by Liam Card
“I’m seeing a ring. The image of a band. This is your husband.”
“Yes, that’s him,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “Is he really here?”
“He’s certainly here, dear. And, I must say, from the vibration he’s throwing off, he’s rather excited about it.” Marielle smiled and nodded.
“Good. That’s good. I’m excited.”
“He has a message for you.”
“Yes?”
“I’m getting a dial. A turning dial on a square, and the square is giving off a tremendous amount of heat. Just a second,” Catherine said, lowering her chin to her right clavicle. She rotated her head in circles a few times until a smile broke out on her serious face. “My dear, I believe he’s asking me to tell you to turn off the stove. Is that right? That can’t be right.” Marielle, despite the tears, burst into a combination of laughing and crying.
“That’s what he’s saying, is he?”
“It seems that way, yes,” said Catherine, with a greater degree of certainty. “How odd. Did you by chance leave the stove on before you left to journey all this way to see me? If so, you should call someone immediately. We can pause this session.”
Marielle shook her head as she collected herself. She rubbed her engagement ring and wedding band with her thumb of the same hand.
“About six months ago, I left the stove on, as I had done time and time again. He was always after me about it. Anyway, I left the stove on after heating some quiche for the kids before school. Many hours later, Pierre walked in the back door from work and closed the back door hard. Not that he was irritated; the frame was a bit off, so you really have to slam it. Well, that slam shook the house a great deal, and this time, the movement in the walls caused an old exposed wire in the circuitry to touch a nail, and, well, there wasn’t much left of the house … or Pierre, for that matter.” Marielle welled up again after an attempt to keep going with the story, and the knot in her throat formed a blockade preventing any more words from escaping.
“Then it’s settled, Marielle. I do believe Pierre is trying to tell you that you should have turned off the bloody stove,” Catherine said with a twinkle in her eye and a disarming smile. Marielle went from tears back to hysterical laughter once again.
“He is. I know he is. That’s exactly what he’s saying.”
“I’m seeing white light now, and that means healing and forgiveness. He’s telling you to stop carrying the guilt with you. He is happy now.”
“I will try my best. Please tell him I will try my best.”
“He can hear you. He’s likely sitting right beside you.”
Marielle looked to the vacant seat cushion beside her and smiled.
“I see children. Three of them.”
“Yes. Three. Exactly. Pasha, Pierre Jr., and Pascale.”
“He’s happy watching over you and your three children,” said Catherine, and Marielle made a hard move back to tears. Catherine stood and made her way over to the couch. She sat down beside Marielle and rubbed her back. She sat there rubbing her back for twenty-three minutes straight. The truth was, Marielle had been feeling better thirteen minutes into the backrub, but loved the healing hands of Catherine Seymour. She sat there and let Catherine rub away, as if she were magically pulling the worm of guilt out through her spine.
Safia vibrated and moved closer to me. I felt that same warmth I had experienced before, as if being covered by a wool blanket.
“You rattled me with your logic,” she said.
“Which logic was that?” I said, and she sent me back the image of the Earth with a Band-Aid wrapped around it.
“Yes, well, I may have been a tad harsh. I was frustrated.”
“You are right, Luke. What happens when a religious nut or mentally disturbed individual acts out, and I am no longer there to stop it? The world will revert back to the way it was. Perhaps worse.”
Safia’s vibration grew stronger as her anger multiplied.
Catherine stopped rubbing Marielle’s back as the walls shook. The headshot of a former pet, a schnauzer named Bolt, fell from the wall. The glass broke in the frame.
“What was that?” said Marielle.
“I’m not sure,” said Catherine, but she knew exactly what it was. “Maybe just a tremor of some kind.”
“It’s not Pierre, is it?”
“No, I can assure you it’s not Pierre. He left about twenty minutes ago.”
Safia travelled around the room in circles, her thought projections moving quickly. “If my actions are nothing more than a scare tactic and Band-Aid, if I can’t be here to ensure that acts of violence won’t continue when I am gone, then I must do my best to change humanity from the inside out.”
“To say I’m not following would be a significant understatement.”
“Luke, I need to change the thought patterns of human beings from the inside out. Essentially, I need to breed out violent thinking,” she said. I asked her to confirm her choice of wording, and she promptly sent back a check mark. Having lived the life of many scientists in the Post-Death Line, I understood that when attempting to breed out a specific trait from any species, it would, by nature, require the discarding of those who didn’t meet the criteria. Thus, the discarded are no longer be able to breed and pass the trait along. If the trait was recessive, those discarded might not amount to many. If dominant, the discarded would amount to the majority of the species. Panic settled in quickly and meaningfully.
“Safia, my Band-Aid comment was not intended to inspire further actions against humanity. We’ve done enough. There’s no more work to be done. It was just a comment on the longevity of the operation.”
“Luke, you made perfect sense. In fact, you may have salvaged all of our work to date, so as not to be in vain; so as not to be a Band-Aid, as you so aptly put it. Humanity doesn’t need a Band-Aid at all. Humanity needs surgery.”
