“There were a lot of us. It wasn’t just me.”
“You’re willing to tell that to a judge?”
“Yes.”
“And you’ll give us the names of the others?”
“Of course.”
“Because we don’t want you. You know that, right?”
“I know.”
“You’ll get off, no charge.”
“I know. That’s why I’m here.”
“Ok, tell me again. How did it start?”
Joy adjusted her position on the cold plastic seat.
“I heard about the job from a friend.”
“Job?”
“Yes.”
“That’s what it was to you?”
“Yes.”
“I thought it was an ideology?”
“Not to me. If it was an ideology do you really think I’d sell it out?”
“I guess not. Carry on.”
“I heard about the job from a friend. It was around Christmas time and I needed the money.”
“A year ago?”
“Two years ago. You think I got all those bodies in and out, without anyone knowing, in a year? It takes time.”
“Of course. Carry on.”
“It was around Christmas time and I needed the money. It seemed like an easy job. We were just there to identify them before their family or next of kin did. It seemed like the right thing to do. To make people happy. Instead of their lives changing forever, right then and there. You ever have a loved one die, Special Agent?”
“Call me Powell. My father died when I was in my thirties. I get it.”
“Special Agent Powell, how would you feel if your father hadn’t died in your thirties? If he was still alive today? If you could still call him up, or hug him, or make him laugh, or take care of him? All the things you miss that you never knew you would.
What if you never even knew he had died? He just came home from work, same as always, kissed your mother on the cheek and told her he loved her. She would never know that his heart had stopped, or he was hit by a car, or stabbed by an insane man who was never caught. How would you feel?”
“I’d be happy about it. I mean, I wouldn’t know about it. So I wouldn’t be unhappy.”
“Unhappy like you are now, right? That’s why I took the job. I thought I was doing some good. I thought I was helping people.”
“I don’t think anyone’s going to put your empathy on trial, Ms White.”
“Joy.”
“Joy. Right. So, how did it work?”
“Well, like I said, we were there to identify them.”
“In the morgue?”
“Sometimes the morgue, sometimes in the hospital. It was Christmas so it was a busy time. Drunks, accidents, suicides.”
“How did you identify them?”
“Photographs. Online. It’s easy.”
“Ok, and then what?”
“They gave us a number to call.”
“Local number?”
“Yes, a 555 number. We’d call and give a name, and a few details, and they would give us instructions.”
“Us?”
“There were a few of us. I told you. A lot of us at that time, actually. Like I said, it was the holidays.”
“Right.”
“And then we would get these little hexagonal pods.”
“How did you get them?”
“From the hospital staff, the morgue staff.”
“Not from the organization’s directors?”
“No, they never came. Well, not at the beginning. I guess they didn’t want to draw any attention, at first. They were delivered by the hospital’s mailroom. Or the morgue’s.”
“I didn’t know morgues had mailrooms.”
“I don’t know, staff.”
“Ok. And what was in the pods?”
“Another life. That’s what I was told. A new life. Another chance.”
“You weren’t skeptical?”
“I just thought it was science. I thought it was a bold new discovery. A technological advancement. I thought maybe it was a trial and then they’d go public.”
“A two year trial?”
“I thought we were doing something good. I didn’t have any reason to question it. And I didn’t realize it had been going on so long.”
“How long?”
“I don’t know.”
“But how long is so long?”
“Longer than I had anything to do with it. Longer than anyone I worked with knew.”
“Tell me who you worked with.”
“Names?”
“Names, roles, positions in the organization. Who called the shots?”
“I didn’t meet anyone in the organization until later. Do you want me to jump to that?”
“No. No, keep going. From where you were.”
“Ok, well–”
“Wait. How many? Would you say? Bodies. Over that time?”
“I mean… hundreds. Five or six a day. For two years.”
“Thousands?”
“Sure. And that’s just me. There were a lot of us. Especially around the holidays. And more in other hospitals, morgues, other towns, other states, other countries. You couldn’t believe how many.”
“Ok. Go back to where you were. You’d get the pods of… life, and then what?”
“Well, we had doctors, or, I guess, surgeons, who were on the payroll too.”
“How did you know they were on the payroll?”
“They didn’t ask any questions. They knew what they were doing. We would leave the pods on the bodies and write out instructions. The name, the background, the family. How they died, what they’d need fixed to be believable.”
“Believable?”
“So their families would accept them. No questions. Sometimes it was just warming up their skin so they didn’t look dead anymore. Sometimes it was rebuilding an entire face or leg or part of the body.”
“Ok.”
