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The Toronto Eaton’s Centre at Christmas time is a great place for chance encounters but, because of the way my brain is wired up, it’s rare that I’m ever surprised.

In a significant exception, on December 13, 2013 Kendra (I didn’t yet know her name) seemed to appear out of nowhere on the third level of the Eaton’s Centre near the Trinity Square entrance.  Our shoulders connected hard and I grabbed for her, saying “Wow, I’m sorry.”

I caught her thoughts, clear as day.  She thought, “Jeez, I’ve got to be more careful when teleporting in.”

Typically, when I’m catching people’s thoughts, I keep a straight face and my mouth shut.  I normally avoid mental eavesdropping so as to avoid excess noise in my head.  However, in this case, I blurted out, “Teleporting?  Seriously?”

She looked as if she’d been stung by a bee.  I thought it best to carry on like I’d not said anything.  “So, you’re OK?”

She nodded.

“OK, then,” I said, “I’ve gotta go.”  And I kept walking.

***

Despite its great retail promise, after two hours, the Eaton’s Centre had exhausted me and I had made little progress with my meagre shopping list.  I fled to the lower level, to the “Urban Eatery” which was, I assumed, the new dressed up term for “Food Court.”

Once people are known to me, I can feel them gradually coming toward me, even if they’re out of sight.  As I headed down to the food court area, Kendra’s presence popped into my mind in a distinctly non gradual way.  By the time I was downstairs, she was walking from a food vendor to a table carrying a rather large burger combo.

I purchased a pita pocket sandwich and, as I was turning around, she waved and beckoned me over.  I felt that coming and also had the feeling that to ignore her would be a bad idea.

Once I reached her table, she outstretched her hand and said, “Hi.  I’m Kendra.  I never got a chance to apologize for almost knocking you over.  Entirely my fault.”

“Stephen,” I said.  “Hardly your fault in a busy mall at Christmas.”

“Please sit down,” she said.

When meeting with strangers, I tend to be on the lookout for strangeness.  Some subsets of the mentally ill glom onto me because their damaged structures seem to grasp that I can peek inside people’s heads.  In Kendra’s case she was focused, but rather scared, and doing a great job at hiding it.  Her fear came from a worry that I was going to reveal her secret.

The problem was that her secret was unbelievable.  It was a conundrum.  To reassure her that I wasn’t going to reveal her secret – one that I shouldn’t know anyway – would require me to reveal my secret — being an actual mind-reader, not just some sideshow trickster.

Kendra believed she could teleport large distances.  That’s what was in her mind.

I am a really good lie detector.  Basically there are three types of lies.  One is a quick whopper that you make up on the spot to try to deflect or avoid embarrassment.  It’s the same as when kids deny dropping the orange juice and then quickly back pedal by saying it was an accident.  The second is a more considered lie.  You’ve taken the time to think it up and equip the lie with plausibility or plausible deniability.  The third type of lie is harder to detect because it’s part of a web of lies that you’ve created so well that parts of your own mind believe what you are saying.

In Kendra’s case, the problem was that she registered as truthful.  There was no sign of mental illness.

“When we collided up there,” she said, “you blurted something about teleportation.  What was that all about?”

Kendra really wanted to talk about this.  She desperately wanted someone to trust.

“Look,” I said, “I might have figured out something about you.  But I get the feeling you really want to share your story, but it’s risky for you.  I don’t mind discussing something with you, but you need to be sure.  Really sure.  Here’s my offer.  Take time to think; if you still want to talk, I bet that you’ll find me tomorrow.  If we ‘bump into each other’ again, I’d be happy to talk.”

I picked up my pita sandwich and walked out of the food court.  I felt a little sad because I realized I too shared her wish to talk.

***

The next day found me not a stone’s throw from the Eaton’s Centre at the new (to me) location of the Silver Snail Comic shop.  I am the lamest shopper in the universe and I figured for the people who had a sense of humour, stuff from this store would work.  I mean, who doesn’t need more superhero action figures?  In the case of my two sons, if the action figures came with money, that was always appreciated from the odd duck father.

Kendra’s presence had been pinging in and out of my mind and it was becoming difficult to tell if it was because I wanted to meet her again, or if she were actually physically popping in an out of my sensory range.

In the comic shop I was holding my purchases when I found her looking at some large bound collections of Avengers past issues.

“Kendra,” I said, “what a surprise.”

“Steve,” she said.

“Stephen, with a PH,” I corrected.

“Ooooh.  OK, Stephen-with-a-PH, what do we have here?”  Kendra started taking my as-yet-unpaid-for-purchases from my hands.  “Who’s the Wonder Woman action figure for?”

“My sister-in-law.  She puts up with my kid brother,” I replied.

“Hey, can we go talk?  I’m starving.”

“Let me buy my stuff.  Where do you want to go?”

“I need a steak.”

Food was very important to Kendra.

***

Barberian’s on Elm Street found us a quiet corner for a late lunch.  I was having a steak sandwich and Kendra ordered a 20 ounce rib steak.  (I don’t know if I ever could have eaten that much.)  On the way over, we had some basic get-to-know-you talk which was more about shopping and the difficulty of buying presents for relatives.

Once in the restaurant, she asked “So, how do you know?”

“You mean about your high level of maneuverability?”

“Yes,” she said

“I’m psychic,” I said.

“Get out.  That explains a lot.  You have to block stuff out of your head to stay sane, right?  I figure I’m able to feel people’s minds before I arrive so I can avoid bumping into them.  So, I bet you were blocking yesterday and that led me to bump into you.”

“Part of me,” I said, “has trouble believing you.  How does it work?”

She paused; jaw and lips were tense.  “You do realize I’ve never talked about this to anyone.  Ever.”

“I’m getting that,” I said.

“All right then,” she said, “I think I’m good with people.  I’ve travelled … a lot.  Let me guess stuff about you and then you can try to outdo me.”

“Go ahead.”

“OK,” she said, “You are single.”

“Divorced.”

“You have two small children.”

“My two boys are at University.”

“Wow you started early. 43 years old?”

“45.”

“You’re a teacher.”

“I’m a criminologist.”

“A psychic criminologist?”

“I don’t discuss the first part when I’m working.”

“OK, Stephen-with-a-ph, my last impression is that you live alone.”

“Correct.  Now it’s my turn.”

I actively avoid doing this kind of parlour trick because it’s usually freak-out inducing and it puts stuff in my head I don’t want.  However, in Kendra’s case, I made an exception.  I relaxed a little and looked into her eyes.

“Kendra Baumann.  Kendra’s your middle name.  Your Korean mother named you Min-seo and your ½ German, ½ Welsh immigrant father provided your middle name and surname.”

Kendra gasped.

“Despite you looking as young as my kids, you are 33 years old.  Born I think in the Toronto area.”

“Thornhill,” she said.

“Your father passed away from an illness when you were 10.  Your mother emotionally retreated.  She was never outgoing like you.  You figured out how to teleport at age 5 – something about a dark room.  That’s a tough one as you’re hiding that part.”

“Stop,” she said.

“OK,” she continued, “I’ll give you the basics.  When I was a kid, I realized I could teleport places I knew well or could see.  As I got older I realized that I could travel large distances.  Also, I realized I could go to places I’d seen on TV – even if I had not been there before.”

“But not a place on a map?  It has to be visual?” I asked.

“Yes.  Visual and, before I get there, I can feel the air and sometimes hear noises.”

“Can you take things with you?  Like a whole suitcase?”  I had a feeling that there was a trauma around this so I was trying to ease into it.

“Inorganic material only and not much of it.   You see the farther I go, the more weight I lose.  I pretty much have to eat right after a big trip.”

This explained the steak.

“Say you had a fly on your jacket when you went, what happens?”

“It dies.”

There was an obvious follow-on question but, seeing she was thinking please don’t ask, I chose to skip it.

“It occurs to me that when I first thought about what you do, I was thinking more Star Trek or Dr. Who.  But if what you do is actually natural, it makes sense that nothing that wasn’t you would be allowed because you could take invasive species anywhere.”

“Hmmm, maybe, but I’m still a freak.”

“Yeah … get in line.”

Her phone in her jacket made a high pitched chirping sound.

“Excuse me,” she said.  “Work.”

She pulled out the largest Samsung cell/smart phone I’d ever seen and started tapping away at it.  “Oh, man.  Lebanon?”  She then started swiping away at what looked like an airline schedule.

“What do you do for a living?” I asked.

“Courier.”

“You must save a lot on gas.”

“Ha ha.  Very funny.  No, I’m a private courier that specializes in very last minute deliveries worldwide.”

“Why the airline schedule?” I asked.

“You’re the psychic and criminologist, what do you think?”

The trick with being a psychic is that if you have it turned on all the time, you go crazy with all the dreck that comes in.  As a result I find the mental discipline of simply figuring it out for myself quite enjoyable.

“I get it.” I said.  You pretend that you are taking the next flight wherever.  Or, better yet, have a pretend network of frequent fliers who are happy to take packages.  But in the end you do most of it yourself.

“Pretty much.  I have a network of trusted local couriers who deliver packages when it’s time to put the material into the recipients’ hands.  That way I don’t have to hang around in sometimes rather unpleasant locales.  I still look like a miracle worker as opposed to an impossible miracle worker.”

“Pays well?” I asked.

She turned her smartphone screen to me with a dollar figure on it.  I took in a breath.

“Half up front.  Half on delivery.”  She beckoned for the server and quickly settled the bill.

“I should pay my half,” I said.

“Please,” she said, “I hope you’re not one of those guys who can’t handle a woman paying the bill.  Besides, you couldn’t handle my food bill.”

We finished lunch and she said, “Look, I have to go.  But give me your phone number.  The universe finally granted me a wish and I am not losing it.”

“What wish?”

“Someone I can talk to about my life without having to lie.  This is a gift and maybe even meant-to-be.”

We traded phone numbers and she then stood up and looked around to see if anyone was watching and did something she’d never knowingly done before.  Vanished in front of someone.  There was a quiet “whup” noise.  Like someone taking a quick breath.  And that was it.  If it weren’t for the plates from her meal, I would have had doubt that our conversation had ever occurred.

***

Two days later, I received a call from Jacques at the Sûreté du Québec.  (I only call them the Quebec Provincial Police, or QPP, when they aren’t in earshot.)  It seems there was another body found that loosely met the pattern I’d been working on.  It’s just too much to put down here, but Jacques was working on a series of disappearances in the Montreal area that were confined to the South Shore and Highway 20 toward Cornwall, Ontario.  A couple of years earlier, Jacques invited me in on the case to see if I could shed light on the killings.  The deaths were always violent and the burials were always in a fetal position, with hands in a prayer position.

Jacques was uploading information to a secure site and would text me when it was done.  In my Danforth apartment, I had a specially modified armoire that folded out with information about the case and a large map.  I opened it up and started to look at the material.  It was important for my sanity (and occasional visitor) that I could hide this monster case away.

I had a folder of missing persons.  Henri Tremblay was a professor from McGill who went missing two weeks ago.  I placed a green pin on my map showing his last known location and a red pin for where he was found near Saint-Zotique.

