1:47 pm, Mountain Standard Time
(2:47 pm, Central Standard Time)
(11:47 am, Alaska Standard Time)
End of the Line, Utah

He closed his eyes and turned his head hard to the side, wishing that he could push it right through the floor, all the way down into the ground where the dead belonged, wishing that this could just be over with already, because he was so very tired of it. So very, very tired of this endless process of learning to be dead.

•

The thing about being dead is, it takes a little while to get used to the idea. You don’t learn that you’re dead all at once. You learn it by stages. You learn it early, perhaps, from Dickie Cotter, when he leans over across the vast gulf of safety separating your desks back in Mrs. Hodgkins’ class while you are bent over your math worksheet, and he pokes you in the arm, hard, and he tells you: “After school, Jack? After school? You’re dead.” That, perhaps, is the first inkling you have, the first realization, that you are dead.

But you don’t die all at once. Not then, and not now. No, you have to get used to the idea first. You have to sit for the rest of the day, wondering what on earth you could possibly have done to arouse the ire of the Torquemada of Lincoln Elementary this time around, able to do nothing but stare helplessly at the clock above the blackboard, and watch the minute hand crawl and the dust motes whirl in the shaft of light from the windows, and listen to the small, worried voice in the back of your mind reciting: “Now you have three hours left to live, that’s not so bad really, that’s a long time...but whoops! Hey, would you look at that? Now you only have two hours and fifty-five minutes left to live! Wow, that was fast! How the hell did that happen?” —and that is when you first learn how it is that time passes for the dead, the way that it seems simultaneously to distend and to contract, warping in all possible directions at once, because time does not make much sense anymore, it doesn’t work in at all the same way that it worked for you when you were still among the living. The time of the living is not the same as the time of the dead.

And that is also when you first learn the way that your stomach feels when you are about to become dead: as if there is something small and desperate and frantic down there—the child, you suppose, that is the father to the ulcer you will develop some twenty years later—something like a small animal caught in a trap, except that you yourself are both animal and trap at once—and its sharp gnawing teeth, too, yes, and the leg that it chews—you are all of these things and more besides; and that is when you also learn about that hard and unyielding thing that lodges in your throat, the thing that later on, once you are well and truly accustomed to being dead, will grow to become the stone that sits heavy on your tongue.

These are the lessons that some people are fortunate enough to learn early. These are the first lessons you must master, when you study the art of being dead.

And when you walk out at the end of that endless day into the bright sunlight that no longer feels or looks very bright at all, then you get to find out what it means when the Bible talks about the sun becoming dark—because it does, you know. It really does do that when you are about to become dead. And when Dickie Cotter is nowhere to be seen and you head for home, hardly daring to believe in your good fortune—this, too, is part of it. The hope is also a part of learning to be dead, because without the hope you will never understand it, not really. Without the hope, you will never understand the true meaning of what it is to die.

And when you decide to take one of two paths home, that is part of it too, an important part: the choice, the illusion of life. It is important because it means that when there they are, not only Dickie Cotter, but Dickie Cotter and his entire cadre of buddies—all of them waiting for you—you get to wonder, you get to ask yourself: if I had taken the other route, would I have been okay? Did I take a wrong turning? Was there something that I could have done differently? Did I bring this upon myself somehow?

This too, this too, is part of learning to be dead.

And then Dickie Cotter’s friends grab you and pin your arms, and you close your eyes—

And then you die.

•

(“But surely, Jack, I mean, surely you didn’t really believe that they were going to kill you, did you? Don’t be ridiculous. They were just bullying you, that's all. It happens to everyone. And honestly, now, what really happened? Were you badly hurt?”)

(“No. I guess not.”)

(No, of course I didn’t really think they were going to kill me, what the fuck do you think? Even little kids, even stupid little kids, aren’t quite that divorced from reality. And no, of course I wasn’t badly hurt. I wasn’t really hurt at all—this was the suburbs, for Christ’s sake. But what difference does that make? Don’t you understand? Don’t you understand anything? I died that day, Lisa. Can’t you see that? Can’t you tell it just from looking at me? I died.)

•

But of course he hadn’t, not really, because you’re never really done learning how to die. You’re never done dying. Not then, and not now. You have to die over and over again. You have to die until you learn to do it right.

It takes a very long time to learn to be dead.

•

He listened to his breath, harsh and ragged and uneven as it choked its way past the stone lodged in his throat, and he felt the small desperate creature clawing around somewhere down there, and he thought:

Holographic molecules. My life is composed of holographic molecules.

