by Inmon, Shawn
Unlike his previous life, he went directly to Moondog’s place. He had found that he liked having a friend and it felt uncomfortable to him to know that the friendship he had established had been erased.
He knocked on the door and when Moondog opened it, Charles said, “Are you ready to hear a really weird story?”
“I actually like really weird stories,” Moondog said. “It’s an odd way to start a conversation when we’ve never spoken more than a dozen words before, but sure, come on in.”
An hour later, Moondog had made the two of them tea he had imported from Thailand and Charles had told him the story of his deaths and rebirth and how the two of them had become friends.
“I’ve even learned to like tea,” Charles said, “except for the kind you import from Ceylon.”
This routine—dying, waking, immediately heading to Moondog’s apartment and telling him this story, held true for more than two dozen lives. These lives were much more similar than they were different.
Charles had been a most-habitual man during his first life. Now, given a set of circumstances that were odd beyond measure, he had managed to make even this a new kind of habit.
Moondog proved to be not only a good and trustworthy friend, but one who could easily suspend his disbelief. He always believed the story, which was an oasis of comfort for Charles in this desert of uncertainty.
Unfortunately, the rest of those lives also followed the script of his first life. He felt fine for the first few days and took care of that life’s business—talking to Vic at Graystone, becoming friends with Moondog—then going rockhounding in Netarts.
He chose to leave Moondog behind for those trips after the first time. He could tell he didn’t enjoy it and was never going to be a good rockhound. Each of those lives, he saw Sarah, who he always thought of as Sarah, Plain and Tall, with varying results.
Unlike his first life, when he had no ability to communicate with her in any meaningful way, he held actual—if brief—conversations with her. It wasn’t enough that he felt comfortable adding her to his short list of friends—said list had a single occupant—but something about her drew him back to Netarts and those quick, shared moments each life.
He made sure that he took it easy and brought his walking stick each time, so he didn’t pass out again.
The limitations of his life cycle meant that he didn’t feel comfortable with anything more than these blink-and-you’ll-miss-them interactions, but he found himself drawn each life to that spot on the log when she passed by. Her kindness to him that first day, when he was reeling from his prognosis, stayed in his mind.
If not for an intervention, Charles might very well have repeated essentially this same life hundreds or thousands of times, making no progress.
Luckily for Charles, there was an intervention.
Chapter Nineteen
Universal Life Center
SEMOLINA DIDN’T NEED to summon Carrie. She appeared at the end of each of Charles Waters’ lives.
Each time, she and Semolina watched the entirety of his short life. They watched him struggle against the tide of both illness and a clock that ticked down at an alarming rate.
“I feel for him. You know I do,” Semolina said. “But what can we do? What can even you do? You have broad discretion in this new paradigm, but you cannot change the edict of The Machine. It is immutable. Perfect.”
“Of course. I would never attempt to change the universal algorithm. That is so far beyond my comprehension that I can’t even begin to know what I do not know.”
“Then what? What can we do?”
“This.”
Carrie pulled the image from Charles Waters’ first life from the Pyxis and expanded it until it was larger than life-sized. A vivid, unmoving image of Charles, sitting in the doctor’s office, a moment away from opening his eyes again. Around them, other Watchers, who were so used to miracles that they were mundane, paused their own pyxis and turned to watch. And still Carrie manipulated and expanded the image, until it filled the space above the desks.
Carrie looked at her handiwork and smiled. She turned the image slightly this way and that maneuvering into the perfect position. When she was satisfied, she rose into the air and stepped into the image. Everything else in the image remained static, but Carrie was fluid in her movement.
She looked at Charles, then kneeled in front of him, her spotless robe pooling around her.
She leaned forward and enveloped him in an embrace that lasted for many heartbeats. She stood, stepped out of the image and back into the Universal Life Center.
“I didn’t know we could do that,” Semolina said.
“Neither did I,” Carrie answered.
“What did you do?”
Carrie smiled. “I hope I made a good outcome possible for him.”
Part Two
Chapter Twenty
CHARLES WATERS OPENED his eyes.
As expected, Dr. Masin was in mid-sentence, explaining the realities of his prognosis. Charles sat quietly, listening.
When he finished, Masin said, “I’m so sorry to tell you this. We’ll be in touch with you over the next few days to make further arrangements. In the meantime, I’ve already called a prescription in for pain and nausea medicine.”
Charles nodded, said, “Thank you, Doctor,” and walked downstairs.
Same people, same car alarm, same distracted driver behind the wheel of the Jaguar.
Charles caught the bus home and found his apartment exactly as he always did—comfortingly sterile and his own.
He realized that the book he had been reading while he lay dying was gone. In this life, it was still on Moondog’s shelf. This iteration of Moondog would once again not know him as anything but a distant neighbor. These early machinations had taken on the feel of a pattern, and Charles took comfort in all patterns.
He sat on the couch and waited for time to pass. He had gotten in the habit of arriving at Moondog’s apartment for their first talk of a particular life at 7:00 p.m. sharp. To accommodate that, he had taken the uncomfortable step of moving his dinner time from 6:30 to 6:00 to give him enough time to heat, eat, and clean up after his meal.