Then I got a twinge.  Normally I detect people more in advance.  I went to the door and opened it.  Kendra was about to knock.  “I’d ask how you got in without buzzing but that would be silly.”

“You must have totally sucked when your kids wanted to give a surprise party.”

“Totally.  Come in.  So … how was Lebanon?”

“A bit too close to Syria for me.”

“How did you find me?”

She was looking around my one bedroom apartment.  I got the impression she was the type to snoop in the bathroom medicine cabinet.

“Jeez Stephen-with-a-ph, there’s this thing called the Internet.  You keep a relatively subtle digital profile, but you are there.”

Kendra saw my open armoire and said “Whoa, is this what you are working on?”

Did I forget to close the armoire?  Or, like her, did I want someone with whom I could share my work?

“There’re some pretty graphic pictures and I’m kind of under a confidentiality agreement,” I said.

“Oh, come on.  Walk me through it.  Is this one case?”

“To me it is, but I work for three different detectives (they all have different funky titles) in Quebec, Ontario and New York State.  For a lot of reasons, they don’t see the links I see.  Typically they call me in to do a reading on suspects to see if they’re worth digging into.  People are generally horrible liars, but the police become so bogged down in the trail of evidence that they lose their people sense.  There are only perpetrators and victims, it seems.”

“So are you seeing something they aren’t?”

“Sort of.”  I opened the laptop dedicated to this investigation and opened up the files on Professor Tremblay.  “My detective associate with the Sûreté sent me this because it met the basic parameters of the other mystery deaths.”

“He’s dead?”

“Yes.  You knew him.”

“Sort of.  I took Economics from him at McGill for three weeks before I left the class.”

“Why’d you leave the class?”

“His interest in the female students and regular invitations to sit closer was creepy.  He also was showing early signs of rice fever.”

“What?”

“You know.  Rice fever.  White guys who are sexually obsessed with Asian girls.”

I looked at her blankly.

“Honestly,” she said, “Where have you been?”

“Uh, raising two strapping boys with my rather white ex-wife.”

“Nevermind.  The guy was a perv.”

“Did he ever get in official trouble?”

“Not that I recall.”

I Googled him doing a deeper search on Montreal news sites and university pages and there was nothing official.  Most profs these days have horrible things written on student blogs and the clutter made finding real information difficult.

“Why are you looking?”

“He was shot in the genitals before being shot in the head before being buried in a fetal prayer position in a shallow grave.”

“I see your point.”  Kendra was very interested in my map.  Without all the pins on it, the outlined area looked like this.

“How accurate are the pins?” Kendra asked.

“Fairly I guess.”

“So they aren’t to actual latitude/longitude values?”

“No, no.”

“I want your data.  This pin collection might reveal something.  There’s a hint that the drop spots are deliberate.  Do you have a USB key?  I can just pull it all off the laptop.”

I hesitated because I didn’t want to have this stuff “out there”.

“Don’t worry,” she said.  “I won’t transmit any of this.  It’ll stay on the key drive and on my laptop.”

“OK.  You don’t have to do this.”

“I love a good puzzle,” she said.  “Besides, I’m thinking this may be what I was meant to do.”

“Destiny is a big thing with you,” I said.

“Let me guess.  You think life is a roll of the dice.”

“Pretty much.  Maybe it’s an excuse not to believe in some supernatural being in the clouds.  I also find that destiny is a convenient excuse for bad bahaviour.  But, hold on.  We’re off topic because you dropped by and I haven’t asked why.”

“Well, you are the only person who knows.  It was so refreshing that I had to come by for more of the feeling of not having to keep a secret.”

I handed her a USB keydrive and she went to my laptop.  I told her the names of the main folders with the case information.  As it copied, she asked, “You have anything to eat?”

We went to my kitchen.  She opened the fridge.  “Wow, you don’t eat much.”

“Uh, no.”

“Kids don’t come over?”

“Not much.  One doesn’t talk to me and the other worries about me.”

Kendra grabbed a ½ litre yogurt container, found a spoon and ate it all.

“If you are going to come over like this I’m going to have to buy more food,” I said.  But then for some reason it made me think that now she’d been inside the apartment, she could just pop in at any time.  “When you come over next time, you’re going to still knock, right?”

She frowned and made a pouty lower lip.  “Yes, I promise.”  She walked back to my computer, removed the key drive and said, “Well, since you don’t have a good enough computer, and almost no food, I’m going to take this data home and see if I’m right.”

“Right about what?”

“Never you mind.”  And before I could read her mind she was gone.

***

It was Christmas week before Kendra reappeared.  I got a text.  It said, “Stay out of the living room.”  I heard some soft steps coming from the living room, which kind of freaked me out, but then her voice said.  “Come on in for a surprise.”

I walked into the living room and said, “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”

She said nothing.  Taped to my wall were two large diagrams.  One was an enlarged image of a drawing of the human lung, obviously taken from a medical text book.  The other was my map, enlarged to the same scale, with pins more accurately placed than before.

“Do you see what I see?” she asked.

“Yes.  That’s extremely creepy.”  The placement of the pins were close to being the outline of the lung diagram.  Someone was killing people and dumping the bodies in very particular places to form an outline of a human lung.

“However, on a lighter note,” I said, “you look lovely.  At a party?”

“Yes, sort of.  I took a few of my trusted New York couriers out to dinner.”

I was in my bathrobe, unshaven, and felt pretty scruffy compared to her wearing a black dress, spiffy boots and a lined leather jacket.  “Is texting five microseconds before popping in considered the same as knocking?” I asked.

“I think if you washed up and put some real clothes on, I could load all my additional findings about your case onto your laptop.  Then I’ll take you to dinner.  I’m starving.”

***

At a Greek restaurant on the Danforth, we went over Kendra’s analysis.  Her work removed any doubt.  All this horror was one person’s work.  Someone had been at this grisly project for at least three years.  What was baffling was, despite the consistent shallow grave and fetal position dumping method, the ways people were killed and what type of people were killed were hugely varied.  All races, ages and genders plus knives, guns and blunt objects.

In addition, the murders crossed three distinct jurisdictions.  Quebec, Ontario and New York State.  Coordination between the SQ, OPP and New York State Police was limited.  Add Homeland Security and Canadian Border Services into the mix and it was a real tangle.

“You don’t think we’d get any help from the police,” Kendra asserted.

“To make these agencies listen to us we’d have to have a smoking gun, DNA evidence, a written confession and extensive Fox News coverage.”

“And your psychic stuff … you have no reading on the killer?”

“None.”

“Is that odd for you?”

“Yes and no.  I haven’t seen all the scenes.  I haven’t interviewed anyone in connection to it.  So I don’t have the personal touch that I do when I help in other cases.”

“Would it help to visit the dump sites for the bodies?”

“Probably,” I said. “But that would take ages.”

“Not if I go.  I could take pictures, talk to you on the phone when I visit.”

“I’d have to psychically tag you.  It’s something I’ve only done to my kids and my ex-wife, before we were exes.  It allows me to tune into their frequency and know where they are.”

“Hey, no problem,” Kendra said.  “You’ll see a lot of the world.”

“You don’t understand.  It’s intrusive to the person that’s tagged.  It makes NSA surveillance look like my grandmother listening in on the old telephone party lines at the cottage.”

“Stephen-with-a-ph, I’m expecting by this stage you can control yourself and not drop in on me when I’m flossing and stuff.  By the way, why did you and your wife break up?”

“Uh.  I read her mind when we were young and did everything possible to make her fall in love with me.  It worked great.  We got married, had the two boys and time flew by.  My anticipation of her needs and wishes … it wasn’t enough.  Had I not had my ‘gift’ I doubt she would have given me the time of day.  Were we really meant for each other when the deck was stacked?”

“You just juxtaposed romantic predetermination with the random chance of a card game.”

“Mixed metaphors.  My favourite is let’s burn that bridge when we come to it.”

“So, what do you do to tag someone?”

I reached for her ears and very gently and slowly brought my hands down to cup her chin.  I let the texture of her skin, the smell of her perfume and the light weight of her hair linger on me.  I looked in her eyes and memorized her.  When I let go I took a deep breath.

“Done.”

“Wow, I got shivers,” she said.

***

In the end Kendra jumped to seven sites in two provinces and one state where the killer had buried bodies.  There was a consistent rural feel to the locations.  I tried having Kendra walk around the sites the way the killer might have.  When she was back, we augmented the computer files as much as possible.  Kendra was a whiz with this stuff.

On December 22nd, Kendra became busy with the courier business.  I decided to take a nap on my couch.  Normally my flashes of insight are during waking hours, and for me sleep is typically a psychic repair time.  The nightmare I had was of a crazed green-eyed version of Kendra trying to strangle me, one handed, and she wore black leather gloves.

I fell off the couch, woke and realized something.  The killer was a woman.  I pulled myself to the laptop and tried to sort out what had come to me.  The symbolism of the fetal positions was sending the people back to the womb.  Penance.  Renewal.  Rebirth.  The violence to the people prior to this was plain anger.  When I flipped through all the victims’ profiles, none were saints.  Even the children had a history of behavioural issues.  In my mind a demented female mind was disciplining these people and sending them back for rebirth.

I had no evidence.  My idea was so out there, I wasn’t sure I’d even tell Kendra when I next saw her.

Dream states are very weird and when there’s missing information, it grabs what’s handy and drops it in.  I had a feeling I’d know the killer if I ever saw her.

My phone rang.  It was the OPP.  “Commander Hawthorne, how are you?”

“Stephen, is there any way you can come look at a scene we have in Brockville?”

“When?”

“Now.  The road reports are showing the 401 as pretty good sailing.”

“What’s the urgency?”

“This one matches your portfolio.  There’s also a problem.  The site was uncovered by an excavator during a farm house burst pipe repair.  There’s a storm in the forecast that’s going to ruin the rest of the site.”

“Ship me the details.”

“Your stay is already booked at the Best Western and I’m sending details to your secure email.”

***

I debated, but I decided not to let Kendra know I was on the move.  As far as I could tell, she was flitting about the South Pacific.  According to Hawthorne the find was a couple of years old.  Kendra had not only plotted our lung diagram based on the locations of the find, but also had an animation showing the order in which the killings occurred.  I wasn’t sure what that told me, but it did look pretty cool.

It was the usual boring four hour drive to Brockville.  (In winter, boring is good.)  Hawthorne was waiting for me at the burial scene.  From what I could gather the couple living in the nearby farm house was totally freaked out.  While trying to fix the burst pipe, they had dug out from the house to locate the problem and uncovered the body.  The OPP had a tent with big lights to protect the scene.  The body was a male, in the classic fetal prayer position and had died from head trauma.

“What do you think made the head injuries?”

“Baseball bat is my bet,” said Hawthorne.

Something else I noticed was that all of the victims were facing the water.  Another part of the renewal symbolism?

“Has he been ID’d yet?”

“No, we have to get him out and to the lab.  Obviously I’ve got one of my guys going over slightly older missing persons reports.”

I was looking at the scene trying to look for an indication of my green-eyed woman.  Any hint of a woman at all.  The fact that only about 15% of serial killers are women led me to want to keep my trap shut until there was something resembling evidence.

“Anything new?” asked Hawthorne.

