by DM Sinclair
There were more items on the list, but that seemed like enough for day one. For an hour or so he filled out the information forms that were attached to the confirmation email. They were what you would expect when going to a new dentist, or skydiving lessons. Health issues, allergies, family history, and so forth. He emailed them back early so they’d be one less thing to worry about.
When night fell he considered ordering his last pizza ever. He didn’t need to look after his body anymore because he would not be in it. But he was nervy so he spent the evening walking in circles around his apartment trying to think of things he would do when he was dead.
He could do anything. Literally anything that didn’t need a body.
He couldn’t think of anything yet. But he was confident that he would.
4. Secure your finances, and make sure they will still be available to you after the procedure by registering your Spiritual Energy Signature with the bank of your choice. Ensure that you have arranged for monthly fees to be automatically withdrawn by the Clinic.
Ryan had already put the procedure itself on his credit card. And he never went on vacations or bought anything, so he had enough in savings to pay the monthly fee for a little more than nine years. After that, he’d need a plan. But he had nine years to think of one. He didn’t know what the Clinic would do with his body if he stopped paying. Perhaps, if he was lucky, his body would have died by then. Banks had, wisely and necessarily, adjusted to post-Blackout society very quickly. Early on, there had been a cataclysmic shift in the financial markets as everyone tried to figure out how to handle the sudden strain of people returning from the dead. But with the usual financial voodoo, they figured it out within weeks. Maybe because they liked that billions of lost customers were suddenly back again. Some had outstanding investments the banks could now resume capitalizing on, and some had outstanding debts the banks could now collect. The Blackout was a positive boon for bankers.
All they needed was a way to carry out transactions with ghosts. It was difficult to do securely because ghosts could neither sign a form nor carry identification. Banks needed to conclusively verify the identity of a ghost in a way that was both easy and legal. Or if not both, then one or the other. Eventually they settled on a method of sampling a ghost’s energy and identifying characteristics of it that were, as far as anyone could tell, unique by individual. It was akin to ghost DNA, though they settled on the acronym SES, for “Spiritual Energy Signature”. Which sounded just scientific enough to satisfy the security concerns of most clients. Once you had it done, your ghost could transfer cash, take out a mortgage, even use certain voice-activated ATM’s to perform basic banking. As long as you didn’t have to carry anything.
The SES identification could be done before death with an electronic meter, if the customer had the considerable foresight to get it done. Ryan possessed that foresight and then some, so he had had it done years ago. The very first day the process was first offered, in fact. He skipped his parents’ 40th anniversary party to get it done. So all he had to do now in anticipation of the procedure was let the bank know he was dead. So he did so, one day in advance of his death, to the bored surprise of the teller.
On his way out of the bank he received a complimentary embossed pencil. Which, after his appointment at the Clinic the next day, he would never be able to use.
5. Cancel any utilities that you won’t need after the procedure, such as heat and cellphone service.
Since his landlord Gabriel took care of all the utilities, Ryan had only his cellphone to worry about. It was fairly new and he sort of wanted to keep it. But he knew there would be no way for a ghost to carry it around. So he bit the bullet and canceled the service, effective Friday. And he reflected, after making the call, that the cellphone company had sounded more upset by his news than any of the friends he had notified.
6. Install voice-activated controls on any utilities and appliances you wish to continue using, such as light switches and televisions. There are many products on the market made specifically for use by ghosts.
Since the Blackout, technology companies had raced to the finish line on every voice-activation technology they had already been working on. There were suddenly a lot of ghosts who would love to be able to change the TV channel or dial a phone. So now, seven years later, there was hardly a gadget or gizmo out there that couldn’t be controlled exclusively through voice.
Ryan had never shopped for them before, and he was surprised how expensive they were. But he finally settled on a minimally-featured universal home automation system. The box featured a cartoon of a ghost surrounded by enough TV’s, lamps, and computers to overstuff a black market warehouse. He was speaking into a microphone and looking seriously pleased with his choice of remotes. Ryan spent most of the afternoon plugging in and configuring it. And the rest of the afternoon playing with it, because it was novel to tell the lights to do things and have them listen.
He spent the evening pacing. Nerves were taking over. He found it difficult to imagine that in two days, he wouldn’t have a body anymore. Once it got dark he spent hours just gazing out the window at the countless milling spirits glowing softly in the street below. He wondered how it would feel to be one of them, insubstantial and luminous.
He wound up finally ordering his last-ever pizza, loaded with everything he liked. But he ate only half. He put the rest in the fridge for tomorrow. Last-ever leftovers.
7. Your ghost will be a snapshot of yourself at the moment it leaves your body, and it cannot change. So wear your favorite clothes because you will be wearing them forever.
On Thursday, the day before his appointment, Ryan’s nerves had fashioned his stomach into the kind of knot sailors use to tie aircraft carriers up to piers. He wondered if he might be having second thoughts. He decided, at least for now, to assume he was going to do it. Still a whole day left to reconsider.