•

You’ve got to be joking, right? he asked himself then. I mean, you aren’t seriously equating these two situations, are you? Not really? Honestly? Because I gotta tell you, Bitsumi, that is insane. That is so fucking insane...I can’t even begin to tell you how crazy that is. This guy isn’t a schoolyard bully, for Christ’s sake, he’s the commander of the undead legions of the forces of fucking Darkness, and you are a long, long way from the suburbs here. What, you think he’s bluffing? You think he won’t really do what he’s been oh-so-cleverly threatening you with? He will. He really will hurt you and then, when he gets what he wants out of you, he really will kill you, so why don’t we try not to piss the man off any more than we already have done here, all right? Because I think that maybe some of the things that this guy has working for him might be feeling just a tad peckish, you know what I mean? And I’d rather have a bullet in the head, wouldn’t you? I mean, that’s your win condition in this scenario. You get that, right? That’s about as good as things can get from here on out. So why don’t we just give the man what he wants and get this the fuck over with, because I’ve had just about enough of this ride anyway, and I think that you have as well.

But I can’t, Jack thought. I can’t. I’m already dead. And the dead do not speak.

•

He listened to his breath choking in his throat, and he kept his eyes closed, and he thought: the dead don’t see, either. The dead don’t see. And that was kind of a relief, really, because what the hell was there that he could possibly want to look at here anyway? The bland taupe paint on the walls? The whiteboard? The conference table? Matthias’ ergonomically designed chair?

This really is happening to me, he thought, and not only is this really happening to me, but it is going to happen to me here, in a conference room that looks exactly like every other conference room for every other project that I have ever worked for in my entire fucking life.

But then, he thought, of course it does. Of course of course. What else would it look like? Because once you choose to become a chemist, you leave your principles at the door. Because once you’ve already worked for Dupont, and you’ve worked for Glaxo Wellcom, and you’ve worked for the Federal Government —well, it isn’t really much of a leap from there to working for the forces of Darkness, is it? Not even a step, really. Just more of the same. Just the same old shit. Just like Dickie Cotter was the same old shit. Because history repeats itself. Because life is composed of holographic molecules. Because everything recombines, but nothing ever actually changes. Because this isn’t something that is going to happen to you; this is something that has been happening to you, don’t you get that yet? It’s been happening to you now for a long, long time.

At least the work was interesting, a small and miserable voice in the back of his head said then, while it lasted... and he realized that he must actually still be alive in there somewhere after all, because he found himself in some agreement with that voice. Yeah, he thought, yeah, shit, the work, yeah, I guess I would have at least liked to have finished the fucking job, and he swallowed hard to keep himself from bursting into tears, because it would seem that you could never really be well and truly dead after all. There was always more to learn; there was just never an end to this, to this endless process of learning to be dead.

•

“Jack,” the Chairman said, because they were on a first-name basis now, weren’t they? Ooooh, yes. You bet. Or...well, sort of, anyway. Sort of. It wasn’t exactly a two-way street, of course, but then, how could it be?, since he had no idea what this man’s first name was, nor for that matter even what his surname was—he didn’t have a name, apparently; he was just The Chairman, that was all, and wasn’t that just typical of this entire operation? Of course he would be Just The Chairman, just like of course his office would be carpeted in hard currency—and there was an alligator pit in there too, Bitsumi, he told himself. You just know this guy had to have had one of those in there somewhere. Hell, you were probably standing right on the trap door throughout that entire interview, and the only reason you missed it is because you were too busy wondering what was making that godawful clanking noise. That, and concentrating on not, you know, falling to your knees, or pleading mindlessly for the life that he’d already stolen from you anyway, or God forbid wetting yourself, because, yeah, whatever else you might think about all of the B-movie crap that this asshole likes to surround himself with, it certainly is effective, isn’t it? I mean, you weren’t exactly sniggering back there, when he made you the offer you couldn’t refuse, were you?

No. He had not been. But then, that was just another thing about being dead.

The dead don’t have much of a sense of humor. Things don’t really seem all that funny to you anymore, once you have become dead.

•

It isn’t easy, learning to be dead. It takes practice. You need to die a little bit more each day, just to get the hang of it. You die a little bit every time you return to your empty house after running late that morning and see the single plate and cup still in the sink, and then you die a little bit more when you wonder why you even bother to keep more than one plate and one cup in the house in the first place. You get some good practice in dying when for the first time in fifteen years, a woman comes back to your house with you after dinner, and suddenly you see it all through her eyes: the spotlessness, and the sterility, and the one worn spot on the couch, and the vast collection of videocassettes. You get some good practice in dying when you realize that you have somehow become forty-three years old.

These things help you to get yourself in training. They help to prepare you. They till the soil. They help to ensure that when you finally are carried off from the lands of the living and taken for good to the lands of the dead, it doesn’t come as too much of a shock. They help to make you a suitable candidate for membership in the ranks of the walking dead.

Because there was a profile here, wasn’t there? Yes, there was: a profile of the walking dead. No spouse, no children, no family, no friends—you start to notice the profile, and suddenly you realize that you really have been dead for quite a while longer than even you had ever fully realized. You notice the profile, and suddenly you realize that while you may have thought that you were leading a safe life for all those years, there was really nothing safe about it—all that time you were sowing the wind, just sowing the wind. Because there is a natural predator for every prey, and your safe safe life only served to attract the attention of the masters of the dead, to attract them as powerfully and inexorably as the flower attracts the bee. You sow the wind, and you reap the whirlwind; you lead the life of the dead while you still walk among the living, and you make it inevitable that eventually you will be dragged off to the lands of the walking dead, where truly, you have always really belonged.