At 7:00, he knocked on Moondog’s door and had the same conversation he’d had with him many times before. Once again, Moondog was a true believer. He also made Charles the tea from Thailand at his request. Before he returned home, Charles asked if he could borrow the copy of Job: A Comedy of Justice, by Robert Heinlein that he had been reading before he died.
Charles went home, put his pajamas on, lay down on his bed, satisfied that he had gotten this life off to a predictable start.
The next morning, he got dressed for work and drove the Civic to Graystone Insurance.
A few minutes before noon, Charles waited for the shame-faced young man to escape from HR, then had his conversation with Vic. A number of lives earlier, Charles had made the decision to keep his options open when it came to Graystone. Each life, he told Vic he was terminally ill, scheduled his vacation, then left it open-ended whether he would return after that. To this point, he had never felt well enough to come back.
On Saturday morning, he drove to Netarts and sat on the log, waiting for Sarah to appear. The rest was completely for show—Charles hadn’t felt any pain or at all out of breath on the short hike.
Right on time, he saw Sarah descending from the parking lot to the beach and begin the hike to the Whiskey River. When she got close enough that he could once again see the Seahawk logo on her blue hat, he said, “Hello.” He had thought of also raising his hand in a friendly greeting but had decided against it.
“Hello, fellow hiker,” Sarah said with a friendly smile as she passed on by.
This was unusual. In Charles’ previous lives, Sarah had always stopped and rested with him on the log in comfortable silence.
Charles watched her until she disappeared around a bend in the distance, then hopped off the log and followed the same path. As he did, he realized he felt b
etter at this point in his day than he had in many lifetimes.
He made it to the river, dug up the same agate he had dug up dozens of times before and put it in his collection bag. As he hiked, he looked for other rocks, but also kept his eyes open for a large boulder that rested against a cedar tree. That marked the farthest spot he had ever made it on any of these trips.
Today, when he reached the boulder, he felt like he was just getting started. He leaned against the rock and fished around in his pack until he found his Bit-O-Honey candy bar. He ate it, not because he felt like he needed the sugar rush to make it back to the car, but because he felt hungry. He realized he hadn’t felt any honest hunger in all these previous lives.
He slowly chewed the candy and rolled this development around in his mind. He could find no reason why the pattern of this life had changed so suddenly, but he took advantage of it. He wrapped half of the candy up in its wrapper and went on.
He hiked another mile along the river, enjoying not being sick. When he turned around and headed back, it was because he knew he wanted to be back at the Civic while there was still plenty of light—not because he felt bad.
He made it back to Middle Falls in time to microwave his dinner on schedule. When he finished, he ate his last Snak-Pak chocolate pudding.
I’ll have to remember to buy more when I go shopping tomorrow.
In all his previous lives, by the time he’d gotten back from rockhounding, he had been so ill that he had collapsed into bed. Tonight, he went next door and knocked on Moondog’s door.
Moondog opened it wide and said, “How was rockhounding?” This was a word he had never heard in this life until a few days before, but Moondog caught on to things quickly.
“It was unusual.”
“Strike gold or diamonds, then?”
“Both of those are highly unlikely when you are looking for agates in Western Oregon. No, that wasn’t what was so unusual. It’s how I felt. Every life I’ve lived, I’ve gotten sick before this day was out. It didn’t matter if I went to Netarts or not. Even if I stayed home, by nighttime, I was sick. And, once I got sick, I never felt better until I died and started over.”
Moondog looked Charles up and down. “You look okay to me.”
“That’s just it. I feel okay. Fine, really. I waited for the pain and nausea all day, but it never arrived.”
“Small blessings. Is it possible that your doctor is wrong? That you’re not as sick as you thought?”
“I’ve died from it twenty-eight times. I think the diagnosis is correct. It’s a change in the pattern. I don’t know what to do with it.”
“I don’t think there’s anything to do with it. At least not yet. Let’s see how you are tomorrow.”
Chapter Twenty-One
WHEN CHARLES WATERS opened his eyes that Sunday morning, he held his breath for a moment. He waited to see if the symptoms that had always settled over him on this day had asserted themselves. Cautiously, he placed his feet on the floor. He stretched.
He felt absolutely fine.
This was a quandary for Charles. He had grown accustomed to the horrible but predictable progression of the cancer. He didn’t know if he should trust this new feeling of well-being.
He showered, made breakfast, and found that he was still perfectly healthy, or at least he felt so.
With an unexpected day of the appearance of good health, he had to decide what to do with it. First up was his weekly shopping trip to Safeway, but what then? He remembered back to the day when he had attended to the many small maintenance tasks in his first life. That work had disappeared, of course, when he had woken up in each of his later lives.
Perfect for today. It will keep me occupied, but I won’t be far from home if the pain and sickness comes back unannounced.
Charles spent the day doing the mundane tasks once again—cleaning the blinds, wiping down the kitchen cupboards, caulking around the tub and sinks.
It was a change in his pattern he had established, but he adapted.
