going to do is implant a few chips into your brain. That's all."

I cursed and shreiked and managed to rip my arm away from Check. But with Ierod and teh burden of heightened gravity I was fairly easily subdued. Pamille injected me with what I imagine was a sedative and in a few moments, the urge to fight left me again. The tinny taste of blood filled my mouth and the back of my head ached.

"You better hold still or you'll have some nasty brusies and the whole thing will take longer for the wires to set up. Believe me, you want the wires as short as possible to help your scores. Anyway, it's not like it hurts much."

"I think," Pamille said, "you call this 'minimally invasive.' Essentially that means we do as little damage as possible." I remember that there were only four fingers on her hands. The skin of her fingertips was soft and warm and her touch gentle as she turned my head so that my right ear was against the table. There was a sharp pain behind my left ear. "That's one." And then another in the soft fleshy part of my neck. "And two. This next one will hurt." She pulled back my eyelid at the corner and I felt something slide behind my eye, an enormous pain caused me to gasp, but it ended so quickly I hardly had time to eact. "And three. Now, four. This one is uncomfortable but not so bad." She inserted something up my right nostril. Again a pain and I began to sneeze uncontrollably. "Almost over." She said as she placed one hand over my head with impressive force and then with the other hand, opened my mouth and inserted one of her fingers. I felt a pain in soft pallete above my tongue. "There, that's five. Give it a few minutes to set up and then we can test it and see how well it does."

I lay there on the table as still as if I were dead like the bodies all around me.

"That wasn't so bad was it?" Ierod stated with a barely credible enthusiasm and only a trace of genuine sympathy. "You'll be better than ever in a few minutes."

"What happened?" I asked.

"Training." Check answered. "Five little chips in your head now. They wire themselves in and start checking things out. You'll get that sensation in a few moments."

And indeed, I suddenly was overwhelmed by a series of flickers and bright lights, sounds, sensations, tastes, and odors. They shot all over my body so that I seemed to feel them all at once and every place. If the conversation was continuing about me I lost track of it. The flooding of my perceptions was not exactly pleasent, in fact in some ways it was excruciatingly painful. But what made matters worse was the maelstrom that followed it as I was treated in rapid successions to a rainbow of emotions from despair to euphoria, wrath to lust, frustration to detachment.

When I came back to myself, I found myself unbound. Check was gone but Pamille and Ierod were nearby conversing...

"97." Ierod said. "I don't care what the other scores say, how can you argue with a 97 reflex. And a 94 retention. Combined that's unprecedented. No one scores that high. This is better than anything you could get with a C1OP."

"Yes, but the covariance is a 58. Passing is 60."

"Oh you can fake that. Who is to know."

"It doesn't matter who is to know. There's a reason why passing is a 60, and ev3n at 60 we would limit his service to only a few months."

"Would you send him to MRA?"

"Of course not. It's way too dangerous for that."

"Then what are you suggesting?"

"Dump it."

Ierod turned quickly to look at me. I was completely still though my eyes were staring at him. "How much longer?" He asked anxiously.

"At least ten minutes. It has to regain its balance. It would be completely disoriented."

"It freaks me out." He turned back to Pamille. "But 97, 94, 88, 91 thos scores are too good. He could be in charge of a division in two or three months. We need someone like that."

"58 Ierod."

"Who looks at covariance. Nobody even knows what covariance is except you and the chip designers. He probably scored low there because he scored high. Too much information always leaves a little confusion. If you go slow, it works it's way out on the field."

"58."

"Is almost 60. I need someone."

"Even if it did pass those scores are too good for what you want."

"No. It's perfect. I give him his assignment. He has time to adjust. He comes back in three months. You test him again. If he's still 58 then we dump him..."

"No."

"... look this is what you were hoping for. Your chips are better than standard issue. And when's the next time you are going to get to try them out? Three months. Check didn't see the scores. Just change them. Take four off the top three. Add 12 to covariance and he's in the black all around. The total is the same."

I heard Check walk in. "So. What's the score?"

"428." Replied Ierod cheerfully.

"Not bad. Not tremendously good, but not bad. What was his high?"

Ierod looked at Pamille. "It scored low in covariance." She said

"Oh?"

She paused. "Yes. A 70."

"But a 93 in reflex."

"93? Really? You must have plunked them down with nanometer leads. Well, what the hell is covariance anyway."

PM 14: (Continued)

Editor's Note: I apologize for the use of the various acronyms if they make the conversation too confusing. C1OP = Class one operative which Peter was originally hired in as. MRA = Material Resource Acquisition, a minor position in the EARA which does not require much in the way of special skills. EARA, if you recall, is the Eternal Agressive Revolutionary Army. PE is Population Encouragement. Transit is, of course, like a period of suspended animation or induced coma. It's really used to keep people who are going to be in tight containers for long periods sane, but it is unhealthy.

The actual conversations were much worse for Peter and filled with more jargon-filled language and references. I have simplified them substantially.

"I don't think so," Ierod said, "confused more likely. Has he been trained?"

"No," Pamille replied. "I am going to administer the basic training program for MRA."

"What a waste. Look, why don't you go ahead and give him a C1OP? See how he does?"

"We don't have many left. You talk about wasting resources. It was in transit two weeks too long. Who knows what that did to its..."

“One of Gereltz people was in transit for almost two months and lived.” Interrupted the Ogre. “Remember, he had stuffed himself in to hide from that PULVA raid and shipped himself back here. But no valid claim form came with him and if we hadn’t needed the tube we would never have even looked inside.”

“That’s very amusing, Check, but if I recall that fellow’s brain was a tad on the mushy side.” said Ierod.

I regret now my first opinion of Check, but he was in fact ugly and combative. Yet I came to know that he was one of the “good guys” in the EARA. Like Ierod.

“Yes, not that it matters but it is now just re-spooling transmission records off unclaimed shuttles.”

The obscure talk was again causing me to hyperventilate. “There’s nothing wrong with me!” I screamed out, and followed the protestation with a stream of expletives. The three of them stared at me for a moment.

“Class 1? I don’t think that would be a wise thing to attempt.” Pamille said after I was done.

“Then why not try one of your experimental programs?” Check suggested. “If his mind is mush what difference will it make?”

“I don’t want my reputation further lowered around here. When it goes bad, what will people blame? Me or it?”

“I won’t tell anyone. What about you Check?”

“It seems like a perfect opportunity to try something new.”

“You could always just say he died suddenly.” She was hesitating. “Come on Check, let’s get him to his feet. Central training?” Ierod grabbed one arm while Check grabbed the other.

“No, Diot will probably be in there. Let’s take it back to reclamation. We can do it there.”

PM 14: Gasp

I almost dozed off until yet another jolt startled me. And with th jolt came another intense emotion, an instictive and urgent desire to run. It was so powerful that, if my weight had not been so great I would have jumped out of my seat. Instead, I lurched upward, tripped over the bench and landed on my back with a loud and painful thud. I cried out, and went still, my breath coming in gasps.

I sweat remembering it.

I stared at the ill-lit ceiling above me, clenched my fists and groaned.

"One of yours?" A voice said.
"No. Don't know him. Probably a space transporter whose been too long on the aem." The last word came was pronounced with an emphasis on the first letter like ay-em.

I propped myself up and saw the two contestants above me. The skeleton-man crouching, elbows on his knees, looked at me as if I were a particularly disgusting bug he had just crushed with his boot. The other, spent his gaze on the other occupants who had backed away to the walls.

"Look at them. They're so pathetic. Miserable. Less than worms really. And I'm supposed to do something with them?"

"Who are you?" Skeleton-man asked.

"Oh, just get an HRO. He needs a lethal dose of something or other."

"Here, let me help you up. Where are you stationed?" The skeleton, with surprising strength and speed grabbed me by the wrists and yanked me into a sitting position.

"Why do you waste your time?" The ugly one queried nastily.

"I'm short you idiot. What have we been talking about. " He turned back to me. His look was not kind, but it was curious. "Are you a transfer or are you a new recruit?"

"I'm Peter. MacLeinn. Where is Bud?"

He put his hand to his mouth, possibly to conceal a smile. "Procurement. You're a nojen. Hey, Check, go get Pamille."

"No need, because she's sloughing her way through the door now." And in fact, over the skeleton's shoulder I could see her form approaching in its half sliding, half stubling manner.