“And then we’d move onto the next one, and the surgeons would come in, and take away the body with the instructions, and the pod, and the next thing we knew they were up and walking out of there. Like nothing ever happened. Not a care in the world. Whistling a merry ol’ tune. Like they never even died. You can see why I did it.”
“I can, Ms White. Joy. I’m not going to question your intentions. Please, keep going.”
“So, I did it for about a year. Other people came and went. There were always a lot of us during busy seasons and less when it was quiet. I was never the only one but I did it the longest, and most consistently, for a whole year.”
“And then what?”
“That’s what I’m getting to. I think it’s because I was there so long that I got a visit from one of the directors.”
“Ok. Now we’re getting somewhere.”
“Right. It was about a year later, around Christmas time again. Another busy season. I was surprised that he would visit me during such a busy season. You’d think it would be busy for them too. But anyway, he visited.”
“Who’s he?”
“Frank. Cross. Doctor Cross.”
The agent nodded.
“You know him, Agent Powell?”
“We’ve been following his activity for a while. We don’t know him. I mean, you just confirmed him, or what we were thinking about him.”
“He’s quite high up.”
“I know. Well, we thought so.”
“You know a lot, Agent Powell. Why do you need me?”
“To testify, Ms White. You’re a witness. Please, continue.”
“It’s Joy. I don’t want to get in any trouble for this.”
“There’s no trouble, Joy. Please, you were saying?”
“Frank, Doctor Cross, visited. And he told me I was doing a wonderful job. He told me I was helping the human race to… survive. That I was part of the greatest scientific advancement to benefit mankind since antiseptics, he said. The greatest advancement to our health.
He asked me if I wanted to learn more about it and I said yes, of course! I knew how much good I was doing. Or, at least, thought I was doing. Every single one of those dead men and women and children got up and walked out of there like nothing ever happened.
I saw the dead rise, Agent Powell. Human invincibility. A guarantee that we would exist forever. I was elated. I felt like a god. No, no, I wasn’t a god. He was a god. Doctor Cross. I was god’s helper.”
“I understand. Please, carry on with the story, Joy.”
“He asked me if I wanted to know more about it. I had never asked any questions. I think he asked me because I had never asked any questions. So, I said of course! Of course, I would. I wanted to know all about it. I had been working in that hospital and that morgue for a full year by then. I saw so much death, and so much life! I didn’t think it was possible. Of course I wanted to know why.
He told me to follow him, so I did. I remember his limp and I wondered what had caused it. I asked him, much later of course, after I had known him for a while. And he told me how it happened. He should have lost his leg. He should have lost his life. But they had fixed it.
He said what I was doing in the hospital and the morgue was the same thing they did to him, decades ago. Long before I started working for the organization. He had another life. I couldn’t believe it. But that’s the whole thing, you didn’t have to believe it. It was right there in front of you. You didn’t even question it.”
“You said this was much later. Please, Joy, don’t leave anything out. Go back to when you first met in the hospital. What happened after that?”
“I thought he was going to take me to a lab, or a facility, somewhere in the hospital. But we went outside. And it was freezing cold. It was the holidays, after all.
He had a car waiting and I was as bundled up as I could be in my little sweater. I hadn’t thought to bring my coat because I didn’t know we were going outside. He opened the car door and I could feel the warmth coming out of it, so I climbed in. It was one of those very long cars that had a lot of space, so he sat at the back and I sat along one of the sides.
I remember he didn’t say anything to the driver, they just started driving. I was still all bundled up trying to shake off the cold, because it was really cold that Christmas. And he offered me a warm drink, so I took it.”
“What drink?”
“Something sweet. Like warm eggnog. But very, very sweet. I couldn’t drink it all because it was so sweet it hurt my teeth. He had one too and drank it down in one go. And then he had another. It wasn’t too sweet for him, I remember thinking that. And by the time I had warmed up, we were there. Well, we were somewhere.
I remember there was no music in the car. I always have the radio on when I drive but I remember there was no music, there was just this kind of hum that was kind of melodic. I liked it. I only remember it because it stopped when the car turned off and they opened the door.
We must’ve been in a parking garage or something because it wasn’t cold out there when they opened it. And I must’ve been exhausted or sleepy from the drive, or maybe there was alcohol in the eggnog, because I stepped out of the car and Doctor Cross’s friends had to help me walk through the garage, or whatever it was.
They gave me more eggnog, saying it would help and then I must’ve fainted or something, because when I woke up again I was sitting in a chair with Doctor Cross and his friends, and I felt very calm. It wasn’t until then that I understood what this was all about.”
“Ok. Ok, tell me.”