I sent her a cartoon version of me placing earplugs into canals. Sound-deadening headphones were then added overtop. The cartoon version of me shrugged his shoulders, and a thought bubble appeared over his head. It read: “Sorry, I can’t hear a godforsaken thing.”
“Luke, Operation Stopgap is now a three-phase process, and I will be requiring your help once again. Phase One was a tremendous success, and we carried it out to perfection. Those caught in the act of committing violent crimes were removed from the planet, and we managed to bring violent crime to a halt entirely. Phase Two will involve the execution of those who have committed or ordered acts of violence in the past. And by ‘in the past,’ I mean before Operation Stopgap commenced.”
“Safia, Phase Two is redundant. Previous offenders are incapable of reoffending under Operation Stopgap,” I said.
“Why should offenders of the past be granted the gift of life? Allowing them to live only rewards the very timing of their offences, and I am not here to reward violent criminals. I am here to get rid of them. Moreover, in changing the human thought process at a cellular level, I must dispose of past offenders so they cannot further procreate.”
“You’re actually bringing procreation into this?”
“Reproduction is a process of sharing traits. I am not prepared to risk violent Thought Traits from being passed down.”
“This feels more like a thirst for blood than change,” I said. Safia disagreed and requested that she be allowed to finish before any judgments were made. I sent her an apology letter, signed and dated at the bottom. She sent me back a document formally accepting the apology.
“Like I said, Phase One is complete, and Phase Two is about removing violent criminals from the past, entirely. Phase Three involves the termination of anyone caught thinking about seriously injuring, maiming, raping, or killing another individual.”
I sent her the image of the Grand Canyon with a Las Vegas–style neon sign that read, “Grand Canyon Cemetery” and
asked if she thought it might be big enough to hold the number of dead bodies that were sure to pile up.
“This is a process of cleansing the human race, and there will be casualties, Luke. I can assure you of it. There are going to be millions and millions of casualties. Possibly billions,” she said and returned my image of the Grand Canyon Cemetery, having added the words “No Vacancy” in the same flashing neon lettering. The V flickering in and out.
“You can’t execute humans for what they think!”
“Why not? Thoughts manifest actions, do they not?”
“They do, but …”
“And do we not use Thought Markers to prevent violent crimes from taking place?”
“We do, but that’s because the thought in question has reached a level whereby action is the decision.”
“Exactly, it all starts with the thought. And to your wonderful point, in order to do everything I can to prevent the return of violence, I must rip off the Band-Aid and perform surgery on the human race in order to change it once and for all.”
I sent her the image of a luxury yacht with the name, “Gone Overboard” written on the hull in calligraphy.
“Stop it,” she said. “I have not.”
“To execute humans based on violent thoughts is to charge them with the crime of being what they are: intelligent animals. What makes humans different is the power of choice. Thoughts enter minds, and humans have the ability to choose whether to let those thoughts become actions. To execute them for the thought alone is a crime against humanity. And you know it. Listen, I’ve gone along with this mandate of yours so far because innocent lives have been saved in the process. People are safe now where they weren’t before. But this is too much. This is murder, Safia,” I said, and sent her a document she was required to sign and acknowledge that Phase Three was murder in the first degree.
She sent back the document aflame.
“My hypothesis is this: those who survive Phase Three are likely to breed and raise children who are less likely to have violent thoughts, and the process will continue until it becomes a dominant trait in humanity. So much so that even the mentally ill won’t consider acts of violence.”
“Exactly,” I said. “It’s a wild hypothesis based on zero factual evidence that will result in the death of hundreds of millions of innocent people.”
“Perhaps,” she said. “I am doing the best I can with the time I have.”
“When are these phases set to commence?”
“I will attempt to give a degree of warning to the people of the world. My plan is to have Catherine Seymour play messenger and make a global announcement. First, she will clear up any misconceptions surrounding who or what is responsible for the acts of intervention; that they are, in fact, the actions of a ghost who will patrol the Earth until the end of time. The last half of that section is technically a lie, but I will have her say it anyway. In the second section of her announcement, she will deliver the exact details surrounding Phase Two and Phase Three. Phase Two will commence twenty-four hours after the announcement, Phase Three one year later. Hopefully that will give people enough time to change their thinking patterns.”
“Having Catherine reveal who is responsible feels more like an attempt to gain notoriety than part of a higher plan.”
“Not at all. Humanity needs to stop thinking that God is involved, since anything faith-based can get twisted and misinterpreted. I want to put a definitive end to certain debates. I want the world to know that there is a ghost watching over them, forever and ever. Amen. That an entirely agnostic ghost, unrelated to any theology, or religious belief system is dedicated to human improvement at any cost.”
“This won’t end religion, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Agreed, but it might prevent one from thinking that their god will protect them, should they act out against the rules. This is to save lives, Luke. Not to gain notoriety.”
“And what if Catherine Seymour disagrees?”
“To what?”
“To be your vessel. Your messenger.”
“We’ve been communicating for days. She’s on board.”
Safia sent me the full transcript of their back and forth over the past weeks, up to and including yesterday afternoon.
