I screamed like that. Once.

The sound was fused with one of those frozen memories from my life I don’t think will ever fade or become unreliable. Each time I approached it in my mind, it refused to take on those softened nostalgic sepia hues that eventually oozed over every other recollection of mine, even those that are also tragic. It remained clinically horrific.

I was nineteen. My brother Lionel was six years older, but not the mature wiser brother I would have liked. I guess that’s unfair. He was who he was.

For as long as I could remember, it was only him and me and Aunt Marta. But Lionel wanted independence, and he tried to make a place for himself in the world on his own terms. He mostly failed. After he was kicked out of the army—for what, I never learned—he drifted from various construction jobs and lived out of a motel on the southside.

I went over one evening to try and convince him to move back home.

He didn’t answer when I knocked. I thought he couldn’t hear me over the TV, which played so loud I could tell it was one of Lionel’s favorite nature shows. The door was unlocked, so I let myself in. 

I understood immediately he was dead. And had been so for several hours. He was on his back in bed, but it was the way he was lying. No one sleeps like that. I noticed the syringe placed on the bedside table. It wasn’t hanging out of his arm like in a movie I saw once. I am glad that detail wasn’t allowed into my unchanging mental tableaux.

My reaction still seemed so strange. I closed the door behind me. Turned off the TV. I looked around for a glass to pour some water in—I suddenly felt incredible thirsty. And then the enormity of it all hit. Blood rushed from my head and I dropped to the floor. I forced myself to sit up and used my feet to shove myself so my back was supported by the wall.

That was when I screamed. Not in fear. Not in surprise. It made sense, what he had done. He had been looking for a way out for years. A way out from life.

I screamed in rage—how dare he! And from a sort of deep sorrow you knew that you’d never be able to share.

That heavy scream of mine that started out so clear and ended strangled and ragged, I carried it to this day. I knew exactly how loud it got and how long it lasted.

That scream from Susan today sounded like the tormented echo of mine from six years ago. The echo finally returning.

Susan was gone, now. And that day in the motel room, that was much further in the past. But both of those screams still hung in the air as Sy ended the music and switched off the applause sign, the show now over.

Only a moment earlier, when I was in Susan’s head, she had almost climbed her way out of the fog. Her memory had begun to firm up, thicken around the edges. She had this notion that she was in heaven and would soon see her family. But when the door was being slammed shut on her, she looked down and saw that awful sight. A horror came over her that she could not even begin to process.

When I said that bit about a deep sorrow I would never be able to share, well, there was so much in the crackling, splintering turmoil careening through Susan’s brain—the numb throbbing panic and rage—that I was pretty sure she could have appreciate my experience from back then. Susan’s scream—as had my own—wasn’t just surprise, fear, and revulsion from encountering unexpected death. It, too, had been attached to something so much greater. With Susan—and I knew this to be fact—the grotesque sight at her feet of a body broken by violence, tripped a switch in her brain that made her aware in an instant that she, too had died. The crush of grief that woman felt for the loss of her own life, that was something I had not prepared myself for.

I swayed, a bit, and I stepped closer to one of the contestant chairs to steady myself.

“Hey,” Michael said to no one in particular. He looked around. “What is that stench?”

As Michael walked away, waving his hands at the air indignantly, I stepped back to Door Number One. I reached out. My fingertips made contact with the knob.

“No!” Saligia hissed from across the stage. That word, spoken so quietly, I knew only I could hear it. And yet I flinched as if it were a shout.

I looked around the studio. The tech people were shutting down their equipment. Sy had removed his new toupee and held it aloft to better admire its fluff and color. August had got to his feet along with the rest of the audience. He was the only one not looking at Valerie and Ed for instruction. His eyes were fastened on me.

Me!

I flinched again.

His lips slid into a cruel smile and I remembered back on Friday morning when I surprised him. When I had felt that suffocating toxic essence of him creeping into my mind.

Valerie reached over to tap August on the shoulder. He winked at me, then turned to follow the rest of the contestants to the stairs and down to the Processing Lounge.

This place no longer felt safe.

Not just August and his inappropriate….

Death! There had been a dead man in that little closet behind Door Number One. Has Death come back? That woman, Connie, maybe she had died. Could it be that of all the world now brushed free of death, this one place, La Vida Tower, the “tower of life,” is where death is still allowed?

Or were those impossible things that had remained after the Changes receded back to wherever it came from…were they finally going away? Was Death poised, ready to spread itself again throughout the world, radiating from the tallest building in town?

Whatever was going on, I no longer saw La Vida Tower as a safe place.

In fact, in that moment, the entire world, which had fallen into its placid, drowsy, repose, like a cat lounging heavy-lidded on the rug in a patch of sunlight…it felt to me that it had all just shattered. I couldn’t imagine myself ever again imagining a place of comfort, a peaceful corner of respite, not anywhere.

I did feel some relief, though small it was, when the doors closed shut behind Ed and Valerie and all of the contestants.

I looked away and watched Morris stepping across the set to have a word with Myra. He appeared concerned. Did he know, too? He was way up in the booth. That should have given him a clear line of sight.

But Myra was already heading out the door with Michael. Morris turned to approach Sy. Then he held back. Sy was telling Ida about how excitingly energetic the show had been. Ida was in enthusiastic agreement—she wore a rare smile. Next, Morris looked over towards Saligia, who was walking toward me. He shook his head and left the studio.

I knew I had to tell someone.

Sy, I thought. I had to tell Sy. I began walking toward him in a daze, but I faltered. Stopped. Probably feeling what that man Morris had felt. Ida was, well, she wasn’t someone I trusted.

Saligia moved around until we stood face to face. She placed her hands on both of my shoulders. She shook her head, no, and steered me back to the set just as the studio lights shut off, replaced by the dim house lights. The workers busied themselves shutting down the studio.

Saligia dropped with a moan into the chair of Contestant Number Two.

“I had an overlap,” she said.

I had too many things to say, all crowding to get to my lips. I sat down beside Saligia on the floor and asked: “What’s an overlap?”

“I was connected with Susan when she stepped into the pod.”

“God! I felt it too! It was awful” I said, keeping my eyes on the floor, afraid that if I were to look up I’d get dizzy. “I could see what she could see. That was Hal, wasn’t it? Inside with her. On the floor. His head twisted around. Eyes bugged open and cloudy.” Saligia’s boots weren’t black, as I had thought. Up close they were two tones of gray, making a subtle leopard pattern. I decided to look up, but Saligia’s eyes were closed. “Did you see him? I mean with your eyes?”

Saligia shook her head. “I saw things the way you did, through Susan’s eyes. Maybe some of the contestants in the upper rows got a peek. Maybe Morris. I was afraid to turn. Besides, there was the overlap.”

The production crew moved around us with the sort of languid efficiency that comes from years doing the same thing until you’ve learned that when you rush things it doesn’t buy you any time in the long run. Maybe they were a bit more buoyant than usual without their boss Hal complaining—usually about his weak knees and queasy stomach. It seemed wrong. Not to tell them that Hal was dead. Every so often one would pause to smile at me or Saligia—that sort of uncharged smile of a good days work almost over. I could do nothing but smile back.

One by one, they finished putting things away and powering down equipment. The two lighting tech walked out, discussing which bar they’d go to. And the sound woman finished gathering up all the battery powered headsets and plugged them in so they could recharge. She left, too.

We were alone. Saligia and me.

“Overlap?” I said, finally breaking the silence. “I don’t know what that is.”

“It’s when images or experiences from two people or more crowd together, pushing into my mind. I’ve worked for years to make sure it doesn’t happen. Almost never does anymore. It’s awful. It’s not just the disharmony, like trying to listen to someone whispering love poetry in my left ear while on the other side of me someone with a hacksaw is cutting a bottle in half. But there’s also the crowdedness. There’s no room left in my head for me.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It was all ugly emotion. There was Susan, terrified. You were in there too.” Saligia touched her head. “Your memory of your brother. It was all raw. Unresolved. Even with Susan and you, I might have been okay. But the truly dark, malignant presence was August.”

“August?”

“August was excited. Aroused. He knew what was in that pod. He couldn’t see from his seat, but he knew. And I saw a distinct memory from when he killed Hal.”

“Is that true?” I felt sick.

Saligia nodded and covered her mouth with her hands.

I never told Saligia that I had found August wandering in the studio alone and unescorted the other day. Should I tell her that now? Or would it be too much for her? Or maybe she was reading me. I looked at her face, but she was staring off into space. I didn’t think so.

I got up and walked to Door Number One.

What actually was it? Or, more important, the space behind it?

Were these rooms machines utilizing some technology unknown to science—meaning science as I understood it? Or was there some mystical vortex inside? This mechanism that took the contestants away—two each night—did it work on a predetermined schedule? Maybe it was “live” for a certain duration around 7:30 each weekday night. Was there someone watching the live broadcast, perhaps out in LA, who pushed some button that transported or even disintegrated anyone or anything inside?

The hell with all that. The hell with everyone’s detached attitude that allowed them to shrug and mutter something insipid like “some things are just unknowable.” I reached out and gripped the handle of Door Number One.

I turned to Saligia, thinking she would stop me, but she didn’t.

I expected the worst. When I opened the door, the small white room with slightly curved walls was empty.

“The smell’s gone,” I said.

Saligia stood up but didn’t turn to look.

“Good to know,” she said.

Silverio and Saligia had some sort of altercation during the commercial break. Something to do with the man who had replaced Hal, the director.

The ease at which they had replaced the man I had strangled surprised me. Shouldn’t a director be more important? It seemed I didn’t know too much about the world of television production.

Because I heard members of the crew grumbling about Hal’s failure to come to work, I assumed his body had not been discovered. I wondered if it was still there on the floor behind Door Number One. Maybe the body had already been transported to wherever things go when placed inside those little rooms. I’d know soon enough. About the body, that is.

But at the moment, I had no clue.

I was expecting to catch the mild aroma of decomposition. Three days should account for something. But they did keep it rather chilly in the studio. Also, I had seen a rubber gasket running along the inner edge of the doors. He could still be in there.

I would just have to wait until the end of the show when that door was pulled open. I only wish I could see better. My seat was off to the side, and I wasn’t certain I’d have a clear view when the door was finally opened. I looked around and realized that most people wouldn’t be able to see the floor of those closets or pods or whatever they were. Well, the contestant as he or she entered would get a glorious eyeful. Perhaps some of my fellow contestants, lucky enough to be seated in the more elevated back row, would catch a glimpse. That new director, Morris was his name, should have a wonderful view from up in the booth. And, no doubt about it, the unmanned camera—Camera Three, they called it—which was mounted on a high tripod, and captured the entire set, it would be able to look right down into both pods. Would it be too much to hope that the new man in the booth would switch to that camera at the right time?

Nothing to do but wait. Wait for that wild reveal.

I never imagined television could be this exciting.

Finally, I felt more in control than since I arrived here. I knew something no one else around me did. And I needed that small purchase—that meager sense of agency. The last two days had revealed nothing useful to me. I explored every room of the 28th and 29th floor. I confess, I’m not technologically savvy, so I was all prepared to squander an entire night trying to navigate around in any computer I encountered. I shouldn’t have worried. I saw none. Not a single computer. I did, however, find a row of filing cabinets in Dr. Hetzel’s office. Every drawer was locked—there were dozens, and not one of them was labeled. I balked at the thought of the tedious work using a paperclip or similar item to pick each lock as I searched for something useful. I decided to leave them, at least for the time being.

Though it wasn’t easy turning my back on those cabinets and the information they might contain. I had a strong feeling they could provide some insight on the terrifying transformation I had experienced when I tried to escape the other night on the elevator.

Atop those filing cabinets was a large old model chunky television set. When I turned it on, I could find no stations. Well, there was one. But all it had was a static slate, black with white letters.

Serpientes y Escaleras, 7-7:30 pm, Monday through Friday. Airing on WSAN, Serving San Antonio’s Broadcast Region.

Only one television channel? Broadcasting only one show for thirty minutes five days a week? Odd. But I now knew something important. I knew where I was. San Antonio, Texas.

Next, I tried to get to the 30th floor. I could find no stairs leading up, which seemed strange. So, with great nervousness, I tried the elevator. It went all the way up. Stopped. And nothing happened. I looked up toward the metal grate in the ceiling, thinking maybe that girl was somehow keeping the doors closed. But I didn’t see anyone up there. I tapped at the button again for the 30th floor. Nothing happened. The number 30 was lit green on the display panel. Then I saw a small red light flashing further down the panel. Beside the light was the printed instruction to Use Key. The one I stole from Michael would be no use. The lock needed a tubular key.

I returned to the 28th floor. I had no desire to try going down again.

Last night, feeling a gnawing of paranoia rising, I seriously considered returning to the studio and disposing of that body. Trust me, disposing of a corpse was no easy task, and in all honesty I wasn’t sure how I would have managed to do it without the ability to leave the building. Fortunately, I pushed that nervousness away by reminding myself that my plan was for people to discover Hal’s body. I hoped to use the ensuing panic advantageously—I just didn’t yet know how. I needed to remain prepared, vigilant, agile.

Once the show began, I actually hoped I would be chosen. I so wanted to be right there on stage when things blew up. But, once again, I was passed over.

So, I leaned back in my chair and followed the instructions of the flashing sign, periodically cheering and applauding, all the while pretending to be entertained.

As the show progressed, my growing sense of anticipation shut out everything else. I had no interest in the activity of the show itself. The stories from the lives of the contestants had never seemed particularly interesting, even less so now that I knew an unexpected surprise would soon be revealed. Besides, I already knew who was going to win.

I’d learned last week that Saligia had a tell. When she began to favor one of the seated contestants over the other, she would walk in front of him or her and smile down benevolently before she moved around behind and did her theatrical waving of hands above the contestant’s head.

Before the clock ran out, Saligia would convey to Silverio her final confirmation who  the should be the winner. Ever so subtly, her fingers would brush across his or her neck, just at the upper anchor of the sternocleidomastoid. I’d even seen Silverio nod to her once, indicating he had seen her signal.

No one else notice it. And I was convinced that the crew—at least for the most part—had no idea the show was rigged.

Idiots.

There. She did it. Saligia touched the back of the woman’s neck. What was her name? Oh, yes. Susan. So, Susan would soon be catching sight of Hal.

Now, things would get interesting.

Only a few minutes on the clock before the end of the show. I focused my attention on Door Number One.

I suddenly realized that the hum I heard every night at that point near the end of the show wasn’t feedback from the sound system. No. It came from the back of the stage. From those doors. A low frequency, just at the edge of human hearing. I felt it in my chest. It would begin about five minutes before the show ended, and continue for maybe five minutes after the show ended.

I knew that hum! It came to me immediately. I had heard that hum just before I found myself sitting naked in that dark room two weeks ago. The portals. That inexplicable manner in which all of us, the contestants, came into and out of this place.

My heart sank. Did that mean Hal’s body had just been swept away? Or would that happen once Susan stepped inside to join him and the door was closed behind them?

Either way, I was about to learn something about the doors.

And there! Just as I knew. Silverio pushed a button and Susan’s place on the big lighted board turned into the image of a ladder. A ladder leading to the topmost square. The eye in the triangle. The winner of tonight’s show.

Sy was madly playing his piano. The applause signed flashed and stuttered. We in the audience applauded with a kind of robotic gusto. Rose took Susan to Door Number One. Michael led the male contestant to Door Number Two. Rose and Michael, in unison, opened the doors, grinning out to the audience and the TV cameras.

The contestants, as was almost always the case, stepped into the pods in a befuddled daze. I craned my neck, but couldn’t see the floor of the little room behind Door Number One. But, there! Susan blinked. She brought her hand to her nose. Scrunched up her face. And she looked down. The doors were being pushed closed by Rose and Michael.

There was no mistaking the expression of horror on Susan’s face. And everyone in the studio had to have heard her shrill scream of terror.

I know I did!

The doors slammed. The screaming stopped. And the crowd continued clapping, Sy kept playing, and on the video monitor mounted up on the wall, the credits began to scroll slowly.

I looked up to the booth. The new director—Morris—he had seen something behind that door. He was on his feet, leaning as far forward as possible. He appeared quite troubled.

