 
The Last Rational Man

Short Stories

By Karlin

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015 Karlin

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Role Playing

Table of Contents

The Last Rational Man

Hair

Dylan's

A Birthday Story

Fugitive

Just Like Pa

A Man of Good Taste

A Modest Meal

Help Me Die

Anatomy Lab

An Obsession, with Music

A Medical Image

A Code

A Clean Kill

Emotions

The Flask of Amaretto

Whaling Wall

### The Last Rational Man

My first stop was a mainstream religion. It had the typical concept of the God who is both dead and alive, and an idea of personal salvation. We never expected much trouble from this group, but since their belief is so popular, it was felt important that I pay them a visit, and understand their weaknesses as best as possible.

The nearest branch of their church was out in the suburbs. The street was lined with small trees that the city had planted in hopes that they would someday grow and turn the street into a leaf-lined tunnel, the way that the city streets once were before the elm trees died. The church itself was a small red brick building, not much larger than the houses nearby.

Inside, the ceiling rose to a peak, following the outline of the roof. The walls were all plain white, with the exception of the wall opposite the entrance, which was covered with red brick. There were folding chairs lined up in rows, and books, possibly prayer books, lined up on shelves near the door.

The only other feature of interest was a large photograph on the brick wall. It was a photo of a middle-aged man, wearing a blue polo shirt, and waving at the camera.

A young man entered the church, and walked over to me.

"Can I help you?"

It is always best to make your lies as close as possible to the truth.

"Yes, maybe you can. I am doing a survey of different religions, and I was hoping that somebody here could explain your beliefs to me."

"Well, we are in luck then. I am the pastor here. Do you know anything at all about our religion?"

"Well, I have heard your group called 'the dead-and-alive ones.'"

"Yes, I know the term. Like most nicknames, it has a kernel of truth in it, but doesn't really explain anything.

"The story really starts about fifteen years ago. Timothy Adams was only a teenager back then."

When he said 'Timothy Adams,' the pastor hit his forehead lightly with his fist three times. He continued doing this throughout our conversation, apparently as an act of reverence.

"Timothy Adams (knock, knock, knock) was skiing in Colorado when he found the Word of God. The Word was written in Cuneiform letters on a block of ice."

I had no choice but to interrupt him.

"Cuneiform?"

"Yes. It was a form of writing originally used to write Akkadian on clay tablets. In this case, the Word was written in ancient Greek, though the symbols themselves were in Cuneiform."

"Was Timothy Adams a scholar? Did he understand Greek?"

"No. He was just a high-school student. But God revealed to him how to read the tablet, so we now know what the message was."

"I suppose that once he had deciphered the tablet, copies of the document were made, so everybody could see the holy word."

"No! Of course not! Poor mortals are not allowed to see the tablet. It can only be viewed by Timothy Adams (knock, knock, knock) himself."

"Well, surely you must keep this artifact safe."

"Of course. Timothy Adams (knock, knock, knock) keeps it in his freezer."

"His freezer?"

"Well, it is made of ice."

"No, I just thought that you would keep it in a museum or a temple, with special backup refrigeration."

"There is no place safer than Timothy Adam's (knock, knock, knock) freezer. If you will let me proceed with the story, you will understand."

"Go ahead, then."

"The important point here was not the discovery, nor how the tablet is preserved. What's important is what is written on the tablet. The tablet told Timothy Adams (knock, knock, knock) two things. First of all, that he is the Messiah."

"Messiah?"

"Yes. I will explain what I mean by the term. The Messiah is the savior. It is through belief in the Messiah that you can reach salvation, and achieve everlasting life."

"You don't have to do anything besides believe?"

"You are expected to behave morally, but the bottom line is that belief paves the path to Heaven, and disbelief is a direct shortcut to Hell."

There was a cruel logic to this, but I thought I could blow a hole in it.

"I understand what you just said, but it doesn't make sense. What about people who never heard of your doctrine, or children, infants, who never had a chance to believe?"

"That's a common argument, to which there is only one answer: It is unfortunate, and may seem cruel to humans, but belief is the only way. We do have a way of saving future generations, though, but that is a different story. The other obvious question is whether criminals can get to Heaven. The answer is of course the same. It may appear unfair to humans, but even the worst criminals are guaranteed a place in Heaven, as long as they believe.

"We are not proud of the fact, but we do have a motorcycle gang that truly believes. I have met them myself, and they really do believe, by any normal definition of the idea of belief. They are, unfortunately, addicted to violence of the worst type. We are not proud of them. Most of our members live moral, healthy lives. We just cannot change the metaphysics of the world. Belief, not action, is what brings reward."

"You said that the Messiah received two messages."

"Yes. Timothy Adams (knock, knock, knock) received a second message. Not only was he the Messiah, but he was dead."

"Dead?"

"Yes. Dead."

"I am afraid that I don't understand at all. Your Messiah died right after receiving the tablet of revelation? You keep the tablet in a dead man's freezer?"

"Yes, that is more or less correct. After the revelation, Timothy Adams (knock, knock, knock) was dead, and he took the tablet, brought it home, and put it in his freezer."

This one was a little difficult to work out. I decided to give it my best shot.

"He was dead."

"Yes."

"And he took the tablet home."

"Yes."

"And he put it in his freezer."

"I see you understand perfectly."

"And where is Timothy Adams now?"

My host looked at his watch.

"He should be home right now."

"He's at home."

"Probably."

"Where else could he be?"

"Well, he sometimes comes to church, and he must go shopping and so on sometimes."

"You realize that there is something a little disturbing about what you are telling me."

"Ah. You probably think that it is rather odd to have a dead Messiah. People often ask about that. It is actually a very common belief. People believe that Christ is dead, and many of those who do think that he is dead believe that he is not only the Messiah, but actually a manifestation of God as well. That belief is acceptable, but you view ours as strange."

"Well, you have to admit that there is a difference."

"The main difference is that Christ lived two thousand years ago, so you are willing to accept all the strange stories about him. But when the Messiah appears in your own time, and you are surrounded by miracles and prophecies, you are suddenly skeptical."

The conversation had taken an unpleasant turn. I needed to get back on track if I was ever going to understand their lunacy.

"I must apologize if you have gotten that impression. I agree with you that the ancients did not have a monopoly on religious matters. There is something else about what you are saying that I find difficult. Even accepting that you have a legitimate dead Messiah, how can he show up in church, or go shopping for that matter? Did you have him embalmed, and display him like the Russians show off Lenin?"

My host laughed.

"I keep forgetting that my guests are not aware of some of the most basic facts on this planet. It will all become clear to you in an instant. Our Messiah is, in fact, dead. This, you will recall, was one of the two basic revelations he received. However, though he is actually dead, he appears alive to us, unfortunate souls that we are. We see only with our physical eyes, so it seems to us that he is alive, when the inner truth is that he is in fact dead."

"The Messiah is dead, but just seems to be alive?"

"Precisely."

This sounded like the reverse of the famous parrot case.

"I see that you are a bit perplexed. Please try to abandon your prejudices for a moment, and understand the theological importance of this. It is well accepted that when people die they go to Heaven. In many religions, one of the main points of Heaven, sometimes the defining purpose of Heaven, is to become close to God, to have your own personal spirit join with his Spirit. It is clear that the dead can reach a much higher spiritual level than the live do.

"In our case, Timothy Adams (knock, knock, knock) is already dead, even though he is still on Earth, and has already achieved a union with God."

"Ah. So Timothy Adams is not dead in the physical sense. You are saying that he is dead in a spiritual sense, and by that you mean that he has achieved a high level of spirituality."

"No. You are close, but you refuse to accept the truth. It is not 'as if' he is dead. He is in fact dead. Dead as a doorknob, kicked the bucket, went on to meet his maker, etc. It is just that to our mortal eyes he appears to be alive."

"This is a bit hard to accept."

"Now you are showing your bias against a new religion. Millions believe that God walked on Earth in the form of a man, and it does not strike you as strange. You may even understand why in some religions worshippers believe their leader is still alive, even though they themselves buried him years ago. So what is so difficult about this?"

Well, he had a point, though one could easily make the case that he had merely demonstrated the lunacy of other religions, rather than the sanity of his own. As usual, though, I did not really need to know more. I was not a candidate for conversion, nor was I going to convince this gentleman that his beliefs were the bunch of nonsense that they obviously were.

"So, the bottom line is that your Messiah, Timothy Adams, is dead. He had a revelation in which his status as a dead Messiah was revealed to him on a tablet made of ice, which only he has ever seen."

"Yes. You see, it is really very straightforward, once you spend the effort to understand."

The conversation had saved me some trouble. I felt that there was no need to visit all of the religions in the world. The irrationality of this one, as my host had inadvertently pointed out, could be easily projected on most other religions. They would all fall like houses of cards when the time came. Yet there was one more on my list.

.......

He must have seen the shock on my face.

"Yes, I know it's a little disturbing. It is sometimes best to deal with a new concept directly, without beating around the bush. You'll get over your shock, and learn to understand our beliefs. Most of our converts had the same reaction as you. In fact, some of our most enthusiastic members actually came up to my office and vomited when they first visited. It is not an easy thing to accept, and yet, you will see that it is the only possible way, the only true way."

His office looked normal in every respect. He sat behind a maple veneer desk, which looked like it had been ordered on-line from Office Depot. The usual mass-produced black office accessories were on the desk: stapler, hole-puncher and tape dispenser. He sat in a light swivel armchair, upholstered in blue.

I avoided looking at the wall to my left, and inspected the prints on the wall behind him. They were Norman Rockwell style prints, also probably ordered off some Internet site. The only expression of his religious beliefs was the organization's symbol, two linked rings, which I had noticed on the wall opposite his desk when I first came in.

I had gone up a flight of stairs to reach his office, which was perched above the main hall of the chapel, if one could call it that. One wall of the office was glass, and the overall effect was that of a supervisor's office overlooking a factory floor.

I felt my eyes drawn to the glass wall against my own will. I glanced down at the chapel, and quickly looked back at my host.

"Well, how would you describe what you see down there?"

"Describe? You are used to this, but it is difficult for me to talk about it. Maybe members of your faith are used to this, but..."

"Well, just say it. Break the ice. You can use naughty words if you like."

"Well, your congregants are, they seem to be, well, sex. They are having sex, as a group, in the chapel. I guess it could be called an orgy."

"Very good! Precise, and to the point. I have a feeling that you will be joining us soon, maybe even today."

"But I don't understand at all. What are they doing? I mean, why are they doing this? Did I come for the equivalent of the Church picnic?"

"No, not at all."

"Well then, am I supposed to believe that this is actually a religious rite?"

My host beamed at me.

"Yes, that is it exactly. It is a religious rite. In fact, it is The religious rite, the center of our beliefs and worship."

"You must realize that it looks rather odd to the outsider."

"Of course it does. But once I explain the inner meaning to you, I think you will change your viewpoint. Perhaps you will no longer view it from the outside. But first, before I can explain the ultimate purpose of all this, you must tell me more about what you see."

I got up, and went to the window, against my better instincts.

The chapel was a large room, almost completely empty. The church's symbol was painted on one wall, and large sodium lamps lit the room from a high ceiling. The room resembled nothing more than a high school gym that had been converted into a place of worship. There were even exercise mats on the floor, the kind you use for practicing tumbling. The only thing was, they weren't being used for tumbling.

There were about fifty couples on the mats, all engaged in what looked like sexual intercourse. I watched for a few minutes. The scene was very odd. All of the worshippers were in exactly the same position, and they all moved together, synchronized by the beat of a large drum that was placed in the middle of the room. After about two minutes, the man beating the drum paused, and hit a gong. The worshippers all got up, changed partners, and continued in a new position, to the renewed beat of the drum.

The worshippers came in different shapes, sizes and colors. There were teenagers there, as well as a few people who were certainly in their seventies, if not older. The switch in partners took place in a complex pattern that reminded me of the way you rotate tires on a car. There seemed to be no sense at all in who ended up with whom. There were tremendous mismatches of size and age, but no one seemed to be concerned.

There was something very wrong with it all. It didn't really look like lovemaking, or even sex, at least in any normal use of the term. It was missing a critical ingredient. Nobody seemed to be having a good time. Not a single one of them was enjoying themselves.

My host pointed to a loudspeaker on the wall, and motioned me to switch it on.

At first all that I could hear was the drum beating out the rhythm of their motion. But then I realized that there was an underlying rustling noise. I concentrated, trying to place the sound. It took a minute before I realized that I was hearing the congregants whispering their prayers.

"What are they saying?"

"It is our central prayer. It is recited in Aramaic, but I can provide you with a loose translation: 'to join the Lord together with his Presence.' It is a statement of intent."

"Why in Aramaic?"

"It is critical that all the churches across the world use the same exact formula. You will understand this better once you have joined the church, and you can study the holy texts. One fact that will help you understand a small part of this right now is that the 'Lord,' in Aramaic, is male, while the term for 'Presence' is female."

I turned my attention back to the window.

"They do not seem to be enjoying themselves."

"Enjoyment is not part of this at all, if they enjoyed it, it would ruin everything."

My host seemed to be sane. He was speaking in logical terms, and was very calm and pleasant. Still, their beliefs were strange, and gave me some hope.

"In order to understand our practices, you have to look beyond the ritual itself, and understand the inner structure of the world. I use the term 'world' loosely, meaning the universe, all of creation.

After the Creation, the world was at peace. This was the period echoed in the Bible as the Garden of Eden. The Creator was one, the world was one, and there was complete harmony among all. Even Adam and Eve, though they were two, were united in a way that is hard for us to comprehend today. The Bible tells us that they became 'one flesh.' Adam and Eve were created in God's image, so in an inner sense, they were in fact one person.

This all fell apart when they ate from the Tree of Knowledge. Yes, the apple that Eve induced Adam to eat. It is very convenient to blame the snake for the story, but the fault must have existed, at least in potential, in Adam and Eve themselves. The truth is even worse. They were created in the image of God, so the fault in some sense was in God."

"You blame God for the Fall?"

"No, not exactly. I didn't mean blame, I meant fault, as in San Andreas, an invisible crack that can have disastrous consequences.

"In any case, the world split. Both the physical world, in which we live, and the metaphysical level in which the creator exists. Now the world is populated by men and women, who live separate lives and never fully join together, physically or spiritually. This situation has been exacerbated in recent years by the rise of homosexuality, which has driven men and women off into even more separate worlds.

"The situation that I have described to you is only a small part of the problem. The world we live in is a reflection of the higher level of existence, the sphere of God's holy existence. When Adam and Eve became separate creatures, God Himself split."

"I don't understand. I thought that you were strict monotheists."

"We are, as you will see, in the deepest sense. There is, of course, only one God, but his essence has been divided into two manifestations, the male manifestation that we today call God, and the female manifestation that we call the Presence.

"This is an unnatural, negative situation. The entire Cosmos is affected by this tension between male and female that should never have taken place. You know of this tension, though perhaps you have not paid attention to it until now. We speak of Mother Nature, and of Father Time. Many of the world's religions recognize the split, though perhaps not as explicitly as we do. There is The Father, and Mother Mary. You will tell me that Mary is not a manifestation of God. That may be true, but I suggest that you do not try to explain that fine point to a peasant woman in Mexico.

"The bottom line is that God has split, largely as a result of man's failure, and that man has to help God reunite, in order to bring on the new Golden Age, the Messianic Age, the New Garden of Eden."

"Well, this is an interesting form of Cosmology, perhaps, but what does it have to do with what is going on down there?"

"Ah. I thought you would figure it out for yourself. The coupling of men and women together, the joining of their bodies, mirrors the process by which God and his Presence may be joined together. This is why our joining ritual must not take place for pleasure, or for procreation, for that matter. It has a higher goal, and one must be sure to keep that goal in mind during the ritual."

I glanced down again at the strange scene in the chapel. There was something else that didn't seem right.

"How long do they keep this up for?"

"The group you see today is an experienced group of worshippers. They have gone through our complete training cycle, and a typical session is about four hours long."

"Four hours!"

"Yes. It is not really enough. There is great importance attached to there always being a group doing the ritual. The churches all over the world are coordinated, to make sure that there is never a gap in the ritual. Usually there are two groups running in parallel, just in case something interferes with one of the groups."

"Still, four hours! How can they do that? Don't they ever, you know, finish?"

"Ah, the old big 'O' question. Well, that has a lot to do with our training. A new convert may be able to keep this up for only ten or fifteen minutes when he first joins, but the training cycle will solve that problem. The training cycle, and the development of strategic calluses."

There was definitely hope. My host, despite his polite demeanor and logical answers, was obviously out of his mind. Unless I was missing something, this church was not going to be much of a problem for us. I decided to give him one more chance.

"Everything you have said makes sense on some level, but it strikes me that the whole system of belief is based on a very particular view of the universe, a view which can't be proven."

"It does not have to be proven. These are just plain facts that are staring us in the face, and which we normally choose to ignore. Just look at how men and women relate, or don't relate, to each other. We have decided to pay attention to these facts, and do our best to reverse the situation, and bring the entire Cosmos back to a state of complete Oneness."

I left the chapel and went out to the street. I allowed myself to feel elated, even though the feeling wasn't strictly logical. This new cult had been rumored to be much more logical and self consistent than the older religions. So I was greatly relieved to find that the cult members were in fact completely irrational. I was starting to hope.

.....

My job was far from over. I still needed to tackle some other pervasive beliefs and movements, especially those that were not religious in nature. These movements could prove to be much more serious obstacles to our Plan, the Plan that would bring our rational rule to the world.

...

My next stop was downtown. I took the subway, just to get a feel for how day-to-day life is for citizens of this city. The signs of an insane society were all around me: the vandalized subway cars, the stink and filth, the inane advertisements for products that people didn't need. It was not surprising that people were drawn to the irrational cults that I had visited.

My target was in a skyscraper downtown. It was not difficult to find the office- the signs were clear and the doorman quite helpful. The building looked expensive, with white marble floors and the latest fad in recessed halogen lighting. The hardest part was picking the right elevator, since one bank of elevators only reached the first thirty floors, and I needed to reach the forty-second floor.

The door to the office was of heavy plate glass, in the latest style, but the inside of the door was covered with newspaper clippings, so it wasn't possible to see into the office at all. I didn't see an intercom, so I walked right in.

The offices consisted of one very large room, with desks and chairs scattered all around. Posters pushing an astounding variety of liberal causes covered the walls and a good part of the floor as well. At the far end of the room was some kind of press center. A few people sat at terminals, surrounded by piles of newspaper clippings, apparently keeping an eye on current events.

A short energetic woman in her mid-thirties practically ran up to me.

"Hi, I'm Martha. You can call me Marty- most people do. What can I help you with?"

Her energy, rather than inducing parallel enthusiasm, seemed to drain all of the energy out of me. The group I was visiting was a well-known humanitarian group, which had helped many worthy causes over the years. It appeared to be a noble collection of people that were doing their best to improve a difficult world. It appeared, at least at first, to be both a noble and rational undertaking. An organization like this could prove a major obstacle in our plans. Everything depended on the irrational thinking of our opponents, and the complete, logical execution of our own plans. It would be best to be careful when confronting this 'Marty.'

"Well, I have heard of your organization, and would like to hear more about it. I may be able to do some volunteer work for you in my spare time."

"Oh, wonderful! I get such a high when new people join us! Here, let me show you the kinds of things we do."

She led me off to a desk in the corner of the room. I would describe the desk, but it was covered with posters and newspaper clippings, and even the sides of the desk had photographs plastered all over it, so I didn't actually see the desk itself. She pulled out a huge album from under one of the piles of papers, laid it down unevenly on top of the other documents, and opened it.

"This is a scrapbook, sort of a portfolio of the projects we have taken on. Fortunately, one of our volunteers comes in once a week to add to the book. Otherwise we would have no record of what we have done.

"This page is from the middle of March. It happened off the coast of Newfoundland. Those activists are blocking the fishing ship, the factory ship, which you see in the background. It was bitter cold back then, and pretty wet in those little rowboats, so some of our activists ended up with pneumonia. They all survived though, and we got some great press coverage, as you can see from the clippings here. If you have time, I will show you some of the YouTube clips as well. That's where it's really at. These companies have been over-fishing that area for decades, and the environmental damage was almost irreversible. We had to do something to stop them.

"Ah. This is from the end of March. You can see thousands of us in this photo. Even some of the pneumonia victims dragged themselves out of bed for this one. You will probably be wondering what we are protesting here- it looks just like empty fields, with a few trees here and there. Well, they wanted to take this pristine area, and build a sewage treatment plant. Can you believe it? Well, we stopped them cold there. You should have seen us on the news network that week."

She flipped through a few more pages.

"Here we are at the UN, in the beginning of April, lobbying for Basque independence. I guess 'lobbying' is a bit of a mild term, since some of our activists did get arrested. But the Spanish ambassador did eventually recover, and we did get some press attention that evening, and I truly believe that in the long run this will contribute to their efforts."

"Just a minute. Basque independence sounds good, I mean, everybody should be independent if they want to be. But the Basques are pretty violent, aren't they? Aren't you helping a cause that is tainted by terror, by attacks on innocent civilians?"

"You have been listening too much to the American Conservative Conspirators. We hear that argument all the time. How do you expect them to fight for their independence? They have no army, they have no funding. So they battle in the only way they know how."

"Still, you are encouraging terrorism."

"Terrorism? They are only responding to Spanish terror that has downtrodden them. If you want, call it terror, but call it 'defensive terror.'"

"But why the Basques? Why not the Quebecois? Or the Kurds? Or the Shiites in Iraq?"

Marty pulled out a ragged pocket diary, and started leafing through it.

"Yes, well, we did the Quebecois back in the first week of February. A bad choice of timing, mind you, we could have left it to the summer and no harm done. Though it did photograph well. The Shiites are scheduled for two weeks from now. I don't see the Kurds, though. Oh, here it is."

She pulled out a spiral bound notebook from one of the piles of paperwork. It had flowers printed on it, like you would see on a fifth grade girl's notebook. She flipped through the pages until she found the bit she was looking for.

"Yes, I remember. We spoke about the Kurds a few weeks ago. 'The Kurds are not a legitimate freedom movement. They are not significantly different than their neighbors, and have used violence to advance their cause.' There you go. That puts it in a nutshell. Now that I think about it, I remember that it is notoriously hard to get into Kurdistan, especially with camera equipment, and most people haven't even heard of them, so it is not really worth it in any case."

"But you said that violence was OK, at least for the Basques. And I do think that Kurds are quite different from the Turks or the Iraqis."

"'The Kurds are not a legitimate freedom movement. They are not significantly different than their neighbors, and have used violence to advance their cause.' That says it all, don't you think?

"Here. Let's look at a few more bits from the scrapbook. Here we are, protesting against the economic situation in Newfoundland in the first week of August. All of these poor fishermen out of work, because of the atrocious behavior of the fishing fleets."

"But didn't you yourself get in the way of those fleets?"

"And here we are, the following week, in Alabama. These poor people are living in a terribly unhygienic region. They live in a small town, which hasn't put up a proper sewage treatment plant! Their children are exposed to all sorts of terrible diseases! And this, mind you, is in the U.S., not off in Africa somewhere."

I had a sinking suspicion as to where that sewage plant was supposed to have been built, and why it hadn't been built, but there didn't seem to be any point in trying to argue with Marty. She had gotten very excited about this particular one. Her face was red now, practically a glowing blast furnace, as she went on and on about the awful diseases that the children of this town would be exposed to, and the potentially disastrous plagues that hopefully, I mean unfortunately, would strike them. It seemed that her group was not likely to be a source of rational resistance to our plan.

I tried to distract her, and move the conversation in a more positive direction.

"So, what are your major projects now?"

She pulled out the diary again, and consulted it.

"Let's see. Last week we did coral reefs. And we are just finishing up this week's bit on the Palestinians, we always give them a week or two each year- they're so photogenic, and let me see. Ah, next week we will do the Airport Racism thing."

"Airport racism?"

"Yes. Let's see. Well I don't have our official statement yet, since that always comes out on the Monday of an item's week. But it seems that certain types of people are being singled out for extra checks at the airport. People with Middle Eastern names, or a dark complexion, are being selected for Special Treatment, especially young men. This is a clear violation of their human rights!"

"What are they doing to them? Torture?"

"No, it is much worse than that. They are invading their privacy, subjecting them to additional, humiliating searches, and repeated x-rays of their luggage."

"Well, they are a more risky group of people..."

"Again, that propaganda. How can you label an entire group 'risky'?"

"But if you ran the extra security checks on everybody, just to be fair, than the airport would clog up, and nobody would be able to fly."

"You have really swallowed a lot of conservative crap, young man. The convenience of a few wealthy businessmen is not important when compared to Human Rights!"

There was something else that struck me about the whole conversation, the diary, and the scrapbook.

"Tell me something. How long have you been working on these projects?"

"As a whole, for about fifteen years. Each project though, gets only one week of real attention."

"One week?"

"Yes. We find that the press and public get tired of a subject after a few days, so we have to have something new all the time. The only exceptions are the really photogenic groups, especially if they have effective P.R. The truth is that I don't really have the patience to stick with one cause for much more than that. It could take years to really research something, and figure out all the subtle nuances and so on. It is much better to find something catchy and run with it. "

A heavy burden had been lifted off my soul. This liberal fad group was dedicated all right, but had lost their minds entirely. After our victory, which was now looking certain, we would pop the whole bunch straight into the nuthouse. Though, of course, it looked like the entire world, with the exception of our small community, was one big nuthouse. The day would come, though, when our educational system would have its effect. The next generation would be a perfect, rational generation, and a new Golden Age would descend on Earth.

.....

The Central Committee meeting was only a few weeks later. It was critical that we stick to our timetable. The meeting was run efficiently as well. Nobody wasted time repeating what others said, and the meeting was run in accordance to our standard rules. Members of our organization must strive for rational personal behavior at all times, even though it was clear that we would sometimes fail, due to our poor upbringing. Complete rational behavior during group activities, however, was mandatory for all. When the movement first started, some members had been expelled for emotional behavior during meetings.

I briefly presented my report, stating the encouraging conclusions, and illustrating them with a few examples of the basic insanity of the people I had met. The chairman had little to add to this.

"Well, we have just heard the report from another field operative. I believe that the overall conclusion is clear. I suggest that there is no reason to wait for further reports, and we proceed as planned."

There was a hand raised at the other end of the table.

"Yes?"

"I agree with your conclusion, but I think that we should hear from one more specific operative before proceeding. I ask that we have a report from the operative who was sent to the accelerator."

"Ah, the physics operative. Unfortunately, he has not been able to come to our headquarters. We have, however, received a preliminary report from him. There are three major points:

1.Physicists have a Cosmology, based on a very limited set of facts, which is no better than the idea that the Earth rides on the back of a giant turtle. In fact, the giant turtle hypothesis has the advantage of being more imaginative.

2.They firmly believe that they are advancing mankind, though all of the evidence indicates that they have only caused damage, and have cost their economies huge sums of money in the process.

3.They are plagued by messianic ideas. They always believe that the next accelerator, the really big one, will give them the real answer to how the universe is built. There is also a pervasive belief that the Higgs Boson is in some way God.

"In short, gentlemen, there is nothing to fear from the physicists. They are as nutty as the rest of humanity, and will not be able to resist.

"Therefore, I move that we delay no longer, and trigger our plan immediately."

The vote was unanimous, as one would expect from a logical group making a logical decision. Our first attack would take place that same evening.

The weapons had been distributed already, and only the assignment of targets remained. There would be no standing up to our methods, to a technology that had been proven to work under carefully controlled conditions. The astounding thing was that weapons scientists had managed to ignore the technology for decades, though it was staring them right in the face.

I waited in line to receive my target, knowing that others, spread across the world, were doing the same. I tried to control my excitement, which was inappropriate for a rational being. I could see that the others in line were having a difficult time controlling their emotions as well. No matter. Future generations would be cured of emotional responses, and will appreciate the effort that we made to overcome the insanity that we had been trained to believe was normal.

I collected my target. It was packaged in a shoebox, a real one with a logo and labels on it, indicating that there were blue running shoes inside. Nobody's attention would be drawn to the package, not until it was much too late for anybody to mount a real defense.

When I got home, I locked the door, and carefully opened the box. There it was, my target. I immediately recognized him. He was a well-known figure, one that I had seen on television many times. A typical mediocre politician, constantly pushing his own form of insanity. I was glad that I had not received a more prominent target. The Prime Minister, for example, was bound to be a difficult one.

The model I had received was carefully marked, and indicated the most vulnerable points and the best ways to attack them. I would of course be expected to mount this attack alone, just as thousands of others would do the same. The attack would be coordinated by the enemy's own facilities. It would start worldwide when the BBC announced that it was 22:00 GMT. I tuned the radio to the BBC station, and went to my bedroom to retrieve the weapons canister.

I sat at the table, the weapons canister to my left, and studied the model, memorizing the location of the critical points. I had a small knapsack packed with essentials waiting by the door. Once it started, all of us would be on the road until complete victory was achieved.

The crucial moment was only a few seconds away. I was sweating profusely, beads of sweat trickling down my forehead and dripping off the tip my nose. I heard the announcer: 'From London, this is the BBC,' and then the beeps.

"Beep, Beep, Beep."

It was time to start, to strike a blow against irrationality, and build a new world!

As instructed, I grabbed my target with my right hand, and using my left hand, carefully inserted the first pin straight through the doll's chest.

••Hair

He loved her. He loved everything about her, especially her long hair. They agreed to get married. But she had one condition. He had to quit smoking. The day that he smoked a cigarette, she would cut off her hair. So he didn't smoke a single cigarette, until finally, after fifty years of marriage...

The story isn't mine. A friend told me the story, so it is first of all his, and then yours. It is only mine for a few moments, as I type this out.

A short story, almost Biblical in its briefness. Jacob loved Rachel, but when he woke up in the morning - he found Leah in his bed. There is so much to tell, but you have to tell it to yourself.

So he loved her. He loved her long hair. But how did they meet?

They lived in the same neighborhood, and saw each other grow up only from a distance, until one day he got up enough nerve, and just walked up to her and held her hand.

She was friends with his sister, and hung around their house a lot, until they finally noticed each other.

They were both getting older. All of their friends were already married with children, and then, finally, somebody introduced them, and they realized just why they had been waiting so long.

I don't even know where they met. Did they live in the US? Philadelphia, maybe, or Cleveland. Probably not out west. But maybe the whole saga took place in Europe.

In a small village in White Russia, two children, a boy and a girl, grew up together. Everybody said that they were meant for each other. When they were teenagers, the whole village delighted in her golden hair, which fell straight to her waist. He was a striking fellow himself, especially when he started sporting that impressive moustache.

White Russia? Maybe it was France, or Poland. Not that it makes much difference. But her hair makes a difference. After all, the story is about her long golden hair. Her long black hair that reached to her waist, or only to her shoulders. Just a little story about her hair, and we know nothing at all about her straight/wavy blond/red hair.

So you have to make a choice. They lived here. They met this way. Her hair was like this, or like that.

He loved her. He loved everything about her, especially her long hair. They agreed to get married. But she had one condition. He had to quit smoking. The day that he smoked a cigarette, she would cut off her hair. So he didn't smoke a single cigarette, until finally, after fifty years of marriage...

Love we can accept. Yes, he loved her. That's easy enough. Or we can pretend that it is easy enough, as long as we avoid defining love. Why did he love her? Just for her hair? It seems unlikely. After all, they were married for so many years.

Was it her smile? That helps, but we don't smile for our entire lives, just a few moments here or there. So he worked hard all of those years to get that occasional smile out of her. Jacob worked for seven years to have Rachel, so he could have worked a week at a time to get a smile, those two seconds of radiance that made the rest of the week worthwhile.

But why would you think that her smile was more important than her hair? She never smiled, or always smiled. He never noticed. He just liked talking to her, a soul-mate who he could share everything with, one who he shared his entire life with. He was just more alive when she was there.

Still, we cannot get away from the facts. He loved her, and her hair was important to him, important enough to make a sacrifice. Important enough to stop smoking for.

Why did she want him to quit? Cigarettes weren't known to be dangerous back then, but she had some intuition that they weren't good for you. Or she just couldn't stand the smell. We only know that her hair was important to him, and his not smoking was important to her, so in this love story, they make a deal, and he sacrifices the cigarettes so he could keep her hair.

And what a sacrifice it must have been! He was a heavy smoker, a chain smoker who went through several packs a day. This we can be fairly certain of, for if it wasn't the case, there wouldn't be much of a story. Besides which, there is the end of the story, which I haven't told you yet. I will tell you. After all, the story isn't mine, but my friend's, and now yours. So I will tell the little that I know.

Even so, there is one question that really does need to be answered. Fifty years is a long time. Blond, red or black, that hair was white by the end of the story. A little love, a lot of love – they must have had arguments. This is a story about real people, after all. So the question is, was he truly faithful to her, to her fading hair, all of those years? Did he lose all desire to smoke? Was he tempted, sorely tempted, but thought of her hair and resisted? Or worse yet – maybe he wasn't faithful. Maybe he cheated a few times, and she never found out, or she chose to ignore his infidelities, knowing that if she carried out her ultimatum, then he would fail completely, and she would have no weapons left to change him with.

He loved her. He loved everything about her, especially her long hair. They agreed to get married. But she had one condition. He had to quit smoking. The day that he smoked a cigarette, she would cut off her hair. So he didn't smoke a single cigarette, until finally, after fifty years of marriage...

Most of the story is yours now. You can choose the details, personalize it so that it is truly yours. I cannot choose, because the story is not mine. It is my friend's, and now it is yours.

He loved her. He loved everything about her, but especially her long hair. They agreed to get married. But she had one condition. He had to quit smoking. The day that he smoked a cigarette, she would cut off her hair. So he didn't smoke a single cigarette, until finally, after fifty years of marriage, she died. He stood over her grave as the gravediggers filled it with earth, and lit a cigarette.

### Dylan's

"From Delphi, you say."

"Yes. Delphi. They heard the reference to 'senators', and immediately sent it off to us. It is brand new, just from last week."

Lepidus unrolled the parchment again. It did mention senators, so it must be important. But you could never really tell what the oracle meant. Half the time the oracle was trying to mislead you. If you were smart, you might figure out what was actually going to happen. Or you might work yourself into the trap that the oracle set for you. Maybe you couldn't escape the fates.