“Yes, but I don’t know if it helps.  There’s symbolism to all this that you can see from this.”  I handed Hawthorne a map of the entire Ontario/Quebec/New York State area that I’d been looking at with Kendra’s more accurate markings.  There were no other indicators on the sheet.

“Are you serious?” asked Hawthorne.

“Yep.  All fetal position.  All turned to look at the water.  Zero in the DNA/Fingerprints department.”

“Crap.  Have your contacts in Quebec and New York seen this?”

“No,” I said.  “I just refined this.  Turn the sheet over.”  Hawthorne looked at the picture of a lung.

“That’s unbelievable,” Hawthorne said.

“That’s why I haven’t brought it up.”

“Why now?”

“The SQ pulled one this week in Saint-Zotique.”

“Look we’ve got to pull up stakes here.  Can you write a summary of them and ship it to me?  I need to see if I can get permission to connect the dots properly.”

“OK.  I’ll do it over the holidays,” I said.

***

Back at the Best Western, my intent was to order a late dinner and go to bed.  I decided to text Kendra and let her know I was in Brockville and that Hawthorne was interested in the analysis.

Now, before you say “Hey why didn’t you see that coming?” realize that just because I can detect people near me doesn’t mean it always works.

As I was getting out of my car, a lady walked through the parking lot, saying, “Excuse me, do you have the time?”  And then she tasered me.  I felt the pain and I hit the ground like a sack of potatoes.

***

I woke up zip tied and duct-taped to a Muskoka chair.  I had a strange taste in my mouth.  I figured I’d been drugged.  Conducted energy weapons don’t normally render you unconscious.

And there she was.  Green eyes, black gloves.  She looked nothing like Kendra.  Sandy blond-coloured hair and Caucasian.  I was in serious trouble and the panic wanted to surge.

She, on the other hand, did appear panicked.  And, judging by the vibe, borderline psychotic.  She simply wasn’t sure what was real.

“Who are you?” she asked.

“Stephen.”

“You were at the crime scene.”

“Yes.  I hate to ask an obvious question, but why am I here?”

As she thought about the answer I picked out of her mind that she was indeed the killer and that her intent was to kill me.  This begged the question as to how she knew about me.  However, a more pressing question needed to be asked.

“I’m very fond of rustic barn architecture but, where am I?”

Her mind gave me that we were east of Cornwall, further east down the 401.

“What do you know about me?” she asked.

I was getting more anxious as her fear grew.  I needed to be able to read her mind.  The Muskoka chair was slightly wobbly; it had not been a quality item and this was a good thing.

“What do you know about me?” she repeated.  She had a hint of a Quebecois accent.

I looked right into her eyes and dug into her mind a little.

“Celine?  Seriously that’s your name?” I said out loud.

She slapped me.  Hard.

“Do you sing?  Married to an older man?”

She slapped me again, even harder.  I took the moment of pain to absorb details of the barn I was in.  Every sound.  Every scent.

“You should know,” I said, “that I have a file on 53 killings that I can link to you.  It doesn’t matter if you kill me and try to send me back to where ever the heck you think all the others went after you buried them.”

She pulled out a ball peen hammer.  I simply cannot describe how much it hurts for a hammer like that to land on the top of your hand.

KENDRA!!

In my mind I yelled for her.  I pushed out into her mind where I was with every detail, every smell.  Everything.  If this worked, I thought, she’ll have one hell of a headache.

My other hand took a blow from the hammer.

“Where do you keep your files?” she screamed.

I started laughing through the pain because Kendra was on the toilet in a London hotel.

Celine punched me.  It was odd I could not pull out of her mind what her full name was, but for some reason she was worried I’d find seven more bodies.

“Jesus lady, seven more?  Do you have no sense of proportion?”

Kendra popped into the barn behind Celine.

“What the hell are you doing?” yelled Kendra.

Celine spun around fast and lunged at Kendra with the hammer.  Kendra executed a deft Taekwondo block and kicked Celine in the knee.  I forced myself up and ran hard against a barn pillar and partly broke the chair.  I saw Celine pull a knife and slash at Kendra.

Kendra screamed, but managed to block the second thrust of the blade.

“Kendra,” I yelled.  “You have to do it now!  She’s psychotic strong!”

I took a second run at the beam and broke more of the chair off me.  By the time I looked up, they were gone.  Another two hits against the beam and I could stand up properly.  I ran outside.

In a couple of inches of snow, Kendra was kneeling, crying and holding her side.

Celine was seriously dead.  I touched her body and it was warm, but the skin and flesh were slack.  It was like what I read bodies were like after about two days of decomposition at room temperature.

“Was that the serial killer?”  Kendra asked.

“Yes.”

“Bitch.”

“Look,” I said, “you are bleeding a lot.  Can you do a jump?  Like to St. Michael’s Emergency?  Do you know it?  Make up a story of getting stabbed outside a club or something.  You simply can’t be found here.”

“You’ll come and get me?”

“As fast as I can.  I’ve been tasered and drugged and, uh, hammered; it may be tomorrow.”

“OK.  I’m feeling faint,” she said.  “Gotta go.  Stand back.”

She was gone.  My problems at the moment included getting the bits of chair off me and extricating my personal belongings from a rather disgusting dead body.  My hands weren’t working so well and it took a minute to retrieve my cell phone and my car keys.  I had been abducted with my own car, which was handy.

I took the knife that Celine had used on Kendra to cut the tape and zip ties from me.  I was expecting a bloody blade, but it was clean.  Not a drop.  I was puzzled, but it occurred to me that when Kendra did her jump thing, she literally took all of herself with her.  This meant that nothing of Kendra was at this scene.

It occurred to me that I should do the same for myself.  I thought that when someone found this soon-to-be-frozen corpse, it would be quite the mystery.  I hoped that the snowstorm would cover my car tracks.  I put the pieces of the Muskoka chair in the trunk of my car and drove back to the Best Western in Brockville.  I got into my room unseen and ordered room service.  Buckets of ice and Tylenol were used to try to alleviate the swelling in my hands.  I was developing a whopper of a black eye too.

It frustrated me that I could not call Kendra.  But to try to drive at night for four hours with swollen hands … it didn’t take a psychic to predict what would happen.

***

On December 24, I finally managed to sneak into St Michael’s Hospital and visit Kendra.  I had texted her so she knew I made it back from Brockville in one piece, but the hospital was not allowing anyone but family to visit.

When I arrived she was sitting up in bed and staring at the hospital food.  I walked in and put a gigantic smoked meat sandwich in front of her.

“Don’t let the nurse see this,” she said.

“Knowing you, it won’t last long.”

She looked at my face.  “You look like crap.”

“You look great.  The hospital gown is so you.”

She dug into the sandwich.  “I still have a headache because of you.”

“Sorry.  Unusual circumstances.”

“So, who was she?”

“A 35-year-old wife of a Canadian Border Services agent.”

“Get out.”

“It explains a lot from a ‘how’ perspective, but not from a ‘why’ point of view.”

“Do you think we’ll ever know?”

“It depends on what they find in her home.  I bet she kept mementos.  I hope so because when I read her mind, there were seven more graves and that should not ignored.”

“Ick.  But maybe we can figure it out from the data.”

“Are you OK with how this worked out?  I know there’s an old trauma for you regarding teleporting living things.”

“Well, with 53 dead, and me with a big knife wound, I really can’t work up much guilt or regret.  You were right to tell me to do it.”

“I’ve never been in a situation like that before,” I said.

“Hey, so what’s our next case?” Kendra asked.

“Huh.  Don’t know.  Personally, I’m taking the rest of the year off.”

Recap

(See The Smudge on Orion’s Belt for details.)

In 2008, Mélanie Beauchamp discovered an usual object heading toward Earth.  On December 25, 2009 she was witness to The Beauchamp Object being manoeuvred into orbit around Earth.  The Object was the first piece of alien space junk ever, measuring 350 km long, 140 km at its widest and 70 km at its highest.

And there it sat, in a slowly decaying orbit.

January 27, 2012 – Earth Orbit

Astronaut Alexander Gerst was standing on the Beauchamp Object, having executed another metallurgical test on the object.  The general consensus was that he was standing on the hull of a spaceship, debris from a wreck.  His equipment panel showed what was shown in every other previous test in the last two years:  nothing.

There was simply no known way to get a sample of the hull.  Waiting for the orbit to complete, he wondered how an object so spectacular could be so resistant to investigation.  The markings on the hull were incomprehensible.  The consensus was that The Object had an interior, but no access port had been found.  Portions of The Object had been heated to extreme heats and the energy seemed to disappear.  Matter and energy may not be able to be created or destroyed, but the Beauchamp Object sure knew how to hide energy.

Gerst waited for the Space Station to swing by.  They’d invented a space hook device to snag researchers off The Object.  It was always a bit of a thrill ride.  As he waited he saw another of the attitude control jets from 2009 misfire and then shut down.  It was the astronaut’s opinion that something else had to be done with this behemoth.

February 16, 2012 – McGill University Campus, Montreal

Mélanie Beauchamp was presenting a lecture at McGill University.  PHYS 641 Observational Techniques of Modern Astrophysics was a popular course.  Undergrads wanted to take it, but Mélanie was fairly choosy.  The University was continuing to enjoy the benefits of her celebrity from 2009.

Near the end of the lecture, there was an unusual amount of murmuring and babbling.  She was unsure of what it was until she caught a glimpse of her hair.  It was Bella.  It had been a long time since she last saw her sister.  Mélanie headed to the back of the hall.  “‘Allo Bella.  Comment ça va?”  Boys always stayed close to Bella due to her attractants, specifically her red hair (dyed), large bust (augmented), plump lips (modified) and regular use of leather as her predominant signature outerwear.

Bella was Mélanie’s half-sister, eight years younger.

“OK guys,” said Mélanie, “take a hike.”

Once the hormonal undergrads had left, Bella said, “Dernièrement, j’ai eu beaucoup de visions. [Lately, I have had many visions.]”

Bella was not only a fetish model but also a self-proclaimed psychic.  With the age difference and different fathers, Melaine was not close to her sister; the distance was made greater through Bella’s choice of profession.

“Quel type de visions?”

“Tu donnais un discours important. À la télévision. Ou dans un film.”

“You dreamt I was on TV?  J’ai souvent apparu à la television.”

“Non, non j’étais éveillé.  Mais tu portais une robe de mariée.”

“Tu es venu tout le chemin à une classe astrophysique pour me dire cela?  [You came all the way to an astrophysics class to tell me this?]”

“Ça m’achalait vraiment.  [It was really bugging me.]”

“Toi t’es vraiment spécial.  [You’re such a nut.]  Have you had lunch?  Let’s go to the café and see how many students you can distract.”

September 12, 2274 – Command Meeting Room – The Odyssey – Omicron Cassiopeiae             The Odyssey was a super freighter space ship heading toward Omicron Cassiopeiae, 910 light years from Earth. Martin was the Commander and was in the midst of a conference with his Executive Officers.

“Are you serious?”  asked XO Jassel

“I have to agree,” said the second XO.  “Surely we aren’t outfitting this ship for battle, in transit, just to blow it up.”

“Look,” said Martin, “There isn’t a single scenario that gives us a win.”

