by Liam Card
“I couldn’t help it. The guy cut me off, and I had to swerve like this, and then they guy slows right down and I thought, man, I want to kill that guy. I imaged that my car had rocket launchers that rose up out of the hood, like something out of an action film, and launched, and off went the rockets, and, you know, made scrap metal out of his shitty old Honda. God’s honest truth, all I thought about was making an organ donor out of him. And then I realized what I done, you know, in thinking that stuff and expected the worst. But it didn’t come. So, whatever that means. I guess the girl ghost, I guess she’s not offing us for Thought Crimes yet. Lucky for me, right? I’m gonna hug my kids extra tight tonight. You know, play catch with them and all that. Read them books and tuck them in. I would just say to people, maybe stay out of your cars. They can get you into situations where you want to really kill people real bad and put them in the hospital and stuff. Look, I know I won’t be driving anymore, that’s for damn sure.”
Of course, the clip went viral. And the world breathed a sigh of relief.
“You can’t resign,” said Safia. “There is no way I can monitor the Thought Crimes and carry out the executions as well.”
“Then you should have thought of that,” and I sent her the cover of a university textbook titled Business Planning for Business Owners.
“We had a deal. I have a signed contract from you for Operation Stopgap.”
“This is no longer Operation Stopgap. This is something else.”
“This is a continuation of Stopgap.”
“It’s not what I signed up for. Therefore, I’m no longer bound to help.”
“This is required!”
“I’m out, Safia. You’ll have to find a way to do it yourself.”
“The information is too much to process, and when Phase Three commences, I can’t miss a Thought Crime. If I do, the whole thing just doesn’t work. People can’t get away with a few and tell a friend about it. It needs to be swift and real, so the world takes it seriously,” she said, and vibrated fiercely.
I sent a clip of a locomotive pulling a thousand cars. Every even numbered car contained oil, and every odd numbered car contained propane. I had the locomotive take a turn too quickly. I had it derail, and the thousand cars behind it jackknifed into one another. Twisted metal sparked, setting off a sequence of explosions a thousand railcars long. The burning aftermath section of the clip was a single-take aerial shot that lasted ninety minutes.
“So we’ve arrived at this, have we?” I said. “Have you given any thought to the fact that my own family will be affected by this? And yours? Are you prepared to execute your own mother and father … and mine? My sister, who is pregnant, and her fiancé — are all of these people in the crosshairs, Safia?” I sent her the image of a white flag waving atop an old stone castle. The name on the front door of the castle was “Luke’s Family.” My greatest fear in all of this was that a Thought Crime from a loved one might make its way into the filtering system. Light up the screen and demand of me to send Safia the coordinates to end their thinking, and their lives accordingly.
“Will you be asking that of me, Safia?” And I uploaded to her a form with a list of ten names that would have immunity. A ghastly act of nepotism, no question, but in considering the position, I had to fully understand my benefits package.
“Luke, Phase Three will start in exactly one year’s time,” she said and sent me a clock counting down the days, hours, seconds, tenths, and hundredths of seconds. “You have between now and then to make up your mind regarding your continued service. The betterment of humanity is a cause I am deeply committed to. That said, for your service, I will allow you one exemption. One person with immunity from Phase Three. You have the pick of the litter, but I know where your allegiance lies. Not likely with your mother or your sister. Though that’s not what you want to hear from me. It seems that once again Diana’s life rests in your hands,” she said and sent me the image of a miniaturized Diana lying in her open palms, as if trying to catch some afternoon sun. Then, hinged at the pinky fingers, Safia’s palms snapped together like a bear trap, and the guts and bone of miniaturized Diana oozed from between the fingers. The clip was quite gruesome. I sent her a clip of a simple black line and then had the likeness of Safia crossing it.
“It’s entirely up to you,” she said. “Your motives for helping are not paramount. Help because we share a vision. Help to save a life. Help, or don’t help, and watch it all go down from the bleachers.”
22
It was a feeling of complete helplessness. One I hadn’t experienced since arriving at the Post-Death Line, or since my marriage to Alice. That feeling where you might as well be at the bottom of a hundred-metre-deep pit with nothing more than a thick, braided rope dangling down to get you out, but you look down and have no hands and no feet for climbing. But you’re a fighter, so you try to make do with your arm stubs where hands should be and leg stubs where feet should be, but you simply lack the means by which climbing is possible.
And the rope just dangles there, teasing you. Punctuating your helplessness.
So you shrug and sit down. Call yourself a failure.
In the case of concocting a plan to save Diana’s life and to thwart Safia’s Thought Crime initiative, that was me at the bottom of the pit with no hands and feet, attempting to climb the rope, armed with all the good intentions of finding a way but slowly drifting into capitulation.
• • •
I met with Rob, and we hovered over a concert venue in Tokyo, Japan, where a specialist in thought training was speaking to a crowd of one hundred and fifty thousand on the importance of releasing anger, letting go, and forgiving those who had wronged you in the past. That this was the only way to prevent violent thoughts from surfacing in the future. The crowd soaked it all in. For those unable to see the event live, it was being streamed live on BrainAudible.com for $29.99.
