A Hundred Billion Ghosts

by DM Sinclair

  His whole body convulsed violently and he was certain his ghost was about to be wrenched back out. He braced himself for the disorientation and the dizziness.

  But it didn’t come.

  Instead, his body relaxed. And he was somehow still in it.

  He felt, briefly, fevered. Heat coursed through him. And then a gentle cool. And stillness. His arm hairs, standing on end, relaxed. They felt singed.

  He breathed. He breathed again. Breathing was great. The air was damp and close, and smelled like disinfectant and sweat.

  He blinked. Blinking was great too. He would enjoy every blink to the utmost from now on.

  He could feel his heart beating. If he wanted to, he could measure his heartbeat in his eardrums. He had rarely paid attention to it before, but now he was intensely relieved to have it back.

  He breathed one more time, just to be sure he was here for good.

  Margie had done it. Somehow. He was back in his body, and apparently not vanishing into the ether anymore. Everything was going to be okay.

  Now. What happened?

  He tried to sit up, but found that though his muscles responded, he couldn’t move. Had he forgotten how to make his body move? Shouldn’t it be like riding a bicycle? It should just come back to you.

  But that wasn’t the problem. The problem was a vinyl strap cutting into his shoulders, another across his chest, and another over his knees.

  He was on his back, staring straight up. His head was immobilized. He felt again a hard lump of cold metal behind his skull, the pinch of spindly arms digging into his cheeks and neck.

  A silhouette cut across the light. The silhouette cocked its head, studying him. Its proportions were wrong. Too tall and thin to be human. For a moment, Ryan thought he had been abducted by aliens, and that his day was therefore looking up.

  “You’re conscious.” Roger’s voice oozed over him.

  Why is Roger here? Did Roger save me?

  Roger’s soothing voice drenched him again. “I can only imagine what you have been going through. Oh dear oh dear. What a terrible thing to have happen. I feel for you.”

  Ryan tried to respond, but found that there was some kind of restraint holding his lower jaw shut. Part of the restraint was inside his mouth, pressing his tongue down. Likely to keep patients from biting their tongue while being electrocuted. Trying to open his mouth made it hurt more. He was past enjoying pain and back to generally not being a fan of it.

  Roger’s silhouette slid out of view and Ryan strained to follow it with his eyes. He lost sight of it completely.

  A moment later it slid back into view from the other side and shone a medical penlight into each of his eyes in turn. “It has always been my vocation to help people through the most difficult times in their lives,” Roger said. “In your case I happen to be the cause of that difficult time, and quite deliberately so. But I don’t see how that changes things. So if there is anything I can do to make you more comfortable…” Roger jerked one of the straps tighter. It cut a deep gouge into Ryan’s thigh and cut off the flow of blood down his leg. “…you have only to ask.”

  How did I get here? What happened to Margie? The questions went unasked. He could only make frantic mumbling noises.

  But the answer came anyway.

  “Don’t torture him.” This voice wasn’t Roger’s. It was someone else’s, cool and clinical. Not a trace of sympathy. “Remember, if you damage any tissue, it’s Caldwell who will have to deal with it. He won’t like that”

  Another silhouette slid into view next to Roger’s. It took Ryan only an instant, even in the halo of the light, to recognize it.

  Margie.

  Ryan’s mind, now bottled up within his physical brain and making use of its various receptors, was a battleground. Rage and fear and hurt all grappled each other. For now, rage was trouncing the others, but he sensed that the balance could shift.

  How long had Margie been planning this? Perhaps she hadn’t stolen his apartment for herself at all. Could it be she was only there to follow him until he found his body, so she could bring it back to Roger?

  Ryan pressed against the straps, enraged. There were a thousand names he would call Margie right now if he could, none of them flattering.

  “Are we ready?” Roger asked her.

  Margie shook her head irritably. “I told you, his biological systems need some time to stabilize. It was nearly dead when we located it. Executing the possession now, it would likely kill them both.”