You realize that you have finally come to the lands of the dead when you are first introduced to your colleagues here, and you notice how pale they all are. If you hadn’t fully comprehended the situation before, one look at that pallor ought to suffice to get the message across. It tells you everything that you need to know about being dead: that you don’t get many vacations in the Bahamas in this line of work, nor do you pick up your paycheck at the end of the week and go home to your wife and kiddies—ha ha, as if you had any anyway. All it takes is one look at the pallor of your fellow dead men, and you know exactly where you are. You know, for example, that you are never going to have to look for another job, or for that matter, worry overmuch about the grocery shopping, or about remembering to pay the utility bill on time. You are never going to have to call the plumber again, or pick up your suit at the dry-cleaners, or pay the overdue fines on those library books that you’re pretty sure you left sitting stacked on the end table in the living room. You probably won’t have to worry about much when it comes to love, either—but you know, there are compensations, there are compensations. At least you will never again have to kneel before that fat prick Hoover in his ridiculous tricked-out basement, not now that you have finally come to the lands of the dead.

You have ended with all of that. You have reached a stopping point. You have come to End of the Line.

•

They were all dead here, of course. All of them. Wu, who had gone in a car wreck, and Pataki, in some bus accident, and that slimy bastard Fields, who everyone said had a secret ambition to become one of the real undead—I mean, Jesus!—and poor little Goldstein, whose recruitment officer—that was actually what they called them here, “recruitment officers,” and every time Jack heard that he wanted to scream at them: “Abductor, you assholes! For God’s sake, call a spade a spade, will you? Abductor. Kidnapper. Undead fiend from hell! What is wrong with you people?” —and poor little Goldstein, whose recruitment officer had pushed him so hard, or so in the wrong way, or so...so something that he still had these spells occasionally where he would go all vacant and start mumbling about having to “serve the Master,” and wouldn’t be quite himself again until someone had given him a good hard slap in the face and then made him drink a cup of coffee black.

All of them, dead. Unpersons. And he himself now an unperson among unpersons, which if you believed that two negatives made a positive ought to restore him miraculously to the land of the living, but which actually, he figured, was a lot more likely to turn him into just a plain old run-of-the-mill corpse.

•

Oh, but not quite yet, Bitsumi, some sane and frightened voice in the back of his head now told him. Not quite yet, I don’t think. You’ve got quite a road ahead of you before you get there, so just why the fuck aren’t you answering this man’s questions? Are you crazy? Do you want him to hurt you? What is wrong with you?

What’s wrong with me? Jack thought. Nothing. Nothing’s wrong with me. I’m just dead, that’s all. And the dead do not speak. The dead have come to an end. The dead have nothing left to say.

•

“Jack,” the Chairman was saying—and my God, did this son of a bitch love to hear himself talk—“Jack,” because they were on a first-name basis now, weren’t they? Ooooh, yes. That they were. Naturally. He guessed that he probably wasn’t going to warrant a surname again for quite some time now, if ever—although hey, he told himself, hey, you just never know, do you? You might very well get it back. Later, perhaps, once he’s broken you completely and you’re sobbing for relief or for mercy or maybe just for a fucking glass of water, then you might get it back. I mean, why look on the dark side here, after all? Why not be optimistic? It’s even possible that once he gets tired of straining his ears to make out what your cracked and ruined voice is trying to whisper to him, he could even give you your doctorate back. So cheer up, bucko.

Yeah. Yeah, sure. In fact, he could just hear that horrible tone of spurious sympathy now. “Matthias,” the Chairman would say, “why don’t you go get Dr. Bitsumi here a glass of water?"—the title awarded ostensibly as a reward for compliance, but actually just to drive the point home even further, the brutal irony of the hand that holds the whip: now that you have not a shred of dignity left, you may enjoy contemplating just how hollow a trapping of that dignity your title always was. It was the same old shit again, the same old same old, the holographic molecules. They took away your power, and they gave you a reputation. They took away your freedom, and they gave you a salary. They took away your principles, and they gave you a dogma. And in the end, of course, they took away everything. And they gave you nothing, absolutely nothing in return.

These are the things that you understand, Jack thought. These are the things that you finally come to understand, when you have been studying the art of being dead.

Not, he thought then, not that knowing any of that actually helps.

•

To learn to be dead, you need to pay attention. You need to learn to see. You need to learn to recognize the power that the living have over the dead, and you need to come to know the feel of that power, what it looks like, how it smells. You need to come to know the meaning of the casual touch, the contemptuous smile, the faux-camaraderie of the bully, the arm around the shoulder—just a bit too high up, just a bit too close to your neck for comfort. You need to know the sound of the question that is phrased as a command. You need to learn that you never escape the playground. You need to grasp the concept of the holographic molecule. Understanding these things is an important part of being dead.

