“No need,” The Person with Bad Breath said as Joseph turned to twist the lock.
“Paranoid much, Jojo doll?” Trishiffany smiled.
“We were followed all the way here by your assassin,” Josephine said.
Trishiffany giggled. “Our assassin?”
“The Man in the Gray Sweatshirt. He’s been following me for weeks.”
“I have a gray sweatshirt,” Joseph said.
“Every man is the man in the gray sweatshirt,” The Person with Bad Breath intoned.
The words emerged from a gust of breath so noxious that Josephine worried about the beast’s well-being; surely there was something harmful in such an exhalation.
“I’m not feeling great,” Joseph said, eyeing the file on the desk.
“Take a seat.” The Person with Bad Breath indicated a pair of plastic chairs.
“He’s dying!” Josephine cried out.
“Not exactly,” Trishiffany said.
“What is that?” Joseph said, pointing at the file on the desk but unable to look.
“It’s what you think it is,” Trishiffany said tenderly.
“What is it?” Josephine demanded, but the cool, dreadful certainty was already propelling her.
She seized the file a millisecond before Trishiffany’s manicured hand could prevent her. She backed up toward Joseph, looking ferociously at the bureaucrats, ready to hiss if either of them interfered. But Trishiffany and The Person with Bad Breath remained tranquil as she opened the file.
It contained a single sheet of paper. She was having a hard time looking at it, yet she couldn’t stop.
Something caught her eye in the fourth row. Following the M/G, the familiar HS89805242381.
“My password for the Database?” she said.
“Yes, but, more significantly, your HS number,” The Person with Bad Breath said.
“You were the 89,805,242,381st Homo sapiens ever conceived,” Trishiffany said. “And your child was the 129,285,656,702nd.”
“Do you know how many hours I spent sneaking around here in the middle of the night to find your number,” Joseph muttered to Josephine.
“One among many transgressions,” Trishiffany said.
“Trespassing in a superior’s office,” The Person with Bad Breath elaborated. “Opening a confidential filing cabinet. Stealing an unauthorized form. Trespassing in File Storage N. Trespassing in File Storage J. Copying down confidential information. Using a superior’s typewriter to fill in a form with fraudulent information. Typing fraudulent information into the Database. Persisting in doctoring a fraudulent file and placing said file in Outgoing even after deactivation was requested by a superior. Unauthorized presence on site after hours and before hours.”
“On three separate occasions,” Trishiffany added.
“What do you expect,” Joseph said, “once someone realizes he can create a life?”
“Zygote, Blastocyst, Embryo, Fetus!” Josephine comprehended as she scrutinized the second row.
“Today’s our embryo day,” Joseph said. He put his finger on the 10082013 following the G3(E).
10082013.
10082013.
“But that’s what’s no good,” Trishiffany said. “See how the number sags below the embryo-date line into the paternal-death-date line? The typewritten text must remain entirely within its appointed space.”
Joseph snatched the file away from Josephine and examined the form.
“You did a fine job,” The Person with Bad Breath congratulated. “Your work certainly reveals an above-average understanding of the mechanisms. But even the finest counterfeit never made it all the way through.”
“She conceived, didn’t she?” Joseph protested.
“You’re diligent, Joey-Jo,” Trishiffany admitted, giving him a sad little smile. “Those must have been some long nights. But things are what they are.”
“You typed in your own death date,” Josephine whispered in disbelief, pulling the file away from him.
“I was typing in the blastocyst-to-embryo transfer date,” he countered. “I was fixing the error that got the file sent back to me yesterday. The first time around I didn’t realize I had to include that date.”
“Oh, no, Joey-Jo. The file got sent back to you because the system had already identified the falsification,” Trishiffany said. “You should have deactivated the file, as per your instructions. Sweetly into the ether, so to speak.”
“Instead, you triggered your own death processing,” The Person with Bad Breath said.
“Typewriters are tricky,” Trishiffany soothed. “Though they do have certain advantages in a system like ours.”
“Typewriters are tricky and now he’s going to die?” Josephine raged.
“Well, at this particular instant, both facts seem to be true,” The Person with Bad Breath said. “Your blastocyst is becoming an embryo on 10082013, and Joseph David Jones is dying on 10082013.”
Josephine grabbed Joseph’s right hand, clamping his finger bones in her grip.
“But not for long,” Trishiffany said lightly. “We’ll get everything corrected straightaway. Make it all line up.”
“A bit of extra paperwork,” The Person with Bad Breath said.
“An annoyance, to be sure,” Trishiffany continued. “A touch of heartache. But all shall be well and all shall be well and all shall be well. Why don’t you hand over those files, Jojo doll.”
Josephine shook her head. The fluorescence illuminated every flaw in each bureaucrat’s skin. She could feel it gleaming over the constellation of zits on her forehead. The whole world smelled like The Person with Bad Breath.
“It’s just paperwork now,” Trishiffany said. “Just a matter of sending one file through Processing Errors and deactivating the other.”
Josephine’s throat released a knotted snarl. Trishiffany didn’t acknowledge the sound, the primal disagreement; she briskly clapped her hands.
“Come now, Jojo doll!”
“Why are you doing this to us?” Josephine tried to yell, but the words came out limp, her voice feeble.
Trishiffany released a short sharp laugh. “Nothing malevolent here, dear! We’re all just doing what we have to do.”
Josephine clung to the files. Joseph rested his head against her head and together they looked down at the blank boxes of their child’s form. And then at Joseph’s form, the chaos following the first four lines, the boxes of letters and numbers and symbols, the dense forest of his paperwork.
“Let’s get it over with, kiddos.” Trishiffany’s words were flippant but her tone was forlorn.
That forlornness in her voice caused Josephine to loosen her grip on the files. She stepped forward and placed them on the desk.
“Atta girl,” Trishiffany said wearily.
“You should sit down, Ms. Newbury,” The Person with Bad Breath said, as Trishiffany produced a bottle of Wite-Out from her bra and passed it to her coworker.
The Person with Bad Breath unscrewed the Wite-Out, opened both files, and painted the liquid over the death date on Joseph’s form.
“Thank you,” Joseph said.
The Person with Bad Breath glanced up, surprised.
“Oh, don’t thank me,” The Person with Bad Breath said with a dusty chuckle. “There’s nothing benevolent here either. I’m not doing favors, I’m doing paperwork. Getting all the ducks in a row.”
Then The Person with Bad Breath held the tiny brush suspended above the child’s form. Trishiffany breathed in, breathed out, licked lipstick off her teeth. The smell of the Wite-Out merged with the smell of the breath. Joseph looked at Josephine, his face burning with hope, and lunged forward to seize the arm of The Person with Bad Breath.
But the wrist eluded him, the hand fell, the Wite-Out smeared the second row.
The beast had been silent for so long.