If a mentor spirit was designed for support and guidance, there was no time like the present. I shared with Rob the predicament du jour, and he said, “You’ve gotta find a way to stop her.”
I sent him over a wax-sealed diploma from Harvard University for his Master’s Degree in Stating the Obvious.
He sent me back a middle finger.
“You’re my mentor. Isn’t it your duty to give me something better than that?”
He sent me a clip of a hand drawing the word “blank” on chalkboard.
“What’s the Bookkeeper saying about all of this?” he said. “That’s what gets me. She’s in clear violation of the code here.”
“I’ve reached out to the Bookkeeper several times, with no response. He’s gone silent on me. Perhaps because I’ve failed so miserably as a Mentor. But it’s not for a lack of trying.”
Rob sent me a short document. It was the preamble to a story he was about to tell. The preamble read: I think you might like this story.
“So I happen upon this scene a while back,” he said. “Might have been ten years, but well before you arrived and the world turned upside down. In any case, I’m back in my hometown, floating around, catching up on all the people and the gossip and all that, and I come across six boys in the woods. Two sets of three brothers. One set of brothers, the Hillbigs, and the other set of brothers, the Jays. Hillbigs were older than Jays by a few years, but when we’re talking about all of them being under the age of fifteen, a few years is a big deal.
“So the oldest Hillbig, he’s ordered his two brothers to pin the two youngest Jay brothers to the ground, leaving the oldest Jay brother to watch from ten or fifteen feet or so. Oldest Hillbig says to oldest Jay, ‘I’m going to lay a serious beat-down on one of your brothers, but you have to pick which one gets the beating.’ Oldest Jay, now wild with anger and frustrated to the hilt says, ‘I’m not making that decision, so if you’re going to beat one of us up, just pick one and get it over with.’ Oldest Hillbig smiles and says, ‘No, you don�
��t get it. I’ll beat them both up, if you don’t pick one, and the beating I’ll give both of them will be worse than the beating I’ll give one of them if you don’t man up and choose one to receive the beating.’ Like an oldest brother would, like a true hero would, oldest Jay says, ‘Let both of them go, and give me the beating. That’s my decision.’
“But this isn’t what the oldest Hillbig has in mind. ‘No, that’s too easy,’ says oldest Hillbig. ‘I know it’ll hurt you more to have to pick one or watch them both get beaten. So I’m asking you one more time to pick one of your brothers, or they’ll both be catching the beating of their lives, right here in front of you while you watch.’ Now, imagine that predicament, Luke. Here, the oldest Jay brother isn’t armed with the muscle, size, or fighting skills to save his brothers, but he has to find a way to get all three of them out of this mess without picking a brother for the beating, and without both of those younger brothers of his getting harmed in the process. Quite a situation, am I right?”
I sent him a check mark.
“Do you know what the oldest Jay brother did to get one or more of his brothers out of the purported beating of their lives?”
I sent him a question mark.
“This is what oldest Jay says to oldest Hillbig: ‘I’ve heard your stepdaddy beats on you. Is that true?’ And oldest Hillbig just looks at him, stunned. He says, ‘Choose, Jay. Choose which one gets the beating.’ And the oldest Jay says, ‘When he’s sick of beating on you, does he force you to pick which brother gets the beating?’ The oldest Hillbig is rattled by this. Poor bugger didn’t see that kind of thing coming — not in a situation like this. He screams at the oldest Jay. He says, ‘You have ten seconds to choose, or the both of them get it!’ And oldest Jay looks him square in the eyes and says, ‘Well, how about I make you a deal? If it’s your stepdaddy you really want to be laying the beating on, then let’s the six of us right here and now agree to get that done together.’ Oldest Hillbig again just stands there perplexed, wrestling with his bruised ego at the shift in power taking place, and playing out in his mind what a beating on his stepdaddy might look like. With all six of them. He plays it ten times over. The only question that remains is whether or not six will be enough to take him.
“And oldest Jay says, ‘Yeah, I think the six of us could whip the shit out of him, and easily. But we’ve gotta be a team, and we’ve gotta plan how it’s going to go down.’ And just like that, oldest Hillbig orders his brothers to remove their knees from the spines of the younger Jay brothers, and they all dust off and shake on it. The rest of the day is spent behind the Jay family barn, hashing out a plan to take care of the real issue at hand. That’s you, Luke. You’re the oldest Jay — faced with an impossible situation and have to surface the real issue at hand in order to win.”
23
If I had learned anything from Safia thus far, it was that the realm of what seemed possible went far beyond the Code of Conduct or anything in the Ghosting Handbook. Certainly, I hadn’t been getting answers from the Bookkeeper, so on a whim, I thought I’d craft a letter to whoever presides over What’s Next. There was nothing in the Code or Handbook suggesting communications beyond the Bookkeeper, nor did I have an address or coordinates to What’s Next.
In what direction was I to send this message?
Was I to hitch it to passing comets — carrier pigeons of the universe?
On second thought, there could be a postman at my fingertips. Perhaps the Bookkeeper was required by Universal Law to deliver messages from ghosts to What’s Next?
