After Death..., page 32
I thought about what Mary’d said about the fluorescent lights, so I hovered up by the ceiling trying to get them to do something significantly ghostly to attract attention. All of a sudden I regretted never learning Morse code, but then again my kids probably didn’t know it either. Just the same, I figured everyone knew the three long, three short, three long code for SOS, and I made that my goal. If I could make the light flash that pattern obviously enough, surely one of them would have to notice it. So I got up there and actually put myself inside one of the lights, and just thought about the pattern I was trying to make.
It’s too bad there’s no training period for being a ghost. I bet there’s all manner of things I could’ve done if I’d just known how. I wasn’t up there more than a few seconds before the lights started to flicker, randomly at first, but then the pattern got stronger and clearer. I could see it made them all uncomfortable, but so far none of my kids had perceived the flickering as a message from beyond the grave. They winced and made faces at the lights. My daughter joked that she was going to have a seizure. Art got up on a stepladder to fiddle with the long bulbs, but of course it had no effect. I could remember, now, doing the same thing eight years ago. I wish I’d known then how close Mary was to me.
Without warning, the light I hovered in shattered. Pieces of glass rained down over the garage as all three of my kids shouted in unison, and I don’t know if the wiring was overloaded or what, but all the lights in the garage went out at once, and without any windows the place was pitch dark.
My kids stumbled around in the dark until one of ’em reached the door to the house, and by that light they all left the garage, mumbling about glass in their hair, old wiring, and flashlights.
I’d bought some time, and I knew this might be my last chance to save them, though I still didn’t know how, precisely. I did know that I’d somehow caused a fluorescent light to explode. I knew also that for the first time since dying I felt tired, almost dizzy. Apparently whatever I’d done to the light had taken energy, and now I was down some. Ghosts, I speculated, must be some part electricity, in order to affect lights and televisions.
This was good news for my kids, because the mine’s trigger was electric. I thought, though, that it might have been bad news for me. If blowing up a fluorescent bulb made me feel this weak—I’d have called it lightheaded, if I had a head—I wondered what blowing up a bomb would do. Could a ghost die again? I didn’t know, and I have to admit the thought scared me. I thought about leaving for a good minute or so: I could visit all the tourist sites in the world, find out what really goes on at Area 51, and maybe find a nice ghost who’d someday become as dear to me as Mary.
In the end, though, I knew that wasn’t true. I flew through the door of the third upper cabinet from the right, on the west side of the garage, and sat so my ghostly form surrounded the claymore mine I’d set for myself. I didn’t know what was going to happen, or how to make it happen. So I just closed my ghostly eyes real tight and thought, This is for you, Mary.
And that was that.
Emily C. Skaftun lives in Seattle with her husband and their child, a cat who thinks he’s a tiger. When she’s not teaching or writing, she dabbles in roller derby, flying trapeze, and other absurd activities. But mostly she writes, because the world is a better place with ghosts and flying tigers in it. Emily has an MFA in Creative Writing and is a graduate of the Clarion West Writers Workshop. Her stories have appeared in Strange Horizons, Ideomancer, and Flurb, to name a few. Find her on the web at: skaftun.blogspot.com.
Should you wake up decades after dying, be leery of the people who brought you back. Acclimation Package explores the not-too-distant future, in which the deceased may be returned to life. The biggest problem? Acclimating them to current times. The solution? Surgery, technology, and a little logistical ingenuity. The author, Joe McKinney, knows a thing or two about examining the human condition, being a police officer, award-winning novelist, columnist, and family man, not to mention humorist. When I first spoke with him about submitting a story to this book relating to “what happens after we die,” he replied he would send me a blank piece of paper. As it is, I’m happy he came up with the following alternative possibility.
The dark was all around him, but that wasn’t the frightening part. He rose through it effortlessly, as if a current of water carried him along. That part felt good. It felt right.
What scared him was that he was not who he was supposed to be.
He groped around in his mind for his name, for some idea of who he was, but all he kept coming up with was the name, Heather Carter.
That’s not right, he told himself. My name is not Heather. It’s not, it’s not.
But it was. He couldn’t escape the terrible certainty of it. The dreamlike fog was clearing from his mind and, with it, the bewilderment of the darkness. He really was Heather Carter, a twenty-four-year-old doctoral candidate in Applied Neurology at the University of Texas in Austin. He had a boyfriend named Michael, and a cat called Boomer, and they all lived in a little apartment not far from campus. He had a good life, lots of friends, a job in Peking waiting for him after his graduation next May. He and Michael planned to get married right before they left for China. They’d even settled on a date, June 20, 2035, just over a year away.
Wait, he thought. What? 2035? That can’t be right.
Desperately he searched through his memory, trying to push his way past everything having to do with Heather Carter. But when he turned inward, the picture of himself that rose in his mind was of a slim, dark-haired, attractive girl in her early twenties.
No, he insisted. That’s not me.