To learn to be dead, you need to listen to that bastard Hoover tell his racist jokes over his sherry, and you need to look around the room at all of the little mini-vacs—the dust-busters, the Hooverettes, the cheering squad—all of them with big shit-eating grins on their faces, and you need to want to say: “Hey, Hoover. Did it ever once occur to you that I am not precisely white myself? I mean, is it really possible that this fact has escaped your notice?” And then you need to realize that no, it has not escaped his notice, very far from it. And then you want to pay attention to the big shit-eating grin on your own face, because there is a lesson to be learned there, a very important lesson, perhaps the most important lesson of all.

Namely, that the dead—as has been mentioned—the dead do not speak.

The dead comply. But they do not speak.

•

The dead do not speak, although they can often think of things that they would dearly love to say. But it is not the place of the dead to emulate the ways of the living. To be dead, you need to learn this. You need to learn to recognize the contempt behind the smile on the young undergraduate’s face when she leans way over your desk in your office to ask for a make-up exam, and you have to feel yourself wanting to tell her: “Yeah, okay, I’ll tell you what, why don’t you show me the eighth of an inch of your tits that you haven’t already flashed in my face, and then get down on your knees right here and now and blow me, okay? And then, if you swallow, maybe then we can talk about your make-up exam.” You need not only to think this, but also to know exactly why you want to say it, and you also need to know that you never ever will say it, and you also need to understand all of the reasons why you never ever will say any such thing.

Once you come to understand all of that, then you are well on your way to becoming dead.

•

(“The thing is, Jack, that you can’t possibly really understand the patriarchy. You can’t understand it because you’re a part of it. You do see that, don’t you?”)

(“Yes, Lisa. I suppose you’re right. I guess I really don’t understand it.”)

(For Christ’s sake, Lisa, the patriarchy? What in God’s name could someone like you possibly know about the patriarchy? I understand it, okay? I know what it is. It is the thing that is killing me. The patriarchy is murder on someone like me, so please don’t lecture me about the fucking patriarchy, Lisa, because for me, it is not a subject for academic discussion. It is my life, and it has been the death of me, so please. For God’s sake. Just. Don’t.)

•

He listened to the blood pound in his ears and his gasping choked breathing, and he waited for the Chairman to finish his sentence. He thought: he’s going to finish that sentence soon, and when he does, he will wait for you to answer him, and that’s going to be your last chance. He will wait for—how long? Thirty seconds? A minute? How long will he allow the silence to drag out before he meets Matthias’ eyes, or raises his hand, or his eyebrow—before he gives the order for it to start? Will he leave the room, do you think? Will that be the dynamic here; will he make himself your protector? How long will it take, do you think, before you come to accept him as whatever it is that he wants you to think of him as? Not very long, I don’t think. Not very long at all. Because you’ve always been easy that way, haven’t you, Jack? So very, very easy that way.

The problem with understanding things, Jack thought, is that it makes you complicit. It destroys not only your innocence, but also your resistance. Knowledge does not belong to the strong, or to the innocent. Knowledge belongs only to the weak, and to the guilty. And to the dead. To the dead as well. Because the dead are never innocent. The dead are not permitted to be innocent.

•

You know that you are really dead when you read your own obituary, read it in a newspaper thrown down in front of your morning coffee—and it is good coffee, too, because the food in the lands of the dead always is, you know. It always is good, even if it doesn’t have much flavor, even if it all tastes of nothing but dust and ashes, because how else could it taste, after all, to a dead man?—nonetheless, you suppose that the food that they give you here is good.

The newspaper is thrown down in front of your morning coffee with a friendly grin from another dead man who says, “Hey, Bitsumi, wanna read your obituary?” as if this is a normal thing to say, you know, a pleasantry, like “good morning” or “how about that Twins game, huh?”—but then, of course, it is. It is a normal thing to say when you are living among the walking dead.

You look down at the newspaper, and it takes you a few minutes even to understand what you are seeing there, because this is an article about hundreds of people dying—not just one, not just you—but then you see that your name is there—yes, there it is—and you think: so they knew somehow that the plane would go down? And because they somehow knew that was going to happen, they got my name on the roster? But how could they have known that? I mean, how could they possibly have anticipated...

And then your hands have started to shake, because really, you know perfectly well what has happened here, but at the same time, you are still thinking: Oh, but surely not! Surely, I mean, surely...

And then suddenly you realize that maybe you aren’t completely dead yet after all—because there just never is an end, is there? There never is an end to this business of becoming dead—because your hands can barely even hold the newspaper anymore, they are shaking so badly, and you are thinking: but why? I mean, for God’s sake, all of those people, women and children and...why? Just to get...just to bring...I mean, for God’s sake, what ever happened to chloroform and a bag over the head and a little spot of arson? What a waste, what a fucking waste...and you don’t even realize that you are speaking out loud at first, but then you begin to hear yourself, repeating over and over again in a low rapid whisper:

“Oh my God, I, oh, Jesus, that’s...all those people, that’s...oh, my God...” and you have somehow dropped the newspaper, and then you can hear behind you someone saying, “What the fuck are you showing him that for? It’s his first week, for Christ’s sake,” and you hear someone else saying, “Get Fields,” and then someone is rolling up your sleeve and that bastard Fields is there, tapping on the inside of your elbow and telling you: “I’m just prescribing a little sedative for you, Jack. Just for today, all right?” And then he leans over and whispers in your ear: “You’ve got to keep it together, Jack. They’re watching your performance, do you get me?”