He spent a good portion of the day going through his closet. This was by far the longest he had ever spent choosing clothes, including for weddings and funerals. He discovered quickly that choosing an outfit is a decision on a whole new level when you know you will never change out of it. It would define him. It would establish when he had died, and what kind of person he was. Or at least how stylish of a person he was, which was not at all.
He laid out everything he owned on his bed, and immediately ruled out ninety percent of it. The ten percent that remained consisted of several nearly identical shirts, and a few pairs of exactly identical jeans.
He thought about shopping for something new. But he feared shopping for clothes quite literally more than death. So finally, in mid-afternoon, he picked the jeans that looked newest and matched them with a comfortable sweater that dwelled somewhere on the hotly contested border between dressy and casual. He decided that the sweater needed something under it, but he had already put away most of his T-shirts. So he dug out from the already discarded stuff the first shirt he could find and folded it on top of the sweater. He set this outfit aside. Everything else he dropped into a donation bin.
8. If you wish your ghost to retain any possessions, prepare them and bring them with you to the procedure. If you possess them during the procedure, your ghost will possess them. But make sure they are things you really want, because you will never be able to discard them.
Ryan couldn’t imagine anything he’d want to carry forever. He guessed that a smoker might decide to have a lit cigarette in their hand during the procedure which they would then be able to puff on for eternity. Some people might want a favorite book, or a picture of a loved one, or a Rubik’s Cube to keep busy. But he didn’t want any of that. He wanted his hands free for whatever it was that he would be doing.
9. Do not eat or drink anything for four hours before the procedure.
This was the last day of his mortal life, and he was having Lucky Charms for dinner.
He did have some justification for his choice of last meal. If he went with the four-hour rule, he could have no b
reakfast the next morning unless he got up before 5:30. So he decided that he might as well have breakfast now. He couldn’t really taste it, though, because in his mind it was already 9:30 the next morning, and he was dead.
Congratulations again! And we will see you at your appointment. You are about to stop living in the mortal sense. But in the immortal sense, you are just about to start!
That was the whole point, he kept telling himself. It would be the beginning of an eternity with all mortal concerns stripped away. He could do anything, with no limitations. And he could spend all of it without ever leaving his prime.
He fell asleep wondering if Sye was having fun somewhere. He hoped he was.
SEVEN
“How are we feeling?” Roger asked as he spidered into the exam room. He went straight to the sink and vigorously washed his hands.
“Nervous, I guess,” Ryan replied. It wasn’t a guess at all.
The doctor/technician/whatever who had performed Sye’s procedure shuffled in after Roger and plunged onto her stool. If she remembered Ryan from Sye’s appointment, she gave no indication of it. She rolled her stool up behind him and scrutinized his head.
Ryan couldn’t help feeling like he was about to undergo an intentionally lethal tonsillectomy. He was lying on the slab bed. Flat on his back, there was no escaping the lights. They buzzed and pierced like a swarm of insects burrowing through his eyes and straight out the back of his head.
“Mr. Foster?” another voice said. Ryan hadn’t seen this man come in. Which was surprising because he was enormous, the kind of man you see on TV dragging a truck by a rope held in his teeth. And he was rendered even more intimidating by the fact that there were two of him, and they were identical. The only discernible difference was that the first was alive while the second, judging by his translucency, was not. Ryan tried to puzzle out how this man could be simultaneously alive and dead.
“Yes, Ethan,” Roger said, finishing washing his hands. “We’ll be done here in a few minutes. You may prepare the storage unit.”
“I’m off in half an hour, Mr. Foster,” Ethan said. “Ewan will do this one.” He jabbed a thumb back at his transparent clone.
“That’s fine, Ethan. Thank you Ewan. We’ll see you in a few minutes.”
Both looked at Ryan again like they were considering whether his body was the right size to play catch with. They turned and squeezed themselves back out into the hall.
Roger dried his hands with paper towel. “Twins,” he explained, anticipating Ryan’s question. “Our orderlies. Ewan obviously can’t do the job anymore, given that he’s dead. Couldn’t lift a feather. But Ethan covers for him, and we pretend not to notice. Don’t want to hurt his feelings, I suppose. And they get to keep drawing two paychecks.” He tossed the paper towel into the wastebasket. “Almost ready!” he added cheerily.
“Slide back please,” the technician said from behind his head. “We need several inches of your head off the end of the table.”
Ryan squirmed until he could feel open space beneath the back of his skull. It gave him a faint sense of vertigo. “Hi again,” he said lamely. He wondered what you’re supposed to say to someone who is about to kill you.
She looked at his face for the first time, and he caught a flash of recognition. “Weren’t you just here?”
“Yeah, I was in a few days ago with…”
Her eyes lit up as she remembered. “Did he go?” There was genuine interest in her voice. Excitement, even.
Ryan smiled and nodded. “He’s gone. No idea where, but he’s gone.”
She nodded before going back to poking at his head, pulling his hairs apart like she was hunting for lice.
“Margie, one-twenty A-two?” Roger asked.