But who am I? Think, damn it.
Think.
And then it hit him. He saw himself as a stocky, slightly overweight man with a badly receding hairline named Dan Spencer. He was forty-four years old, a cop in the Austin Police Department. And it was July 6, 2013. He knew for sure because that was the day he . . .
Died.
Horror overtook him. His heart pounded in his chest. His stomach rolled. He remembered pulling up on a kid trying to break into a car. The kid took off running and Dan chased him through some government housing at the corner of Turner and Lexington. They ran through a darkened hallway and emerged into a courtyard, where a clothesline strung across the sidewalk caught him under the chin and laid him out flat on his back. He remembered looking up into a black sky, gulping for air, unable to move. And then the kid yanked the gun from his holster and stood over him, looking at him down the length of the barrel.
There was an explosion of white light.
He tried to move, but his limbs felt like he’d slept on them wrong, like they were asleep. He tried to scream, but couldn’t.
And then a thought occurred to him.
Or, not so much a thought as a realization.
Relax. You’re okay. There’s no danger here.
Spencer couldn’t accept that. He wanted to get up and run. To where, he didn’t know, but he felt cornered and frightened and all he wanted to do was get away.
But then another realization struck him, and this time he sensed that it came from the girl he’d visualized when he passed through the darkness. She pushed herself into his mind, telling him to relax. Her thoughts didn’t come across as words. They were more like impulses, and those impulses pulled him toward calm, toward acceptance of what was happening. He wasn’t sure why, but he sensed he could trust her.
Spencer willed himself to relax.
His vision started to clear. Shadowy forms moved overhead.
They’re fixing you, the impulses told him. They’ll take care of you.
The shadowy forms grew a little clearer.
“Core temperature is normal, Doctor,” said a female voice. “He should be coming around any second.”
Spencer turned toward the voice, but only saw a dark blob floating just out of reach. He tried to speak, but only managed a groan.
“Yeah, there he is,” said a man’s voice. “Everything’s looking good. Mr. Spencer, can you hear me?”
Spencer blinked uncertainly. He could see now that the shadowy figures were doctors and nurses in blue surgical scrubs. One of the doctors had a strange looking contraption over his eyes, like a set of night vision goggles, only much smaller. There was blood on his scrubs.
“Mr. Spencer, can you hear me?”
“I . . . I died,” Spencer said.
The doctor laughed. “That you did, my friend. You most certainly did. But you’re back in the land of the living now.”
“What year is it?”
“Today is November 2, 2034. I guess we should call that your new birthday, huh?”
Spencer groaned and slid back into sleep.
The next morning Spencer woke in a hospital room. Every muscle ached, and when he tried to sit up, it made his head swim.
With great effort he made his way to the bathroom and urinated. They’d been force-feeding him fluids and he was surprised his bladder could hold so much. But then, he’d been holding it for twenty-one years. He supposed he should be happy that everything still worked.
He hobbled back to bed and fell onto the pillow.
Spencer glanced at the bedside table and saw what looked like a black pane of glass the size and shape of a credit card. A brand new Touch, he thought. Those things are expensive.
His mind drifted for a moment before he caught himself.
How did he know what that was called?
He picked it up, and was surprised at how heavy it was. It looked like highly polished glass, but it didn’t feel breakable at all. In fact, it felt solid as a stone. There were no obvious controls, but he surprised himself again when he dragged two fingers over the face of the device and it immediately came to life. A note appeared on the screen:
Mr. Spencer,
This is for you, compliments of the Lazarus Institute. Be in touch later this morning,
Wayne Graham
The jingle for the Apple Touch played in his mind: Always be in touch with your brand new Touch!
He smiled at Graham’s little pun. It was just like Graham to greet him with a play on words.
Wait. What?
How did he know that? He’d never heard of this Wayne Graham in his life, yet somehow he knew the man was the CEO and chief psychiatrist for the Lazarus Corporation.
And, apparently, he knew him well enough to recognize his sense of humor.
And knew the ad jingle for a product he’d never seen before.
What the hell was going on?
But, curious as he was, he felt drawn to the Touch. He tapped the device and the startup menu appeared. He spent the next twenty minutes going through one menu after another, amused at how easy it was to navigate, at how effortlessly he worked the controls, like he’d been using it all his life.
And that’s when it finally hit him.
He shouldn’t be able to do this.
He started to rise, thinking he’d go to the door and turn on the lights, but he stopped himself and said, “Lights, sixty percent.”
The lights slowly rose, muted just enough for his still-tender eyes to handle.
“Huh,” he said. Something else he shouldn’t know how to do.
On the far wall hung what looked like a television screen. He didn’t see any controls, though. And there didn’t appear to be a remote.
Unless . . .