"This one will be nothing but trouble." She said.

"Where did you get him? We aren't due for another two weeks?"

"It was simply late in getting here. It should be dead."

"So his position has been filled. Bud let go of him."

"Yes, but if you want it, it's too late. He has been claimed by Material Resource Acquisitions to..."

"Screw them. What do they need a nojen for? Any beast or lilly can stuff a bar of Beryllium down its pants." The ugly man started to laugh at this image. The skeleton turned to me, "My name is Ierod Iohann. I work in Population Encouragement. How would you like to work for me?"

The Ogre checked his snorting and blurted out contemptuously "What, you're asking him? Just tell him. Oh I suppose everything is flat now just like you like it. Let's all have a big meeting and we can take turns picking."

Pamille's voice picked up an edge. "It isn't yours and it hasn't been trained. You don't know what it is good for."

"Neither does MRA."

"It's obviously stupid."

"So? You can tell. He's a perfect neutral. That's what I need a neutral. Someone nobody thinks anything about or looks twice at but isn't a lilly."

"Where's Bud?" I asked.

"See. Stupid."

PM 13: In the Canteen

The disgorging of my stomach contents had left me feeling light headed and suddenly empty and ravenous. I was weak and wanted to lie down, but I seemed to have no choice but to follow Diot into the room.

It was a large room well-lit unlike the morgue with several long tables. And it was almost completely empty save for a few lean looking men and women sitting alone or in small groups. Two men were having an argument at one of the tables, otherwise the room was quiet. “This is the Canteen. Pamille should be showing you around. Not me. You won’t need to know anything about it really because you won’t be stationed here but I’ll show you where you can get some food. Then I’ll leave you.”

She led me to a long serving counter which we walked along as rapidly as was possible under the burden of our own weights. At the end of the counter she pulled out a small plastic tub from a cabinet and handed it to me. “Here. You open the lid up at the corner and drink it. That’s exactly one long shift worth there and you won’t be hungry. In fact you won’t want anymore for a while. I’d suggest you drink it slowly over there at the tables.”

“Where do I get something to drink?”

“You need to drink after each job. You’ll be provided drinks by your supervisor. I’m only giving you this because you haven’t eaten anything.” She gestured toward a place and as I turned to sit down she left the canteen. I sat down and began to eat. Hungry as I was I couldn’t control myself. It was grainy and sweet like the pulp of some fruit, thick but not at all sticky and it flowed easily. It was almost without color. I drained the container and regretted it immediately as it left a sharp pain in my stomach. There was another sudden wrenching of the room and I felt myself almost turn weightless. Again I was overcome with nausea but I managed to hold the food down. I could feel it in the pit of my stomach.

And then I sat there wondering alternately what caused that horrible lurch, whether Diot or Pamille would return to claim me, whether I was dreaming or dead and in hell and when and where I could lie down and sleep. The people in the room would get up and leave, others took their places, going up to the counter sitting at a lonely place at a table and slowly consuming the contents of the containers. When they talked, they talked quietly, in short staccato sentences primarily consisting in yes’s and no’s and about things I couldn’t begin to understand. They mostly were dressed in gray uniforms like mine most often, occasionally powder blue or peach but they were all thin and miserable looking. I must have been the most miserable of all.

The only real point of interest in the room was the two men arguing. They were dressed in black as Bud had been dressed and equally animated in contrast to all the others. The taller of the two was bald and skinnier than any of the others. His features were skull like especially as his lips were always curled back showing his teeth to the pale pink gums. As a consequence he looked like he was frozen between agony and hysterical laughing. He would lick his teeth with his tongue in a way that struck me as a kin to blinking. The other man who did more of the talking was smaller and more bent. Not fat but definitely more fleshy. He had thick lips which appeared to brutish to form words and eyebrows as bushy as caterpillars and a face with coarse skin and deep wrinkles. He was in a word ugly.

As others came and went these two remained in their animated conversation. I tried to concentrate and listen but try as I might my mind simply could not cling to their words and instead I kept returning to my own predicament. I do remember one small snippet however: “It’s no good!” the skull faced man said “You can’t turn them into anything more than passive participants unless you pump them full of chemicals. And then they’re psychotic and unmanageable. Yes, we can reason with them but they are completely pragmatic. All they want is recognition and power and they get it more readily from PULVA than from us.”

“Yes you see they do want something”, the brute said, “they think they deserve it. They think the way to get it is to follow the rules. But we can give it to them…”

“They don’t like to break rules. They don’t like to cut line. They get angry when you try to make them. Even now when amnesty comes along we’d lose half of them if we didn’t shoot them ourselves.”

PM12: An incident in the hall

The uniform was similar to those of Diot and Bud. The only novelty was in the color - which was gray with a white satin stripe - and in the undergarments which were rather tight fitting. The sleeves of the under shirt went down to my elbows, the under pants down stretched from waist to my knees. The shoes were integrated with the pants as was an under-belt. The loose long sleeve shirt had a hidden flap which snapped down onto the pants and over the under-belt. I put all this on with some difficulty but I found that the more I moved the steadier I became. And though the pull of gravity seemed to always be driving me downwards I was compensating quickly. All my movements, I noticed however, seemed to have slowed down.
There was a small backpack like the one I saw Bud using, which I hesitated to put on because of its feminine appearance. It was surely intended to be part of the uniform. I picked it up to give it a closer inspection. As I stood there looking at it, a door at the end opened noisily. I would not have even noticed but for the shuffling movements of Diot.

“Presentable.” She said.

I swallowed hard. “Yes.”

“It goes on your back if you are trying to figure it out. You’re geared up as a flight technician. That might not be what you turn out to be but there’s always a shortage of them and they are easily trained and so can be rather stupid.”

I took the insult as indifferently as she gave it and awkwardly put the pack on.

“Well, now let me take you to the canteen.”

I left the walker behind and followed her out the silent door and into a large and empty hallway. I was shuffling in the same manner she did. “Walk this way.” I mumbled to myself. She emitted an inquisitive hum. “Nothing.”

“From the little I’ve seen of you, I begin to think you might be a smart-ass.” I was quiet. “The whole earth is full of your type… or at least your type is the only one that are stupid enough to get recruited. Why do you think that is?” The hallway was rough hewn stone like the room I was just in but broken by the occasional door.

“Where was I just then?”

“You mean where you got dressed or where you woke up?”

“Where I woke up?”

“That’s a reclamation room.”

“Is that like a morgue?”

“I’m not sure what a morgue is. We don’t use that word. But I suppose you are thinking of the other bodies. Yes there dead and its my job to reclaim what can be reclaimed before disposal.”

“It was rather large and empty.”

“Yes, it doesn’t get as much use now. We’re all hoping we’ll be busier. I hate it.” She paused. Maybe she had surprised herself by her frankness. “I mean I hate the fact we’re not busy. But I hate the job too. I hate touching things. I hate pulling the chips. Not as much as most people. I have a high tolerance apparently though I am not like you. I am engine.” I thought the word was engine but she pronounced it stressing both syllables. “But I hate the boredom worse and I hate the fact we’re not winning. That’s how it is here. I hate it both. But good news for you. You won’t get a job like mine any time soon that’s for sure.” Her accent was strange to me. It was not foreign but seemed slightly twisted. The way she said reclaim was like the truncation of the longer word reclamation with a short “a.”

The floor suddenly lurched, and I had the dreadful sensation that I was spinning. The unexpected disruption led to the unsettling of my stomach and I keeled over and vomited. Diot’s reaction was sudden and fierce. Her eyes opened wide and she almost leaped to the other side of the hallway and began to scream at me.

“Oh just great! What a revolting mess! What is the matter with you, can’t you walk 100 yards without doing something completely disgusting? I’m not going to clean that up. I am not going to clean that up. It wasn’t in my room. Someone else can clean that up.”

I caught my breath and began to apologize but she didn’t seem to notice me. Then from the other end of the hallway emerged the lumpy form of Pamille. “Diot.” Came the pleasant voice. “Calm down. You don’t have to clean anything up in the tunnel. There are other people to clean.” Diot almost immediately quieted down, but the baleful expression on her face remained.

“It’s not my job. The bodies, that’s okay. And the blood, that’s okay too. But not that.”