By that night, he felt tired, but it was the natural tired he hadn’t felt in so long, he’d forgotten what it was like.
When he woke up the next day still feeling perfectly healthy, he began to wonder about Dr. Masin’s diagnosis, no matter what he said to Moondog.
He called Dr. Masin’s office and found him in.
“Hello, Charles,” Dr. Masin said. “How are you feeling?”
“That’s why I’m calling. I feel fine. Shouldn’t I be sicker by now?”
Charles wanted to say, I always have in the past, but he knew he couldn’t explain that to Dr. Masin, so he didn’t.
“Not necessarily. It’s not unusual to have periods where you are feeling much better than others.”
It’s been unusual for me.
“Have you filled the prescriptions I called in for you?”
“Yes, I filled them yesterday, but I haven’t felt the need, so I haven’t taken them.”
“That’s fine. Keep them nearby. Unfortunately, these feel-good periods have a way of ending abruptly.”
“Of course. Thank you, doctor.”
Charles didn’t speak to Dr. Masin for the rest of that life.
ON WEDNESDAY MORNING, Charles woke up at his normal time and even though he was on vacation, he couldn’t keep his mind off that report on the effects of bicycling on long-term health benefits. He had gotten partway through his work on that in his first life, but hadn’t been able to do any more since then.
When he opened his eyes that day, his first thought was, that report will be sitting in Jim Steven’s inbox this morning.
By 8:45, Charles was dressed in his Graystone clothes and was on his way to the office. He parked in his normal spot and headed for the front doors. He saw the sideways glances the other workers cast in his direction—dead man walking—but ignored them.
He walked past the elevator and took the stairs up to his floor. He went to the mailroom and straight to Jim Stevens’ box. He and Kenny Siefert arrived at that spot at the exact same moment.
Kenny glanced at Charles, who looked at the package in Kenny’s hand. It was addressed to Charles and Kenny had been in the process of placing it in Jim’s box.
“I think that’s supposed to go to me.”
“Umm, right. I was just—“
“Give it to me, I’ll take it to the copy room, make a copy for Jim, and I’ll put that in his box.”
Kenny shrugged. “Sure, Charles. That’s fine.” He squinted a little, taking in Charles. “I’m sorry; I had heard you were sick. But, you don’t look sick.”
“I’m dying. I think. As far as I know.” Charles took the envelope and headed to the copy room on the second floor. He slit the envelope open and ran the seventy-five pages through the copier. He slipped the original report back in the envelope and delivered the copy, held neatly together with a binder clip, back to Jim Stevens’ mailbox.
Two minutes later, he was in his office, jacket hanging on the hook on the back door. He sharpened his pencil, arranged the thick report in front of him and dug into the numbers.
Time passed easily as it always did when he had numbers in front of him. Several hours had gone by when he heard a gentle knock on his door.
Alice Harkins had actually been knocking off and on for almost a minute by the time Charles heard her.
Instead of saying, “Come in,” Charles set his pencil down and opened the door a crack. “Yes?”
“Hello, Charles,” Alice said, “Can I come in for just a second?”
Charles’ expression said ‘Must you?’ but he opened the door wider and stepped back.
There wasn’t quite enough room between Charles and the door for Alice to squeeze in, so she settled for popping her head in.
“We heard the news about your health, Charles, and I wanted to say how sorry I am.”
Charles didn’t speak, but simply waited.
“Anyway, we’ve all gotten together to have a little party for you, to show you how muc
h we appreciate and care about you. I just wanted to see if you’ll be in either this Friday or next Monday? Monday would be better for us, because we want to get you a cake and that will give us enough time to get one made, but I didn’t know if you might have a doctor’s appointment then.”
Alice seemed to sense that she was rambling a bit and stopped talking.
“I’ll be in both Friday and Monday, unless something changes, but I don’t want a party.”
“There’ll be cake!” Alice said in an attempt at enthusiasm.
“I don’t like cake.”
“Pie?”
“No.”
Crestfallen, Alice didn’t argue any more. She said, “Sorry to have bothered you, Charles,” and shut the door behind her.
Charles forgot about her instantly, sat back at his desk and went to work.
With the pain of his illness gone, Charles returned to his old habits. He didn’t use any of his remaining vacation days and instead went in to work like normal.
There were whispers among the other workers at first, as they expected every day to be his last. He was a curiosity for the first week, but eventually the novelty passed and the group mind of Graystone Insurance turned to other things, like the upcoming presidential election and the office Halloween party.
Meanwhile, Charles went to work every day, began to watch television when he got home, ate his frozen dinners, and essentially forgot that he had a death sentence hanging over his head.
He stopped knocking on Moondog’s door, although he did speak to him when he met him in the hall.
Halloween fell on a Monday in 1988, so Charles went to work. He wore his gray slacks, white shirt, red tie and gray jacket. As he entered the building, he was surrounded by vampires—fake teeth and all—women dressed in revealing nurses’ costumes, a man dressed as Beetlejuice, and Alice Harkens, dressed as Chucky from Child’s Play.
Charles ignored them all. Not because they were dressed in costume, but simply because he failed to see everyone around him.