“Doctor Cross said that they had been working on it for some time. It’s what was going to save us… humans. He explained that these new lives had been brought down from one of the rocket missions. That there were just a few of them at first. And that the astronauts who brought them back knew all about them. And showed the people over there at the space program how they worked. It was a revelation back then, just as it is now. And the space program kept sending more and more rockets up there to get them.”
“The pods?”
“The lives. The new lives.”
“So, what are they?”
“That’s what I asked, and this is how he explained it to me. He said we build all of these rockets. They’re these incredible machines. They’re all so advanced and impressive, the height of technology. And I agreed.
Then he said, but they’re nothing if you don’t have someone to drive them. And I agreed with that too. He said, they’re just these big hunks of inanimate technology just sitting there, getting old, unless you have somebody at the controls. And I agreed again.
He said our bodies are the same thing. And I got the connection he was making. He said that our bodies are some of the most advanced, impressive, technologically amazing machines in the universe. And I thought universe was a bit of a stretch but, of course, he’s been over there at the space program, so what do I know?
He said our bodies are some of the most incredible pieces of machinery that the universe has ever seen. But the drivers… the drivers aren’t all that great. The drivers don’t really know how to get the most out of our bodies. They don’t really put them to the test. They don’t push the limits or anything. They don’t even really spend long enough in them to get the most out of them.
And I’m trying to keep up but I’m not totally getting it. And he said that that’s ok because it’s a hard thing to get. And I asked him who are the drivers in this case? And he just tapped once on his head and then once on his chest. And he asked me if I understood. At first I just said yes because I didn’t want to seem like I wasn’t following. But then, the more I thought about it, the more I did understand.
And he said why wouldn’t we give the greatest machines in the universe to the greatest drivers in the universe? Which made sense to me. And then it all made sense to me. Then he said he had given me a new driver and for a second I thought he meant he was going to take me home. But then I got it. He had put one of these new lives in me. He must’ve done the surgery with the pod and that’s what I woke up from.
He said it takes a while for the new life to attach to its host, or assimilate, I think he said. And that’s why sometimes I don’t understand and sometimes I do. He said it’s much easier when the person’s dead, and there aren’t, like, two drivers fighting for the wheel.
But he said it wouldn’t take too long for the new driver, the new life, to take over completely. And then he said I’ll live like I’ve never lived before, and I’ll do things I’ve never been able to do, and I’ll push the limits of what’s possible, and eventually I’ll recruit others.
And then he stood up and he ran straight up the wall and across the ceiling and back down again. He said I’ll soon be able to do that too. And then he did the same thing again, but slower. And he literally stood there, upside down, on the ceiling and told me I was free to go. And then one of his friends got up and showed me the door.
As I walked out, he told me that I was welcome back there anytime and he said, still standing upside down on the ceiling, that he and his friends wanted me to be one of them. And that I shouldn’t fight it. And I could feel this other driver in me taking the wheel and I totally got what he was saying and told him so.”
Special Agent Powell was speechless. He just nodded, slowly.
“And then his friend led me down to the long car again, and I got inside and he passed me another eggnog and I drank it. But this time it wasn’t too sweet and it didn’t make my teeth hurt and I actually enjoyed it. And then, again, I don’t know if it was because I was tired, because it had been a big day, or if there was some alcohol in the eggnog or something, but I felt myself drift off and that was that for a while.”
“Wow.”
“Right?”
“How long is a while?”
“Well, longer than before, because I woke up and it was, like, February.”
“What?”
“Yes! It was, like, February. And still cold and everything but it wasn’t the holidays anymore. And I still had my decorations up in my apartment. But no one else did. I was the only one.”
“So you slept for a month?”
“More than a month. But I wasn’t asleep. I just hadn’t woken up.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you’d think after more than a month, if you had been sleeping that whole time, you would lose your job and people would start to worry about you. Not that I had anyone to worry about me. But I had clearly been going into work at the hospital and at the morgue all that time, because no one acted any different to me, like I hadn’t missed a minute.”
“You were… what?… blacked out?”
“I can’t explain it. I just went to sleep and woke up again, more than a month later, and it was like I hadn’t missed a minute.”
“Wow.”
“The only thing different was that I had packed on a few pounds. I thought it was probably because of that sweet eggnog, because my fridge was full of it, and there were half empty bottles of it all around my apartment. So I stopped. Because it wasn’t Christmas anymore and that’s when you drink eggnog, as far as I’m concerned. And I didn’t want to put any more weight on. In fact, I wanted to lose it. So I stopped drinking the eggnog and I went back to work.
And there must have been something in the air back then because there were more and more dead bodies coming in than ever. It was like Christmas everyday! That was a joke I made at the time, but I realize it was in poor taste.