I looked back to the stage. Rose was shaken. The scream, clearly she had heard it; though, because she never turned away from the camera, she had not seen the corpse. And Saligia, she was affected as well. She held her head in her hands. Was she in Susan’s mind? Did she see through the woman’s eyes? That psychic stuff?

After my recent experiences, I placed less importance in critical, skeptical reasoning than any time in my life. Or, lives. Besides, I wanted them afraid, pushed off balance. Throw some healthy chaos into this pristine and clinical world. Let whoever had caught sight—be it with their eyes or some psychic powers—of Hal’s broken body begin looking over their shoulders, afraid there was a murderer in their midsts.

And what about Susan and her grisly companion inside that little room? Did Door Number One truly lead to another place? A place that had just received a terrified contestant and a slightly decomposed corpse of a director? Would word be sent back to the people here?

I was curious. Curious and impatient.

Silverio Moreno began moving his fingers more softly across the keys. He spoke energetically into his microphone.

“And there you have it! Another exciting episode of Serpientes y Escaleras. Join us tomorrow when you’ll meet two new players!”

The credits had almost finished rolling. Moreno increased the tempo of his playing as he spoke with breathless rapidity.

“Serpientes y Escaleras is a wholly owned property of both Silver and Brown Productions and the licensing entity, the Network, neither of which are responsible for the opinions or actions expressed on this show.”

He caught his breath before adding in a low, firm tone: “Good night, all!”

The credits ended. The monitor went blank. And Silverio Moreno stood back from his electric piano clasping his hands in front of his chest. As the droning sustain of his final chord hung a moment in the air before decaying, he stared off into space with a satisfied smile on his face.

“Annnnnd, we are out,” said Myra, the woman with the clipboard. “Wow! Great show everyone. Awesome energy!”

I would not disagree. And I felt a vague swell of pride in my pivotal role in the Monday broadcast of Serpientes y Escaleras. The home viewers no doubt enjoyed the unexpected ending with that unsettling scream. And maybe, just maybe, they caught a quick glimpse of an uncertain something waiting behind Door Number One to accompany that lovely and perfect scream of unfiltered existential terror from that wretched woman as she was sent off to meet her fate.

Now, it was just a question of waiting.

Those people who had clearly been aware something was going on—the new director, Rose, Saligia, probably others—they would soon begin to compare notes. Their secure and smug world would now become corrupted and unstable. I would remain vigilant, awaiting whatever opportunity that might arise which I could exploit.

Every Monday morning I performed a little ritual whilst facing the rising sun. I welcomed the rebirth of a new week with song—or more specifically, a little Shakespearian ditty about mortality.

That’s right, Shakespeare.

I have a serious side.

Picture me, if you could, standing in the center of my sprawling penthouse—naked as the day I entered this world—looking to the east. When the first rays of the sun hit my face, I’d begin strumming along on my ukulele.

You might know the piece. It’s from the tragedy Cymbeline.

Instead of playing the music famously arranged by Roger Quilter in the 1920s, I sang along to the music of Blue Öyster Cult’s Don’t Fear the Reaper.

The first verse goes like this:

Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,

Nor the furious winter’s rages;

Thou thy worldly task hast done,

Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages:

Golden lads and girls all must,

As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.

Before the Changes, those words of Shakespeare reminded me to never take the preciousness of life for granted. I was well aware of the consequences in doing so. Every few years, it seemed, hubris settled upon me. Down into despair I would fall, unable to see life as anything other than a tedious routine. It was a miserable state to be in, and it took so long to escape.

Of course, after the Changes, death seemed to have, itself, died. Or at least be off on vacation.

Meditation upon memento mori no doubt had fallen from fashion across the globe—if indeed the world was still spherically shaped. But I continued to find value in my practice. Life remained precious. And work still needed doing.

As for death…well, even if Death no longer visited the living, the dead were constantly dropping in on my world. Five days a week. Death was part of my life.

We at La Vida Tower were engaged in serious work.

Today might have started out fairly standard—with my sunrise song followed by a breakfast of bagel and marmalade—but as showtime encroached, I watched in satisfaction as a new piece to my puzzle fell into place.

I am of course speaking of Morris.

For our Monday night broadcast, he had been tasked with running things up in the booth. Our director Hal was inexplicably MIA. But Morris being who he was, couldn’t stay put. Not when he was working. He scrambled down from the booth periodically to adjust a light, finesse the placement of a microphone, tape down a few cables—he always found something that needed to be addressed.

I would have expected his behavior to cause all sorts of conflict with the rest of the crew. You know—new guy promoted on his second day and showing such initiative. But Morris has a way with people. They warm to him.

Like the hair and make up team. He had that vacuous pair laughing. I didn’t even know those lifeless and colorless boobs had it in them. Somehow Morris had, at least momentarily, removed the slack from their jaws.

And then he was off again. Roving about. Giving pep talks. Cracking wise. I watched mesmerized as he took no more than two minutes to put order to the tropical tangle of dusty black cables languishing in the shadows back by the utility closet. The sort of thing Hal would never have lowered himself to do.

Strange about Hal—with only minutes to go before air, he still hadn’t surfaced.

He’d never missed a day in all the months of the show. Lord knows I’d seen him on many an occasion hunched up and grimacing with a hangover. But he was never late. In fact, he always arrived a good thirty minutes early, clutching his thermos of coffee and grimly doing his best to project an air of jocularity.

But I had confidence in Morris. There was a rhythm to this sort of production work. Not everyone could slip into it. But Morris was a natural. He was up there, checking the board while using his radio headset to engage in the rarified jargon of the techies. Even without Hal, things were running as smoothly as ever. No. Things were better.

Adding Morris to a stew always improved it. He was like MSG.

Our medley of spices was finally balanced.

Silverio, Saligia, and Morris! Together again, just like when the Changes were turning things upside-down and sideways. What wonderful days. Talk about your first light on a new week! Each morning during the Changes the sun rose on a new reality. Dozens of unexpected novelties to make your pulse sing!

Sure, Sal and Morris have had their difficulties. Their quote unquote history. Poor Sal—she never learned to appreciate a simple dalliance as joyful and life-affirming.

Sal would do well to think of Morris like marzipan. So tasty, at first. But when you’d overindulged, you no longer had the slightest interest. You were certainly not going to make a meal of it. Right?

Not that it was Morris’ fault. Some were born to be the entree, others dessert or finger food. Myself, I don’t doubt that people saw me as a fizzy apéritif, over-sweet with notes of paprika and lavender.

Anyway, Morris as a friend was so much better than Morris as a lover. When that man wasn’t trying to second guess your feelings, he was able to be more dependable, more honest.

Oh, but Sal and Morris would work it all out. They had to, because, well…how was it said in the movies?

We’re putting the band back together! 

Yeah, it felt like that.

I should have told Sal. You know, about Morris being back. I did have the whole weekend. Actually, I should have pulled them both aside on Friday, before the broadcast. But, to be honest, I wanted them to encounter one another, in the hallways, or on set. Naturally. Like creatures in the wild.

Probably not very sensitive of me. I mean, chance encounters with creatures in the wild often resulted in explosive savagery.

The other glaring problem with my plan of letting nature take its course in such an unplanned manner meant that the surprise meeting between Sal and Morris could well occur when I wasn’t watching.

Which was pretty much what happened. As the clock nibbled away the minutes, I was preoccupied with checking my game board interface, and then—BLAM! Sal caught sight of Morris like a water buffalo spotting a sneaky hyena creeping through the grass.

And did she let him have it!

Sal was whisper-yelling, right in the center of the studio. I don’t know why people do that. It puts everyone around them in that awkward position of pretending they didn’t overhear what was so obviously said. It certainly got the attention of everyone in the studio.

Sal vented for a considerable time until, spent, she retreated to her lair behind the black curtain. Lick her wounds. Gargle with honey water. Regain her composure. Like a wild animal…who just happened to be the host of a monumentally popular game show.

Unfortunately, I was too far away to enjoy the nuance of the drama.

Quite a bit was going on. For instance, there was Rose standing off to the side with her mouth agape, as she watched the unexpected and strange (well, to her) dressing down of the “new guy” by her gal pal Sal. I realized Rose had not yet seen Sal in rage-mode.

And then it occurred to me that Sal’s tirade was captured on my homemade video tape recorder! I would be able to watch it again and again. Well, I wouldn’t be able to see Morris’ expression. But I couldn’t have everything.

Video recording!

Now I’d be able to have videotape archives of my show. It would allow me to gather reliable information about the contestants. Their histories, what they all might have in common, when they lived…. There had to be a logic behind it all. Such as why were they sent to us? It couldn’t just all be random. For instance, did we only receive people who died once the Changes began? We never got people from ancient history or anything like that. But some seemed to have died well before the Changes, maybe a decade earlier. Of course, there was the possibility that the Changes had been going on longer than anyone thought, just too slight to be noticeable.

Questions. So many questions.

I had begun to realize that there were similar themes in the lives of all of our contestants. So subtle, I wasn’t sure if anyone else noticed. I was doing my best to catch them. Sort them out. Things were falling into place. With the action recorded, I could transcribe everything. It would make it much easier to find the answers I needed, the grand answers that I knew were just around the corner. I could feel it!

The energy felt good.

I pulled up the mirror bolted to the side of my electric piano on a goose-neck stand. I peered into it. Not too bad. I used a squirrel hair bush to apply a light dusting of sheer translucent face powder to my nose and forehead—keep that sheen down! But that was it for makeup. My thinning dirty blond hair I kept buzzed to a stubble. It helped when taping on my white pompadour toupee. That famous toupee which matched the scalloped mother of pearl sequins on the lapels of my black velvet dinner jacket.

I was good-to-go and camera-ready in my standard outfit, complete with wig. I stepped back a bit so I could see more of me in the mirror.

Good, but it could be better. Maybe one day….

No! Today. Today was that day.

I peeled the toupee from my head.

Raul watched me with a puzzled expression.

I returned my white pompadour to its head-shaped stand, and swapped it for another similar stand that was stored in a low cabinet beside my vintage Vox AC30 amp. The second wig stand held another pompadour, but this one was red, more bright than burning charcoal on a windy day.

Raul raised a hopeful eyebrow.

I nodded and called across to him.

“Let’s do this!”

He grinned and clapped his hands. With no further delay, he reached into a garnet bag hanging from the crowded clothing rack beside him.

I unpeeled a fresh slip of toupee tape. By the time I had on my new vivid hair, Raul was behind me clutching a bright green velvet dinner jacket festooned with fiery red sequins.

“The most assertive of all color combinations,” Raul whispered in my ear, as he helped me with the jacket. “Lime and scarlet make no apologies, they take no prisoners.”

He stood back to admire me.

“Thank you, Silverio. You’ve made my day. My week!”

I saw Sal emerge from her sanctuary. She didn’t glance over at me, but she appeared composed and sound of mind. Ready for the broadcast. She was fine. Just fine.

Raul stepped away from me as Myra took her position between cameras one and two where she always began the countdown.

“We’re doing this without Hal,” she told us all. “But we all know what to do. So, take a deep breath everyone. We’re on the air in five, four, three—” She continued silently by holding up two fingers, one finger, and then she pointed that lone finger up at Morris in the booth.

And we were live.

The show proceeded as smoothly as could be hoped. I decided to think it was propelled by my high enthusiasm. New hair, new jacket, trusted friend up in the booth. Sal did eventually shoot me a few scowls, but moodiness was nothing new with her.

The chosen contestants, Jerry and Susan, exuded the perfect combination of sedate befuddlement and curious attentiveness. They sat still in their seats and watched with rapt consideration as Michael and Rose reenacted scenes from their lives—it all seemed to come back to them, their past lives, in a slow-dawning reveal. Our two contestants might sob one moment, and then smile broadly with swelling joy the next.

When the first commercial break rolled around, even Myra was feeling the energy.

“All right, everyone, we’re out,” she whispered into her headset. And then she added, “Three minute commercial break, people. So don’t go anywhere!”

I watched Sal walk up to me. Her face was impassive.

“Still no sign of Hal,” I said quietly. “How odd.”

“We have to talk,” she told me, tilting her head back so she could look down her nose. She hooked a thumb up towards the booth behind her.

I guess she had not come over to compliment me on the change of hair.

I looked up at the booth. I tried to catch Morris’ eye but he was busy doing stuff. I gave him a thumbs up anyway. He was running on all cylinders today!

“Talk?” I looked at Sal. “Certainly not now during the commercial break.” I reached down to my drawer of snacks and began nibbling on a handful of almonds.

“This is not the mindset I want when doing this sort of work, Sy. And you know it.”

“But you’re doing great, Sal. Better than great. I’ve always said, you thrive amid chaos.”

“You damn well could have warned me.”

I was tempted to suggest that Sal turn her attention to the odd one in the stands, August. That one would be sure to distract her mind from indignant thoughts brought to mind by the appearance of an ex-lover. Of course, that would have made things worse.

And in my defense, I had assumed that with her mind-reading skills, Sal would have learned all about Morris’ return by now. I really don’t think I should be held completely responsible just because she can’t bother to peer into my brain every so often.

My eyes wandered back to Miles who was in the middle of delivering a commercial. He extolled the virtues of a sugary breakfast cereal which was both puffed and flaked. And also frosted with chocolate. I had to admit, it didn’t sound half bad.

“Are you even listening to me?” Sal asked.

I smiled at her and pointed to the clock high on the back wall.

“Ten seconds,” I told her. “Turn that charm back on!”

“You’re an ass,” she said. “And that thing on your head looks ridiculous.” At that, she spun around and moved to return to mark on the stage. She turned her attention to camera two and gave it her softest and most earnest smile.

I hit the applause button at the same time I launched into the theme music on my piano. I tried my best to ooze compassion and universal love for the audiences at home, but Sal’s comment about my hair had been unkind.

“Welcome back to Serpientes y Escalerrrrrrras!”

The first day of my new job, back on Friday, had been an eye-opening experience. What Raul told me about the mysteries associated with Serpientes y Escaleras had seemed outlandish. But once I was on the production team, I found nothing to disprove what he had said.

Ah, Raul. I had been so preoccupied with Saligia, and what I would say when I finally encountered her, that I completely forgot I knew another person on staff.

“Well, you work fast,” Raul said when I almost collided with him in a corridor. His hand shot out to grab the ID card dangling from my neck. “Just wanted to check what name you’re using.”

“What?”

“You know,” he said with a wry smile. “Like your friend sometimes known as Shelvia.”

“Ah, yes,” I said. “Rose got caught up in the drama of Fran’s group and their love of anonymity. Speaking of which, I’d hate to inadvertently expose you as a member of,” I lowered my voice to a whisper, “the ASES. Should we try and get our stories straight.”

“Say whatever you want to.” Raul shrugged. “As for me, I never lie. If asked, I’d probably say the two of us originally met at a support group meeting.”

“Well, okay.”

“That should conjure up depressing images of bad coffee, stale cookies, and shared sadness. Who’s going to press for more details?”

“God, is that us?” I asked.

Raul laughed.

“Not at all, my friend,” he said. “We’re seasoned television professionals, with interesting extracurricular hobbies. And let me just say, welcome to the team!”

And off he went.

That threw me a bit. For a place with so much secrecy, the upper floors of La Vida Tower seemed relatively free of paranoid skittishness. No one lied to me. When I asked why I couldn’t go to certain parts of the building, people would simply say it was “secret stuff,” and if I was supposed to know about it, I’d be given a key. And when I said it was my understanding that the contestants had been brought back from the dead, and our job was to send them off to some other world, most of the people on staff just shrugged and said it sounded about right.

About half an hour before the show back on Friday, Hal called me up to the booth.

“Best place to learn the ropes, Morris,” he told me. “Besides, up here you won’t get in anyone’s way.”

He pulled a large brass flask from the inner pocket of his jacket and passed it to me. When I shook my head, he muttered, “good man,” and then, before returning it to his pocket, he took a deep swallow.