They said that the smart man considers every word of the oracle carefully, but the wise man ignores them completely.

"Read it again."

"Come senators, congressmen

Please heed the call

Don't stand in the doorway

Don't block up the hall"

"Stop right there. What do you make of it?"

"Seems obvious – though you know what Delphi is like. It's the introduction to the prophesy. It is calling for all the senators to come hear the prophecy. And it says that all should hear, that the path should be clear for all to hear the words of the priestess."

"The senators part makes sense there. But what men are these 'congressmen'?"

"It is another word for Senator. Those who congress together are congressmen."

"Or those who congress together are Gauls. It could be any group of men, friends or enemies."

"And if it indeed means senators, then it could be enemies and friends..."

"Lepidus, some things are best left unsaid."

"Especially true things."

"Read the rest. Often the end will help bear light on the beginning."

"As one's death bears light on one's birth."

"Just read it!"

"For he that gets hurt

Will be he who has stalled

There's a battle outside

And it is ragin'.

It'll soon shake your windows

And rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin'"

"Who gets hurt? Is it a threat to senators? And the stalling – why would one who is hurt be stalled?"

"It says 'He who has stalled', not 'who is stalled'. The one who gets hurt will be the man who has tried to prevent something."

"Or one who takes care of horses and stalls them."

"Or maybe it is referring to Hercules, who cleaned out the stalls."

"It could refer to anything. Maybe to Cato."

"He certainly has stalled. Kept talking at the podium till the early morning hours. How did he keep it up?"

"They never should have allowed him a break to pee. I'd like to see him last for twenty hours without taking a leak."

"Knowing him, he'd manage it. Or bring a bucket to pee in. Or wet himself. He's one stubborn bastard."

"I won't repeat your comment to anyone. You have enough enemies as it is. Let's consider the rest of the prophecy."

"There's a battle outside

And it is ragin'.

It'll soon shake your windows

And rattle your walls

For the times they are a-changin'"

"Is this aimed at the senators, or at 'he who has stalled'?"

"I don't know. But I don't like the part about the battle. It seems that it is a battle in a city, a place with walls and windows."

"May the fates will it that the city is that of our enemies!"

"Indeed. Unless they are some of our own senators, in which case the city is Rome."

"Enough of that. So far we aren't sure of much here. It is definitely a warning, but to who, and about what?"

"What use is a prophecy that you can't understand? I would not say anything negative about the god's own oracle, but one can't help but wonder."

"I wonder as well. I wonder if this prophecy just got to the wrong address. Maybe somewhere there is someone to whom this makes perfect sense, without all of this guesswork."

"Somewhere and sometime."

...

"Yes, I know that it is highly unusual to ask the entire class to be present at the same time, but I feel that that the interaction between the students is important when discussing ancient texts.

"You all knew in advance that this course would affect your personal schedules, so I will not answer any further questions about this requirement.

"Now, on to our first text. You have all read it, of course.

"A few words of background. This is a fragment of a song whose dating is unclear. It is certainly quite ancient. As you will have noticed, there are many difficult terms in the song. We must bear in mind, though, that if a copy survived thousands of years, it must have been very popular and easily understood in its time. Let's do it a bit at a time:

"Oh the seas will split

And the ship will hit

And the sands on the shoreline will be shaking.

Then the tide will sound

And the wind will pound

And the morning will be breaking.

"404, I see you have something to say."

"Well, it relates directly to your introduction. I can't understand the words here. I remember from a previous course why the term "Oh" is used. But "seas" has me stumped. And what kind of ship would hit? It sounds like a good way to wreck a ship. If it happened on a planet with no atmosphere, you'd lose pressure and the crew would die. And in any case you'd need a lot of repairs before you'd be able to lift off again."

"Well, this has been a matter of some debate among the scholars. The term 'seas' occurs fairly often in ancient texts, and it is a term describing a large body of water. It is not clear whether these 'seas' are purely mythological or occur on some planet that we are not familiar with. Some have suggested that such things existed once here on Earth, but their opinion is not taken seriously.

"I suspect that we are mistaken in thinking that 'sea' refers to a body of water. How could such a thing split? Anybody have other ideas what it might be? Just from the context – what do you think?"

"It could be a force field protecting the ship. If for some reason the field failed in a TEM 01 mode, the field would split – and then the ship will be unprotected, and may get hit."

"Interesting idea. However, it does say that the ship will hit, not that it will be hit."

"Perhaps the words were used differently then. There is also the question of poetic license. The writer may have skipped the word 'be' as a means of maintaining the rhythm of the piece."

"Possibly. Possibly. And since you have come up with one decent idea, what do you make of the next three lines?"

And the sands on the shoreline will be shaking.

Then the tide will sound

And the wind will pound

"Well, we know what sand is. Shoreline is another matter. Maybe it is a word that is constructed out of two other words, 'sho' and 'reline'".

"Very good, though you may be better off dividing it into 'shore' and 'line'. But how would either of our suggestions help us understand what the song is about?"

"I'm not sure. 'Shore', according to my dictionary, means to hold up something, or to give something extra support. So 'shoreline' could be a supporting cable or life-support line. Ancient orbiters had all kinds of extra wires and stuff.

"But there is still the issue of the next verses. Tide will sound, wind will pound. What is all that supposed to mean?"

"Well, my search has shown that there was once a cleaning agent called 'Tide'. They found an empty package in decent shape in one of those time capsules. Why didn't they put anything really interesting in those capsules, anyhow?"

"So how would a cleaning agent sound?"

"Maybe it was used in an ultrasonic cleaning device. But none of this makes much sense. Even if we get the words right, the whole work still comes out as nonsense. Maybe that's a sign that we are getting the words wrong."

"OK. This is a good time to go on in the song, and try to get an overall picture of what it is about. Once we understand the context, then the words will fall into place."

"Oh the fishes will laugh

As they swim out of the path

And the seagulls they'll be smiling.

And the rocks on the sand

Will proudly stand,

The hour that the ship comes in.

"Can anybody identify the objects here? Fishes, Seagulls."

"603, I see you have been waiting to speak for some time now. Can you shed light on this song?"

"You are misreading everything. There really were seas. And ancient ships traveled in those seas. And there were swimming animals in those seas, called fishes. And flying animals too, that flew in the air. Once you understand that, things fall into place."

"603, can you zoom in a bit? Ah, thank you. I see that you are religious. You are letting your religious feelings get in the way of your scholarship. You will find it difficult to progress in your studies as long as you keep that symbolic noose around your neck.

"No serious scholar, whether historian, biologist or geologist, thinks that these seas existed. There has been no physical evidence found for these seas, nor for the mythological creatures you mentioned. Fiction and fantasy are not new inventions. The ancients made up all sorts of things, and we should try to understand what those things meant to them on a symbolic level, and not pretend that they really existed.

"These legendary fish couldn't laugh if they lived in the water, not can these 'birds' of yours smile. There is something else going on here, and difficult as it may be, we must try to understand these texts without imposing our own mythology on them."

......

"Splag?"

"Splag. It was picked up in a drifting wreck. Can't tell where the foghod is from. They are dating it now, but it must be old, since all of the memory units were wiped clean by cosmic rays."

"So how Splag?"

"Recorded with some primitive mechanical memory. Scratches in a disc. Took 5 tyrfods till they figured it out. We still can't be sure that we got the frequencies right, but we can make out the words, and it sounds like Old Earth. I am sure that it has a good 50K Betelgeuse years on it."

"Can you understand it?"

"Most of the words are known, but the sense of it – who knows? Here, I have a recording of it.:

How many roads must a man walk down

Before you call him a man?

Yes, 'n' how many seas must a white dove sail

Before she sleeps in the sand?

Yes, 'n' how many times must the cannon balls fly

Before they're forever banned?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,

The answer is blowin' in the wind.

How many times must a

How many times must a

How many times must a man look up

Before he can see the sky?

Yes, 'n' how many ears must one man have

Before he can hear people cry?

Yes, 'n' how many deaths will it take till he knows

That too many people have died?

The answer, my friend, is blowin' in the wind,

The answer is blowin' in the wind.

"Definitely Splag. Nice rhythm. I see that there is one line repeated several times. It breaks the rhythm. Why?"

"I do not know. It may be deliberate. The technicians thought it was a mechanical problem, but I doubt it."

"Ah. Splag meant to disturb. It could be. It is a question Splag, somewhat like the old Gyfris cycles. It offers an answer, like Gyfris, but not a real answer. So repeating that line could add to the feeling of Bnyrt that the Splag induces."

"Bnyrt. Yes, that is what I sense. How such a Splag manages to do that after thousands of years and many light-years of travel is beyond me."

"A gifted Husplag. Shame we only have this one work."

"Yes."

"Let us listen again."

"Hmmm."

"Hmmm"

"Bnyrt."

"Yes, Bnyrt."

•A Birthday Story

Pharaoh was uptight. He had given his servants two months notice, but he suspected that it was hopeless, that they would all fail him. The truth was that they knew the event was coming long before he had warned them, but none of them had thought ahead and come up with a solution.

They were all just a bunch of yes-men. Very handy when you wanted an approving chorus, but useless when some real creative thinking was required. The only thing that kept the empire from being overthrown by the Greeks was the undeniable fact that the enemy had even less imagination than his servants.

How did it happen? Why were his ministers and officers so incapable of original thought? There was no telling. Maybe the empire had just been around too long, and thought old, slow thoughts. More likely it was due to generations of rewarding the mediocre, and removing the few brilliant men, the ones who could come up with an original solution to the original problem. Those were not just geniuses- they were dangerous geniuses that could destroy the entire system.

It was well known that shepherds tended to keep and breed sheep with thick wool, and sell the ones with poor, thin wool to the slaughterhouse. Over the generations this meant that the thick-wooled sheep lived longer and reproduced, and sheep slowly gained thicker and thicker coats of wool.

Here they had rewarded the slow witted ones, and exiled or destroyed the quick-thinking servants. Now all that were left were the thickheaded ones, the ones with wooly thinking.

Not that he himself was much better. He could also come up with a solution, at least in principle. Instead, he had made himself dependent on this bunch of fools, and had turned himself into the biggest fool of all.

Well, it was almost time for the meeting. The results were predictable: the same old ideas, but nothing that was right, nothing that would obviously do the job. When the right idea came up, he would know it, he would recognize it right away. He would give his thick-skulled servants their fair chance, but he was not going to settle for the same old ideas. Not this year.

He entered the Great Hall. The entire crowd was there. Old Hopi the wine server, Ptero the baker, even Potifar had shown up for the festivities. And festivities there would be, even if they were not quite the ones that the gang expected. He would show them what a festive occasion could be like.

As he sat down on the triple throne of the Nile, slave girls fanned him with the traditional Optifals, the peacock feather fans that had been used in the palace for generations. He looked over the set of guards that had been provided for his protection, and noted with approval the presence of Amnitohep, the ceremonial executioner. This would be an interesting test of his ceremonial function, and a good test of his memory as well.

A large group of noblemen had shown up for the occasion as well. It would be interesting to ask them for their ideas. They were very good at fighting with each other, quibbling over the pecking order, but the ability to really think independently had been bred out of them eons ago.

Well, it was time for the farce to begin.

"Welcome all, on this auspicious day. I trust that the augury has proven favorable."

A thin man in the corner bowed, his nose touching the ground. As he rose, he nodded briefly at the Pharaoh. He was not overly fond of the man, whose professional duties often left bloodstains on the hem of his robe. Still, protocol was protocol, and the man was indispensable.

It was time to begin.

"So, my faithful servant Hopi. Have you come up with an original idea?"

Hopi bobbed up and down.

"Diamonds, oh Lord of the Nile."

Diamonds? Diamonds? That was the best he could do? The Pharaoh glanced at Amnitohep, and raised two fingers. The entire room gasped. Two? The Pharaoh had chosen Two for his faithful servant? A whisper went around the room. Those who were familiar with Two were spreading the word. Hopi was to be thrown to the crocodiles, piece by piece. He would watch his severed limbs being swallowed whole, before being tossed in the pool himself.

Protocol required that Hopi maintain his composure during the announcement, and he did, though his face did go through several interesting colors. The murmuring in the room stopped when the Pharaoh glanced around the room. Nobody was going to take a chance on being noticed by the Pharaoh after Hopi's fate was announced.

Still, he needed a solution.

"Ptero, what have you come up with?"

"Oh mover of the Sun, a hundred foreskins of uncircumcised Philistines!"

That? That was the best he could do? It was straight out of the Hebrew Bible. Samson maybe, or was it David? There weren't even any real Philistines left anymore. He showed Amnitohep four fingers. And that was going easy on the guy.

The whisper went around the crowd again. Oil! It could take hours, if you were lucky. One of the slave girls fanning him passed out, and was carried away. It was a shame; she was one of his favorites. No matter. They could embalm her now, and she would await him in the Pyramid that was already being constructed.

"And you, Potifar?"

"Nubia, oh great giver of life"

Nice. Expensive, and impressive. But no soul, none at all. And not...not appropriate, that was the word. He needed something more. Where was the spark of creativity? How had they fallen so low? It looked like he was doomed, and along with him, the entire kingdom.

He used both hands this time, and threw a seven at Amnitohep. Amnitohep gave him one of his famous smiles. There were no whispers in the audience this time. Everybody had heard of number seven. He could hear somebody retching in the back of the crowd, but chose to ignore it.

He rose, and the entire hall fell flat on their faces. He left the room, his heart heavy, doom weighing on his head and on the kingdom. There was no escaping it. The date was fixed, the hour was reckoned, and he would remain empty handed when the sun rose. The sun would rise perhaps, but he would fall.

Oh great Ra, why? Why did you not give of Your wisdom to Your servant in his hour of need? Why have you cursed me with advisors whose tongues speak but trivia and nonsense? How have I sinned? What have I done?

With a heavy heart, unable to postpone the bitter end, Pharaoh stepped through the palace.

Both men and God had failed him, and he was doomed. He did not have the right gift for his wife's birthday.

### Fugitive

I listened idly to the bickering prison guards. They had delivered me to the court, this time to face new charges. What was the point? I was already condemned to thirty years without parole. By the time I got out, I would be eighty. Considering how my health was deteriorating, I was likely to leave sooner, but in a pine box. Much earlier, if one of my fellow prisoners decided to get rid of a rapist and murderer.

The guards were waiting for the court police to come and take me off their hands. I knew the procedure only too well. First the paperwork as responsibility was transferred. Then the second set of handcuffs and leg irons. Finally, the first set of restraints would be removed, and I would be led off to the holding cells in the court building, while the prison guards would head back to work, making sure to have a leisurely coffee break on the way back.

Escape under these circumstances was out of the question. Besides the guards, the courtyard was surrounded by a high wall topped with barbed wire. Once out, an escapee would be easily recognized in his prison uniform.

I didn't think consciously about the possibility of escape. I had gone through it a thousand times in my head, awake and asleep, and knew that it was impossible to escape. Impossible to escape, impossible to get a second trial, impossible to survive in prison, and impossible to remain sane.

My guards today were itching to go. I knew them pretty well. They liked to go to a doughnut place after dropping off the prisoners. The fat one liked cinnamon rolls, while the skinny guy who chain-smoked was into jelly doughnuts. For months they had been talking of doing something else on the way back from the court. These guys wanted to stop by a whorehouse.

I could tell that despite their bravado neither of them had actually done this before. They were very nervous, and worried that it would take too long, they would get back late to the prison, and face embarrassing questions. Somehow they had managed to get up enough gumption to actually do it today.

The guards' business was none of mine, though I enjoyed hearing their plans. It was a real-life reality show, though sometimes I thought of them as more of a soap opera, or even a sitcom. Let's face it - most prison guards aren't very intelligent. The only thing that keeps the prisoners from just walking out are the strict rules that the guards follow. If they ever had to think for themselves, disaster would surely follow.

In my case, this is exactly what happened. These guys were not very good at thinking with their heads, and apparently much better at thinking with their balls. Fatso kept looking at his watch, waiting for their relief to show up. Skinny-smoker went over the paperwork again and again, trying to make sure that everything was filled out properly, so the police would only have to sign it, the work of a few seconds.

Fatso was really nervous. He had me sit down, and started taking off the leg irons. His partner looked up from the paperwork.

"Hey, watcha doin'?"

"Savin' time. These leg jobs always take forever to get off."

"Alright, but keep the cuffs on till the blues show."

The irons came off, and I started dancing around to loosen up my leg muscles. I managed to stay in pretty good physical shape by working out in the prison yard, but even an hour in those iron made my legs ache. Fatso gave me a look like he was going to tell me to sit still, but he kept his trap shut.

Finally we heard a couple of familiar voices from the building. My love-hungry guards' relief had shown up. Skinny smoker shuffled the papers into a reasonable sense of order, while Fatso unlocked my cuffs.

"Don't try anything funny. You'll have your new bracelets in a minute."

I nodded, trying to look as passive as I could, while my eyes scanned the courtyard. This was the closest I had come to freedom in two years. Could I do anything with it? Would they shoot me if I tried anything? Did I care?

Skinny noticed that my cuffs were off, and started yelling at fatso that he was taking a risk. Fatso turned aside to answer him. I didn't hear the words. My heart was thumping, irregularly as usual. I ducked under fatso's arm, sprinted the few yards to the corner of the yard, and ducked behind the paddy wagon. The guards shouted, and I heard answering voices from inside the building. My dumb guards would be reinforced in a few seconds. I wasn't sure that the police were any brighter, but they were likely in better shape, and worse yet, a lot of them had been in the service, and might manage to actually hit me.

Three seconds. That's what I remembered from basic training. It takes three seconds for the enemy to take proper aim on a moving target, so count to three while you run, then duck behind something. I already was behind the truck, and they knew I was there, but they didn't know what I might try. There was a good chance that they thought they could just come around the truck, knock me about a bit, slap the cuffs back on, and nobody would ever know that they had fucked up so badly. They wouldn't think of shooting me unless they thought that I would really get away.

Three seconds. It was foolish to count on any more, and it was stupid to wait for the police to show up, likely with their weapons already drawn. There was a step up to the driver's seat. I put a foot on the step, hauled myself up, got a second foot on the hood of the truck, and scrambled up to the roof of the vehicle. Three seconds. How many had I used already? When should I start counting? No time to think. I crouched and jumped up to catch the edge of the courtyard wall. Heaved myself up, the barbed-wire tearing my clothes and skin. I could hear my guards shouting, and a warning shot fired in the air. Running footsteps announced the arrival of the cops, and when they sound of running feet suddenly stopped, I knew that they were in stance, carefully taking their aim. I rolled over the concertina wire, and dropped over the wall as the shots rang out.

Outside. A minute, two or three and the place would be swarming with police. A convict in bright orange overalls would not be hard to spot. I started walking briskly down the sidewalk, grateful that there were no pedestrians on this side street to notice me. The sirens went off as I reached the main road. There was plenty of traffic here, plenty of problems for yours truly, and close to no time to solve them. I had to put some distance between myself and the court, and I had to look less conspicuous if I was going to get very far.

A construction crew was doing some street repairs. The rear door of their van was open. No keys in the ignition. But bright yellow safety vests with the words "Tel Aviv Road Crew" emblazoned on their backs, along with matching hats. I committed the first crime of my life, stole a vest and hat, and walked away, turning street corners randomly, but making sure to gain that distance that I needed.

I could hear the sirens as the squad cars set off on the search. Civilians might be fooled by my vest and hat, but police would immediately recognize the orange overalls. I thought of finding a hiding place, a cellar, maybe, or even inside a big trash container, but I couldn't stay there forever, and it wouldn't be long before they started systematically searching the area.

I would be trapped in my hole while the cops opened every door and looked under every bush. Do-gooder volunteers would join in a few hours, to get the dangerous criminal back behind bars.

I needed to get far away from the entire neighborhood, and as soon as possible. They were quite capable of setting up roadblocks and searching every vehicle that left the area. It was standard procedure when chasing after a terrorist, so why not use the same method to catch a dangerous criminal?

Getting some normal clothing was my top priority. Small apartment buildings lined the street I was walking on. They were older buildings, but in good repair, since this was considered a yuppie part of the city. Low stone walls surrounded the small gardens around the buildings. I walked past two or three of the buildings, unsure of myself. I had already stolen the hat and vest, and now I was contemplating more thefts. But there was no time for philosophizing about this. My choice was simple: either to take care of myself, or go back to prison.

I turned into one driveway, and moved to the back of the building. As I expected, the laundry lines were in the back. And as I had hoped, there was laundry hanging from the lowest line. It would have been best to just slip a jacket and sweatpants over my uniform, but I would have to make do with what there was. I grabbed a T shirt and jeans off of the line. I didn't like the idea of changing right there, but time was working against me.

I stripped down to my underwear, and put on the clothes. Not a perfect fit, but it would do. My considerate host was bit heavier than me, so I would need some kind of belt to keep the pants from sliding off of my hips. I had no time for belt shopping, though, so I grabbed an undershirt off of the line, ripped a strip of fabric from it, and used the strip to tie two belt-loops together. The tee-shirt covered up the sloppy fashion design, and I was ready to move on.

The police had squad cars going down the streets now, bullhorns warning that a criminal was loose. I finished tying my shoes, and looked up to see an old woman looking at me from the second story of a neighboring building. It was likely that she had seen me change, and if she had heard the police announcement, or heard the news for that matter, she was likely to turn me in.

I could do nothing about this witness, unless I was willing to become quite violent, but at that point violence didn't seem like an option to me. Instead, feeling absurdly guilty, I took a white stone and scratched "thank you" on the rear wall of the building. There was nothing left to do but to get back out to the street and walk as nonchalantly as possible away from the great laundry line heist.

The vast majority of people in the world are at their ease when walking. Sure, they may be hurrying, checking their watches every few minutes, but there is still something natural about their gait. Do you have any idea how hard it is to deliberately appear natural? To pretend that you have all the time in the world, when you want to run as fast as you can, when you can be caught in a few seconds?

Fortunately, your average civilian is not very observant. A non-descript guy in non-descript clothing is easily ignored. After I managed to walk a few blocks further south, I felt a little more at ease – until I remembered that I had foolishly left my prison clothes in a pile right by that laundry line. I spent a good five minutes cursing myself for such a stupid move, but figured that there wasn't much to do about it, so I continued on my way.

How did it happen? How did a perfectly normal guy wake up one day and discover that he is a criminal? It happened to me, and frankly, I haven't a clue. One morning there was a knock on my door. I was packing my lunch, looking for some apples in the fridge, and was just about ready to leave the house. We normally don't get unannounced callers at seven a.m., but I wasn't particularly concerned. Probably one of the neighbors needing something.

There were two policemen at the door. I asked them what they wanted, and they politely asked if they could come in. At this point I was a bit confused, but I invited them in, as any law-abiding citizen would. I was alone in the house, since my wife had taken our daughter to the kindergarten on her way to work.

The police explained that they needed to question me about a rape and murder that had taken place a couple of weeks earlier. I said: 'sure, ask away', but they said that they would prefer to speak to me in their 'offices', as they put it. I agreed, though at this point I was getting a bit nervous. Had I done something that they caught onto? I couldn't think of anything that would be worth their bother. Maybe one of their cameras had caught me running a red light?

I got hold of myself as best as I could. They were investigating those awful murders, and it only made sense that they would want to do it in an organized fashion. They were only being helpful when they suggested that I ride in the squad car. I left my wife a message on her cell phone, and rode down with them.

At first I didn't understand what they were after. They kept asking me questions about where I was this morning or that afternoon, who did I see, did I notice anything unusual. I answered as best as I could, but it was really hard to pin down all the times and places that they were talking about. I hoped that they would find the rapist, so I really tried to help them.

Out of the blue, one of the cops told me that I should call a lawyer, since from this point on I would be questioned "under warning". At the time I didn't know what being questioned "under warning" meant, but I did know what 'you should call a lawyer' meant.

I called our lawyer. She was the wrong sort of lawyer – the kind that you use when you are buying a house, but she was the only lawyer I knew, and I had to start somewhere. She warned me not to say anything at all to the police until she showed up. The police didn't expect anything different, and left me alone.

It must have been while I was waiting for her, alone in the 'interview room', that I stopped thinking clearly. My memories from that point up to the moment I realized that I could escape are blurred.

My lawyer showed up. We waited for another lawyer to come, this one a criminal lawyer. Quick questions, confused answers. Back to police questioning, but now with the lawyer's guidance. Accusations, silence on my part. Difficult phone call to my wife. Does she think, maybe, possibly, that I am that criminal? Kept overnight in prison while the evidence built up. Witnesses, hair, blood, DNA.

I am an average-looking guy, average height, average build, jeans and polo shirt. There are thousands who look just like me, so it was no surprise that there were witnesses who thought that they had seen me near the scene of one of the crimes.

The lab results were beyond me. How could they have found my blood under the fingernails of one of the victims? Was somebody trying to frame me? Who? Why? Was it a lab error? Or had the statistics of this caught up with me – the lab tests are 99.9% accurate – and maybe I was the lucky one who fell into the other 0.1%. As I fell further and further into a fuzzy world, I couldn't make head or tail of anything.

I sat in prison for months, waiting for a trial that went by in a blur. How could I defend myself? There were witnesses, there were forensics – yet I was completely innocent. The system decided that I was guilty, and I headed off for the endless, mindless torture of prison life. The rapes and murders continued, by the way, since the real serial killer was still out there. The police put it down to 'copy-cat' crimes.

I survived prison as best as I could, always in a daze. The boredom, the violence, eventually the inevitable divorce. An innocent, sane person in prison is likely to lose either his sanity or his innocence. The only alternative was suicide. I have a stubborn moral streak and a strong animal desire to live, so it was my sanity that suffered. I floated through prison, disconnected from reality; not knowing or caring what the next day or year would bring me. I viewed what was happening around me, or even to me, as a kind of reality show, entertainment that didn't have anything to do with me personally.

You may not believe my story. A few years ago, if someone had told me a story like this, I would have laughed at him. Sure, yeah, you were completely innocent. Yep, absolutely, the witnesses and the lab results are all wrong. Pull the other one, it has bells on.

But it happened. It happened to me, and it could happen to you. What would you lose in prison – your sanity or your morality? I regained my sanity in that instant when I decided to escape. I left the safe cocoon of blurry survival, found reality, climbed over that wall, and ran.

The moment I ran, I also started eroding my innocence. I was immediately an escaped convict. A few minutes later I was a thief. Where would this end? I didn't know. One thing was for sure. I was not going back to prison. I would rather die – and I meant that literally.

Now I was free, but a fugitive, with only my wits to live on. I had managed to get some normal clothing, and I was gradually putting some distance between myself and the scene of my escape, but I was far from calm. My face would be all over the papers and the television in a matter of a few hours at best. I needed a place to stay, and some way of finding food to eat.

I was still headed south, and had already reached one of the less well-to-do neighborhoods. I slowed down, and started looking carefully at the apartment buildings on either side of the street. Soon I found what I was looking for - a building with all of the shutters closed. There was a good chance that there was nobody home in the building, so I would have a chance to 'visit' one of the apartments and get some things that I needed.

I walked up to the building, and started up the staircase. The apartments on the first floor had those modern steel security doors. I doubted that I could break one of those down, and if I did manage to get through one of those doors it would make a huge racket. I continued up the stairs, hoping to find what I needed. Sure enough, on the third floor one of the apartments still had its original wooden door.

I rang the doorbell, then knocked. A thought ran through my head – 'breaking and entering', but then I caught myself, thought 'liberty or death', prayed that God have mercy on Patrick Henry and myself, and put my shoulder to the door.

It was harder than I thought, but on the third try the door flew open, splinters scattering from the door frame. I kick the loose splinters into the apartment, closed the door as best as I could, and got down to business.

I grabbed a small backpack that I found hanging on a hook behind the door, and headed for the kitchen. I had no interest in jewelry or silver. I needed cash and food, and didn't want to be weighed down with stuff that I would have a hard time unloading later. I found some bread in a drawer, oranges in a basket, and some sliced cheese in the fridge. I was about to head to the bedroom, figuring that my host might keep some cash in a nightstand or sock drawer, when I thought of an old trick. I opened the freezer, and started pulling things out. Frozen ready made food, more bread, ice cream – and a can of coffee. Some people keep their coffee in the freezer as a way of keeping it fresh. But some, like my latest victim, keep cash in a can in their freezer.

The whole visit took about ten minutes. I was satisfied with what I had found, but decided to take some jewelry just to make it look more like a real theft, and not like an escapee had stopped by for some basics. I dumped all of the drawers in the bedroom out on the bed, put the few rings and earrings I found in the knapsack, and left, taking care to close the door behind me.

My luck held out, and nobody noticed me. My next step was to get out of town, which was a lot easier now that I had some cash. But what was the best way to go? If I took public transportation, a lot of people would see me. On the other hand, most people don't look at the other passengers on a bus or train. They would walk right past their own mother if she didn't call out to them. A cab driver, though, would start chatting with me and might report me to the police.

I realized that my face wouldn't be readily recognized until later that evening, when it would likely appear on the news. So I opted for public transportation. A bus to the train station, a train to Haifa, and I was gone.

I knew Haifa pretty well, since I studied engineering there. I left the old British train station, crossed the parking lot, and headed for one of the older neighborhoods where I knew there were some deserted Turkish buildings. I could run into some drug addicts in these old buildings, but, on the other hand, they could run into me, a convicted killer.

I managed to survive the next few weeks without too much difficulty. I cleaned out an old apartment, one that some other vagrant had fixed up with plastic sheeting covering the broken windows and a jury-rigged door. I stayed put for a few days to let the excitement die down and to let my beard grow out a bit. Then I ventured out, but only in the dark, buying food in twenty-four hour stores or little groceries, trying not to frequent the same places too often.

There were plenty of opportunities for petty theft as well. Once I got up my nerve, I found that I could walk off with fruits, vegetables or even cheese in the crowded open-air market. Sometimes I managed to take a little cash from a vendor as well. About once a week I broke into an apartment and borrowed some money.

It turns out is that if all you are really interested in is bare survival, you don't need much. I knew that eventually I would have to make a move, somehow come up with a new identity, or maybe leave the country. For the time being, though, my best bet was to wait it out.

'Waiting it out' was the right thing to do, but the day came when things caught up with me. It had been about a month since my escape, and I was getting used to my lifestyle. It wasn't luxurious, but it was a hell of a lot better than prison. It was late at night, close to midnight, and I needed to buy a few things. I went to a grocery store about twenty minutes away, one that I knew was open until midnight. I liked coming to these places close to closing time, when the clerk was in a hurry and wouldn't pay much attention to me.

I didn't recognize the kid at the cash register, which was just as well. It made it less likely that he would recognize me as well. I paid for my few items, and only then noticed that he was watching a small TV mounted on an arm opposite the counter. I had mistaken it for a closed circuit security monitor, but it turned out to be a TV meant to entertain the help in the late hours of the evening.

He was engrossed in his show, and hardly looked at me. I hadn't seen television since my time in prison, so I watched for moment. It was a crime show, one of those that shows the unsolved crimes and asks the viewers to call in if they have any information. I froze, fascinated as my own photo appeared on the screen. The police artist had done some sketches as well, including one showing me with a beard. The artist had done a good job. I would have to do something else to disguise myself. Maybe I could shoplift some hair dye or something.

The kid at the counter ran my items through the barcode reader without glancing at me. He was riveted to the screen. I was trying hard to look inconspicuous, which may have been my fatal error. He glanced at me as he handed me my change, looked back up at the screen, and then back at me. His whole posture changed as he figured out who had just bought some tuna and soap in his shop. There was no doubt that he would call the police as soon as I left.

He found a pencil and started scribbling down the phone number that they'd showed on the screen for people with leads about those photogenic unsolved crimes. That was his fatal error. I had little choice. There were some bottles of liquor behind me. I grabbed one, and swung it down on him as he bent over the paper. The bottle burst, leaving me holding a bottle neck with jagged broken edges. The clerk collapsed on the floor, probably just knocked out. I was about to attack him again with the broken bottle, but I was afraid of the mess the blood would make.

I looked at the kid, lying on the floor, and saw that he was still breathing. So I hadn't yet committed murder – but I had to. When he came to, he would call the police, report the crime, and identify me as the attacker. I had a few minutes to think it over. He wasn't going to wake up that fast, and it wasn't likely that there would be any more customers that evening. I turned off the lights to make sure that it looked like the store was already closed.

It would be easy to kill him while he was unconscious. The store sold rubber gloves, the kind you use for dishwashing or cleaning. I could put on gloves so I wouldn't leave fingerprints. Then I could bash his head in with something heavy, say the cash register. A couple cans of tuna swung at the end of a stocking would work as well. It would be much simpler to just choke him. He was barely breathing as it was. Just tighten my hands around his throat. It would only take a minute or two. He was unconscious so he wouldn't feel it. And there wouldn't be any more blood.

I found the gloves and managed to get them on my shaking hands. The choice was clear. Either kill him, and stay free, or let him live, and stand a good chance of being caught. I had no way of leaving Haifa until the morning. I could steal a car, but I had never done that before.

I got behind the counter and knelt down next to my victim. I was below window level now, the lights were off, so there was no chance that anybody would see me. I just had to squeeze his throat for two minutes and walk away.

I would have to dump the gloves somewhere. I wondered if they could get prints off the inside of the gloves. The easiest thing was to throw them in a trash bin, but one that was far away from the murder scene. They would be picked up early in the morning by the municipal trash crew, probably before the murder was discovered.

The clerk had fallen on his side, crumpled up uncomfortably in the cramped space. He wouldn't be uncomfortable for long. I reached for his neck and felt his pulse. He was definitely alive. I would have to do this. It was inevitable. It was hard to do.

I brought images of prison life to mind, to remind myself of why I had to do this. I imagined myself aging in prison, dying of rape-induced AIDS. I thought of leaving the country, maybe to Europe, to a remote Greek island.

Just squeeze, and it would all remain possible. Just squeeze. He was unconscious, it would be like squeezing a piece of meat in the butcher shop, a carp by the fishmonger. Hell, it wouldn't be much more than squeezing a bottle of ketchup. Squeeze and be free. Murder and be free. Mord Macht Frei.