“You still need to take him to the canteen.” Diot composed herself and started to walk back down. Pamille, gestured with a leathery arm for me to follow and, enlarged and elongated her eyes with an abrupt nod of her head as if to give me a look saying “What did you expect considering what you just did?”

The Ninian remained at the site of trauma. I caught up with Diot who was shufflimg at double speed. She shrunk away as I approached. “Haven’t you ever been sick before?” I asked in a desperate sounding voice. The vomit had been orange and frothy and some remained on my chin. I tried to wipe off the remnants on my sleeve, but the material was synthetic and water repellant.

She refused to look at me “No! And I don’t plan to be. That’s something you do.” With those words she turned towards one of the doors which slid open with barely a whisper at her approach.

PM 11: Cleaning Up

"Now try and relax," she continued. "Take a deep breath."

I did as she told me, my first breath quite rapid and shallower than I intended. Then I gained some self-mastery and swallowed hard. Gradually the weight or pressure seemed to subside a little and a warm feeling spread all over my body. When she could see that I had calmed down she returned to her work at the console. The air came into my body and went back out: in, out, in out. My heart beat in my chest, thump-thump thump, thump-thump thump. The blood flowed through my temples: throb, throb, throb, throb. I clenched my fists and released them, I clenched my jaw and released it. As I calmed down I began to notice another sound which at first I mistook for my own breathing. It was deeper and rougher and out of sequence with the movement of my chest.

"You'll be glad to know that you now have been assigned a number and are on a schedule. Aren't you lucky."

I tried to lift my head again and found it much easier. I turned my head back to her.

"Well now, you're existence has been re-established. I put a bulletin out for you, but we'll have to wait to see who is interested in you." She took a moment to look me up and down. "I think we might as well get you up and start getting you used to things." She shuffled towards me, gracelessly, with heavy footsteps. Then bending over me she unhitched several straps and I felt the pressure diminish further, though not completely. The table I was on tilted and my head elevated as my feet descended. I was soon sitting upright but the position felt very precarious as if at any moment I would topple over and slam hard against the floor.

I felt a pinch in my arm and a burning sensation. She was using a syringe to inject some yellowish fluid into my arm. "This will keep you from throwing up. Just sit here for a minute and let the medicine work." The ill-lit cavernous room stretched out before me in all directions. I noticed that it was not exactly an aseptic environment. Little piles of damp cloths and other indefinable substances were strewn around the room. I waited for quite some time as the human resources worker went from one locker to another, from one console to another, disappeared altogether and reappeared from another direction, never taking a fast step but always with that ungainly gait.

Eventually she emerged from one of the shadows with a walker and placed it in front of me. "I hate this part of the job." Diot said and sighed. "Time to get you cleaned up." She slipped an arm behind my back and pulled me off the inclined table towards the walker. My hands reflexively stretched out for the handles. My grip was weak and I stumbled again but she, much larger than I, managed to keep me from total collapse until I established enough muscular control to correctly distribute the burden of my weight between my arms on the walker and my wobbly legs on the floor. The shroud had fallen off me and I realized I was naked.

I glanced at her in my shame and embarrassment but she was clearly oing her best to avoid contact with me, visually or physically. “Go straight ahead, follow the little copper colored strip and it will take you to the showers.” On the trash-littered floor there was indeed a copper colored walkway painted. “I will meet you there.” She stepped away and I was left to my own abilities to reach my destination. At first it was a struggle but with every step I gained some more self-control.

I soon left the realm of the spot lights and corpses and worked into the shadows. These had been created by rows of hanging curtains the purpose of which I could not guess, but every now and then I seemed to catch a glimpse of some reflection of a metallic object in the murkiness of that room. The copper path I walked along seemed to glow a little in the darkness and if not for that luminescence I would have had a great deal of difficulty. Eventually I reached a wall which, from the shallow semi-circular grooves, appeared to have been ground out of a solid rock and then coarsely smoothed down. And in the wall was a doorway to another room. As I looked a bank of lights came on in this room revealing it to be no more than ten feet deep and twice as wide with a series of shower heads in the far wall. I wheeled my way in and as I did the water came on in one of the heads.

Steadying myself with my right hand, I reached out with my left to touch the spray. It was very fast and hard and the temperature was lukewarm at best. I hesitated to step into it. But this whole time I had not looked down at my body and when I finally did I saw that it was rather filthy.

“Any soap?” I called out. My voice merely echoed. There was no other response. I noticed however, that on the floor, the water from the tap appeared to be generating its own sudsy lather, so I stepped into the spray. It was unpleasant, neither hot enough or cold enough, or even, for that matter wet enough. It seemed to take a long time to effect much cleaning. The filth on me was rather sticky but oddly did not have any smell to it at all. I wondered a little what it might be. The water dripping down from me, hardly a trickle actually changed from dark to lighter and as it did the soapiness of it seemed to reduce and then the spray stopped altogether. The stream of water suddenly became a blast of warm air, but with a kind of chemical odor to it. Then it too stopped. I was now clean and dry but still naked. And I was cold. I turned to look around wondering what I was to do now.

“MacLeinn.” said Diot’s voice from a masked speaker. “Step through the showers and into the uniformary.” Then I noticed a doorway off one of the sidewalls. I wheeled my way through the door and into an ordinary looking locker room. I was feeling steadier, and wanting to get rid of this walker but I did feel physically tired and still very heavy. On a bench against a wall was a little stack of clothes. I assumed I was to put them on. Wheeling my way to the bench, I parted from the walker and sat down heavier than I intended hard against the wall, my head coming to rest with a solid thunk. “Put it on.” Diot’s voice urged impatiently and I turned my attention to the clothes.

PM 10: Introduction

I was shocked, my whole body jerked in revulsion. What was this thing that hovered above me?

"I assure you," she said sweetly "you look as revulting to me as I do to you."

I tried to sit up, but the weight of my body was so very great that I could not even lift my head.

"Steady," she continued, "let's not rip a muscle overexerting. Diot or someone will help you up in just a minute."

"Where am I?" I asked again.

"You are with the EARA. You were just unpacked."

"What are you going to do to me?"

"Well, we will do some training, indoctrination, acclimation as I just said. We also will outfit you for your new career depending on how well you take to the training. That's our main job in human procurement. But of course, we are just one group in a much larger organization. Take for example, this single station. We have a large semi-autonomous program management team here. There are about twenty-five full time assistants and associates whose whole occupation is to monitor commuication between various operatives. We also have an information coordinator and a Ninian Press Liason. These are all part of our Protocol and Internal Affairs Departments. We also have several actual operative divisions. Don't ask me to explain all their various tasks. Truthfully their affairs are no real concern of ours. We have a small hospital contingent, a fair sized mechanical technician lab, an armament recuperation officer, and an information coordinator. With all the incomings and outgoings of officers and operatives we also employ..."

I suddenly realized that she was going to keep talking unless I took action immediately. "I don't care, damn it! Just let me up!"
"As I said, we will let you up in a moment. I suggest just relaxing and being patient. You are a great deal overdue. This has put us into an unpleasant situation, and I can't tell you how much typework this is going to cause. We have to relist you and check on current assignments. The position we had you down for has already been filled, hasn't it Diot."

"Yes..."

"Just send me back!"

"No, I don't think so. It would be a tremendous nuisance. The only options right now are to dump you or train you." She stepped away, "Diot, will you see to it that it is put back into the system? I have a few other affairs to take care of." She shuffled out of sight. I turned my head and looked at the far more attractive creature operating a console a few feet away.

Relatively more attractive. She was tall and thin and the head on her long neck drooped like a wilted flower. She had a wild mass of yellow-orange hair that seemed to stick straight up like a candleflame. Her elfen face was a little less than pretty and a little more than plain. Her tight fitting uniform revealed a rather asexual body with very little feminity. I noticed that it was the same kind of unifrom Bud had appeared in with a few small changes. The satin stripe down the leg and sleeve was white with a red square at shoulder and hip.

"What was that thing?"

"Hmmm?"

"What was that thing?" I repeated, my voice becoming more desperately shrill and ragged.

"You mean Pamille?"

"Yes. Whatever. What was she?"

