Stopgap

by Liam Card

  “You believe you altered what was meant to be?”

  “It looks that way.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Why impossible? It happened, did it not?”

  She offered to play the scene for me again, but I refused to accept the upload.

  “It was an accident,” she said. “But nothing happened to me on account of my actions. The rules of ghosting, as stated, had clearly been broken, but nothing happened. Not a message from the Bookkeeper. Not a punishment. Luke, listen to me … nothing.”

  “It was a wild coincidence. Nothing more. His lease was up,” I said, trying my best to rationalize a situation that was causing me to pulse with fear. “Yes, his lease was up at the very second you connected with him, and he was always supposed to die from a horrible brain aneurysm after striking a young woman with his car.”

  “Interesting hypothesis, Luke,” she said, and then sent me the sound of an obnoxiously loud horn used in hockey to signify the end of the period or game. The sound lasted exactly forty-six seconds, so in this case the extended hockey horn was clearly meant to signify sarcasm.

  “Play along for a second. Let’s say it was me,” she said.

  “Sure. Let’s say you killed him.”

  “Good. Now, if that is true, let’s get back to the question at hand. What if I could prevent acts of violence before they happened?”

  “I’m not following,” I said, but she knew I was following and called me on it. To say I was thoroughly embarrassed would be an understatement.

  “What if I could have melted his brain before he committed the crime?”

  “I don’t like this already,” I said and sent her a cease and desist order, signed and dated at the bottom.

  “It gets better.”

  “Safia, please stop.”

  “Listen, I can read his mind, as we all can. Ghosts, I mean. But I have played back the situation a million or more times since it happened, and it seems that I can pinpoint the exact moment he decided he was going to do it; that point of no return when he was going to hit her with his car and nothing was going to stop him. There was a discernible moment in his thought pattern, a Thought Marker.”

  “A Thought Marker.”

  “It signals the point of no return for human action,” she said. “I’ve been watching violent crimes play out since this incident in Miami, and what I’ve learned from this research is that I can truly identify the moment of clear choice, the Thought Marker, the moment when there is no turning back in the mind of the assailant.”

  “Safia, please listen to me.”

  “What if, after identifying the Thought Marker, I disconnect from the assailant, gather my anger, and throw every bit of vibration energy I have into reconnecting? If this action causes the blood vessels of the human brain to burst, like I believe it can, then I could effectively …”

  “You could effectively prevent murder.”

  “More than just murder. I could prevent rape, torture, beatings, maiming … you name it. I could prevent acts of violent crime all over the world.”

  “Safia, I’m not comfortable with this at all,” I said, and I sent her certificate of authenticity with regard to that statement.

  “Do you want to save lives or just float around like an idiot?”

  “That’s an unfair question, because that is not our role here as ghosts. We’re not some invisible police force. Some invisible army that dispenses capital punishment based on your ability to identify Thought Markers.”

  “You say we are not, but we could be.”

  “I can’t do what you do, Safia. I can’t shake the earth like you can. I can’t push energy like you can. I don’t share in your rage, and I think we need to seek help from the Bookkeeper on that front. I’m seriously failing as a Mentor here.”

  Her composition became swollen, and she connected to the entire world at once, taking in every thought. She batched and organized the thoughts into columns, given their varying degrees of violent thought up to and including having just committed a violent crime. I asked how she did that, and she showed me.

  “It’s important that you know how to do this.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “For later,” she said. “When I require your help.”

  “Safia, I want no part of this. I’ve made that clear.”

  “Twelve people were just murdered and sixty-one raped in the last ten seconds. We could have potentially done something.”

  “Safia, I would like to leave. Please don’t call me back if I do.”

  “This will change the world! Let’s do this together! I need you, Luke.”

  “This is none of our business!” I sent her the cartoon clip of a pit bull barking those words to her at close range, fangs exposed. Hurling long strings of saliva.