            The Odyssey was facing an enemy far beyond her capabilities.  About two years earlier, Earth ships had investigated the ternary star system Omicron Cassiopeiae and uncovered unusual gravitational fields between the stars.  Use of the ships’ displacement drives upset what was later determined to be an artificial field binding the stars together.  The subsequent discovery of ancient alien artifacts, followed by a hasty translation indicated that one alien race had imprisoned another.  The reason?  The other race were star eaters who would arrive in a star system and literally absorb the energy of the sun as food.

Humans decided to call the trapped aliens Titans and the now long departed race that had entrapped them were nicknamed Olympians.  Despite having star ships, 23rd century humans felt as ill-equipped as ancient Greek shepherds trying to battle Zeus himself.

March 28, 2012 – The White House, Washington DC

The President was not in the mood.  NASA’s Chief Engineer had managed to arrange a small amount of precious meeting time with Barak Obama.

“OK, Kenny, lay this out for me.”

“Well Mr. President, The Object’s orbit is decaying and we’re losing the attitude control engines at a rate that will have this thing crashing down on our heads by Christmas.”

“Since The Object has given us precious little data, I’m assuming you don’t think it will burn up in the atmosphere.”

“You’re right sir.  We think it will actually absorb the energy from the friction and land harder as a result.”

The President poured himself a glass of water.  “Well, that doesn’t sound good.  Tell me you have options.”

“Yes.  Trying to upgrade the attitude control engines seems wasteful because it would be a continuous process and eventually it will come crashing down.  We’d to know more about The Object by now, but even if we could land it softly on Earth, we aren’t sure we want it on the ground.”

“So … ” said the President.

“We want to put it on the Moon.”

April 3, 2012 – McGill University Montreal, Office of Mélanie Beauchamp, PhD

Mélanie answered her cellphone, “Pierre, how are you?”

“I’m good.  I’m on my way back to Ottawa from DC.”  Pierre had managed to obtain very good consulting work with the Canadian Government after the successful placement of The Object into orbit.  Mélanie was glad not to be in the spotlight as much and Pierre was fond of the jet-setting.

“What’s going on?”  asked Mélanie; Pierre rarely called just to say ‘allo.

“It looks like they want to move The Object to the Moon.”

“Get out.”

“Really.  They feel that if the thing drops from orbit, it might have the heat energy to make a very, very big hole.”

Mélanie was aware of The Object’s energy absorption qualities and agreed it would make a mess when it touched down.

“What am I supposed to do about it?”

“They want you to sell the plan to the public.”

“Oh no.”

“Oh yes.”

“Pierre, I don’t think I could handle that circus again.”

“The man who’s going to phone you next is not someone to say no to.”

Mélanie’s phone started showing another incoming call.  “You are just the worst,” said Mélanie and she swapped to the other call.

“‘Allo?”

“Bonjour Melanie,” said a very American voice.  “This is Barak Obama.  It’s good to talk to you after so long.”

September 12, 2274 – The Command Deck on The Odyssey

The XO Jassel of The Odyssey was thinking out loud.  “In summary, you are saying we wait for the Titans to emerge.  Once we confirm they are real, we blow up the ship in such a way that displacement travel can’t work around Omicron Cassiopeiae.  At the same time the main section of this ship is propelled backward in time with a warning for our forebears to deal with Omicron Cassiopeiae differently.”

“Yes,” said Martin.

“That’s crazy.”

“Yes, but in a good way.  We have no hope of beating the Titans with current technology.  We can slow them down, but unless we develop exciting solar mechanical engineering techniques in short order, we will be destroyed regardless.”

“Everyone on this ship dies.”  The other XO made it sound like more of a statement than a question.

“Oh yeah.  It stinks, but no one knows better than all of us that this was a one-way trip.”

April 6, 2012 – Restaurant l’Académie, rue Crescent, Montreal

Mélanie deliberately arrived early to use wine on her nerves and to think.  She was arguing with herself about asking Luc to do security again.  In early 2010, he asked her out and they had more than a year together as a couple.  His work took him away often, abruptly and it was always top secret and dangerous.  They had broken up eight months earlier on fairly amicable terms – as break-ups went.  She convinced herself that they were both sufficiently mature and professional that they could work out some arrangement.

She was two glasses of wine ahead of Luc when he appeared.  Somehow a man Luc’s size should not be able to sneak up on anyone, but he startled her nonetheless.

“You look wonderful,” he said.

She looked at him.  He was still that chiselled, insanely fit pure laine Québécois with the sturdy jaw that they all seemed to have.  “Did you somehow develop even broader shoulders since I last saw you?  How is that possible?”

Luc laughed.  “Maybe.  I do have to custom tailor my suits.”  He picked up her glass of wine and sniffed it.  “What are you drinking?”

“L’oiseau Bleu.”

“Blech.  That won’t do.”  Luc ordered something French in the $80 range.

Mélanie sat blinking at him.  “What are you doing?”

“Ordering good wine.  I haven’t seen you in what, eight months?  I’m not drinking swill.”

“I got a phone call from Barak Obama yesterday.”  Mélanie was trying to sound casual.

“Really.  Most people don’t get to say that in casual conversation.  Is he looking for re-election help?”

Mélanie leaned forward and took his hand, as if to make an intimate gesture, and whispered in his ear, “they want to move it to the Moon.”

“Wow.”  Luc sat back, but kept holding her hand.  At first he thought she was being cheeky about the Barak Obama statement, but he took an extra second to look at her face and assess the lines and crinkles around the eyes and realized she was worried.

“What’s he wanting you to do?  Please use generic terms,” said Luc.

“The role is, effectively, Head of Marketing.”

“So, the cost of this manoeuvre is high.”

“Totally.  The Europeans and the Russians are on board.  Technically they all understand the risk of this thing falling on our heads.”

“How can I help?”

“I need security again and I asked for the right to choose my own team, which I received.  I thought you could help me.  In ’09 I was as afraid of you and the others as much as I was afraid of the freaks out there.  I’d like to avoid that problem this time.”

“Who’s footing the bill?”

“The President.”

“Good.  Harper’s too cheap.”

Mélanie laughed.

“Look,” said Luc, “You’ve caught me off guard here, which is funny because I was hoping to surprise you.  But I’ll agree to help you, but I have to say something that might affect your request.  When you called, my extremely regular heartbeat spiked.  And I realized … I’ve been in love with you since I first met you. And I now refuse to lose a chance to ask.”

Mélanie put her hand to her mouth.

Luc presented her with an engagement ring in a velvet box.

“Please marry me.”

Mélanie burst into tears.

“Is that a ‘yes’?”

September 12, 2274 – Engineering Division Conference Room, The Odyssey

Martin recalled his officers for the second half of the meeting.  The Odyssey was a hive of activity as everyone was working to prepare the ship.  The problem Martin faced was timing.  Sending the largest piece of the ship’s hull backward through time was not like boarding a bus with a regular schedule.

“I suspect that at least two of you will be wondering if the section of the hull will arrive anytime in the past where it will be useful.”

“We did wonder.  The mathematics indicates the early 21st century.  Will they be able to understand it?”

“Not without help. We’ll need to communicate with someone back then so that they’ll understand to put the wreck on the Moon.”

The officer in charge of the Science Division groaned. “You’re not planning to use that bio link time tunnelling trick are you?”

“Of course,” said Martin.

“It is so … flaky.”

“Look, all of this is a huge bet.  If we’re really, really lucky the aliens will have died in that artificial gravity well and this will be a giant waste of time.  However, if there’s a chance to send a little hint to the past, then we all have the pleasure of helping avoid this stupid, stupid mistake our civilization made.”

“And we’ll probably cease to exist.”

“Well, probably.  Or we die horribly.  Either way it’s for a good cause.”

May 5, 2012 – St. Peter’s Anglican Church, Sherbrooke Quebec

Bella was helping Mélanie with her wedding dress.  The plan was for a small wedding with a small group of family and friends, but despite the speed, was a dignified affair.

“This is all very traditional,” said Bella, who was still perplexed by the white dress’s train.

“Uh-huh.  This coming from the woman who’s wearing an all leather pink maid of honour dress.”

“Hey, you called me a woman and not a girl,” said Bella.

“It must be the stress.”

“Don’t you feel weird?”  Bella gestured to all the trappings of the 1850s church.  “This is all so traditional.”

“I blame Luc.  He’s the Protestant, which in a way is a good thing because the Roman Catholics would never have let us get married this fast.”

Bella and Mélanie had concluded that the visions Bella had had a month earlier were in anticipation for the TV coverage – camera crews were waiting for them to leave the church.  Even President Obama had sent greetings, which by themselves were enough to garner media attention.

During seemingly endless fussing over Mélanie’s dress, the Minister interrupted them.  “Just to let you know ladies … show time in 20 minutes.

“Damn,” said Mélanie.  “I have to go pee.”

“Do you want help?” asked Bella.  “With the dress,” she added.

“No, no.  I’m OK.”

The church’s washroom in the vestry had space enough to manoeuvre with the dress.  Someone was thinking ahead.  When Mélanie stepped out, she felt like she was no longer in the church.  She was surrounded by white light.

“Hi,” said Martin.  “I’m Martin, commander of the space vessel The Odyssey.  Sorry to disturb you.”

“What the hell …”

“I have one quick question.  Do you live in an age where a large space artifact has been discovered?”

“Yes.  In fact I discovered it.  Who the hell are you really?”

“Excellent!  I’ve had a couple of false starts in this process.  It’s good to connect with the right person.”

“Answer the question, Martin.”

“I’m talking to you from the 23rd century.  I’m using a time tunnelling technique that allows images of ourselves to communicate.”

Mélanie looked around.  It seemed they were in a white room with glowing walls standing in front of one another.  Martin looked more of a nebbish than a commander.

“Is this some kind of joke?” asked Mélanie

“No.  Um, why are you dressed that way?  My research of the 21st century led me to expect something else.”

“I’m getting married, you idiot.”

“Oh!  Congratulations.  Look, it’s really important that the artifact is moved to the Moon.  It’s too dangerous to keep in orbit.”

“We’re working on that.  Being from the future you really don’t know much, do you?  Can I go get married now?”

“Don’t you want to know what the artifact really is and its purpose?”

***

Mélanie was back, standing in the vestry.  She estimated that she had worked with Martin for about 30 minutes.

“That was fast,” said Bella.

“Was it?”

“What’s wrong?  You look like you saw a ghost.”

“I think the nerves are finally getting to me.”  There was more Mélanie wanted to tell her sister, but it was going to have to wait.  At least she learned one thing.  Precognition comes from faster-than-light energy projecting from the future.  Everyone receives the signals but only people like her sister can perceive them.

“Is it show time?”  Mélanie asked.

June 17, 2012 – Ed Sullivan Theatre, New York City

David Letterman’s intern said:  “It’s show time Ms Beauchamp.”

“Are you going to watch?”

“Yes,” said Luc, “I liked this one last time.”

She kissed Luc and left with the intern.

On the monitor, Luc watched Letterman do his stuff.