And of course they are. Of course they are. Why should the lands of the dead be any different from anyplace else?

“You don’t want to let your performance slip, you get me?” Fields whispers to you as he slips the needle into your arm—he barely even moves his lips when he speaks, because that is just the way that people talk here, that is the custom of these inmates of the houses of the dead—“It’s tough at first, I know,” he tells you, in that smarmy voice, “but—” and you think: But? But what?

But the answer is clear enough, really. But you get used to it, of course. You get used to it. It just takes a little while, that’s all. It just takes a little while to get used to being dead.

•

“Jack,” the Chairman was saying, and then “blah blah blah, Jack, blah blah blah blah blah—and never mind the details, because what did the details matter, after all? What possible difference could it make to a dead man just how cleverly he was being threatened with torment and death this time around? I mean, really, who the fuck cared?

What a prick this man is, Jack thought. What a complete and utter prick.

But then, that was axiomatic. He was a magician, after all. All magicians were pricks.

Prick or not, that sane and now very frightened voice in the back of his mind told him: Prick or not, I really do think that you’d better talk to him. You’d really better do it soon. Because you do hear that smarmy tone of bogus sympathy in his voice, don’t you? Even if you’re refusing to listen to the words, you do hear the tone, right? And you know what that means, don’t you, that tone? That tone means that you are running out of time.

Yes. Jack agreed. The bogus sympathy was definitely a bad sign. There was a routine here, he thought, a set sequence to the way that the gloves were to be taken off. It was a dance, the Chairman’s dance, the dance of the Seven Veils, being performed here just for his very own benefit, except that what was being veiled in this case was not a threat but a reality; and the first name had come out of the woodwork, and that was the first veil, and then the touching—that hand on his shoulder, that poke on his chest, that calm cold assurance of power, that touch which says: “This? This thing? Your body? You think that it’s inviolate? You think that it’s yours? You’d better think again”—the touching, yeah, that was a second veil, and then...well, let’s be frank here, Bitsumi, he told himself. Once they’re throwing you onto the floor? Once they’re holding you down and ripping your socks off? That’s a whole bunch of veils right there; that’s a whole lotta veils all at once; that’s not even a veil anymore; that’s an entire garment, right, because this guy isn’t exactly one of your high-class strippers. He’s a fucking exhibitionist, this man is, and you don’t really have a single veil left. You haven’t for some time. The only reason that he’s still talking to you at all is because the man is simply in love with the sound of his own voice. That’s it. Well...that, and also because this sort of thing is like a kind of a game to guys like him. It’s like a challenge, you know? It’s just like (holographic molecules holographic molecules) grade school, where if you can punch the fat kid in the arm and make him cry, that’s good, but if you can get him there just by threatening him, that’s even better—it’s worth more points or something in the strange and brutal and arcane scoring system of the living—but worth even more points? The equivalent of shooting the fucking moon? That’s when you can make the little cretin snivel just by threatening him...and then find some excuse to pummel the shit out of him anyway.

And that’s just where this is going, Jack thought. That is exactly where this is going. Because even if you start talking right now, there are things that this man will never believe. Because he is a magician, and all magicians are pricks, and one of the things that makes magicians pricks is that they all have these little sayings, these little aphorisms that they like nothing better than to shove down your throat at every given opportunity. And one of those sayings? One of their favorite ones? One of the all-time favorites of all of the prick magicians in the world? The one that they all just love?

“There are no coincidences.”

They love that saying. They love it, and they believe it, and you really are in so much trouble here, because while we all know that it’s impossible to prove a negative proposition according to the laws of logic, we left the realms of logic behind a long, long time ago. We are now traveling in the land of coercion, and this land has its own special brand of logic, its own rules and its own laws, and according to those laws, you can prove any sort of proposition you damned well please, just so long as you put a little bit of effort into it. It just takes a little time, that’s all. A little time, and a little effort, and a whole fuckload of human misery, and oh, Jack, he thought, feeling his shoulders begin to shake helplessly against Matthias’ knees and realizing that he must have started to weep. Oh, Jack, you are in so much trouble here; he is going to factor that fucking P of his right through the goddamned roof before he’s done with you.

•

He tried to turn his head even further to the side, not able to stand it, somehow, the idea of them watching his face while he did this, even though he knew that they must be doing just that, because the Chairman had—will wonders never cease?—actually stopped talking; and then he tried to raise his arms, pushing feebly against Matthias’ knees, only wanting to cover his face, because this was just dying all over again, doing this in front of these assholes, having them watch him do this, having them take their gratification from watching him do this.

