Voices: Here he comes.
Yes. I can see his shape…
Then, in a flash, the world reformed around me. Only I wasn't in the lobby anymore. I was standing in my Brain office with Brad and the Ghost of Fieldman, who was holding what looked to be a television remote control box.
Fieldman smirked. “I bet you're wondering how we managed to drag you up here against your will."
“No,” I said. “I'm standing here trying to imagine what it's going to feel like."
“What what's going to feel like?” Brad asked.
“What it's going to feel like when I eject both your sorry souls into the bathroom toilet."
This cracked them up. Knee-slapping and everything. I made a note to myself to work on my threatening, tough-guy voice.
“Funny you should say that,” said Brad, chuckling one last time before wiping his eyes. “Because it's where you're going. Tell him, Agent Fieldman."
Fieldman started pacing around me, his clunky gizmo trained on me. “You forget that I know your secrets, Collective. Using the processing power given to each Brain Hotel resident, I invented this-a device that can take your soul and drag it around. Eject it into whatever we want."
“I'll mention it to the Nobel committee.” What was this confrontation about, anyway? An extra closet or two in their apartments? “Why are the two of you so eager to drag me around? Because I don't have Brad's murderers hung by their thumbs yet?"
Brad sighed and waved his arms around. “God, you can't see anything, can you? For such a supreme being, you're painfully, stupefyingly, pitifully ignorant."
That was nice. I'd never been called a supreme being before.
Brad continued. “We've been planning this for months now-almost as long as you've been conducting your so-called ‘murder investigation.’ And all the time you thought you were in control. Ordering us around. Barking questions at us. You have no idea how weak you are."
“Don't bother explaining to the Collective,” interrupted the Ghost of Fieldman. “His mind is far too closed to comprehend."
“I suppose you're right,” Brad said. “Go ahead and zap him."
“Destination?” Fieldman asked.
“Oh, why don't we use the man's suggestion?"
A smile lit up Fieldman's face. “You are serious, aren't you?"
This talk was getting loopy-not to mention, personally destructive. I had to flex my muscles now or forever hold my peace. “Paul?” I shouted. The more muscles the better. “Hey, PAUL!"
“He's not going to answer,” said Brad.
“Oh,” I said, with as much braggadocio as I could muster. “He will."
“No… he won't. Because I'm Paul After."
I gave him the same kind of look you'd give someone who's declared himself the Prince of Mars.
“You don't believe me,” said Brad. “And to tell you the truth, I wish it weren't true. But Paul After is undeniably me. Or me, that is, until approximately eight months ago."
“It is not worth explaining,” said Fieldman.
“Sure it is.” Brad said. “It'll give him something to think about when he's hanging out with the Tidy Bowl man for the next 50 years. You see Del, I used to be an extremely disreputable man. Started out doing small-time jobs for the New York Mafia, then headed out West to make my fortune. Which I did, through a number of businesses. A few of them you even wrote about, back when you were a reporter."
“I don't remember writing about any Brad Larsen."
“Not by name, you didn't."
“What are you talking about?"
“Let's put it this way: If you hadn't come along and collected my soul from the muddy waters of the Woody Creek, there would be no ‘Association’ left for you to chase."
I stared at him, slack-jawed. “That's not poss…” I started to say, but then couldn't think of anything.
“Starting to get it? I am your fucking ‘Association'! Just me…"
Possible? Certainly. What kind of evidence did I ever have? Only bits and pieces. I had put the picture together. I had assumed a massive criminal organization pulled the strings. I had never dreamed one man could do so much.
“But I'm drifting from my original point,” said Brad. “You see, the key was having two separate lives, so utterly distinct that one could never, ever, lead to the other. In one life, I was Brad Larsen, college professor in training, with a Masters in 17th Century English Literature, and working towards my doctorate at the University of California, Bakersfield. I was married to the beautiful Alison Larsen, nee Langtree, and we lived in a gorgeous two-bedroom bungalow three blocks away from campus. She was a hairdresser. And she never asked where all the ‘grant money’ came from."
I interrupted-merely to inject myself back into the flow of things. “And in your other life, you were this J.P. Bafoures, bloodthirsty crime boss, willing to kill anyone-man, woman, child-as long as it put dollars in your pocket."
“I only killed two women. And no children,” Brad said.
“So I'm to believe you've been working the Susannah Winston case? In effect, babysitting your own murderer?"
“Not exactly,” Brad said. “This ‘Paul After’ is not technically me. He's a fragment of my own psyche, sheared off the moment you absorbed my soul."
“Not possible,” I said. “I absorbed him months after I absorbed your soul."
“No, you only thought you absorbed him then. It was a fabricated memory we put in place months ago."
“I can explain this, Collective,” said Fieldman. “Your programming-that is, the processor that is your mind-is only equipped to handle one identity per chip. Once it encountered Brad, who had a brain disorder known as a ‘split personality,’ it did the only thing it could: it assigned each disparate identity its own chip, with a new, fabricated personal history."
“Paul even gave himself a new last name,” said Brad. “Bafoures became After."
“Understand, Collective?” Fieldman asked.
“Thank you, Mr. Wizard,” I said. The ghost never gave up. “If he's a separate “psyche,” why can't he leap to my defense right now?"
“Simple,” Brad said. “I erased him."
“You erased him?” I didn't know whether to believe him or not, but at that point, it didn't seem to matter. The Ghost of Fieldman walked up to me, and softly applied his hand to my cheek. “You've had enough suffering for one lifetime. It is time to rest."
“How can you ‘erase’ a soul?"
Fieldman held his gizmo up to my face and tapped it with his index finger. “Interesting you should ask, Collective."
And then it was over.
I spent an agonizing length of time between planes of reality. (Only later did I realize I'd traveled in a fraction of a second, and had spent 20 hours trying to piece my mind back together.) I didn't appreciate what I'd had until it was rudely snatched away from me. For years, I had the companionship of other souls, whenever I wanted it. I had a building full of unique individuals, each with stories to tell, emotions to vent. And, during those same years, I had souls to reach out to.
Now, all that was gone. The only physical sensation left was tumbling: endless, nauseating tumbling. No sense of up, down, left or right; no depth. It was like being jettisoned into outer space, only without the blessed quick death of decompression and body implosion. This tumbling went on forever. Every time I tried to figure out how they did it, how they wrenched my soul from its home inside my brain, I'd start to spin more violently, unable to think on an intellectual level any longer. I would have vomited, but I feared I'd spend eternity spinning in an ocean of my own bile and whatever my last meal happened to have been-probably fast food of some kind and a gallon of tequila. No… must stop riffing on food and drink, I thought to myself. Me? Who was me, anyway?