Letterman:  It’s going to be a bit crowded up here because I’ve got guests who are like the cousins who visit for Thanksgiving but don’t leave.  [Olivia Wilde and Denis Leary wave at the crowd and mime eating and drinking.]  Our next guest is, thankfully, a returning guest.  Please welcome from Montreal, Melanie Beauchamp, doctor of astrophysics and the person who first observed the Beauchamp Object, which is currently, precariously, orbiting our planet.

Mélanie walked on stage to the theme of Jaws.  She waved at Paul and shook each of Denis, Olivia and David’s hands.

Letterman:  Welcome back to the show.  How have you been?  You look great. Beauchamp:  Thank you.  I’m good.  Busy due to The Object.  It gave me a couple of years off, but now we have to work on it more. Letterman:  Didn’t you just get married? Beauchamp:  Yes. Letterman:  To your bodyguard. Beauchamp:  Only one of them. Letterman:  [pulling a photo out for the audience]  To this guy?  [the audience sees a picture of Luc standing beside other people and towering over them.] Leary:  Jeez.  That guy’s a moose. Wilde:  Denis! Leary:  C’mon.  Look at him.  What did he eat for lunch?  A linebacker? Beauchamp:  Yes, that’s Luc. Wilde:  It’s so sexy the way you say his name. Letterman:  And [pulling out a different photo] who’s this?  [It was a picture of Bella in her pink leather maid of honour dress.] Leary:  Holy cats. Wilde:  How’d she get into that dress? Letterman:  Please, let the real guest answer. Beauchamp:  That’s my half sister. Leary:  Which half? Beauchamp:  She was my maid of honour. Letterman:  I Googled her. Beauchamp:  That was probably not a good idea. Letterman:  My computer was so taken aback it rebooted. Beauchamp:  She’s a psychic. Leary:  Well, she certainly knows what men are thinking. Letterman:  We’ll be back in a minute after this break.

During the break, Letterman thanked Mélanie for letting him bring up personal matters.  Leary and Wilde were into the mission and Letterman said, “we’ve only got a couple of minutes, so let’s give Melanie a chance to do her pitch.  Denis.”

“What did I do?”

Letterman:  Welcome back everyone.  Melanie’s job seems to be to make sure we all know why we’re moving something to the Moon that Scientific American called “the least cooperative discovery in human history.” Beauchamp:  This mission is so fun.  People will go to the moon for the first time in decades but in the least likely way.  A specialized crew is going to ride The Object to the Moon. Letterman:  And they’re doing this because if it falls out of orbit it will land with a big BOOM? Beauchamp:  Literally the only thing we know for sure is that The Object absorbs energy and keeps it somewhere, internally.  There’s just no way we want to see how much energy it has anywhere on Earth.  It’s about 215 miles long.  What scrap yard wants that landing on its head? Letterman:  But you don’t know what it’s made of. Beauchamp:  No clue.  It has not let us take a sample or analyze it. Letterman:  I was told you were asked to help by President Obama himself. Beauchamp:  Yes. Letterman:  Wow.  Did the Canadian government object? Beauchamp:  When the President of the United States calls to request the secondment of one of your people, what do you say? Letterman:  ‘Yes sir’? Beauchamp:  Pretty much. Letterman:  Ladies and gentlemen, up next are The Pierces. August 7, 2012 – 320 West 66th St., New York City

Mélanie was joining Barbara Walters, Whoopi Goldberg, Elizabeth Hasslebeck on The View.  The regularly scheduled guests included Meryl Streep, Tommy Lee Jones, Gillian Flynn and Jane Seymour, all of whom wanted to meet Mélanie.

Goldberg:  Our crowded show today is bolstered by Melanie Beauchamp who’s here to explain the next phase of weirdness around The Beauchamp Object.  Let’s give her a warm welcome.  [Everyone greets Mélanie.] Walters:  Welcome back.  I’ve done a lot of reading about The Object, as I notice you refer to it.  Is it as frustrating to the scientific community as it sounds? Beauchamp:  Absolutely.  When there’s a new discovery, normally regular scientific inquiry will give insight.  But with The Object in space, it’s difficult to analyze and there’s no way we’ve found to take a sample of the hull. Goldberg:  Hull.  So you believe it’s part of a spaceship. Beauchamp:  Given what I know, I’m pretty convinced. Hasselbeck:  Moving it to the Moon.  Is that the only option?  Washington is being very tight-lipped on what this is costing. Beauchamp:  I have no access to costing data, so I can’t help there, but I do know that continuously servicing the rockets that keep it in orbit will be a never-ending cost but the trip to the Moon is one time.  Other options were considered, like tossing it into the Sun, but since we have no idea what The Object is made of, it seemed like a bad idea. Goldberg:  So why not cut it loose and let it float away and be someone else’s problem? Beauchamp:  We have to move it to the Moon.

Whoopi was taken aback by Mélanie’s earnestness.  In the Green Room, Luc was watching and realized that a nerve had been hit.  He’d accompanied Mélanie on hundreds of shows and interviews and had not seen this before.

Jones:  I think we’ve seen on our own planet what happens … y’know … dump something somewhere for someone else to clean up. Beauchamp:  If you’re out on a boat and you see garbage floating by, aren’t you supposed to pick it up and take it to land, even though you personally didn’t put it in? Goldberg:  At 215 miles long, that ain’t noDixiecup floating in the water. Hasselbeck:  Obama asked you to help pitch the plan, right?  Did he mention how this would effect his re-election bid? Walters:  You’re a Canadian citizen though, right? Beauchamp:  Correct and I have not talked politics with him except to wish him luck.  And this is international.  Just like the first time, if this thing lands on our head, it’s a bad time for all.

Back at their hotel, Luc asked, “did you get a little defensive with Whoopi Goldberg?”

“Yes, I did.”

“You have all the signs of someone who’s weighed down with a secret,” said Luc.

Mélanie considered herself bad at keeping secrets and being married to a spy certainly didn’t make hiding one easier.  The good news was that it was not for long.

“Look,” she said, “Didn’t Martin Sheen in your favourite movie say something like ‘Sir, I am not aware of any such activity or operation – nor would I be disposed to discuss such an operation if it did exist.’”

“Pretty damn close.”

“Consider me in that category, but also consider me a girl who needs desperately to go out with her handsome husband, a woman desperate to be part of the world and not some object on TV.”

Luc pulled out a second cell phone, not the one Mélanie saw him normally use.  He typed “NY outing.  One hour” and pressed Send.

“Should I ask?”

“No.  I have a special kit for you.  Wig, dress, shoes.”  He pulled a case from the closet and popped it open.

“Wow.  Blonde.  This is different.  Sexy.  Did you choose it?”

“Your sister helped.”

*** Four hours Later ***

“Did you have to hit him that hard?”

“Pretty much,” said Luc.  “Well, at least we had a couple of hours out before someone recognized you.”

“Why are people so … crazed?”

“A deadly combination of garden variety celebrity status, fear of the unknown and that Mayan prophecy drivel.  You are the lucky one; you understand The Object better than anyone.”

“Let’s pack up and go to bed.  Don’t we go to California tomorrow for my guest spot on The Big Bang Theory?”

“Yes.”

September 18, 2012 – Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank, California

Mélanie was sitting on stage with Michael J. Fox and Ellen DeGeneres.

DeGeneres:  In my all-Canadian show today, I am first going to attempt to embarrass my second guest with pictures of her family.  [In the background were a couple of carefully cropped photos of Bella.]  Now this is my kind of sister.  Sadly, I have a brother. Fox:  And I thought I was twitchy before. Beauchamp:  Half sister. Fox:  Looks like a whole sister to me. DeGeneres:  Now that I’ve got your attention, let’s talk about the Moon.  [Image switches to a huge picture of the moon.]  So, I’m not all techie or anything so I asked Melanie if we could act out the mission to put The Object on the Moon.  Now we all know Michael is the Earth because he likes to be the centre of attention.  Melanie, you’ll be Mission Control so you’ll stand here.  [Mélanie moves to a pre determined spot.]  I’ve also got a couple of helpers from the audience.  [To Mélanie’s surprise, Bella comes on stage wearing a conservative suit exactly the same as Mélanie’s.  Mélanie is totally caught off guard.  They hug.  In the Green Room, Luc chortles.]

It took a moment for Mélanie to compose herself after a short exchange in French with Bella.  Meanwhile, DeGeneres brings up three people from the studio audience.

DeGeneres:  So, Susan, Tiffany and Don here are going to pretend to be The Object.  Bella is going to be the Moon – or maybe moons in her case – and Michael is going to be the Earth.  So, Melanie, how’s this going to work? Beauchamp:  OK.  Could Susan, Tiffany and Don please walk in an ellipse around Michael?  You’ll see some nice blue bits of tape on the floor.  Snuggle together as the astronauts flying The Object will be clenching pretty tightly.  Now can Tony put on The Planets by Holst? Tony:  How about Gangam Style? Beauchamp:  Good enough.  Now, Bella, please orbit around Michael following the green marks. DeGeneres:  And Michael can spin on his axis in one spot until he throws up. Fox:  Sounds good.  I try to fit that in every week. Beauchamp:  As you can see, the Moon moves around the Earth, also in an elliptical fashion.  For the last while, the private SpaceX Dragon has been moving equipment onto The Object.  Ellen?  [DeGeneres hands gifts to the three members of the studio audience.]  Once the position is correct, rockets on The Object fire and it flies right toward the moon, circles around the Moon, fires more rockets, and lands, hopefully gently on the Moon. DeGeneres:  Group hug!!  [Bella and the audience members hug.]  Now, Melanie, I gotta ask.  “Landing gently on the Moon” sounds optimistic. Beauchamp:  A pilot friend of mine once said, “it’s not the flying, but the take off and landing that’s tricky.”  In this case, we only have to land The Object.  It’s already in flight.

In the Green Room, Mélanie was bawling her eyes out at being able to see her sister and she slapped Luc on his barrel chest.  “Tu savais, hein?”

“Bien sûr.  Ellen m’a appelé. C’était son idée.”

Ellen gave Mélanie a gift of remembering what was important … family.  The mission was scheduled for October 27.  She was planning on being very relieved.

October 26, 2012 – CBC Studios, Toronto Mansbridge:  I have Mélanie Beauchamp on the line from Cape Canaveral.  Mélanie, how’s the weather? Beauchamp:  Peter it is dreadful.  Hurricane Sandy has pretty much locked down the entire eastern seaboard. Mansbridge:  And the mission? Beauchamp:  Scrubbed I’m afraid.  It’s not just letting the hurricane pass, it’s the cleanup afterward. Mansbridge:  This isn’t just waiting for the next flight, I assume? Beauchamp:  They are recalculating when the next optimum window is. Mansbridge:  I guess President Obama may not be President when this mission completes? Beauchamp:  I know Mr. Romney is on record as saying he thinks the entire mission is a waste of money, but I don’t think he will see any cost savings if he rolls it back now.

Mélanie paced her apartment in Florida.  Luc was simply looking at her.

“What’s your biggest worry?”

“Romney might permanently scrub the mission.”

“You honestly think he’d do that?”

“To pander to the nut jobs that are trying to get him elected?”

“What about the nut jobs trying to get Obama elected?”

“Well, at least they’re more my type of nut job.”

November 6, 2012 – The Marriott Residence Inn, Cape Canaveral Florida

Mélanie had never watched election coverage so closely before and truly hoped she’d not have to do so ever again.