  This was my first unbridled brush with anger since returning as a ghost, and after coming to grips with my outburst, I was ready to resign my post. It had become all too clear that Safia was too much ghost for me.

  All would be mended in my afterlife, if I could just have someone else assigned to me. One who might want to catch an interesting play or a ballgame. One who might want to explore the great mountain ranges of Earth, take in a concert, hover in courtrooms, or float above lovers in honeymoon suites.

  Yes, that was exactly the kind of RDS I wished for.

  My mind was made up, and I was just about to submit a formal request for a change of RDS to the Bookkeeper, signed and dated, when Safia said, “Would you be willing to change your tune if it meant saving the life of your beloved Diana?”

  8

  Calvin Handler was the kind of guy you warn your children about. The kind of guy whose abusive upbringing created a filter for his view on the world. A filter that led to his concern for the well-being of others being on par with what he felt for vermin. And Calvin Handler looked the part too.

  Tall, but not too tall.

  Lanky.

  Tight, as if his skin had been shrink-wrapped around his sinewy muscles and protruding vasculature.

  An Adam’s apple too big for his throat kind of guy.

  A greasy, shoulder-length hair tucked behind his ears kind of guy.

  A wispy facial hair and dark sunken eyes kind of guy.

  You know Calvin Handler. We all do.

  We’ve met him in the street and seen his mug on TV when they show the police sketch artist’s rendition of the suspect. He’s every bit the character you’d look away from if he met your eyes on the streetcar or subway. If you passed him on the street, you’d pick up your pace without knowing, instinctively wanting to distance yourself from him, as though you might catch something, or worse, that he might catch you.

  Calvin Handler is no mystery. He’s as dangerous as he looks. Yet people find Calvin. In fact, people flock to him.

  And of course, Calvin finds people.

  Through this process of being sought out and locating others, he is able to survive in the world, selling pills and powder to people and discarding those who get in his way.

  In the case of Diana-of-no-last-name, when she heard from a friend of a friend that she could likely pay for the entirety of her college tuition via selling Calvin’s product at school, she thought that was a no-brainer. Who else was going pay for her schooling? And bartending kept you up all hours and unable to study. Pills and powder seemed easy to sell. There was never any shortage of rebellious students who were into experimentation. And experimentation leads to once a weekend, which leads to several times a week, which leads to a habit — and then you have yourself a good old-fashioned customer base.

  Game on.

  I’ll back up a bit. Diana was introduced to Calvin, who made a deal with Diana, and before either of them could say Massassauga Rattler, Diana was his highest-earning wholesaler of pills and powder.

  Four years flew by,
leaving Diana with an undergrad degree in English and Calvin Handler with a fat wallet. By nature, it also left him eager to continue their business relationship and on-campus empire they had built.

  The problem was this: Diana was finished.

  After four years, the guilt had taken its toll, and she was ready to carve out a new life. This brings us back to Calvin Handler and how little he valued the lives, dreams, and general well-being of others. So Calvin did what Calvin did and threatened the life of Diana should she choose to discontinue the highly profitable operation they had going. Diana chalked that threat up to the rantings of a miserable, drugged-out lowlife and moved away for teacher’s college. But Diana was not easily replaced.

  Calvin and I agreed on that.

  Flash forward several years, and Diana makes the Burlington Gazette as she’s captured giving the English Award to her top student, Amanda Grier. What should never be overlooked when discussing characters like Calvin Handler is the reach these creatures have.

  Tentacles and eyeballs everywhere. In every city and every town.

  And one of his associate eyeballs spotted this picture of Diana in the Gazette, clipped it out, and brought it to him personally.

  Calvin’s version of the story played out several times in his head as he sat in a parked car a few blocks from Diana’s house. Safia shared with me Diana’s version as we hovered over the 1991 Ford Mustang. And not the five-litre V8 Mustang, I should mention. The lesser Mustang they sold that year with the sewing-machine engine that still looked like a Mustang, but without the pep or price tag.

