Soul Identity

by batchelder, dennis

  I doubted Bob was getting his palm read. And I hoped that the palm reading place wasn’t the headquarters of Soul Identity, because there would be no work for me, and I would have to break some bad news to Berry. Was this another pickup for Bob? I drove past him, parked on the left in front of a gas station, and kept an eye on his van.

  Staking out a joint looks a lot more fun in the movies than it really is. I scanned the radio stations, fiddled with the AC controls, and played with the seat buttons. I wondered if I could take a chance and run into the gas station to buy some snacks. In about fifteen minutes, just as I was about to give up, Bob walked out of Madame Flora’s. I followed as he drove back toward my house.

  My phone rang as we neared my neighborhood.

  “Mr. Waverly, this is Archibald Morgan.”

  “Hi.” I took a stab at being friendly. “Archie, where are you calling from?”

  “Please call me Mr. Morgan.”

  My stab missed; he wanted to be formal.

  “I am calling from our Massachusetts headquarters,” he said.

  Or maybe he was hanging out at Madame Flora’s place. I could at least check his area code if he’d give me his number. “I’m about to drive through a dead zone. Can I call you back?”

  “I will call you again, Mr. Waverly. Would that suit you?”

  No number for me. “Give me two minutes.” I hung up.

  Bob’s van pulled into my driveway. I parked next to him and got out. “All delivered?” I asked.

  “Yes sir. Mr. Morgan said he’d be calling you within the hour.”

  I held up my phone. “He just called. Bob, where is he located?”

  He looked uneasy.

  “Is he in Maryland?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “No, sir. He’s rarely in Maryland.”

  “Then how did you deliver my message?”

  “Perhaps you can ask Mr. Morgan that question.”

  “I did. He said he was in Massachusetts.”

  Bob looked relieved. “Yes sir. That’s where he usually stays. At our headquarters.”

  “I followed you when you left here. You only went to Madame Flora’s. No other stops. Are you sure Mr. Morgan isn’t at the palm reading place?”

  “Sir, I delivered your message to Mr. Morgan by using equipment at Madame Flora’s.”

  “What kind of equipment?” I waited for an answer, but then my phone rang, and Bob slipped away.

  “Is this Scott Waverly?”

  “Hi Archie.” I just couldn’t resist.

  “Please call me Mr. Morgan.”

  “Okay. Mr. Morgan, why does your delivery guy communicate to you from a palm reading joint?”

  Silence on the line.

  “You still there?” I asked.

  “Yes, Mr. Waverly. Did Bob give you a reason to follow him?”

  I didn’t want to get Bob in trouble. “No. It’s a sample of my work, free of charge.”

  “Ah yes, charges. We need to discuss your rates.”

  They were going to be high. Especially since these guys transformed my happy Santa neighbor into a shotgun-firing, crying old man. “Let’s talk about what you need me to do,” I said.

  “We offer financial services to members wishing to eternally preserve and multiply their accumulated wealth. We also offer an escrow service, providing a place for members to deposit articles for future withdrawals.”

  “You sound like a bank,” I said. “Where do I come in?”

  “Our organization wants to offer these services over the Internet. However, there are some of us inside the organization who are apprehensive about the risks inherent in this untested medium. We wish to apply some risk management to the process.”

  Archibald Morgan sounded like one of the apprehensive types. “So you want me to make sure your computer security doesn’t catch you with your pants down?”

  “I would have chosen different words, but that is essentially correct. There will be other tasks, but making sure we are safe is my top priority.”

  I thought about it for a minute. “Usually my reviews take a few weeks to perform and a few weeks to write up the report and recommendations. When do you need this done?”

  “Right away.”

  I gave him our standard rates.

  Morgan answered without a pause. “Very good. When can we start?”

  That surprised me; my rates are high, and most clients try to talk me down. Better make sure he was committed. “If you want me to start right away, you’ll have to pay a month’s retainer in advance.”

  “Bob can deliver a certified check tomorrow morning. Can we start Wednesday?”

  I stared at the phone. These guys must have a huge emergency on their hands. What wasn’t Morgan telling me?

  “Mr. Waverly?” Morgan’s voice was faint.

  I brought the phone back to my ear. “One more thing. I don’t like formality. I call you Archie, and you call me Scott.”

  He laughed. “If that is what it takes to engage you, I can certainly call you Scott.” He paused. “Most of our operations are run from Massachusetts. I suggest that we start here and see where else you need to go.”

  “Okay, send me your address and a recommended hotel and I’ll see you in time for your morning coffee.”

  Archie cleared his throat. “I will send somebody to pick you up at your house in Maryland at six o’clock Wednesday morning. We will provide all transportation and accommodations.”

  Now he was getting too weird. “I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that, Archie.”

  “I assure you that you will be well taken care of. Soul Identity will pay for your services around the clock, starting Wednesday at six o’clock in the morning, and continuing until your work is completed.”

  I almost dropped the phone. “Around the clock pay?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “This work is extremely important and critical to us. We would like your complete and undivided attention for the duration.”