He scooped up the Touch and, sure enough, there was a menu to sync it with the TV. Maybe he could catch some history documentaries. The doctors told him he’d been dead for twenty-one years. TV might fill in a few of the gaps. But a huge number of the programs listed looked like they were in Chinese. Then it occurred to him that he could read the foreign characters on the screen. He chose a documentary at random, something about the American Gulf Coast, and stared in amazement at the TV as a pretty young Chinese girl explained how global warming had caused sea levels to rise and turn much of the Texas and Louisiana coasts to marshland.
Houston was an underwater graveyard.
New Orleans too.
But it wasn’t so much the things she said that surprised him. She spoke in Mandarin.
And he understood her.
A knock sounded on his door and a man’s voice said, “Mr. Spencer, this is Dr. Graham. Are you awake?”
Spencer shut off the TV.
“Yes,” he said quickly, a little taken aback at the hoarseness in his voice. “Yes, come in.”
A tall man entered. He wore a blue, long-sleeved shirt, open at the neck but without a collar, beige slacks, and black shoes that looked as shapeless as bath slippers, though they had a high shine, like patent leather. His features were angular, almost gaunt, and his gray hair and beard neatly trimmed. There was a breezy confidence about him that put Spencer at ease, like he was finally going to talk to the boss and get some answers.
“I see you got the Touch I left for you,” Dr. Graham said.
“Uh, yeah, I did. Thanks.” He pointed to a chair by the foot of the bed. “Do you want to sit down, Dr. Graham?”
“Would it make you feel more at ease if I did?”
“Doc, I don’t care if you stand on your head, just as long as you’re willing to tell me what the hell is going on.”
Dr. Graham chuckled.
“What’s so funny?” Spencer demanded.
“Well, to be honest, you. You’re handling yourself really well. I guess it’s your training as a policeman. You’re accustomed to maintaining your composure while dealing with strange and stressful situations.”
“Doc, don’t blow smoke up my ass. Just tell me what the hell’s going on. How come I know how turn on the lights and use this Touch thing, and how come I know how to—”
He was about to say, and speak Chinese, but a sensation like a sharp stick jammed into his mind stopping him before he could finish the sentence.
Dr. Graham brightened, like Spencer had said exactly what he hoped to hear. “How come you know how to do what?” he asked.
Spencer shook his head. “You know, all of it. What’s going on with me, Doc?”
“You’re not experiencing anything else, are you? Anything specific?”
He shook his head again. “No. Just tell me what’s going on. Please.”
“Okay,” Dr. Graham replied. “I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out already. But maybe you haven’t asked the right questions yet. You see, you were given what we call an acclimation package. Something to help you adjust to your new circumstances.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”
“No?” Dr. Graham sighed. “Okay, let me back up. You died. You were shot, and brought to the University Medical Center, where a decision was made to put you in cryogenic suspension. You know, freeze you?”
“Sure, I know what that means.”
“Well, we thawed you out.”
Spencer touched the wound on his chest. Even beneath his bandages, it was still sore.
“We fixed your wounds. You have an artificial heart now, by the way. The best on the market.”
Spencer looked at him. “But, how do I know how to do stuff like work this Touch and turn on the lights.”
“I think you’ll find you know a whole lot more than that. You see, here at the Lazarus Institute our job is to help those who have recently returned. We’ve been doing this for a few years now, and the first few that we returned did not adjust well to their new environments. They . . . well, let’s just say some of them had psychotic episodes.”
“What kind of psychotic episodes?”
“They woke up just as you have, confused, disoriented, maybe even a little frightened. Plus, they’ve just jumped fifteen to twenty years into the future. Everyone they’ve ever loved is older, or dead, and their skills are obsolete. They can’t find a job, they can’t interact, go on dates, use a Touch. They’re lost. As a result, many of them had psychotic episodes.”
“But what does that mean? What happened to them?”
“Did you ever read Brave New World?”
“I don’t think so.”
“It’s about a man who’s brought from a primitive culture and put into a super-advanced one. Eventually, he kills himself.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. And, well, our business here at the Lazarus Institute is bringing people back to life. Suicide is bad for business.”
“Makes sense.”
“That’s where the acclimation package comes in. You see, we’ve found a way to implant the experiences of a contemporary person into the subconscious of a Revival. That’s our term for a person who’s been resuscitated.”
“You mean you’ve given me the memories of a dead person?”
“Memories? Is that what you’re experiencing? Do you remember anything of the person whose experiences you received?”
Again, the sharp stab in his mind.
He winced.
“No. Or, well, I don’t know. I know how to do things I shouldn’t know how to do. I can turn on the TV. I can work the lights and the toilet, that kind of stuff.”
“But nothing else? Are you sure? No ghost images of the donor? Are you experiencing any sort of identity overlap maybe? Do you know the name of your donor for instance?”
The sharp pain was back, but Spencer forced it back down. He didn’t need a warning here. He was a cop, after all, and he could tell when someone was too eager, too interested. Whatever it was that Graham wanted, he was trying a little too hard to draw it out, and Spencer’s cop instincts started blaring the alarm.