"She is a Ninian, Mr. MacLeinn. Please don't worry about the typework. It's really not that bad. Pamille just doesn't understand how the system works. She always thinks things she doesn't know about are so complicated. There, you're back in the system." She looked over at me giving me a reassuring smile. The anxiety on my face must have been quite obvious. "Try to relax, I'm checking your insulin response and a couple more medical checks and I'll help you up and you can get something to eat and drink."

I looked around the room. There were many more tables like the one I assumed I was on. Most were empty but several had bodies on them. Unmoving bodies. There was spotlight above each of the corpses, just like the one that had blinded me. "Why can't I move?" I asked. "I'm not dead am I?"

An enormous teeth baring smile split her face. Then she emitted a spontaneous barklike laugh and then snorted through her nose. "Oh... the gravity is always a little higher in the basement. No Mr. MacLeinn you're not dead, but for all anyone really cares you might as well be dead." She paused looking at what I took to be a computer console. Her expression became more serious and reflective. "And probably, soon enough you will."

PM 9: Arrival

It is a strange thing unconsciousness, hovering between existence and nonexistance. A taste of death it often seems. My uncosciousness, unobserved by any, was of an even stranger sort. It did not merely encompass me, but everything else. It was a blankness in the universe. I was Schrondinger's cat.

Perhaps you are not familiar with that story from modern physics. Schrodinger came up with the experiment to refute the ideas of men like Heisenberg and Niels Bohr who believed that reality was the summation of various wave states which collapsed upon observation. The experiment Shrodinger suggested, if carried out, was a rather cruel exercise in probability; however, it was only a thought experiment. The cat is placed in a black box with a poison vile and a small amount of some unstable isotope and a radiation detector. The decay of a isotope determines when the vile of poison is released. Until the box was open and the cat seen again, the unfortunate beast was neither alive nor dead but both and neither. Half a cat, some might say. Shrodinger thought his opponents would realize that their arguments would have far reaching consequences. The cat subject to the whims of an uncaused event showed quite clearly that there can be no real distinction between the subatomic world (radioactive decay) and the macroscopic world (cats and scientists). Therefore, surely the idea of a half a cat would by its very absurdity prove to them that their interpretation of Quantum Mechanics was false. Shrodinger was naive to think the saner view would be the more pervasive. We now must accept only half a cat.

Yes, I was that cat, possibly alive, possibly dead in a black box somewhere in the Universe. My existence was even more questionable, for unlike the cat whose consciousness had it been awake would have been snuffed out, mine was simply not present. But if "I" was not in the box, where was "I." I was so dilute, even to myself, that I was for all practical purposes not really any place at all. I had simply fallen out of time. And more than that, there was no guarantee I would ever appear again. And even one step further, as it turned out when I did come back into existence, for the observor unaware of my history, I may have merely appeared out of the ether. I appeared ex nihilo, another uncaused event like radiaoctive decay.

Father Kindly objected to talk like that. He said it was silly and idle and I will have to account for it someday. But Father Kindly believed in causality. He believed in St. Thomas Aquinas's proofs. I myself am not sure. God, if he exists, being omnipresent, sees through all things. He is the observer extraordinaire and therefore, it seems to me all waves must collapse for Him. God does not play dice with the universe as Einstein said, but all evidence seems to say if there is a God then he does. How can it happen that a photon passes through both slits at the same time? If conscious shapes the universe and we know there is an unknowable, there can be no observor. I told Father Kindly this, but he always insisted on the metaphyiscal certainty of God's existence. Metaphysics and physics. I can comprehend neither. How can I choose between metaphysics, which I can't see but can percieve, and a photon, which I can't help but see but shall never percieve?

All the stronger argument seems to work against God. Why would God hide invisible behind his creation? Shouldn't he arc above it like the sun in the sky? I see and percieve the universe, its vastness, its emptiness. I see nothing of what is beyond it. The universe I can comprehend, measure, and describe. I can in a measure comprehend it. Father Kindly's God is incompatible with this universe. He is colorless, massless, sizeless. I can not see, percieve, or comprehend him. How than can I be at all understood to have been created in his image? This is too much to believe. It is faith that defies the probing of reason. Father Kindly said reason can not contradict faith, but my reason causes me to reject God. Only one thing keeps my mind open to the faintest possibility of His existence: the odd fact that I myself feel incompatible with the universe.

Of course these were not the thoughts I was entertaining when eventually the waves did all collapse down and I popped back into existence. I was thinking of how much pain I was in as I lay on a cold metal shelf. I felt so very heavy. I tried to open my eyes but was almost immediately blinded by the brightness of my surroundings. It was liking stepping out into sunlight from a pitch black cave. I blinked, but the light was so intense it hurt.

"Oh good, its brain cavity isn't going to burst." said a voice.

"His vitals are fine. Blood pressure is rising but still normal. I told you he would be okay."

"Yes, yes, yes, but you aren't the one who gets splattered when they go off." It was a woman's voice, soft and melodious. My one eye could make out a vague outline, a grotesque and distorted sillouhette. She prodded me. "Can you hear me? What's your name?"

I grunted.

"What planet are you from?"

Two grunts.

"A slow riser apparently."

"I'll pump in a little more adrenalin." Said the second voice, also feminine but by comparison quite a bit more gravelly.

"I say we just dump him. Why bother training such a useless glob of flesh. It will be doing it a favor. It doesn't stand a chance. Better to die out in the void than be ripped apart in some arena." She paused. "Besides, I'm over my short shift by at least 10%. "

"Peter." I managed to get out. my arm moved slightly, but it was so heavy. I curled my fingers and turned my head.

"Look, he's responding." siad the second voice.

"To which question?"

"He's telling you his name."

"Is that your name? Peedar?"

"Peter MacLeinn."

"Look him up will you Diot?" Said the soft voice. "Where's he supposed to be?"

"Nothing by that name." The gravelly voice replied. "Ask him where he's from."

"What planet are you from?"

"New York."

"Newyork? Diot what planet is Newyork?"

"Earth, he means Earth."

"Well how come he said Newyork?"

"New York is a big city there. Several recruiters work out of New York. Of course he could have meant New York the province."

As my eyes grew accustomed to the light the blur that was my inquisitor became more colorful and distinct. I could see now that despite the loveliness of her voice she was horrendously ugly. "You're not properly in the system. Who recruited you? We need to know." The word recruited brought me a little more back to the world.

"Where's Bud?" I said weekly. "Where am I?"

"Oh here he is. I found him." The gravelly voice exclaimed. "You know he was supposed to arrive ten long shifts ago. We had him down as lost in transit."

"That's impossible. Where has it been all this time?"

"Probably in a warehouse, or in one of the bays."

I was looking around trying to make out other objects in the room. The overhead lights kept drawing my attention. "Well, some have been known to endure twenty or thirty long shifts in stasis. Still it's amazing it survived. Most likely it has brain damage." She paused before addressing me again. "Did you say Bud Holligan recruited you?"

I licked my dry lips, my tongue was swollen. There was little saliva. "Where is he?"

The second voice, Diot, answered. "He's long gone. Don't worry, if you knew him as well as we do, you'd be grateful you missed him."

"Who are you?"

"Oh, I'm just the resident medical technician. This is Pamille the Human Resource coordinator."

I now could make out this woman who stood over me. Her bald wrinkled head, her huge lidless black eyes, her colorless lips, the flat nose and her long neck. She wasn't ugly, she just wasn't human. "Welcome to the Eternal Agressive Revolutionary Army. I'll be assisting you as you get acclimated."

PM 8: Decision

Am I a man anymore? Am I human? Or am I something else entirely? I am not sure. So much has happened.

I’m sorry. Again, I am hesitating to just stay with the events. I promise you, if you humor me this one last time, that I will not be reflective again. This is the last time I stop the steady progression of my story as it ticks away, moment by moment, to this very point. But I don’t know what I did, and in some way this exercise of relating all these events is just some attempt on my part to finally see myself. Everything changes in a moment. After years of following a long, winding, branchless road, I found myself at the intersection of my life, ironically to be decided by the choice of a green or a red button.

I walked to the couch and upon sitting down, the first (and of course most sensible) thought that occurred to me was “I would have to be crazy to take it.” There was no mention of pay. Most likely it was a sales-type telemarketing job or (to contrast dull with sinister) it could be some mob-related business. The note had a lot of words, but really didn’t say anything. It didn’t even say whether the job was downtown or on the moon. It just seemed like a stupid thing to do. It was a simple choice of risk with no real expectation of reward, or safety… with no real expectation of ever really achieving anything.