As soon as Romney gave his unexpectedly gracious concession speech, she wanted to go to bed.

“You should email him,” said Luc.

“Obama?  Don’t you think he’s a bit busy?”

“Trust me.”  He tossed her her smartphone.

November 26, 2012 – VIP Observation Deck, Cape Canaveral Florida

It was 15 degrees C, clear and sunny at Cape Canaveral.  Suborbital private craft were launching with space tourists to watch The Object leave orbit.  Richard Branson had been a huge supporter of moving The Object and was thick in the venture to view the operation live from space.

In the VIP observation deck, Mélanie was able to speak in person with Obama for the first time since 2009.

“Melanie!  Good to see you.  Thanks for your support and work during this process.”

“You remember Luc, my husband?”

“Hard to forget him!”  They shook hands.  “Thanks for your email after election night.  It meant a lot to me.  Make sure to stick around afterwards.  There’s going to be quite the party.”

As Luc and Mélanie walked away, Luc said, “Told you the email was a good idea.”

“We have to find a corner where we won’t be watched.  I have to tell you something.”

Once settled, she leaned to Luc and whispered, “There are two ways this could go down – three if you include total failure.  First they put an inert object on the Moon.  Second, The Object reveals something in flight.  And when that happens everyone will be looking at me.  My security issues to date will look like nothing in comparison.”

“OK.  I’m officially nervous.”

“This could all be a figment of my imagination.  I promise to disclose fully afterwards, but whatever happens, do not leave my side under any circumstances.”

A few hours later they were watching the pictures as the object broke free of orbit.  Rockets were firing correctly and Mission Control was tracking everything according to plan.  As The Object started hurtling away from Earth, cameras showed the markings on the hull had shifted.  In massive letters in many languages, including English, the markings now formed a simple message:  LOOK INSIDE.

“Crew on the Object.  Are you noticing anything strange with the markings?  Over.”

“Nothing we can see, Mission Control.”

“Can we get confirmation from other observers?”

Luc was looking at Mélanie.  “It’s starting,” she whispered.

“Mission Control.  This is Gerst on The Object.  It looks like the hull is shifting.  What appears to be an access port has appeared.  Over.”

“Can you beam us an image?  You are getting out of camera range.”

“Working on it.”

Mélanie typed a text message for Bella.  Does this look familiar?  She did not press send yet.

Then all monitors at Mission Control and Cape Canaveral were interrupted.  Incongruously Mélanie was on screen in her wedding dress.  She was clearly shaky and nervous, but the transmission continued.

As many of you know, I’m Mélanie Beauchamp.  This transmission was made on my wedding day, May 5, 2012.  I was intercepted by The Object’s captain through a time-tunnelling technique I frankly don’t understand.  Something about shared photons.  If you are seeing this, you are in the process of moving The Object to the Moon.  You are moving the remains of the spaceship The Odyssey.  It is a human ship from the year 2274.  It was deliberately blasted back in time as a warning.  In the centuries to come, humans will investigate the triple star system Omicron Cassiopeiae and discover entities able to destroy us.  Inside the hull are artifacts able to help us understand the danger and to avoid it.  The Object should be downloading to all university sites a data package with details.  Assuming I’m still involved in this mission, please understand why I had to withhold this information because, frankly, I’m still not 100% sure that this isn’t my imagination.

The transmission ended.  Mélanie pressed Send on her phone.

“Crap,” said Luc.  He grabbed his special phone and tapped in FULL ALERT and pressed Send.

Mission Control and Cape Canaveral were in an uproar.

Obama yelled out, “Keep it down!  The mission proceeds.  Mélanie and Luc.  Could you come sit with me for the duration?”

As they rose Luc said, “Now I know why you wanted him to win the election so much.  Romney’s bunch might have shot you.”

December 24, 2274 – The Bridge of The Odyssey, Omicron Cassiopeiae

Martin’s hand hovered over a red button.

“Commander, honestly, a red button?”

“It’s an homage to 21st Century humour.”

“Commander, the expected fluctuations in the gravity well are happening.”

“Show time, everyone.”

The entire crew of The Odyssey hoped nothing would happen.

As the gravitational fields unfolded there was a churning energy field underneath, and it started broadcasting.  Suddenly everyone on the ship were feeling horror without a single image or a specific thought to trigger it.

“Right on schedule,” muttered Martin through clenched teeth.  He hit the button.

The light from the blast would reach Earth 910 years later.

Denzel:

Jack arrived at my door shortly after his bicycle accident.  Usual idiot.  He left the house thinking he was being a good father and husband by getting on his mountain bike and blasting around the city instead of doing what he wanted to do:  whack the shit out of his wife, son and daughter.

Of course, he was too much of a man to wear a helmet so, when he came off the Burrard Street Bridge – no bike lights of course – the jackass slid on some wet sludge on the Gregor Robertson Approved Bicycle Lane and flew over the concrete divider into a Range Rover.  It was driven by a distracted stupid bitch who wasn’t watching because she was checking her phone for a text message.  Jack ricocheted, flew off his bicycle like a rag doll into the concrete barrier on Pacific Avenue and smashed his head open like a really crunchy egg.

Jack:

I was standing in front of a door marked “You’re next, asshole.”  All around me were mists like what you saw on old science fiction shows.  Where was I?  I pushed through the door and was faced with a large, muscular black guy.

“Jack, Jack, Jack,” he said.  He was holding what looked like an iPad.  “You were an abusive husband and you neglected your children.”

“What?  Who the hell are you?” I asked.

“Denzel.  Don’t worry – no relation to the movie star.  I’ll be your post-mortem disciplinarian.”

“I’m dead?”

“Oh you poor thing, you don’t remember.  Let me help you.”  Denzel touched my arm and I remembered the bike accident.  I was on my knees wanting to puke, but nothing came.

“Yes, you have no stomach, so you can’t barf,” said Denzel.

“But, I have a body,” I muttered.

“It’s pretend.  Now shut up and listen.  They tell me I’m privileged to be helping people like you – abusive morons – see their errors and move onto a higher plane of understanding.”

I stared at this guy.  He looked like a football player but talked like an angry gay guy from the West End.  This seemed pointless.  Even if I could be different (Denzel should have met my father) I didn’t see what yakking about it was going to do.

“God you’re boring,” said Denzel.  “Everyone thinks they’re ‘OK’ when there’s someone worse.  It’s so lame.  There’s always a worse driver, worse parent, worse policeman, worse murderer – Pickton says he killed 49, I’m nothing compared to that.”

Denzel:

I couldn’t believe after all the time I’d been doing this job I let a minor, minor league wife and child abuser get under my skin.  Maybe the infinite quantity of unmoving, unchanging fucking morons coming through my door was finally wearing me down.

Anyway, they’re always confused at first as to how things work.  Jack was no exception.

“You have been cursed with figuring out why your life is such a bad example of human existence,” I said to Jack.  “I have been cursed with showing you the way.  How it works is that I put you into situations that you have to address – you know, try to improve – and then you report back to me.  You will have a body, but it will only appear to the people involved in the unpleasantness.  You will be impervious to harm.  You will have substantially more physical strength that any human around.  When you touch someone – or if someone is stupid enough to touch you – you will be able to see into their minds.  Have fun.  Good bye.  No more questions.  See you.”

I quickly flipped through my list of scenarios on my simulated iPad and saw a juicy one.  I double tapped it and sent Jack off.  I took a short moment to quiet my mind.

“Next!” I yelled.

Jack:

That crazy shit Denzel just tapped on his iPad (Apple Computers in Hell??) and now I’m here … in someone’s shanty smelly tiny house.  The air felt like desert air.  Why was I breathing anyway?  Wasn’t I dead?  Denzel talked so fast I wasn’t sure what he was going on about.

Then I heard the unmistakable sound of sex, but the female partner was clearly not enjoying herself.  Denzel sent me here to give someone Sex Ed lessons? Then she screamed.  Obviously a young girl.  Her words sounded Arabic, but as I heard the words I somehow knew what they meant, knew it was Yemen Arabic.  Denzel hadn’t mentioned that trick.  She was clearly saying, “you’re hurting me.”

I left the room and entered what I presumed to be the bedroom.  There I found a guy – I guessed he was about forty – forcing himself on a girl who seemed to be nine or ten.

“No matter where, that’s rape,” I said.

Naturally both of them were pretty surprised by me being there.  They scrambled to throw on some clothes.  The girl moved away from the guy and he started shouting “Who are you? What are you doing in my house?”

I ignored him and asked the girl, “Can I get you out of here?  Take you home?  We can go to the police if you like.”

“Stop talking to my wife!”

I turned to the guy and said, “You’re kidding, right?”  (It passed through my mind that somehow I was speaking Arabic without knowing a word of it, but I didn’t dwell on this because I was too busy dealing with the child bride thing.)  Then he charged me as if to push me out of his house.  Once he touched me, the whole story flooded into my head: the financial deal with the girl’s father; the whole messed up concept of family honour.  Essentially, about two weeks ago, she had been bought and paid for and he felt he could do whatever he wanted.  I pushed him back and he flew across the room and smacked against the wall, looking as surprised at my strength as I was.  Denzel was right.  What else had he told me?  I was supposed to address this situation?  Yeah, like how?

Then the mother came into the room.  Not the girl’s mother, but the so called husband’s mother.  Her screeching made my paranormal head hurt.  She looked around sixty going on ninety but had the lung capacity of a high pitched moose.

“Would you shut up?” I said.

“Get out!  Get out!  Leave my son alone!”

She came at me and I didn’t realize she had a big honking knife until she was on me.  Talk about a flood of venom when she touched me.  The pictures I received from her head of what she used to do – sexually – with her son when he was a kid were literally beyond my ability to describe.  It made what my old man did to me look like a cake decorating class.  I also learned that she too had been a child bride.

This crazy woman was snarling like some kind of feral dog and I flung her off me only to find her big knife jammed into my left pec up to the hilt.  No blood.  No impairment of movement or breathing, but it sure hurt.  I pulled the knife out and pointed it at the mother-and-son combo.  I lost my temper.  I said to the girl, “cover your eyes and turn your back.”

After, I found out that the girl was called Jasmeen.  I told Jasmeen to pack up her things and dress to go outside.  I asked her where she used to live, I assumed with her parents, and I started walking her home.  I couldn’t realistically leave her in that mess.  We walked the dusty streets and she asked such childish questions.  She was the size of my 8-year-old daughter, a bit more mature, but given what she’d been through I expected more.

“Are you an angel?”

“Definitely not.”

“What are you?”

“A ghost,” I said.

“How did you die?”

“Bicycle accident.”

“Did it hurt?”

“Yes.”

“Why did you help me?”

“Good question.”

“Do you help lots of people?”

“No.”

“Will my daddy make me marry again?”

“Not after I talk to him.”

Literally no one saw me until a rough looking character walked toward her saying, “where are you going little girl?”  I felt myself solidify; the guy trying to hassle her jerked back in surprise as if he was thinking where’d he come from?

“Walk away, jerk,” I said.  And he did.