The dead feel no shame, he reminded himself. The dead feel no shame...—and then the pressure that had been digging into his shoulders all of this time and forcing the small of his back against the floor at just the wrong angle suddenly released as Matthias clambered off of him, because apparently they had decided that it was enough for now, enough humiliation for the time being; they were not actually going to force him to lie there on his back, sobbing in terror while they loomed over him scrutinizing his face.

He covered his face with his hands, and he thought: you aren’t really feeling gratitude right now for this minor consideration, are you, Bitsumi? Please. Please tell me that you aren’t. Please tell me that we aren’t really going to play the game quite this according to Hoyle. Please tell me that you aren’t really so utterly, so totally fucking predictable.

But he was, of course. He was. Because the dead were just like that. The dead were always predictable.

•

You cannot be truly dead until you have finally accepted the fact that your life is composed of holographic molecules, that in your beginning is your end, that you will never change, that you will never be able to become unpredictable. Unpredictability is for the living, not for the dead. It is unwise for the dead to presume to imitate the ways of the living.

When you have finally come to the lands of the dead, you will meet kind guides who will help you to understand this. You will know that you can trust them, because they have been dead even longer than you have; they have far more experience than you ever will with this complicated business of being dead. The kind guides of the newly dead will explain it all to you. They will gaze into your eyes as they speak, as they explain to you just how confused you have been, and how misled, and how betrayed.

There are kind guides to the lands of the dead who can help you to reinterpret your memories, to learn to recognize what you had thought was kindness as calculation, and devotion as manipulation, and reciprocity as seduction, and love as betrayal.

There are kind guides to the lands of the dead who can help you to understand that the only act of courage or grandeur or worth or merit that you have ever committed in your entire life was not in fact your own action at all, but merely the extension of somebody else’s will.

There are kind guides to the lands of the dead who can help you to foreswear unpredictability.

There are kind guides to the lands of the dead who can help you to become dead.

•

He sat on the floor of the conference room, trying to stop crying, because for Christ’s sake, he was a grown man, wasn’t he?—and no matter how predictable this reaction might be, no matter how much he knew that it was just what they had wanted and just what they had been after, that knowledge didn’t really help in the least; it didn’t make it any less embarrassing.

A hand squeezed his shoulder gently, and he did not flinch.

“Jack,” the Chairman said, and even though the dead do not hear, the dead do not hear, somehow he managed to make out the rest of the sentence. “Why don’t you tell me about it?”

Gently—of course, it would be gently now, wouldn’t it? Compassionately—yes, yes, of course. Lovingly, even—and even knowing, even knowing what that was all about, it didn’t matter, because knowledge really didn’t make a damned bit of difference in a situation like this. Even knowing exactly what the point of all of this was, it still had its effect, just like Pavlov and his dogs: it made him sob even harder.

Oh, you prick, Jack thought. Oh, you miserable little prick. Yeah. You’re good at that, aren’t you? That sympathetic tone. That compassionate little squeeze. It might even be convincing, he thought, it might be, it might be, if only I hadn’t fallen for it before. If only you hadn’t killed me at least once that way already. Or had you forgotten? Or do you think, somehow, that those weren’t really your hands at all, the ones that led me here?

Do you even know, he wondered then, do you even realize that they are all your hands? Matthias’ cold implacable little hand, and Dr. Fields’ nimble fingers, and little Goldstein’s sweaty palms, and Norbert’s...and Norbert’s...

(the compassionate little squeeze, yes, and even more: the gentle caress, the fingers that brush so softly over your face, and you think, no one has ever touched me like that before, no one will ever touch me like that again, as if there might be actual regard there, you know—as ridiculous as that may sound, as absurd a thing as that may have been for a dead man to have believed even for a moment—as if there might be respect there, as if there might be tenderness, as if there might be desire, as if there might even be love. But anyone can touch like that, can’t they? Anyone can learn to lie with a touch. Anyone can exploit a weakness as obvious and as pathetic and as hopeless as loneliness. It’s easy, isn’t it? Sure it is. Just as easy as exploiting terror. Anyone can do it. Anyone can take advantage of someone who has already been dead for years)

Jack swallowed, and he thought: they’re all your hands, all of them, and I don’t even think that you appreciate that fact. The left hand yours and the right hand yours, the iron fist and the velvet glove, the hand that dangles the carrot and the hand that wields the stick, and even mine, even my own hands, these hands trembling now on my face, these hands that perhaps later you will decide to have damaged, when you finally lose patience with my silence, ordering the fingers broken or cut or smashed, the nails pulled—but of course, of course, you can do with them as you like, can’t you? That is your prerogative. They are, after all, your hands.

Just ask your Manitou, if you don’t believe me, he thought. If you really don’t believe me, then maybe you should go ask Runs With Nightmares whose hands it thinks these really are.