(Tuesday, January 27)...Based on the storekeeper's information, hundreds of police crowded into downtown Haifa, searching for the escaped convict. He was soon identified by security guards as he entered the new city hall. A brief chase by the guards and two policemen ended as the criminal found himself cornered in the top floor of the building, and threw himself out of a window.

Upon reaching the criminal's broken body, investigators found a curious diary in his pocket. A police spokesman said that 'the diary was a hypocritical attempt by the serial killer to prove that he was actually a completely innocent victim of circumstance. This twisted, manipulative criminal mind will trouble us no more.'

### Just Like Pa

"Oh, he looks just like Pa"

I must have heard this a thousand times as a kid. I was just like my grandfather. There were only a few old black and white photos of him. One as a child at some unidentified family event, just a skinny kid, could be anybody. A formal photo, this as a young adult, taken perhaps before his wedding. I recall seeing one of him in uniform, though I am not sure where. Perhaps at an aunt or uncles house.

That's about it for photos. If it was only that I looked like him, it wouldn't have been a big deal. Especially after I grew that big black moustache. Guys with that fat smear of black on their face all look the same anyhow – the old Groucho Marx look.

It wasn't that I just looked like him. I sounded like him too. Acted like him, had his temper – you name it. When I was young, my parents tried not to mention it too often, but I would see their eyes flitting from the old photos on the mantelpiece to me, shaking their heads in disbelief at the similarity. My Dad always seemed kind of pleased to see the resemblance, as if I had somehow brought his father back to life.

When we had guests over, it was unbearable. Holiday time, and all of my old aunts and uncles came over, all shaking their heads, mumbling 'just like Pa' to themselves. And then my dear Aunt Kasha would burst out in her grating voice: "I can't believe it! He looks just like Pa! He talks just like Pa!" If I got upset, then I heard: "Look, he's even got Pa's temper!"

My grandfather died shortly before I was born, so I never met him. We have a tradition in our family of naming kids after relatives who are no longer alive, as a way of remembering our ancestors. When I was given my late grandfather's name, nobody thought that I would end up looking like him, sounding like him, acting like him, being like him. Who could know that that shrunken newborn would be the spitting image of old Pa, down to the black moustache?

My parents understood how much it bothered me to be constantly reminded of my resemblance to my grandfather, and I am sure that they would have chosen a different name had they realized how close the resemblance would be. I sometimes dreamed of changing my name, but it was unrealistic. Nobody would suddenly forget who I resembled. Besides which, the name was already part of me.

I didn't have my own identity. This stranger, my grandfather, was part of me. To some extent I was my grandfather.

I began to hate my grandfather, that stranger who had taken over my identity. When I was twelve I started reading science fiction and learned about time travel. I started dreaming of going back in time, and killing my grandfather, so that I would never have been compared to him. It didn't take long before I found out that my dream could never come true. There was no such thing as time travel, and even if there were, I couldn't go back and kill my grandfather. It would mean that I would never exist and be able to go kill him in the first place.

Kids grow up, and eventually I did too. I outgrew science fiction, but stayed with science. Played football in high school (Oh, Pa played football when he was that age...) and finally left home. I went off to a university out of town with an eye towards studying physics and finally developing an identity of my own.

It is easy to forget about home when you are away at school. I was busy with my studies, and managed to squeeze in a social life as well. My grandfather was an immigrant and made a living as well as he could as a manual laborer, so I was finally doing something very different form the things that he had done.

Mind you, when I came home for a visit, say on Thanksgiving, it would start again. As sure as there was stuffing in the turkey, you could be sure that some old aunt would start going on about how bright my grandfather was, and how it was a shame that he never got a chance to go to school.

Still, my visits home were mercifully short, and I managed to get through them pretty well.

I did get a shock in my Junior year, when I came home for winter break. My aunt had been widowed a few months earlier, so she spent a lot of time visiting. She knew that I was coming home for the break, so she brought something special for me. It was an old book, a practical guide to chemistry. 'Everyday Practical Chemistry'.

The book had recipes for making soap, varnish, drain-cleaner, pesticides – you name it. The idea was that you would cook some up in your kitchen, preferably when your wife wasn't around, save yourself the expense of buying ready-made stuff, maybe make a few bucks selling insect repellent to the neighbors, and most of all, have fun playing scientist in your own home.

When she first gave it to me, I started leafing through it, curious as to what could be in such an ancient technological book. I hadn't looked at it for more than two minutes when the inevitable 'I knew he would find it interesting! Pa always loved that book!'

My grandfather, despite his lack of a formal education, had an interest in science and technology. So the idea that by studying physics I would finally set out on my own independent path was a dead end. I was only fulfilling my grandfather's dreams.

I was upset for a few hours, but then got over it. After all, I was myself, and it was no surprise when kids turn out like their parents or grandparents. I was studying physics for myself, and it was actually nice that I discovered that 'Pa' had the same interests.

I managed to convince myself that I was finally mature enough to deal with the grandpa thing, and not judge everything that I did on whether or not my grandfather did the same.

I went back to school feeling a lot better about myself. If I thought of 'just like Pa', it was with a little smile. If I ever managed to time travel, I would go back and shake his hand. How could I have ever thought of killing my illustrious ancestor? It would be like killing myself.

I took a radiochemistry course that semester as an elective. We were taught the ins and outs of radioactive elements by an elderly gentleman, a veteran of the Manhattan project. One of the highlights of the course was a visit to Fermilab, one of the largest particle accelerators in the world.

Once we were properly impressed by the size of the accelerator and the bison grazing peacefully on top of the ring, we went to visit a few of the experiments running at the time. The experiments took place in fairly large buildings that were partly underground, since the particle beam itself was underground. So we trooped down short staircases into a technology freak's paradise.

One of the labs had a piece of plastic pipe hanging in the staircase, with a sign taped on it that read: 'danger, PI Meson beam'. The pipe was hanging loosely on a couple of chains, and was obviously put there as a joke. There was no way in the world that a particle beam would pass through a staircase. Certainly not with only a dangling plastic pipe protecting innocent tourists. True, those particular particles were especially harmless, and would go through just about anything without any effect, but there was no way they would let people walk through a beam of any sort.

Everybody ducked to get under that 'beam'. Everybody but me. I never found out whether there was a real particle beam going through that pipe. I knocked the pipe out of my way, and walked right through the 'PI Meson beam'.

I found myself in front of a mirror, a liquid shiny mirror. I could see myself in it, a wavy image that quivered in the mercurial surface. I touched the surface. It gave a little, and concentric circles of waves spread out from my finger. When I pulled my finger back, the mirror stuck to the finger like soft chewing gum. It pulled back with my finger, and it took some effort to pull back far enough so that the string of mirror material finally snapped back. The snapping quicksilver sent a new series of ripples across the mirror. These interfered with the waves bouncing back from the edges of the mirror, distorting my image.

I should have been afraid. What was going on? Where was Fermilab? Where were my classmates? But none of that was of concern to me. I had landed in some kind of alternate universe, or maybe was just having a hallucination. Either way, my curiosity overrode my natural sense of caution.

I touched the mirror again. This time I pushed as hard as I could. My finger sunk into the surface. I saw my mirror image doing the same. But where was my finger? Both my digit and my image's had sunk into the surface, so the tips of our fingers had disappeared under the surface.

I pressed harder, sinking my entire forearm into the surface. My image did the same, our arms meeting at the elbow. Only I this point did I realize that even though my image was following my motions exactly, we were not dressed alike. The elbow of my sweater touched that of his tweed jacket.

I raised my eyes to look into his, and recognized myself, myself as a stranger. I reached out with my second hand, and he reached out with his. It was like a game mimes play, one imitating the other, playing the role of a mirror. Here, though, there was a mirror, and my image/second self was following too closely for it to be a game.

I wondered what could have caused this hallucination. Did that particle beam do something to my brain? I didn't have much experience with hallucinations -recreational drugs never interested me much.

I decided to test the hallucination. I let my head drop down to touch the mirror, and pushed with my legs as hard as I could. At first the surface resisted, but I slowly managed to push my way through. The surface stretched to accommodate me, and then suddenly burst. I was through!

I was standing in front of a mirror, looking at myself. This time, though, I was really looking at myself, my original self, the one wearing the sweater. The mirror no longer had that liquid mercurial look. I was sweating like a horse. My brain may have been calmly considering the situation, but my body had completely panicked. Well, it was over now, and I could relax. Or so I thought.

My image in the mirror faded away. All that was left was a blank sheet of silver with a heavy wooden frame. Heavy wooden frame? I reached out to touch the unfamiliar mirror. My hand extended from my tweed jacket. My finger reached out to the frame. I froze. My tweed jacket? I was wearing a sweater!

There was a sink under the mirror, an old fashioned heavy thing that sat on a pedestal. I turned around. I was in a washing area, just outside the men's room. The washroom sign said 'men', and had a classic drawing of a man wearing a hat, just to make sure that the illiterate could figure out which room it was. It was a bit silly, after all, since hats like that had been out of fashion for half a century. Still, it went well with the general décor.

I guessed that I was in the restroom of a theme restaurant. I wasn't too far off. I pushed open another door, this one with frosted glass in a wooden frame, and found myself in a small Italian place, all done in a thirties style, down to the mechanical cash register – its typical 'ding' as the owner made change caught my attention. How did he handle credit cards? Having a thirties theme was OK, but business was business.

Coats were hung up on a wooden coat rack near the entrance. Hats sat on a small shelf nearby. Hats just like the one in the bathroom. The customers, in fact, all seemed dressed to fit in with the décor. Some of the men had tweed jackets of the same odd cut that I had. A few wore double breasted suits, the kind that I associated with gangsters. The women were wearing long dresses or skirts and little hats. Most had white gloves laid on the table next to them. I had walked onto the set of 'The Sting'! A theme restaurant where the customers played along with the theme, a muted Rocky Horror Picture Show.

I wasn't quite sure that this was reality. Hallucination seemed like the most likely explanation, though I had no recollection of smoking, sniffing or injecting anything. Everything sure seemed real enough. I glanced out the window and caught my breath. It wasn't just the restaurant. The entire street was ancient. Hand painted signs on stores, cars with long hoods that must have escaped from museums. And everybody, I mean everybody, who was walking around outside was dressed like extra for a movie.

Only at this point did I seriously consider the possibility that I had actually traveled in time.

A woman waved at me from one of the tables. Confused, I walked over to her.

"Are you OK, honey?"

"Um, yes. I think so."

"You look confused. Come on, sit down."

I sat down. What else could I do?

She sat there, drinking coffee out of a dainty china cup, gabbing away like I was her best friend in the world. She worked as a clerk in a store, and from the sounds of it had about thirty very close friends there. I could hardly follow the narrative, which was complicated by the fact that the friends all seemed to have similar names. I did manage to catch her name. Rebecca.

Rebecca was happy, exuberantly so. She didn't mind her simple boring job. She was happy just telling this complete stranger all about her day.

She was dainty, with brown hair cut short, and dark eyes. Her gloves lay on the table next to her, and her fine small hands waved rapidly as she spoke. They only slowed down for a second when she took a break to sip at the coffee.

I stared at her hands as she drank. There was no doubt – that was a wedding ring. This happy girl, jabbering away, her bright eyes flirting, undoubtedly flirting with me, was married!

I didn't know what to make of it. She kept calling me by my name, though I had never identified myself. I thought of explaining to her that no matter what she thought, we had never met, we were complete strangers. I didn't have the heart. She was so happy. Happy to be with me, as far as I could tell.

Finally she was done. I obviously was expected to pay for the coffee and whatever meal she had had. I wasn't wearing my own clothing, and doubted that I had any cash. Still, I reached into my pocket, and found a wallet with money in it. I could tell that it was American money, but I didn't recognize the bills. There was a bit of a misunderstanding at the cash register, when I tried to pay far more than expected. The meal, whatever it had included, cost a grand total of seventy five cents!

At this point I had to admit to myself that impossible as it seemed, I had managed to travel back in time. Not only that, but I had fallen into some other fellow's shoes. If only I could get back to my own time! It would make my academic career! But I had no idea of how I had managed to time-travel.

It likely had something to do with that particle beam, but even if I could figure out the mechanism, particle accelerators hadn't been invented yet. Well, Cockcroft and Walton had put one together in 1932, but it was a primitive low powered thing, and wouldn't be much help to me.

I walked with my new friend, who insisted on taking my arm. I half hoped and half feared that she was going to take me home, to her house. She did. She lived in a fourth floor apartment in a large building. We climbed up the stairs, and waited by the door. After an uncomfortable pause, I reached into my pocket, and sure enough, there was the key.

As soon as we were inside, Rebecca gave a big kiss, and dragged my off to the bedroom to make love. Something inside me cringed when I realized what was happening, but as far as she was concerned, I was her husband, and a fairly new acquisition on her part, as far as I could tell. Her real husband must have been the fellow who I had seen in the mirror before. Had he swapped places with me? Possibly, but unless I got back to my time I would never know.

The next morning Rebecca woke me up. She was dressed for work, and my work clothes were laid out for me. I shaved, miraculously managing to sue the straight blade without nicking myself. I worried for a moment about getting AIDS from my alter ego's blade, but quickly realized that if I had really time-traveled, then AIDS didn't exist yet. On the other hand, if I was hallucinating, or had landed in some alternate universe, then there wasn't much point in worrying about twenty first century diseases.

My lover, possibly my wife, had breakfast ready for me in the kitchen. She had, or, as I was beginning to internalize, we had a small table and couple of chairs in the kitchen. A white ceramic sink with two separate faucets sat on top of a metal cabinet. We had a gas burner on a small countertop. A thin gas line ran to a refrigerator in a corner. I had seen gas powered refrigerators mentioned in an old thermodynamics text, but had never seen one. I walked over to the fridge, and peered behind it. Sure enough, there was a small flame burning next to the cooling coils.

"Honey, Jimmy will be waiting for you."

"Ah, right. Just curious."

"As always. But you've looked at that refrigerator a hundred times already."

I grunted, my mouth full of scrambled eggs. She seemed satisfied with my response.

I finished eating, not quite sure what would happen next. As it turns out, most people's lives are pretty well regimented, and it doesn't take as much effort as you might expect to take over somebody else's role in life.

We left the house together. Rebecca left me with Jimmy, who was in fact waiting for me outside. She ran off to catch the streetcar, while Jimmy and I set off for the port. I found it easy enough to keep up with Jimmy's conversation. Men don't talk much among themselves, besides the occasional grunt or curse, so Jimmy didn't notice that anything was odd about me.

Our work was what manual labor is always like, everywhere and every time. We moved boxes and bales around, cussing and sweating, ate the lunches our loving wives had packed, and sweated and cursed some more.

Jimmy invited me to stop at a bar on the way home, but I opted out. I was having a hard enough time fitting in without having to mingle with my old buddies at the bar, my old buddies that I had never met in my life. Fortunately, Jimmy decided to skip the bar himself, and walked home with me. I am not sure that I would have found the way back on my own.

On the way home we passed a bookstore. It was a 'professional' bookstore. A sign in the window explained that they carried scientific texts, medical texts and law books, and that whatever they didn't have in stock they could order for delivery within two weeks. There were a few books on display, simple hardcover volumes embossed with the name of the book and author. The day of fancy graphics on textbooks hadn't arrived yet.

I wondered what physics texts they would have. This was the beginning of the era of modern physics, so some of the 'classics' might already exist. There were no physics books on display in the window, and I considered going into the store to see if I could find any. My main concern was Jimmy, who wasn't the bookish type, and was already getting antsy waiting for me by the shop window.

I was about to give up on the whole idea, when a book in the store window caught my eye. It looked vaguely familiar. It was familiar! It was 'Everyday Practical Chemistry'. My grandfather had had a copy, which I received as an inheritance – and now I would own my own. Jimmy waited patiently while I went into the store and bought the book. During the rest of our walk home he couldn't avoid commenting on what a waste of money it was, buying books like that. I wanted to tell him that it was better than wasting money on drinks, but thought better of it, and ignored his chiding.

When I got home, Rebecca and dinner were waiting for me. We ate quickly, macaroni and cheese, and then Rebecca led me off to bed again. We did need to eat, but it was of secondary importance. Love-making was our highest priority. Frankly, it suited me fine.

This constant lovemaking in the days before the pill was invented could only have one result, one which we both looked forward to. Sure enough, not six months after passing through the looking glass, Rebecca became pregnant.

I was quite nervous as the pregnancy advanced. Things weren't completely primitive back then. There were hospitals and basic sanitation, but basic diagnostic techniques, like ultrasound imaging, hadn't been invented. Even penicillin was not yet available. Rebecca, though, was ecstatic, and more importantly, quite healthy. After waiting the requisite nine months, plus an extra week (a bonus for first-time parents), we were rewarded with our first son.

If you have ever had children born to you, you will know how happy, shocked and confused I was. Our son was born in the local maternity hospital, and we name him Alan. Rebecca and I had discussed both girls and boys names, and we had agreed upon Alan because, well we just liked the name. What Rebecca didn't know, and what I could never tell her, was that Alan was my father's name, and I chose it in an ironic mood, a twist on the family custom of naming kids after dead relatives. The thing was, I had just named my kid after a relative who hadn't even been born yet.

Eventually I had to leave the hospital, and go home to get some rest.

It took me a long time to fall asleep. Having just turned into a father made me think about my own family, and the life I had left so long ago in the future. I wondered how my mother was doing. Did she wonder what happened to me? Were my aunts still saying 'Just like Pa?' When I finally fell asleep, images of my parent's house flitted through my dreams.

In the morning I found myself alone for the first time since I had come through that mirror. I had to find my own clothing. Pants and shirt were no problem, but I had to rummage through the drawers to find a pair of socks. I found the socks in the bottom drawer, and was about to close it when I noticed a shoebox buried under the socks.

I opened the box. There were a bunch of old photos in there. Mostly photos of people I had never met, though I would probably be expected to recognize them when I met them.

Rebecca appeared in a couple of photographs. And – so did I. There I was, at some formal occasion, perhaps our wedding. The photograph looked familiar. I looked at it more carefully. Sure, I had seen that photo before, on my mother's mantelpiece. It was a photo of my grandfather as a young man. Sure enough, just like Pa.

### A Man of Good Taste

"You have heard of our restaurant, I assume?"

"Of course. It is famous in the Islands."

"Famous, or perhaps infamous. It depends on your point of view, I suppose."

My host was a huge man, tall, broad, and fat. His face was bloated as well, though it was mostly hidden by his unkempt beard. His blue eyes glanced calmly at me, as if there was nothing unusual about our plans for the day.

He wore what passed for formal dress in the Islands, long slacks and a polo shirt, as opposed to shorts and a complete lack of shirt. As a journalist, I was dressed in a similar fashion. It is always best to mix in with the natives, unless they are shooting at each other.

We walked down the twisted path that passed for Main Street. The city planners hadn't worked very hard at planning. One could say that the Islands in general were very deliberately unplanned. Unplanned by design, courtesy of the Islands' fabulously wealthy dictator/owner Sir Hardly Fine.

It was an amazing stroke of genius. Take a bankrupt island economy, one where anarchy prevailed and law and order was a distant dream, and find the local resource that could be turned into hard cash. An island with no natural resources, lousy agriculture, and an uneducated populace. What could one possibly sell?

Well, Sir Hardly, known as 'Hard' to his friends, had figured out exactly what would sell. Anarchy, if it was marketed just right, could be a gold mine. Your well-to-do western citizen leads a boring life. Sure, sometimes he watches a football game, and gets all excited about some team of another, but it's artificial, and deep down inside he knows it. Buying a new SUV or luxury car might be a bit exciting the first time around, but it becomes routine after a while. And need I tell you how routine sex is for most people?

But at night, they turn on their televisions, and watch the real world, the Third World, fall dramatically apart. They watch their favorite anchorman, reporting from a nasty civil war off somewhere they've never heard of, and though they don't admit it, they're jealous. That reporter is in danger. He's wearing a flak jacket. Bombs and missiles are exploding all around him. His adrenalin is flowing like crazy - hell, he's got more adrenalin than most of us have blood. He's alive, really alive.

So they sit there, night after night, all comfortable in their suburban homes, watching comfortable canned TV shows, making comfortable love with their comfortable spouses, and dying for some excitement, some real excitement. So they go to a hockey game, and watch other guys having an exciting time hitting each other. Or they don't even pretend they are watching team sports, and they go to watch boxers, or go to a car race and hope somebody crashes spectacularly. And that is the problem. It's all spectacle, there is nothing real. They may as well watch a chess game.

Sir Hardly could hardly spell his own name, but he saw the business opportunity. A place where almost everything goes, where almost anything is possible, a place with real excitement, real danger, real adrenalin.

Anarchy as a tourist attraction. The trick was in managing the danger, make it just the right kind of danger, just the right amount of danger. People will accept a small risk of being shot. That type of risk is exciting. Dying of dysentery, on the other hand, is dull – you may as well stay home and watch the game, and die slowly of boredom.

So the Islands were born. The place where the sewage system worked, but the police force didn't. Where con-men, thieves, and prostitutes of every imaginable sort roamed free. A place where you could gamble, whore, steal and even murder without repercussions. Where drugs were sold at every street corner. In short – a hell of a paradise.

There were some limits. Anybody entering had to be screened for diseases. Murder was tolerated only if the killer was a paying guest at one of the hotels. Revenge killing was also tolerated, so a killer was really taking his life in his hands, and enjoying every second of it.

The most notorious among all of the questionable places of entertainment in the Islands was the restaurant we were headed towards right now, the Russian Restaurant. The curious thing about this restaurant was that everybody knew of its existence, and presumably some knew what was unusual about it, but nobody, and I mean nobody, ever talked about what actually went on there.

I had been in the Islands for over a month, and had witnessed every depravity known to man, all openly practiced, as befits a land where the only king is anarchy. Every form of entertainment available was widely advertised. Every business did its best to attract the adrenalin-hungry, dollar-laden tourists. Every business, except one. The Russian Restaurant.

As a journalist, I was fascinated by this most notorious yet mysterious dining establishment. There had been endless reports out of the Islands, yet no journalist had managed to crack the secret of the Russian Restaurant. As far as I could tell, any journalist who managed to get a hint of what was going on there backed off immediately, and looked for more benign things to report, like the High Bull Fight, where both the bull and the volunteer matador where shot up with Heroin before the fight. Or the vicious highway-drive, where you could get out your anger at other drivers by trying to kill them on the road – before they managed to kill you.

We turned off of Main Street into an unmarked narrow lane, and continued walking for a few minutes.

"So, what can you tell me about the restaurant?"

"Not very much, right now. Guests are allowed, even encouraged to visit, but one of our rules is that the secret of the restaurant can only be revealed over a meal. So you will have to join me for dinner, and then you can quiz me as much as you like.

"I can say a few words about myself. The restaurant is a bit like a club, and we all have nicknames there."

This didn't surprise me. Hardly anybody used their real name on the Islands.

"I go by 'Big Ben' myself. If you become a regular customer, you will have to choose a name as well."

"Are most of the clients regular goers?"

"Definitely. It is a place that offers the finest, most exciting entertainment imaginable, and the clients are nearly all regular customers. We do invite guests as much as possible, though, as a way of filling in our diminishing numbers. It seems harder and harder to attract new guests, though. I never could understand why our little club is so feared."

We arrived at the club, a large brick building with white columns set back from the road. It reminded me of Jefferson's Monticello, a stately, civilized edifice. A uniformed servant ushered us in, and we found ourselves in a large dining room with small tables set elegantly for dinner. Each table was set for two. White linen napkins contrasted with the black tablecloths, and a bewildering array of silverware and glassware was laid out for each place.

Calls of 'hey Ben!', 'Still a risk-taker, Big Ben?' and the like greeted my host as we walked in. He answered in kind, and the other diners nodded kindly in my direction. We went to the bar, got some drinks, and mingled a bit. I noticed that all of the regular guests were men, and most of them quite heavy – the kind of fellows that really enjoy a meal. So I at least could be sure of enjoying a good meal, no matter how bizarre the entertainment turned out to be. A few more heavyset men entered the room, and we were all seated.

"You see, a meal here doesn't start until exactly one hundred diners have arrived."

"And if somebody comes late?"

"Their loss. And possibly ours."

"Why exactly one hundred? Is there something special about that number?"

"Well, there is, in a statistical kind of way. But you will have to wait till after we drink our toast before I can explain."

At this point about a dozen cummerbunded waiters came in, and distributed our first course, a thin slice of pickled meat laid carefully on a black plate. A single black olive and sprig of parsley decorated the plate.

I followed Big Ben's example, cut a small piece, and chewed it carefully.

"What kind of meat is this?"

"It is a bit hard to tell. The chef is very creative, so you can't always recognize what a course is. My guess is that this is pickled tongue."

I nodded my understanding and continued nibbling at the bit of meat. I glanced around. Everybody was slowly and carefully eating their portion, in an almost religious ecstasy. I found this odd since the meat, when it came down to it, was tough, and didn't taste like much.

I finished my portion long before anybody else, and had to wait a while before everyone finished and the waiters cleared the plates. I was dying to hear what dark secret this place had, but knew that I would have to wait until after the toast to find out.

Finally, the plates were cleared, and the waiters brought out drinks in black glass wine glasses.

"The toast?"

"Yes, the toast. You must drink the toast if you plan on continuing your meal here."

"Well, it's the only way I'll ever find out what is happening here, so drink the toast it is."

Soon we all had our black glasses. One of the guests, and immense fellow whose little head perched directly on his bloated torso without a visible neck, stood and made the toast.

"To our friend, Lucky Jimmy, a man of good taste!"

"To Lucky Jimmy, a man of good taste!" the cry rang out.

I followed my host's lead, banged the glass on the table, and downed the drink in one gulp. It was wine, red wine, but I couldn't quite place the type. Perhaps a Chilean vintage.

"Well, we've had our toast. Can you explain now? What is this place? What happens here?"

"Well, I will explain slowly, so you will understand. The fellow who made the toast, "Slims", is our longest surviving member. Survival is the name of the game here, much as it is in other businesses in the Islands. Every evening, a hundred of us gather here to dine. One hundred enter, but only ninety-nine leave."

"One doesn't leave? One dies?"

"Yes, you have been in the Islands long enough to understand that."

"Well, perhaps one dies, but one hundred must leave. Ninety-nine on their feet, and one in a box."

"No. Only ninety-nine leave. Ninety nine dine, and one is dined."

"Is dined?"

"Is dined upon, if you will."

One is dined upon? They couldn't possibly – yet the Islands were the one place where they actually could. 'Anything goes' had gone beyond the mundane violent crime, off into the realm of gourmet cannibalism. I ran my tongue over my dry lips, and managed to ask a few more questions.

"Somebody volunteers to be eaten?"

"No, not at all. We all volunteer to be eaten. We each take the one in a hundred chance of being cut up into steaks and roasts."

"One in a hundred chance? So there is a lottery."

"Of sorts."

My host peered at me, waiting for me to figure it out, and ask the next question. It took me a moment.

"There are one hundred guests here?"

"Yes."

"Including myself?"

"Yes."

"So I am expected to take part in this lottery?"

"No. You have already participated. We just don't know the results yet."

"Meaning what?"

"Our toast is the lottery. The glasses were full of wine, but one glass had something extra. A drug. A drug that takes effect after twenty minutes. In twenty minutes, less actually, one of us will collapse, unconscious, and the chef's men will take him to the kitchen for dinner."

"I could be out cold, in say, fifteen minutes?"

"Yes. So could I."

"And in the kitchen they would..."

"I am not sure of the details. I believe they cut the winner's throat. It is painless in any case, since the winner is unconscious."

'The winner!' What an odd term for the victim.

I figured that a one in a hundred chance wasn't that bad, compared to the odds in some of the other activities in this 'resort'. But I was only here once, while these guests were regulars.

"How long have you been eating here?"

"Two years now, once a week, every week."

"You've eaten here a hundred times? Your chance of 'winning' is astronomical!"

"Not at all. It is the same one in a hundred chance every time. There is no difference between the first and the hundredth time. 'Slims' there has dined here over two hundred times, and every time he takes the same risk. In fact, there is a wide spread belief here that once you've survived a hundred toasts you become immune to the laws of probability."

"Nobody is immune to the laws of probability."

"I suppose not. But it seems to work that way."

"You realize that though your chances of surviving any particular evening are ninety nine percent, the chance of your surviving a hundred meals is much lower."

I pulled out my cell phone, and struggled with the math on its inadequate calculator.

"Your chance of surviving a hundred meals is only 37 percent. If you stick around for two hundred meals, you're looking at a fourteen percent chance of survival."

"Ah. That would be true if I looked at the whole picture before I first started eating here. As it is, I only think of the day, so I have a ninety nine percent chance of survival. And look at "Slims" over there. His continued survival shows you that probability isn't all".

I glanced in Slims' direction. He had slumped over the table. I looked at my host straight in the eyes.

"Slims?"

"Yes, you know, the one who gave the toast in honor of last week's winner."

"Well, Bon Appetit!"

At that, Ben turned around, and saw the chef's men rolling 'Slims' onto a stretcher.

He turned back to me, and made what I was learning was the polite comment.

"Ah, Slims. A man of good taste."

"Yes, a man of good taste." I made the correct response.

Until this point, Big Ben had been completely calm, taking this cannibalism completely in stride. Now I noticed just a tinge of nervousness, perhaps fear, in his fat face.

"Ben, it looks like the lottery results have upset you a bit."

He shook his head violently, trying to clear the fear from his mind.

"No, not at all. It's just that, well, it did seem like long-term survivors were somehow immune to the lottery."

"As you said, it is a one in a hundred chance for everybody, every single time..."

"Yes. No favorites, no exceptions. If there were, there would be no point to this at all."

"I suppose so."

I had been watching Ben's response to the lottery so carefully that I had hardly noticed my own reaction. I had maintained complete calm during the lottery. After all, it was a one in a hundred chance, and there wasn't anything at all to do about it. That was my mind, cool, calm, logical. My body, on the other hand, had sent my heart rate sky high. I was soaked in sweat, and, shall I admit it? – I was ecstatic. Ecstatically alive. I had tried a good portion of the adventures available in this kingdom of anarchy, but none of them had brought me to this level of sheer animal vitality. I had survived!

I had gone into this without knowing what I was in for. Imagine the tension if you played the game on purpose, knowing when you went in what the risks were!

I looked around the room. Everybody was talking quietly, behaving like the gentlemen that they appeared to be. Like Englishmen commenting on the 'recent unpleasantness'. Yet most of these calm gentlemen were busily mopping sweat off their thick foreheads. There was a distinct feeling, a smell of fear and relief that permeated the room.

We remained silent for a few minutes, catching our breath and letting our hearts catch up with our chests.

I had only partially calmed down when the waiter came around. Ben explained that as a first-timer, I got my choice of cuts. Now that I had proven that I was a real man and truly had cojones, only one cut would do.

"I'll take the Rocky Mountain Oysters, please."

The waiter did not understand me.

"Sir, Excuse me?"

"I would like to have the Montana Tendergroin"

"Sir?"

I gave up, and decided that euphemisms would not work here.

"I would like to eat Slim's testicles, please. Slim – a man of good taste!"

"Certainly sir! Slims - a man of good taste!"

Ben ordered fried liver ('my favorite'), and the waiter scooted off to the kitchen.

"Ben, you know that this is just an exaggerated Russian Roulette."

"It does have some similarities, but the tension is greater. Not to mention that the odds are better."

"Still, it is the same type of gamble, with the added payoff that the winners – or losers, if you like, enjoy a macabre meal."

"Now you will tell me that the meal isn't even very good."

"Well, is it?"

"Honestly, no? But the food is not the main point. By the way, it is time for you to be given a nickname."

"A nickname? Like 'Big Ben' or 'Slims'? I don't think it will be necessary. I won't be back here again."

"Much as you deny it, you will be back again. You are fascinated by our little establishment. I can sense it."

I grunted and shrugged. I was abhorred by the 'little establishment', and yet strangely attracted. Who knew what tomorrow would bring?

"You will be back. And I will give you your nickname. 'Newsboy'."

"Newsboy. I guess that will do. But don't hold your breath. I won't be back."

"I never hold my breath. You never know if will be your last one."

The testicles did not taste very good. I had never had lamb testicles, so I didn't have much to compare them to, but I would prefer a good hamburger any day. For one thing, I couldn't help but think of my own balls being on the plate. It was a real possibility. I felt myself reaching down between my legs to see if they were still safely attached.

I looked around at the other diners. Many of them were idly caressing some part of their body- an arm, a leg, or a shoulder. It didn't take much to guess what they were eating. Big Ben had developed a tendency to rub his abdomen.

Dessert was not served. A final glass of wine was poured, our man of taste was toasted again, and the group broke up.

Ben had a final word for me.

"Join me next Thursday for dinner?"

"Like I said, don't hold your breath."

I left the restaurant, having had an adventure that I didn't want to repeat. After all, someone who has survived a battle, though it may have been the most exciting time of his life, does not want to return to the battlefield. He will happily live a regular boring life. Boring is good. Sure, there are those few nuts who actually volunteer for service, and those who become career officers, but, when it came down to it, those professional soldiers were mentally-ill people who had found a useful way to direct their energies.

So I thought for a few days. You wouldn't catch me walking into that place, taking my fair chance of having my tongue pickled, my liver fried with onions, my balls served up in neat little slices. I had had my bit of fun, and that was enough for any sane person.

Yes, I knew what a logical, sane person should think. But deep down, I knew differently. I constantly went over the events at that fateful meal, replayed every moment in my mind. I remembered every remark I had heard, every mouthful of human flesh I had tasted. Still, there was no way I would go back there. Absolutely no way.

My obsession followed me to bed. I tossed and turned for hours, woke suddenly in the small hours of the morning troubled by dreams that I didn't dare remember. Wednesday night was the worst. I had an invitation to lunch the next day, an invitation that I had already refused. There was no way in the world I would go. Sleep escaped me entirely. I was furious with myself. How could I allow this silly restaurant business to upset me so? I had already decided that it was ridiculous to go back there. So why was I losing sleep over this? What was my problem?

I remembered getting this way over a girl years ago. I was completely obsessed with her. At the time, I thought that it was true love. I ignored everything negative about her, and thought of her day and night. The whole world looked gray and boring when she wasn't around. I knew all along that we were a mismatch, but knowing intellectually and understanding something on an emotional level are two different ball games.