There wasn’t much to the show. Three cameras—two on wheels, one mounted in place. Sy and Saligia each had a standard Shure SM58 microphone. Two wireless lavalieres were placed on the performers who acted out scenes supposedly from the lives of the contestants. And a boundary mike picked up the rest of the audio. The lighting scheme was simple enough. Bright, flat overhead illumination. Well, there was the occasional atmospheric interlude when Saligia went into one of her mystical  trances—a spooky spotlight would momentarily isolate her.

I watched it all from up in the booth with Hal. My elevated vantage point gave me no real surprises of “the most popular show around.”

It was as banal as it was when I had watched it on a TV set.

I enjoyed watching Sy mugging for the camera as he played interstitial music on his electric piano or made his absurd statements about “the great here after” or “passing weighty moral mandates.” But it was Saligia who really impressed me. Her delivery and timing was extraordinary. She clearly was twisting the melodrama dial higher than I would have thought possible, but somehow she remained believable. And absolutely captivating. 

Also, I have to say, the crew worked smoothly. It was a tight, flawless production. After half an hour, the two chosen contestants were escorted to their doors, one to heaven, the other, hell. I suppose. The doors were opened. They entered. The doors were shut. The show ended.

Seeing that the work of the day was done, I expected to learn more about the fantastic elements of the show from Sy and Saligia. However, they had disappeared before I made it down from the booth.

I had to assume that Sy would eventually give me one of those keys. I was keen to poke around the place.

And I still had not been able to talk with Saligia. She never once looked up at the control booth. I was quite sure she didn’t even know of my presence.

I needed a moment with her to explain why I disappeared all those years ago.

A moment?

No. It’d never be that simple. Besides, the longer I put it off…I mean, now I would need to explain why I had been avoiding her.

I realized I was ready to take a healthy slug from Hal’s flask, but he, too, had gone.

In fact, I was the only one left in the studio.

I looked at the two doors at the back of the stage.

Why not?

I crossed over to take a peek behind them both. Each door opened into a room the size of a closet. They were empty. No way either of those two contestants could have gotten out. No rational way.

One of those freaky, creepy remnants of the Changes.

As I walked across the darkened stage, I realized I wasn’t alone. Nora was leaning against the wall grinning at me.

“Was this Raul’s doing?” she asked. “You go on just one man date with the guy, and he gets you a job. Not bad.”

“So, they just let you wander around?” I asked her.

“I’m resourceful. Come on, you know that about me.”

Nora went on to explain that ever since she got her job in the building, she had taken to watching the live broadcast from a little hidden nest of cushions beneath the risers where the audience sat.

“You think I’m making that up?” she suddenly demanded, narrowing her eyes at me. I must have been smirking.

She dropped to her knees in front of the first row.

I joined her and peered into the darkness beneath the seats. I unhooked a tiny flashlight from my belt and played its beam about under there.

“Well, it looks fine for a thirty minute show,” I said, wondering where she got all those plump velour pillows. “But it’s almost as cramped as that compartment in the train.”

“Hey, don’t be thinking that I live under there. I have an apartment in the basement. A proper apartment with plumbing and a queen sized bed.”

“Well, then your TV nest is perfect.”

“Thank you!”

“How about I buy you dinner?” I asked, getting back up. “Or maybe drinks?”

“Whoa! Slow down, tiger!” And she laughed. “Can’t. I gotta do a few things before I can clock out.”

“Maybe I’ll go up and talk to Sy,” I told her.

“Good luck with that. He had me install a lock this afternoon on the elevators. You can punch that button for the top floor all you want, but unless you have a special key, you’ll never get to the penthouse. Because of Saligia. She wants more security.”

“Saligia lives up there, too?”

“She’s got a cabin on the roof—it looks like something you’d see in Great Falls. Flimsy plywood and tarpaper.” Nora tightened her tool belt. “Imagine that, a penthouse for the penthouse.” And off she went, leaving me alone.

So, I had no choice but to head home and join the other lonely men at the Omega Hotel.

###

I was certain that Sy would eventually get Saligia up to speed. Tell her all about me returning to their life. I mean, Sy had the entire weekend.

However, today, when I returned to work, I found myself feeling less and less confident that he had told her anything.

I was apprehensive. Whether or not Saligia now knew of my presence, I still expected heavy emotional fallout. But it turned out that Monday was no different than Friday. There was no good time to get away and track her down. The studio was buzzing with activity from the moment I arrived. It was the nature of the business—everything was constantly one second away from crisis. Which, in itself, wasn’t bad. It didn’t give me time to think. That was often my downfall—overthinking.

That probably explained why I loved the messy and choppy waters of production work; how it pulled you along inexorably, much too fiercely for you to steer. Just try and stay clear of the rocks!

Also, it was a Monday.

I love Mondays when working a new job. Everything feels fresh, crisp. Filled with possibilities. I’d also noticed something about myself over the years. The more dour and disengaged were those around me, the more spirited I felt. And there were plenty of crotchety moaners today. Throughout the studio, the crew members stomped around, grumbling about how their weekends should have lasted another day or two. The lighting tech cursed when he discovered that one of the lights was missing a cable.

“Yes, but you caught it before we went on air,” I told him in passing. “Look on the positive side.”

“Yeah. Whatever.” The guy—and really I needed to learn everyone’s names—kicked at a step stool in the middle of the set. “And then there’s this. I wanna know who’s not putting their stuff away!”

“Where’s Hal?” a voiced shouted out. I looked around. It was Sy. He stood at the top of the steps to the tech booth.

“I haven’t seen him,” Myra yelled from across the studio. “I thought he was with you.”

“Me?” Sy made a face. “Why would he be with me?”

“I’d assumed everyone was in one of those meetings I’m never invited to,” Myra muttered, but at a high enough volume for all to hear.

“We’re thirty minutes to show time,” Sy said. “And no Hal? That can’t be good.”

Myra grabbed a passing production assistant and told the young man to search the building. “Go to Hal’s apartment, if necessary.”

“So, who has the key to the booth,” Sy called out. “I’m wanting to hook up some equipment.”

“There’s no lock,” the lighting tech said. “The door sticks. Kick it at the bottom.”

Sy did so. “Ah! The beauty of low tech security.” He awkwardly hauled some clunky and familiar looking machinery into the booth.

I walked over to Myra who was riffling through some pages on her clipboard.

“Um, so, what’s our plan if they can’t find Hal?”

Myra looked up. “I’m the only one trained on the switcher, but I can’t be in two places at once. So, the answer is, I don’t know. Unless you know how to operate a Schneider-Wilcox switcher board.”

“As a matter of fact, my high school had a TV station. It wasn’t much to speak of, but I got to work with their old Schneider-Wilcox A-450.”

She gave me a noncommittal stare. Neither dubious nor hopeful.

“I was up there with Hal for Friday’s show,” I elaborated. “Everything he did made perfect sense to me. I’m your man.”

“Well, get on up there,” Myra said with a sigh. “Let’s hope Hal shows. If not, do your best.”

“Will do.” I crossed the set and climbed up to the booth.

Sy was crammed under the switcher board flat on his back with his feet sticking out.

“Hal?” Sy asked. “Glad you could join us. Fire up the board, will you?”

I sat in the lone chair in the booth and reached across the huge, antiquated video switching board. I felt along the upper edge until I found the small rocker switch. I flicked it and the board came to life, with dozens of colored lights flashing on as a row of VU needles behind small glass windows swung in unison all the way to the right, before settling back to zero percent.

Sy’s hand appeared from below holding a black cable, terminating in a BNC plug.

“Stick this into the auxiliary video output.”

I did so.

“Now give me some signal. Let’s say, from camera two. That is, if Morris has turned it on.”

“I have, Sy,” I said, switching to camera two.

Sy slid out.

“Where’d Hal go?”

“I’m his replacement.”

“My goodness, but you are a young go-getter,” Sy said with a grin. “Bet you’ll be running this network before long.” He slid back under the board. “Don’t forget us little people who helped you on the way up.” 

I heard an electrical crackle, followed by a yelp from Sy.

“You okay down there?” I asked.

“Okay? I’m more than okay.” Sy slid out and pulled himself to his feet. “I just invented the video recorder. And, it’s in color!”

“Invented?” I peered under the board, watching the slow rotation of the tape reels on the recording device. “Let’s not get carried away.”

“Try not to bump it with your feet. It’s fragile.”

“So,” I asked. “You’re recording the show?”

“My video archives of Serpientes y Escaleras begins today.”

“Right. So, you want me to turn it on when—”

“It’s rolling now. I’ve got two hours of tape. More than enough.” Sy gave me a salute and stepped to the door.

“Wait, Sy.” I glanced around the booth. “Anything else I’m supposed to know?”

“What do you mean?”

“Do I just run the board? Or is there anything else that happens up here?”

“Such as?”

“Well, like the game board. Or the applause sign. I don’t know.”

“Those are things I control. Just put on your headset. You’ll be able to communicate with me and Myra.” Sy softly punched my shoulder. “You’ll be fine. I mean, how difficult can it be?”

He stepped out and closed the door behind him.

I put on the headset and watched through the large glass window of the booth as Sy bounded to his station behind his electric piano and began putting on his toupee.

Part of Sy’s charm was that he considered himself to be homely. By most  standards, he was a handsome man—though I guess not by his standards. So he compensated with clownish behavior. And, of course, given the slightest reason to dress up, he would do so.

I should point out that I didn’t have a type. I typically was drawn to those who were drawn to me. I’d always been too self-conscious to be the pursuer.

Early on in our working relationship on the show, Wonders Unfolding, I found myself captivated by Sy’s love of surprising those around him. I’d known people so caught up in a neurotic need to perform for others that it became exhausting just to be around them. But with Sy, it was different. He had a flirty ease when interacting with people. Disarming. Subtly seductive. He obviously knew he was doing it, but he had no idea how good he was at it.

So, maybe I did have a type. The charismatic type.

The thing was, those people were so rarely drawn to me.

That must be why I always responded when they did show interest.

Soon Sy and I began spending our free time together after work. We always ended up at my sad little apartment. He said he didn’t want us bothering his roommate.

It wasn’t until after we’d been involved for three weeks or so that I learned his roommate was Saligia. I was vaguely aware she had some sort of TV show. A show that Sy produced.

Anyway, when my monthly lease ran out on my squalid place, Sy suggested I move in to his “rambling old adobe villa in the suburbs,” as he called it. I did. And it was just me, Sy, and Saligia.

Saligia hated me at first. That really bothered Sy. He wanted everyone to get along.

So one night, and I’m not even sure how it happened—well, alcohol was involved—Saligia and I stopped being enemies. In fact, the next morning we woke up in the same bed.

Sy had been working late at the station editing some project or another, and when he came in that morning and discovered us, I thought he’d be angry.

He was overjoyed.

“My two favorite people now like each other!” he’d shouted. And off he ran to the kitchen to make us all breakfast.

It turned into an odd but far from unpleasant domestic relationship.

Well, until the incident with the meteor.

I was pulled out of my reminiscing when I heard Myra’s voice over the headset.

 “Okay, everyone, Hal’s still MIA. We’re going live in 23 minutes with Morris on the board. Things might get rocky, but, folks, we got this.” I looked down and saw Myra. “You look like a natural up there,” she said over the headset. “How are you feeling?”

“It’s all coming back to me,” I said, hoping my smile was believable.

I wondered if Nora was under the seats, watching.

I switched the feed, checking all three cameras. Each camera had a red light on top which came to life when that camera was active. The equipment was doing what I expected it to do. What more could I ask?

Suddenly the video monitor was filled with Saligia’s face. I pulled back. I looked out from the booth. There was Saligia Jones, standing inches from camera one, the camera with the glowing red light. She clutched a microphone in her fist, aimed inches from her mouth.

“Morris,” she said low and grave, her voice in my ears. “I don’t know if this microphone is switched on—”

Saligia leaned to the side a bit to look up at me.

I nodded my head.

“Good,” she whispered, moving back to glare into the camera. She took a deep breath. “Well, isn’t this unexpected.” I remembered that cold, methodical tone she enjoyed using on occasion. “I wish someone had told me you were here. I should blame Sy for that, right? He does love his drama. From a distance, that is. I thought I was done with you, Morris. Dammit! I used to like Mondays.”

She turned and walked away, disappearing behind a black curtain.

That’s when I noticed the sound woman—seated at her station at the edge of the set and wearing her headphones—had heard everything. She was staring up at me with her mouth open.

Yeah. Saligia Jones can have a powerful effect on people.

Sy had done a much better job at being reunited with an ex-lover than Saligia had.

This was going to be a very long show.

It happened again. I had not been chosen as a contestant. That left me with an entire weekend to manage my escape before the next time I would be in danger of being sent through one of those doors. Of course, I wouldn’t need an entire weekend.

I sat on the edge of my narrow bed looking at the clock. Other than to let us know it was meal time, we “guests” had no use for clocks. When it was time for the show itself, Valerie and Ed always came to get us.

Our daily routines were actually very simple.

For instance, now that we had finished with the TV broadcast, been served dinner, and had enjoyed some leisure time in the lounge, we had all retired to our rooms for the evening. The next scheduled event would be “lights out,” that time when the overhead lighting throughout the place automatically dropped to a faint glow.

I realized this new life resembled my time in prison. And with that analogy in mind, my participation in the broadcast of Serpientes y Escaleras could be likened to a mandatory work detail.

But now I had a key, and I could just walk away from that unpleasant duty. I held it up for closer examination. Nothing special. A single-blade brass key cut for a standard five pin lock. I had already disposed of Michael’s plastic keychain which had the logo of some sports team.

I suspected that the key opened every lock in the place. It had gotten me through each door I tried it on.

Last night, I used it to slip out into that lobby. But there had been a sign taped to the wall explaining that the elevators were shut down for maintenance. It didn’t stop me from trying, but I was unable to summon either of them.  

I searched up and down the corridors, thinking there had to be a central stairwell. But there wasn’t. Every place was supposed to have fire exits. Had I found myself sent to some world free of the most basic building safety codes?

I had returned to my room with the plan to try the elevators the following day.

And that day was today.

I looked back at the clock and saw it was ten o’clock. The lights dimmed, right on schedule. I held my breath a moment and listened. Silence. By this time of night, all the contestants were in bed. And because it was Friday, even those few on staff who tended to work late hours had likely left.

When I got to my feet, I turned toward the mirror. I was still wearing the causal clothing the wardrobe department had provided, and I felt confident that in them I wouldn’t attract undue attention when I made it to freedom.

I crept across the lounge and paused at the corridor toward the nurse’s office. I could hear the night orderly quietly snoring. I then pushed my way into the kitchen and peered about. Everyone had left for the night.

Over at the large heavy oak door, I inserted the stolen key, turned it, and slipped out of the lounge. I eased the door closed until I heard the satisfying click of the lock catching.

I stood on a dark brown carpet with a springy deep pile. The recessed lighting above threw a soothing glow about the confined foyer with a gangly artificial rubber tree in a corner. Everything looked exactly as it had last night.

Almost everything.

The maintenance sign on the wall was now gone.

I stepped up to the two elevators. I pressed the Down button on the panel between them.

There was no waiting. The doors to one of the elevators parted immediately. When I stepped in, the doors slid shut behind me.

I learned from the panel of buttons that I was on the 28^th floor of a 30 story building. I would, of course, go down. If the basement were labeled G for garage or P for parking, I would have chosen that. But it was just B. I went ahead and pushed the button for the first floor, hoping that the doors wouldn’t open facing a front desk with security guards.

As the elevator began its descent, I was afraid that someone would get on and recognize me as a contestant. Then I realized I was still behaving in the mode of a prisoner, nervous and furtive. I took a deep breath and relaxed my arms and shoulders. I let an innocent and unhurried smile form on my face. Just a man heading home after a long week at work.

Then my arm went numb. A sensation which almost instantly transitioned into what felt like a low frequency electric current running just under the flesh. I looked down. My arm, where it was tingling, was gone. Gone! But, no. It had shortened into a pale shiny stub, just barely peeking from the sleeve of my shirt. Then, like the flickering of a light, my arm shuttered back into existence.

My stomach lurched to the side. The floor had tilted. Or was it some inner ear thing? I tried to brace himself against the wall, but now that both of my hands were gone—and the doughy, abbreviated appendages where my arms should be were of no use—I fell to the floor.