Even my hands, Jack thought, even my hands aren’t mine anymore. They haven’t been mine in years. They’ve been Dupont’s hands, and they’ve been Glaxo Wellcom’s hands, and they’ve been the hands of the Federal Government. They’ve been the hands of Herschberg University, and of its Chemistry Department. They’ve been Hoover’s hands, and they’ve been the hands of the angel Yabukie; they have been God’s hands, and if you ask me, they’ve been the Devil’s hands as well. And Lisa would probably say that they’ve been the hands of the patriarchy, although she would never admit just to what extent they’ve also been her hands. And now they’re your hands, Chairman, my hands are yours, they belong to you, and I don’t even think that you appreciate them. I don’t even think that you fucking appreciate that fact.

•

He struggled to get himself under control, only vaguely aware that he was being helped up, being seated, returned to the chair: his reward, he supposed, for having broken down so very cooperatively, having humiliated himself so perfectly on cue. Go ahead, he thought. Put me anywhere you like. It isn’t really my body anymore anyway, if it ever really was. It belongs to me as little as my hands do.

I am the dead, Jack thought, and the dead own nothing. Not their hands, not their bodies, not their labor, not their minds, not their hearts, not even their souls. The dead own nothing. And I have been dead for a long time now. I have moved among the living, yes, but I myself have been dead. It just took me a little while to realize it, that was all. It just took a little bit of help. It just took your kind assistance.

•

“Why don’t you tell me about it?” the Chairman asked him softly, in that gentle, that compassionate, that understanding tone of voice, and Jack thought:

Oh, if I could tell you. If I could tell you. The things that I could tell you. The things that I could tell you, if only the dead could speak.

Because in the end, being dead has nothing to do with whether the heart continues to beat, or the breath continues to fill the lungs. It has nothing to do with pain, and it has nothing to do with despair. Death is knowledge. The dead know things that the living cannot guess, but what the dead have learned, they cannot tell. There are no words, there are no words for the things that the dead know.

•

The dead know many things, not least of which what it is like to die. The dead know what it is like to balk suddenly, some part of your brain screaming at the sight, at the realization, at the sudden knowledge of just what it is that you are being called upon to do, what it is that you are about to be forced to do. The dead know what it is like when you hear your own voice—and you don’t even recognize it, it sounds so little like anything that you have ever imagined your voice to be, but of course this makes sense, because you are thinking of your living voice, not of the voice that belongs to you when you are about to die—that voice that comes out in a high whinnying babble of nonsense: Norbert, I can’t do this, please, please just listen to me, please, I’m sorry but I just can’t, I really just can’t, please don’t ask this of me, please...

The dead have heard themselves plead, and the dead have known that it will not matter, and the dead have known that in the end, they will act willingly. Because this too is a part of being dead, this realization: that you will always be called upon to comply with your own destruction. So long as coercion is absolute, you have not really died at all. Until you have become complicit in your own demise, you cannot really know what it means to be dead.

The dead know these things, and more besides. They understand how it is that one can be both living and dead at the same time. They know what it is like when your mind simply splits in two: one half, the living half, the half that is about to die, screaming and wailing and clawing as it feels the lurch of the undercarriage and the nauseating lift of the aircraft—you imagine it as an animal trapped in there, much like the animal in your stomach; you imagine it leaving bloody claw marks on your brain as it howls and it babbles and it scrabbles desperately for escape—and then the half of you that died years and years ago, the half that doesn’t really care anymore, the half that is still pretending to think that the creature beside you is a genuine person, the half that gazes into his eyes as he murmurs “relax, Jack, just relax” and wants very badly to touch him, the half that is perfectly content to sit back and watch the other half die.

•

And the dead have learned to recognize when parts of them have been well and truly killed. You learn it when they put you on a plane to Utah, and you stare listlessly out the window as the Nome airfield shrinks in size, buildings and automobiles and landed bi-planes becoming toy-like, unreal, and all of the houses of the town laid out beneath you like a map, and then the clouds covering and obscuring everything; and when there is sudden turbulence, when the plane shudders and drops, and Goldstein gasps, and Pataki turns pale, and Fields starts handing out the Dramamine, you just shrug and say: no thanks, I’m okay, thanks, no.

And you learn it also when Wu complains about this house in Utah being like a monastery, and Fields tries to explain to you exactly what the policies here are—they’re really very considerate, he is trying to tell you, because they understand that people have certain needs...—and you listen and try to imagine feeling those needs that he is talking about, feeling lust, feeling desire; you try to imagine ever wanting particularly to touch or to smell or to taste someone again. It is something that once had meaning for you, you are almost certain, but the only response you seem to be able to muster for the entire concept is a vague and unspecified distaste.

There are little deaths that exist to prepare you for an eternity of being dead, and some of them are hardly cause for regret, and others perhaps are—or would be, if only you were still alive enough to care about them. This is something else that the dead learn. This is something else that the dead know.