There was something to be said for taking a risk. The prospects of staying in this current situation were pathetic at best. Could I really continue to face a slurping Mr. Daniels five days a week for thirty or forty years and then retire? And what would I do then? What had I really built for myself? And what if I pressed the green button? I wasn’t signing anything. If I didn’t like it I could quit. Really, where was the harm in pressing the button? The blitbox must just be some kind of pager. I could just say I wanted to ask him some questions. If it was mob-related I could go informant. Nowadays the mob didn’t seem as dangerous as they had been. But the thought of the mob and bombs under my car and kneecaps blown off frightened me.

Then all my thoughts became jumbled up together. After struggling towards no conclusion, I decided to sleep on it. Distraction did not seem the appropriate action, however. I went back to the study and did a search on Bud Holligan but found nothing. Holligan was not a particularly common name, but it was far from unique. It must be a derivative of the Scottish name Holigan.
A search for EARA was more fruitful, but of the organizations bearing that title, none made much sense: Eastern Airlines Retirees Association, Egypt Amateurs Radio Assembly, Environmental Auditors Registration Association, Equipment Authorization Review Activity, European Asbestos Removal Association, European Association for Research on Adolescence, European Association for Research in Astronomy

I quickly grew tired of this, though it did allow me to distance myself from the actual reality of the crisis I faced. I went back to the sofa and turned on the TV. Watching until late, I finally was tired enough to try my hand at sleep. It was a restless night, filled with half-thoughts among a murky cloud of possibilities. One moment I was trying to convince myself to take the job, then at the first sign of inclination, I argued instead that it would be the worst mistake possible. Yet no matter how often the rational argument won out, the inner desperation crept out.

I was awake as dawn began to break, and I looked out of my bedroom window to see a sick-strange green sky, like I imagine the deadly sky of an approaching hurricane at sea might look then headed towards the bathroom and then the kitchen. I looked at the blitbox innocuously resting on the counter. It almost seemed alive to me. I was in my pajamas. I went to back to my room and put on some sweatpants and a tee-shirt.

Back in the kitchen, I was again looking at the blitbox. I picked it up. It fit well in the hand. The buttons were perfectly placed so that the thumb rested right between them. I thumbed the two large buttons. I shook the object vigorously. It seemed light and hollow. My thumb went from button to button. Feeling strangely calm I walked back into the living area, stood in front of the poster and the sofa, and I pressed the green button with my thumb.

At that moment I was only thinking of one thing. I needed to ask Bud some more questions. This situation was to strange. If I did not press the button this would always remain a mystery to me. The button did not yield immediately. I really had to push hard to depress the button. Then it sunk in with a click and I felt a sting. I dropped the box and lifted my thumb to my mouth. Before I had managed to open my mouth I had collapsed to the floor completely unconscious.

Peter McLeinn

I demand another Peter McLeinn story right now! I want my fix!

PM 7: The Results

Bud asked me if he could use my study for a moment. I did not trust him.

"Why do you need the study?"

"I just need a place where I can look over the results we have compiled and match it with positions within EARA. It will only take a moment, but I need privacy." I directed him towards the bathroom. What harm could he do there?

I was relieved that this strange ordeal was coming to an end, but also curious about what the results would be. The test was unusual, but the abrupt way it ended seemed to suggest I wasn't the candidate they were looking for. I wondered whether it was because I had suggested attacking the pyschotic professor. Yet, it did make the most sense. The professor was certainly the greater danger to society and killing him would have had more positive results than simply not killing the philanthropist. Who knows how many times the professor would conduct the same experiment in order to achieve a statistically significant sample?

Bud closed the bathroom door. I could only imagine him sitting down on the toilet and consulting his little black computer. I went back into the kitchen, curious about the damage he had caused to my refrigerator. Beside the pickels, olives, and mayonaise, he had somehow also consumed three beers and a small bag of pepperoni.

This seeming trivial fact suddenly brought fully into my consciousness the peculiarity of the situation. My animal insticnts of self-preservation, dulled from years of fantasy role playing games, came alive all at once. A cold chill ran all over me and I realized that Lucifer or some other angel of darkness was at this very minute in my bathroom, plotting how to steal my soul. I may have been agnostic concerning God, but at that moment I believed with total conviction in the Devil.

Peeping over the kitchen bar where the hallway and the bathroom were clearly visible, I waited with an ever mounting fear for that six-panel off-white door to open and for Bud Holligan to step out with horns and a tail. But nothing happened. I looked at the clock on the microwave. I waited for five minutes to pass by. Still nothing. I was sweating. Then a very funny sensation come over me at all at once, the kind of feeling only the Germans or French have a name for, a feeling as if I were not really standing in my kitchen, but in some other place watching through a camera and I found myself walking towards the bathroom. I watched my hand reach out and touch the doorknob. I swung the door open abruptly only to find the bathroom completely empty.

The sudden disapearance brought back with a keener edge the fear that had seized every nerve in my body. My eyes widened and I stepped backward into the hall and into the living area, tripping over the coffee table and landing with a series of dull thuds, half on and half off the low table. I climbed back to my feet. Immediately I ran down the hall, looking in the closets and then in my bedroom and laundry room for this ghost.

Returning to the study and kitchen I continued my search. Looking in the pantry another thought seized me. Had it been my imagination? Was I insane? No, it was not possible. There on the counter were the remnants of Bud's presence. There was something else as well. A small black object with two large buttons, one red and one green. There was also a note. I looked at the object with suspicion, then I picked up the note and read:

Congratulations, Peter, you scored perfectly on the exam, and as such you are officially offered a position with EARA. Whatever you do, don’t press any of the buttons on the blitbox until you’ve finished reading this note and taken time to thoroughly think about the position. We only can employ serious candidates.

First, you probably want to know something about the position you will be embarking on. We are looking for class-1 operatives. What is a class-1 operative? Our personnel guide describes class-1 operatives as “self-motivated, action-oriented people who can lead a team of similarly motivated people into risk-enhanced situations where they are empowered to make decisions under marginal time circumstances.” To me though, being class-1 is all about team, loyalty, and cooperation… and it’s also about having fun. The typical class-1 operative spends only about 8% of his time on the job, the rest is your-time to relax and enjoy the many benefits of working for EARA.

The class-1 operative position offers you the opportunity to travel to exotic places, to meet exciting people and fascinating cultures, and to learn skills that you will use the rest of your life. And, oh boy, will you have stories to tell the grandkids! EARA takes good care of its employees. You’ll never have to worry about healthcare, dental insurance, transportation, or even laundry again! We ask only that you give us your all on a consistent basis, that you show the kind of enthusiasm that we know you’ve got in you, and that you be the leader you were meant to be.

You’ve already shown you have the mind for the work, now we want to know if you have the motivation to join our team. It’s a tough job, certainly not for coffee-sucking, pencil-chewing, desk-types. And it can get hectic. But our own internal research has shown that people who take this position have a 43.4% higher happiness index after five years than those who wuss out.

Congrats! Your Bud,

Bud Holligan, RFF

P.S.: Peter, I just wanted you to know that the blitbox will only stay active for 24 hours. Please make sure that you have made your decision by then. To accept the position, hit the green button. To decline, press the red button. Its that simple.

PM 6: The Third Question

Bud abruptly turned his back to me and headed back to the kitchen.

"That's it?" I asked incredulously, tailing after him.

"There are more questions friend, but we're done with question 2." his head was back in my refrigerator.

"No, I mean, the point of all those questions was to see when I would get sick of answering questions? This is really a stupid test. What kind of company is this?"

He reappeared with a jar of pickles. The lid was off. His beard was wet with vinegar and his face had a pained look about it.

"Did you just drink that?"

"No," he said, but by the way his mouth was stretched out and his eyes tearing up I could tell he had. He fished out a couple gerkins and ate those.

"It doesn't look like they feed you well."

He apparently found this an amusing remark and his strained expression metamorphed into a tight grin.

"They feed me quite well," he said. "But, honestly, it is rather bland. I miss strong flavors. Moving on to question 3. This is an ethical question. You may have heard something like it before. It is imperative that you are completely honest."