To a large extent, it was hormones. Obsessed with the wrong girl? Testosterone in action. Obsessed with Russian-roulette dining? Adrenalin in action.

I was obsessed. Everything outside of that restaurant looked gray and boring. My guts knew this, but my mind denied it.

I found myself back in the restaurant for Thursday's lunch, pretending that I only came to express my apologies to Big Ben for not joining him for the meal, pretending that I would not drink the wine, not participate in the lottery.

When I arrived, nobody seemed surprised, least of all Ben. I was greeted by smiles and calls of 'Newsboy' by many of the guests, and felt immediately at home. After all, we all had something very basic in common.

The meal proceeded in what I now understood was the usual fashion. A bit of socializing until the requisite one hundred guests had shown up, and we were seated. I sat with Ben, and we ate the appetizer, which I now realized was pickled meat from a previous winner.

I finished my appetizer quickly. I watched Ben slowly savoring his bit of pickled human. I regretted having eaten mine so quickly. After all, it may have been the last solid food I would ever eat, so I may as well have enjoyed it for as long as possible.

I found myself eyeing Big Ben with a professional eye. Would all that fat give his meat that marbled effect that is so prized in steak? Or would it be sloppy external fat that would be trimmed off, and his meat tough and useless?

And how to cook - that was a serious question. Steaks should be grilled, of course, but how about those thick thighs? Slow cooking in a casserole seemed right for them. I wondered about having him roasted whole, with an apple or something in his mouth. It didn't seem right though. Too barbaric. This was a civilized restaurant, after all.

Big Ben looked up as he finished the last morsel of human pastrami.

"You have that hungry look – thinking what it would be like to savor a slice of your's truly."

He raised a hand to stop my budding protest.

"Don't be concerned. We all do it. You look a bit thin to me, but you'd do fine deep fried.

"We had a fellow here a few months back who was an eyeball freak. I don't know why he liked them. Most of us wouldn't touch a fish eyeball, let alone a cow eyeball. But this guy always insisted on having the eyeballs. He tried them every which way. Deep fried, stuffed, as a pâté. When his day came, I had his eyeballs. Pretty disgusting, frankly. Stick with the steak or fried liver, if you ask me."

I smiled weakly at him, caught out in my wandering thoughts.

"Well, everybody is in the same boat. No telling who will be chewing and who will be chewed in an hour or two."

It was time for the toast. I felt my heart rate accelerate as the waiters brought out the drinks. I had some sky-diving experience, and the tension of waiting to jump out of the plane was nothing compared to what I now felt.

The drinks were on the table, as were our lives. The toast was about to be made. I reached for Ben's glass, and raised an eyebrow at him. He understood perfectly.

"Go ahead. Why not?"

I switched the glasses. The toast rang out.

"To Slims, a man of good taste."

We drank.

We spent the next twenty minutes in small talk. The weather, the island, "President" Hardly Fine, the news. As the time wore on I started scanning the room, looking for the first signs of weakness, someone slouching over their plate. My shirt was soaked with sweat. I was surreptitiously looking over my shoulder when I heard a loud thump right in front of me. A murmur raveled around the room.

"Big Ben, a man of good taste."

I was shocked. Despite the fact that I had come to play the game, to take my chances with the rest of the diners/dinners, I had convinced myself that on some level I wasn't really part of the game, that I was somehow beyond it. But here it was – if I hadn't switched glasses, I would now be on the way to the kitchen. My throat would be slit, my life's blood drained in a moment. A sharp knife would slit me from groin to neck, my guts scooped out – well, there is no need to go into more detail.

I ordered the liver, and pondered my position. My tour of duty in the Islands was due to end in a week. I could visit the restaurant one more time. So the risk was minimal. It really was only one in a hundred. I had no plans to come back to the islands, so the temptation to keep playing wouldn't exist.

It didn't take long to convince myself. Even though this would be my third visit to the restaurant, the excitement, if anything, had grown. The fact that I had consciously decided to return didn't change a thing. I could do this a hundred times, and still get the same adrenalin kick.

My flight out was early Friday morning, so I could just fit in one more 'last supper' before my flight.

I sat with 'Superman'. I had noticed him during my previous meals, a fellow who spent a lot of time working out. He was a meaty fellow, and looked like his steaks would be quite tasty, unlike Big Ben, who may have been a man of good taste, but didn't taste very good.

The ceremony followed the usual pattern. Big Ben's fatty pastrami was brought out. This time I chewed slowly. You should enjoy every one of your meals – you don't know which one will be your last.

At first I tried to remain calm, but then I admitted to myself that I was there for the adrenalin rush, so I may as well let it flow and enjoy it.

The drinks came out. I was tempted to switch the drinks once again, but I hardly knew Superman, and there was a bit of intimacy involved in exchanging these lottery tickets, these death drinks.

The toast rang out: 'To Big Ben, a man of good taste!', and we downed our drinks.

Superman, though he was talkative enough before the drinks came out, clammed up completely once the toast had been made. He sat still and watched my face. I tried to avoid staring back. I kept glancing over the room, to see who had keeled over, even though it was too early for the drug to have taken effect.

Finally I gave in, and stared right back at him. In only a few minutes the lottery would be over, and presumably this staring game as well. Superman's eyes were dilated, as if he was on some hallucinogen. His face grew red, and his breath became shallow. I found my lungs matching his, quick, shallow breaths, breaths that left me hungry for more oxygen.

Unlikely as it seemed, it looked like for the second time running my dinner partner would become my dinner. Our breaths grew shallower and shallower. His face became puffy and round, perfectly round. It was round as a plate. I wasn't looking at him anymore – I was staring at my plate.

As I collapsed, I heard him murmur.

"Newsboy, a man of good taste."

The waiters carted me off to the kitchen. I hadn't spent much time in commercial kitchens, but I knew that this one was different. One side of the kitchen was taken up with what was normally confined to the slaughterhouse and butcher shop.

The kitchen staff was methodical. They stripped off my clothing, not even allowing me the dignity of underpants. A young fellow tied a rope around my legs, and attached the other end to a winch. When he was sure that it was attached securely, he grabbed a small control box, and switched on the winch. He stopped it when my head was a few inches above the drainage grate that formed the floor of this part of the kitchen.

The young fellow knelt down, grabbed my hair, and pulled my head back. An older man, who I took to be his boss, knelt as well, and keeping well out of the way of the spurting blood, drew a long sharp blade across my throat. The spurting subsided once my heart gave up on beating, but they let me hang there a few minutes longer to drain.

When the flow had slowed down to a slow dripping, the young butcher slit my abdomen open from groin to sternum, without lowering me from the winch. My guts spilled out, and he pulled them away, looking for my liver and pancreas, which were considered delicacies.

Once I was lowered and flayed, the steaks and roasts were easy enough to remove. Testicles were snipped of with a pair of kitchen scissors. When I was alive, it hadn't occurred to me that I could order brains. They are easy to remove if you have the right tools like this kitchen did.

I could go on and explain how my liver was sliced and fried, or how my tongue was pulled out and pickled. I could, but I won't. Frankly, it would be totally tasteless. And, as you know, I am a man of good taste.

### A Modest Meal

"Oh, Mom, not Korean Ground again."

"Honey, you know we always have meatloaf on Sundays."

"Yeah, but I like Triple-R. Korean Ground has bits of chewy stuff in it. They think that we won't notice it when it's all ground up like that, but I can tell. That stringy stuff gets stuck in my teeth."

Elaine smiled to herself. She preferred 'Triple-R', Romanian Rump Roast too. Who wouldn't? But who could afford luxury every day?

"Well, Davy, would you really like to have the same thing every day?"

"Yeah, Triple R for breakfast, lunch and dinner, every day of the week!"

"You'd never get bored of having the same thing every day?"

"Never!"

"You'd never miss, say, those nice German sausages, just to pick a random example? The ones I fry up with onions?"

"Well, um, maybe we could have those sometimes, like weekends..."

"Or those Norwegian cold cuts, on rye bread with mustard?"

"OK, Mom, I get the picture. But still, I wouldn't mind skipping this Korean stuff. What make it so tough?"

"I don't know. I guess they make it out of older animals, so their meat is tougher."

"So why do we have to eat it?"

Elaine believed in being honest with her son. He was old enough to understand that the McManus family wasn't wealthy.

"Well, frankly it's cheap. We can't afford to eat the best meat every night. So some days we just make do with Korean meat loaf."

"OK. Hey – can we have French Fries tomorrow to make up for tonight?"

"Sure honey. A lot of good protein in those."

Davy doused his meat loaf with ketchup, though he knew that flavor wasn't the problem, texture was. In fact, he kind of liked the taste of the Korean stuff, that weird fishy aftertaste. His Mom once explained to him that it had to do with what they fed the animals. A lot of fish and seafood, and the meat ended up tasting a bit fishy.

If his Dad had a better job, then maybe they could have better food, like Randy's family. They lived in a big house on the other side of Clinton Street, and they always had Chinese Chops, Moroccan Roast and West African Spare Ribs. They wouldn't allow sausages or ground meat in their house at all.

"Mom, I'm thinking of becoming a vegetarian."

"Really now. Just a moment ago you were being so picky about what kind of meat we eat, and now you want to stop eating meat altogether."

"Well, Darius has become a vegetarian."

"Isn't he a year older than you?"

"Yeah, but we hang out together. His class went to see a slaughterhouse, and ever since he won't touch meat."

"They took them to a slaughterhouse? That's awful! Why?"

"Their teacher wanted to be buddy-buddy with the class, and offered to take them on a field trip to wherever they wanted to go. She probably figured that they would want to see some sex show, but instead they asked to see a slaughterhouse."

"Well, I am sure that it is a disturbing sight. I'm surprised that only one kid turned into a vegetarian after that."

"Well, about half of the class did. I only mentioned Darius 'cause you know who he is."

"Well, just because the way some food is prepared looks pretty awful doesn't mean you have to stop eating it. All it means is that you shouldn't go watching it being made."

"Darius has joined a vegetarian club."

"He joined the crazies, huh? He'll outgrow it."

"He goes to their meetings. He says things like 'Animals are our friends. Please don't eat our friends.'"

"Nice slogan, but it doesn't really mean much. Do you have any animal friends?"

"No."

"Of course not, honey. They don't even talk. How could you make friends with them?"

"Darius says that they do talk. We just don't understand them, that's all."

"They make noises, but they don't really talk. They just signal each other, like 'danger!' or 'food', or ' want to mate with me?' Nothing beyond that."

"Darius says that they really talk, and if we could only understand them we would find out that they talk a lot like us. Not only that, he says that they look like us too. They have faces like we do. Well, more or less. They have mouths, ears, noses and eyes, even if they aren't quite the same as ours."

"Davy, all mammals have the same basic parts, because we are all related. But that doesn't change the fact that there is a difference between humans and other animals."

"I guess you're right, Mom. But maybe we can at least stop eating meat at breakfast? Like a symbolic thing?"

"You'd give up on Polish bacon?"

"Yes. Let's just have cornflakes for breakfast. I'll bet that fatty bacon isn't healthy to eat anyhow."

His mom smiled at the twisted use of one of her own arguments.

"Sure, let's give it a try."

When Davy came downstairs the next morning, he found his mother cheerfully frying Polish Bacon. The smell filled the kitchen. Davy went straight to the table, where a bowl of cornflakes and a carton of bovine milk awaited him.

"Good morning, Davy. Sure you won't have some?"

"That's OK, Mom. Cornflakes for me today."

Davy sat down, poured some milk on his cornflakes, and started eating. They tasted fine. Crunchy, just like the edges of the bacon, but, well not quite like bacon. They smelled good too. Though the smell of the bacon was much stronger. In fact, he could hardly taste the cornflakes. The aroma of bacon, good Polish bacon, assailed his nostrils, and the cornflakes just couldn't compete.

Davy closed his eyes and tried to imagine that he was actually eating bacon. It only made it worse. Why did his Mom insist on frying them right now? He knew his Dad liked to eat a traditional breakfast, but why couldn't she have waited until he was done eating his bowl of cereal?

His Mom added Spicy Lebanese Links to the frying pan. They sizzled, and Davy thought he would lose his mind. He ate his cornflakes as fast as he could and fled the kitchen.

"Got to catch my bus!"

"You've got plenty of time."

Davy ignored his mother and ran out of the house to catch his bus.

Elaine managed to get her son and husband out of the house, dressed, and went off to her part-time job in the library. The work didn't pay well, but the hours were good. She could see her men out of the house in the morning, and usually was home before Davy came back from school.

On the way home she stopped at the butcher and bought some frozen French Fries. The butcher would cut up fresh ones for you, but the fresh ones cost more, and Elaine didn't think that anybody would be able to tell the difference under all of the salt and ketchup anyway.

When she got home, she tidied up the house a bit. She could get quite a bit done in that magic hour between coming home and when Davy showed up. She'd fry up the French Fries just before dinner. They were always better straight from the deep fryer. She managed to clean up the kitchen and vacuum the rugs when the screen door banged and Davy came in.

"Take off your shoes, honey. I just vacuumed the rug."

Davy liked playing soccer during recess, and he knew that his school shoes were always dirty.

"OK, Mom."

He came into the kitchen in his socks. His traditional after-school hot chocolate was ready on the table.

Elaine smiled watching him drink. It seemed a bit primitive, but food remained a central part of family life, and she felt pleasure in preparing food for her family. In some ways humans hadn't really changed since the days of cavemen, huddled around a smoky fire eating burnt food.

"Learn anything new in school today?"

Davy slurped noisily at the hot chocolate.

"Not really. The English teacher tried teaching us something new, but hardly anybody understood her. She called it 'satire'."

Elaine sighed. They really expected too much out of the kids these days. First the trip to the slaughterhouse, and now they expected them to understand satire.

"Didn't she explain what satire is?"

"Sure. She said it wasn't meant to be believed. That it was an exaggerated version of reality."

He pronounced 'exaggerated', a word he didn't often use, slowly and deliberately.

"She said that when somebody writes satire they want you to laugh, they want to show that some idea that people have is silly. None of us really understood what she was talking about."

Typical of teachers today. They could hardly teach concrete facts these days, let alone abstract ideas.

"Well, didn't she give you an example?"

"Yeah. Everybody thought that it was completely serious. Darius even threw up when he read it."

"Can I see it, the example?"

"Sure."

Davy rummaged in his knapsack, and pulled out a few wrinkled sheets. Elaine read them slowly. It was a classic bit of satire, one that she had read in school, though when she was a bit older than Davy was now. She remembered that half of the class didn't really 'get it'. She also remembered that there was one paragraph, the punch-line, if you like, that triggered angry responses.

Sure enough, there it was, Jonathan Swift's famous bit of satire:

I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.

Help Me Die

Here you are, back in your study. You've opened your Bible, the one that has served you so well for many decades. You know every page, every bookmark. You know that drops of coffee have stained Samuel, right where David kills Goliath:

Then said David to the Philistine, Thou comest to me with a sword, and with a spear, and with a shield: but I come to thee in the name of the LORD of hosts, the God of the armies of Israel, whom thou hast defied.

The coffee stains seem to be blood stains, Goliath's lifeblood, dripped thick and red on the page, aged and faded to these brown spots three thousand years later.

You have opened your Bible to a different page now. One of your favorite parts in the Old Testament. How do I know? I know more about you than you yourself know. You are on the page where Elijah is about to go up to the heavens in a whirlwind. The power of those words! But there are more words here than you bargained for. Somebody has written this message in the margins of your Bible. Yes, the one Bible that you have not marked up with highlighter, the one you have never scribbled notes in. Now somebody else has defaced it.

The somebody else is me. I needed to get your attention, because what I am going to tell you is important, critically important to me, but only terribly important to you.

So who am I? How did I get into the locked study of a Bishop and manage to scribble this nonsense in his Bible?

It is worse than you think. I took your Bible out of your office, took it to my home, if you can call it that, made my notes and replaced it on your shelf. So I am writing this in my office, not in yours, and I invaded your office twice.

The first thing to understand is that I am not, strictly speaking, alive. I am not quite dead either. You see, there is a special place for those of us who did not quite manage to die. A purgatory of sorts, if you like, though I prefer to see this as a waiting room. There are a few permanent residents here, some of whom you may have heard of.

We have ended up (I use the term "ended" a bit loosely) here for various reasons. But there is one main reason that we stay here. People believe that we are not quite dead. Somehow, that belief has affected our reality.

To be honest, everybody goes through here at some point. The moment you die, no matter how sudden your death may have been, you reach this place. Most go through here very quickly. They look like flickering ghosts to us. Flick in from life, flick out to death. They are constantly in the background. You learn to ignore them after a while.

Occasionally some poor soul spends more time here. There Joe is, stretched out on the table, the surgeon wielding the scalpel, the anesthesiologist watching his vital signs, when – oops! Something's off. The medical team gets busy with resuscitation, and we have a visitor for a few minutes.

This is one of the few forms of entertainment that we get here. It isn't as much fun as you would think. They arrive here pretty befuddled, and usually don't sober up before they are gone - back to life, or on to death. We take turns approaching them, trying to talk to them, but it is not much use. If they die, then they are gone. If they live, all that they remember is a "near death" experience. Usually they think that they see Jesus, while it just as easily could be me, or Elvis. People see what they want to see.

So you are dying to know who else is here, I suppose. Mostly gods that die and come back. A few heroes. Some of them are getting kind of hazy. How many people today believe that Osiris dies and is reborn? Still, there must be a few, since he is still here. I will tell you about a few of my neighbors in a bit.

So, is this note for real? Well, there are two possibilities. One is that this is some kind of hoax. Though you must wonder how anybody broke into your office here without being seen. The other is that it is true. By the time I am done, you will have heard enough about yourself to realize that I must be telling the truth, and you will at least consider helping me. Yes, I do need your help.

How can you help me? I'll explain in a bit – but first you should know something about my own life, my biography. By the way, "bio" comes from the Latin for "life". So can I use the term to describe my experiences after I, if not quite dead, was not really alive? Hopefully the word police won't catch me, and I will call it a biography. As Humpty Dumpty said: "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean--neither more nor less."

Well, I was a famous Rabbi in my time. Though I should be careful about tenses, since, in many ways, I am still quite famous, and my time is not really over.

I was born in a Hassidic sect, one that you may have heard of. You know about Hassidim, I imagine. But what you know is mostly that they dress funny. There is a lot more to it than that, and you'll have to understand something about them before you can understand how I ended up here, not quite dead, but not alive either.

Hassidim come in different brands, but they have some things is common. For one, they have a mystical view of the world. The other thing is that they have a leader, a holy person who is their special Rabbi.

They will ask their Rabbi for advice, on just about anything. Sometimes about Jewish law, but just as often about marriage, health, business – you name it. The Rabbi is holy, practically a prophet, and his advice is considered to be inspired.

The Rabbi is more than that. He is, for all practical purposes, the prince of his followers. King of the sect. He is supported by the community. When he enters a crowded room, the crowd splits like the Red Sea and lets him through. At the wave of his hand, they will sing a song, or bring him a drink. When he dies, his son inherits the position.

This is where I came in. My father was not the Rabbi of my sect. Though I was a direct descendant of the founder of our group, the inheritance had gone down a different branch. So I didn't have the honor, or the burden – for a burden it certainly was.

So I had a more or less normal youth. I studied the ancient texts, but also learned many other topics. By the time I was eighteen, I could speak four languages, and went off to study engineering at the university in Berlin. And I must admit I had a great time there. It was my first real exposure to the larger world, and to other people. Sure, I kept up the traditions of my people. I prayed every day, and was careful to eat only kosher food. Still, there was nothing to prevent me from enjoying a beer or two or even three with my new acquaintances. Considering that these were one-liter beer tankards, I probably should have limited myself to one.

Still, when you are young you can afford to do foolish things. I did have some nagging doubts in the back of my mind, but reality forced itself upon me. It was hard to think of the mystical world that underlies our day to day world when you are studying physics or enjoying a drink.

And there is a mystical world underlying the one that you see with your eyes. A mystical world that is real, even more real than the physical world that you are familiar with. I knew it all along, even though I chose to ignore it. In this real world there is a constant struggle between good and evil, pure and impure, a struggle in which men can participate, on either side.

How can men help in the struggle? By collecting the sparks of holiness, scattered during the creation of the universe, and returning them to God. When the task is complete, we will be in the Messianic age. The very nature of the world will change once the terrible tension between good and evil is relieved.

That is reality. Or so I believed when I was alive.

So, here I was, enjoying life, and pretty much ignoring the deeper, true meaning of the world around me. I was forgetting that the world of the cosmic struggle was not a separate world, but overlaps our own, and affects everything that happens here.

Well, that cosmic reality struck home when the Nazis started parading around Berlin. A beer hall was no longer a good place for a Jew to be hanging around in. The forces of evil were gaining strength. I was aware of this, but did it make me abandon my studies, and devote myself to the cosmic struggle? No. Not at all. I knew that the great Hassidic Rabbis would be trying to deal with it, but it was not my worry, not my burden.

So, off I went to Paris to continue my studies. I was sobered by the events in Germany, but still able to concentrate on my own life, still able to at least pretend that the events in Germany would not change my life.

Paris, I have to admit, was a lot more fun than Berlin. Fun is good, but more fun also means more temptation.

Beer, though uncommon in Paris, was still my preferred drink. Wine is a bit problematic for observant Jews, since we only drink Kosher wine, so I was missing out on one of the major attractions of the Parisian life. I made up for not drinking the French wine by learning how to drink whiskey and especially vodka. My father had liked the occasional shot of vodka, but as a child I couldn't stand the stuff. In Paris I developed a real taste for the clear spirit. It didn't take much before I felt happy. Another shot and I was ecstatic. One shot more and I forgot how many I had had.

I recall only one occasion were I actually passed out and my friend had to drag me home. Usually I managed to stop before that, though not before I would say or do stupid things. And here is where I have to mention the other great temptation – women.

Oh, I was very holy-minded, sometimes even more so when drunk, but there was a middle stage of mild inebriation where inhibitions dropped away like flies struck by DDT. When I reached that stage I was as susceptible as the next fellow to the attractions of the gentler sex, especially to those of Leah, a young Jewess, who mysteriously (I thought) showed up nearly every time I was out having a break from my studies.

Leah laughed at the contrast in my life. The young Hasid, studying in Paris and getting drunk with the best of the Gentiles. I enjoyed her teasing, though I knew that she was right. I had known her for over a year when I made one of the first major errors of my life.

The political situation had gone downhill very rapidly, and I decided to leave Europe altogether. There was a ship leaving in a few days, and I wrapped up my affairs as well as I could, and then went out for one last night on the town with my friends.

Naturally enough, Leah was at the establishment we frequented, and as you may imagine, the combination of emotions, drink and hormones did the trick, and I spent the night in Leah's room.

Oh, I was appalled at myself in the morning, but I shouldn't have been surprised. If I had been a bit more aware of myself I would have realized that that would be the natural outcome of my time in Paris.

Well, as things turned out, I had to pack and leave, and I never saw Leah again. Many years later I discovered what had happened to her, but we will get to that in due time.

It was a long, arduous voyage from France to the U.S. There was only limited information in the news, and none that was comforting. When I reached New York, I was met by a relative of mine, who was at that point the leader of our Hasidic sect. He took me into his home, and helped me get set up in my new world.

He didn't have any sons, which was a great concern to his followers. Who would succeed him? Would they be left without a leader? There already was a group like that, and they were sometimes called the "Dead Hasidim". There was a daughter, but women could never fulfill the role of Rebbe. It was completely unthinkable. As far as anybody could tell, there was no solution.

In the meantime, I became interested in the Rebbe's daughter, Rachel. Beautiful, shy, bright and strictly religious. This was the right kind of girl for me.

I did my best to put Leah out of my mind, and when the time seemed proper, asked for her hand. At the time I only thought that I had found my "beshirt", my intended one.

In due course we were married. I had found part time work, but spent the bulk of my time studying the religious texts in the Hasidic seminary, which back then was about a dozen guys in a small room with poor heating and little ventilation.

Life went on. I was fairly happy, though beginning to wonder why Rachel hadn't become pregnant after months of marital bliss. Then disaster struck- actually two disasters that changed my life.

The first was my own, personal disaster, or at least I thought so. My father-in-law suddenly died. I had been close to him, and took his death badly. Rachel was a wreck. The Hasidim were beyond themselves with grief and worry about their future.

Then news of the Holocaust started trickling in. It was nearly impossible to digest the size of the tragedy. Even I, who had fled Europe just a few years earlier, had not expected anything this bad. How could it have happened?

Europe's Jewry was gone. Nearly everybody had lost relatives there. People wandered around with the last letters that they had received from their relatives, tears in their eyes. There were some survivors, lists of them were being published, but they were few, so few.

Were we, the few Jews left in America all that was left of thousands of years of tradition? The sense of responsibility was powerful. So many American Jews were no longer keeping their ancient traditions.

This only increased the tension among the Hasidim. They needed a leader, and at this time of great need their leader had died with no successor. It didn't take long before I was approached. I was shocked. And I refused. Again, and again. But they kept it up. There was one other possible candidate, but not one that anybody could look up to. I was a direct descendant of one of the previous Rabbis, the last Rabbi's son-in-law, and well known from my time spent in the Seminary. The pressure to take the position was huge.

I think that I would have resisted the pressure, if it wasn't for the news out of Europe. As it was, the need for a leader was so great, that I had no choice but to fill the role.

So there I was, proud leader of a small group of poor Orthodox Jews in New York. Even after we were joined by refugees from Europe, there were still only about two hundred families in our group. There was much to be done, and very little to do it with. But the work had to get done.

At this point I realized that my mission was not just to help out a few families. The disaster that had struck in Europe was not an isolated incident. It was part of the cosmic struggle that underlay everything in this world. I needed to mobilize my people, get them to spread out and help in the basic struggle. We couldn't rest until we succeeded, until we managed to bring the Messiah.

Yes, the Messiah. This was the second of my major mistakes. You can work to improve things without invoking that dream. Though it was easier to get people motivated with a dream like that. In any case, at the time it was my own dream, not just a means of motivating my people. And motivate them I did. I sent them all over the world, to teach lost Jews about their heritage, to set up schools and synagogues. They caught Jews in the street and had them do something Jewish, just one thing, so they would remember their heritage. They went through the phone books in remote towns, looking for the Jewish names, and calling them up, inviting themselves over.

The movement grew, slowly at first, and then faster as we passed some critical point. There were tens of thousands of us. Millions identified us with authentic Judaism. We had made a huge impact – but there were two things missing. One was the Messiah. We had worked so hard, and yet there was no sign of the Messiah showing up. The second thing that was missing was a child. We were childless. We didn't know if the problem was with Rachel or with me, and Rachel's child-bearing years were long over before the modern methods of tests and fertility treatments had been developed.

I started talking a lot about the Messiah, how he was going to arrive soon, very soon. My followers took this very seriously, and went a step further. Remember that the Rabbi is a prince to his followers, and that the Messiah is king of all of the Jews. The jump from a prince to a king is not that large. So the belief that I was the Messiah, and would soon reveal myself, started to be popular among the Hasidim.

Elvis has been sitting here with me while I write, and notes that being identified as "King" is easier than you would think. Getting labeled "King" was easy for Jesus too, though his experience was not exactly fun. To this day he curses himself for showing himself to a few of his followers a few days after his crucifixion. This resulted in millions believing that he is not quite dead, and it is unlikely that he will ever get out of here.

Elijah is off on one of his jaunts, so I am not sure what he thinks about this. Elijah is a special case, though. I think that he is the only one who actually enjoys his position here, and would prefer to stick around, rather than go off to whatever death brings, like the rest of us would like. Otherwise he wouldn't keep showing himself on Earth, a practice which only increases the belief that he never really died, and makes it very unlikely that he will ever manage to get out of here.

I am in pretty bad shape myself here. It could be a long time before I can go on to the next stage, whatever that is. Easily hundreds, maybe thousands of years. I only see one way out, a way that you can help me with.

But let me finish my story first, and then you will see how you can help me.

As I was saying, my followers started believing that I was the Messiah. Someone found an ancient text that suggested that the Messiah would be childless, which fit me perfectly. So instead of being "dead Hasidim", they would be Hasidim with the Messiah as their leader. At first I thought the whole idea was silly. I worried that if I wasn't revealed as the Messiah, then my followers would go through a crisis, and much of what we had built would be lost.

Over time, though, the idea started looking more realistic to me. For one thing, it would wrap up the picture so neatly – the Holocaust, the childless leader, the young Jewish state. I dived deeper into the mystical writings, and found evidence that the time had come. It was the time, and I was the man. Still, I hesitated. Who could be sure? We had wrong so many times. Bar Kochba, Shabbetai Tzvi, Jesus – who could be sure?

So the belief grew popular, and, though I didn't encourage it, I never came out and denied it either. And then one final disaster occurred.

It was a visit. A visit by a woman. A non-Jewish woman to boot. It was not easy to get a personal interview with me. There were events when people would line up by the hundreds so they could just shake my hand and receive a blessing. But a private interview had to be arranged through my secretaries, and they were jealous of my time. So this woman must have been extraordinarily persistent to get a twenty minute slot with me.

The scene has been burned into my mind ever since. She was ushered into my office. My secretary closed the door, though he left it slightly ajar, to avoid any hint of impropriety. Considering that my guest was an elderly woman, not much younger than myself, it was hardly necessary. She sat down in the leather-upholstered chair across from my desk. Hundreds had sat in that chair, waiting for my advice on so many matters. She looked nervous, nervous in a different way than the usual guest. I wondered what she wanted.

"I am not Jewish", she started out, "I have come to tell you something that you don't know, something very personal about your own life."

She glanced at the door, mutely suggesting that I close it completely. I waved her concern aside.

"Nobody will listen at the door. It would be considered a tremendous disrespect."

"Well, then. I don't have easy way to say this, so I will get right to the point. I am a nun, yes, a Catholic nun. You are surprised – what could I possibly want from you? What could I possibly tell you that would interest you?

"I belong to an order called the Sisters of Zion. A group that was started by a former Jew, and whose goal is to explain about Judaism and the Jewish roots of Christianity to our fellow Catholics.

"I was a young nun in our Paris Convent when the Germans invaded France. We ran a school there, a well respected elementary school. Many of our students weren't Catholic – they came to us for a good education. Some were Jewish."

Her story was vaguely interesting. I had heard of these types of stories in the past. But what was so special about this that she had gone to all this trouble to see me?

"When the Germans invaded France, some of the Jewish parents left their daughters in our care. They stayed in the convent, and survived the war. Their parents didn't. Some of the girls left us when they grew up, but some stayed on, and became nuns themselves.

"Yes, now I am sure that I have your attention. But this is not the main point of my visit.

"One day a young Jewish woman came to the convent, begging us to take care of her infant. This was less than a year after the Germans had invaded. The infant was a boy. We normally would have avoided taking care of a small boy, but this was a difficult period, and we had no real alternative. I accepted the child. The mother left abruptly, tears streaming down her face. I never saw her again. The chances of her surviving those awful years were close to zero.

"The boy grew. By the time he was getting too old for the convent the war was over, and we managed to transfer him to a boarding school, in a monastery near Rennes. I was in touch with the monks there, and followed the child's progress. He was a highly intelligent child, and has grown into a very intelligent man, a man not unlike yourself in many ways. He has chosen to stay with the Church, and today he is a Bishop.

"Yes, I know that to you he is a lost soul, while to us he is a found soul. Still, I don't think that we have much to apologize for, considering the alternatives the child's mother had back in those days."

I noticed that a slight shiver, almost a chill, passed through her body whenever she mentioned "those days". She was right, hard as it was to admit. They had saved the boy's life, hidden him from the monsters. What could one say under these circumstances? I stroked my beard, an old nervous habit, and nodded at her to continue. She looked to the side for a moment, gathered her courage, and went on.

"This would be the end of the story, if it wasn't for one small thing. The mother had handed me a small handwritten note. She said 'if there are any Jews left when this is over, then you will find somebody who can read this'. Those were her last words before she left.

"I kept the note for many years. It was in Hebrew, so I had no chance to read it myself. If I have sinned, it was in not finding someone to read it for me earlier. When I was told that the child was going to be a Bishop, I realized that I had put it off for too long. That I owed it to the mother, may God rest her soul, to have the note read."

She made a noticeable effort to avoid crossing herself when she said 'God rest her soul.'

"I found a colleague, a scholar who had studied Hebrew at the Sorbonne, who could read it for me. The note had two names on it. That of the mother, and that of the father."

Without any further ado, she handed me the note. I turned on my desk lamp to see it better. It was an old, yellowing sheet of paper, folded too many times so that it was torn on the creases. The writing was faded but still readable under the lamp.

There were in fact two Hebrew names. That of the mother, Leah. And that of the father. It was my name.

Leah had had a child from that ill-advised night we spent together! There was little doubt about it. My name is unusual, and the timing was about right. That meant I had a son! But a son who was a Catholic Bishop!

My head was lost in a flurry of thoughts. My emotions ran wild. All of those childless years, and it turned out that I had a son. But a Bishop. My blood raced. My heart pounded. My vision became blurry. I tried to speak, to ask my guest a question, but my lips couldn't form the words. My head slumped forward, and I collapsed on my desk.

The next thing I remember was waking up in a hospital. It took me a while to get my bearings, but I understood that I had had a major stroke.

I took me months to recover, but it was only a partial recovery. I never walked again, and I never spoke again. The woman who had brought me that note had disappeared, and there was no way to even ask what had happened to her. I couldn't control my fingers well enough to write a note.

My followers didn't let my stroke get in their way. They said that my suffering was a necessary part of the Messianic process. I had no way of cooling their fervor, which reached a feverous pitch before I died.

When I died, I assumed that they would give up on my being the Messiah. After all, dead Messiah's are a Christian thing, not a Jewish one. I was wrong.

My death didn't cool off anybody's belief. If anything, the opposite occurred. There was a regular frenzy among my followers. Being dead was a minor problem for the Messiah! Besides which, I wasn't really dead at all. I had gone temporarily into the other world, to straighten out a few mystical matters before coming back to herald in the Messianic age.