•

He really doesn’t want to hear about being dead, Jack, the voice of sanity told him then. He doesn’t really care about that at all, you know. He already knows everything that he thinks he needs to know about that: namely, that it is something you do to other people, or something that you threaten to do to them in order to make them do what you want. Okay? That’s about the extent of his interest in the lives of the dead. That isn’t what he is asking you about.

He wants to know about Montauk, Jack, that voice continued patiently. He wants to hear about the failed Doorways. He wants to know about the PMD80. He wants you to confirm for him that this isn’t really the first shape-shifter that you’ve seen. And he wants to know exactly which of the Benandanti you are. And once you get into that...well, he’s going to want to know everything. About the lost writings of the last prophet of Yabukie, and about the Great Call, and about the midwifery of the Divine Child. He’s going to want to know names and places and dates and facts, and then he’s going to want to know who sent you here and why—and because he’s a magician and doesn’t believe in coincidence, that could get a little sticky, sure, but no stickier than things are going to get if you just sit there refusing to speak. I mean, why are you doing this? To protect that bastard Hoover and all of his little dustbusters? You must be joking. If you’re going to stand on principle, Jack, then it might as well be a principle that you actually believe in, don’t you think?

But that isn’t the point, Jack thought. The point is that none of those things is important. None of those things really matters. The things that really matter, he thought, the only things that matter are the things I cannot tell. The things that matter are the things that only the dead have seen.

If I could tell you, Jack thought, no longer weeping but now trembling, eyes tightly shut, gripping the armrests of the chair. If I could tell you what the dead know, it would freeze your blood cold.

But you would never understand it. Even if I could speak it, you wouldn’t understand it. Because you are a magician, and all magicians are pricks, and one of the things that makes magicians pricks is that they all have those little sayings; and one of those sayings might be “there are no coincidences,” but the other one? The other big one? The other one that you people all adore?

“Knowledge is power.”

But knowledge is not power. It is nothing like power. If knowledge were really power—well, we wouldn’t be having this little encounter in the first place, now, would we?

Knowledge and power are always opposed. Power belongs to the living, while knowledge belongs to the dead. Power belongs to the strong, while knowledge belongs to the weak. Power can command knowledge, and it can commission knowledge, and it can destroy knowledge. But it is not knowledge, and no one who believes that it is will ever understand a thing that the dead have to say.

Calling knowledge power, Jack thought, that’s just as ridiculous as calling the millstone the grain. As calling the bee the flower. As calling the anvil the hammer. You might as well say that the stone is the same as the jug. You might as well say, he thought, you might as well say that the hand that moves the pieces is the same as the pieces themselves—or the same as the board, for that matter, the board itself, the board that is always, always trampled underfoot.

These are the things that the dead know.

•

To be dead is to understand that the Chairman is Dickie Cotter. That working for Dupont is working for Glaxo Wellcom is working for the Federal Government is working for the forces of Darkness. That knowledge is not power. That you have always been meant to live among the walking dead. That indeed, indeed, there are no coincidences. That the mills that grind the souls of men do not belong to God.

To be dead is to realize that where you are now is where you have always been, to look deep within and to see, to see that life is composed of holographic molecules, that in your beginning is your end, that nothing ever changes, that history does not just repeat itself—it is itself.

To be dead is to accept historical inevitability.

To be dead is to realize that what you had thought was your one last desperate attempt to join the land of the living was actually nothing more than the last step that would finally bring you straight to the lands of the dead.

To be dead is to understand that this is the way it must have gone.

To be dead is to appreciate dramatic irony.

•

The dead understand these things because they have seen. They first saw it all those years ago, the first time they died, when they looked into Dickie Cotter’s banally malicious smile and saw the heavens open, the clouds part, and the false blue sky rip aside to reveal that beyond that facade there is not an uncaring clockwork mechanism, nor a benevolent deity, nor nothing but darkness, nor anything like light, but rather something older and far more dreadful than any of these things: something that operates on a principle of irony without humor, understanding without empathy, comprehension without charity, equilibrium without equity; something colder than light and more cruel than darkness; something that exists to punish not sin, but weakness. Something that ensures that every man meet his own particular dread, that seeks out in every individual his one deepest vulnerability and then pushes there, hard. Something that exists to mete out to every man not justice—

Not justice at all—

Not justice—

But Nemesis.

•

To be dead is to come at last to accept that nearly all of your life has been an attempt to deny that single moment of vision, as if having once seen the stars, you resolved never again to go out of your house at night, to step out of doors only when the sun blazed in the sky overhead. You have turned to science, which keeps you inside and claims that the stars do not exist. You have turned to religion, which lets you out only during the day and insists that the sun can banish the stars. But the stars are not banished. They are always there. They are there when you are inside, and they are still there even when the sun shines high in the sky. Just because you can’t see the stars doesn’t mean they aren’t there. The stars are there. The stars are always there. The stars are there forever.

•

Oh God, Jack thought. Why am I doing this? Why am I going to let this happen to me? Why doesn’t somebody stop me?

•

•

•

(continued)

•

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