There were no other incidents.  Once at her home, she ran to her mother in tears.  The father came out at the sound of the ruckus.  He stared at me.  Saw me.  I approached.  “Listen carefully.  You sold your daughter and she was raped.  Your days of being a moron are over.  Take care of her or you’ll end up worse than her ‘husband’.”

Jasmeen’s father seemed convinced.  I was surprised he didn’t start arguing with me.

“What happened to him?”

“He had a discussion with his mother that didn’t go so well.”

He started to cry.  I hate it when guys cry.  But I started to fade away and I disappeared into those dry ice / Classic Star Trek style mists again.

I was in front of Denzel’s door once more.  The sign on the door read, “Nice try, asshole.”

Denzel:

“Jack, Jack, Jack,” I said.  “‘Address the situation,’ not ‘murder the perpetrators and set up a grisly crime scene worthy of CSI.’  Although I am one who can’t help but appreciate a good quality faked murder-suicide, especially when the mother was set up as the murderer.  Just an inspired bit of homicidal rage.  No pent up anger in you, eh?”

Jack just stared at me.  I knew what he was thinking but I needed him to say it.  So I waited.  Eventually he spoke.

“They didn’t seem to think that they had done anything wrong.”

“So?  Killing them leaves little opportunity for improvement.”

“I assumed the point was to save the girl.”

“The point is to save your soul.”

“Isn’t it a bit late for that seeing I’m dead?”

“Souls are forever you yutz.  Bodies come and go like Paris Hilton’s underwear.”

I was staring hard at Jack.  He hadn’t made the connection yet.  It’s always a challenge to break down the barriers.  He had the capability to be smart – to make connections, to draw conclusions, to modify his behaviour.  But he was stunted.

“So, Jack,” I said, “do you think Jasmeen’s experience and Sandi’s experience with you are similar?”  (Sandi was Jack’s daughter.)

“No.”

“Oh, come on.  You don’t think all the times you called her names, took her stuff away from her for no comprehensible reason, made her watch when you verbally abused her brother – just to ‘toughen her up’ – isn’t the same as what Jasmeen’s father did?”

“I wouldn’t sell Sandi.  I wouldn’t touch her.”

“Yeah, sure, but what if she got really bad, Jack?  What if she really disrespected you?  What if she mocked you?  Wouldn’t you want to show her what a real man was?”

Predictably, he took a swing at me.  He was still too attached to the flesh.  I’d been trying to avoid violence, but it’s still there for me.  The pleasure.  Even though his arm and my arm were simulated, not of earth, I took a delicious pleasure at wrenching his arm around, shoving it up his back and tearing his simulated shoulder ligaments and breaking his wrist.

Jack writhed in pain.  I kneeled down beside him and whispered in his ear, “Fix yourself Jack.  Remember your real body is in a body bag on Pacific Ave.”

Jack:

The pain in my arm was incredible but the bastard was right.  This wasn’t real.  This was like the knife in the shoulder.  I concentrated, straightened out my arm and imagined it was in one piece.  And then it was.

What was the point of this?  Was Hell a real place where they sent guys like me who were mean to their wives and kids?  Some modern torture chamber run by angry gay black men?

“‘Mean to your wife?’”, said Denzel, quoting what was in my mind.  “Jack, don’t you get it?  You were abusive.  You hit her in anger.  Come on, loose the justification that just because your Dad used a closed fist and you didn’t doesn’t make it any less abusive.”

I really didn’t like that Denzel could read my mind.  I wondered if it went two ways.

“OK,” I said, “What the hell do you want from me?  Is there some kind of 12-step program or rehab in the afterlife I can sign up for?  I have no idea what the rules are here.  I’m not all that thrilled at the prospect of spending any time at all with you.”

“Oh poor widdle Jackie.  He’s afwaid of dah black man.  Afwaid dah black man gonna do something nasty to him with his big johnson.”

And Denzel started laughing.  That laugh was creepier than any part of this so far.

“No sweetheart,” said Denzel, “I have another job for you to help you ‘get it.’  This time, I’d really recommend finding a more creative way to handle the issue.”

He tapped on his damn fake iPad again and I was suddenly in a suburban home, specifically its wood panelled basement.  There were many boxes labelled with “family photos,” “university texts,” and so forth.  Some sporting equipment was piled around including skis and a diving wet suit, which was hanging on a rack.  There was stuff up against all the wood panelling except for one spot where boxes had clearly been pushed aside.  There was light coming from underneath the panelling.  It was a fake door.  I quietly pushed through the 2/3 height door into a home made movie studio.

I was once again glad to be a ghost with no stomach.  A man was operating a console that was controlling the angles of three video cameras.  He was at a desk behind a Plexiglas sound wall.  It was dark where he was sitting but the lights were bright in the fake bedroom where he was filming a masked middle-aged man having sex with two underage girls – I’d guess the girls’ ages to be 9/10 and at most 12.  No doubt this was being fed live to the Internet.

To have a complete picture of what was going on, I was going to have to touch this creep.  I grabbed his shoulder and pulled him back from the consoles, taking his rolling chair with him.  This bastard’s story shot into my head and I will not describe it all here.  He was selling his step daughter and real daughter to men for sex.  He then filmed them and sold the footage online to perverts around the world.  Read any study on sexual abuse and it follows the same pattern.  The lulling of the children.  The promise they’ll be stars.  The brutalization of the mothers into silence.  The subsequent self-justification.

In my mind, the temptation to simply kill these guys was huge but, I hate to admit, Denzel was right.  I was given the physical capability to easily kill, but did that mean I had to use it?  However, for efficiency, there was going to be a little violence.

“Who the hell are you?” was all the cameraman could say before I punched him in the face.  He was howling in the chair and it occurred to me that it would be fun to alter my appearance.  I concentrated and willed my face into a classic red-faced devil with horns.  I went around the Plexiglas.  The girls started to scream the moment they saw me.  The “actor” pulled back, his mouth an open O when he saw me.  I grabbed him by the shoulders and tossed him into the concrete basement wall.  No wood panelling for this guy.

I turned to each of the cameras and said “I’m coming for you.”  Then I crushed each of the lenses with my bare hands.

I let my face turn back to normal and said, “Girls.  Put some clothes on and wait here for the police.”

I grabbed the actor by the leather strap of his mask – he was screaming quite loudly now – and dragged him to where the cameraman sat, who was cupping his bleeding nose.  I tossed them both to the ground face down.  I unplugged some of the PCs’ power cables and tied their hands behind their backs and bound their feet.  Then I dragged them both by the feet up the narrow stairs from the basement to the main hallway.  (That had to hurt.)  I continued dragging them outside to the curb.  I smiled when I saw the trash cans.  How fitting … the next day was garbage day.

The night air was refreshing as was the sight of lights coming on in neighbours’ houses.  I guessed it was around 11 PM, but I had no idea of the day.  I could tell by the trees that it was autumn.

I went back into the house, found a phone, punched up 911.

“What is the nature of your emergency?”

“I need the police and ambulance.  There’s been an assault on two girls.”

“What’s your address?”

“I’m not sure, but I’m calling from a land line, so I hope you can figure it out.”

“How do you know about this assault?”

“I’m a witness and I interrupted the creation of a child porn video.   The girls are in the basement.  The rapists are tied up by the trash bins.”

“Who are you?”

“An anonymous source.”

I put the phone down, but did not hang up.  I heard sirens in the distance.

I wasn’t sure about when I was done this mission, I felt that I could leave once I heard sirens and saw the cops pull up.  I walked into the kitchen admiring how normal-looking it was given the horror show that had been going on in the basement.  There were two calendars hanging on the walls.  “November 2010” was on both of them.

The police sirens were really loud now and the flashing lights filled the front of the house.  I faded away and was greeted by those mists and Denzel’s door.  The sign on the door read, “You’re still an asshole, asshole”.

Denzel:

“Well, did you have fun?”

Jack didn’t reply.  It looked like he was going to be stubborn.

“Come on,” I said, “what could go wrong?  You were the hero.  You saved the girls, you handed the bad guys over to the cops.  You even had a chance to rid yourself of some of those nasty inner tensions.  I liked the devil face; that was a nice touch.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore,” said Jack.

And then he grabbed me!  Me.  He grabbed both my wrists and looked into my face and said with his mind, “Who are you?”

So I showed him.

Jack:

He showed me.  He showed me horror.  He had been a child soldier in Zaire and Rawanda.  He moved up the ranks and became the most effective mutilator of women, children and men there was.  The words rape, torture, dismemberment are just words.  The words can’t cover the atrocities.  And, worst of all, he enjoyed it.  It was pleasure all the time until finally someone put a bullet in his head.

Denzel:

Jack let go of me and fell backwards.  And he thought that what I’d shown him before was bad.

Jack:

I wanted to get away from Denzel as soon as I could.  There was no doubt that this guy could do the Devil’s work.  I turned around and pushed out the door.  I had a theory and there was no better time to test it.  I walked straight into the mists and concentrated on where I wanted to be and when.

Denzel:

Well, I’ll be damned.  It had been a long time since someone had thought to just barge out.

Jack:

There wasn’t anything I wanted more than to have a conversation with myself.  I thought it was a funny idea.  It reminded me of when people gave me stupid advice like “you have to be able to look yourself in the mirror” and “be true to yourself.”  The idea to counsel myself had come to me when I saw that 2010 calendar.  I realized that Denzel had the ability to send me anywhere to any date.  If that was the case, why couldn’t I do it myself?

To my own surprise, I materialized in my own basement about two hours before that bicycle accident.  My earlier self was sitting at his/my desk.  (Argh.  Pronouns are going to be tough here!)

“Jack,” I said.  He/I swivelled in the chair and said, “Wha?”

“Listen, there’s likely not much time.  I have to warn you.  I have to tell you … a lot.”

“What are you?”

When I looked at him/me I realized that some of my anger, my frustration was partly medical.  There was something about my eyes that looked wrong.  Talking was not going to work.  My earlier self stood up and I kneed him in the nuts.  Not too hard.  It was strangely – what’s that fancy word – cathartic?  Therapeutic?  While his hands were holding his nuts, I grabbed his face and pressed my forehead into his.

“Listen and watch,” I said.  It didn’t take long to shove my memories into his head; I started to fade.

Next thing I knew I was in my chair.  I was no longer dead.  I was no longer super strong.  I really hoped I was somewhere where Denzel could not get me.

Now what?  In a little bit something one of the kids does was going to set me off, putting me into a rage sending me on my fatal bike ride.  This made me remember all the scenes.  Yemen, the kid porn basement, Zaire.  My innards were really wanting to let go of dinner.  I took a moment to calm myself.  Then I could feel it.  I could feel the power of habit.  Part of my mind was not wanting to change.  To stay here, wait for the time to pass and hope for the best.

If I could save those girls in other places, I could save my own kids.

I picked up the phone and called my brother-in-law, Dennis.

“Hello?”

“Dennis, it’s Jack.”

“Jack, how are you?”

“Bad.  Can I stay on your couch for a bit?”

“Man, did she throw you out finally?”

“No, I’m throwing myself out.”

“Really.”

“Yes.  I am not safe to be around my family.  You said you knew some counsellors or shrinks or something.”  Dennis did social work.  Like his sister, he tried to save hopeless cases.