That is what my followers thought. But I found myself in a bind. Here I was in this purgatory, with no way out. Elvis and Jesus are OK, but it is not much company for eternity. And it looked like it would be an eternity, or close enough that it didn't matter. Jesus was stuck here for two thousands years already, with no end in sight. There was no reason to think that my followers wouldn't hold out for a good long time. There was no way out!

But there was a way. Just a chance, but it might work. I needed to change my followers' belief. If it turned out that I was not the last of my line, that there was an heir to the throne, so to speak, then I would not have to be alive in their minds, and the whole thing would settle down.

Yes, the fact that my son is a Bishop could be a problem. But a child, born as a Jew, now a Bishop, who returned to his roots and took his father's place? It might just work. It seemed to be the only chance that I would have. Once my son had died my last door to a proper death would be slammed shut. As it was, it was only open a crack.

You are reading this, and wondering what to make of this story. I know that it seems weird. I am hoping that the weirdness has kept your attention, but I know that it will not convince you.

I am asking a very difficult thing. To leave your faith, leave the honored position that you have worked so long to reach. And all of that just to help your dead father, a father whom you have never met, whose very existence was unknown to you until a few minutes ago. Why should you believe this?

I am aware of this problem. I have thought this through very carefully.

There is one person who can help me convince you. You may find it interesting to speak with him. He will convince you that this letter is true, that you should leave the Church, and present yourself to the Hasidim. Once you are convinced, I can help you convince the Hasidim. But first I need to convince you.

When you are done reading this, you will hear a knock on the door. Open the door. You will see a dark, short, middle-aged man with a hooked nose. There is no need to be afraid – it is only Jesus, helping out a friend.

### Anatomy Lab

He stood in front of the mirror, foam on his face, razor in hand. It was hard to imagine a world without safety razors. To the best of his knowledge, his father had never used one. The last one in the family to use a straight razor was probably his grandfather. He had no memory of his grandfather shaving, but he could imagine him honing the blade on a leather strap, slowly pulling the blade across his cheek, carefully running it over his neck.

There would be a shaving brush, and a cup of foamy soap that he would spread on his face. There would be a styptic pencil to stop the inevitable bleeding, or perhaps little bits of toilet paper stuck on the wounds. He wouldn't have cut himself daily, but surely often enough that it was real bother. That blade, after all, had to be really sharp to shave with.

All-in-all he was glad that the safety razor had been invented. It was still possible to nick yourself, but it had to be a lot better than in the old days, when every clean-shaven man essentially took a carving knife to his neck every morning.

Knives. You use them all of your life, yet they mean something very different when you are a medical student. It was true of most tools. Suddenly knives, scissors, even saws looked different, only because you were now aware of their multiple uses.

He had been a bit nervous that first day in the anatomy lab. Everybody was. Most people don't see dead bodies, certainly not naked, cold, bare ones. Sure, you went to your old uncle's funeral, and if your family was into open caskets, there was Uncle Jimmy! But he was dressed and made-up, and, well, not really dead. Just on his way to heaven, but not dead like the chicken at the butcher's or road-kill, some deer that didn't get out of the way of your SUV in time.

The dead in the anatomy lab, though, were really dead. And the lab, in some ways, was a butcher shop.

When you first walked in, your immediate impression was the god-awful smell. They had gotten away from formaldehyde as a preservative, but the chemical smell was still overpowering. The lab was a large room, well lit with fluorescent lamps, and supposedly well-ventilated. The cadavers were laid out on tables. There were about fifteen of them, each covered with a clear plastic sheet to prevent them from dehydrating. It would take weeks to finish the lab work, and if the body dehydrated, you would find yourself well-trained as a mummy dissector, but not as a physician or surgeon.

The bodies had identifying tags hanging on their big toes. What a strange thought on his first day! He worried that when they inevitably started working on the toe, the tag would fall off. It turned out that they never touched that toe. You didn't really need to do both arms, both legs, all ten toes. The students worked in small groups, though, and sometimes it made sense to work on both legs, say, so that more students got hands-on experience.

He had gotten through most of the semester without much problem. Sure, he avoided looking at the stiff's face. Most people did, until it was time to learn about the facial muscles, find the thyroid hiding in the neck, see what tonsils were really about. The cadavers all had pet names, of course. Some were rather lewd, but his group was pretty civilized, and had gone along with Suzy as a name for their subject, an elderly woman who had donated her body to science.

He stretched the skin on his face to meet the razor. It was hard to remember the names of the facial muscles. Everything was in Latin, as usual. Procerus, depressor supercilli, levator labii – which was which? Part was easy. Depressor moved something down, levator moved something up. But what were the supercilli?

He finished shaving, washed his face, and put on the usual aftershave. He always hoped that its smell would screen him from the stench in the lab, but the mild chemical odor of the lotion tended to remind his nose of the lab.

It was good living on campus, just a short walk away from the lecture halls and labs. Outside, at least, there was fresh air. He never took the elevator up to the third floor where the labs were, preferring the stairs. His fellow students were gathered around the lab door, exchanging pleasantries and the inevitable macabre joke. He sensed a bit more nervousness in the air than usual. They had gotten used to the idea, the smell, the mechanical reduction of humans to component pieces, like cars stripped down for their parts. Today, though, was face day. They had all diligently avoided looking at that most human part of the body, but today was the day when they would start. Skin would be peeled off, muscles exposed. The anatomy text showed the internal structure of the eye. There were some lively discussions as to whether they would actually slice open eyes themselves, or if that was one thing in the book that they would not actually do.

He followed the others into the room, grimacing as the stink hit him. After a while he would get used to it, and be able to work, but he would still be aware of the polluted air.

He joined the others around Suzy. One of the other students, a young fellow with a beard, ceremoniously pulled the plastic sheet off of what was left of Suzy. An open ribcage, some parts, carefully examined and identified, still in place, others removed to expose hidden organs. And today, the face.

He had the feeling all along that somehow, unlikely as it may seem, Suzy would turn out to be somebody that he knew. It was a common phobia among the students, often joked about. A nightmare that never came true. He forced himself to look at the face, the owner of the body he had been desecrating for so many weeks.

She did look vaguely familiar. It was bit hard to be sure. The preserved cadavers didn't look the same as living people. It was easy to be fooled. Still, that turn of the chin, the sharp nose. It couldn't be, yet...

He found himself on the floor, looking up at concerned faces. Medical students knew enough not to crowd around and dump water on somebody who fainted. The instructor spoke to him. He answered. Yes, he felt weak. He would be OK in a minute. No, he wasn't sick. It was just the shock. Yes, shock. You won't believe it, but "Suzy" is my grandmother.

Pale, shocked faces. A nightmare come true. He was sent home with a friend, along with a promise that tomorrow he could work with another group, a different body. The statistics were wild. It was highly unlikely to know the person that you were taking scissors and scalpel to. The cadavers were traded around between cities and states, just to avoid this situation. Who was to know that that would be his grandmother's last trip from Atlanta to Detroit? How would he be able to keep this horrible secret? It would destroy his mother.

Best not to talk about it, not to think about it at all. Tomorrow he would gather up his courage as best as he could, and start on the next one. It had to be tomorrow. If he put it off any further he would never be able to go back to the lab.

He closed the door to his room, assuring the concerned face that he would be OK. A hot shower, the smell washed away, his mind clear, just the hot water washing away the shock, washing away the memory.

He dried himself off, resisting the urge to give Latin names to the familiar parts of his body. He could dry his knees without naming them, and his balls were just balls, nothing else.

He managed a light supper, a couple pieces of toast with cream cheese, and crawled into bed, his mind blank.

He was in the lab again. It was late at night, maybe midnight. The room wasn't entirely dark. Light from the streetlamps made its way through the windows. As his eyes grew accustomed to the dim lighting he found that he could see fairly clearly. He was the only one in the room, not counting the cadavers. He could make out their shapes under the draped plastic sheeting.

He knew somehow that he was dreaming, but it didn't make it any less real. He went to a cadaver, lifted the plastic, and bent over to see the face hiding in its shadows. The stench assailed his nostrils. He stood up suddenly, and dropped the plastic back in place. Not because of the stench, but because he thought, was almost sure, that he knew that face.

He wanted to leave the room, but couldn't. A strange fascination drove him to the next body, to the next plastic sheet. He lifted up the plastic and peered at the face. This body lay in a darker corner of the room, and try as he would, he couldn't see the face very clearly. A wave of relief passed over him, and he became aware of his heavy breathing and sweaty forehead. He gradually relaxed and listened to his heart slowing down to a normal pace.

Just then a beam of light, perhaps the moon peeking through a hole in the clouds, or an odd reflection from an automobile headlight, fell directly on the unknown face.

He woke up, and glanced at the clock. Three o'clock in the morning. He had the uneasy feeling that somebody was watching him, that there were concerned cadaverous faces gathered around his bed. He flipped on his reading light to dispel the visions. He felt oddly damp. He pulled himself up on one elbow, and saw that his sheets were soaked with sweat. He would have to change them. But first he had to shower.

He took off his shorts and threw them on the bed. The whole mess would have to go into the wash. He stopped in the hallway, halfway to the shower. There was light from his room, enough that he could inspect himself in the full length mirror. He was certainly all there. He touched his face, rubbing the familiar muscles hiding under his skin. Procerus, depressor supercilli, levator labii.

He ran his hands lightly over his body, trying hard to not think of the Latin names. Funny how he had so much trouble remembering the names for an exam, but couldn't forget a single one when he actually wanted to forget.

His skin felt cool, but horribly sticky. He continued to the shower. There was always plenty of hot water, and the room was well-lit. In the shower he could forget everything, and just enjoy the animal pleasure of the running water pouring over his head.

Eventually he had to come out. He would have preferred to stay there forever. Isn't that a form of heaven – an endless hot shower? But is anything endless really that good?

He put on clean shorts, changed the sweaty sheets, but didn't go to bed. The thought of turning off the lights in that room, the possibility of a returning dream, of more faces, were too much for him.

He stayed in the living room, all the lights on, and watched the late night movies until it grew light outside and the early morning news shows came on. He dumped half a jar of instant coffee into a mug, added boiling water from his electric kettle, and added great heaping spoonfuls of sugar until it was obvious that no more could dissolve. He thought of adding some milk, but wasn't sure that it would improve the mess. Besides which, he hadn't been shopping in a while, and suspected that whatever milk he had was well on its way to becoming cheese.

He managed to drink most of the caffeine concentrate, and only then started wondering what the symptoms of a caffeine overdose were. It made no difference, though. He had already drunk it, and he couldn't afford to fall asleep in class. In class, or lab.

The morning routine. Again the shaving cream, the safety razor, skin stretched taut to meet the blade. The muscles under his skin, the familiar Latin names popping into his mind, Procerus, depressor supercilli, levator labii. Even the thoughts had become a routine. He was with his grandfather, watching him shave with that straight blade. He found himself holding the safety razor the wrong way, about to pull it sideways across his face, a move that would almost certainly result in a nasty cut. He paused, and inspected his drawn face in the mirror. Hopefully the caffeine would kick in soon, and he would stop daydreaming.

Classes. Disease, diagnoses, treatment. Very definitely not thinking about the lab. Time enough to feel nervous when the lab started.

Again the corridor, the waiting students, the nervous jokes. A few asked him how he was feeling, and smiled at him. He wasn't embarrassed. Anybody would have reacted the same way if it had turned out that they were dissecting their own grandmother.

The door opened, and the students filed in. He was with a new group today, with a body he hadn't paid much attention to before. He noticed that 'Suzy' was no longer there. Somebody had had the sense to remove her from the lab. They were still working on the head and neck.

One of the female students pulled the plastic off of "Roger's" head. He had never noticed the student before. She was a petite, pretty girl, whose reddish wavy hair reminded him of his sister. He hadn't thought that there were any cute medical students, but it seemed, happily, that he was wrong.

He took a good look at the cadaver's face, momentarily reassured that it definitely was not his grandmother. Not his grandmother, may she rest in peace. Bernie! How could it be Bernie? It was just his imagination. His brother was alive, or at least had been the last time they had spoken, only a week ago. How could he have died and ended up here without his having heard about it?

It was just his imagination. Like the song, just his imagination, running away with him. The best thing was to ignore it, and proceed like everything was fine. The cute girl asked if he would like to make the first cut. He felt honored, almost the master of the house carving the Thanksgiving turkey. He picked out a pair scissors from the drawer, and turned towards the body.

The mantra ran in his head. 'It's not Bernie. It's not Bernie.' He started snipping, cutting Bernie's face, exposing his facial muscles, reducing Bernie to a list of Latin names, Procerus, depressor supercilli, levator labii. Then the pretense broke down. It really was Bernie. Who was he fooling?

He remembered a dizzy feeling, and the pain of hitting the floor. Afterwards, he found himself in his room, on his bed. How long had he been there? Who had brought him there? He didn't know.

He heard a voice, vaguely familiar. It was the same voice that had suggested that he be the first one to dissect Bernie. The cute student had offered to stay with him until he woke up. He really wanted her to stay. It was a chance to talk to her. She had deliberately volunteered to be with him. He wished that he could like her, ask her to stay. But the voice only reminded him of Bernie, of the sound that the scissors made as he snipped through his own brother's skin. He had to figure out some polite way of getting her to leave, of convincing her that he was fine now, thanks for your help, appreciate the concern.

He had been so busy with his studies that he hadn't had much time to pay attention to the gentler sex. And here he was, alone with the only cute girl who had paid attention to him in the past ten months, and all he was concerned about was getting her to leave. Still, he had no choice. He didn't want her hanging around mothering him. Maybe tomorrow or the next day he could invite her out for coffee or something, just to thank her. Then there would be the possibility of a more normal relationship.

Hard to stop the daydreaming once it started. After all, he was a healthy young man, and it was perfectly natural to think about an attractive young woman, even to fantasize about her. Face the facts, he did have a very real interest in the female anatomy, as long as it wasn't presented to him stiff and cold under a plastic sheet, stinking of whatever they used these days to keep the cadavers from, well, stinking.

He knew that he was starting to obsess about the lab. He would just have to muddle his way through for the next few months. If he backed out now, he would just end up doing it all over again next semester, and it would mess up his schedule pretty badly.

He hadn't eaten properly in days. He should go down to one of the local restaurants the students frequented, and get himself a hot meal. He didn't want to. Either because he didn't want to eat by himself, or, contradictory as it may sound, he was afraid of meeting somebody that he knew. An expedition to the grocery store was more the thing. Some eggs, fresh bread, and some salad greens would be just the thing. Keeping his hands busy with kitchen tasks might help him forget what his hands had been busy doing in that lab.

On the way back from the grocery store, he walked by a small pharmacy. He had been in there on occasion, for the usual headache pills, toothpaste or the like. He was not into stay-awake pills, preferring to take his drug in its more natural liquid form, though one could question whether the coffee he made these days was liquid or more along the lines of hot instant coffee mud.

He paused by the store entrance, thinking he needed something, but not sure what. He walked in, figuring that if he needed something, he would recognize it inside the store. But what did he need? Possibly vitamin pills. Maybe that would make up for his lousy diet. A diet of caffeine and vitamin pills didn't seem right, and after all he had just bought some salad greens. He had plenty of soap and toothpaste, and unfortunately no need for condoms.

Ah. Shaving cream. That was it. He picked up his usual green can and, for the first time in many years, read part of the label. Recommended for both safety razors and straight razors. But who used straight razors these days? Either a few very old men, or some nuts who were convinced that they gave a better shave than the safety blades. He could see the attraction, the ceremony of honing the blade, the feeling that you were still slightly in control of technology. It was even better ecologically, using the same blade for years, rather than throwing out dozens of disposable safety razors.

Sure enough, this pharmacy sold straight blades. Made somewhere in Europe. He put down the can of foam, and picked up the blade, which looked so benign in its bubble pack. There were brief instruction on the back of the package on how to use the blade for a 'traditional smooth shave'. He liked the ring of that word – 'traditional'. Could shaving equipment give you a sense of roots? Well, it would be one thing that he would have in common with his grandfather.

If he was going to do this, he would have to do it properly. He picked up some shaving soap and a brush, and even found a special cup for mixing up the foam in. He left the store carrying his 'traditional' purchases, feeling oddly proud of himself, a man who had bought some roots in the local pharmacy.

When he got to his apartment, he dumped the bags on the kitchen table, and started getting organized for a decent meal. He washed the dirty dishes and set the table, even neatly folding a paper napkin and placing it next to his plate. A fork went on the napkin, and a dinner knife on the other side of the plate. You didn't need a very sharp knife for eating an omelet or lettuce, which was just as well, since he didn't own any sharp knives – except that now he did. That knife was for shaving, though, not for eating.

Knives were the first tools that men created, chipping them out of bits of flint. Did they have specialized knives for different jobs, or just general all-purpose blades used for everything? Amazing how little the average person really knew about these things. Maybe they only had one blade at first, then developed specialized knives for shaving and murder and the like. Was that what they meant by 'Neolithic'?

Making an omelet was a traditional kind of activity, as much as shaving with a straight blade was. Though, come to think of it, he doubted that his grandfather even knew how to fry an egg. That was his grandmother's role. He rubbed his stubbly cheeks. He should shave first, and then put on a clean shirt and eat in a more civilized fashion. Why did students have to live like animals?

He took his new toys to the bathroom, and spent some time getting the soap to foam properly. You had to use warm water, have a little patience and a quick stirring wrist. The blade came pre-honed, which was just as well, since he had neglected to buy a leather honing strap. He could pick one up tomorrow. The foam spread easily enough. He followed the instructions carefully, and managed to shave without even a nick. Once he got used to it the motions would become automatic, and he would be more likely to cut himself in a moment of inattention.

He ran his hands over his smooth face. He could see the photos from his anatomy text hiding under skin. Procerus, depressor supercilli, levator labii – they were all there. They could easily be exposed with his new sharp blade – a bit of self dissection. He shook the thought out of his head, rinsed his face, and headed to the kitchen for his healthy meal.

Now he felt better, properly shaven, properly fed. It was still early. He could spend some time studying before going to bed. With all of this excitement about the anatomy lab he was falling behind in his studies. He sat at his desk, intent on infectious diseases, and managed to fill his mind with the details of viral and bacterial attacks on the human body.

He fell asleep over a chapter on antibiotic resistant pneumonia, his head comfortable on his crossed arms.

Images of bacteria battling with antibiotics floated through his dream, the bacteria more or less realistic, the antibiotics symbolized by geometric shapes. They fought over the alveoli, prime territory for bacteria intent on destroying lungs. The bacteria were already resistant to the antibiotics, and conquered the alveoli, and eventually the entire lung. A pyrrhic victory, since they ended up killing their host. His view zoomed out as the bacteria covered individual alveoli, then lungs, and he watched from above as the entire body succumbed to the disease.

The body was in a hospital. He followed as it was moved down to a lower level for autopsy. Disembodied hands cut and probed, doing a complete dissection, which in a dream-logic went exactly according to his anatomy text.

Inevitably the hands reached the cadaver's face. They caressed the skin, feeling the muscles hiding under their thin cover. Procerus, depressor supercilli, and levator labii waited to be exposed. The face looked vaguely familiar, but he smiled to himself in the dream. Obviously he was fantasizing about his own traumatic experiences. The pathologist, or was it a medical student, spoke. He couldn't make out the words, but the voice was familiar. He looked directly at the student, and saw that it was himself.

His viewpoint suddenly jumped, and he was now himself, carefully following his anatomy text as he pulled the skin off the smoothly shaven face. He had never seen such a smooth shave on a cadaver. Perhaps this victim of tuberculosis used a straight blade, just like he did. He gently pulled off the skin, felling its smoothness as the muscles were exposed, procerus, depressor supercilli, levator labii. Only then did he realize that it was his own face that he was dissecting. A strange calmness overtook him, and he continued slicing, snipping and peeling. He mumbled the Latin names as the organs became visible.

In time the face was gone, and a small electric saw replaced the scalpel. He sawed around the top of the skull, aware that it was his own, and pulled the cap off as if he was opening a Tupperware container. His brain lay exposed, another picture out of his anatomy text. The arteries pulsated as the blood flowed through his still living brain. He saw little flashes of electricity as thoughts flickered through his mind. He knew that they didn't really exist- you couldn't see flashes of anything as the ion concentrations moved in waves between the neurons.

Still, the flashing went on. They became more and more agitated as he gently separated the hemispheres with his left hand and sliced with his right.

He woke up with a sore back and an all-too-familiar cold sweat. It was practically a routine now. Dream, cold sweat, shower, shave. He stayed under the hot water until his fingers looked all shriveled. He thought of going back to the safety razor, but decided that he was in complete control, that no crazy dream would make him change his habits. He would conquer his fears and shave with his straight razor. Tomorrow he would go to the lab, and calmly cut, peel, and even saw.

Six days later, in a far off city, students gathered nervously around a cadaver, ready to start on the face and head. They had been warned that "Adam" had had his throat slit, so they weren't shocked to see the damage. But there was something else wrong with "Adam". Unlikely as it seemed, somebody had already started dissecting his face. See, there, just like in the textbook \- procerus, depressor supercilli, levator labii.

### An Obsession, with Music

It had been a long week, a very long week. And the week before had been long as well. Seven weddings in two weeks. To be honest, they had skipped one wedding- it was just getting to be too much. Even so, they had driven back and forth to Jerusalem or Tel Aviv four times in the past week, and J was exhausted.

The bottom line was that C, his wife of twenty-six years, didn't like driving at night, so when it came to driving back home at one o'clock in the morning, guess who did the work? And guess who loaded himself up on caffeine to make sure he'd stay awake while driving? And stay awake he did, so when they got home at two o'clock, he couldn't fall asleep.

Thursday night, and they were supposed to go to a concert. They had a subscription, and the concert just happened to land on the day when they were most exhausted. On the day that J in particular was most exhausted.

"Let's cancel. We can get credit for the concert, and go some other time. Maybe next year."

"The break will do us good. Something besides weddings. The music will be better than the music at the weddings."

"The music might be good, but I'll sleep through it and miss it. It will be the world's most expensive nap."

There was only one way this discussion was going to end, as J knew full well. He stumbled home from work and drank some coffee before they drove off to the auditorium. Only half a cup, hoping to strike a balance between staying awake through the concert and being able to sleep at night afterwards. He shouldn't drink that much coffee. It wasn't good for his heart, which already beat irregularly, and sped up under the influence of that dark brown drug.

"What are they playing?"

"A Beethoven concerto. The 'Emperor', I think."

At least it was an old classic. Sometimes you enjoy hearing something you know better than a new piece. On the other hand, if you've heard it a hundred times, it could be boring. A combination of boring and exhausted meant a huge effort to keep from snoring through the concert. Dear wife would be kicking him to make sure he stayed awake. So it goes.

The short drive to the concert hall went smoothly. They parked downhill from the hall, and walked up the hill, a ten minute walk. J felt more awake after the walk, but how long would that last for?

They got their subscription tickets punched, bought a program, and sat down. The concert was going to start with two other pieces, both Beethoven, though not as famous as the Emperor. The program would probably spell out which ones were written after Beethoven was deaf, though the Mrs. was reading the program now, so he might not get a chance to find out till later.

The gods must have been happy, striking a composer with deafness. Deafness was an odd one. They usually struck the creative with madness. J knew this. He came from a creative family, and was often not sure of his own sanity. He'd make stuff up, and then he wasn't quite sure which bits of information were real, and which he had invented.

But to strike Beethoven with deafness seemed especially unfair. Who knows? Maybe Casanova was stricken with impotence at some point. Could he keep such a thing secret? He could write a book about it, The Secret of Casanova. Maybe it would be popular like one of those books about Jesus' secret life. And just think about the graphic love scenes. It was bound to be a best seller. What would you rather read about, a first century Jew being executed in a most horrible fashion, or a eighteenth century lady's man making his way into the finest beds in Europe?

It was a minor miracle that he hadn't fallen asleep yet. The orchestra finished tuning up, and out came the conductor along with the pianist. They must have changed the order of the pieces. The Emperor was the only work that included a piano, so they were playing that first.

Here was the first shock. The conductor was dressed in traditional black, just like the rest of the orchestra. But the pianist, a young woman, was wearing a white suit. And she kept her hair pulled back in a pony tail tied with a red band. A red band! She was very daring, or very confident, or both. J could see the reviews, all going on and on about her red band, as if it was the most important thing about the concert. Like Camus' stranger, convicted of murder by his café au lait.

J didn't say anything to C, but the pianist looked cute with that red band in her hair. Hell, she looked cute in general. But classical music was classical music, Beethoven was Beethoven, and he was tired. The coffee hadn't woken him up- just made him jittery. There was no way he was going to stay awake through forty-five minutes of Beethoven. C would be kicking him before long to stop his snoring. He only hoped that she wouldn't stomp on his foot with those spike heels.

She did that once. Another concert. Haydn maybe. Something terribly boring, whatever it was. A real lullaby. He had managed not to scream out loud, but they spent the rest of the concert in the emergency room having his foot set. Some little bones he'd never heard of. He would have preferred the Haydn.

He must have made that up. C never wore spikes. She didn't even own a pair. Just his 'magination, running away with him. Some day it would run away with him, run so far that he wouldn't find his way back.

The concert started. First the piano a bit, then the horns off on that familiar tune. The Philharmonic played well, no doubt about that. And Beethoven was OK. But when he was driving and wanted music to help him stay awake, it would be the Temptations, Stevie Wonder or even Bob Dylan. Not Beethoven, Mozart, or any of the other guys whose busts decorated so many pianos. Classical music was sleepy. No words, no beat, and, well, no soul. Not for J, anyhow.

He took the program from C's lap, and starting reading. That would keep him awake for a few minutes. Hélène. A French pianist. What a French pianist was doing out here was beyond him, though the Philharmonic did have a good reputation. The orchestra finished their bit, and Beethoven handed the show over to the piano. Hélène had kept her neck stretched out, her head cocked, waiting for the conductor's signal. There was something attractive in the way she held herself, a hawk about to swoop on its prey.

The signal came, and Hélène flew with Beethoven. J's jaw dropped. This was different. Very different. It was still Beethoven, yet something new. She was doing something different to the music. Same notes, different song. He hunched forward, chin in hand, a regular 'thinker'. My God. Beethoven had written it, but only now was it played properly. Ludwig had written it for her. J hoped that there was a heaven, and that Beethoven had his hearing restored there.

There was something special happening. He knew that he was still breathing. If he had stopped, he would have dropped dead by now. And he wasn't dead, though he was in heaven.

He stopped thinking for a minute. Something he never did. He never could. There were always a dozen things running through his mind. Work, recipes, inventions, stories, people, and that old male stand-by, sex. For once though he stopped and just listened. An image came to his head. A lone bird, a seagull, flying against a breeze.

A vision, one of the few that somebody had induced in him. There were plenty that he induced in himself. Or that the gods induced in him. Sometimes a book would do this to him. Music? Never. Yet here he was.

Hélène. Helen of Paris. The music that launched a thousand ships. Trojans and Greeks smiting each other.

Soon it was over, No amount of applause could get an encore out of Hélène. She didn't need to please her crowd. She was good, damn good, and didn't have to do any favors for the audience in this hick-town. So downstairs for the intermission, a quick drink, and a chance to buy a disc. Hélène and Beethoven. J picked out one that had been autographed by the master, actually touched by those hands.

C was impressed too, but hadn't had the epiphany that he had experienced. She was too sane, that was the problem. She understood how impressed he was, but didn't share the experience with him. Like trying to explain a battle to someone who wasn't there. Only your buddies really knew what it was like. The folks at home never understood. Though come to think of it, he had never been in a battle either.

Home and to bed. J had to settle down first. Internet time. Hélène on the Wikipedia. Where she was from, where she studied, what she was famous for, even a link to her personal site.

J wanted to send her some fan mail. He wanted to share that vision with her. It was silly. He was almost fifty years old, married, a father and grandfather, and he wanted to send fan mail to a classical pianist as if she was a rock star. Ridiculous. J went to bed.

Sleep wouldn't come. It may have been the coffee, but that was many hours ago. It was Hélène. His mind was boiling, the music running through him, her fingers seducing the keyboard. A letter. What could he write her? What did he want from her?

Dear Hélène. I heard you play in my home town tonight, and can't get the music out of my soul. I had a vision as I listened to you. I want to meet you. I would give my right arm to meet you. I have tried to get the arm into this envelope, but it did not fit, so I will keep it in the fridge until we meet. Please excuse the bloodstains on this letter- the wound is still dripping.

But how to send such a letter? Her site only had her agent's email address. There was no address for fan mail. Besides which, that bit about the arm was too much. It didn't sound like a fan or an admirer. It just sounded crazy.

Well, first he'd have to figure out where to send a letter to, and then he could figure out the wording. He sent a quick note to her agent, asking where he could send fan mail to. He was not surprised when he didn't get a response. Classical musicians didn't get fan mail. If they did, their agents didn't want to be bothered with forwarding it.

J knew where his mistake was. He should've started screaming at the top of his lungs when she performed, like the teenagers did for rock stars. That's what he was, a fifty-year old teenager. He should've tried to meet her offstage after the concert. He had been in a state of shock, and it hadn't occurred to him. It wouldn't have worked. Hélène had performed first, so she was long gone by the time the concert was over.

Maybe she stayed in one of the local hotels that evening. Not likely though. They probably had her perform first so she could get back to Tel Aviv or wherever she was staying. He could have done something. He could've skipped the second part of the concert, and tried to catch her as she left the hall. What he would have told C was an interesting question. Come to think of it, there were only a half-dozen hotels in the country that she would likely stay in. A half-hour on the phone would have done the trick. It's so easy to think of these things when it is all over and too late.

No fixing what's gone and past. The next step was obvious. Track her down through the internet. J read everything he could find out about Hélène. She lived in New York, formerly with her boyfriend, but apparently no longer. She raised wolves- and wrote books about them.

J made a copy of the CD and put it in his car. For the first time ever he listened to classical music on his way to work. Dylan and Wonder collected dust, and the Emperor ruled. He made everybody he knew listen to the piece, told everybody about the concert.

Youtube. It was amazing what you could find on Youtube. J was an avid surfer, and usually had half-a-dozen tabs open at the same time. Hélène playing this. Hélène playing that. Hélène teaching music. Hélène and her books. Hélène, Hélène, Hélène. But how to find her? Even just to send her a letter?

J had to go to Taiwan on business, so he tried to put Beethoven out of his mind. But first he made a copy of his disc for a colleague in Hsinchu. Beyond that, he would have to concentrate on his work. It would drive some sense into him. What he didn't take into account was those long lonely weekends and evenings overseas. Sure, you can work part of the time, read part of the time, and flip through the TV channels hoping to find something in English. But you could also surf.

He started on a Hélène search frenzy. Phone books were available on-line for every civilized country, and Hélène was civilized. He started with New York, since that is what he remembered from one of his searches, then he tried Paris, since she was originally French. He couldn't find her. London? Somewhere in Germany? No luck.

Finally, exasperated, he went back to the Wikipedia. There it was, staring him in the face. He read quickly, very quickly, and often missed little details. In this case the little detail that he had spent hours looking for.

No matter. Time was cheap on these trips. Switzerland. Where? Zurich? More likely Geneva – they spoke French there. He tried every Swiss town he could think of, and a few that he found on maps and deemed likely, but couldn't find her. A couple of people with a similar last name, but not her.

He went back to Hélène's website. He had only tried one of the contacts there, her agent. He wrote the representative of the recording studio. Who knows? Maybe she would be more responsive. J wasn't too optimistic about it. A famous musician like that probably treasured her privacy.

Come to think of it, who was he to disturb her? Just a guy who got too excited about some 200 year-old music. He should leave her alone. What would happen if he actually met her? What could he say? She wouldn't appreciate his right arm, and what else did he have to offer her? Clever conversation? He was good at that, but who knows what she was interested in. He couldn't hold a decent conversation about music, certainly not with a professional. He was pretty much a jack of all trades, maybe a renaissance man, though an imperfect one. Too little knowledge of too many subjects.

He would just have to hope for the best. Hell, he'd be afraid to even shake her hand. What if he hurt her? What would happen to her music? And what was it that she did with the music anyhow? The piano was part of her, or maybe she was part of the piano, but there was more to it. After all, every really good musician is an extension of his chosen instrument. She played the same notes and the same instrument that pianists had for centuries, and yet she played completely different music.

He liked surfing in the evenings, at home. It was a form of entertainment, not different than sports or crossword puzzles, with the advantage that you sometimes learned useful information, or at least interesting trivia. He tried to avoid surfing at work, though he knew people did. Just walk through the open space, and see what your co-workers were up to. Or walk into their cubicle and see them quickly switch away from Google to their Outlook Inbox.

The thing was that he couldn't stop thinking of Beethoven and that red hair-band, even at work. He found himself surfing endlessly, looking for clips, photos, hints as to her address. He fell behind in his work. His boss was used to good performance on his part, and didn't say anything at first. He probably figured that J would come around after a bit. Maybe he was just under the weather.

Sleeping got to be a problem as well. He'd stay up surfing and dreaming, and go to bed long after his wife was asleep. In the morning he'd stumble out of bed and somehow get to work without smashing into something. Once at work he'd proceed to fall asleep in meetings and in the middle of important calculations.

At this point his boss called him aside and asked if he was sick. J said no, but his boss insisted on sending him for a checkup at company expense. The doctor found nothing, as expected, and told him to get more sleep. More sleep. You need to pay an expert to tell you what you already knew but wouldn't admit to yourself.

J went to bed early that night. His wife was glad to see him, though he was too exhausted to respond much. Maybe after a good night's rest he'd feel better in that department as well.

He dreamt of fingers, musical fingers playing up and down his spine, a concerto of a massage. His spine relaxed in response, the vertebrae vibrating in E-flat major. He felt a hard foot on his, massaging his sole, his pedal sole, his pedal soul. The fingers ran up and down his spine, finally settling rhythmically on the base of his skull.

The fingers tapped, harder, harder, a crescendo that reverberated in his brain, a beat that finally was in his brain, fingers massaging his gray matter, tapping on his cerebrum, fiddling on his cerebellum. J's arms and legs twitched as Hélène danced with Beethoven. Neurons flew to join the dance, bits of gray snow filling the sky.

The earth shook under the snow, and shook again.