He left the kitchen and sat down on my sofa with the jar of pickels. He put his feet up on the little coffee table. I noticed again his strange shoes. It was almost possible to make out the outline of the individual toes almost as if they were sprayed onto his feet. A he put up his legs I could see that, in fact his pants had no hem, merely a single fold. The shoe became a sock and the sock folded over, became loose and formed the bottom of his pants.

"Surreal" I thought to myself as my gaze left Bud and followed a vartical path up the wall behind him. Hanging above my couch was a poster of Salvador Dali's The Temptation of St. Anthony. When I was in college I had purchased it in the campus bookstore as something to put on the wall. It was something cool, kind of "psychedelic," kind of intellectual. It hung it over my futon where I slept. When I would come home from drinking bouts I would flatten out the futon, put my feet against the poster and stare at it. The long spider like legs of the elephants caught my attention. They were made longer and spindlier by the near sharp angle of my observation. The nude woman in the chalice, the torso through the window.

I grew sick of it, but I brought it with me to New York and had it framed and hung it over the sofa. As I drifted towards isolation and boredom, it had faded into the background. Long ago I had given up looking at it. But that day I looked at it again for the first time. It was the only remnant of my college days left. This time it was the horse that caught my attention - I can't imagine why this had not occured to me before, but the horse's shoes were on backward. What possible reason could there be for this?

"Imagine a mad college professor who happens to be a doctor of social-ethics. Unlike the theoreticians who litter his field, this doctor has decided to perform an experiment on a real subject. So, he snuck into one of the physics labs and acquired a sizeable amount of Polonium."

"This is rather a distasteful question."

"He also kidnapped you, not to poison you with polonium, but because you are the subject of his experiment. His experiment is simple - you have a choice. Either he will poison a member of your family or a complete stranger. "

"This is sick. I won't answer this question."

"No, its not a sick question. There is no Polonium, this is all just hypothetical."

"Hypothetical or not, I do not think I want to work for any company that asks questions like this."

Bud looked at me with a rather sour expression on his face. "That may be true... or it may not be true." Then he smiled with his mouth, his eyes stayed hard. "Look, this is just hypothetical. It tells us something about you. Not who exactly you are, because, after all, if you were in such a situation there is no knowing how you would actually act. This is a question about how you think you should act. Please relax. Answer the question."

"It's meaningless for me anyway. I don't have any family."

He noted something down on his Blackberry. "Well then, a friend or someone you care about."

"I've lost touch with most of them."

Again, he made a note. "Well, then how about this. Your options are, a great philanthropist someone who does a great deal of work with the poor or some complete stranger."

"How do I know the stranger isn't a philanthropist too?"

"The stranger is someone completely insignificant. You have a choice between the life of a great worker of miracles and some ordinary schmuck. Who do you choose."

"I don't think I would choose. I would refuse to choose."

He was ready for this. "If you refuse to choose he would kill them both."

I thought for a moment. "Still I would refuse."

"And kill both of them?"

"It wouldn't be me who was killing them."

"But by your choice, you'd let them both die."

"I think there is a difference. I'm not actively willing someone to die, I am just not participating in this pscyhotic professors experiment. What I would do instead is try and kill the ethics professor."

He seemed stunned at this idea and made another note, then abruptly snapped closed his Blackberry and stood up. "I don't think there is any more need of questions. If you could give me a second to tally the score."

PM 5: The First Two Questions

He took my silence for consent. "Good! Well here it is. Imagine yourself in a room, roghly 4 meters by 4 meters. 3 meter ceiling. There is nothing on the floor or ceiling. All the walls are plain and featureless. However, on the floor is a box. What color is the box?"

"What is this a riddle?"

"No, its a question to test your psychological profile."

"I seem to remember a question about a house with all southern exposure and a bear walks by. What color is the bear? This question seems the same thing."

"This isn't the same thing."

"Carole Burnett couldn't figure it out. Obviously if a house has all southern exposure than its at the North Pole, and then it has to be a polar bear. Of course polar bears probably don't live as far North as the North Pole. Is this something like that?"

"No. There's no right answer, no trick answer."

"If there's no right answer or trick answer why do you ask the question?"

"Because your answer says a lot about you and how you think." He looked like he might want to say more and was restraining himself. I was wondering if this was a joke or if he might be serious. In either case, he seemed rather disarmed.

"I think it's a stupid question. If its a completely empty room, except for me and a box, how am I supposed to see the box to know what color it is? Put a light in the room or something."

My visitor took out a stylus and pressed the blackberry screen. He started to write down some notes. Still looking at the screen he said. "Okay, have a light. Now what color is the box?"

"What color is the light?"

"What?"

"What color is the light? The color of the box depends on the color of the light. Is it a white light?"

"It's a plain regular white light."

"Incandescent or flourescent?"

He wrote something else down on his screen. "I don't know. Flourscent. It doesn't matter."

"And the walls, the floor, and the ceiling. What color are they?"

"What difference does that make?"

"The box might be reflective."

He was starting to look a little exasperated. "Is the box reflective?"

"How should I know? Its your box."

"I don't care. It doesn't matter. You choose."

"Surely it matters for your psychological test. You need to know whether I am giving you the color of the box or the color of the walls?"

He scratched down something else.

"Moving on to Question 2. This has multiple parts. How do you spell Grey?"

"G-R-A-Y."

He pressed down with the stylus. "Do you believe in ghosts?"

"If there's a paycheck in it..."

He seemed rather annoyed. "Do you believe in ghosts? Just yes or no."

"No."

Another flick of the stylus, "Are you afraid of heights, tight spaces, open spaces, or the dark?"

"No."

"Do you take psychoactive drugs?"

"Is caffeine a psychoactive drug?"

"No."

"Are you sure? You don't know how much caffeine I take."

"No."

"Then no."

The second question with its multiple parts went on. At first I was rather troublesome with my answers. The strange questions were annoying and seemed to require a cynical response. But I began to grow tired and respond simply "yes" or "no" as appropriate. After ten minutes however, I was fed up."

"Have you ever encountered an alien life force?"

"No. How much longer will this go on?"

Abruptly he said. "That's the end of question 2."

PM 4: The Visitor

That stupid moppy headed brat. I blame his as much as anything else. If I had only been stronger for the next few hours and more confident in myself. It wouldn't have happened.

I am getting ahead of myself.

Once, as a kid, I found this enormous praying mantis. I was repelled and fascinated at the same time. I was a cowardly litle kid and afraid of bugs and snakes and worms. But there is something so unworldly about a mantis, and I've never seen one so fat before. In my mind I can still see the mantis's abdomen expanding and contracting. This revolting memory comes to me now as I think of the rudeness of that acne-scarred child whose ability to interact with the world was limitted by the speed of his thumbs. We shared a universal contempt made tolerable only by isolation. But isolation was itself intolerable. I can not deal with another person. It is too much like looking myself in the mirror. I don't want that. Adam and Eve were naked before the fall and ashamed and clothed afterward. I must put on a character in a fantasy game. Only then am I free.

I have heard that love pierces to the heart. There is a dream of love out there for everyone, no doubt, but its a dream built on a false idea. The love I want is a kind of passion that excuses reason. I want a love, like the poets talk about. I want a passionate love like a worm that will burrow its way through my skin and into my heart and kill me, so I don't actually have to love. Even if that love we all wait for exists we are all too bent on self-preservation to ever allow such a parasite to conquer us. I told Father Kindly all these horrific thoughts of mind, and he preached something different. If what he preached was love - like he said it was - then I knew nothing of it then, and I only have a faint glimmer of it now.

I returned to my apartment. Into the living area, a room dominated by the plasma TV, and through to the small kitchen. I opened the apartment size refridgerator and took out an Amsel Light, went back through the living area, flipping on the tv, and then into the small study. I sat down in front of the screen. I Read news on news sites and sports on sports sites and I drank.

There was a knock on the door.

This stunned me. People did not visit me. Once, the lady next door asked me to feed her cat while she was away. She said I looked honest and she could always spot honest people. She died and some Chinese couple had moved in. They hardly spoke english. I would nod if I passed them in the hall. Ocassionaly they screamed at each other and I could hear them through the wall in the study. I almost never saw the man across the hall who worked a night shift and went up state on the weekends. There was a tenants association but they had given up on asking me to do anything a long time ago. No children allowed here. No solicitors. For me, no visitors.