  Roger pinched the bridge of his nose and shook his head, maybe trying to shake the impatience out. “Mr. Caldwell will be arriving shortly. He won’t want to wait.”

  “He won’t want to die either. He’s done that enough times lately.”

  Roger circled halfway around the table with a fist pressed to his chin, never taking his eyes off Ryan. “This will all be over soon, Mr. Matney,” he said. “Won’t that be a relief? You’ve been through so, so much.” Finally he spun around and strode out of sight. Ryan could hear his long footsteps receding down the hall and up the stairs.

  Ryan stared hard at Margie’s face. But she wasn’t looking at him. She was staring at the door, listening to Roger moving away.

  When the hall was silent, she leaned in close to Ryan’s. “Ryan, listen to me.”

  Ryan didn’t want to listen. And at the same time, desperately wanted to. He strained against the straps again and roared as much as he could with his jaw held shut. He knew none of it would do any good, but he wanted her to know how offended he was.

  “Shhh!” She gently pressed down on his shoulder and jabbed a finger towards the door. “Ethan and Ewan,” she whispered. “Right outside.” She took a few steps out of sight, was gone for a second, and then reappeared on his other side. Maybe she had looked out in the hall? “Ryan, I’m sorry. After I extracted Sye, I tried to restore your ghost/body connection myself. But the Box was just too damaged. It wasn’t going to work, and you were close to total dispersal. The Clinic’s equipment was the only way to save you.”

  There was a cough from the corridor, and Margie looked sharply over her shoulder. She stared at the door, waiting for somebody to come in.

  When nobody did, she leaned in to Ryan again. “I made him a deal,” she said. “If I brought your body here, he would let me put you back in it temporarily. Your body is keeping your ghost stable for now. But the deal is, we’re going to extract you again. And Clifton Caldwell will take over your body. Permanently.”

  Ryan struggled to understand. What happens to me? He tried to ask it with his eyes.

  Margie glanced back at the door again. “We don’t have much time, so listen. When I extract you, I can ‘borrow’ some of Caldwell’s axions. He won’t miss them. He’s lost millions of them already. I think I can stabilize you for good, reverse the damage done by the snow globe. You’ll be a stable energy field again. You’ll have your post-mortal life back, exactly as you wanted. And with a new shirt. It’s nice. I picked it myself.”

  Ryan sniffed deeply. He knew the shirt’s usual baked-in grease-and-sweat aroma very well, and it was not here. In its place all he could smell was fresh cotton and heavily scented detergent.

  A clean shirt. I’m sorry I doubted you, Margie.

  “Caldwell’s possession isn’t going to work,” she went on, shifting again to the other side of him so she could watch the door as she whispered fast. “Your body doesn’t match Caldwell’s ghost. It will die within days, and Caldwell will be out-of-body again. Roger doesn’t know that, and he doesn’t need to. We need him to let this procedure go ahead. Without this procedure, your ghost will never repair itself. Even if it stayed in your body for the rest of your mortal life, as soon as your body died, your ghost would disperse immediately. Do you understand?”

  Ryan tried to nod, but could produce no head movement at all.

  She must have noticed the flexing of his neck muscles, though, and interpreted it as a nod. “Good,” she said. She put a hand on his shoulder. �
��You’re going to have everything you wanted.”

  Ryan’s heart pounded like a flurry of punches inside his rib cage. His mind flipped over and over. Everything he wanted. Everything he came into the Clinic for in the first place. An end to the nightmare. Right now. What did he care if the Hardware Baron of Boston got his body? Just minutes ago he had been facing total oblivion. And now? Now he could ensure that he never faced it again. Ever.

  So why was he not sure?

  Margie’s eyes snapped back to the door. Feet were coming down the stairs. Roger’s voice, shifted now from sympathetic to sycophantic. “How nice that you’ve managed almost the typical number of torsos today,” he was saying to someone in the hall. “Well done!”

  The exam room door thumped closed. The clack of a deadbolt invaded its echo.