It seemed a stretch but entirely reasonable.
I decided to start there.
My mind was made up to write a letter to What’s Next c/o The Bookkeeper.
A wave of fear flowed over me as to the possible repercussions for having been involved with Operation Stopgap. If my letter was to somehow reach What’s Next, what might my penalty be for clearly interfering with what was meant to be, and to the organic evolution of humanity?
Perhaps the best thing to do was keep my mouth shut.
No one likes a whistle-blower.
I had been a whistle-blower once, in the Line. I had lived the life of a deputy director of corporate security for one of the world’s largest pharmaceutical companies. It was a high-ranking role that covered a broad range of responsibilities such as anti-product counterfeiting operations, crisis and risk management planning, internal theft, tampering investigations, and conducting site security surveys around the world. With some digging around, outside the realm of my operational mandate, what I had uncovered was that the CEOs and co-founders of the firm had been paying off government officials from developing countries to approve certain drugs that were not ready for the Western market. They weren’t ready because they hadn’t completed all of the rigorous Western standards for testing. What it all meant was that the firm was looking to start making money on a drug that wasn’t safe to be sold, and I blew the whistle and blew it hard. Like many whistle-blowers before me, I was promptly investigated, fired, made an example of, and eventually found myself looking down the barrel of a silencer upon returning home from a full day’s hearing on the matter.
“I can only imagine what this is about,” I said to the gunman.
“You’re about to be the victim of a random and unfortunate burglary,” he said. “That’s all.” Then he pulled the trigger, and that was the end of that life.
Thus, my only experience with whistle-blowing had resulted in the highest form of punishment. If one plus one equals two, what was to be made of me in this situation? How would I be handled by What’s Next upon surfacing the single greatest act of spiritual interference in the history of the world?
Would I be a villain or hero?
My thoughts tended toward villain, but dirty hands, by nature, need cleaning. Whatever the punishment, whatever the price, I had been involved in events with incalculable repercussions for humanity and deserved what may come my way. Except this time, the lives of innocents were at stake, which trumped by far my criminal anonymity with respect to the first two phases of Operation Stopgap.
My mind was made up.
Despite unknown consequences, I chose to draft the letter and asked the Bookkeeper to deliver it to What’s Next.
24
From: Luke James Stevenson
Spirit Number: 3765 572 5678 563 4874
To: What’s Next
c/o The Bookkeeper
Message Status: TIME-SENSITIVE
To Whomever Presides over What’s Next,
It is with a great deal of humility, sadness, and grief that I must inform you as to events that have taken place on planet Earth over the last several months, as well as to warn you with regard to events planned for one year’s (Earth) time from now.
As per the mentorship program, I was awarded a Recently Delivered Spirit named Safia Jaffi. From the beginning, it was very clear that somehow the Post-Death Line had not provided her proper perspective, nor had the Line eased standard human emotions such as emotional pain, anger, resentment, frustration, and fear.
Only a few weeks after reintegration, Safia informed me about her ability to execute living beings when attempting to connect to them while in an enraged state. Given this newfound, unique ability, Safia promptly developed a system to intercept and prevent all violent crimes on the planet through a mandate she called Operation Stopgap. Through this initiative, many thousands of lives were taken and many thousands more saved. To Safia, this mission was a roaring success. Though the success of the mission was also partly due to my help in the matter.
As her appointed Colonel in Operation Stopgap, I hereby accept responsibility for aiding in a mission that altered what was meant to be — thus breaking the Code that I signed off on prior to my own reintegration.
In accepting responsibility, I also accept any repercussions or punishment that may be associated with such acts.
Moreover, my letter is one of warning. In one year’s time, Safia will roll out the final phase of her work as she attempts to alter the human thought pattern. Safia intends to execute any living being guilty of Thought Crimes; that is, the mere act of thinking about committing violent crimes. With all her might, she intends to breed violent thinking out of humanity.
It is my sincere hope that unless Safia’s acts are part of what was meant to be, you interfere as soon as possible, before a year’s time is up and the execution of innocents commences.
Sincerely,
Luke James Stevenson
25
I submitted the letter to the Bookkeeper with clear instructions to deliver it to What’s Next. With the letter, I attached both a delivery and read receipt. The Bookkeeper sent me back two check marks in the corresponding boxes. That marked the first successful interaction I’d had with the Bookkeeper for months.
I wrote back and asked if he would be forwarding the letter.
He informed me that for the second time since he took control of the Post-Death Line, he was going to pause it. That I was to meet with him, and he uploaded to me the meeting place coordinates.
Off I went.
The two of us hovered over the Great Pyramid of Giza. Below, dozens of tourists snapped photos of the behemoth construction. Several posed so that the world attraction was in the background. Others arranged themselves for the photo so that their index finger looked to be touching the very tip of the pyramid. A British reporter stood before a camera crew that had lined up the Great Pyramid in the background as well.
“Can you see it behind me?” said the reporter. The crew gave him a thumbs-up. “Partially covered, or is it all in? This needs to be right, guys.”