Charlie hugged himself and wondered why he was naked. The tile was cold beneath his bare feet, the fluorescent lights bright and harsh. The hallway stretched on as far as he could see, narrowing in perspective down to a tiny point that disappeared behind a dim, bluish haze.
Charlie turned around. Behind him, the hallway stretched infinitely in the other direction, also disappearing in a blue haze. For no reason that he could articulate, Charlie felt sure that the hallway behind him was where he had come from — while in front of him was where he had been going to.
But how did I get here? he wondered.
And why am I naked?
Charlie put his hand on one blank, white wall. It was smooth and cool and very slightly uneven, like bare plaster. He looked up at the ceiling. The lights made him squint.
He started walking down the hallway. His feet made little slapping noises against the tiles.
It took him less time to reach the end than he'd thought it would. The bluish haze withdrew, and the hallway opened onto a large, white room. Along the far wall there were several windows, evenly spaced. Behind each window stood a person. They all seemed to be busy with paperwork, or typing on something.
Charlie worried about being naked. He resisted the urge to crouch and cup himself — somehow that seemed even more embarrassing. He kept his hands down by his sides and twitched his fingers.
One of the tellers looked up and smiled.
"Next," he said.
Charlie padded up to the window.
"Hi," said the man behind the window. "Name?"
Charlie stared.
"Your name, please?"
"You look, uh." Charlie cleared his throat. "You look just like this guy I knew. In college."
The man smiled again. "Does that make you feel more comfortable, to see me that way?"
"No. He shot himself in his dorm room sophomore year."
The man's smile faltered. "Hmm. That doesn't seem right. Have to talk to memory branch about that — you're not supposed to be getting death associations at this stage."
"Am I dead?"
"Oh, no." The smile snapped back on. "No, you're not dead. And this is not heaven, nor is it hell."
"Why am I naked?"
"If you can just give me your name, sir, I can pull up your file and we can find out what's going on."
"Uh." Charlie scratched his chest slowly. "My name is Charlie. Uh, Charles Edward Brunner."
"Edward . . . Brun . . . that's with two 'n's? Ah, yes. Brunner. Here we go." He scanned the text flickering up the screen. "Brunner, comma, Charles, E." His eyebrows shot up. "O-kay, there's the problem." He tapped his finger on the monitor. "It's your soul. It has released itself on its own recognizance."
The bartender took the nearly full glass and topped it off again, then set it back down in front of the little guy. The little guy put both hands on the rim, hoisted himself up, craned his neck over, and dunked his whole head into the dark porter, slurping loudly. When he ran out of breath, the little guy sputtered and dropped back onto the bar.
"I mean, it was pathetic," said the little guy, wiping foam from his face. "I had to get out."
"Sometimes you gotta do that," said the bartender. He picked up a glass and started to wipe it. The glass wasn't dirty, but it seemed to set him at ease, wiping things.
"It was so cramped in there," muttered the little guy. "No room to breathe, no room to grow. I mean, I was put on this earth to sing, to soar, you know? To try new things! If you're not even going to use me for that, then . . ." he leaned heavily against the eight-inch-high glass. "Then what are you even doing? What's the frikkin' point?"
"What's the frikkin' point?" chorused the bald man slouching over a drink one stool over.
"Fucking-ay," said the little guy. "This guy was a settler. Never went after a goddam thing in his life - just settled for whatever dropped into his lap. Settled for the closest and easiest college he could get into; settled for the first job he got after graduating. Settled for any girl who thought it worth the trouble to ask him out, and settled for loneliness after they'd dump him. And 'someday' . . . Jiminy Christ, how he loved to go on about 'someday.' Someday was his favorite day of the week. 'Someday I'm gonna go back to school and get a real degree,' " he said, rolling his eyes and pitching his voice in a mocking simper. " 'Someday I'm gonna ask for a raise. Someday I'm gonna quit this dead-end job. Someday I'm gonna ask that waitress out. Someday I'm gonna write that big novel.' Shit. The way he went on, he thought he was gonna die 'someday.' I'm telling you, I couldn't wait that long. How the hell was I supposed to accomplish anything with a deadbeat like that? Fuck it. I had to split."