  Margie stepped back, and Caldwell’s ghost thrust into view, peering down at Ryan skeptically. He seemed to have two constantly shifting torsos facing opposite directions and his head drifted fluidly between them like a blob of goo in a lava lamp. It was hard to imagine that he could focus on anything.

  Caldwell frowned at Ryan. “This is the one that was at my house. He’s the perfect match?”

  “Better than ninety-five percent!” Roger replied.

  Ryan checked Margie’s face, but she was steadfastly refusing to show a reaction.

  “Guaranteed to work this time!” Roger chirped. “A lifetime guarantee, in fact. But just one lifetime. After that, we’ll have to discuss options.”

  “It’s not as fat as the last one,” Caldwell finally said. “Let’s do this.” He drifted out of sight.

  “Very good,” Roger said, rubbing his hands together as though anticipating a lovely dinner. “Let’s begin.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Lowell reclined in his office chair, using the plastic folding chair as a footrest. He was slightly buzzed from Caldwell’s mid-priced rye and wanted to sleep, but was afraid to lie down in the dentist chair because he might leave his body. He didn’t want to. He had thought about putting Rufus’s body into the dentist chair instead, but getting it out of the car and up to his office was an impossibility.

  Is this who you are?

  He drowned out Margie’s voice in his head with another sip of the rye, and balanced the glass on his gut as he stretched out. A couple of his usual office ghosts watched him silently from across the room and whispered to each other, but he ignored them. He didn’t need their judgment. Passing headlights from the street below threw shifting silhouettes of his window blinds across the ceiling. They made him dizzy. He wished he had a couch to sleep on. And a home to put it in. And maybe a bed in that home, so he could sleep in that instead and save the couch for other things.

  He wasn’t going to get anything from Ryan. Ryan was probably gone by now, along with all access to his finances. That was a loss. A pretty big loss for Ryan too, obviously, but still a significant loss for Lowell. He could perhaps have stood up to Margie. Ryan seemed more than happy to pay him. But something about what she had said made him back down.

  Is this who you are?

  He took in a deep breath, and his gut rising almost overturned the glass and spilled the whiskey across his pants.

  Screw it.

  He pushed himself off the desk chair, threw back what was left in the glass, and stumbled to the dentist chair. He lay back on it, adjusting his back and neck to its familiar curves. This was better. He would sleep. If he left his body, so be it. He’d find something to do while his body got some rest.

  Except…

  What if I can’t get back in?

  He reluctantly rolled off the dentist chair and made his way back to his desk chair/folding chair setup. They both made irritable grinding squeaks as he tried to get comfortable.

  He didn’t want to leave his body. If he couldn’t get back into it, this was who he’d be forever. The answer to “Is this who you are?” would be “yes”, and would always be “yes”.

  He couldn’t get comfortable enough to sleep in the desk chair, even with the footrest. He briefly attempted curling up on the top of the desk, but that was worse. That left his car, down in the parking garage. But Rufus’s body was in there.

  That was his one hope. Keep Rufus’s body in the car for a few days, and the payout from Rufus and Lucinda would cover him for another month. Maybe he could get some kind of traction, start to build up some savings and get a place, and a couch in it to not sleep on because he was sleeping in the bed. Turn things around. Like he had tried to do every month for five years.

  He had to admit, Rufus’s body’s breathing had seemed to be getting faster and shallower when he left it down there, like it was in some kind of distress. But it didn’t matter. If it died, he’d deal with it. Five days, maybe six. That seemed like the magic number. Then he’d call and start the ball rolling.

  He made me coffee. He drove me to work every day.

  That’s what Lucinda had said, through tears. But so what? It was a play on his sympathies so he’d lower his rate. Wasn’t it? And it hadn’t worked.

  Lowell gave up on sleeping and pulled the blinds open to stare down into the street. There was little late-night traffic so the street was almost all ghosts, from this height faint white blobs drifting around each other. Lowell wondered if they were all fine with who they were going to be forever. Probably not. Probably hardly any of them were.