'Are you OK?"

"Huh? Yeah. Just a dream."

"A nightmare?"

"I don't know."

C rolled over and went back to sleep.

Was it a nightmare? How did the popular song go? This could be heaven or this could be hell. There was a tune to that, but he couldn't think of it. There was only one tune now, woven into his brain by those incredible fingers.

How did the Israelites feel the morning after God gave them the Ten Commandments? J knew. They were wired, wired without twelve cups of coffee or funny mushrooms, assuming that those grew in the desert. He bounced out of bed, bounced into his car, bounced into work, leaving a trail of neuron snow behind wherever he went.

Wherever cloud nine was, he was way above it. He was flying. At the morning meeting one of the engineers grabbed him and told him to calm down, to stick with the topic at hand. 'Stop surfing- what have you been taking anyhow?' But he hadn't taken anything, just a bowl of Cheerios and a dream.

That night he went to sleep even earlier, to leave more time for dreams. He saw the fingers in the distance, playing his song, but they wouldn't come to him. The fingers paused and waited for the orchestra to do their part, a thin silence in the air. The fingers arched out and beckoned. Come. Come. But he couldn't budge. Bits of gray matter were spread around his pillow, splattered out by the pianist's tent peg, driven by the same fingers that called. Come, come. The fingers dripped perfume and blood, and reached for the door latch, but the only door that was locked was in his soul. Come, come. The orchestra finished, and the fingers returned to the pianoforte, abandoning vertebrae and neurons.

J stared at the ceiling the rest of the night. He had to finish this. He had to clear Beethoven and those fingers from his mind. But he couldn't just forget that evening, that concert. There was only one way. He had to meet her. Just for a minute. Just so she could tell him to get lost. Then he would be able to shake this thing off. The whole bit was ridiculous. But how? How to find a pianist?

By the morning he knew. Pianists play at concerts. He would just have to go to a concert and find her. He could. He would.

As soon as he got to work he searched for her performance schedule. The next one was next week in Paris. Too soon, too soon. How could he arrange the tickets in time? He needed to tell his boss that he wanted a few days off as well. He needed to figure out what he would tell C. Most of all, he needed to think about what he would tell Hélène.

What did he really want? Just an autograph? Would that do it? Or would it just leave him hungry? He wanted something special, he wanted to know that he was special, that her music was special to him. He should give her something, something symbolic, something that she would keep. If she had something of his in her house, or even, dare he dream, on her piano, then he would be connected to her in a real way. And maybe, who knows, he could even get her email address. He would send her greetings once or twice a year, on holidays or her birthday...

But what? What could he present her with? Certainly not chocolate or wine, which, if he was lucky, she would eat or drink and forget. It couldn't be store-bought. It had to be something special, one of a kind, something that he would create for her. A gift that was part of him. No, not his right arm. That really was a bad idea. He was good at ideas, especially bad ones. He wasn't that good at forgetting them.

She wouldn't put a rotting arm on her piano in any case. What was wrong with his head? And how could he cut it off? There was that guy whose arm got stuck while he was hiking, and he had to cut it off to survive. He spent hours at it. No, he'd use an electric saw. It'd be over in seconds. Ridiculous. She'd think he was sick, and there was no way she'd keep that on her piano. Think of the stink! Unless he got it preserved, like that German guy who made art out of preserved cadavers.

It was a bad idea anyway you looked at it. He needed something practical, something that would impress her as an artist. It had to be something creative. Something beautiful and special that he could create. Not music, since anything he would do would be amateurish to her. A painting or a sculpture. He didn't know how to paint or sculpt, but he could learn enough in a few months to at least express himself, even if not very professionally.

That settled; it was just a matter of picking a concert. That would set him a deadline for the artwork as well. Two or three months would have to do. Any longer and he'd go nuts. London, end of July. Not Beethoven, but it would do. The timing was right, and it was a country where they spoke some version of English, so there was hope of figuring out how to see her after the concert.

C was pleased. Ever since he'd started the art class, J had become much calmer. It was amazing how much it helped him. It gave him a positive direction to channel his creative energies in. She was right, but she never understood the motivation, not till it was too late.

J went for sculpting. In some ways it was harder than painting, since it was three dimensional. On the other hand, the image he had in his mind, the human piano, was three dimensional, and converting it to two dimensions was too much of a challenge for him.

The beginners class that he had signed up for modeled in clay. The techniques involved in carving wood and stone were too advanced for beginners, and would distract them from the basic skills needed to create three dimensional art.

After getting through the assigned exercises, he made his first attempt. A human whose head was stretched to an absurd width, a huge smile on the face. The teeth were piano keys, the feet pedals. The back of the head was swollen towards the back, a cranial soundboard. One arm was twisted backwards and down to the floor, to be the back leg of a grand piano. The other arm stretched up to a wide flat palm holding sheet music.

J liked it, but it was too simple. It looked like a caricature, like a cheap souvenir you'd buy somewhere. A souvenir that you'd buy under the influence of a mind-altering drug, but a souvenir none the less.

The concert was in a month. J pulled some money out of their savings account and bought plane tickets and a ticket to the concert. Yes, the money was supposed to go to their dream vacation, but C never looked at the finances, so why worry about it?

He didn't have much time, so the second sculpting attempt better be right. This time he borrowed from his dream, self-plagiarism at its best. A few minutes with an anatomy text straightened out the details.

A human form, on its hands and knees. Twisted, so the two hands are on the ground on one side of the body, the hands forming pedals. One of the legs extended forward, stretched and twisted to balance the figure. The skin on the back was slit open and pulled back, exposing the vertebrae from tailbone to neck.

The scalp was slit as well, and the skull cracked to show the brain. J was especially proud of the brain, which was made of three dimensional notes, wholes, halves and quarters, all molded of clay and jumbled together into a loose ball.

His art instructor congratulated him for his interesting work, and said that it was quite creative, but J could tell that she was perturbed. She was the one who told him that art should have an effect on the viewer, and if the work bothered her, so be it. Besides which, this piece was aimed at an audience of one, the instructor didn't really count anymore.

In the beginner's course the instructor took care of drying and firing the pieces. The students were supposed to concentrate on the artistic side, without being overly concerned with the technicalities of modeling in clay. The risk was that a student would create something that couldn't be properly dried and fired, and would end up with a mass of broken chunks of clay. The teacher tried to avoid that, guiding the students in the proper handling of the clay and explaining the limitations of the material, but even so there were always a few pieces that didn't survive the process.

J had to wait a week before he could see the final result. So many things could go wrong. Maybe making the brain out of notes was a bad idea. They were so delicate. On the other hand the big round mass of the head wouldn't have dried well if it was one solid piece. The extremities would be an issue. If the hands didn't work right, the whole thing would be a fiasco. There would be no pedals, and the whole construction would be unstable.

There was too much fine detail in the piece. Even fine cracks could be a big problem. If the vertebrae didn't come out right, he would never be able to turn the sculpture into a human piano. And there wasn't enough time to create another one and dry and fire it. And he had to remember that there was a bit of painting to do as well.

J wasn't sleeping well, but then again he hadn't been sleeping very well for quite a while. Maybe he should start a second one, just in case the first sculpture didn't work out? Best just not to think of it. Think of meeting the Pianist. Should he actually listen to the concert, or just wait backstage in hopes of catching her? And how to present it? Should he wrap it? He'd have to bring it inside of something to the concert hall, but wrapping didn't seem right. He wanted her to see it right away, while he was there. If he wrapped it she might take it back to her house or hotel and only then unwrap it.

The only real option was a box, like a shoebox, but decorated. He found a shoebox the right size, but decorating it was an issue. He didn't want the box to be decorated to the point where it would distract from the gift itself. It should be elegant, and above all it shouldn't look like a shoebox. A nice wooden box would be best, but he didn't know where to get one, and it would be pretty heavy.

He settled for painting the box a solid color. Three layers of black spray paint followed with a layer of clear shellac turned the box into ebony, the ebony of a piano – if you didn't look too closely.

Fortunately, the sculpture came out OK. A couple of hairline cracks, but nothing critical. In any case he planned on painting it, or at least part of it. A fine brush, a little paint, and every other vertebrae was soon black. A virtual vertebrae keyboard. J was pretty pleased with it. It would never make it into the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but he didn't want it there anyhow.

There were a few last-minute arrangements to make. It didn't take much to make C think that he was off to Korea again. The train was the cheapest way of getting to the airport, but he paid for a cab, so it would look like a business trip.

London was expensive. Everything, the hotel, the food, cost more than he had expected. And he had to stay there a week to maintain the illusion that he was in Korea. But hang the cost. He had to do this. It was the only way to cure himself of what even he had to admit was an unhealthy obsession. The sculpture was a sacrifice, brought to appease the goddess Obsessa.

He should view the cost of the trip as part of the sacrifice as well. In some countries they burned money as a sacrifice. Or was it a way of ensuring that you would have enough cash in Heaven? Either way, if spending some money would get him out of his current hell, it was well worth it.

He had made sure to arrive in London the day before the concert, so he could get a good night's sleep before the big day. Who was he fooling? He hadn't slept in months, and it wasn't going to get any easier now. He went out to get some dinner before turning in for the night. Fish and chips. Not that he liked fish and chips. Nor was he particularly hungry. But eating fish and chips made him feel like he was a regular tourist, not some guy trying to exorcise a demon.

Hélène as a demon? No. That was impossible. The demon was himself. Hélène was innocent. She was a perfect dream. The problem was within him, the need to possess the dream. He had generated the demon within himself. It was a good thing that he was basically sane. Otherwise, who knows what could happen. Men with similar obsessions sometimes committed suicide. Some even murdered the object of their obsession.

There's a thought. If Hélène didn't exist, he would be free. It had to work. All he had to do was get hold of a pistol. There had to be someway of getting hold of one in London. Sure there'd be an added expense, but in for dime, in for a dollar, as they said. He'd already spent a fortune on the tickets and the hotel, so what was a few hundred extra pounds?

The whole idea was ridiculous. He had a hard time squashing a roach. He couldn't harm the innocent target of his own craziness. Whatever put these ideas in his head?

Sleep, not surprisingly, didn't come easily that night. He lay in bed, looking up into the darkness, imagining over and over again what would happen. Almost anything could happen. She could be delighted, thank him, and go on her way. Maybe someday she would read the note in the box and actually email him. She would lift her hand to him, and he would kiss it. Maybe, maybe she would offer her cheek.

More likely she would glance in the box, give him a strange stare, and hurry off. It was a weird-looking thing after all. Here he was, faced with meeting the most beautiful looking and sounding woman in the world, and all he could give her was a twisted, sick, amateur attempt at sculpting. He would have been better off sending her an arm. At least it was sculpted properly.

He glanced at the clock. One a.m. He had no plans for the morning, so it made no difference what time he fell asleep. Still, he had been in bed for over two hours. How long could you stare at the ceiling for? He reached over for the TV remote. Ninety eight channels, and nothing to watch.

Still, he had to do something. He had to distract himself. He propped himself up on a couple of pillows and watched some Sumo wrestling. Boy these guys were huge. Huge, but graceful in their own large way. But true grace was...better to watch something else, something that wouldn't remind him of you-know-who.

There were beautiful women in nearly every commercial TV show. Most sports shows too, for that matter. He settled for a war documentary. Naval warfare in the US Civil War. As long as they didn't go on about the beautiful lines of the Monitor or the music of the artillery or some such thing. Well, some time must have passed. One fifteen? That's it?

J never drank, but he had to get to sleep. He went to the mini-bar and cracked open a beer. From what he understood, one beer wasn't going to do the trick, certainly not for someone in his condition. He'd need to be near unconscious before he'd actually get to sleep. There was a small bottle of Scotch in the mini-bar, so he drank that, along with some fruity alcoholic drink they had in there.

He woke up with a splitting headache early in the afternoon. Sure, he got a good night's sleep, but it came together with a hangover. Just what he needed on this day of all days. He had a buddy at work who once told him that hangovers were really a result of dehydration, so he drank a few glasses of water in hopes that it would pull him through.

By the time evening came around, he had pretty much recovered. He had even managed to eat something, an activity that had seemed quite impossible in the morning. Most of the decisions were behind him now, except for one. Should he attend the concert, or just wait outside for her?

As it turned out, he didn't have to make that decision. When he got to the concert hall the security guard took one look at the box he was carrying and told him that it couldn't be brought into the hall. He could check it, but then it wouldn't be handy after the concert, and he might miss her altogether.

He left the hall and wandered around the building, trying to figure out where Hélène would come out. It wasn't that complicated. There was an unmarked door in the back of the building. A couple of chartered buses and a limo were parked nearby, and the drivers were lingering around. A few words with one of the drivers confirmed what was already obvious. He sat on a bench across the street, and settled down to wait.

At first the drivers gave him some odd looks. He could see why. They knew why they were waiting there. It was their job. But what was he doing there? And why was he carrying that box? He tried not to look nervous, but he didn't think he was successful. He was radiating nervousness, an emotion lamp illuminating the entire street.

The limo driver went into the building for a few minutes. Probably to use the bathroom. He spoke briefly with the other drivers, and they gradually calmed down and stopped staring at him.

It was hard to kill time, waiting for her to show up. One of the drivers was smoking. He wished he smoked cigarettes or chewed gum, anything to help pass the time. He made sure not to look at his watch. He knew it would make the minutes go by even slower. Maybe he could hear the music. He concentrated, straining his ears, but wasn't quite sure that he could hear the symphony. There was too much background noise from the traffic. The concert hall was built to prevent those sounds from coming in and disturbing a performance, so it stood to reason that sound couldn't leave there very easily either.

It was hard to wait. As a kid he had liked star gazing. A perfect activity to help pass the time. You couldn't see many stars in the middle of the city. Too much background light from the street lamps.

Finally he saw a crack of light around the door. He got up, clutching the gift to his chest. The limo driver had noticed as well, and was reaching for the handle to open the limo door. He'd have to hurry if he wanted to meet Hélène. He walked quickly towards the limo as she came out of the building. He'd hardly noticed that a security guard had come out with her.

He was still a few meters away when she reached the car. He somehow managed to find his voice.

" Hélène!"

"Yes?"

"I'm, I'm a fan of yours. I've brought you a gift."

He lifted up the box, showing her what he had brought, but the security guard interfered.

"I can't let her take that without checking it first."

"It's just a thing, something I made for her."

"Don't come any closer. Open the box."

The guard's hand was dawdling near his pistol now. J stopped where he was, opened the box, and tilted it so the guard could see.

"What is it?"

"A sculpture. I made it myself. It's a gift."

"Lift it up out of the box."

J lifted the sculpture up, and carefully unwrapped it. It was clearly visible under the streetlight. The guard was peering at it, not quite sure what to make of the strange twisted figure. Hélène interrupted.

"It's OK. I'll take it."

She took the figure out of his hands.

"Thank you."

Before he could respond she was in the car, leaving him with the empty box. A few seconds later the limo was gone.

He had done it. He had given her the gift. He knew he should be relieved now that it was all over, but he felt empty, like something was missing from his life. He was empty, like the empty box. The almost empty box. It still had his card in it. She would have no way of finding him, and he would never find out whether she liked his gift. It was just as well. This way he had gotten her out of his system, and he could go back to a normal lifestyle.

He walked slowly back to the hotel, drained by the evening's events. He thought of taking a shower, but didn't have the energy. He sat on the bed, reached down and untied his shoes. Then he leaned back onto the bed, leaving his feet on the floor. He'd just rest like that for a while, then get up, go out, and get some dinner.

When he woke up he realized that he had overslept. Getting too late to go out for dinner. He looked at the clock. Five a.m. Too late for much of anything. He'd never get back to sleep either. He managed to stand up and strip off his clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor. It took a while for the hot water to reach the shower. Probably because nobody was using water at this time of day, so the water sat in the pipes and cooled down.

Eventually the shower was steaming hot, the way he liked it. He spent forever in there, trying to lose consciousness in the vapors. He would have stayed there forever, but you can't do any one thing forever. Sooner or later you need to stop and do something else.

He brushed his teeth, got dressed, and went out. The streets were not as deserted as he thought. There were always those who had to start the workday early, and there were the inevitable breakfast joints that catered to the early morning crowd.

J joined them for some scrambled eggs, toast and coffee. He wasn't as hungry as he thought, and ended up eating the toast, leaving the eggs to cool off on his plate. Grease slowly congealed around the egg. Some things have to be eaten hot, or not at all. He slowly sipped his coffee, trying not to think, keeping his mind a blank.

They had sugar cubes here. Just like his grandmother used to use. She'd hold a cube between her teeth and sip her tea through it, the tea sweetening as it filtered through the sugar. Here they had both white and brown sugar cubes.

He played with the cubes, lining them up in rows, alternating brown and white stripes, moving them here and there absent-mindedly.

"You play?"

He looked up. The waitress was looking at him. She had just asked a question.

"Play?"

"Yes, play. I play the flute. You play the piano, I gather. Looks like you daydream about it."

J looked down at the table. He had managed to arrange the sugar cubes into a keyboard. A bit rough, but recognizable.

"No, I don't play. I only listen."

"Maybe you should think of playing. Take some lessons. You look pretty obsessed with it. Next thing you know you'll be building a working piano out of Legos."

"Could be."

The waitress left, leaving him alone with his sugar piano. He was drained. He didn't care about that female pianist. He didn't care about Beethoven. He didn't care about pianos. He hated red ribbons in women's hair. Come to think of it, he hadn't noticed whether she had her hair tied up when she came out of the auditorium. It must have been. But he wasn't sure. How could he have not noticed?

He stared at the sugar cubes. Who was he fooling? He hadn't cleared her out of his mind. He had only made things worse. Now that he had invested so much time and effort into tracking her down, he felt even more attracted to her. He was chained to her much more than before. He had made matters worse. Much worse.

Everything reminded him of pianos. Everything reminded him of Hélène. Damn those sugar cubes!

J swept his hand across the table, scattering the piano cubes all over the floor. The physical act helped. It was a little easier to breathe. But he felt bad about the sugar cubes. It wasn't fair to that sweet waitress who had shown interest in him. He got down on his hands and knees to gather them up.

There were a few under the table. The leg of the table was in his way. He couldn't get his head under the table, but he managed to twist around and reach out with one of his hands. There really wasn't space to move between all of the table and chair legs. He nearly lost his balance, but if he put both of his hands under the table, and twisted his leg a bit to keep his balance...

The waitress heard a crack, the sound that a watermelon makes when you first cut it open. The sound came from where that musician was sitting. Where was he, anyhow? Ah, he was on the floor. Maybe he had lost his contacts or something. He seemed kind of stuck. Maybe he hurt his back- that would explain the cracking sound.

She walked over to J's table.

She froze for a few seconds before she managed to scream. His back had split, revealing his vertebrae. His skull had split as well, and bits of gray matter had spattered out, covering the floor with, well, little brain quarter notes. Some of his vertebrae had blackened. That, and the way his body had twisted, made him look, well, like a piano.

### A Medical Image

Sal looked up from her screen.

"Jude- what did you say yours has?"

"Brain Tumor. Touchy business. I'm down to the cell-by-cell level here. I should have it all erased in a few minutes"

The equipment was expensive, so there was a lot of time pressure on the medical graphicers. The physicists had tried putting together a system that would separate the imaging from the curing, but they hadn't gotten it quite right, at least not yet. Organs tended to move around too much to allow the time gap between the two functions.

Sal studied the CAT image of her next patient. Breast cancer. In her mother's day that meant major surgery, chemotherapy, and only a fair chance of survival. In her grandmother's day it was a good as a death sentence.

Modern medicine had changed all of that. Three dimensional imaging had been around for decades, before somebody thought of what now seemed obvious. 'If only we could fix the image, and project it back into the patient.' It started as a dream, completely impossible. It took decades before the first experiments were done on rats in a university lab, and another decade before the first commercial use of such a device.

Sal had been lucky to be chosen as one of the first graphicers. They had originally been called 'erasers', but it sounded too negative, so graphicers it was. She had planned on going into surgery from the day she started medical school, and this was the ultimate, cleanest form of surgery that there was.

The breast cancer patient had a pretty bad case. A young mother, the typical victim of the disease. It hadn't metastasized yet, but it had spread pretty badly. She would have to erase some of the muscle tissue. It looked like she could work around some of the main blood vessels though, which would make recovery easier.

If only they had approved the machine for reconstructive work. She knew that they were working on it. It was a matter of using the electromagnetic fields not just to destroy tissue, but to actually move it around. The literature was full of reports of experiments on rats. One researcher claimed to have amputated a rat's paw, and then moved bone, muscle, blood vessel and skin tissue to reconstruct the paw.

She remembered the photos. The work was mediocre. The new paw was a caricature of the original one. It worked, more or less, but looked like a cartoon paw, not a real one. The rat had a hard time controlling it as well, though the researcher had rebuilt the nerves.

Reconstruction was simple, in principle. You could thin out the bone in one part of the body, take ten or fifteen percent of the tissue, say, and move it to the desired location. Sal had no idea how the physicists got the fields to do that, but the plain fact was that they did. The thinned-out bone where you stole the material from would rebuild itself in a few months. What worked for bone would work for other tissues as well.

The problem wasn't just in the graphicer work involved. The process just wasn't accurate enough to do practical work with.

"Sal, you still day-dreaming there?"

"As usual. Reconstructive work, as usual."

"You have a fixation on that issue. You planning some major work on your man Bob? Maybe a little enlargement work? Huh?"

Sal giggled.

"Bob doesn't need help in that department. Maybe that's your fixation. But keep it down. This isn't the kind of talk I want my kid to hear."

Sal nodded in the direction of her ten year old daughter Saffron, who was engrossed in something at the next station. She wasn't supposed to bring her kid to work, but could she do? Bob was off on one of his endless business trips, and she had the evening shift. She couldn't leave Saffy by herself or with friends every night for a week. Besides, Saffy liked it here.

Saffron was one of those super geeks. She spent every spare minute of her time working on three dimensional animations. Right now she was on a nostalgia kick. She would take some ancient cartoon character, say Mickey Mouse or Bugs Bunny, and turn them into three dimensional holographic animated characters. She had developed her own programming tools to do much of the work, and now, following in her mother's footsteps, was building virtual skeletal and circulatory systems.

Even though she couldn't bother her mother with technical questions while she was actually erasing, Saffron still liked to watch her mom work. The real attraction was that mom's machine had huge amounts of computing power, more than she could ever dream of having at home.

Saffron played with Bug's Bunny's lungs a bit more. The airflow calculations were more complicated than expected. You could predict the behavior of a lung design using bio- statistical-mechanics pretty well, but that was a far cry from actually designing a working lung.

Jude had finished with the brain tumor. She was shaking, sweat running off her nose. Jude had the most difficult job of all. Nobody would ever know if you erased a bit too much breast, but there wasn't room for wide margins in the brain business. As their professor had said, you needed a really sharp pencil for brain work, not the blunt crayon that the rest of the field uses.

The steel treatment chamber slid out of the field coils and cracked open. Most patients could sit up by themselves, and after a few moments of regaining their bearings they would walk off on their own. The brain patients had a harder time. They underwent more serious anesthesia, and were taken out on a wheeled stretcher.

"Tough one Jude."

"They always are. I hope that his sight will be OK. I'm not too sure about his left eye."

"You're the best Jude. The absolute best at brains. Nobody could have done better."

"I know – but that doesn't make it easier."

The attendant finished cleaning the chamber, and Sal's patient came in. An obvious beauty, even stripped of makeup and dressed in the hospital gown as she was. Her long brown hair was tied back, to keep it out of the way during the procedure. Sal tried not to look when she took off the gown and lay down naked in the chamber, but as usual she couldn't help herself.

Sal winced. An amazing figure. Hard to believe that she had gone through two pregnancies. She wouldn't look that good after the erasing. That full left breast wouldn't be much more than an empty bag of skin by the time Sal was done with her. Only real surgery, the kind with knives and silicone implants, would make it look anywhere near normal. She wished they would hurry up and finish the reconstructive methods, so she wouldn't have to go through this thought process for every patient.

"Saffron, stay out of trouble while I am treating the patient."

"Yes, mommy."

Saffron was a good kid at heart, but she was bit too bright and far too curious to stay completely out of trouble. Sal didn't like to think of her daughter as a hacker, but her daughter's bedroom was papered with 'borrowed' schematics and blueprints. Not to mention that embarrassing bit last year when the entire Idaho potato crop was almost delivered at their flat. Sal managed to stop it after the first hundred tons, but she ended up paying for the return shipment, not to mention the legal fees it took to keep Saffron from ending up in juvenile prison.

Saffron went back to her Bug's Bunny, and Sal turned back to her station. The current live images were very close to the preparatory set she had been given. There would be some trouble with that artery, though. It would have to go. Jude would have gone to a lot of effort to save it, but that was brain. This was breast, and Sal had a blunt crayon, not a sharp pencil. It was a question of expensive machine time. The high resolution work took a lot more computation and radiation time, and it just wasn't justified for breasts, pretty as they might be.

It was over an hour before Sal finished the erasure design and computation. It would take another hour for the actual tissue erasure. She had to keep an eye on things while it was happening, but there wasn't much she could or would do unless there was a complete disaster. There was essentially no feedback from the patient during the process. The fields were too strong for any of the imaging or monitoring devices to work.

She entered the code that started the process, and listened as the hum of the generators kicked in. Saffron came over to her station.

"How did it go, Mom?"

"I think well. She'll need some reconstructive work afterwards, though. She should have waited a few years with that cancer, then I could have done the rebuilding for her too.

"Can you tell how it's progressing right now?"

"Honey, you know that at this point we just let the machine run. We can't monitor the process in real time."

"You sure she's OK?"

Sal caught something in Saffron's voice.

"What's the matter? Do you know her? Is she your friend's mom or something?"

"No. I just get nervous with these things."

Saffy didn't sound right. Maybe it was some early hormones breaking in. pre-adolescent nervousness. She certainly had that awkward lanky look girls sometimes get at that age.

The machine seemed to be running fine. You could set the display to 'show' the process, but it was just an animation based on the work Sal had already done, not a real-time image. Sal preferred to keep the instrumental display on, to see that power levels and frequencies looked about right. There were duplicate systems for almost everything, so a major failure in the middle of the process was unlikely. Still, it was best to keep an eye on things.

Power levels were a bit higher than she'd expected, but not high enough to be of concern.

"Saffy, could you run and get me some coffee?"

"Sure, mom."

Well, at least the kid would be busy for a few minutes, and helpful to boot. Sal wouldn't leave the station until the patient sat up.

"Thanks for the coffee."

"You're welcome."

"Are you OK?"

"Uh huh."

"All done animating for today?"

"Uh huh."

"Bug's Bunny completed?"

"Uh huh"

"Getting bored?"

"Uh huh."

"Paying attention to what I am saying?"

"Uh huh."

"New boyfriend?"

"Uh huh."

"Pregnant?"

"Uh, huh."

Sal gave up and sipped at the coffee. The process should be almost done by now, but the progress bar showed only 28%. It was hard to calculate exactly how long the process took. Sometimes a small change could complicate the calculations and double the processing time, but Sal had been doing this for years, and had a good idea of how long things actually took

"Mom, isn't there any way to see how it is going?"

"Not really. You know that. It's just taking longer than expected, that's all."

"You sure?"

"Of course I am. What could go wrong?"

"I don't know."

"I could show you the animation of the process. But it is just a low-resolution animation, no real data. The bottom line is that the machine does exactly what it is told to do. I set up the parameters, and now it's doing what I set up a couple of hours ago."

It had been two hours already. Highly unusual for mamo work. Still, there wasn't much to do about it.

Saffron was getting antsy.

"Mom, maybe we should look at the animation."

"Honey, your work is a thousand times better. I find the animation insulting. It's like watching a washing machine. Really. Just be patient."

Two and a half hours. Far too long. Sal called her supervisor, the head of the department, disturbing her at a romantic dinner with that cute young professor. She was on call, though, and this did seem like a serious situation. The supervisor's response was predictable – 'Give it another half hour, and if the machine still hasn't finished, call me and I'll come in'.

She gave it the extra half hour, and picked up the phone just as the supervisor walked in.

"I was just about to call you."

"I decided to come in. This doesn't sound right."

They looked at the readings together.

"Sal, I see why you're worried, but I don't see what we can do. You know what a mess it is to stop this in the middle of a procedure. Anyhow, it seems to be just about done now."

"Mom, maybe we should look at the animation."

"Saffron, can't you see we're busy here?"

She turned back to the supervisor.

"Sorry, but you know how it is. Bob is out of town, and I've got the evening shift."

"No problem. "

"Mom, I really think we should look at that animation."

"Saffy, what's gotten into you? Look, the fields are shutting down. The chamber will be sliding out in a minute."

Saffron reached out to her mother's console and brought up the animation display. Bug's Bunny popped up on the screen. The room was silent, except for the sound of the chamber sliding out.

"Saffron, is this why you wanted to see the animation? So you managed to hack this station and paste your cartoon character on the screen? You proud of yourself? And you did it when my boss is here to boot. You're never coming with me to work again!"

Saffron sat wide-eyed, staring past her furious mother at the opening chamber. Sal turned around just as a grey furry hand reached over the edge of the chamber. Horror struck as a familiar voice called out:

"Eh, what's up, doc?"

### A Code

"You were given a number.

"A number. Part of a secret code."

"I've told you already, a thousand times. I don't know anything about a secret code. I don't have any number."

"You have no idea how critical this is."

"So tell me."

My interrogator mulled it over for a moment, but chose a different path.

"Look, we have been going around in circles. For hours now. Let me try something different. Maybe this will remind you."

He pulled a printed page out of a pocket. It was a photograph of a young woman. I was doubly shocked. Shocked at the fact that he was showing me a two dimensional printed photo, instead of the usual holo. And shocked because I knew her.

It must have shown.

"You know her."

A statement, not a question.

"I have met her."

"When? Where?"

"What difference does it make? It was purely social. You know that I have no interest in politics."

"So you have said. And so our records show. But this woman did have an interest in politics."

I immediately caught his use of the past tense. Again, my face gave me away.

"Yes, she did have an interest in politics, when she was alive."

Dead? She couldn't have been more than forty. She had a good two hundred and fifty years ahead of her. She must have been involved in something pretty bad, from the sounds of it.

"And, yes, it was not a peaceful death. Nor a pleasant one. She gave us the information we needed in the end. But she delayed long enough for it to be only of limited use."

"You tortured her?"

He didn't answer. Just stared silently straight at me. So they had tortured her.

"It isn't legal! It's immoral, and against the national code of ethics. For that matter, so is this questioning. You haven't charged me with anything, just locked me in a room, and questioned me for the past eight hours. I want to speak with my lawyer."

"There are times when even the most basic laws must be ignored. This is one of them. If you spoke to a lawyer, I would have to lock him up as well, just in case you passed the information on to him."

"I tell you that I don't know anything! Nobody gave me a secret code or whatever this magic number is supposed to be. Not she, nor anyone else."

I had only met her once. I had found a quiet corner in one of those nostalgic coffee bars. They had become a little too fashionable for my tastes, but the coffee was usually good. The place was fairly busy, but I managed to find a small table towards the back. I was sipping a double espresso. Unsweetened, so I could enjoy the strong bitter taste. Then she pulled up a chair and sat down opposite me.

"May I join you?"

"It is considered more polite to ask first, then to sit."

"My apologies. I am rather short of time."

"You look like you have a good couple hundred years left."

"Thanks for the compliment. Hopefully, I do have those years left. I am not sure. Right now, though, I am in a bit of a rush."

She did look a bit disheveled. Her hair was long, straight, and dark. Nearly black. It badly needed brushing, and she was constantly pulling stray strands out of her face. Her face was unexceptional, pale, with weak features. A slightly sunken chin, lips that protruded just a tiny bit too much.

Her eyes made up for all of it. I had never seen such piercing eyes. Bright blue eyes, but all I paid attention to was her pupils, black, infinitely deep. I stared straight into them, mesmerized, like the legendary deer that froze when an automobile's headlights shine on them. Though automobiles were just about as legendary as the deer now.

She repeated herself.

"I am in a bit of rush."

I continued staring.

"I need you. Badly."

The whole thing was turning into a sorry version of an adolescent daydream.

"What?"

"I need you. Not for sex. Though maybe we can do that too, if I have enough time. I doubt that I do. I can't explain here. You just have to promise me one thing."

"What?"

"That you will call me."

"Call you?"

"Don't be dense. Call me. By any kind of phone – it makes no difference. Call me tomorrow. I'll give you my ID number so you can call me. But there is one thing."

"What?"

"Don't write or record the number here. Memorize it now. If you are afraid that you will forget it, then write it down. Later, not here."

She glanced briefly at the ceiling. Only afterwards did I understand that she was looking for concealed cameras. There were cameras there, as it turned out. Well-concealed ones.

"Here is my number."

She told me the digits. I repeated them after her.

"Remember my number. Be sure to call."

"I will. And I will."

"If you don't get hold of me, make sure to keep the number. Somebody will ask you for it someday."

The conversation was turning from male fantasy to detective thriller. But she had me hooked.

She got up, and flashed me a killer smile.

"See ya."

"Sure."

I sat alone for a minute, recovering. I gulped the rest of the coffee, now cold, and left. At the time, I didn't pay much attention to the police loitering near the café's door. I wish that I had.

I came back to the interrogator. He was waiting for me to answer.

"A code. A number. She gave you the key to a code."

"I know nothing about a code."

He looked at me for a moment, shrugged, and went on.

"I'll explain. You are aware that there is a group of rebels that is trying to destroy civilization as we know it."

"Sure, the Blue-and-Greens. They want to go back to some fairy-land dream of primitive ecology. Benign nuts."

"Nuts, yes. Benign, no. They plan on achieving their goal by destroying everything that is based on advanced technology."

"There is no way that they could accomplish that."

"They can come awfully close to success. They have gotten access to a major database. I have been told that the information could be used to paralyze society."

"How?"

"I don't know. I wasn't told, and it is one of these things that it is best not to know. But let me explain. The database security is not that difficult to break, except for one important fact. The data is encrypted. There are certain parts that can be accessed if you have the right code. The database as a whole, though, is open only to those who have a special code, based on an extremely large prime number. We are talking about a number in the range of a hundred digits.