I went to the door and peered through the spy hole. There was a man outside who I did not recognize.

New Yorkers are a wary and suspicious race. We pride ourselves on the fact that we are not fools, but we also don't like to appear lacking in self assurance. I could have ignored him, but that would have been timid. I could have opened the door part way with the chain still fastened and asked him what he wanted. But as we know, a good swift to the door and the chain is broken. There really was no particular fear. It was only eight o'clock or so and the building was secure with cameras in every hall. So I opened the door, intending to face the newcomer head on. He had stepped into my apartment before I had a chance to step out of the way.

"Good evening, Mr. MacLeinn." He said as he brushed by me. "Close the door if you don't mind."
Strangely enough that's exactly what I did. "Who the hell are you?" I said at his back. He had swept right through the living room and into the kitchen and opened my fridge as if he was mimicking my own entrance several hours earlier. He pulled out a jar of mayonaise, a jar of mustard, and a jar of olives. He turned his attention to the pantry and pulled out a jar of peanut butter, took a bowl down from the cabinet and a spoon from the drawer.

"I trust you don't mind. I am in a hurry and if I had to wait for politeness we'd probably not get down to business." He was mixing the contents of all the jars together in the bowl

"What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm about ready to eat something, if you don't mind." He slathered the concoction on a bagel. He was tall, taller than me, at least six four, with curly black hair and a goatee and a very ruddy complexion. He wore a loose long sleeve black shirt with no collar and black pants with a satin band down the side like military dress. He had black laceless shoes which seemed to conform closely to his feet. On his back was a very small pack, almost like a woman's purse, but without accent or trim. A cell phone was strapped to his gray belt.

I pointed at the door. "Get the hell out of here!"

"I'm here," he said with his mouth full, "because you called me. I assume you are interested in an adventure."

"No, I am not. I don't know who the hell you are, but get the hell out now or I am calling the porters to haul you out."

He ripped a large chunk out of the bagel, breathing heavily through his nose. He looked at me for a moment as he chewed and swallowed "Don't be stupid friend, listen to what I have to say. Opportunities like this don't come around very often. Not once in a lifetime, but once in a thousand lifetimes. Its practically unique."

I suddenly had the dreadful thought that this was Satan incarnate, coming here to make a baragain for my soul. And in the light of his meteoric entrance, features, clothing and strange behavior, it seemed the most reasonable explanation.

"Do you know how many people are on this earth?" He asked.

"Five billion."

"You know how many people have ever, ever been asked to join the EARA?"

"The what?"

"Fifteen. You'd make sixteen."

"I don't care. I'm not interested. I have a good job."

"If you had a good job you wouldn't have called. I'm betting you have a pretty lame job, friend." He was in my fridge again. "What's with the water-downed beer? You have a girlfriend or something."

"I don't like a lot of alcohol. Look I don't know who you are..."

"I'm Bud Holligan, EARA recruiter and ST Division Head. We have to wear more than one hat sometimes friend." He had one of my beers in his hand. It was already open. "Actually, you might as well know, won't hurt to tell you, I'm recruiting in my spare time. We don't normally recruit here in the States."

"Look, I don't know why I dialed your number, but this is just a misunderstanding. Whatever it is you do, I'm not interested."

He stuffed some more of the bagel in his mouth, then chewed. "Look, I'm not offering you a job."

"Then why are you here?"

"I'm not offering you a job yet. You have to take this personality test first. It's a screening tool really. If you pass it, then we can interview you and I can tell you a little about what we do."

"I'm not interested." I said, but unfortunately, my curiosity was beginning to grow.

"You don't know that yet. Besides, its a lot of fun." He pulled his pack off one shoulder and swung it around to his side. It was like a duffle bag as he just pulled at the opening and reached in. Out came a little device which he folded out into a panel about four inches by six inches. "All it is, I'm just going to ask you a few questions. None of them personal at all. No bank account numbers, social security numbers, Mother's maiden names... Just a few situational problems, I'd like you to answer as best you can. There's no right answer or wrong answer, just answers, and if they match up with our profile, than we'll want to bring you in."

I had the oddest sensation that I was playing AlternateLife. I looked at my computer screen in the study, but it was blank except for the screen saver. I looked at my hands. No keyboard or mouse in sight.

"Shall we begin?"

PM 3: Last Day on Earth

I remember that day well. It was a suprisingly cool day for August. There was a fresh smell in the air - never present in the city anytime but in the fall. Other common city odors seem to become separate and distinct the way sometimes an object floating in a clear pool might sometimes becomes brighter and more colorful once it is submerged. Even passing by an overflowing dumpster I found the aroma pungent but not entirely distasteful that crisp morning.

The morning sky was cloudless, hazeless, bright, and blue, marred only by a few contrails. For the first time in a long time I was entirely awake. I remember being unusually aware of my own clothing: my jacket, tie, shirt. There was nothing odd about this uniform except that it seemed particularly appropriate for that day. I am trying my best to describe this alien sensation, but all words fail me. I fit in, I felt placed. It was anti-angst. Looking back I find this emotion I was experiencing on, what effectively was my last day, very, very disturbing.

Its a ten block walk from my building to my office. Time enough to pass by a thousand faces. Hundreds of times a year I walked that same street, passed the same people. You would think I would be able to recall one man or woman or child. But they were nothing to me. A part of the steel and glass scenery. I can't describe one, but I can describe all: a loosely fleshed, chalky face. Two dangling gold earings that refuse to sparkle. Eyes hidden behind tortoise shell sunglasses. Her hair is colorless, not brown, not blonde, not red, and certainly not black. Thin and translucent, it seems to me in my mind, pinkish like the belly of a fish. The only real color is the bright red color of her lipstick. Her lips are so thin, the color seems clownish. Her lips in a fixed sneer. Her skin puffy, her clothes expensive and tacky, her expression hard. I don't see her hands but I imagine her manicured nails are long and lacquered with the same color.

I can not form an impression in my mind of a face behind that sneer and those tortoise shell sunglasses. Just an impression. I think she has a small nose, too much mascara, too small eyes, thick eyebrows, but I can't put all these disparate features together and arrange in my mind a real person.

I dream now of turning and following that woman. She would make her way into one of those many office buildings like mine. Enter the elevator and fill it with some perfume like the stench of stale bourbon. The ride up to the fifteenth floor is a torture for the other passengers. She and arrives at her office. She takes her keys from her purse, unlocks her desk drawer puts her purse back in the drawer, and locks the drawer. Her heels click on the tile floor as she steps from the carpet into the coffee room and makes herself a milky sugary decaf - just like Mr. Daniels.

Why do I dream of following her? Is it for nostalgia, or for familiarity that would give me that sense of safety I am so bereft of. Not even in my earthliness - which I cling to - do I have anything in common at all with this woman. Only this, we walked the same street for ten years, but in opposite directions. That sneering demanding mouth which leaves it stain on the styrofoam cup is what stands out most. It is the true soul of New York. She is Spiritus Mundi - the beast slouches towards Bethlehem.

I remember I did very well with my numbers. Things went as planned, nothing surprising happened and those items that could have gone either way turned in my favor. It was not a "career" day, but good solid day and by four thirty everything had settled out so nicely that I could return home in a mood which bordered on the peaceful. The air was still cool but the sun was still high enough to fill the gorges between buildings with its radiant heat and I remember how my jacket became to warm for me. I ate an early dinner at a greek place two blocks out of the way, reading the remnants of the morning newspaper in a narrow booth. No need, really, I had to stay abreast of every detail so that I could guess which numbers would go up and which numbers would go down. No red or green buttons to push until the next morning - none ever again as it turned out.

The busboy cleaned my table as I sat there and gave me a dirty look. It was beginning to get crowded. He'd say something if I didn't leave in five minutes. So I folded the paper and put it on the table, left a generous tip and walked out of the restaraunt and headed two blocks over to the Game Room. I wasn't really in the mood to buy, I had too many games as it was that I wasn't playing but I was curious to see if there was anything new that I had missed. I "specialized" in first person shooter games, but I liked all the arcade style games. Alternate Life, which I played over the internet was nice, but simply not as intense and I wasn't into sending real money to get the perks of membership.