As I struggled to get back up I saw in the empty legs of my trousers some short stubby protuberances moving about. My legs, too, seemed to have transformed. I thrashed helplessly flat on my back. Moaning in pain. Every muscle felt pummeled and violently electrocuted. I clenched my teeth and tried to roll over. I couldn’t. And as I looked at the ceiling, I saw an eye, up there, staring back at me through the grating of a metal panel.

The eye blinked.

And then everything else did, as the world lost focus and went black. Was my head transforming, too? When my sight returned, I glanced back up at the eye in the ceiling. It was gone, but now four fingers and a thumb wiggled through the holes in the grate. Then the metal panel was pulled away. A young woman stuck her head into the light of the elevator. She slid her body through the opening, pivoted, and landed beside me, crouching down, bringing her face close to mine. 

“Assistant to the Superintendent of Elevator Services here to assist and serve! You can call me Nora. I was topside tightening the lee side roller guide housing. It’s been rattling like mad. I was sure I got it fixed last night, but boss said I needed to dial up the torque on my ratchet driver, scramble back up there, and…anyway, it looks like you could use a hand. Is this behavior common with you?”

“Excuse me?” I managed to croak.

“The way your body keeps changing—like putty. Wow! There it goes again. Does it hurt?”

“The lower we go,” I gasped, “the worse it gets.”

The elevator doors finally opened onto the first floor. I tilted my head back and looked out onto a marble tiled lobby with wood paneled walls and lighting sconces. Was that to be the last thing I saw? Was I dying? Again?

“Then let’s get you up!”

But instead of offering her hand, Nora pushed the button for the 28^th floor. The doors closed and up we went.

I stifled a moan.

So close to freedom.

I clenched my fists in frustration.

My fists?

Miraculously, my body had returned to normal. I had two arms and two legs, just as it should be.

I pulled myself into a sitting position with my back to the wall. I lifted my hands and examined them. Nora watched as well. My fingers flickered, but then they held. The searing electrical pain shifted into mild numbness, and then that, too, dissipated. My pulse still hammered in my ears. I tied my best to catch my breath and relax.

“That’s quite a condition, sir.” Nora stood and held out her hand. I took it and got to my feet. “They have doctors and nurses on your floor, right? I mean, those people in the white coats.”

A bell chimed and the doors opened. It was the 28^th floor.

She placed a hand on my shoulder in an attempt to escort me off the elevator. I moved around to block her from getting out.

“Please,” I said, stepping out of the elevator. “I’ll be fine.”

She frowned and narrowed her eyes.

“That wasn’t just a dizzy spell or a sprained ankle. We need to make sure you get safety to your—”

“Like I said,” I told her, stepping back into the reception area, “I’ll be fine.”

She crossed her arms and looked me from head to toe. Then she shrugged and gave me a hopeful smile.

“Well, it’s a strange world, and I know I don’t have to tell you. Even after the Changes have settled down, there are still amazing things to witness. Maybe that affliction is old hat to you, but do me a favor and get it looked at, you hear?”

She moved back to allow the elevator to close, craning her head slowly to the side, maintaining eye contact with me until the doors finally shut.

I pulled the key from my pocket. I took a deep breath, and almost immediately my hands stopped shaking. Then I let myself back into the lounge.

Years ago I developed the mental skills necessary to control the flight or fight response. Impulsive actions could lead to unpredictable outcomes. And when one’s life was on the line, predictability was a wise hedge against chaos.

And along those same lines of reason, I pushed aside—for the present moment—all of the terrible implications connected to my disturbing experience on the elevator. When all you have are questions, but no reasonable answers, conjecture could easily turn into a fruitless mental exercise leading to nothing but paranoia and neurosis. 

I saw no one as I crossed the lounge and made my way to the door that led up to the studio. It, too, opened to my key.

As I knew it would.

Earlier in the day, before my fellow contestants had even woken up, I had already made a trip to the TV studio. I failed to discover anything useful or particularly interesting. But before I could finish looking around, I had been discovered. I just knew I would be searched and my key taken away.

But that didn’t happen. No one seemed curious how I got through the locked door at the base of the stairwell. I guess they just assumed someone had left the door ajar and I aimless blundered my way upstairs.

Of course, I do not aimlessly blunder.

I repeated my actions from my previous visit—I climbed up those stairs with purpose, and I pushed my way into the studio. It was quiet and dim, with enough light coming from the window of the control booth above the seats for me to make my way around. I crossed onto the stage. I enjoyed being free to take my time exploring this area which usually was a mass of frantic activity. I stood beside one of the over-stuffed upholstered chairs. What could be more preposterous than to have one’s immortal soul weighed whilst sitting in such an innocuous piece of domestic furniture?

I turned to those two damned doors on the back wall.

If I hadn’t been disturbed by that woman, Rose, earlier in the day, I would have already examined them.

I reached out and tentatively touched the handle to Door Number One, half expecting the same tingling sensation that overcame me in the elevator. When nothing happened, I grabbed it tight and turned until there was a click. I jerked it open.

Inside it was almost identical to the tiny room I had arrived in. All it lacked was the chair. But, white, slightly curved walls, and no other way in or out. I did not enter, but eased the door back shut. I checked the other. The same.

Could there be a compartment beneath? I crouched down and tapped on the floor. No. It was solid.

As I sat there on the floor of the stage, it all caught up with me. I felt overwhelmed with a sense of impotence. I needed to shake it off. A kind of innervated shock, which I hoped was a temporary side effect of the amnesia of the previous week, coupled with the indignities to my physical body mere minutes previous. Too much to process in such a short time. Both biological and psychological.

What was it that elevator technician had said? A strange world. Something she called the Changes. It reminded me of Rose’s cryptic talk about the impossible things out there.

Strange and impossible. My death and my rebirth. And that incident in the elevator—what was that? Some weird security measure to keep the contestants from escaping? What possibly could have thrown me into the throes of some perverse transformation from which that young woman had saved me? I had no idea what I had been transforming into, and I certainly did not want to know.

What now?

I had learned nothing useful from the mysterious doors beside me. Could there be a switch that activated them? Maybe over behind Silverio Moreno’s electric piano?

Before I could investigate Moreno’s station across the room, I heard something. From behind me.

There was someone else in the studio. I eased myself into a kneeling position, still hidden behind one of the chairs. I tilted my head to get a better view.

It was Hal, the director. He carried a step ladder over to one of the light stands. I watched as he climbed up and uncoupled a dull and frayed cable from one of the lighting fixtures. He draped it around his neck and got back down. No doubt to go get a fresh replacement cable.

When Hal climbed back down, I moved behind him.

One of the things I have learned after garroting a few people by coming up on them from behind—throwing the rope around their necks, and pulling them to the ground—was that they invariably struggled to get to their feet in same direction they went down. Very useful to know, as it can make the strangler’s work easier.

I was impressed by the robust nature of the lighting cable, it had a slight spring to it. As Hal opened and closed his mouth, twisting to get up, I maintained my grip firm. I then applied a much greater pull on the man’s noose.

He went limp without ever having seen who had come up behind him.

I maintained the pressure on the cable until I was certain that my victim was not just limp, but limp and lifeless.

The next step seemed logical enough. I opened Door Number One and heaved Hal’s corpse inside. I half expected his weight to trigger some automated system, but nothing unusual happened. I closed the door. Waited a moment. Opened it again. The body was still there.

I guess my daily allotment of the strange and the impossible had run out. No inexplicable forces swept to my aid to magically spirit away the evidence of my misdeed.

I closed the door on Hal. Or more to the point, I closed the door on the results of just that kind of impulsive behavior my mental training was supposed to hold at bay.

Sloppy of me.

However the theory of military engagement suggests that when you lack sufficient information to win the war, reallocate your resources and make damn certain to win the current battle.

 With that in mind, I allowed myself a moment to enjoy a warm sense of righteousness. One firm blow against my subjugators. But I needed dispassionate methodology to guide my every step from that point on. I promised myself to maintain that protocol.

Cool intellect over hot emotion. I liked that. It would be the new me. August Mark II.

So, I turned my attention to my cool intellect in search of my next move.

Well, I had the key. There were areas in the building I still had not explored. Both on this floor, and the one below. Also, according to the control panel on the elevator, there was yet another floor above.

Ultimately, I decided the most prudent strategy would be to withdraw to my room. It wouldn’t do to be seen out and about when a dead body was likely to be discovered soon.

Of course, there was that mechanic. Nora. She might tell someone about me. But even if I were to become a suspect in a murder investigation, there was nothing but the most flimsy circumstantial evidence to connect me with Hal. I decided not to worry myself about it.

As for the dead body I was leaving behind, well, over the years I had learned that the implementation of unanticipated blunt force often created unexpected opportunities. When other people’s lives were turned upside-down, you gained tremendous advantages.

So, I headed downstairs to bed, and would wait and see what the weekend might bring.

It was early in the morning before anyone had arrived in the studio. The stairway that led from the 28th up to the 29th floor was dimly awash in the subtle red glow of the exit signs, one at the top, one at the bottom.

I smiled to myself when I realized I was making my way up softly, secretively. Creeping, like a spy.

Even with my master key and my promotion, I couldn’t break with all my old behaviors.

It was unlikely that anyone would be in the studio, and certainly I was doing nothing wrong. Not really. But I gently pushed open the door at the top, listening to how it dragged across the shallow pile carpet, and then I was in.

I kept my hand on the handle until the door shut behind me. I breathed slowly, and listened. I could hear the air conditioner and the faint buzz of lights up in the tech booth—the cold glow that spilled from the glass window up there was all I needed to find my way about.

Even though I was alone, I maintained my stealth.

As I crossed the stage and stepped behind Sy’s electric piano, I knew I was now trespassing into a forbidden place. But, still, I inched open the top drawer of a little table.

There it was. Sy’s bag of chocolate covered almonds.

It had become like a game, this sneaking in. And now I was about to tear opened a cellophane bag. There was no way I could do that silently. I should have brought along a pocket knife.

Then I heard a sound.

Up in the booth.

The door clicked opened and clicked closed. I watched a figure methodically descend the metal stairs. It was a man dressed in the white scrubs of the contestants. He didn’t notice me—I was standing so still—as he stepped on the stage and stood staring at those two doors on the back wall. Door Number One. Door Number Two.

The way he stood, shoulders back, firmly distributing his weight on both feet, I knew instantly who it was. August. How did he get up here? The doors of the contestant area were kept locked.

I suddenly felt so sorry for him. My distrust for the man vanished in that instant, replaced with pity.

What must it feel like to be held in this sort of limbo? Awaiting the unknown. Something so extraordinary waited beyond those two doors.

It occurred to me for the first time, he was a prisoner. Our prisoner. How outrageous! We were his jailers. What monsters we must seem to him.

I stepped out from behind Sy’s piano. It only took me a few furtive paces to find myself behind him. What now? I didn’t want to startle him. Clear my throat?

But he knew I was there. I had a flash. From his mind. And without Saligia’s assistance. It came and went, and I knew he knew I was behind him. His thoughts were attached to words.

It’s her.

He turned, as smooth as a dancer, and looked me full in the eyes. No surprise. No shock. Nothing even slightly resembling fear.

Something from within him—a mental state too primal to be an emotion—enveloped me like a heavy rubber sheet.

His smiled with gleeful hunger just like a campy actor in an old black and white horror movie.

When I heard the door to the stairwell open, I did not move. The last thing I wanted to do was to turn my back on that smile.

“August,” a woman’s voice said from behind me. August looked over my shoulder. His smile instantly switched to unguarded and free of any meaning. Everything returned to normal. “We’ve been looking all over for you.”

Then I turned.

It was Valerie who had spoken, and I saw Ed standing beside her. They nodded pleasantly to me as they escorted August away.

“Let’s get you back to the Lounge,” Ed said.

When they had left, I heard the crinkle of plastic and looked down at my hand. I was holding the bag of Sy’s almonds.

My hand was trembling. My shoulders wet with perspiration.

I had to sit down.

###

I found Saligia in the dark room that looked onto the classroom.

She was sitting alone. Staring into the empty classroom. Not reading. Not knitting. Nothing. Just staring. She didn’t even look up when I came and sat in the chair beside her.

“I just had an unpleasant encounter,” I told her.

She looked over. Her eyes were red, her hair unkempt. It didn’t look like she’d been sleeping well. Maybe she was hung over.

“I found myself in someone else’s head.”

She blinked. Waiting for me to continue.

“I did it without you.”

She nodded.

“It just happened, I wasn’t trying to.”

“There will come a time,” she said, pausing to take a sip from a water bottle. “A time when you’ll have to train yourself to keep those thoughts from pushing in. It takes discipline. And it’s hard. And sometimes you fail.”

“It was August,” I said.

I saw a muscle below her left eye twitch.

“That man should never have come to us. We’re not prepared to deal with people like him.”

“Who makes those decisions?” I asked, but I knew she didn’t know.

“It happened with Connie,” she said. “And now it’s happened with him. Of course, he’s a different sort all together.”

“He looked at me,” I said, searching for the right words. “A knot of thoughts and feelings washed over me. Horrible things. It was like someone tossed me into a coffin filled with millions of slugs and hammered the lid shut. The sense of hopeless dread. The loneliness.” I could still feel it all so clearly. “It was awful.”

Saligia trembled. She brought both hands up to cover her face.

“What you have,” she gasped, her voice muffled. “In your mind…it’s still too fresh. You have to go. Anywhere, just away from me. For a while. It keeps pressing in on me.”

Those impressions I had of August were washing into her mind? Couldn’t she control this sort of intrusion?

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I only—”

“Go!”

###

There was a coffee shop I’d go to some days just two blocks from La Vida Tower. Olmec Street Coffee was a quiet retreat with good coffee. It served as a calm retreat. Certainly today, when I wanted to get away from August, if only for half an hour or so.

The place was empty except for the shy bearded barista who took my order. He was new, but seemed to know his way around the espresso machine. I relaxed on a plush sofa, slipped out of my shoes, and listened to the clatter of spoons and cups as he made me my latte.

“Here you go,” the man with the beard said a few minutes later as he placed my drink on the low table in front of me. He stood for an awkward moment before he sat down on a wicker chair. The chair creaked. “I don’t mean to intrude, but it’s Rose, right?”

There was only one way I knew how to answer that sort of question. With honesty. I guessed I would have to get used to being recognized by strangers. Am I going to have to learn new behaviors? Be aloof? Stand-offish?

“Yes,” I said, trying to smile in as neutral a manner as I could.

And then I laughed.

But I didn’t want to be that sort of person.

“Sorry,” I said, taking a sip of my latte. “That came out rude. The fact is, I’m new to this whole celebrity stuff.”

“Excuse me?” He looked confused.

“Serpientes y Escaleras,” I said. Now it was my turn to be confused.

“Oh, I never watch television.”

“You’re kidding.” I peered closer at him. Was he making a joke? I tried to think of anyone I knew who didn’t watch the show, and I was coming up blank.

“You probably don’t remember me,” he said. “It’s been a few years. I’m Charles.”

“Oh, God! I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you.” I grinned at him. “It must be the beard.”

He reached up to stroke his cheek.

Charles! How unexpected. He was Lionel’s best friend since they were altar boys. Charles, the one constant and constantly good thing in Lionel’s life. That true friend who kept trying to push the bad influences from Lionel…who tried so hard to get him to stay in therapy.

I hadn’t seen Charles since the funeral. Six years ago.

“It suits you,” I told him. “The beard.”

He nodded.

“I think about you.” Then he paused. “Every so often. Wondered how you and your aunt were getting along. It never occurred to me you’d be on TV.”

“So, you’ve never seen the show? I’m surprised. I mean, I’m pretty sure I remember you watching TV before. Wrestling matches. Even soap operas.”

“Yeah.” He laughed. “Me and Leo were always trying to get you to watch the lucha libre, but you only rolled your eyes and ran to your room.”

“Was I that much of a brat?”

Charles shrugged.

“I don’t mean to say I never watched that show you’re on. I tuned in early on and watched a few episodes. I was excited that it was the same man who did that Wonders Unfolding show.”