"The rebels somehow managed to get hold of the code. Six of them split the number among themselves. Each memorized a part of the code. We tried to catch them before they could record the numbers, or pass then on to others. Five of them slipped by us. Their secret is probably known by hundreds now. We caught the sixth. We thought that we caught her in time, before she passed on the number.

"One of the men was a bit too enthusiastic during the interrogation. It may be for the best. If the number died with her, then we are safe. There is only one problem. We know that she met with you on her last day. We are pretty sure that you are the only one she met. So we need to know. To really know, no matter how uncomfortable you feel about it, no matter how illegal this all seems.

"Did she give you the code? A number."

Only then did I realize. Her phone number. It had seemed like the wrong number of digits to me. Whatever this was, I didn't want to be part of it. I wanted out as fast as possible.

"She gave me a number. I thought that it was her phone number. Listen – I will tell you the number, or write it down. You can have it. I don't want to be part of this"

This finally threw him. I could see panic in his eyes. He held up his hand.

"No. Don't. And I am sorry, you are part of this, no matter how innocent you may be. Don't tell me the number. It would only make it worse. Another unauthorized person would know the key. We only have one choice, really. We have to make absolutely sure that you don't ever let that number out."

My guts froze.

"You wouldn't!"

"No, we wouldn't shoot you. You are innocent, after all."

My imagination was starting to go wild. They wouldn't shoot me. Maybe they had some other awful death in mind for me. They had no legal case against me. They were going to arrange an "accident". I would drown. I would be found hanging from a rafter, an apparent suicide. They would threaten my family, to make sure that I remained silent. Maybe some brain surgery. How much would they need to cut out to make me forget? How much of me would be left once they did that?

For some reason, I didn't think of the worse possibility of all.

"I am afraid that it is going to be difficult for you. Some options were eliminated on moral grounds. Others were just not practical, or reliable enough. In fact, the option that was chosen in the end does not seem quite reliable. I personally do not think it is terribly moral either. It was not my decision, though I am the one who had to question you and now has to inform you of your fate."

By now my mind had frozen. They had come up with something so terrible that even my overworked mind couldn't have thought of. I waited.

"I am the last person that you will speak with. Ever. You will be kept in a prison. A beautiful prison, a large prison, but a prison nonetheless. It will be a form of solitary confinement. We cannot take the slightest risk that the number will get out. Information will be able to come into your comfortable prison, but no information will be allowed out. You can have books, newspapers. You can even have an internet connection. But it will be one way- you will only be able to download, never upload. Not a single email. Nothing from this moment on.

"The rebels have many supporters. If the number leaves your cell, we fear that they will quickly get hold of it. The results will be disastrous.

"You will wonder how long this will be for. The database is extremely large. To re-encode it with a new key is essentially impossible. We also don't see any point at which the database will cease to be of use to the rebels. In short – you will remain here for the rest of your life."

"There isn't anything at all that could happen? Some event that could free me?"

"I suppose that if the rebels somehow got hold of the code, then your presence here would be of little use. On the other hand, if the rebels got hold of the code, it would be hardly worth leaving the cell. Life as we know it would know longer exist.

"It is of no matter. You will not be able to contact the outside world. Knowing what the cost of the key leaking out would be, I doubt that you will even try."

He got up, and walked to the door.

"Goodbye. And thank you."

The last human I ever would see walked out of the room. I sat stunned for a few moments. I finally got up, and tried the door. It was open. It only took a few minutes for me to understand that they had left me an entire house as a prison. A house without windows.

I needed to get a message out. No, not the number. Just a message to my friends, or to my parents, who would be going crazy with anxiety. I wondered what story they had been told to explain my disappearance. If I could tell them what was going on, maybe they could take some legal action and get me out of there.

I started exploring, examining the prison.

The kitchen was well equipped. Later I would learn how food was delivered through a chute. There was a sort of airlock. The inner door would only open to let the food in when the outer door was closed.

I spent the next three weeks going through the house as thoroughly as I could. There must be some way of contacting the outside world. It was impossible to accept that they had thought of everything. Yet it seemed that they had. There was no way to get any information out of that house.

I tried everything. My garbage went directly into an incinerator. I thought of flushing notes with the secret number down the toilet, but I had little doubt that they had the equivalent of a garbage disposal on the sewage outlet.

For a while I though that the internet connection would be their weak point. You remember the internet. After all, it wasn't that long ago.

Sure, I was set up with only incoming data. But you always had to ask for information. You couldn't download a movie or a book without sending some packet of data out. All I needed to do was to have some kind of pattern to my surfing, and maybe, maybe somebody would pick up on the coded message. A little wild surfing turned up the truth. They had a special server set up for me with some basic information and entertainment preloaded. Some of it, such as the news, was updated regularly by the server. I could never get anything unusual over that connection, though.

Printed books were available. New ones kept being delivered with the food. But I couldn't ask for anything specific. I could only read whatever they chose to dump down that chute.

One day I just stopped. I had thought of every possible way of getting a message out, and come up with nothing, nothing at all. It looked like I would be spending the rest of my life there – close to 250 years! How would I manage to survive?

At that point I had no interest in contacting the rebels. I just wanted to get word out, in hopes that somehow I could get out of there. I had no interest in giving the enemy the key to that database.

I hoped that I could forget that number, that cursed set of digits. If I did, then I would feel better about actually getting out of the prison. I would no longer pose a risk to civilization. Did you ever try to deliberately forget something? If you can answer me: 'Yes, but I don't remember what,' then I will believe you. It is essentially impossible. Once you decide to forget something, it is burned even deeper into your memory.

The best way to deliberately forget something it to try to remember it. But you have to convince yourself that you really do want to remember it. I couldn't deceive myself enough to do that.

I spent months memorizing other sets of numbers, in hopes of drowning the code in a sea of other numbers. It didn't work.

There was no point in it in any case. I had no way of getting a message out, and even if I did, there was nothing that anybody out there could do to help me. Only the code could free me. I was determined that even if I found some way to get a message out, I wouldn't send out the code. If saving civilization meant I had to give up on my freedom, then so be it.

But I was lonely. The loneliest human that ever lived. I went over the events, trying to think what I could have done to avoid the mess that I was in. This is always a futile exercise, unless you expect to be in a similar situation in the future, and can learn a practical lesson from those endless musings. I was never going to have to deal with that set of circumstances again. It looked like I would never have to deal with anything at all, ever again.

Still, I tortured myself. Why did I pick that coffee bar? Why did I let her join me? Why didn't I sense that something was wrong? I tried to blame myself in any way that I could, but without success. I had no way of knowing how much trouble that phone number was going to be.

There was one thing that I regretted, though. If only I had given that interrogator that number! I should have shouted it at him. They would have had no choice but to put him in prison with me. At least then I would have had a human to keep me company.

At times I felt guilty about these thoughts. After all, the cost of having him as my partner in prison would be the loss of his freedom. What had he done to deserve that?

I wondered what would happen if I died. I guessed that they would never know. I was sure that nobody was monitoring me. No secret cameras were watching me. Anybody who would watch me would be risking their own liberty. No, they wouldn't know if I died. I imagined that they would keep the house running, with full supplies, for two hundred and fifty years, maybe a bit longer, until they were sure that I was dead.

What would they do with the dead house? Would they just bury it and forget that it existed? Would they incinerate the whole thing, in case I had recorded the number somewhere? Who knows?

The years rolled by. I gave up on looking for a way to communicate. I gave up on blaming myself. I gave up on wishing that I had a partner in the prison. I gave up on just about everything.

For a couple of decades I managed to maintain a regular schedule. Woke up at six, exercised, showered, ate, checked the news, read, watched a movie or two. Then I fell apart completely. There was in fact no day or night in this place. I fell into a completely irregular schedule. I spent years gaining obscene amounts of weight, and years starving myself to a near skeleton. I wandered around the house stark naked for a few months, then turned the air conditioner down as low as it would go and walked around in a heavy coat.

Did I lose my mind? I suppose so. Anyone would. I often thought that it would have been kinder to kill me on the spot. I even thought of suicide. I dreamed up a hundred ways of doing it, but frankly, I was afraid. I wasn't capable of taking my own life.

They say that 'as long as there is life, there is hope,' but it wasn't true for me. I had life, at least in the minimal biological sense, but no hope.

Can I excuse myself by claiming insanity? I wish that I could. Others have forgiven me, but I can't forgive myself.

As the years rolled on into decades, I began to question everything that I had ever held as true. I was no longer sure what reality was. After all, each human experiences it differently. So was there a 'real' reality? I no longer knew.

And who said that the government was right? Maybe the rebels were right. Maybe technology was our ruin. It certainly was mine. If there were no phones, no phone numbers, then I would be leading a real life. Sure, a much shorter one than that offered by modern medical technology, but a lot happier one than the one I was leading now. Maybe even a happier one than I would have been living outside the prison. Perhaps cavemen really had had the best deal of all, and humans had been too smart for their own good.

I began to think of the Blue and Greens as my partners. I had no idea of how far their ideology went, but my hatred of technology was as extreme as could be. I spent hours writing a thesis discussing the question of whether it was moral to use stone tools, or if man should go completely back to his animal origins. I scribbled in pencil on paper, then threw the entire thing into the incinerator, disgusted by the pencil, the paper, even the letters themselves. I took to eating my meat raw.

I tried religion. I prayed to the modern gods that I knew of, and gradually worked my way back to more primitive gods. Ba'al was too advanced for me. I prayed to the gods of nature, the gods of streams and soil, of rock and sky. The gods of a nature that I was not experiencing.

Inevitably the day came when I decide to smash the computer, destroying the one-way internet connection to the outside world. It was irrevocable. Nobody would come and fix the machine for me.

I sat down in front of the screen, and watched the news for the last time. They were electing a new pope. The cardinals were meeting, and once they had made a decision, white smoke would come out of their chimney. If they had not made a decision, white smoke would signal it. I liked the smoke-signal idea. It was primitive. It required fire, but not much technology beyond that. It could only be used for simple messages, yes or no. Not much more than that.

I sat mesmerized in front of the screen, my mind boiling. Simple. Smoke. Yes or no. Yes or no, on or off.

All data can be reduced to yes or no, on or off. It was the basis of the digital world. Even my number could be expressed in binary code, a series of offs and ons, zeroes and ones. A quick calculation showed that I could express my number in sixty binary digits. Two months of daily smoke signals. Two months seemed like such a short time to me.

I could send a smoke signal. I could only hope that somebody was watching, and would understand.

I started experimenting in the kitchen, trying to find combinations of materials that would give off huge amounts of smoke. They sent me various cleaning supplies along with my food, so there were plenty of materials to use for playing amateur chemist.

Eventually I found a combination that seemed to work, one that would give off huge amounts of smoke in the incinerator. I was pleased with myself. Until the doubts started. Maybe there was some kind of filter on the incinerator exhaust. Who said that anybody was watching my prison? Maybe the rebels didn't know where it was. If my guards figured out that the smoke was a signal, they might tighten up security even further.

I decided that smoke signal wasn't enough. I would have to put out as many signals as possible, all at the same time, and hope that at least one of them got picked up. Smoke was one way of signaling the outside world, but I had to think of others. What else could get out that could carry the information? I racked my brain, but couldn't think of a thing.

I had been thinking along the wrong lines. "What else could get out that could carry the information?" It took me a week to realize that I hadn't stated the problem properly. Who said that something had to come out? Maybe something coming in could be a signal. There were two things that came into my prison that responded to my demand. Water and electricity. Water coming in had the advantage of producing more sewage going out.

At first I thought that I would alternate days. On "on" days, or "one" days, if you like, I would burn garbage that created a lot of smoke, leave all of the water faucets running, and turn on every electrical appliance in the house. On "off" or "zero" days, I would sit in the dark and cold, and not run the water at all. If anybody was watching the water or electricity consumption of my prison, they would get the message, even if the smoke didn't make it.

It had to succeed the first time. I had to make it as easy as possible for my friends, as I now thought of them, to understand that I was sending them a message, and actually get the information out to them.

If instead of having "one" days and "zero" days I would have "one" months and "zero" months, there could be an advantage. Maybe someone on my side was keeping an eye on the electric or water bills. If it meant that it took five years to get the message out, so be.

It took five years. I had to ease up on the plan a little, and allow myself drinking water and toilet flushing during "zero" months. I left a small electric light as well. I would survive in the complete dark for months at a time. |Remember that the binary coded number could have several zeroes in a row, which meant several months of dark, cold, and no shower.

Did I understand the consequences of what I was planning? To a limited extent I did. I had grown to identify with the blue and greens, but I didn't quite understand how far their ideology actually went, or that the code would really give them the ability to do much harm. I had been by myself for decades, and was to a large extent living in an imaginary land of my own creation.

Would we all have been better off if they had just killed me that first day? Maybe. I at least would have been spared the years of suffering. Beyond that I do not really know.

I had chosen a difficult path, five years of off and on, of mixing up batches of smoky garbage. I once went for six months without a shower, just to make sure that the code got out.

Finally, I was done. Sixty insane months were over. I went back to my regular routine, showered as I liked, and wondered. Did it work? Did the rebels get the code? If they did, would I be let out? Maybe I would be left to rot in the prison, no longer of interest to anyone, forgotten in the upheavals of the revolution.

A week after I finished transmitting, there was a knock on the door. I didn't bother answering. The door was locked from the outside, and if somebody wanted to come in they would have to let themselves in.

The door opened, and my familiar interrogator walked in. He hadn't aged much, but there was a look of resignation on his face. I tried speaking to him. I wanted to ask what had happened, I wanted to just talk, talk to another human. I couldn't get a word out. I had gotten out of the habit of speaking. Later, it took me a month just to regain the power of speech.

I did understand what he was saying.

"You may as well come out. There is no reason for you to stay here anymore."

I looked at him. I looked past him, out the open door. It was night. The streets were lit, and I could hear the background hum of the machines that kept civilization going.

My guest stared at me for a moment, and then abruptly left. I reached the door just as all the lights went out. I stared out at the silent city, lit only by moonlight, and wondered if flint tools would be allowed.

### A Clean Kill

I walked into Bo-Sung Kim's office completely exhausted. I had spent most of a twenty-four hour day traveling to South Korea, and had only allowed myself an hour in the hotel to shave, shower, and change into clean clothes before meeting him.

He rose from behind his desk and bowed slightly. I bowed back, as expected. When he visited my office in Chicago he had shaken my hand. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. I would venture a guess that in the days of the Roman Empire, everybody did as the Romans did, and the Romans did as they pleased.

In any case, I was in Bucheon, and would do as the Bucheons do. Bo-Sung dismissed my driver, and invited me to sit in his guest chair. To Westerners, Oriental people tend to look the same. I fear that Westerners look pretty much alike to Koreans as well. In any case, I had been trained to notice details, and would never confuse one Korean with another. Certainly not Bo-Sung, who was my colleague in many ways.

He was tall, with a mop of dark hair just starting to go gray at the temples. His face was distinctly triangular, wide at eye level, narrowing down to a small chin. His eyes were unusually narrow slits, "sharp", as I later heard other Koreans describe them.

We both served as ranking detectives in municipal police forces. Our techniques were very similar, despite the distance between our countries. As it turned out, the differences in culture were not as great as one would expect. Normally, the two of us would never have met. But normal times were over, and municipal police forces were being drafted to help battle international terrorism. Municipal forces now had an international importance, and more importantly, we now had funding for travel.

I expected some niceties, a little tea and chit-chat, before we started discussing issues of airport and stadium security, but I was wrong.

"Well, Michael, you have caught me at an interesting point."

"Interesting? In what way?"

"I was informed of an unusual case a few minutes ago. If you had not been on your way, I would have left the office by now."

There was usually only one kind of "unusual case" in our language. Murder.

"Well, I will join you. Maybe I will learn something."

"I would be pleased."

I found myself immediately more wide awake. I was used to working strange hours, and the excitement of the chase brought a rush of adrenalin. I knew that I eventually would pay the price and collapse completely when the case was solved, but in the meantime I was ready for battle. Bo-Sung's driver was already waiting in his unmarked Daewoo, and in a few seconds we were on our way.

"So, what is unusual about this case?"

"It has taken place in an unusual location."

"Unusual location?"

"Yes."

My friend interrupted our conversation to speak to someone on his mobile phone. Since my knowledge of Korean was complete only in its nonexistence, I was still in the dark. I wondered how unusual the murder location could possible be. My colleague had decades of experience behind him, as I myself did. I found it hard to believe that a murder location could create such interest in a senior detective.

When he was done with his call, Bo-Sung did not apologize for the interruption. Neither would I have under similar circumstances.

"The murder has taken place in a clean room."

"A clean room?"

"Yes, in an electronic manufacturing plant. Dong-Bu's Fab 1"

I vaguely recalled that computer chips and the like were manufactured in special clean environments, but had never heard of murders taking place there. We didn't have any chip manufacturing in Chicago, so I did not know much about the facilities, and why it made a case unusual.

"Well, most murders do not take place in a factory, but it does occasionally happen."

Song-Bu turned to me.

"Ah, you are not familiar with these factories. They present a special challenge in a murder investigation. This is, unfortunately, the second time I have had to deal with such a case. The first was ten months ago. The file on that case is still open.

"The problem in these clean room environments is that there are very few clues. Our usual forensics, even the most modern DNA analysis, are nearly useless. To a large extent, so are eye witnesses. There will not be much to work with."

He returned to his phone, and left me wondering. Could the case really be that difficult? A murder in a presumably well-lit workplace, with dozens of potential witnesses, should not be that difficult to solve. A drop of blood here, a bit of hair there, and DNA analysis would provide most of the solution. If there were witnesses, even circumstantial ones, the case would be solved. Most large scale factories also have some security cameras as well.

Bo-Sung knew all of this, of course. So there still must be something really unusual here. I had to curb my curiosity as best as I could, until we arrived at the plant, and Bo-Sung got off the phone.

"I am sure that your curiosity has been awakened. If you follow me into the fab, you will quickly understand what makes this unusual."

We drove through a crowded parking lot, past a few squatting gardeners who were weeding the lawn, and pulled up in front of a large building. Squad cars were scattered around the entrance, and a handful of uniformed policemen loitered near the door. They recognized Bo-Sung immediately, and bowed as we entered the building.

"Please follow me. There are very strict dress codes here, and the rules must be obeyed, even if it is a crime scene."

There was a foyer just past the automatic glass doors. To our left was a set of numbered cubby-holes with slippers and shoes. We removed our shoes, placed them in a cubbyhole, and put on slippers instead.

"Don't worry about the fit. You will be taking them off in about two minutes."

He went on to answer the unasked question:

"It is a combination of Korean tradition, and the need for cleanliness in the fab."

One of the plant managers, obviously distraught, met us at a second set of glass doors and led us to the elevator. Bo-Sung continued his brief explanation as we walked down a narrow corridor and found the elevator. He started explaining the difficulty of the case as we waited for the elevator.

"The electronic chips that are used in today's consumer products: computers, cell phones, MP3 players and the like are manufactured in plants or 'fabs' like this. Some are owned by well known companies like Intel or Samsung, others by more obscure firms. Even a small plant like this represents a huge investment, in the range of a billion US dollars.

"The chips that they make have millions of electronic components packed into tiny packages. The only way to accomplish this is to make the components, transistors and the like, very small. The net result is that the features on the chips are microscopic. Actually, they are sub-microscopic. You can't see them in a regular microscope."

The elevator arrived, we stepped in, and Bo-Sung continued with his brief explanation

"The details of the manufacturing process are not that important, though we may need to learn some details later. The critical point is that dust of any kind, even tiny particles, will ruin the 'wafers' that these electronic chips are manufactured on. An hair or a bit of dandruff are disasters here. There is an elaborate system in place to prevent dust or particles from interfering with the manufacturing process. It is this system that makes the usual forensics nearly useless here."

The elevator door opened. We walked down a short hallway, only to find another set of cubbyholes. We left our slippers in cubbyholes, and entered a small room.

"The lockers are for objects that are not allowed into the clean room, regular paper notebooks, cloth laptop cases and the like. I see that they have assigned a Dong-Bu technician to help us dress."

Bo-Sung translated the instructions as we went along. I had to clean my eyeglasses in an ultrasonic cleaner, then dry them with a special lint-free cloth. Bo-Sung had to wipe his cell phone down with a special cloth. Cell phones in general were not allowed in the clean room, but an exception was being made for the chief detective.

We washed our hands with ultra pure water in automatic sinks. When the washing cycle was over, the sink blew warm air on our hands to dry them.

The next room was the 'smock room'. I have no idea if this is what they were called in Western countries, but those were the few English words that were on the sign that I saw. We put on white face masks, attached to our ears with elastic cords. The masks covered our faces from nose to chin. The 'smocks', as it turned out, were commonly called "bunny-suits". These were one-piece suits that covered us from head to ankle. A complicated set of ties, flaps and Velcro straps secured the hood around our faces. The technician helped us with this – it was not something that you would figure out on your own.

The suits were in two colors, pink and blue. I though that it was a boy - girl thing, but as it turned out, blue was for company employees, while pink was for outside suppliers. We were pink bunnies.

To complete the suit, we put on plastic shoes. The shoes had attached sleeves that zippered up our calves, like a high woman's boot. Though this was not exactly high fashion. Another Velcro strap fastened the top of these shoes.

Bo-Sung spoke through his face mask.

"The suits are made of a special material that does not shed fibers."

I nodded my understanding, not quite certain how to speak in my costume. We went through yet another automatic glass door into another room. I felt my feet sticking to the floor. There was a special blue sticky pad on the floor, designed to trap bits of dust from the soles of our shoes. A wide full-length mirror let me get a view of myself. There was not much to see. People in bunny-suits look remarkably alike. All you see are eyes, glasses, and a bit of eyebrow.

We put on gloves, presumably made out of some lint-free cloth, and then a second pair of long vinyl gloves. The technician, who had suited up with us, helped me arrange the elastic cuffs of my suit over the top of the gloves.

We waited in front of a stainless steel and glass door, guarded by another sticky pad. I could see through the glass into a narrow steel corridor. The technician pressed a button, the door opened, and we walked into an "air shower". There was a loud rushing noise, and blasts of warms air struck us from every direction. All of this in an effort to blow off any dust that we might have on our suits.

Finally, we entered the clean room. The air was cooler there, which was a relief. As it was, my glasses were starting to fog up. Bo-Sung paused for a minute, to let me get my bearings. It was necessary, since I had just entered a world that I never even knew existed.

The room was huge. I can't even tell you how large, since it was crowded with machines whose purpose I couldn't even begin to guess. There were carts scattered all over, loaded with plastic cases full of what looked like stacked dinner plates. Some of these plastic cases were running overhead on a robotic monorail. I could see a few technicians and engineers waiting by machines, and gathered that there were many more people in the clean room than I could see.

The floor was perforated with little holes, reminiscent of the pegboard my father used to hang his tools on. I could see lights and some kind of activity in the space below the floor. The whole room was lit with yellow lamps, providing another eerie touch to this odd world.

"Welcome to the clean room. A boon to modern technology, but a curse to the modern detective. No DNA testing, no fiber matching, no real witnesses – but a very real murder."

I pointed down to the floor.

"What's there?"

"They call it the 'sub-fab'. There are other machines there that service the ones we see up here. There is normally no access directly from there to this room."

A pink bunny-suit, presumably a police officer, led us through the maze of machines.

"I gave strict instructions that no one was to leave this room. We can't keep everybody here indefinitely, as you can imagine. If you need to use the washroom, you have to leave, and go through the entire cleaning process again."

"Are there surveillance cameras?"

"There are some. I doubt that there will be much footage of interest."

I could see his point. A completely anonymous setting, with everybody traveling incognito. Even if we found a blood splattered plastic glove, we wouldn't be able to connect it to the murderer. No fingerprints even on the inside, because of the inner cloth gloves.

I saw a few technicians moving the stacks of dinner plates around. Their bunny-suits were marked in Korean, with the English words 'zero defects' on their shoulders. The plates were the wafers that the chips were made on. The fab couldn't completely stop, even for a murder.

We arrived at the victim in a few minutes. A small bunny-suited figure, presumably a woman, laid crumpled on the floor next to yet another machine, this one helpfully labeled 'Asyst'.

There was no doubt as to the method. Her head had been bashed in by a blunt object. The stain of blood could be seen through the fabric of her hood, though no blood had managed to penetrate the fabric. Another blow against the forensics guys.

There was an obvious candidate for the murder weapon. A flat piece of shiny steel, with a large hole drilled through it, laid on the floor. A flange that belonged to one of the machines. The forensics guys were waiting for instructions. They would have to take it out of the fab for testing. You can't dust for fingerprints in a clean room. It was all basically pointless, though. There would be no fingerprints, and it looked like there would be no blood either.

We stood there silently for a few minutes, each of us making his own professional impression of the scene.

Later there would be autopsy results. I didn't need them in order to know that the blow came from above, at an angle that only somebody considerably taller than the victim could have dealt. The perpetrator must have been fairly strong as well. That flange looked pretty heavy.

I took a closer look at the flange. There was a shiny rubber seal embedded in the flange.

Bo-Sung broke the silence.

"Any ideas?"

"Do you know when it happened?"

"She was last seen alive ten minutes before the body was found. A very narrow time frame for the act. I have somebody tracking down the surveillance recordings. Not that it is likely to help.

"We will of course question her friends and relatives. If it is at all like the last one, we won't find a thing. Just a normal young woman, with the usual relationships."

I pondered the situation for a moment, and came up with an idea, or at least part of one.

"I do suggest one thing. When you have the workers leave the clean room, collect the vinyl gloves from each one, and label them with the worker's name. I know that there is no blood to speak of, and the murderer may have changed gloves by now, but maybe not. And I do have an idea of sorts."

"It is easy enough. Though I am curious as to your idea."

"So am I. It is only half an idea right now."

"Half an idea is better than none, which is where I am right now."

Bo-Sung gave some orders over his phone, while I pondered the situation. There was no doubt that this was murder, not an accident. The fact that this was the second case in this one factory was disturbing. Nothing in the previous victim's background led to any possible motive. If the same was the case here, the circumstances pointed to a serial killer, who killed for the fun of it, or maybe just to prove that he could commit the perfect unsolvable crime.

Committing a second crime of the same type was risky, but if the crime was perfect, why not repeat it? Repeat the crime, repeat the thrill. A low-risk thrill, from the looks of it.

There was something else highly disturbing about the whole thing. Korea has a very low crime rate. Even automobile theft was rare. Sure, there were some scandals involving politicians, but a serial murderer? Unheard of.

Bo-Sung finished his call and looked at me. Somehow I could read the question in the few square centimeters of his face that were visible between the mask and the hood.

"Yes, there is nothing more to see here."

Bo-Sung nodded, and led the way out of the clean room. Leaving the room involved the same complex set of procedures, only in reverse. We were spared the air shower on the way out.

"Interesting?"

"Quite. You know what it looks like."

"Yes. Some kind of a nut. A serial killer. Unheard of in my country."

"I would like to hear the results of the interviews."

"Of course. The critical ones will take place today."

The interviews would be conducted by Bo-Sung's staff. It was possible that he himself would conduct some. I could be of no help here. The language and culture barriers were insurmountable. Back home, I would even try to have officers of the appropriate ethnic group speak to family and friends of victims. Everybody, whether Irish, Polish, Black or Hispanic felt more comfortable speaking to somebody who was more like themselves.

"You will join me to see the camera recordings?"

"Of course."

Our fab guide brought us to a meeting room, where two officers were watching the footage with a digital projector. A few words in Korean, and they showed us the relevant footage, if I can use the term 'relevant' loosely.

The camera was one of ten in the fab, and it was the only one that faced the general direction of the murder scene. We watched ten minutes of film, between the last time the victim was seen alive, to the discovery of the body. There was very little to see.

The victim herself was hidden behind the machines. Somebody larger than her did enter the area, but the place was a maze, and there was no way of knowing whether this person was our suspect, or just an innocent worker, while the murderer had reached the victim some other way. Not that it made any difference. The recording was of the usual black and white low quality that I was used to, and would be of no help in identifying the suspect.

There was a bustle of activity on the screen as the body was discovered and people rushed to help.

"Almost certainly useless," Bo-Sung offered. "I will have these digitally enhanced, but I have no real expectations."

"No. The information that we need just isn't there. How was the previous murder committed?"

"The obvious question. The victim, also a small woman, was strangled with a length of wire that was left on the scene. No blood. Our enemy here is careful. Blood spattered on his bunny-suit would give him away."

"The intelligent crazy serial killer. The worse possible type. The one who is least likely to make a mistake."

"Oh, he will. Eventually. But many may die before that happens. I cannot wait that long. The fab is pressing for results as well. The whole business is making their workers nervous, which is bad for productivity."

A plainclothesman hurried into the room, and consulted with Bo-Sung in rapid-fire Korean. When he was done, Bo-Sung turned to me.

"Well, it looks like we have a break. The woman who found the body saw somebody leaving that area as rolled her cart towards the victim's tool. She will be brought here for questioning in a moment."

I remained silent. Even if she had seen the murderer, there was little hope that she could identify him. It did narrow the time that the murder took place to about one minute, which was precise, but useless in this case.

I watched the interview, and though I didn't understand a word, the gist of it was obvious. The witness wasn't going to be much help. Afterwards, Bo-Sung confirmed my impression.

The witness had approached the victim's area with a cart-load of wafers. As she walked up the aisle, she saw a man in a blue bunny-suit walking away from her in the same aisle. She thought nothing of it, since she hadn't yet seen the body. The body was hidden by a rack full of equipment, so she didn't see it until she was practically on top of it.

Yes, she was sure that it was a blue suit. She thought that it must be a man just from his size. Besides that, he was just a bunny-suit.

She was a good witness, trying to be helpful, but the circumstances were such that her information wouldn't help crack the case.

There was not much else for me to do there. Bo-Sung arranged for a taxi to take me to my hotel, where I tried to get some badly needed sleep.

I always have a hard time falling asleep when a fresh case lands in my lap. This was the worse type of case there was, the so-called 'perfect crime'. I was convinced that the crime wasn't perfect, that I could help Bo-Sung solve it, but for now all I had was a hunch, a hunch that would take some effort and no little cost to follow through on. It had been many years since I my last chemistry course at the university, but I still thought that there was something to it.

I was exhausted, though, and did fall asleep. I breakfasted at the hotel, and took a taxi to Bo-Sung's office. He had left me a note in Korean to show the cab driver, to make sure that I would find the way. In quieter times I am sure that he would have picked me up at the hotel myself, or at least sent his driver, but the pressure of the case wouldn't allow him that kind of luxury.

After the usual greeting, I asked my host the first question on my mind.

"How many?"

"How many potential suspects? About two hundred, including all of the employees that are tall enough. And, in answer to your second question, there is no real news from the interviews with the friends and neighbors. Forensics, as expected, are of no help here. They did verify that an object shaped like that flange could have caused the wound, but nothing more."

"So no nice surprises. We have two hundred suspects, and no motive, and no clues."

"Yes. I'm afraid so. Still I cannot wait for the next murder, and hope that our 'friend' will be sloppy for a change."

"No. Will you try my half-baked idea?"

"If you will share it with me, I may."

"The gloves. The flange."

"What about them?"

"There are no hairs, no blood, no fibers, no photos, and no witnesses. We have a body, a weapon, and two hundred pairs of gloves. I propose that we match the gloves to the weapon, to that flange."

"I don't follow."

"The flange is a piece of steel. It has no DNA. But it may have traces of something else on it. Some chemical from the process, maybe some vacuum grease on the rubber seal. It may have a 'fingerprint' of its own.

"Have one of your forensics guys put on gloves, exactly the same gloves as used in the fab. Then have him lift the flange, and lower it. Take the gloves to a chemical lab, and have it analyzed for anything likely you can think of. Find out what the flange may have been in contact with in the fab, and see if there are traces of it on the gloves. Make sure to send a clean pair of gloves for comparison."

Bo-Sung thought for a moment.

"The cost of the initial test is minimal. If it works, I can justify testing all of the gloves."

"I will help you speak to the process engineers, if you like. To figure out what might be on the flange."

"I would be pleased. In fact, I would be pleased to act as your translator."

As it turned out, his help as a translator was not really needed. The engineers spoke passable English, at least when it came to technical issues. They used a special perfluoroether grease on the rubber seal that I had seen, and reported that the process tended to scatter Aluminum atoms.

The Aluminum was useless. It is commonly found almost everywhere, even in a clean room. The grease though, gave us a break.

It took three days, but finally Bo-Sung had something to report.

"We have gone through all of the gloves, and found three with the tell-tale grease."

"Three? Two suspects, or three?"

"Two. One of them probably has a legitimate reason to have that contamination on his gloves. After all, it is used in the fab. My bet, in any case, is that the worker with two 'dirty' gloves is our man. That is a heavy flange. Two hands were needed for this murder."

Bo-Sung was right. The fellow who had two dirty gloves did not normally work with that grease. So we had our fellow. Actually, we had identified him, but we didn't have enough information to convince a court.

"So what's next?"

"Well, not too many years ago, this would have been the end of the case, and our friend would find himself behind bars, or perhaps he would have disappeared. We no longer have a military dictatorship here, so we will have to be bit more imaginative."

"What you really need is to have the witness identify him in a line-up. Doesn't seem likely to work, though."

"No, it doesn't."

Bo-Sung looked thoughtful, and I knew that he was onto something. I also knew that it was a bad idea to interrupt somebody who was thinking like that, so I didn't ask him what his thoughts were.

I spent the next two days with Bo-Sung and his colleagues going over the security arrangements for the Asian Games that were to take place in September. It was late Thursday before the 'unusual case' was mentioned again. Bo-Sung interrupted our discussions to throw out his idea.

"Michael, you mentioned a line-up."

"Sure. If the witness can pick the suspect out of a group of bunny-suited men, you would have the evidence that you need. The only problem is that she won't be able to."

"We are going to try in any case. The suspect is in custody now, but I won't be able to keep him if don't get more evidence. So we'll try the line-up. Maybe we'll be lucky."

I could tell that my colleague had a hunch, maybe only half a hunch, but I knew him well enough to respect his gut feelings. Sometimes that is all you have to go on.