"Sometimes you gotta do that," said the bartender.
The bald man slouched even further; his sweaty forehead bobbed a mere inch or two over the surface of the bar. "I was gonna write a novel, once," he muttered. Then he sat up, frowning, and rubbing at his chest.
"I'm a free agent, now. I'm not going back. What are they gonna, what, assign me some other loser? Put me through another sixty-five years of 'someday?' No thank you. I'll go back to animals, first. I'll —"
The door suddenly opened, throwing in a thick wedge of afternoon sunlight. Two big, dark suits lumbered into the bar.
"Shit!" hissed the little guy. He hopped down behind the bar and scampered out through the back. The bartender blinked after him.
One of the suits walked up, glanced at the mostly full glass of beer still sitting out on the bar, and asked, "You seen a little guy go through here?" He held one meaty hand out flat, about eight inches above the bar. "About this tall?"
"What's the last thing you can remember?" asked the teller gently.
"I was . . . I was in the deli, near where I work. That's where I eat lunch. I always get a sandwich there. I was standing in line. Looking at the menu. I always get the turkey club."
"And?"
"And then I . . . uh, I felt a pain. Right here." Charlie tapped his chest. "Right in the middle. Sharp pain, like a needle. I felt dizzy. I remember the girl behind the counter, she asked me if I was okay, but I couldn't . . . I couldn't answer right, for some reason. I couldn't make the right words. I think I asked her for a soda. There was a . . . I think I must have hallucinated a little. There was this one point where she smiled at me, and it looked like she had all these little, sharp teeth."
The teller frowned and looked down at something on his screen.
"But that went away. And the next thing I remember, she's leading me to one of the tables, and telling me to sit down, and there's someone on the phone, I guess calling an ambulance.
"It was strange. The girl went back behind the counter, there were people still in line with orders. At some of the tables people were eating their sandwiches. No one looked at me. I felt a little bit embarrassed. The pain had stopped, and I wasn't feeling dizzy anymore, and I wanted to leave but I was afraid it would be awkward if the ambulance came and I wasn't there. So I just waited.
"After a few minutes the girl came back with a soda.
"After a while the ambulance came, and the paramedics rushed in with all this equipment and made a huge fuss. They made me wear an oxygen mask, and they opened my shirt and put those little suction cup things on my chest. Monitors. And one of them kept asking me questions, like did I have any history of heart problems, and was I diabetic, and all kinds of things.
"And still no one looked at me.
"I guess they decided there was nothing wrong with me. I felt fine. The one guy asked if I wanted them to take me to a hospital, but I said no thanks. I just wanted to get out of there. So they packed up all the equipment and they left. I got up and said thank you to the deli girl, and she smiled again and waved.
"I wondered if maybe I should take the rest of the day off. I wasn't sure if I wanted to mention anything to my co-workers, since I still felt a little bit embarrassed by the whole thing. And I got about halfway down the block, and that's when the pain hit me again.
"Much worse, this time. Like something stabbing me from the inside, inside my chest. I remember crawling on the sidewalk, seeing the sidewalk bright between my hands, and the shoes of people walking all around me. No one stopped. It felt like something was pushing out of my chest, pushing against my shirt. So I pulled my shirt open and looked.
"There was a . . . a cut, a wound opening on my chest, right here, right over my uh, my sternum. Three, four inches long. It opened up, but there was no blood. Nothing was coming out. And then out came this tiny little hand.
"It waved around for a little bit, and then it pushed, and a little head came after it. And then this tiny little person crawled out of the hole in my chest and dropped onto the sidewalk in front of me."
"Yes," said the teller. "That would be the pneuma."
"It looked just like me," said Charlie. "Only tiny. And naked. And he stood up — just eight inches high — he stood up and turned around and looked at me. And he sort of made this face.
"And then he ran off.
"And then I was here."
The teller smiled again. "That's only temporary, I assure you. Just until we can locate your missing homunculus, establish the facts of the case, and determine where you need to be re-queued. Did you happen to notice where the little guy went?"
"Er . . . no."