“People keep telling me about that one,” I said. “But I don’t even remember it.”

“Silverio Moreno, he was out in the world investigating things. Asking the questions everyone should be asking. I hoped he’d do the same thing here. You know, investigative reporting. But it turned out just to a dumb game show. No offense.”

“I think Sy would agree with you,” I said. “I mean, Silverio. He still wants answers.”

“I’d tune in to watch if he did something like Wonders Unfolding again. There’s so little of it these days, you know, honest inquiry.”

“There’s none of it these days,” I said, laughing.

“Maybe not on television but…well, you have to know where to look. I found a group of people who do ask questions. They want to know what the Changes were really all about.”

I was pretty sure I knew what group he was talking about.

Because I was Fran’s private spy, I decided to feign disinterest. Or, maybe I used to be Fran’s spy. I really needed to have a conversation with that man and stop avoiding him.

“Well good for you,” was my noncommittal response to Charles. “It’s always nice to find like-minded people.”

“The Changes turned everything upside-down. It traumatized us all, don’t you think?”

“I can’t argue with that,” I said. “But most days you’d never know it out on the streets. People seem to accept things. Could always be a case of self-deception.”

Charles sighed and nodded. He turned to look out the window.

“I came to terms with something a while back,” he said softly. He shifted his attention to his hands in his lap. “About Leo. Look, stop me if any of this makes you uncomfortable.” He paused. Maybe to give me an opportunity to stop him. Maybe just so he could collect his thoughts. “They say that after the Changes no one dies any more. I have to say, I’ve not heard otherwise. And for…well, for years I thought if only I could have kept Leo distracted or maybe had intervened in just the right way. If only he could have—this is a horrible phrase—but if he could only have held on just a bit longer until the Changes changed everything.”

I knew where Charles was going with this. I knew, because I had turned it all around in my head, as well.

“But, here’s the thing, Rose,” Charles continued. “Might that not have been worse? If Leo suddenly found himself with no recourse for relief….”

“I know,” I told him. “I know.”

We sat in an awkward silence that wasn’t as awkward as one might expect. The both of us began laughing at the same time because it was so quiet that we heard the clock above the counter when it clicked as the minute hand advanced.

“I have to get back to work,” I said, finishing off my latte and getting to my feet. I hoped no one had noticed that I slipped out for an unscheduled break. “It was so great to see you again.”

Charles stood up.

“Come on back,” he said. “I’m here every day from noon until we close.”

###

Nobody even noticed I was gone.

The rest of the day moved slowly. I managed to avoid August. And it would seem Saligia managed to avoid me.

Close to showtime, I went up to the studio to wait. The audience had yet to be brought in. I took a seat on the second row.

I looked up at the game board. Without all the flashing lights, it didn’t look like much. Just a large rectangular grid. The placement of the lighted snakes and the lighted ladders would change each day. A surprise! But always the winning square remained in the same place—top right corner. That final destination that ended the game, and allowed the winning contestant to pass through Door Number One. That top square held an illustration of the Eye of Providence. That’s what Sy called it. That famous eyeball surrounded by a triangle.

I had no idea how that eye was connected with snakes or ladders. I do recall having read somewhere that the popular children’s game of snakes and ladders—chutes and ladders, whatever—came from India hundreds of years ago. It served as moral instruction for young people. I guess if you lived in a culture that embraced reincarnation, you’d want to be mindful of your virtues and vices. No one wants to die only to come back as a snail.

I got up and walked across the studio. There was a new crew member working on one of the large rolling television cameras. He was handsome in that way that older men almost never are, not outside of the movies. Maybe forty or forty-five. It looked like he cut his own hair and shaved twice a month, tops. But on him, it worked.

It was odd to see a new face. Other than Bianca leaving the show because of her emotional breakdown or whatever, the staff hadn’t changed since I got hired.

I came to a stop facing Sy, with only his piano between us.

“I know what you are,” I said to him.

He looked at me with an amused smile, switched his electric piano to the church organ setting, and played the opening bars of Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. My piano teacher would be thrilled that I had retained some of her lessons.

“Lay it on me, babe.”

“You’re a bodhisattva,” I told him, indicating the game board.

“I see.” Sy didn’t turn his head in the direction I was pointing, he was looking over at the new man who was now hunkered down oiling the casters at the base of the camera. “Hey Morris,” he called out. “You have a moment?”

The man got up and walked over.

“Yeah?” He looked to Sy and then to me. He had the weathered face of someone who spent considerable time out of doors.

“You told me that you read the entire Encyclopedia Britannica while on your sabbatical.” Sy pointed a finger at me. “What was that word you called me?”

I rolled my eyes at Sy.

This from the man who won every game of Scrabble during our weekend get-away. I sighed and turned to the man, Morris.

“I called him a bodhisattva,” I said. “And I’d lay odds he already knows what it means.”

Morris nodded. “Yeah, Sy knows that word. But I don’t think he’s that at all. Not in that outfit.” Then he smiled at me, crinkles gathering at the edges of his eyes. His irises were pale blue. “I’m Morris.”

“I’m Rose.”

Sy held up a finger.

“No flirting with the talent,” he told Morris. “Back to work.”

When Morris returned to his camera, Sy whispered to me.

“He was giving you his seduction voice—smokey, husky. So hard to resist. I don’t think he even knows he’s doing it. Anyway, Morris is one of the good guys. That man knows me almost as well as Sal.”

We stood there, Sy and I, and watched Valeria and Ed escort the contestants into their seats. I shifted my weight and crossed my arms.

“I’m getting better at picking up on things even when I’m not in Sal’s proximity. You know, people’s thoughts.”

“Are you still talking about me?” Sy asked. “You know, your favorite bodhisattva with the big spiritually advanced brain? Or maybe Morris?”

“No. Him.” I pointed to August.

“Let me guess. Dark, transgressive thoughts? Disturbing memories of macabre rituals? Rose! I didn’t take you for a fan of the Bad Boy?”

“He’s hiding things from us.”

“Haven’t we already gone down this road,” Sy said, clearly losing interest.

“I’m talking about some seriously twisted stuff,” I said, and that seemed to perk him up. But then he just smirked when I added that I didn’t have anything specific.

“If I’m a bodhisattva, you’re the quintessential girl detective. But you still need to dig a lot deeper. But hurry, Rose! One day he’ll be gone. My guess is an exit through Door Number Two.”

“Sy, the man’s dangerous.”

“Sounds like the perfect material for a scintillating show.”

“This isn’t the stuff for entertainment, Sy. Not from him.”

I was trying to make eye contact with Sy, but he was rummaging around in his snack drawer. Probably looking for his chocolate covered almonds. Eventually he lifted out a granola bar that he looked at with scant interest. I glanced over at the black cloth strung up between two lighting supports. Saligia would be on the other side, probably nursing her hangover.

“I’m convinced,” I continued, “that there’s nothing random in the choosing of contestants from the audience. I think Saligia picks who she wants to work with.”

“Is that what you think?”

“And she doesn’t want to work with August. That’s why he hasn’t been chosen yet.”

“An intriguing theory. A rigged game show. How can such a thing be?”

“Or is it you?” I asked. He glanced at me with feigned shock. “Look, Sy, we need to get him out. And now. It might be unpleasant, but, like pulling off a band-aid—”

“He doesn’t look so ferocious,” Sy said, looked over at August.

“What if I told you I found him earlier this morning skulking around the studio. Here! This studio! The contestants, they’re supposed to be contained to their quarters, right?”

“Dark? Disturbed? And now, resourceful? I’m liking this mad man more every day.”

“That’s your response? What do you think Saligia would do if she turned a corner and encountered him sneaking around where he’s not supposed to be? You must have noticed that she’s been drinking more than usual.”

“You want to know it all, Rose. I understand. But secrets—be they the underlying metaphysics of the universe, or the dark contents locked in a disturbed man’s heart—they all reveal themselves eventually. Everything comes to those of us who wait.”

Sy changed the setting on his keyboard so that the sounds emerging from it resembled those of a Wurlitzer. He began playing the Bryds “Turn! Turn! Turn!”

Again, my piano teacher would be thrilled

“From Ecclesiastes, to Pete Seeger, to the Byrds,” he said grinning wide enough for me to see his wisdom teeth. “Come Rose, sing with me. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven.”

I made a face at him and crossed over to the lighted mirror in the corner to check my hair and makeup.

The man was like a willful child.

The reel to reel tape deck hummed with a warm tone. I stood at the counter of my kitchen island and watched the narrow brown tape as it was pulled across the playhead. A single RCA cable went from the line out port of the tape machine and into my custom converter box. Then, a coaxial cable snaked out from the converter device across the counter to where it was plugged into the video input of an old analog CRT video monitor. Why wasn’t the blasted thing working?

I had no patience for a blank screen, and I was just about to give the whole contraption another whack, when I heard the bell to the elevator.

Oh God, I hoped Sal was up in her rooftop shack, and not rummaging around down here looking for a crossword puzzle book or something. The last thing I wanted was to have Sal complain to me about our poor security. I told her the other day I’d have that elevator girl fix things so people couldn’t ride up to the penthouse without a special key, but I had forgotten all about it. The truth is, I wasn’t sure how to go about that. Was there some sort of requisition form?

Besides, Sal’s fears seemed absurd. What was up with her recent obsessive talk about malignant forces, marauding maniacs, or whatever? I mean, she was the psychic around here. Why worry about the vagaries of happenstance when you’re a clairvoyant?

Probably she’d tell me her powers didn’t work that way.

Rarely did I concern myself about such matters of random violence. Still, I did turn my head in the direction of the elevator, and waited. Would I be rushed by a crazed killer or overly obsessed fan?

I was not. The doors slid open to reveal the last person I expected to see. A thrill did surge through me, but not one of danger. My ratchet crimping tool slipped from my hand, but I caught it before it hit the floor.

Morris? Morris Fisher? Here?

How long had it been? Three years? Four? More?

The bright overhead fluorescent tubes of the elevator gave his arrival an unearthly aura. If Hollywood could have embellished that moment, dry ice fog would have spilled out into the penthouse in slow motion. The ominous soundtrack of layered electronic drones would shift to deep percussive thuds that would represent the heaving heart of the protagonist (me), as his heroic beloved, thought long dead on a distant planet, makes his unexpected second act appearance—his handsome face battered and burned from the brutal proximity to neutron stars and the caresses of lusty radioactive aliens. And I probably would have swooned, just as the script demanded.

Interesting. I had not noticed before how my fantasies leaned toward science fiction.

However, even without those elevated imaginary elements, Morris made quite an entrance. He always looked as if he hadn’t shaved for three days. His perpetually unruly hair left most people thinking he had just climbed off a motorcycle. Long before I met the man, he had perfected his uniform of brown leather jacket, jeans, and engineer boots.

I felt foolish and overdressed in my electric indigo silk moire pajamas and Peranakan beaded slippers.

Once I realized I wasn’t going to swoon, I decided to play it as cool as possible. Unflappability is a universally attractive quality. I’m quite sure of it.

“I wasn’t expecting company,” I called out across the room. “But I’m happy it’s someone who might be able to help me.”

Morris stepped into the penthouse. He held some sort of oblong item in a brown paper bag. The elevator closed behind him. He looked around, uncertain, before heading over.

It wasn’t too hard for me to play it cool because I didn’t yet know what Morris wanted. Was he happy? Angry? Did he want to reconnect with me romantically? Was he just here for Sal?

I’m not sure how I did it, but I managed to hold back a massive grin that threatened to break across my face. It was Morris! How I had missed him.

“So, this is going to sound crazy,” I said in a relaxed convivial tone as I returned my attention to the electronic devices and the wires spread across the counter. “I’ve converted a video signal into an audio signal, and now I’m trying to get it back to video. But it’s not cooperating. How difficult can this be?”

Pesky emotional baggage aside, Morris was exactly the sort of person I needed. Not just to help with my current contraption, but also to round out my crack team of metaphysical broadcasting guerrillas! The man was a master of all sorts of technological doodads.

“And it’s good to see you, too, Sy,” he said in that low and soft voice of his.

“What? Oh, right. I guess it has been awhile.” 

He leaned in closer. The paper bag crinkled softly where he gripped it. I thought Morris might reach out with his other hand and touch me. But he didn’t. I guess those days weren’t going to return. I wondered if I even wanted them to.

Oh, dear. Was he wearing Old Spice?

“You look, younger,” he said, sounding perplexed. Envious, no doubt. Good genes and good face cream. “I almost didn’t recognize you when I saw you on TV the other night.”

“You, I must say, look exactly the same,” I said. It gave me an excuse to look him over. “It’s been a few years, right?”

He removed a dark green bottle from his bag and placed it on the counter beside a spool of 22 gauge insulated copper wire. It was some exotic liqueur with an unpronounceable name which, were I to judge by the earthy green glass, was made with kiwi fruit and Brussels sprouts.

Morris had never been well versed with social niceties. To show up with a gift was so out of character. Maybe he had matured.

He leaned against the edge of the island, crossed his arms, and gave me that familiar warm smile. It made you feel as if he had a secret to share, but first the two of you should retire to some place quieter, more private. My eyes drifted to the bottle. Should I go get a couple of cordial glasses? Maybe undo the top button of my pajama top?

But of course, I’m forever misreading body language.

Morris reached up and pushed a white stubby button on the video monitor.

“There’s your problem,” he said.

The screen came to life.

“How’d you do that?”

The man was a genius! Well, when he wanted to be.

“It looks like this funky antique Soviet video monitor has a manual format switch. You were in SECAM. Never put your trust in anything other than the tried-and-true Trinitron broadcast monitor.” And then he laughed. “What am I saying? You’re re-inventing the wheel with…what the hell is all this?” Morris tapped a finger on my transcoder box.

Before I could answer, his eyes drifted to the TV screen. A gray and silver image undulated into view.

“What the hell is that?” he asked, moving around to look closer. “Looks like a NASA transmission back from Tranquillity Base, but with, you know, some tentacled alien.”

He had his face inches from the screen.

“What are you into these days, Mr. Moreno?” Morris whispered.

“’Tis but Cleo,” I told him. “Recorded on quarter-inch magnetic tape.”

I then pointed across the room to the large fish tank.

“That is Cleo,” I said.

Morris ambled over and hunkered down. He rested his forehead on the glass and squinted in at my beloved pet octopus.   

“Cleo? But wasn’t that your dog?” Morris stood up and turned to me. “Wait. Is this Cleo, you know, after the Changes?”

“Don’t be absurd. It’s only a name.” I walked over and stroked the side of the aquarium. “A name I quite like. Cleo. Before my dog, I had a parrot. Guess what her name was?”

“I’m thinking that this isn’t just any squid.”

“It’s an octopus. Australian blue-ringed octopus.”

“Ah, an exotic, poisonous pet. Why am I not surprised? It’s not like Silverio Moreno would have fantail guppies. Too mundane.”

Seems we’d shifted from playful banter to glib barbs.

“Is this where I say, ah, Morris, how I’ve missed you?”

“Jesus, Sy.”

Morris stepped back and looked at me up and down. Then he scanned the huge apartment.

“Jesus,” he repeated, but in a tired whisper.

I watched him walk over to one of the conversation areas. He sunk down into a sofa and looked over at me. Now he looked older. Just a bit.

“The last time I saw you, Sy, you exploded.”

Ah, that.

“Were you blown clear?” he asked.

I crossed over and took a seat in an armchair.

“That was quite a day,” I admitted.

“I just…look, Sy, if I had thought for one second you were alive, I would have hung around.”

“No need to explain,” I told him.

“But it was such a strange day.” He furrowed his brow, bringing those memories back. I had a feeling he had been tormenting himself in this manner over the last few years. “The stegosaurus, the meteor coming down and destroying the production truck—”

“A meteor?” How awesome! I never knew a meteor had been involved.

“Well, that’s what it looked like to me.” Morris shook his head grimly. “And then that manuscript you said you had back in the motel.”

“Motel?” What was he going on about now? “Manuscript?”

“Our motel in Fort Stocked. The day of the explosion. You told me you had this manuscript of a book by this physicist.”