The line-up took place a few hours later. Five men of nearly identical height, wearing identical bunny-suits, including masks, stood in a row in the front of the room. Our witness sat in a blue plastic chair, and stared at the exhibit. Finally she shook her head, and mumbled a few apologetic words to Bo-Sung, who looked disappointed, like a gambler standing in front of a traitorous slot-machine.

I leaned over to my partner in crime, and whispered to him.

"I wouldn't have expected much from this in any case. After all, she just saw his back as he was walking away. How could she identify him after that?"

I watched as a smile slowly spread over Bo-Sung's face.

A few quiet words with his assistant, and the line-up was moved to the back of the room. We moved our chairs closer to the back of the room as well. Bo-Sung insisted that we keep our backs to the suspects, and had them walk one by one past us to the front of the room.

The witness was confused at the proceedings, which were different from the ones she was used to seeing on television police shows, but she went along with the game. I was only starting to comprehend Bo-Sung's brainstorm myself. I wasn't at all convinced that it would work.

The suspects walked past us one at a time. I watched the witness, who shook her head as they went past. One, two, three – nothing. As the fourth suspect walked past, she stiffened, paused a second, and quietly spoke a few words to Bo-Sung. He nodded to a uniformed policewoman, who led the witness out of the room. When she had left, and the suspects had been cleared out, he turned to me.

"I must thank you. Your comment that she had only seen the murderer from behind filled in the missing link. I recreated the situation as best as I could, and it paid off. She picked the same fellow who had the grease on his gloves."

"How? From behind they look even more alike."

"So it seems to you and me. But those who work in these fabs look at things differently. They constantly have to identify coworkers in those suits. Is it your boss or your boyfriend who is approaching? It would be useful to know before you make some critical error. So they identify people in an unusual way. Unusual, but I think likely enough to convince the court."

"What did she see? They were all identical. Completely so from behind."

"Not so, my friend. Not when they are walking. It turns out that each of us has another identifying feature, besides our faces, DNA and fingerprints."

I could see that he was right. He must be, since the witness had picked out the right suspect. But how?

Bo-Sung saved me the effort of phrasing the question.

"Another identifying feature, Michael. The way we walk. Our gaits."

### Emotions

" 'Hi. I want to be sad.'

'No problem. Let's see your ID card.'

The client handed over his ID card, and you ran it through the scanner.

'David Bateman?'

'Yes, that's me.'

'You can't be sad again until next year. You've used up your quota.'

'But my father died. I want to mourn him.'

'I'm sorry, but there are rules. Do you have private insurance?'

'No. I can't afford it. Isn't there any way...'

'Well, there's the committee. But I see that you have already applied to them three times this year. Twice for happiness, once for anger.'

"That's how your day went, right Jimmy?

"Of course I got it right. How else could it be? It must be pretty much the same every day. Great job you have, selling emotions packed inside of a syringe.

"How close was I? Practically word for word, huh? You could probably do it in your sleep. Maybe you do.

"Jimmy, it wasn't always like this. Everybody walkin' around like a bunch of zombies. No emotions. No feelings, no, well, no being just plain human. Used to be that people were alive, really alive. They didn't need injections to be alive either.

"There was real music then, real art, and real people to appreciate the stuff. Now folks go to a museum, and know that they are looking at great paintings. They go to a play, and they'll tell you that the acting was good, or the plot was lousy, whatever. They'll analyze it to death – but it never means anything to them. Doesn't talk to them. Doesn't move them. Nothing.

"Just look at us today. All perfectly calm. Nobody unhappy, nobody angry, nobody anything. Sure, you can get a hormone fix. Want to be happy? Sign up here. Got insurance? You can be sad this week. Want to fall in love? Here's your dose. Everything is controlled.

"Sure, things are lot calmer now. We used to have crimes of passion. Murder, rape – you name it. War. Far too much of that. Today we only have logical wars, if there is such a thing. No passion today. They say it's for the better.

"Jimmy, excuse my French, but if you want to fuck properly these days, you've got to apply for the emotions, buy the feelings in a bottle, have the nurse inject them. And they tell us things are better.

"Bunch of zombies. That's what we are. Robots. Used to be a joke about a fellow whose doctor tells him he should improve his life style, live healthier:

'You should quit smoking – you'll live longer'

'What for?'

'I told you. So you'll live longer. You should stop drinking so much too.'

'What for?'

'I told you. So you'll live longer. You should cut back on your womanizing too.'

'What for?'

'I told you. So you'll live longer.'

'That's what I'm asking. Live longer? What for?'

"So what are we living for today? For happiness? Only a couple times a year, three or four if you have the extra cash. People say that we live more satisfactory lives today. That we are more satisfied. Satisfied? I don't feel satisfied. I don't feel anything. Just an empty lump where part of me used to be. Hell, I don't even love my own son. I wish I could, but I can't, just like a guy without legs can't walk.

"Everybody knows that things were different back then. Even you, even though you were an infant when it happened, know that people were different. You taste it every time you get a dose of anger, love or happiness. We used to feel those things all of the time. Without having to pull out our ID cards to get them.

"So how'd we lose it? Government will tell you that it was a conscious decision. That things were bad. That emotions were driving people crazy. That there were riots in the cities, murders in the bars, endless wars everywhere. So they decided to get rid of emotions, and fix the human race. They'll even tell you that they had some kind of election. A referendum or something, and everybody agreed to it.

"That's not what happened. Sure, the government funded some research. It started out as a way of getting rid of the prisons. They had so much crime back then that they would lock people up to keep them out of trouble. It was expensive, and when they let out the folks who had committed those crimes, they would run off and do them again. Prisons didn't fix anything. So they looked for other ideas.

"The first one they came up with was neat solution for rapists. Castrate them – that's right, just chop off their balls. It was a primitive idea, but it worked. No testosterone, no built-up anger, no violence. The first subjects were all volunteers. They'd rather be cut than spend the rest of their lives in prison. Then other criminals starting clamoring for the surgery. Not the thieves, but the assault-and-battery types, and the murderers. If no testosterone meant no violence, why should just the rapists get the deal?

"So the biologists started working on something better, something that would suppress anger without the surgery. See, castration screws up a lot of things, besides just suppressing anger, and it doesn't suppress anger completely. They wanted something more specific, something more effective..

"That should have cued them into the problem. You can't play with one thing in this machine called the human body without affecting something else. But they tried anyhow. They came up with concoctions that would suppress this emotion or that, but they always had side-effects.

"Government thought there would be military uses for the technology too. What if you could suppress anger and violence in enemy soldiers? Just infect them with some virus that would kill their anger, and the war would be over.

"The research dragged on, and had pretty much come to a dead end. They had an emotion-killing trick, but it killed all emotions. They had a virus that could spread it, but they had no way of protecting our own soldiers. They called it the 'fix-it virus'. The virus that would 'fix' everything. They didn't dare use it.

"The biologists kept up their work. Where there is funding, there is science. The fix-it virus was a dead end. They kept a few vials of the stuff in a freezer in Los Alamos, and that was it.

"How do I know all this? I was there. Back then I was a molecular biologist. We were all sworn to secrecy after it happened. I shouldn't be telling you this. But somebody ought to know the truth. And the truth is ugly.

"We were finished with the fix-it virus. Nobody could figure out a good use for it. But we had learned a lot about how emotions work, and there was a project afoot to strike fear into the hearts of our enemies. There was still a lot of work to do. We had to avoid running into the dead end we did with the first virus.

"The team worked closely, and for long hours. The work was fascinating, the people were tremendous, and, well, I at least have memories of how these things felt. You will never even have that.

"The crazy working hours and the close-knit team had an obvious side effect. Nearly everybody who was young and unattached was in love, one way or the other. How could it be otherwise? I fell in love and married your mother inside of a few months. Getting married was the best thing that I did. It got me out of the emotional swamp that the labs had turned into. Ecstatic love, broken love, jealousy, despair – you name it.

"I at least had a real reason to leave work at a more or less reasonable hour. After you were born I had another reason to spend time at home. I was crazy about you. Yeah – that's how we talked. Intense love was described as a type of insanity. And so it was. A beautiful insanity.

"There was one fellow who was what we called 'intense' back then. He had some complicated foreign name, but went by Henry. A guy who felt everything very strongly. There were always some guys around who were like that – they were prized as guinea pigs in our research. He was a neurologist, but he spent more time have his own brain scanned than he did studying others'.

"Well, it figured that a guy like that would fall madly in love with one of the technicians. And it figured that after a while she would be exhausted by their relationship. Someone that intense is hard to be with for very long. We all saw it happening, their getting closer, their few months of unbelievable happiness, her pulling away, looking for space for herself. Then bickering, anger, and a proper break-up. You have never seen these things, but they were common enough back then.

"Our hero took the break-up very badly. Back then there was something called suicide. You may have read about it, or studied it in history class. When somebody was really angry, they might kill somebody else. If they were depressed, then they might decide to kill themselves. That's what suicide was.

"It was pretty common back then. Sometimes there were suicide pacts where a few people would kill themselves at the same time. Like a death party. Sometimes there were murder-suicides. A classic one was where the girl decides to break up with the guy. So goes off, says: 'If I can't have her, then nobody will', and shoots her, then himself – out of depression or remorse, or both – I don't know. It's been so long that I barely remember what those things feel like.

"Well, Henry was intense, but not really violent. He wasn't capable of pulling a trigger, whether the muzzle was aimed at him or at somebody else. Turned out that he was capable of something much worse.

"We were all eating one day when he joined us in the lunch room. People looked up when he walked in. We liked Henry, and felt pretty bad for his heartbreak. Thing was, it looked like he was finally getting over it. He sat down next to me, grabbed my glass and spoon, and started dinging on the glass to get everybody's attention. Sure enough, the room quieted down.

"He gets up, and says, believe or not: 'If I can't have it, nobody will!' I couldn't believe it. The next thing he was supposed to do was shoot his ex-girlfriend, who was sitting across the room, then half-a-dozen innocent bystanders, and finally himself. Sure enough, he reached into his jacket and pulled out a squirt gun. Yep, a toy that shoots water. A green plastic job, didn't even look real. Then he starts squirting everybody in site.

"There was a gasp of relief when he started squirting. It was just a practical joke. Nothing to worry about. He used up his water after a couple of minutes, nodded politely to his co-workers, and walked calmly out. After a few minutes of joking and laughing, we all went back to our meals. He had pulled it off perfectly, getting his dramatic moment without hurting anyone.

"It took two days for the virus to incubate. Two days before the symptoms showed up. Two days in which people had gone home to their families, gone out to meals, movies, you name it. Two days in which in had spread out of control.

"The second day I was feeling odd. I couldn't quite place it, but I knew that something wasn't right. I asked my buddies at work how they felt. I thought that maybe the flu was going around, or food poisoning or something. They said mostly that they felt odd, but couldn't quite nail it down.

"Then a bunch of bad shit happened to me. The jerk I shared my office with had one of his interminable loud phone calls with one of his many girlfriends. I spilled my coffee, getting a bunch of paperwork all wet. While I was cleaning up the mess, I knocked your mom's photo off the desk. I got down on my ands and knees to retrieve it, and when I got back up I banged my head on the corner of the desk. I was getting ready to explode in a fit of cursing and pounding on the desk – my usual little fit of anger. Then I realized something. I didn't feel like it, I didn't feel like cursing, or stomping outside for some fresh air. Truth was, I didn't really feel angry.

"Now, I knew myself. A series of dumb incidents like that would really get on my nerves. But this time I hardly noticed. I didn't feel angry or upset. I didn't feel anything. That's when I realized what had happened.

"I grabbed my cubicle-mate's phone, and hung it up. I had wanted to do that for years, but was always afraid. Now I didn't know what fear was.

"'Mickey', I said, 'don't ask questions. Come with me.' He didn't say a word, just followed me into the hallway. That's when I knew my hunch was right.

"I led him downstairs to the labs, into the cold storage area, where we kept our frozen experimental viruses. I showed my ID to the guard, and he gave me the key to the right freezer. He would give the key to anybody who was authorized. Henry, for example.

"Sure enough, the fix-it virus was gone. Henry had sprayed us all with it. I made for the nearest phone, called the emergency number, reported the missing virus and my suspicions. They wrote everything down, and started their investigation. They were pretty quick. It only took them a couple of hours to shut the place down and declare a quarantine, and a few more to convince the authorities to shut down the airport. Two days had already gone by, though, and the airport wasn't the only way to leave town. There were no quick tests to diagnose carriers, the symptoms were not typical disease symptoms, and there was no vaccine. The virus had been specifically engineered to spread quickly, and it did.

"By the time foreign governments were informed, it was too late for them as well. It reached every country inside of a week, and a couple of weeks later it was all over.

"So here we are, not because some government decided that we would be better off this way, but because some hormone-driven fellow wanted his revenge.

"The worst part of it is that we know we are missing something. I know it, because I lived back in the old days. You know it too. You know that something is missing, that you are not whole. That's why all of those poor slobs line up for their shots. 'Oh, I need to be sad', 'I need to be happy', 'I need to fall in love', 'I need to be angry'. Poor slobs, they can never have what they really need, only a quick fix that will let them experience for a few hours what was once theirs to experience for their entire lives. Not only that – they charge them for it.

"Turns out that there is a real cure. No, don't get excited. It won't bring emotions back. It will just take something else away. That need. That feeling that you are missing something. Yeah, I know what you do for a living. You process emotions. Folks show up, and they want to feel this, they need to feel that. You ever wonder why they need, why they want? It's chemical, like the rest of it. Their emotions have been deadened, but deep inside, buried in their molecules, they know that the emotions should be there. It's all imbalanced.

"When we worked on the fixit virus, we knew this would be a problem. So we designed the antidote – the molecule that would balance things out, at least in a way. So you wouldn't have that awful need.

"Here, follow me. Yeah, to the kitchen. Bear with me. It's slow going with the cane. The story's not over. I'm not going to make a cup of tea now just to keep you in suspense.

"OK, open the fridge. No, the top part, the freezer. Take out the ice cream. Now, in the corner – what do you see? Just a coffee jar, right? Pull it out. It's full of cotton, you see that. Open it up. Pull out the cotton. Go ahead. Just be careful. There's a test tube in there. Hold it up.

"See that white powder? That will fix everything. Nobody will even notice that they are lacking emotions. That white powder will kill that last bit of humanity, that feeling that something is missing, that there has to be more. I took it when I left the lab. To make sure that it stayed safe, that we didn't all turn into complete zombies.

"I guess I hadn't completely lost my emotions at that point. I still cared a bit. Enough to bother saving that virus. I thought I would keep it safe, make sure that it never got released. Who knows, if people realize that they are missing something, maybe the day will come when they'll figure out how to get it back.

"A few weeks after I left Los Alamos I thought of destroying the virus. It's easy enough. Just need a decent incinerator. But by then I didn't care enough to bother. So I left in my freezer, and here it is. I don't think that it makes much difference now. You don't get real creative thinking without emotions. Nobody's going to figure out a way around this. Nobody will really put their heart into it.

"Yeah, that's the kind of thing we would say then. You didn't just think things, you felt them in your guts.

"Put the test tube on the table. Yeah, just lay it there. Nothing to be afraid of. There really isn't, since you don't know what fear is. They used to say that about brave men, that they didn't know the meaning of fear. Now nobody does. Then again, nobody is brave today either. It's a wonder that people don't just stop eating and die. I guess that there is some survival instinct still left. Or maybe they managed to educate everybody so they know cognitively that they should stay alive, have children, whatever.

"If I could feel bitter, I would. We don't feel anything. We don't even care. We could leave that test tube on the table, taking the risk that the cat will knock it down. Or we could put it back in the freezer. Or take it to the incinerator. And we would feel exactly the same about all of the options. We would feel nothing, as usual. Unless we go to your silly clinic and buy some emotions for an hour or two.

"We could have a nice rational discussion about the best course of action to take. But we wouldn't care about it. Terminal apathy. If the damn thing fell on the floor, we wouldn't care. No guilt. No remorse. No sorrow. We might feel that we ought to feel remorse, and go the nearest clinic and buy some. But once the virus has spread, even that luxury will disappear.

"So the future humanity depends on what we do or don't do. And we don't really care. Wish we could, but we don't.

"Ah. You've come prepared. Didn't know what you'd find out, but knew that you'd need some help. So you pull the little vial out of your bag. A whole handful of little vials. So which will it be? Anger? Concern? Maybe you need a little love of mankind?

"Confusing, I guess. Which do you need? You know you shouldn't do that. Taking a full dose of so many at once. There's no telling what you'll do. If I still loved you, I would stop you. Maybe you can give me a shot of love, if you've got a spare vial. Then I could stop you.

"So you're taking the virus with you. Where to? Watch out. You've shot up a full load there. You're not used to it. For the next two hours you'll be normal, and it ain't easy.

### The Flask of Amaretto

Stanley was saying kaddish for his father. He'd never had a good relationship with him. To be honest, he'd never liked his father, and sometimes positively hated him. But now that it was too late, he was beginning to realize that it wasn't as simple as he'd thought. His father was from another generation, and simply didn't understand him. He couldn't say that his father was really a good man- that would mean ignoring a fair number of shady business associates and a few run-ins with the law.

He now realized that under it all, his father did love him, but had no way to express himself. He had probably rejected his father's efforts at reaching out, till they both got in the habit of not communicating. And now it was late, far too late to change that history.

The only thing he could do was to say kaddish. It was supposed to help the dead person's soul somehow. Stanley wasn't sure of the details, but people's souls could start out way down in Gehenna, and only gradually, over a year, work their way up to heaven. If the dead guy's son said kaddish, it helped move Dad up the steps of the stairway to heaven faster, and could save his soul a great deal of suffering.

So he went to prayers three times a day, and said kaddish. The gabbai in charge of the prayers quickly noticed him, a new mourner showing up at six thirty each morning, and asked him if he'd like to be the shaliach tzibbur- to lead the congregation in the prayers. He refused- he'd never done that before, and thought that the pressure would cause him to stumble on some of the more difficult words. But the gabbai asked again and again. Finally an explanation came forth:

"The kaddish that the shaliach tzibbur says is the original kaddish, the one that really counts. You're in the thirty day period since your father died, so you have priority in leading the prayers."

So he started leading the prayers, and got in those extra kaddish's that the leader got to say, the more important ones. He could sense that his father was climbing out of the pit of Hell, and reaching out towards Heaven. In his gut he knew that his father forgave him for the past. This held up for about a week, till disaster struck.

He'd been vaguely aware that Berel's mother had passed away. He hardly knew the man, let alone his mother. It had nothing to do with him. Or so he thought. As soon as Berel was done sitting shiva, he showed up in shul- and now he expected to lead the prayers as well. The gabbai started splitting the prayers between them, and Stanley felt a knot tightening in his stomach. His father, his own poor sinful father, would suffer more because Berel wanted to say kaddish for his mother.

If he closed his eyes, he could see his father on the rungs of a ladder, the flames of Hell licking at his heels, calling out to him, screaming for another kaddish, another one, to save him from the flames.

He couldn't sleep. He was suffering almost as much as his father was.

He started coming early to prayers. If he got there before Berel, he could grab the leader's spot. The gabbai wouldn't interfere with an established fact like that. It worked on Monday, and then on Tuesday. Wednesday Berel got up even earlier than he, and grabbed the spot. Thursday he got up even earlier- but Berel anticipated his move. They both ran to the coveted leader's podium. Berel was fat, a couch potato, and Stanley was sure that he'd pass him, until Berel tripped him. By accident, of course.

Berel got the kaddish. Stanley got bruised. How could that fat slob get away with such a thing? What was wrong with that gabbai? Berel's ugly behavior went along with his ugly appearance. Simply a jerk. A fat jerk. Probably had sky high cholesterol, liable to drop dead of a heart attack any day. That would be convenient. If Berel dropped dead...

A nice dream, but not likely to happen.

Not likely to happen. By itself. Not that he could do anything to help it along. Not really. Well, he could, maybe.

Stanley tried to think of other things, but somehow, he kept coming back to it. It could be done. He could help Berel along to the World to Come. Berel was headed there anyhow- it was only a question of accelerating a process that was well under way.

Not that he would actually do it, but years ago, as a teenager, he had worked in a plating plant. Nickel, chrome- all sorts. Cyanide, huge quantities of it, were used in the baths. He 'borrowed' a test tube from the lab, filled it halfway with potassium cyanide, and took it home, thinking it would be a cool thing to impress his friends with.

He never showed it to his friends. He was afraid. It was probably illegal to have that stuff at home, and it was dangerous. Somebody could get poisoned by accident. He thought of dumping it somehow, but was afraid to do that as well. What if somebody realized that there was cyanide in the sewage? What if it got into the groundwater?

As a teenager he had an exaggerated idea of how strong the stuff was, but the bottom line was that he had kept that test tube, wrapped in plastic wrap and hidden in his sock drawer, for the past twenty-three years. It had followed him to college, then back home, and finally to his current apartment, biding its time in that ancient test tube.

So- cyanide. Nobody would suspect that he had access to it. But how to get Berel to taste the stuff? It was notorious for smelling like almonds, not that he recalled such a smell in the plating plant, and someone was bound to notice. Unless...

Stanley wasn't really going to do it, but just for kicks, he bought a nice bottle of Amaretto, that almond liquor. Once home, he opened the bottle. Such a sweet fragrance. He could bring the bottle to prayers one morning. It was commonly done- a quick L'Chaim after prayers. Sometimes done on the anniversary of someone's death. He would reach the end of the first thirty day mourning period, the 'Shloshim' soon, and that might provide an excuse. But he didn't want to hurt anybody else in the congregation. He just wanted to 'help' Berel to his final destination.

The usual procedure was to pour out drinks in disposable shot glasses for everyone. He could 'fix' one of the shot glasses, and invite Berel over for a drink. "Let's let bygones be bygones." "No point in quarreling over prayers." Whatever. Hand around his shoulders, beaming, the other men smiling and urging Berel to be a sport. He hands over the magic shot glass- but how can he keep it straight? He can't very well write "the poison is in this one" on the glass.

He hit on an idea: sugar frosted glasses. You frost just the rim. It was usually done with mixed drinks, but the guys were not very sophisticated. They'd think it was cool, a nice touch on his part. Nobody would notice if one of the glasses was rimmed a little slanted. It is hard to get these things perfect. Nobody would notice- but he could tell.

Disposable shot glasses were easy to find. Rimming them was supposed to be easy, and after a few tries, he got some decent looking glasses with sugary rims. He set aside the normal glasses, then mixed a little sugar with his cyanide supply, and rimmed one more glass- but with the rim slanted. Easy to recognize if you know what to look for, but otherwise not likely to be noticed.

Dosage was a problem. Cyanide was notorious for being fast, and if the dose was too big, Berel would drop before he left the room. Ideally he would be at least partway home before collapsing, but that was hard to pull off. It was even hard to tell how much of the spiked sugar would actually get into Berel.

Stanley decided not to worry about it. Maybe nothing would happen to Berel, maybe he would be 'helped' slowly, maybe quickly. The important thing was that he wouldn't hurt anybody else, and that he was unlikely to be traced. Anyhow, he wasn't really going to do this. He would bring the drinks to prayers the next morning, along with the frosted glasses, and would just keep the special one in his pocket. There was no way he would actually do anything to Berel.

He carefully poured the unused cyanide/sugar mix down the toilet, threw the test tube and contaminated paper towels in the garbage, and threw the garbage into the dumpster down the block. It got emptied early Monday mornings, as regular as a Swiss clock, so by the time prayers were over it would be gone.

In the end it went smoothly, more smoothly than he had imagined. Berel was only too happy to accept the drink. Apparently wanted to bury the hatchet- though that is not what got buried in the end. He downed the drink in a couple of quick sips, and headed home. Stanley cleaned up his little party, tossed everything in the dumpster near the synagogue, and headed home. He noticed the garbage truck coming to empty that dumpster as well.

Berel collapsed two blocks away. By the time they got him to the hospital, there was nothing anyone could do. Later Stanley heard that the police had been around, asked some questions about the prayers and the amaretto, and that was that. They didn't even bother questioning him.

Tuesday was good. Showed up at the regular time, walked right up to the podium, and led the prayers. The rest of the guys were upset over Berel's death, and there was some murmuring during prayers, but Stanley was OK. Berel was going to go soon anyhow, and in the meantime he could help his own father work his way up the heavenly ladder. Life and death were good. Berel would have to take care of himself.

By Thursday things had gotten back to routine. A routine that included Stanley's monopoly of the coveted position. He'd heard nothing from the police, so it seemed like everything was cool. Amazing how easy it was when you thought it all through, down to the last detail.

Friday night it was raining, so he walked to a nearby synagogue, rather than hike for twenty minutes in the rain, and show up soaking wet. If it wasn't for that rain, he would have discovered his fatal error earlier. As it was, he woke up late on the Sabbath, and prayed with Chabad, who always started late.

On Tuesday morning the bitter truth hit him. As he approached the synagogue door, four young new worshippers entered, all unshaven. Avi, Danny, Sruli and Hezi, Berel's four sons.

### Whaling Wall

Why is it called "The Whaling Wall"? Because the whales would gather there to bemoan their fate. Zehavah says that the worshippers would raise their eyes to the whale-angels in the firmament. Hillel says that the Temple Mount was once filled with water, and the whales were hunted there.

"Because the whales would gather there to bemoan their fate." Thus it was both whaling and wailing. What was their fate, and why did they bemoan it?

In the beginning, whales were fish like all other fish. They roamed the sea, eating kelp and small creatures. One day the Holy One asked the creatures of the sea if they would like to try living on land. The whales, along with many others, agreed. After many generations and many changes they were prepared for life on land.

Life on land was difficult. They had been very picky about their seafood, but the food on land was different. Though they now had legs and lungs, they could not get used to landfood. And so many other creatures had joined them on the land that there was fierce competition for food. Some of the other creatures even thought of whales as food!

The worst was the heat and cold. The sea had always been kind to them in this way, a smooth blanket whose temperature varied only slightly through the seasons. On land, though, you could roast in the sun one day, or freeze the next. And the winds! A blast furnace or a quick freeze.

The other creatures seemed satisfied with this situation, but the whales were sad, and sang of their despair to each other. In time the Holy One heard their lamentations, and they were allowed once again to live in the sea. But it was too late. They were no longer suited for the sea. Their flippers were just legs with webs, and didn't work as well as the fins their fathers had had. Their lungs were of little use to them, so they had to rise to the surface every few minutes for a breath of air. Calving became an acrobatic exercise, a race in time to get the newborn to the surface before he drowned.

So the whales continued singing to each other, bemoaning their twice cursed fate. Every year, after the calving was done, they would gather around an underwater mountain peak, and sing their dirges. The Holy One heard their lamentations, but understood that bringing the whales back to land would not make them happy. They would have to continue to live and lament in the sea.

When the time came to build the holy temple, the Holy One raised the undersea mountain, and gave it to Solomon as a site for the Temple. Thus the prayers of those who stayed on land would join those of those who returned to the sea, and all would know, that although not all prayers were answered, all were heard.

Though this is whales and wailing, it is not whaling.

"Zehavah says that the worshippers would raise their eyes to the whale-angels in the firmament." Whale-angels? What do we know of whale-angels?

From the first Adam we learn of a whale that appears in the firmament, a by-product of the improbability drive. If a rocket engine can produce a whale in the heavens, there can be no doubt that the Holy One can do so.

Why did He create whale-angels? When He first wanted to create man, He consulted with the angels, and they agreed, so He could say: "let us make Man in our image." Yet when man was completed, some of the angels saw him as a competitor; a competitor that would overcome the angels, for this Man could create, and thus was more in the Holy One's image than they themselves were.

They wanted to stop Man. They wanted to stop man from creating, for in his creations they would be defeated. When Man first tried to light a fire, they made the tinder damp, so it smoked but would not burn. When Man first tried to make a knife, they hardened the stone under his hand, so it would not chip properly. But Man was obstinate, and perhaps a bit stupid, so he continued in his efforts and made fire, tools and musical instruments.

When the Holy One realized what the angels had been doing, He decided to punish them. The snake was already slithering on its belly, so the example was set. The only question was what to turn the angels into. He sought the most inconvenient shape for these angels.

Wasps, bees, birds, cattle, fish and clams were all considered and rejected. What would be the appropriate punishment for those who interfered with His creating creation? This is when Adam first dreamed of a whale in the heavens. What could be more fitting for these destructive angels than punishing them through the little creator's dream?

And so these angels were turned into the most ungainly shape that ever inhabited the heavens. They must sing His praises, as all angels do. The whales in the sea echo their song. Since all punishments should match the crime, the whales have an extra burden. When men pray in groups, the prayer reached the Holy One directly. But the prayers of individual men are channeled to the Holy One through these angels.

Already in the time of Adam, praying was known as "whaling". Noah whaled when he left the ark, and Abraham whaled when he was asked to sacrifice his son. Solomon included a brass sea in his Temple, a symbol of the whaling prayers that took place there. And to this day individuals whale at this holy site.

Hillel says that the Temple Mount was once filled with water, and the whales were hunted there. How can this be?

Solomon wooed the Queen of Sheba, and sent his ships throughout the world seeking gold, jewels, monkeys and other wonders of nature. When the time came to build the Temple, he sought the most magnificent, the most unusual for the House.

He consulted with his brother Hiram of Tyre. The engineers presented him with plans, plans for the largest, greatest House of God ever built. Largest, greatest, but not unusual, not special.

So there was an altar. A big altar. So what? Every temple had an altar. Bronze columns? Impressive, but basically me-too. And the bronze basin? Just a copy of Hiram's showy place. The bottom line was that he'd end up with a bigger version of Baal's temple. He needed something different, something unique. The Phoenician designers were good. They had generations of building tradition behind them- and that was exactly the problem.

There were no designers worthy of the name in Israel. Even if he came up with an idea, there was no one to prepare the blueprints, no one to plan the design. He had no choice but to continue with what amounted to a Phoenician temple.

One day, at the height of the construction, the king went to Atlit-on-the-sea. He went for the quiet, far away from Jerusalem, which had turned into one big construction site. And he went for the food, to the best fish restaurant in the country. It took a day and a half to travel to Atlit, but it was worth it.

While Solomon was shoveling mullet down his gullet, Ben-Ezra the Fisherman came to fill their glasses, and asked if there was anything else he, or perhaps one of the young ladies, would like. Sol had just been feeding Wisdom a crunchy salty chip when the Fisherman arrived at the table, so he was in a philosophical mood. Though it was nice watching Wisdom's fine neck as she reached out to nibble another chip from his fingers. No reason to not enjoy life while you were being philosophical.

Anything else that he needed? Besides the fine food and the fine company? Yes, just one thing. One idea. One thing that would turn that Lebanese monstrosity into the talk of the world. Mind you, it was already under construction, so it would have to be pretty simple, like painting it blue or something.

Ben-Ezra was shocked. He was thinking in terms of sea bass, not imperial temples. He continued filling the glasses, mumbling meaningless sounds, trying to avoid looking too closely at Wisdom's fine gullet. Only too late he realized that, nervous as he was, he had been filling Solomon's plate instead of his wineglass.

Solomon wasn't a cruel man. Though there was that bit where he settled some of David's old accounts. And there was that bit with splitting the child, and...better not to think about it. Ben-Ezra hoped that only the plate had gotten wet, and that there wasn't a puddle collecting on the floor under his robes.

Solomon followed the Fisherman's shocked eyes, and saw his plate full of wine. He dipped a finger in the wine, and let Wisdom lick it off.

"See, the Fisherman does have a good idea."

"Maybe he does?"

"Maybe?"

"I mean beyond the wine. He has given you the answer."

"How? He just spilled some wine is all."

"He filled your plate, your normally dry plate, with wine. Do the same with your Temple. Flood it."

She wasn't called Wisdom for nothing.

So Solomon flooded the temple. The altar and lamp sailed on small barges, while the brass basin, now a boat, floated through the courtyard. The bulls and rams could no longer be brought as daily sacrifices. Instead, once a year, a leviathan was brought to the Sea of Solomon (as the Temple courtyard came to be known), and it was hunted by priests standing in the brass basin. The blubber supplied oil for the lamps, and the flesh burned for many days on the altar.

All of this left the world when, because of our sins, Nebuchadnezzar captured the city, drained the Temple, and sent Judea to exile. The second temple never reached the wet heights of the first. As it is written: He who has not seen the whaling in the first temple, has not seen true fishing in his life.

Karlin says that all of these opinions are agreed. The whales bemoaned their fate when the Temple was underwater. In the time of Solomon the whale was hunted, and today men ask the whale-angels to intervene for them in heaven.

In the time of redemption the leviathan's flesh will be shared with all. Men from all nations will gather to the feast, and Bob Marley will conduct as the Whalers, whale-angels and the whales in the sea join in a song of praise.

###

Excerpt from Role Playing

The old guy held out his cane. It was a wooden cane. The top of it was curved, but ribbed, like the horn of some animal. There were also some odd carvings on it, four characters that looked vaguely like Chinese pictograms. The overall impression was one of an "antique" cane you could pick up at one of the souvenir shops a few blocks away.

"Why would I want this?"

"You need it."

"Look, I'm walking fine without it, and it looks to me like you need it a lot more than I do."

"I have managed for quite a few years without a stick. I brought it here especially for you."

"For me? You picked me at random. You had no idea who was going to come down this street."

"You may believe that if you like. In fact, I have been waiting for you for a long time. However, I see very little point in arguing about it."

"Well, in any case, I don't want the stick."

"I am not surprised. But let me explain again. You do not want it. But you will need it. More precisely, you will have needed it."

"Again, I don't want it. Who the hell are you anyhow?"

"Hmm. You can call me Eli. That would be best. And one could say that we have met before. Or that we will have met before."

This was getting to be a bit much for Jed. So much for a quiet afternoon wandering around Chinatown.

"Look, Mr. Eli, I do not want your stick. Have a good day."

Jed turned away from the old man, and walked back towards Grant. He walked quickly down Grant, ignoring the other tourists, and hurried down towards the station on Market Street, with an eye towards getting back to the port.

He stopped to peer at the cables running in the crack down the middle of the street. Amazing how ingenious people could be. He tapped idly on the steel cover with his cane, and...

He could have sworn that he didn't take the cane from that old guy. In fact, he had rather rudely just turned around and left. How did he end up with it?