  “What brought you to Diana in the first place?” I said.

  “Her story resonated with me when I uploaded your life story, so I wanted to find her. When I did, she was thinking about college and Calvin Handler and what rock he might be hiding under. I did some more digging and located Calvin, just as he had come across the newspaper article and began making plans to kill her.”

  “Which brings us to now,” I said.

  “Precisely.”

  “We can’t be sure he’s going to kill her.”

  “I agree. We can’t be certain until the Thought Marker presents itself. Then there is no turning back.”

  “And you haven’t seen it yet. For sure.”

  “He could get into the house and then change his mind. Time will tell. But I need to know if you are with me on this path of violent crime prevention. If you are, we can start with Diana’s forthcoming assassin and go from there to make the world a better place.”

  As she said this, Calvin Handler screwed the silencer onto his revolver with gloved hands. He began to rehearse what he might say when face to face with Diana. A few of his natural choices were:

  “Well, well, well … lookie what we have here.”

  “Well, if it isn’t my little Diana banana.”

  “Hi there, Diana. Miss me? I sure missed you.”

  “Looks like you called my bluff and lost.”

  Calvin liked options one and three. He thought two was a little too jovial for the situation at hand and four was out of a bad movie.

  We followed him out of the car and toward the house. He picked the lock on the front door as easily as one might remove the steel cage from around the cork on a bottle of champagne. Earlier that afternoon, Calvin had already scouted the house for any telltale signs of an alarm system and saw nothing to be worried about. No contacts on the windows or anything. He wondered why people in nice neighbourhoods tended to skip that expense. He thought it couldn’t be a money issue due to the property values. Thus, he concluded that maybe such people decided against alarm systems out of a desire to reflect the safety their neighbourhood. When the lock released, Calvin drew his gun and gently opened the door, turned, and closed it with equal care.

  Safia began to vibrate. Calvin thought someone had left the dryer on or something as the walls began to shake.

  “Luke, I need to know what to do here. Are you with me in this, or not?”

  “This is wrong. This is not our purpose,” I said and pulsed again with fear.

  Calvin crept up the stairs to the top floor. By now the family wire-haired fox terrier had caught his scent and heard the footsteps, the creak of the stair boards fighting with century-old nails. The terrier began to bark and squared off with Calvin in the hallway. Calvin flicked on the hall light and made short work of the family pet. Two pops and the terrier staggered into the doorframe of the master bedroom and began the process of bleeding out. My fear escalated, and I began to vibrate myself, though nothing like my counterpart.

  “Luke, the Thought Marker has presented itself. He is going to do it. I have an agreement, and I need you to sign it.”

  She sent me a document stating that we would be partners in a global campaign called Operation Stopgap. I was to be her Colonel. Her navigator, if you will, and she was the General in charge of formal executions. I read the document over three hundred times in a few seconds but couldn’t yet bring myself to sign it. I had too many questions. There were too many implications associated with this kind of operation.

  “What if your Thought Marker theory is wrong?”

  “It’s not, and Diana and her husband are going to find out the hard way.”

  Diana’s husband, James, flicked on the light in the master bedroom and bolted out of bed. He called out, asking who was there. He threatened to call the police and picked up the phone. I connected with Diana, who knew exactly who was in the house, and why. Her heart redlining as she sat up in bed.

  She had known as soon as the dog barked, although she couldn’t believe it was actually happening. How did he find me? How did he possibly find me?

  Fear had her firmly by the throat, and sounds wouldn’t take shape. She wondered if she should reach for the baby in the nearby crib but was paralyzed. Perhaps if she had the baby in her arms they might both be hit by gunfire. Diana grabbed a throw pillow and hugged it tightly, awaiting Calvin Handler. He entered the room moments later, gun drawn.

  “Put the phone down,” he said to James. “I came here for one of you, but if you don’t put the phone down, your kid’s an orphan. Try me.”