A crowd of moppy headed teens with an eclectic collection of piercings were competing against each other wirelessly on their hand held systems. They sat in a silent circle, elbows out, heads down. It was like looking back upon some pagan ritual. Ocaasionally they broke their silence with a groan of frustration or an exclamation of triumph. I was leaving and I stumbled, I don;t know why, just stubbing my foot against the carpet, and brushed up hard against one of the teens. He shot me a glare like the waiter in the restaurant, but he was too engaged to say anything.

"Sorry," I muttered.

"Screw off," he said, not even looking up.

I continued out the door, on my way back to my apartment.

PM 2: Safety in Numbers

Well, now that I've started, I find it is suddenly easier. Much easier to write about it. I won't go into long explanations. Brevity is the sole of wit. That much, at least, I have learned.

I don't know why I did it, but I ripped that little section out of the newspaper and stuffed in my pocket.

Then I went back to my desk and looked at numbers the rest of the day. I studied numbers. I placed them upon charts and watched them go up and go down, waiting for just the right moment when all the numbers lined up just right. Then I would push the big green button, or sometimes the red one, and a million dollars would change hands. Well not really change hands. The green and grey bills all stayed put wherever they were -- if they ever really existed -- only numbers moved. Numbers from one column to another column in the blink of an eye. When those numbers moved, other numbers moved, and other numbers, and other numbers, and so on and so on.

When I try and explain this no one understands. I don't even understand and it was my life. It was a life of imagination of betting games. Betting what 200 million people will buy next year. Betting whether there would be two hurricanes or three. Betting on what the temperature would be in New Mexico on a certain day. Betting how many people would die of the same drug that had been hailed as a miracle cure. I led a life dependent on imagination. And I wanted to touch something real, so I stuffed the little scrap of paper into my pocket.

But I forgot it was there, all day long it was there, and if I had thought about it I would have crumpled it up and nothing would have happened. Numbers might have moved, but numbers are always moving. No one would have died that's for certain. I wouldn't be here where I am now. God help me! I kept the scrap of paper in my pocket all day long until I got home and then, as I sat down in front of my screen (as I always do) I threw the contents of my pockets upon the desk. And there it was.

And there it stayed as I read sports on sports sites and news on news sites. I paid my bills and contributed to the movement of the numbers I made my living by. One can not breathe without contributing to the chaotic flow of numbers! I ate dinner. I sat before the television. I might have gone out of my apratment, but I was too weary and too frustrated. I sat back down by the screen and saw the scrap of newspaper there. I looked at the number for a long while. I thought about it, considered it, and dismissed the idea as absurd. I was happy enough, wasn't I? Well not exacty happy, but content. By content I mean secure. By secure I mean safe. I was safe, wasn't I?

Yes, I was safe and for a second, I was also stupid because safe was not enough for me. I needed something to happen, even a joke. And so, in a reckless moment I picked up the phone and I dialed the number.

It rang twice but I hung up before anyone answered. I crumpled up the newspaper scrap and I threw it in the trash by my desk. I was still safe and that is all that really matters in life. If anything else matters we can find a way to forget about it by distraction. That night I played AlternateLife until three in the morning. I had not been so content for a long time. I went to bed and slept well. I got up the next day and went back to the numbers.

PM 1: Vocation

My name is Peter MacLeinn.

I have tried several times to tell my story... never with anything remotely approaching success and I very much fear that this time will be no more successful than any of the other attempts. If I just tell it perhaps... well then maybe I can get through it.

I want to tell it, I need to tell it, but though its my story and God knows its full of everything that should make a story exciting, I'm afraid that you will quickly grow weary of me. Weary of my voice... weary of my weariness. If only there was someone else or some other voice. There are none. Its just me.

My story has an obvious beginning. I could trace it back farther but what would be the use. Do you want to know about my dull childhood, dull adolescense, dull adulthood? No of course not. It was idle. Whatever came before does not really matter. All that really matters is like Dante I came to find myself, in the middle of my life, lost in a dark wood, my way barred by a fierce animal. But I had no Virgil to save me. I had Bud Holligan. Who he is - or was - well I'll get to that in a moment.

Open the door to my little apartment in New York and see me hacking away, two finger style on a dirty keyboard. I don't know what color they call it - bisque I think. Gray-brown-khaki. I was there wearing sweatpants and a tee-shirt a can of coca-cola with a wet ring around it slowly seeping through a pile of bills and receipts. I could tell you, but it doesn't matter what I am writing, its how I am feeling. I am/was trapped by this same voice that I try and throw off. Let me embrace it. I couldn't write then and I can't write now. Look at me though, before the irridescent screen. I was so weary. A failed, miserable, writer. I had no business writing. What did I know? But I feel. I go on feeling. And I want to write. It is an itch in my mind nothing settles.

My story is falling apart already. But I'll go on scratching.

I reconsider. I will tell you what I was writing. A novella called the Sword of Constantine. A novella with some four hundred pages loosely connected waiting for me to thread them together. I add to it every night. Each word I keep. But that night frustration is high and I am confronted, for just a moment, by a vision which borders on the realisitic. A certainty of futility. And I close my document without saving. I turn off the computer and I walk away to the television. Collapsing on the sofa, I let out an exasperated breath. My mind won't shut off right away. Four hours of infomercials, documentaries, news shows numbs me to the point I can sleep.

How much more of this can you take? Writing for me is a relief. Each second of writing brings me closer to my story, closer to the end, closer to where I am now. I will find myself in this. I am in this story someplace.

The next day I go to work in a black mood. Sit at my desk and respond to an endless stream of e-mails. At 10 I go to the break room and sit down at the table. There's the morning paper. I flip open to the classifieds - to the employment section and I start to read. Mr. Daniel walks in behind me. I do not lift my head. "Looking for a job?" He asks. His voice is plain but irritating. Cheerful and too intimate. I want nothing to do with him. He makes his way to the coffee and pours it into a styrofoam cup. Three sugars and a cream. I sense he is starung at me. Several minutes pass and I flip a page. He slurps.

My dourness wins out. "Catch you later." He says as he leaves the room. He doesn't know that what happens next changed his life - mine - everybody's.

The ad was not anything spectacular. Only its proximity to another larger and more colorful one made me take any notice of it. I can almost remember every word, but to be honest, I'll just paraphrase it.

This is what I read in the break room:

"Looking for adventure? We're recruiting now. Free room, board, and training. Ample free time. Call Bud at 888-XXX-YYYY."

PM0: Prelude

Bishop, "mission" priest disappear in Smokies
Local resident claims alien abduction

Newport, TN, March 23, 2007

Authorities are trying to locate a Roman Catholic Bishop and a priest who dissapeared under mysterious circumstances from a remote East Tennessee village. Auxillary Bishop Atwater of the diocese of Bridgeport Connecticut was visiting a rural mission located near the village of Tom's Mill in a rugged sparsely populated region 10 miles from the North Carolina border.

Mystery surrounds the event since federal agents took over from the TBI and placed a military cordon around the area and are denying media access to the local residents.

"We are very concerned about Bishop Atwater and Father Kindly." A spokesman for the diocese of Bridgeport said in a press conference Thursday. "We are as much in the dark as anyone. All we know is that Bishop Atwater went to St. Paul's Mission house Tuesday morning with a driver, Father Kindly and two . He was supposed to return to Knoxville by Tuesday evening. When he did not return the Knoxville Diocese became concerned and alerted the Tennesse State Highway patrol. That is as much as we know."

The TBI and the State Highway patrol have refused to answer questions in regards to the Bishop and his companions but Trevor Cooke a resident of the nearby village of Harmony Grove claims to be a witness to the abduction of the Bishop by aliens.

"I was at the mission to get my toilet paper. [The Bishop] and the [black] priest was there when I saws there was a flash and a bang and this bright disk came from the sky. We was all knocked over and then a man came from the disk and grabbed them two and just hauled them off."

Cooke claims to have gotten into his pick up and attempted to ram the disk while it remained on the ground. However the craft was airborn before he had a chance. "As soons as I missed that disk thing there was another one that landed behinds me. I didn't want to be abducted again so I just went on home. I suspect the other craft came and got them other people who were still at the mission."

Within thirty minutes Cooke than saw several military helicopters flying into the area.

Bishop Atwater was a Glenmary priest for twenty years before being created an Auxilary Bishop in 1998. The mission has been run by the Glenmary fathers and brothers since 1957 .