  It sounded good enough for me. “Archie, you have a deal. Send the round-the-clock month’s pay tomorrow so we’re ready.” I disconnected, and then stared at the phone. Mom was right; these guys were nut cases.

  That night I dreamed I saw an osprey dive down and scoop a bluefish out of the bay, but then I realized it was me and not the bluefish wriggling in its claws. I broke free and started falling down to the water. Good, I thought, now I get to wake up, right before I hit. But the osprey caught me and carried me high up in the air. I was shivering from the cold as we broke through the clouds, only it was no longer an osprey, but an airplane that held me buckled into my seat. I looked into the cockpit and saw Bob was piloting.

  The airplane transformed into Bob’s green delivery van. Bob swerved to avoid ramming a silver gray car, and he drove off a cliff. I woke up, right before we hit the ground, and sat straight up in bed.

  These Soul Identity guys were getting inside my head. I wanted to see how the dream ended—not the cliff part, but where Bob was taking me. I lay back down and tried to rewind, but I couldn’t keep the dream alive.

  I walked into the bathroom. An image had repeated in the dream. It was on the osprey’s breast, the back of the airline seat, and the side of Bob’s van. I closed my eyes to see it again, but the image swirled away from me like mist on the bay breaking up at sunrise.

  I sat on the bed and tried to squeeze out the image, but I ended up falling asleep and tumbling to the floor. I grabbed a pencil and a piece of paper and put them next to the bed, just in case.

  In the morning I discovered that I had written the following: “Soul Identity =”, a triangle, “Is,” and a comma. Underneath this I had written “(that’s how).” Apparently I had woken up with a bright idea. I stared at it and tried to decipher it, but got nowhere.

  I had the coffee ready by the time my parents arrived for work. I poured out three cups. “Starting tomorrow we have a new customer,” I said.

  “You finis
hed the airport report?” Dad asked.

  “All done, billed, emailed, and filed.” I smiled at their reactions. I rarely do the paperwork.

  “Who’s the new customer?” Mom asked.

  I pointed out the window at Berry weeding his flowers. “Santa dragged me into this. Did you know that his real name is Arthur Berringer?”

  “He goes by Berry,” Dad said.

  “I wish I had your memory for names, Dad. Not knowing it almost got me killed.” I told them about Berry shooting in the air and Bob peeling away.

  “The same delivery guy from last week?” Mom stared at me. “Don’t tell me we’re doing business with those Soul Identity wackos.”

  “We’re doing business with those wackos. And they’re paying us a month in advance for round-the-clock work.”

  Dad almost choked on his coffee. “We charge so much for your time because you only bill ten hours a week.” He punched some numbers on a solar calculator. “The advance will be more than we made last year. Is this for real?”

  “I guess we’ll find out if the check shows up today,” I said. I relayed what Berry told me about Soul Identity’s bridges between lives, and how I promised that I would help him out, even though I didn’t like what I had heard.

  “Tough call on taking them as a client,” Dad said. “Though it’s a nice thing for Berry, and maybe they won’t be as bad as they sound.”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Hey, I need a favor from you two. Can you come and get your palms read with me this afternoon? There’s a place we need to check out.”

  They smiled when I told them how I followed Bob to the palm reader’s. “With money like this, why not?” Mom said.

  I remembered my dream, and I showed them the paper. “What do you guys make of this?”

  “Looks like you were programming in your sleep,” Mom said.

  “With lousy English, too,” Dad said. “What language ends its sentences with is?”

  “Maybe it’s not programming. Maybe it’s math,” Mom said. “Soul Identity equals delta is comma.”

  Dad said, “Maybe it’s not a comma, but just Scott’s lousy handwriting for an apostrophe. Try this—Soul Identity equals delta eyes.”

  I thought for a minute. “Maybe I meant delta of the eye images. Maybe these guys compute the soul’s identity by figuring out the difference between the eyes.”

  Dad shrugged. “I guess you’ll find out tomorrow.”

  “Let’s find out now.” I fired up my laptop and opened the bluefish eye images. “The spatial data can help to line up the eyes on the same axis,” I said. I rotated the left eye image until the numbers matched. “Now let’s get them the same size.” I zoomed up the right eye image until it matched the left.

  Mom looked over my shoulder. “How do you get a delta from that?”

  “They probably have a more sophisticated program than my photo editor. One that overlays the images and shows the differences.”

  “You’re not going to write all that now, are you?” Dad asked.

  “Of course I am.” I opened a new window and started coding. I grabbed a graphics library to manipulate the images and borrowed some old code to display the data nicely. An hour later I looked around, but my parents were outside on the dock. I went to work on the compile bugs.

  After another half hour I was close. I stared at my code. It loaded two images, calculated the delta, and then displayed it. Where was the bug? There: I was trying to display an empty buffer.

  I fixed and recompiled my code, loaded the images, and clicked the delta button. This time a new pattern came up on the screen. I added a slider that let me control the delta threshold.

  I re-ran the program and tried out the slider. My parents came in and saw me moving it around.

  “All done?” Dad asked.

  “Yeah, the slider controls how strong the deltas have to be to get displayed.” I tapped the screen. “This window shows the differences.”