  James put the phone down on the bed.

  “We are moments away here, Luke. This is going to happen,” said Safia.

  Calvin told James to get on the floor. James refused and motioned to protect Diana, so Calvin put a bullet in his abdomen, and James went down hard, clawing at the ever-expanding wine stain on his white T-shirt. Diana’s eyes filled but she made no sound.

  She sat there, frozen.

  Calvin raised the gun to her. This was the moment he had been rehearsing in his head, coming to fruition. The weight of the moment landed on him, and he smiled. He said, “For such a smart girl, how could you be so fucking stupid, Diana?”

  He was pleased with that line and thought it captured exactly how he was feeling at the moment. Much better than the options he’d come up with in the car.

  Diana managed to cough out a plea for forgiveness. To spare her life and that of her husband.

  “No, no, no. This is not my fault,” said Calvin. “That’s not fair. This is your fault. You did this to yourself. You walked away from the cash cow we built, and I warned you this would happen if you did.”

  Diana just shook her head and sobbed.

  Safia hovered closer to her.

  “Luke, Diana’s blood is on your hands. I can stop this, but you have to partner with me.” And she sent me the document with the signature portion magnified and glowing. Calvin raised the weapon and placed his finger on the trigger.

  There was no more time for the debate surrounding implications and morals, evolution and laws. All of that was now boring rhetoric with lives hanging in the balance.

  I signed the document and sent it back to Safia.

  “Goodbye, Diana,” said Calvin. “It’s just business, swee
theart.”

  The room shook with Safia’s rage for exactly two seconds. Calvin Handler stood with a perplexed look on his face, as if someone had stumped him with a difficult math equation or asked him to spell “onomatopoeia” front to back, then back to front.

  Blood began to pour from his nose and run from his eyes and ears.

  He promptly dropped to the floor and made a mess of the lovely silk rug. Diana covered her mouth, but no scream came out. James continued to moan and writhe on the floor.

  “What just happened? Diana? Where is he? Are you all right? Jesus Christ! Answer me!” said James, and he went on like that for thirty-three seconds before Diana made a peep. She told James he was going to live.

  “Someone up there is looking out for us, love,” she said.

  Safia sent me a thousand roses and a card that read, “Congrats! Way to save a life.”

  “Now, we get to work,” she said.

  Thus began Operation Stopgap.

  9

  After the salvation of Diana, Safia and I met at the peak of Mount Everest and hovered there. The scene was postcard-perfect, as if Mother Nature were staging a photo shoot for tourism. Not a cloud in the sky. The calm before the storm, I thought, and Safia sent me a check mark.

  “It looks like we’re doing this,” I said.

  “Thankfully, yes.”

  “I’d like to know why my involvement and service is required before you go on your self-justified killing spree.”

  “First, let me tell you about Operation Stopgap,” she said. “The world has been able to operate as it has for far too long. Too often, those who harm or kill others walk away with little to no punishment to speak of, and to be clear, I do not consider time behind bars or life in prison to be justice. Clearly, then, the criminal justice system in place is not working, nor is it terrifying enough to deter a person from committing atrocities. The world needs something to close the gap between violent crime and punishment. Thus, I present to you our operation. Anyone caught in an attempt to commit a malicious act toward another human being with the clear intent to maim, murder, or cause severe bodily harm is considered guilty, as per the mandate of Operation Stopgap. Upon identification of the Thought Marker, that individual is to be executed before the act of violence can be committed. Luke, this is where you come in. I cannot be gathering information and ending lives at the same time. There is too much information to process. I need you to collect the data. I need you to chart the thought patterns of malicious intent and rank those individuals according to Thought Markers and the time horizon of the event taking place,” she said, and she showed me exactly how to do that. “You send me the coordinates of Thought Markers, and I will be racing around the world, protecting the innocent. It’s that simple.”