“Oh, right. Dr. Marjoko’s Anomalous Quantum Fluctuations and Scalar Field Instabilities and Their Role in the Manifestations of the Changes.” I had to laugh out loud. I was able to remember that ludicrous book title, but I couldn’t recall more than three of the Seven Dwarfs.

“Yes, that’s the one,” Morris said, leaning forward as if this was something important. “Someone had broken in to the motel room and stole it. So, clearly, I thought—”

“Please, Morris, don’t give it a second thought. I certainly wasn’t expecting you to bring me that old manuscript. The bottle of green liqueur was more than enough. Besides, that was ages ago.”

He was shaking his head, not wanting to let it go. Before he could start spinning out some patchwork of whatever stale conspiracy theories he had been cobbling together over the last few years, I made another attempt to let him know I held no grudge for whatever action he had done or imagined that he had done.

“Look, Morris, if you haven’t noticed, the world has quite literally changed since those days. The very fabric of reality rewoven with, for all we know, candy floss and corn silks.”

“I guess I’m just rattled,” he said. “You being alive and all.”

“Still in one piece,” I said, lifting up my arms so he could see, not just me, but the whole place. “Tip-top shape, and living at the top of the world. Well, top of San Antonio, but it’s a start.”

“From a dead man to a penthouse apartment.” Morris scanned my massive home—no doubt impressed.

I caught sight of a slight graying at the temples of his auburn hair. He must be about forty by now, but to me he was still that adventurous and reckless man in the full flower of youth.

“And beloved by millions,” I thought to add, to clarify my importance.

“Millions?” Morris’ eyes returned to me. “Are there that many people left?”

“That I don’t know,” I told him. “I don’t get out much these days. But they tell me our ratings have never been better. Of course, I’d like to think that millions of people are obsessing over me.”

We’d slipped back to the banter. Which was fine. I guess. But Morris was so cagey. And so damn serious. He probably thought he had something to do with that explosion. Perhaps he had. I knew that Sal believed Morris was responsible. Sal! Now that would be an interesting reunion.

And then I had an excellent thought.

“Please, Morris, tell me you’re looking for a job.”

“If you’ve been reduced to using that antique equipment,” he said, “I don’t know how useful I could be around here. But, sure, I have nothing but free time these days.”

“Tell you what, old chum, I’ll turn you over to my director, Hal. I’m sure he can use your help with the camera or audio departments. As for the vintage technology…it seems that after the Changes ended, there was nothing left but analog television cameras. And only live broadcast. Videotape, gone. Digital? Don’t even dream about it. We’re lucky we can broadcast in color.”

“But you’ve found a workaround.”

“Pardon?”

“Your reel-to-reel octopus footage.”

“Ah.” I turned in the direction of that the mess of wires and electronic components covering my kitchen island. The man must think I’ve gone bonkers. “Well, I’ve hit a wall in my knowledge of video technology. I was never the best student.”

“Perhaps,” he said. “But you’re an excellent teacher.”

“What?” Me? Silverio Moreno teaching Morris Fisher about technology? Clearly he was making a joke, but it had zoomed right over my head.

“You taught me to dance.”

Ah, we were no longer talking about electronics. I would think he’d be curious as to why I was recreating the video tape recorder. But, no. Morris was reminiscing about that weekend trip we took years ago. Morris might be shy at times, but I’d always found a way to get him to loosen up. In fact, back in the day, he never questioned my impulsive plans—such as on that trip when we dressed up in cassocks and slow danced in the courtyard of Santa Fe’s historic San Miguel Chapel.

“It was windy that day,” I said, playing black in my mind that lovely memory. “And then there was that unexpected updraft.”

I did it! I could still make Morris Fisher blush. Clearly he also remembered that we hadn’t been wearing anything under those cassocks

“We shocked some tourists, as I recall,” he said with a wistful smile.

“Well, I probably should put away my little experiment for the time being,” I finally said, standing up. “I have a show to prepare for. I guess I should say, we. We have a show to prepare for.”

Morris stood up as well.

This was turning out to be a great day.

“So, Hal?” he said, switching gears into his professional persona.

“Yep. Take the elevator down one floor. Ask around.”

I opened a lacquered box on the coffee table and pulled out a neck lanyard with a card in a plastic pouch displaying the logo for my production company.

“Put this on and you’ll be official.”

As Morris slipped the credentials over his head, I wondered, what next? A hug? Handshake? High five?

Morris is an odd one. He’ll be, one moment, a chummy touchy-feely backslapper, and then an aloof hands-off stoic. The man takes intimacy entirely too seriously.

The hell with it. We’re grown men.

I slapped him on the buttocks and walked back to the kitchen island.

“Welcome to the team,” I said over my shoulder.

He returned to the elevator and headed back down.

That all went well. We’d established our roles.

Then I realized we had never spoken about Sal. The one topic we definitely should have covered. And more than that, we should have gone up to see her or called her down. She had as much emotional investment in Morris as I did—probably more.

I could imagine the scene now, her grousing on and on about how men are so caviler when it comes to the emotions of other people…the entire male gender’s obligate inability to recognize nuance and nicety.

What had she once said?

“Men are blunt, selfish heathens.”

Something like that.

So, should I go up to the roof? Tell Sal about the new developments? It’d be all tears and shouting, no doubt. The return of her old beau who had left our lives years ago without ever having said goodbye.

No. Best to let things develop at their own pace. Besides, I didn’t want my stomach in knots before I even had lunch. Conflict can kill an appetite.

But first, I needed to straighten up. Or at least put a tarp over my experiment so I wouldn’t get mustard over everything.

As I rewound the tape of that muddy and gray footage of Cleo, my Plan was taking on greater form and clarity. Still a bit fuzzy, granted. But with Morris back in the mix, I’d have things in a sharp focus in no time.

Right?

Absolutely! Nothing could stand in the way, now.

“I was being somewhat facetious,” Raul explained when I met him in the lobby of the Cottle Hotel. “On the phone, you asked me to name the restaurant, and well, I love the decor here, even if the food is so-so.”

I couldn’t help but smile. I liked this man.

“Fondu Fantasque?” I said, looking up at the sign above the entrance. “I’m game.”

“I know the owner.” Raul shrugged and gave me an almost shy smile. “He has a weakness for whimsical dining. His previous venture in this same space was called Crêpe Cod. But people in this city didn’t seem too excited about a fusion of pancakes and fried fish.”

The hotel lobby as well as the restaurant had all the elements of a Victorian gentleman’s club with the low lighting, polished dark-stained wood, and plump upholstered chairs. 

“For a fondu place, it seems quite upscale. I feel woefully underdressed, if not downright shabby.”

My leather jacket had seen better days. Probably I should have given it a good rubbing with some saddle soap and linseed oil. Raul put me to shame in his deep russet sport jacket and charcoal Merino turtleneck.

A slim young man in formal wear approached holding two menus. He escorted us to table in a book-lined alcove.

“It’s a casual town,” Raul said, lowering himself into his chair. “Besides, what you lack in finery, you more than make up in style. I like a man in a vintage aviator jacket. Is that a Boyville?”

The man had quite an eye, though I suppose it was his profession.

After we had ordered and been served a bottle of wine, Raul brought up our mutual friend.

“You said the other night you are a friend of Silverio’s?”

“Well, it’s been a few years since I’ve seen him. But, yes.”

“So you’re in the business as well?”

“The business?” I had to laugh. “You mean show business? It’s starting to sound like we’re in a movie.”

“Is the dialog becoming stilted?”

“Probably not,” I said with a shrug. “But I find that these days I keep overanalyzing my speech. You see, I went into seclusion for a few years. There it is, again. Seclusion. Who says that? I meant to say, I moved to a cabin in the mountains.”

“So romantic. Were you hiding from the law? Or maybe you’d taken up the life of a gentleman of leisure?”

Raul had a smooth and easy-going manner. I admired men like him. I try to be one myself, but I can never quite get it to work.

“You say that so well,” I confessed. “Gentleman of leisure. Outside of books, I only ever hear that phrase used as a sardonic euphemism. You know. A bum. And that would a be closer description. I just opted out when the Changes finally exhausted me. Moved out to my uncle’s hunting cabin. He had left a note on the little cork board by the door, where he kept his shopping list. It said that if any of his nephews—there’s three of us—were to drop by, we were welcomed to any or all of his possessions. He had departed for, he wrote, a Grand Tour of the Orient. People don’t use that word anymore, do they? Orient?”

Raul lifted his shoulders and eyebrows just enough to convey that he was not one to judge.

“There was plenty of oatmeal and military rations,” I said, continuing. “A shortwave radio. Which didn’t work. Some books. A set of bong drums. Those were the possessions I was welcomed to.”

I paused.

“But show business,” I said, bringing us back. “Yes. I have worked in the entertainment industry for some years.”

“Oh, I thought we’d gone off that topic. I’m still intrigued by your life in the outback.”

“I read the encyclopedia. Counted the stars. I ate a rattlesnake. Once. That about sums it up. I left because, well, I guess I got bored.”

“Then show business it is. Let me see.” Raul leaned in closer to me. I caught a whiff of a pleasant blend of vanilla and jasmine. “You’re no actor. Not enough poorly-concealed neuroses. I’d think maybe a stuntman, but you’re too spry. And you’re too flippant to be a director. Not self-absorbed enough for a writer. Too shabby—if I might use your language—for a producer. That leaves someone from the crew side of things. Yes. Clearly, you’re perceptive, very visual. So I’d say camera department.”

“I would say you’re the perceptive one,” I said, impressed. “You pegged me fast. I’ve worked as a camera operator and DP on more movies and TV shows than I’ll ever be able to recall.”

“I see so few people from the industry these days.” Raul nodded, and then he laughed. “Well, that’s patently wrong, isn’t it? I see them every day. But that’s just from the show I work on. Do people still even make movies or TV shows these days? Other than Serpientes y Escaleras, I mean. I’m not even sure if Los Angeles still exists. Sure, that’s where the Network officials say they come from when they make their unannounced visits. But try and talk to those people. Ask them, straight up, what other shows the Network produces? They’ll just stare at you with unblinking insect eyes. I’ve given up on all interactions with those people.”

Raul took a deep breath before continuing.

“Network. The Network. Like there’s just one. Maybe there is. It’s certainly true in this town. If Serpientes y Escaleras were to shut down, I don’t know what I’d do. Am I too old to wait tables?”

“You could move.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Even though they say the Changes are over, I’m nervous that it might still be crazy out there.”

“It seemed safe enough when I was traipsing across the prairie a couple weeks ago.”

“You know how I came to be in San Antonio?” Raul smiled, shaking his head. “I came here in the early days of the Changes, when things were just slightly weird. I had flown in to see my niece get married. It was a lovely ceremony. Afterwards, she and her new husband got out of town just in time—flew off to their honeymoon in Corfu. I had booked a flight back home to LA the next day. But during the night, it disappeared. The airport, that is.

“So, that was that. I was terrified to take the bus—who knew what might happen? I lost my apartment back in LA. And my job. I was head of the wardrobe department on The Price Is Right. I loved working on that show! I was purging thirty years of polyester turtlenecks, and neckties wide enough to park a buffet on. You’ve never seen so many flared trousers and aloha shirts! 

“But I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t screw up the courage to try and make my way back home to California. That was the only work I knew. After college, my life revolved around film sets and TV studios. Before that, I was a boy living on a pistachio farm outside of Yucaipa.” Raul laughed. “Pistachio farm! I know, I know. Now I’m the one waxing romantic. The sad truth is, the pistachio isn’t a young person’s nut. My father witnessed a massive downturn of sales as, year by year, our dependable consumer base died of old age or were rotated off a solid food diet.”

“So, you were here in town when Sy started up his game show?”

“Serpientes? Yes. But I was here before then. When I gave up hope of getting back to LA, I found work as a production assistant on Saligia Jone’s psychic dating show. So, if you know Silverio, do you know Saligia?”

“I do. But, wait, are you talking about her show Silverio produced, Duplicity Revealed? I wouldn’t call that a dating show.”

“That one was before my time. This one was Procuress of the Heart. Saligia being the titular character. A psychic matchmaker. She helped the lovelorn contestant decide from a panel of eager suitors. A far cry from The Price Is Right, but it paid the bills. Silverio was on the books as producer of that one as well, even though no one had seen him in a couple of years. The rumor had it he was dead. But, obviously not, as he eventually moved to town to start up the game show. That was right around the time La Vida Tower disappeared.”

“Yeah, I heard something about that.”

“One day it went away like cigarette smoke wafting out a car window. Left a gaping hole where it had stood. And three days later, it came back.”

“Like Jesus?”

Raul laughed.

“I don’t know about that. But when the sun rose on day three, there it was, La Vida Tower. It looked, well, similar. A slightly different architectural style. Everyone seemed happy to have it back. I don’t know what happened to the people who were in it when it vanished. But when it reappeared the military moved in on it fast. Big army trucks and men in uniform surrounded the whole thing. No one allowed in or out.

“At some point, it was no longer the military overseeing the building. It was the Network. They hired Silverio to create a game show. They scrapped Saligia’s dating show and brought her on as host. And, what do you know, they needed someone to run the wardrobe department, so Saligia put in a good word, and here I am.”

“I understand that Sy has the entire top floor,” I said. “That’s quite a perk.”

“I suspect that man can be a firm negotiator. When the mood strikes.”

“And the two floors below that are the show’s studio and production offices, right? That’s what my friend said.”

“The maintenance woman?”

“Yeah. She also said there’s some sort of dormitory.”

“Dormitory? I guess so…in a manner of speaking. And even though the top three floors are given over to the show, the fact is, the Network controls the entire building.”

“This Network, it’s headquartered in Los Angeles?”

“That’s the narrative as they present it. Those Network people used to come to town on big black helicopters. A hold-over from the military connection, maybe? They’d land in Travis Park. But one day, that fancy bullet train appeared. And ever since, that’s how people arrive here from the outside world. By train.”

“That’s how I got here.”

“From California?”

“No. I snuck on the train when it stopped in a town in the desert near a glacier.”

“Ah, of course, one of the weird gifts of the Changes.” Raul smiled. “A glacier in the desert. Why not?”

“Fran said that you have an interesting theory about the Changes.”

“Ah,” Raul said, looking up as the waiter arrived. “I was thinking of the sirloin and Gruyère. For two.” He looked over at me.

“Sounds delightful,” I said, happy to have him order as I hadn’t even glanced at the menu.

“You’ve seen the show?” he asked once the waiter had left.

“That snakes and ladder game show? Well, I was in a bar right when I hit town. The show was on their TV. Mostly I was watching the people watching the TV. I’ve never seen people that engaged by a game show. I didn’t recognize Sy or Saligia. Not at first. Saligia never used to be so intense and, well, performative. She’s looking well. Do you do the hair and makeup on the show as well?”

“Just wardrobe. It sounds like you know her well.”

I didn’t feel like getting too deep explaining my, well, complicated relationship with Sy and Saligia, so I just nodded.

Raul kept looking at me.

“I was wondering,” he finally said, “if she always had that…gift?”

“Mind reading, you mean? I never spoke about it with her, really. It was her profession. The stuff of night clubs and birthday parties. No sane person believed in it. Of course the Changes happened, and now we have to pretty much believe in anything and everything. So, what the hell, maybe she can really do it. Maybe she has always been able to do it. I think too much about these sorts of things and I get sick to my stomach. This turning my back on critical thinking.”

“I’m the same.” Raul shrugged. “Anyway, that’s the central conceit of Serpientes y Escaleras. The mind reading element. Like yourself, I just take it in stride. Besides, it’s not the strangest thing that goes on with our game show.”

Ah, here we go.

“Do tell,” I prompted.

“Well,” Raul said, leaning across the table, lowering his voice to a conspiratorial tone. “Where do you think we get our contestants?”

I, too, leaned across the table until I was inches from Raul’s face. I lifted my eyebrows.

“Tell me, Morris,” he whispered, “how would you do it? Let’s say you produced the show.”

I nodded and leaned back in my chair.