  “Let me try,” Mom grabbed the mouse and fiddled with the slider. “That’s as clear as it’s going to get.”

  “So that’s what a bluefish’s soul identity looks like,” Dad said. “Now I’ve seen everything.”

  I looked at the screen. Four small yellow triangles sat placed around the pupil. “It doesn’t look like much to me,” I said. “But then again, neither does a fingerprint. Maybe human eyes are different.”

  We decided we would combine our palm reading trip with a celebratory lunch at a local restaurant. While my parents wrapped up the office work, I visited Berry. I told him I had gotten the contract and would be gone for a while.

  “You think there’s any hope to get me in?” he asked.

  “Tell me again when you lost your eye.”

  “About ten years ago.”

  I walked over to the living room wall where the pictures hung and studied each one. “Do any of these show your real eye?”

  Berry pointed. “That convention in Philly was just one week before the accident. And this one too.” He tapped another frame. “From a couple years earlier.”

  I looked at the images. The Philly picture had Berry’s hair obscuring part of his left eye. The second picture looked much cleaner and focused. “Can I borrow it?” I asked. “I might be able to grab an image of your missing eye and calculate your soul identity.”

  He helped me take the picture down.

  “I’ll call you as soon as I know something.” I looked at him. “Can you keep it together for the next few weeks?”

  He nodded. “I’ll keep it together. But bring me back some good news.”

  four

  Dad drove while I navigated us to Madame Flora’s tiny parking lot. I checked my watch; we were two minutes early. Did palm readers keep a tight schedule?

  We went in and stood in a tiny foyer. A large diagram of a hand graced the door in front of us. Its palm showed three horizontal lines labeled Life, Head, and Heart, and three vertical lines marked Fate, Sun, and Hepatica.

  I rapped my knuckles on the intersection of Life and Fate. The lights dimmed, and the door swung open.

  Madame Flora sat on a couch behind a low glass coffee table. She wore a long maroon robe. I could not gauge her age in the dim light. My parents sat down on the couch facing her, and I sat on a chair to her right.

  Madame Flora stared intently at a crystal chandelier hanging above the table. She waved her left hand in the air. I leaned forward and noticed she was holding a remote control in her right hand. She pressed one of the buttons with her thumb.

  A woman’s sultry voice crept up the walls of the room. “Welcome to Madame Flora’s. Together you and Madame Flora will discover the answers you have been seeking. Madame Flora will use your astral projection to help you find your direction in life. Madame Flora is the only palm reader in the Mid-Atlantic region who has been certified by both the New Eastern Astrological Society and the Unified Palmists of North America.”

  Some kind of squeaky Eastern instrument played quietly over the sound system.

  Madame Flora thumbed another button, and the voice continued. “Please use the paper and pencil provided to write down your heart’s most burning questions. When you are finished, drop it in the slot in the middle of the table. This will allow Madame Flora to concentrate and release your astral energy so the answers to your questions may be revealed.” A spotlight brightened and illuminated the coffee table between us.

  I saw a pad of paper, a can filled with pencils, and a small slot in the center of the table. Under the slot sat a narrow clay vase.

  I took pencil and paper and wrote my question: “Will you help me speak with Archibald Morgan at Soul Identity?” I slid the paper down the slot in the table.

  Madame Flora pressed another button. The spotlight dimmed and the voice continued. “Please hold your hands palm-side-up in your lap. Madame Flora will gather the projected astral energy.” The music’s volume increased to the point where I could hear a drum getting whacked and somebody wailing almost in tune with the s
queaky instrument.

  We held up our palms, but only a minute later the music stopped abruptly and the lights came on. A little old lady stood in front of me, hands on her hips, shooting daggers with her eyes.

  Madame Flora sat on the couch with a look of astonishment on her face. “Grandma, I was handling this just fine.” She pulled off a wig and shook out her long brown hair.

  The old lady frowned. “They’re not here for palm reading, sweetie. They’re here for Soul Identity.”

  I looked at the young girl on the couch. She was slim and cute, no older than nineteen or twenty. “What’s your real name?” I asked her.

  “Rose,” she said. “I’m Madame Flora’s granddaughter, and I’m helping her out with her summer workload before I go back to college.” She pointed at the old lady. “She’s the real Madame Flora.”

  “What do you want?” the real Madame Flora asked.

  “I’d like to see how you talk to Archie,” I said. “Bob told me that this is the way he does it.”

  She crossed her arms. “Bob who?”

  I shrugged. “His last name begins with an O. He said you have the equipment.”

  Madame Flora nodded. “Do you know how to work the machine?”

  “No.”

  “Neither do I. But I’ve watched others do it many times over the last few years. We could probably figure it out together.” She walked to the far wall, pulled aside a black curtain, and went through an opening. “This way,” she said.

  My parents followed. Rose motioned for me to pass through the curtain. I waited a second for my parents to get out of earshot. “So there’s a hole in the bottom of the vase?” I asked.

  She giggled. “Gypsies never tell, you know?” She looked at me and cocked an eyebrow. “But what do you think?”

  “I think I’ve really ticked off your grandma,” I said.