We paused to watch Catherine Seymour show Marielle to the door. Marielle wrote the cheque and thought it wasn’t enough. Catherine accepted the cheque and thought it was too much. The two women hugged, and Marielle was soon on her way to the cab that was waiting at the end of the cobblestone walkway.
Safia hovered close to me. I sent her a video clip of two magnets with the same charge coming close to one another, and the predictable distancing. One magnet read “Safia.” The other, “Luke.”
“Are these acts of yours the acts of a hero?” I said. “I thought that was the role you were playing.”
“Sometimes heroes have to make difficult decisions. That’s what makes them heroes, isn’t it?”
“When does the hero, in an effort to do good, become the villain?” I said and sent her a famous quote by Friedrich Nietzsche with respect to monsters.
“When the hero abandons the big picture,” she said.
I uploaded to her a stylized image of the word “hero” so that the letters were wrought with cracks and fractures.
I left and hovered over the Eiffel tower, looking onto the city of lights. How many of these lights are going to be extinguished a year from now? I wondered.
17
Catherine Seymour sat in the face of the bright studio lights. A young woman from the make-up department powdered her forehead and cheeks while another glossed her lips. A middle-aged man from the sound department fussed with the lavalier microphone hidden under a fold on the collar of her blouse.
“Can you speak for me, ma’am?” he said.
“What would you like me to say?”
“Oh, any old thing. Just count to ten if you wish.”
So she did. She counted to ten and then counted to ten three more times as the sound team made final adjustments.
A woman from the lighting crew asked Catherine to rotate slightly to her left. Then the make-up girls came back to do more touch-ups, since the new angle had surfaced some oily patches.
“These lights are quite hot, aren’t they, Mrs. Seymour?” said one of the girls caking on the powder.
“They are, indeed. I’m catching quite the glow here, aren’t I?” she said, and wondered whether, if she cracked an egg on the black granite of the polished news desk, might it fry. She played this action out in her head — dressed in chef’s attire, cracking a dozen eggs on the news desk and asking those around her how they preferred them to be cooked. In her mind, one of the make-up girls asked for scrambled and was promptly scolded, given that scrambling was, indeed, no proper way to treat a perfectly good egg.
“It’s fine, ma’am. That’s what we’re here for,” said the make-up girl.
“Pardon me, dear. What is it that you are here for? I was off in another world.”
“To make sure you aren’t shiny on camera. You know, given the heat of the lights.”
“Of course. Yes. You’re doing a fine job, I’m sure,” said Catherine, although part of her still held an irrational grudge due to the girl’s imaginary penchant for scrambled eggs. She thought that was silly and unfair but couldn’t help it — the same way one holds a grudge when wronged by someone in a bad dream.
Catherine wondered how professional news people put up with this for a living — all the doctoring and fussing and lights and microphones with wires running from your clavicle to a device velcro’d around your ankle. She wondered how her announcement would go, and if this was, in fact, a terrible idea. Would she go down in history as a saint or as some sort of witch or devil? Someone that just a few hundred years before would have been strapped to the dunking chair, boiled in a pot, or
burned at the stake. She thought she certainly would have been and was thankful for the timing of it all. Certainly, messengers of higher thinking hadn’t fared so well in the past. Don’t kill the messenger, she thought, but killing was obviously out of the question with Safia around. Here come my fifteen minutes of fame, she thought, and that made her feel sick to her stomach.
Catherine swallowed the ounce of bile that had been brought up with a burp. How embarrassing, she thought, to vomit all over myself after this level of fussing. She imagined herself vomiting all over the news desk and herself, and the two pretty make-up girls doing their final touches. The first daydream was the kind of vomiting where you can’t quite control it and it spurts out of clenched jaws, failing in the attempt to hold it back. In this case, bearing the brunt of it. However, the second daydream showcased projectile vomiting wherein everyone within ten feet of her sightline was affected by direct spray or splash. Both daydreams were followed by Catherine saying, “Pardon me. I’m very sorry. What a mess I’ve made.”
Fame was the last thing she had ever wanted. Attention at a dinner party was too much for her to bear. However, this announcement, this news and media event, was for the greater good, she told herself. It would save lives. And that went well beyond Catherine Seymour from Little Bookham and her hang-ups with attention and notoriety.
To her, this was a matter of duty.
When the world-famous anchor Sterling MacKinnon sat down next to Catherine at that world-famous news desk, her heart rate increased. This announcement was sure to happen in short order. The make-up, sound, and lighting departments descended upon Sterling for final touches. He sat there with his eyes closed and let it all take place, like a trained show dog being groomed to run around the competition ring. His heart rate, too, was elevated as he understood the full significance of what was about to happen. That today’s exclusive with Catherine Seymour would be the most important piece of world news he would ever be a part of. That this interview would go down in history and be shown to classrooms around the world for generations to come. At least, that was what his producer had told him thirty minutes ago. Sterling sat there as the powder brushes tickled his nose and forehead, marinating in the moment he had been waiting for his entire lifetime — his moment of immortalization.