So, I’m busier than I’ve ever been. Identifying the bodies, and calling the number, and getting the pods, and sending them off to surgery. And, to me, it’s like nobody ever died because they all walked out of there just fine. Otherwise it would have been a tragedy. But really it was more like a miracle.”
“When did you see Doctor Cross again?”
“I heard him on the phone sometimes, when I’d call the number. He’d tell me I was doing a great job, and that he would have me come back and visit again someday.”
“And when did you start getting suspicious?”
“I was never really suspicious. I was so used to it. And I was thinking about everything Doctor Cross said, about giving our bodies better drivers, and I was thinking there was a miracle happening all the time. And that’s when Agent Robinson started coming to see me and asking me about all the different deaths and how they happened and where the bodies were found and everything.”
“That was in the summer?”
“Christmas in July! That’s what I told him. And again, I know it was kind of a cruel joke, but it was what I had to do to cope with all the death I was seeing. And the miracles I was witnessing.”
“Ok. And then what?”
“Well, then I would see Agent Robinson a lot more often. He would come in and ask me about all the bodies. About how they died. And I knew I wasn’t supposed to tell him.”
“How did you know?”
“I just knew.”
“Your other driver knew?”
“I suppose so.”
“How long did this go on?”
“A few months.”
“How many bodies?”
“Hundreds again. Thousands.”
“It didn’t seem strange to you? That there were so many bodies?”
“I thought it was a good thing.”
“Because of the new drivers?”
“Right! And then Agent Robinson started trying to tie all these deaths to Doctor Cross, saying that they didn’t know it was him at first, and that there were so many different suspects, that it was a huge web of deceit, he called it.
But then they realized that every single one of the suspects could be linked back to Doctor Cross in some way. That this was essentially a mass murder at his hands. He spent a lot of time at the hospital and at the morgue asking me about all these different deaths and all that. And asking me if I knew these suspects and tried to link me to them. Seeing if I was here at this time, or there at that time. And I said I don’t know anyone, I don’t go anywhere, and I don’t do anything. And that was mostly true.
And then he started asking me if I knew Doctor Cross. And I didn’t know if I should lie to him, but I knew I was supposed to. But then he wouldn’t leave me alone. He kept asking and asking and asking me so I told him yes, I met him once and he seemed like a nice guy and then I didn’t hear from him for a while.”
“Doctor Cross?”
“Agent Robinson.”
“Oh. So when was this?”
“The end of the summer.”
“Ok.”
“And then, about a month ago, I know because it was around Thanksgiving and we were getting so many more bodies again because of the holidays, he stopped by.”
“Agent Robinson?”
“With Doctor Cross!”
“Oh?”
“They stopped by and peeked in and both nodded at me. I could see they were drinking eggnog and then they offered me a glass. And I thought, why not? It’s the holidays, after all. And it was the really sweet stuff, of course.
That’s when he told me all about his limp. Well, he told Agent Robinson really but I was listening. He said he had been in a terrible car accident and he thought he had died but he came back better than ever. And Agent Robinson seemed to understand everything he was talking about. And then they walked out and that was the last time I saw him. I hadn’t even thought about him until you came in and asked me to come Downtown.”
“Huh. Ok. So that brings us to today?”
“Yes.”
“And you haven’t seen Doctor Cross since then?”
“No, I saw him just now!”
“You did?”
“Yes!”
“Oh. Well… what did he say?”
“He said to bring you this.”
Joy pulled a small hexagonal pod from out of her bag.
“Is this…?” Agent Powell started.
“…your new driver!” Joy shrieked.
She reached back into her bag and pulled out a knife and stabbed the Special Agent in the chest with it. He clutched at the blade, and then at the handle, and felt the life drain out of him. He saw her twist open the little hexagonal pod as his eyes went fuzzy. Then everything disappeared completely.
In the darkness, he could feel every part of his body all at once, from his fingertips to his toes and every cell in between. He could feel all the way down to his atoms. Every sense, every reaction, every instinct felt heightened, as though he could lift mountains, fly through fire and fight God himself.
He woke up with a glass of eggnog to his lips, and drank it straight down. It was sweet, sweeter than anything he had ever drunk before. He thought it would make him wretch but it didn’t. Just like the increased strength he felt when he was alone in the darkness, his whole body felt oddly accustomed to the sweetness. He tipped up the glass and finished the drink, then looked over to see Joy and Agent Robinson. They had just supped back their sweet eggnog too, and the three of them slammed their glasses down on the table in unison.
“Ahhhhhh.”
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhh.”
“Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
“Dr Cross was right,” said Joy. “The surgery wasn’t that hard at all. Anyone can do it!”