“Mm hmm,” the technician replied. She drew her handheld scanner out of her lab coat pocket. “I’m going to scan your SES,” she said to Ryan. “This might be a little cold.”
“I’ve had it done before,” Ryan replied.
Her name is Margie? I’m about to be sort-of-killed by somebody named Margie.
She touched the metal edge of the scanner to his neck and held the button down. It was indeed cold, and had a tingle like touching your lips to the contacts of a nine-volt battery. After a few seconds she pulled the scanner off, rolled her stool away and made a note on his chart.
“Is this your current address?” Margie asked. He twisted his head around to see her.
“Yeah, I filled it in.”
“Nice place?”
“Not really.”
Without any follow-up to that she wheeled her stool back over to Ryan. He felt her fingers on his scalp. Her glasses went past his line of sight every once in a while, and her nearly pointed chin, and her sanitary shower cap. He was glad for the lab coats and the caps. It gave him the feeling that at least some part of this was either scientific or hygienic. It was a feeling that the table, and the weird box with all the wires, and virtually everything else about this procedure totally failed to inspire.
“Margie,” Roger said, “can you finish the prep, please? I will be back in a moment.”
Ryan snapped his head around. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
Roger enhanced his smile with a few extra units of reassurance. “Everything is fine,” he said. “I just have something to attend to. Relax, Mr. Matney. You’re in good hands.” He slipped out the door.
“You’ll have to remove that,” Margie said coolly after Roger had gone.
“Remove what?”
“The sweater.”
“Why?”
She tapped one of the buttons near his collar with her pen. “Metal buttons.”
“That’s bad?”
“You’re familiar with electricity?”
He hadn’t even considered electricity when selecting his outfit, but he did vaguely recall something in the confirmation email about buttons. He could see there was no point in protesting, so he undid the two buttons at the top of the sweater and started to pull it over his head.
He stopped halfway when he remembered what he was wearing underneath. It was the shirt that he had counted on nobody ever seeing under his sweater. The shirt he had barely glanced at. He couldn’t remember where it had happened, or when, or how, but somewhere in hazy decades long past he had come into possession of a Float Beer T-shirt. It was emblazoned with the logo of a soda from the mid 90’s that had attempted to simulate the flavor and texture of a root beer float, without the need to use actual ice cream. It was an exceptionally poor simulation, and its poor sales and quick demise had reflected that. Yet somehow Ryan had the shirt. It had been worn mostly for sleeping, and had been washed countless times. Though it had once been loose and comfortable it now stretched snugly over his abdomen. Even with the sweater on he could feel cool air through the shirt’s many rips and holes. It had stains that entire forensic teams would need to work long nights with electron microscopes to identify. It was, in short, the worst possible thing he could be wearing.
He didn’t want her to see it. And he certainly didn’t want to be wearing it forever without something to cover it up. “I can’t,” he blurted. “I mean, this is what I’m wearing.”
“If you’d like to go home and change, we can reschedule.”
“For when?”
“Probably six months.”
“But I only made this appointment three days ago!”
Margie looked surprised. “Really?”
Ryan balled his fists and weighed his options. Another six months. He was ready now. He was excited now. He had already shut off all his services, prepared, set everything up.
Just get it done, he thought. The shirt isn’t that bad.
He sat up, self-consciously pulled the sweater off, and tossed it onto an empty plastic chair in the corner. He lay back down. Doesn’t matter, he thought. Nobody cares.
Margie did nothing for a few long seconds. Ryan glanced back at her. She was staring at the shirt.
“You know,” she said, “we have
some clothes here from when this place was a funeral home. You could go through them.”
Wearing a corpse’s clothes was worse than wearing the Float Beer shirt. Only by a little, but still worse. “No thanks,” he said. “I’m good.”
Margie resumed prodding Ryan’s head, not saying anything for an uncomfortably long time.
“So how does this work?” he asked her finally when he couldn’t take the silence anymore. She had two fingers about an inch apart halfway up the right side of his scalp, pressing there for about a minute. Maybe she had found what she was looking for.
“We’re going to stimulate a part of your brain with an electrical pulse,” she said casually, like she was fitting his cerebral cortex for comfy new slippers.
“Which part?” he asked, trying to sound as if he know the names of all the brain parts.
“To be perfectly frank,” she said, “virtually all of it. This thing is quite powerful.”
He felt a cold and damp point touch his scalp. Was she making a dot with a permanent marker? For some reason he wanted to know what color.
“Is this safe? Can’t it, like, cause heart failure or something?”
“You don’t need your body anymore. What do you care?”
Ryan supposed that was true. Somebody could stab him in the stomach right now and it would just save him years of monthly fees.
Margie wheeled the cart with the scary gray box on it over to his table. It was the same one she had used on Sye. Only this time she left the horseshoe paddles where they were and instead lifted another attachment from behind the box. It looked to Ryan like a horrific monster spider, the kind that attacks and eats birds in South America. And he reflexively squirmed when she tried to put it on his head.