“Well, the best way,” I said, thinking things through, “would be to hire professional actors. They’re dependable. Hit their marks, enunciate clearly. And they tend to respect a non-disclosure agreement. But if you guys are truly pulling random people from the audience, then I guess you’re putting out a general call for interested people to show up, like any other TV show with a live studio audience.”

Raul smiled and sat up straight.

“Oh, they show up,” he said. He paused to sip some wine. Then he leaned forward again to whisper. “We have two little rooms on the 28^th floor. About the size of closets. Curved inside. One could say egg-shaped. White. A kind of enameled metal, perhaps? Each has a single door. A handle like a walk-in refrigerator. There’s a rubber gasket around the edge of the door. And at the beginning of every day, there’s a light no bigger than your thumbnail that comes on at the top of each door. And when it begins to glow green, you can open that otherwise locked closet. The green light means that a new constant has arrived.”

“I see,” I said. Actually, I didn’t. “People materialize, you mean? Two every day?”

“Well,” Raul stretched the word out with a wry smile as he sat up straight. “Every Monday through Friday. Because, you see, those magical portals, or whatever they are, take the weekends off.”

“How civilized.”

“Isn’t it, though?”

“And where do they come from?” I asked.

“No idea. You can try and ask them, but most are muddled in their thinking. The ones with clearer heads sometimes have memories that they died. So there’s that.”

“Okay,” I said, “I think I’ve got it. An office building in San Antonio is where the souls of the dead wait for their turn to be sent further on their journey into the afterlife…which is decided on the set of a TV game show. Seems rather gauche. But what do I know? Though, at two souls per day, five days per week, you guys’ll never catch up. That’s some heavy duty job security, I’d say.”

Raul smiled and buttered a piece of bread. We sat in silence for a moment. I’d learned to recognize the face of a man about to launch into a story. 

“Not so long ago,” Raul said, his voice quiet, “we had one of our contestants rush out of the studio while we were broadcasting the show. Just the other week, in fact. Right there in front of the cameras—the woman didn’t even wait for the commercial break. She managed to pry open a window out in the hallway and throw herself to her death. Fell to the pavement 300 feet below.”

Our silly banter had taken a turn. 

“My god! That’s horrible.”

“That all happened off camera, of course.”

“To her death,” I said in almost a whisper.

“Pardon?”

“I was echoing your words. I didn’t think that was a thing anymore.”

“Death, you mean? Well, I don’t know what else to call it. I helped Michael retrieve the contestant. That’s Michael Larkin, one of the Readers. Anyway, I wasn’t prepared for what we found down on the street. I should point out, I had never seen a dead body before. And, to be honest, I still don’t believe I have.”

I listened to Raul tell the story of the jumper, wondering if I would have any appetite left once our meal arrived.

Some of the things Raul spoke about I didn’t quite understand. Particularly the mind reading stuff. I’d seen Saligia do her routine years ago, but it didn’t in any way resemble her act on Serpientes y Escaleras. I had a difficult time imagining that somehow Saligia could mumbo-jumbo her way into the brains of the contestants and fish out incidents from their entire lives.

Raul explained, they weren’t supposed to be sent people whose lives or deaths were overly traumatic. This could be harmful to Saligia and her Readers. Of course if that were true, Raul mused aloud, that begged the question, who or what was on the other side of those portals deciding who to send through?

The contestant who jumped, it was learned, too late to do anything about it, had a history of mental illness. She had taken her own life before she appeared on the show.

For the time she spent at La Vida Tower waiting to be chosen as a contestant, she had no memory of her past life. But on the day she was picked, at some point towards the end of the broadcast, this woman experienced a moment of absolute lucidity. She saw her final moments, jumping to her death from a bridge. That was when she bolted, ran free of the studio, found that window, and leaped out.

The moment she rushed off set, Hal, the director, cut to a commercial. Michael ran after the contestant but wasn’t fast enough. He and Raul took the elevator down to the street.

“We weren’t the first on the street,” Raul said. “There were two men in short sleeve shirts with ties—can you imagine? Anyway, they seemed to be in charge. Michael rushed to them while telling me to keep any bystanders away. I caught a glimpse of the body. I didn’t see much, but I can tell you this, it wasn’t human.”

“Meaning?”

“It’s hard to explain. It was broken, yet it still had a form. But no…anatomy. No arms, no legs. The three of them—Michael and the other two—placed it into a sort of black zippered bag. I would have helped them carry it into the lobby, but the thing was small. And so light that one of the men wearing a tie was able to just tuck it under his arm. We all hurried inside and got on the elevator. The man with the zippered bag put it down on the floor. We rode up in silence. When the door opened on the 29th floor. Michael told the men in the ties that we’d take it from there. They stayed in the elevator. But here’s the thing. It took both Michael and me to lift that body bag from the floor. It—whatever was inside—had increased considerably in weight. Also, it had expanded as well—the bag bulged.”

Raul finished his wine and poured another glass before continuing.

“We took that bag into the studio. The audience members were still in their seats as a couple of our crew people did their best to distract them while Michael and I lugged the zippered bag into the little white room behind Door Number Two. And then the cameras came back on and Sy and Saligia and the rest of us finished off the final minute or two of the show, pretending all the while that there were still two contestants. The contestant who was still standing, you might say, was escorted through Door Number One, and both doors were slammed shut.”

“No one noticed?”

“About the fact that when we came back from commercial there was just one contestant? Well, you’re a camera man. You know how easy it is to fool an audience. It’s not what you show them as much as what you don’t show them.”

“And that thing in the bag. The body or whatever?”

Raul just shrugged.

“It went wherever. I suppose. To the same destination as those contestants who have been put into that cramped space always go. Once the door is shut. Goodbye. I believe her name was Connie.”

And at that, our food arrived. A large steaming caldron of melted cheese and two platters holding slivered beef and cubes of bread.

I was heartened that I still had my appetite.

In many ways Raul had said so much. I was afraid he must have broken any number of non-disclosure agreements.

On reflection, however, I had been given little in the way of answers. Only vague descriptions, each of which led to dozens of other questions.

“It seems like so much energy aimed at such an inconsequential thing,” I said. “Takes the show-must-go-on to a whole new level. Why even put her remains in that portal thing?”

“It’s where she was going to be placed all along,” Raul said with a shrug. “And she had to go somewhere. Besides, no one has any idea what might happen if each of those portal things isn’t utilized for its intended purpose every broadcast day.”

“So, if all the people in the audience have come through the portals, but only two arrive and two depart each day, why the extras? See what I mean? Your studio audience.”

“That’s how long it took to get the show up and running,” Raul said, leaning over to sniff eagerly at the pot of molten cheese. “The arrivals began to accumulate. To hear Sy explain it, that’s how he came upon the idea of a game show. They would be his live studio audience. So, by the time they had the studio outfitted, and the production ready to go, there were 23 extra arrivals.”

“Wait. 23?”

“Well, actually on the weekdays between the morning arrivals and the end of the broadcast, there’s 25.”

“No.” The math wasn’t adding up. “That’s not what I meant. If two arrive, and two depart. Shouldn’t there always be an even number?”

“I should think so.” Raul smiled and picked up a skewer. “Interesting, isn’t it?”

Raul dipped a cube of toasted bread into the bubbling cheese.

The other night when my memory fully returned I decided to tour my environs in a more methodical manner. I waited until all of my co-contestants—my fellow prisoners—were fast asleep in their simple little rooms. The lights, during those late night hours, burned at half-intensity. The lounge and corridors took on a cozy quality. A young man, whose name I didn’t know, was available to us if anything unusual came up. Sort of an orderly, I guess, with basic medical skills. He spent most of his shift lounging on a sofa in the nurse’s office reading or napping.

I carried with me a half-eaten apple so it appeared I had innocently got out of bed to enjoy a midnight snack. It proved unnecessary. No one noticed me.

It only took me a several minutes of canvasing my prison to learn that there were only three locked doors—well, other than those two metal portals down the corridor marked arrivals. The one for the stairwell that led up to the studio. Then there was one at the far end of the lounge through which I’d been able to catch a glance a time or two. It opened onto a lobby where I had seen a pair of polished steel elevator doors. And finally there was a door just past the wardrobe department that appeared to lead into a corridor of office suites.

All of the doors were fitted with the same model Hammett-Glaze mortise locks. I’d gotten past such locks before, but only using my own pick set. Possibly I could scrounge around and fashion something that might work. The doors themselves were heavy slabs of solid oak. Except the double doors that led up to the studio. Those were cheap hollow core construction, usually used on closets. It’d be noisy to break through them. I also noticed that the hinge pins were accessible. I could get a butter knife and a can of Spam from the kitchen and knock them free in two minutes, tops. But, again, it’s not quiet work.

If I could chose, it would, or course be the door to the elevators.

The talk I’d heard about a woman jumping out a window to her death suggested we were on an upper floor of a tall building. Early on, I had been under the impression we were deep underground. Maybe because of the whole afterlife conceit of the TV show. As well as the lack of visible sunlight.

So, an elevator was what I wanted. Or stairs—going down.

My earlier thought that maybe we were back in time—that damn candy bar Silverio Moreno was eating—no longer had the slightest sway over me. Everything about the place fit solidly into a 21st century office building. Drop ceiling acoustical tiles. Fluorescent lights. Vents for an HVAC system. Standard American electrical outlets.

Nothing out of the ordinary about the place. Well, except those arrival pods. And me—a dead man.

The air vents were too small to consider as escape options. And though the ceiling tiles above would in no way support my weight, I decided to see if the inner walls of the offices and corridors went all the way to the true ceiling. In most tall modern office buildings the inner walls do not support the structure.

I hopped up on the long table where they laid out our daily breakfast buffet and gave myself some added height by standing on a plastic chair with tubular legs. With slow and soft movements I pushed up one of the white fiber tiles and slid it aside. Directly above I saw a heavy iron pipe. I gripped it tight and raised myself up until my head and shoulders were in the dark cavity above the ceiling of the lounge.

I found nothing of note. The dead space was about three feet high with enough ambient light from the gaps in the fluorescent fixtures. And, yes, the walls did indeed go all the way up.

Yet I lingered. My feet dangled above the buffet table as I supported myself by my strength alone. The sensation was marvelous! I pulled myself up another inch. Two. I did a series of pull ups, amazed at my physical strength. It was a far cry from those last weeks in the hospital when I could barely lift a spoon to my mouth. And I wondered, had I ever been so strong? Even in my youth? So…vibrant?

As I hung there, I wondered what I should do now that I had been given a wholly unexpected second chance at life?

Well, first I had to get out of this place.

I needed a plan.

I replaced the tile, put the chair back at a table, and returned to my room. Maybe a good night’s sleep would clear my mind even more.

###

I had made a decision to avoid the drugged food they served us in the hopes that my senses would become sharper. I had learned it was easy enough to grab fruit and chocolate bars from the kitchen throughout the day, so that would do to keep my strength up, at least for the immediate future. But I didn’t want to arouse suspicion, so the following day I headed to the lounge along with the rest of the group for our daily scheduled breakfast.

The line moved at a slow shuffle as we filed into the kitchen, were given our trays, our food, and then each of us made his or her way to a table. Today I chose a suitable dining companion, a large muddle-headed man who usually sat by himself. He barely noticed as I periodically added my food—discreet spoonful at a time—to his plate, until he had finished his breakfast as well as mine.

When it occurred to me—back before my memory returned—that the meals were drugged, I accepted it. Looked forward, even, enjoying the languid subtle stupor.

After depositing my tray and empty plate on the shelf outside the door the kitchen, I walked over to a sofa where Rose sat holding a clipboard. When I sat in a chair beside her, she looked up from filling out some sort of form.

“I think I’m here because I died,” I said to her.

She looked up. Seeing who it was, she put the cap on her pen and tucked it behind her ear.

“That’s quite a thing to say. Does this mean your memory is coming back?”

I was curious how she might respond to such a confession. There was curiosity in her face, along with something else I couldn’t immediately place.

“There are some things I remember,” I lied—because I now remembered everything. “Every day, I seem to remember more. And I distinctly have this image of myself in a hospital room. That’s the last memory. Well, before here.”

“But things are still cloudy?”

“Yes. But I have this strong impression I was very sick. Terminally ill.”

“I’m wondering,” she said slowly, measuring her words, “that time between the hospital bed and waking up in our arrival room, any memories from that time? Impressions?”

Curiosity and fear. That was it. Curious about my experiences. And fearful of me. She was afraid of me. She hadn’t been like this around me—guarded, cautious—back before my memory had returned.

Could it be that her change in attitude—her new behavior toward me—was connected to the return of my memory? I must admit that I now had vivid recollection of so many things I had done in the course of my life she would no doubt find unsavory, or even terrifying.

Of course, I had to take a moment to process my new line of reasoning. Did that mean I now believed that psychic powers were possible? I suppose I had to at least give consideration to that possibility, taking into account I now believed I had been resurrected from the dead.

Of all the things that I currently found troubling and concerning—death, rebirth, the passing of moral judgement—she wanted to know about something relatively inconsequential. My journey through that limbo separating death from life anew.

Her curiosity on metaphysical matters held no interest to me. Besides, there was still a gap in my memory, and even if I had wanted to, I could not have answered her question. Maybe one day I would ponder that time I had spent between the then and the now.

Before I could think of a suitably vague reply, I saw one of those locked doors open. The door with the elevators on the other side. Dr. Hetzel entered along with Michael trailing behind. Michael spotted Rose and said something to the doctor before heading over to us.

“I have to think that August is your favorite,” he said to Rose. “You’re going to make the rest of the contestants jealous.”

Rose managed a smile. It was clear she didn’t care for Michael.

“I thought I might go across the street to the new coffee place,” he said to her. “Want to come along?”

“I can’t,” she said. “Busy day for me.”

“It must be nice,” I said quietly. “Just to be able to go through that door out into the world. Enjoy a cup of coffee.”

I had planned to keep a low profile as I put together my plan of escape. But time was important if I wanted to avoid eventually being chosen to play that idiotic game show. I wanted to see what might slip out if I threw these people off balance.

And my words indeed did have that effect on the both of them, especially Michael.

His eyes widen in confusion. Then he smiled with wonderment as if watching a dog who had begun to walk about on its hind legs. Without taking his eyes from me he lowered himself into the sofa beside Rose.

“Don’t worry,” Michael said to me in a decidedly smug and patronizing tone. “You’ll get out soon. Every day your chances increase.”

Was there a hint of a threat?

I was about to set Michael straight on embracing a common fallacy concerning statistics, but before I could open my mouth, Rose spoke. Also concerning statistics, but from another angle.

“That’s funny,” Rose said to Michael. “I’ve also been thinking about chance, and its relationship to the length of our contestants’ tenure here.”

“What are you talking about?” Michael asked.

“I was going through the records.” She flipped to a page at the back of her clipboard and tapped at some equations I couldn’t quite make out from where I was seated. “We’ve been on the air for 423 shows. That’s 846 contestants who have been chosen. The longest anyone has spent waiting, from arrival to departure pod, has been seventeen days. Doesn’t that seem—”

“Statistically unlikely?” I asked, looking at Rose. “Extremely, so. Of course, I assume the game’s rigged. Isn’t that in keeping with the entertainment industry?”

Michael looked at me as if for the first time.

“I’d think the real question is,” I continued, “why are contestants not allowed to linger?”

I saw Ida from the corner of my eye as she crossed the processing lounge.

“Perhaps we should ask her,” I said, pointing. It was my attempt to sow some seeds of disharmony.

My words didn’t give me the results I expected. Michael stood up with the fervor and alacrity of a puppy spotting his master.

“Oh,” he said, immediately forgetting about me. “I have to go talk to Ida about some new marketing ideas I have.”

As Michael turned to head off, my hand shot out, dipped into his trouser pocket. My speed and dexterity even impressed myself. No one noticed as I pulled out his key and unhooked it from the clip on his belt loop. I transferred the key to my own pocket as Rose watched Michael walk away.

Michael always followed in the wake of someone else. Some superior whose favor he was currying. I gambled on two things. One, when Michael realized he no longer had his key, he would not remember when he last used it. Two, Michael would not admit to having lost something so important—probably he would himself steal a replacement, no doubt from an inconsequential underling.