  And there wasn’t anything they could do about it. Their time to change was over.

  His wasn’t.

  Dammit.

  He drained the bottle and pulled his coat on, dialing Rufus and Lucinda’s number as he staggered to his office door.

  FORTY

  Roger shoved Ryan’s gurney. The wheels shrieked, and the ceiling spun around Ryan.

  “I do apologize if you’re claustrophobic,” Roger said, “but this procedure requires somewhat more specialized equipment than you’re used to.”

  The light overhead revolved and twisted out of sight, and then something else filled his entire field of view, just a foot or so above his face. He was inside a metal cylinder. All around him was smooth, shiny metal. His breathing, fast and shallow, echoed hollowly around him. He had never had an MRI but he imagined that they felt something like this.

  Claustrophobia gripped him, and every muscle in his body jerked as he fought panic, squirming to get free.

  As the gurney plunged into the metallic hollow and jolted to a stop, Ryan could dimly make out his own reflection in the surface of the tube above him. It was distorted by the curvature into a grotesquely wide version of himself that, he was not surprised to note, was also panicking.

  “Are you warm enough?” Roger’s voice reverberated down the tube at him. “Your comfort is… well, clearly not my first priority. But let’s say my third. Fourth at worst.”

  Ryan focused all his strength on the shoulder straps, thinking maybe if he concentrated on just those he could summon enough force to break them. He strained every muscle in his back and stomach, but the straps seemed not to give at all. And then he thought, why am I fighting? They’re giving me what I wanted.

  “Mr. Caldwell,” Roger said from outside the tube. “If you would be so kind as to enter the chamber as well.”

  Something moved at the foot of the tube, diffusing what faint light made it as far as Ryan’s eyes. In the distorted reflection above him Ryan could see a mist flowing into the tube with him, swirling around his feet and flooding up over him. Shapes of Caldwell’s body parts—feet, hands, even his face—shifted in and out of existence throughout the cloud as it swirled around Ryan’s legs, past his waist, all the way up his torso. He could feel Caldwell’s ghost beginning to mingle with his, the sharp static tingle, the intrusion of emotions that weren’t his. Mostly greed, impatience, and rage. Caldwell’s ghost filled the chamber so completely that Ryan started to lose any sense of which emotions were his and which were Caldwell’s.

  In the distorted reflection above him Ryan watched through panicked eyes the m
ist flowing over his shoulders and neck, up to his face. He felt like he might drown. He seized control of his mind and threw every remaining ounce of his strength into flailing all his limbs. But none of them moved beyond a furious tensing of the muscles.

  The mist rolled over his face and formed briefly into a grotesque distortion of Caldwell’s head, giant eyes bulging and sinking back and bulging again, the mouth fully open on one side and fully closed on the other.

  “Anything I should know?” Caldwell asked sourly. “This body allergic to anything? It doesn’t have any, like, rashes or anything, does it? That last guy had this thing on his foot. Drove me freaking nuts.”

  From somewhere over his head there was a hard, sharp thunk. And then a sound that Ryan recognized immediately. An electric drone that started deep and rose slowly, steadily in both volume and pitch.

  Just like the Box, the cylinder was charging up.

  “Thirty seconds, Ryan,” Margie called in from outside the cylinder.

  Ryan felt the hairs on his arms stand up. Electricity hummed through the spider on his head and through every inch of the metal cylinder. The air was thick with static. This was it. It was happening.

  And yet he still wasn’t sure.

  It had seemed so clear when he first came into the Clinic. Give up a few mortal years for a perfect eternity. What decision could be easier? It was trading a penny for a billion dollars, a matchbox for a castle, a thimble for an ocean. Going post-mortal was inevitable anyway, so why put it off? What could he possibly do in those few mortal years that would remotely compare to an eternity spent doing very nearly anything, without the limitations of a physical body. He had climbed Everest in his first week; he could climb a billion of them in an eternity. Even now, he felt the logic hard to contradict.

  And yet he was not sure.