"Well, even so." The teller dismissed the question with a wave. "The collector team had a pretty good fix on you at the moment of separation. They should be closing in on your soul any second now. Autonomous pneuma are supposed to report in as soon as this sort of thing happens, but . . . you know." The teller shrugged. "Sometimes they go renegade."
"Listen," said the little guy, "how'd you like to do me a big favor?"
The old bum wagged his head and grinned, showing black gums.
"Great, that's great. I need — whoa." The little guy turned his head away and squinted against the bum's reeking breath. "Man. Listen. I need a place to hide, okay? And you're the only person handy who's got any room in there." His tiny index finger tapped the bum's stained, threadbare shirt, just over the sternum. "Yeah. Wow. Looks like nobody's been living in there for a long time. But, you know, maybe we could work something out. I don't know how long I'd have to stay in there; maybe we could come to some sort of arrangement. I mean . . ." the little guy peered up at the old bum's ravaged face. ". . . sure, I can see why the last one left. But you can't be as bad as my last host, anyway. There's gotta be at least a little bit of workable material left in there, I'm sensing. Some dream not entirely extinguished? Some dim memory, someone who used to be important to you? Yeah? Maybe she still is?"
The old bum's face crumpled. He tipped his head back and groaned. "Aaah," he said, and a tear traveled down the seams of his face and was lost in the greasy tangles of his beard. "Gaaah." A few passers-by glanced over and then hurried on.
"Hey, it's okay," said the little guy, glancing around nervously. He patted the bum's sleeve awkwardly. It was stiff with old vomit. "Uh, eww. Um, it's okay. Okay? We'll see what we can do. No promises, but hey, you never know. So, we got a deal?"
The old bum sniffed and nodded.
"Great. Quick. Open wide."
There were still a few teeth left in the old bum's mouth; the little guy grabbed hold of two and pulled himself in. The bum made some weak retching noises as the little guy crawled down his throat. His nose ran and his yellow eyes twitched fearfully. And then only the little guy's two tiny feet showed, kicking out between cracked lips. And then he was in and gone.
Two big suits rounded the corner and skidded to a halt in front of the bum's garbage-choked alcove. They scanned the crowded streets in all directions. One of them glanced down at the old bum. The black, featureless sunglasses looked him over for a moment or two — then moved on. The other one pointed down a side street, and they hurried on.
The old bum sat up straight, put his hands down and felt the warm, rough pavement beneath him. He took a deep, shaky breath.
"Amelia," he said.
"But I haven't done anything!"
"Well," said the teller, "that pretty much sums up the problem, you see. When you were placed with your soul, you entered into a contract to use it. To live, to create, to challenge yourself. It's a two-way street — the little guy provides the inspiration, but you have to act on it. You just sitting around watching TV doesn't do either one of you any good. And frankly, it's a waste of your soul's time. There are only so many cycles available for placement, after all. So if a soul feels that it's not being used to its full potential, it is entitled to terminate the contract preemptively and file a petition to be placed with another coil. We'll conduct an inquiry to see if your soul's complaints are valid, and if they are, it will be placed with the next available coil, where, hopefully, it can pursue a more mutually satisfactory life on earth."
"What happens to me?"
"You'll go back to the queue for routine metempsychosis, after our auditors go over your karma and make any necessary adjustments. You'll be reborn as soon as we have a free soul for you."
"And that will take?"
"No more than three or four hundred years. Depending on the turnover."
Charlie stared.
"That's really all I can tell you right now, until the collectors pick up your soul," said the teller, spreading his hands.
"Where do I wait?"
The teller leaned close to the glass and pointed over to another room, off to Charlie's right. Its walls were white and there were bright lights, just like in this room. There were chairs, and Charlie could see people sitting in a few of them, reading. "We'll call you when we're ready for you. There's some magazines."
Charlie backed away from the window. His face squirmed a little.
"But I haven't done anything," he said again.
The teller smiled. "We'll call you when we're ready."
Charlie padded off to the waiting room, looking down at his cold, bare feet the whole way.
Far away in America, a 35-year-old single mother was about to get a phone call. Just before she picked it up, she thought how strange it would be if it turned out to be her father, whom she had not seen since she was ten.
It was a fleeting notion, and she dismissed it before she had even touched the receiver.
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