“I’m sorry,” Rose said to me. “Michael’s something of a—”

“Buffoon?”

She laughed. Then she said something about having a busy schedule and excused herself.

423 shows. That was a new piece of information. Was it useful? I had no idea. But it hardly mattered now, I thought, resting a finger on the outside of my pocket feeling the outline of the key.

The ASES, or, the All-Seeing Eye Society, met every Wednesday night in the basement of an old building downtown. Now that I was known to the group, or more specifically, to the elderly woman in the wheelchair who stationed herself at the end of the shadowy marble-tiled corridor, I was allowed to bring a guest.

I pulled out my membership card with the society’s logo of that flying eyeball in the clouds. I held up the card, but the woman was looking at my face and not my card.

“Ah,” she said, smiling up at me. “You’re Fran’s friend from the other night. I never forget. And,” she pointed a bony finger towards Nora, “I see that you’ve brought a new initiate into our conclave of brethren and sistren. Another who seeks the truth.”

“I’m so happy to be here,” Nora said with a little curtsy.

“We’ll fix you up with your own membership card.” The woman turned to the folding table beside her and opened a small polished teak box. She removed a card which she gave to Nora. “No dues to be paid, no oaths to be made.” She passed Nora a pen. “Please, write your name on the verso. I’ll avert my head while you write. We respect anonymity.”

“That’s so sweet,” Nora chirped. She scribbled on the back of the card and slipped it into the breast pocket of her coverall.

The woman pulled from the side pocket of her wheelchair a bedraggled peacock feather, which she then waved feebly in the air above Nora’s head. Once the simple ritual was complete, she gestured for us to enter the meeting hall.

I felt somehow slighted, as no one had given me a feather benediction.

The grand wood-paneled room was dimly lit by a pair of red crystal chandeliers high above. The maroon carpet muffled our footsteps as we made our way past the rows of folding chairs which faced a slightly raised stage. I counted seventeen people scattered about the room on the hundred or so chairs. We chose a couple of chairs in the back row, near a table holding a large coffee urn and a solitary box of cookies.

We sat in silence, surrounded by the polite murmuring of conversations. I felt Nora’s elbow in my ribs.

“Falafel man,” she hissed. “Two o’clock.”

I tilted my head. There in the front row was Charlemagne DeWinter, unmistakable in his fez and rose-tinted glasses.

“I do believe you’re right,” I said.

I looked around the room and saw some other familiar faces from my previous visit.

“Remember how I told you the other day that they shoot a TV show in my building?” Nora’s voice remained low, still in her conspiratorial whisper.

“Sure.”

“Well, that man walking in right now works on the show.”

“Well, of course,” I said, absently. “You’d probably know them all by now.”

“What?”

“Because of your job,” I clarified. “I mean, everyone has to get on the elevator.”

“Now wait just a minute!” Nora’s voice rose as she cut her eyes at me. “I told you, I’m a technician. I’m not some darn operator, trapped in a little room all day, tipping my hat, morning sir, morning madam, what floor will it be? I’m a trained and respected specialist, servicing the upper transoms, greasing the back sides of the landing doors, checking the cable tension of the car slings. Yesterday we had to shut down shaft B, and I was hanging by a harness for about an hour tightening the bolts to the guide rail bracket. I’m an integral part of building operations, sir. Integral!”

“Of course.”

“He’s Raul,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“The man who just came in. Well, he’s sitting down, now. Right next to our friend, Charlemagne Falafel.”

“You say he works on that Serpientes y Escaleras show?”

Once this fellow Raul had situated himself next to the falafel vendor, he immediately became as nondescript as the folding chair in which he sat—the danger that comes from sitting beside someone much more flamboyant than yourself. But, when I looked closer, I saw there was something special about Raul. Handsome, certainly, with his pleasant face and dark complexion. And undeniably distinguished with a touch of gray at his temples and the stylish taper to his sport coat.

“Yes,” Nora said. “He works on the show. Costume department. Raul Somethingorother. Probably I could track down his last name.”

“I believe we’re to respect everyone’s anonymity here,” I cautioned her, at the very moment Fran walked up and clapped me on the back.

“My good friend, Morris! I see you’ve brought a guest.”

“I have,” I told him. “Fran, allow me to introduce—” I reached into Nora’s pocket and removed her All-Seeing Eye Society membership card. I suspected she was playing at being someone else. I turned it over and read aloud: “Shelvia Woolridge.”

“Well, Ms. Woolridge, or if I may, Shelvia—don’t really use surnames here—we have a treat in store for you tonight.” Fran gave her a wink. “Our guest speaker has some intriguing theories to challenge and perplex your worldview. Oh, and it looks like it’s time for the presentation!”

Fran hurried off.

“Maybe it’s going to be your friend from the show,” I said to Nora.

“I’m betting on the falafel guy,” she said, taking her membership card back from me.

“I doubt it. He spoke at the last meeting. It was all about the impending arrival of our alien overlords.”

“Looks like we’re both wrong,” Nora whispered, nodding her head towards the man walking down the aisle towards the lectern.

He was rail-thin, and in his hopsack blazer and light blue speckled cravat, he radiated the air of a southern lawyer. He moved with the focused energy of a younger man, but when he reached the front of the room, I saw him wince as he climbed the two steps to the stage on arthritic joints.

There was a scattering of polite applause.

Fran arrived too late to assist the guest speaker, but he crossed the stage with the older man. They both stood at the lectern for a moment, waiting for the room to fall silent.

“What a nice turnout this evening,” Fran said into the microphone. He scanned the audience with approval. “Most of you in this room have known me for years, but I do see a few fresh faces. And to those I say, welcome. My name is Francis, but please call me Fran. The All-Seeing Eye Society is run strictly by volunteers, so, if you have a small donation to cover our refreshments, there’s a little jar on the table beside the coffee carafe. Our restrooms are out the door, and immediately to the left. And for those newcomers, we do all hope you return. Think of this room as a zone of tolerance for all ideas, no matter how far-fetched or implausible. As we all know, we live in implausible times. No doubt we all have people in our lives with no interest in our inquiries as to what has happened to the world. They care little when we speak of our notions concerning the Changes.”

Morris saw heads bobbing, and he heard murmurs of agreement.

“That’s why our organization is important,” Fran continued. “Without the All Seeing Eye Society, we would—each one of us—feel so very alone. Of course there are other groups scattered about. But they are narrow in their assessment as to what is going on—or, what they gather is going on. And because most of those groups hold deeply dogmatic tenants, they seem to many of us in this room as religions more than anything else. But we are seekers, not zealots. Each one of us gathered tonight might have strong feelings of one theory above another as to the true nature of the world after the Changes, but not one person who I have met and spoken to in this room feels he or she has a complete picture. So, please, listen with an open mind to our guest speaker. Some of his words, his ideas, might be just what you came here tonight to hear. Without further preamble, allow me to introduce Warren P.”

As Fran backed away, giving a slight bow to the audience, the guest speaker stepped to the lectern.

“Warren P.,” the man muttered with a smile. “Makes me feel like we’re in some sort of support group. Which I guess we are. My name’s Warren Pruitt. I’m an electrical engineer and software developer by trade. Not much call for such work these days, so I suppose I’m retired.

“Me being up here in front of you fine folks has been a long time coming. I’ve known Fran for a years. He’s been chipping away at my resolve. And, well, here I am.”

Warren paused a moment to look down at Fran who had made himself comfortable in a chair on the front row.

“Back before the Changes,” he said, continuing, “I worked in a government-funded lab known as the Center for Quantum Information and Control. And now the laboratory, and, to the best of my knowledge, the United States of America, are no longer viable institutions, I feel I am no longer bound by the raft of non-disclosure forms I signed during my tenure.”

I noticed that most of the audience members leaned forward in silent fascination, ready to learn classified secrets. I realized I was doing the same.

“We were tasked with utilizing an obscure property of quantum coupling so we might observe particles or events below the Planck length,” he continued. “I called this property quantum lensing. Co-authored a paper on it, even. There was the possibility that we might discover that we do not live in a naturally occurring universe, but in fact inside a computer simulation. Strange to think that trained men of science would pursue such questions for a living. Now if all this sounds bizarre, you don’t know quantum mechanics.”

Warren chuckled, looking out into the audience as would a standup comedian who had just delivered a dependable punchline.

“Oh my goodness,” Nora whispered in my ear. “He’s adorable!”

“Put aside, for a moment, the existential implications. We were not concerned with matters of philosophy. We were engineers. Besides, if we proved that the universe was a vast digital simulation, the practical applications to be exploited were absolutely staggering. Of course, that was a big if. You see, this could only exist if space-time were quantized, meaning that at some infinitesimally short duration, time was discrete. Can you imagine that? That the universe might be composed of an outrageously large number of frozen moments, like a multidimensional flip book?

“It was all fringe theory, I should make this clear. We had no real expectations that it would turn out to be true. Indeed, the study was wrapping up, with no interesting data discovered. To the very outer limit of our technology, there seemed no indication that space-time was quantized. Even using my quantum lensing techniques. We were just at the point of putting to rest once and for all the notion of a simulated universe, when the Changes happened.

“Now, we all know, it’s hard to get any two people to agree on what happened during the early, chaotic days of the Changes. It seems like each one of us has had unique experiences, often quite divergent from others. This makes it difficult to generate a robust empirical model, phenomenologically speaking. What I, personally, can attest is that in our laboratory we began to witness what appeared to be an emerging quantization of time. A granular quality began to coalesce around 7 femtoseconds. This phenomenon had not been there before. But it was real, I assure you. We had a sister lab in Sweden replicate our results. This was April of 2020. Before any of the anomalous manifestations that soon came to dominate everyone’s life. This was two or three weeks before all hell began to break loose.”

My attention began to wander sometime around the phrase “an emerging quantization of time,” and as Warren Pruitt began delving into a version of string theory with “eleven spatial dimensions, and two temporal dimensions,” I was wondering if I could manage not to attract too much attention with a trip to the snack table.

Nora seemed of the same mind. We both rose to our feet and snuck to the back of the room. As we sipped coffee and nibbled on cookies we watched the audience mesmerized by the man at the lectern. He began to expound upon his theory, speculating that before the Changes, we all lived in a simulation.

“A video game of such sophistication as to be beyond human comprehension. That’s why we missed it in the lab. It had been running at such a level of speed and complexity that our equipment couldn’t detect it. And then something happened. System failure? User error? It was like playing some seamless 3D video game with 128-bit graphics and something happened and everything dropped to an 8-bit processing rate. Anyone here remember Space Invaders? Of course, such analogies are moot. Computer games are all gone, now. Thanks to the Changes. Gone like the internet and the compact disc.

“It’s unsettling, I know, to think that each one of us is in actuality an artificial mind generated by ones and zeros. Whether we have free will or not, I have no idea. But I am convinced that before the Changes we shared this simulated world with millions, billions of people who weren’t people. Not sentient like us. What is it that the kids would call the characters who moved around their computer games like so many extras in a movie scene? Non-player characters? Yes. NPCs for short. And I would postulate that as those novel and irrational events—what we called the Changes—were a clear indication that somewhere outside of our universe, perhaps in some other dimension, something had gone wrong. Something went screwy on that super-duper supercomputer running our cosmos. Hardware, software? Maybe a power outage? That system failure reduced our universe to only the real players—the sentient ones. Us. All of those secondary characters in our lives had all been deleted, purged from the memory. Those cities and countries we had never visited? Gone. Were they ever there at all? And for the worst period of the Changes, before the chaos settled down—well, for the most part—we were at the whims of the principal players, those of us who remained. All of the nonsense we might believe in became manifest, be it ghosts, telepathy, even house cats with the power of human speech. There were no safeguards in the programming.”

He paused for a moment to let his words sink in.

“Well,” Warren said, scanning the room. “I was asked to set aside time for questions from the audience.”

Immediately half a dozen hands shot up.

“Don’t you want to raise your hand?” Nora asked. “Get some clarification?”

“About talking cats? Or quantum lensing?”

Before Nora could respond, Fran walked up, leaning in to snag a cookie.

“Some wonderful words, wouldn’t you agree?” he asked us both.

“I do believe you said the same thing last week,” I said, “about that Charlemagne fellow and his alien theories.”

“I did indeed. An open mind will not stagnate. And as we live in wondrous times, it stands to reason that a multiplicity of small truths might move us to the greater truth.” Fran pivoted around and looked out across the room. He lifted a hand in a paternal manner. “Each of us has a piece to the puzzle. See that gentleman down front? The one I was sitting beside?”

“Raul?” Nora asked.

“So you’ve met him,” Fran said, eyeing Nora with newfound respect. “He has some very interesting information. He’s hesitant, but I’ll get him on stage eventually. And I’ll have you each at the podium, too. Just watch.”

At that point, voices were being raised at the front of the room.

Fran hurried away from us.

Nora and I followed.

A young man stood on the floor at the edge of the stage looking up at the speaker.

“So, let me get this straight, Pruitt,” he was saying with his hands on his hips. “All the people who have disappeared because of the Changes were, what was the phrase, non-player characters? Just some digital fabrications? Little more than set design? Well, I can assure you, my grandmother was nothing of the sort. She was sound in mind, body, and spirit when she vanished during the Changes. Not only will I not have some armchair theorizer slander my family’s good name, I will also not quietly sit here as you gin out some preposterous speculations which are so easy to disprove!”

Fran stepped up on stage and eased himself beside Warren Pruitt so he could speak into the microphone.

“I think we’ve run out of time for this evening’s convocation. Let’s have a big round of applause for Warren P.”

Mr. Pruitt bowed to the warm applause and left the stage.

“I should remind our audience,” Fran continued, “it is unlikely that any one of our speakers will bring with him or her the single and complete answer to the questions we all have. We share ideas, here. This is a forum for the free exchange of information.” Fran looked down at the young man who still held his ground at the edge of the stage. “And if anyone has any issues with the content of these meetings, please discuss them privately with myself or Ms. Maribel V., who you meet at the door.”

The young man snorted at that and walked off.

“There are still plenty of refreshments at the back of the room,” Fran said. He then added something about raffle tickets before he left the stage.

I decided to sit down in an empty chair next to Raul. Nora remained standing just a few feet away, watching me with mild curiosity.

“I understand we have a mutual friend,” I said to the man beside me.

Raul blinked. He realized he was being spoken to, and he turned around.

“Pardon?” Raul looked at me, scanning my face, my hands, my clothes. And then he noticed Nora.

“Ah,” Raul said with a smile. He then raised his voice loud enough so she could hear as well. “If it isn’t the assistant to the building superintendent at La Vida Tower.”

“Elevator technician will do just fine,” Nora said with a dip of her head.

“Oh, no,” I corrected Raul. “Not her.”

“Hey!” said Nora, crossing her arms.

“I’m speaking of Silverio Moreno.”

“Well,” Raul said with a wry smile. “A friend of Silverio Moreno? A rare bird, indeed, I’d think.”

“Morris Fisher,” I said, giving him my name.

Raul introduced himself, as well, and he shook my hand.

“And this is Shelvia,” I said.

“Shelvia is my All-Seeing name,” Nora said. “My real name is Nora.”

“Of course it is,” Raul said with a warm grin. “It’s stitched on your coveralls.”

“What?” She blushed when she looked down and saw Nora embroidered on her chest.

“Fran was telling me you have some interesting theories about the Changes,” I said to Raul.

“Silverio Moreno, Rose, and now Fran? Sir, it looks like we have quite a few friends in common. As for my so-called interesting theories, well, that seems quite a stretch. What I would enjoy, would be the opportunity to discover what other people or things we might have in common. Let’s meet for drinks or dinner some evening.” He scribbled his phone number on a piece of paper and gave it to me. Then he stood up. “However, it’s getting late, and I’m no night owl.”

Raul patted me on the shoulder, gave Nora a gentlemanly bow, and he politely excused himself.

“Had enough of the All-Seeing Eye Society Tonight?” I asked, turning to Nora.

“Let’s give it ten more minutes. The angry guy’s still skulking around. He’s gonna sucker punch Mr. Pruitt any minute, wanna bet?”