“No problem.  I can fix you up with someone nuts-and-bolts.  I know how much you like the airy-fairy stuff.”

“OK.  Excellent.  I’ll explain more when I see you.”

“You gonna bike over?  It’s pouring.”

“No, no.  It’s OK.  I’ll walk.”

Lying in bed dying of liver disease is pretty boring.

But the ghost was making it interesting.  He kept wandering around the room, sitting impatiently in a chair, standing and looking at my chart, looking over the nurses and doctors’ shoulders as they did their usual rounds.  I didn’t know this guy.  He looked around my age – 52 – and was anglo-looking, taller than me.  I assumed he was a ghost because no one else seemed to see him, and I wasn’t that high on my meds.

It wasn’t until my kid brother showed up and sat on the ghost, that I was 100% sure it was a ghost.  Right after Tommy dropped his big butt on him, the ghost turned into a mist and reformed in a standing position beside my IV drip stand with a rather nasty scowl.

Tommy was full of the usual pointless blather and questions you share with a dying man. Hope of transplant? Nothing yet. Affairs in order?  No, but don’t care either.

“Tommy, you know what?” I said, “Get outta here.  Call Mom and tell her I’m as OK as I’m going to be and go see your family.  It’s Christmas Eve.  I have no interest in making someone stay in the hospital with me.”

Tommy left saying, “see you tomorrow,” and I replied silently, if we’re lucky.

At this point I decided to address the ghost.  “Hey, ghost.  You want to get lost?”

“So, you can see me.”

“Of course I can; you’ve been messing around here for a while, but I didn’t think it would help me much to be telling the doctors that there was a ghost in the room.”

“Your brother’s not that intuitive, eh?”

“No, not exactly an in-tune guy – except for baseball stats.  Why, what do intuitive people do?”

“Well,” said the ghost, “it varies.  Most have a subconscious that directs them away from me.  A few others will perceive me to some level and make a passing remark and then avoid me.  A couple of full-on psychics will miss that I’m not a real person – for a couple of minutes, away.”

“So, uh, why are you here?” I asked.

“Well, it’s Christmas Eve; and there’s always a bit of extra magic floating around that gives me a bit more mojo to do interesting things.  So I pick someone in a situation like yours and see if they want to join me.”

“Join you where?”

“In this hereafter I’m in – the space between the conscious and unconscious worlds.”

“Why would you want me there with you?”

“Ah well; good question.  According to my research you’re an ass.  I mean really, you don’t have personal relationships with women. It’s kind of an exchange of services.  You married your wife for the business connections, and if she hadn’t lied to you about going off The Pill, you’d have never been a father.  And your daughter is so estranged from you that she might not even come to your funeral.

In essence, beggars can’t be choosers.  Were Halle Berry, or even Cher, in suitable near death situations, believe me; I’d be talking to them.  But loneliness is powerful, even when you’re dead.”

I looked at this ghost and wondered what the hell this was really about.  One of my first jobs was selling cars, so I knew a pitch when I heard one.  I decided to carry on the discussion because this was a far more interesting way to spend my last hours than reading Readers Digest.

“I can’t be the only near-death guy on Christmas Eve,” I said

“No, but you have a certain profile; it’s hard to describe.  But, we have no time for this.  What I need you to do is experience life twice from two different points of view – in fact in two totally different bodies – and then come back and let go of your own life.  I.e. not wait until you die, but release yourself to death.

“How do I do that?”

“You have to lose that tiny bit of hope that some doctor is going to come in here with a shiny new liver for you and give up.”

“Um, OK,” I said, “how do I experience a different life?”

“You leave that to me.  It’s called magic because very much in the same way you drive a car without knowing how to build an internal combustion engine, I can send you into a body.  However, there’re some wrinkles.  I can send you anywhere at any time, but the person you drop into will have just died.  They have to have died of some relatively subtle ailment (a heart attack as opposed to being hit by a bus).”

“You’re going to make me into a zombie?”

“Uh, sort of.  But without all the groaning and eating of human flesh.  You will have access to the dead person’s memories, and you will decay, slowly – it’s not a long term deal.”

“You are going to send my mind back in time, into a dead guy’s body?  That’s the craziest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Of course.  This is not something you’ll find on the Internet.  Now, we’re running out of time.  Just say ‘yes I would like to experience another life’ and we can get going.

“I would like to experience another life.”

***

I awoke in a much bigger body.  Man, this guy had had his fair share of lumberjack breakfasts.  I blinked and blinked.  It was like everything in this body was set to manual.  I had to think about everything, including breathing.  Of course, this made sense if he’d just kicked the bucket.  As my vision cleared I realized I was on an aircraft.  Clenched in “my” hand – wow; this guy had big mitts – was a boarding pass.  “UA 93” with a date of “9/11/01.”

Oh crap. Oh crap.

I was sitting in a row by myself.  The plane felt empty.  Damn, damn, damn, what could I remember about this?  This is the one that flew into the ground in Pennsylvania.  What else, what else?  Passenger revolt.  Nothing else was coming to mind.

Time.  What time was it?  According to the host body’s watch it was 9:35 AM.  Hadn’t the World Trade Centre planes already crashed?

I tried to make the host body work.  It was stiff; what a surprise (undoing the seat belt helped).  I was in coach and started moving to the front.  I did recall that the hijackers had bought first class tickets.

Exactly what I thought I was doing was a good question.  I was a nearly dead man occupying a dead man’s body who was on a plane about to meet a rather nasty end.  I also didn’t see the point of this.  But what was I going to do?  Do the crossword in the newspaper and watch events unfold?  I was put here to learn something – I anticipated a short lesson.

I lumbered into first class.  Operating the host body was like having to talk to yourself in order to walk:  right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot and try not to flail your arms like a zombie.  I parted the curtains and entered first class.

The first class passengers were huddled in a few seats furthest from the cockpit.  A hijacker turned to me and said, “Go back!”

I had not tried talking yet.  The first noise as I booted up the voice box was “glaackk.”

My next statement was a lot more direct:  “People! These guys aren’t going to ransom the plane.  They’re going to crash it into DC somewhere.”

The hijacker lunged toward me and stabbed me in the chest with something.  You’d think it would have hurt, but in this case being in a dead body has its advantages.  I grabbed him by the shirt, pulled him close and fell backwards out of first class into coach.  “Help help!” I managed to blurt.  Someone from first class climbed over us and went back into coach.  The hijacker repeatedly stabbed me with no effect until others from first class pulled him off me.

People in coach hauled me up to my feet and put me in a chair.  “Are you OK?”

“I’ll be fine.  You have to get into the cockpit and get the hijackers out of there now,” I said.

Now what?  It was 9:44 AM and I could see the rest of the passengers were on phones and were mobilizing.  Passengers were pounding on the cockpit door, trying to rip it open.

I wasn’t bleeding so much as oozing.  One of my arms was now not responding to my commands.  I was trying to stand up again when the plane started rocking and passengers were toppling over.  The pilot was clearly trying to knock folks over to stall their breach of the cockpit.  This of course made me less useful.  As the body I was in started to seize up more, I shoved myself in a seat and belted in. I could only watch.  It was the faces that were so haunting.  The entire range was there: hopelessly paralyzed by fear to completely determined to survive.  Had I been my real self in this situation, where in the spectrum would I have been?

I felt the plane roll and dive.

***

I was back in my hospital bed, sweating and gasping.  “What the hell!”

“Nice flight?” asked the ghost.

“What was the point of that?!”

“Come on.  In this situation there aren’t that many cool opportunities to be a part of history without messing things up.  You don’t think there’s a huge selection of people dying in ways where a body-takeover can happen and no one notice?”

“Crap, why not just put me on the Titanic?”

“Hey, that’s not a bad idea.  Do you want …”

“No! Thanks very much, no.”

“Well, brace yourself; you’ve got one more to go.”

***

I was in an alley.  It was dusk and I really was having a hard time getting this body going.  Once my vision cleared I saw the needle sticking out of my arm.  Not much doubt as to the cause of death.  I pulled the needle out and was going to toss it away when I realized that that might not be so friendly for someone cleaning up later. I pulled myself up to standing, using a wall for leverage, and dropped the needle into a dumpster.

This was a filthy body.  My hands looked like I’d been gardening in manure for a year.  I stood and stumbled as I was trying to make the body work semi-normally.  With the sun setting I wandered out of the alley.  Where was I?

Once at the nearest street it was obvious to any Canadian who watches the news.  DTES.  Downtown Eastside, Vancouver.  What was the year?  I had only visited Vancouver a few times – mostly for work – so I wasn’t clear on my directions.  I followed a street called Gore and headed to East Hastings.  I found a scrap of the Vancouver Sun and, assuming this wasn’t too old, it was at least December 24, 1999.

“Kelly, Kelly!” Someone was calling out.  I could tell it was aimed at me.  It was another addict.

“Hey,” I grumbled.  I was desperately asking the brain of this body to give me a name.  I could not tell from all the harm that this brain had suffered if the trouble was with retrieving, or not knowing.  “Susie,” I said.

“Did you score?  Did you?”

“Oh yeah.”  Susie, up close, seemed truly strung-out.

“Anything left?”

“Nah.”

Susie looked at me, working hard to focus.  “You look real bad, Kelly.”

“I’m dead on my feet,” I replied.

And then, over my shoulder, I saw him.  Robert Willie Pickton.

“Shit,” I said.

“What?” asked Susie.  I pointed in the serial killer’s general direction.  Susie shuddered; I thought she was going to faint.  My mind was charging through facts.  Recently the Vancouver Police released a report discussing how they and the RCMP had messed up the investigation of this psycho.  Six murder convictions with up to 49 murders, depending on the reliability of that jailhouse confession.  Remembering these facts was tricky, but didn’t the cops only start taking the missing women seriously, now, in 1999?

I started to run, well hobble – I don’t think my host body was much of an athlete – after Pickton.

Susie started yelling:  “Kelly!  Kelly!  Where ya goin’?”

“We’ve got to stop him,” I yelled.  Susie was shuffling along beside me.

Of all things, a Vancouver cop stepped out and put himself between me and Pickton, who was walking serenely down the street with a woman who was clearly a DTES resident.

“Officer,” I said, “you have to stop that man.  Pickton.”

“Hey, sweetie; it’s Christmas Eve and you shouldn’t be exerting yourself.  You don’t look so good.”

I stared at the police officer.  His mind was somewhere else.  He was not listening and had no intention of listening.  I was in the dead body of someone who was a non-person.

“OK,” I said, “I’ll just walk nicely.”  And I tried walking slowly around the officer.  He blocked my way.

I stared at his badge.  “OK, officer 34592, I cannot perceive any reason why you would be impeding my way.  I am not doing anything illegal or in fact particularly annoying, which is more than I can say for you.  May I please pass?”

The officer stared at me like I was an alien.  I realized that he towered over me, which was result of me being in a small body more than he being particularly large.  The problem is that by this time, Pickton was gone.  The officer was still not moving.  I was beginning to think that a well-spoken voice coming from a down-and-out homeless person (who was actually a corpse) had stunned him into inaction.  I’m not sure what that damn ghost thought I was going to accomplish here, but I thought I’d give it my best shot and then get the hell out.

“Listen carefully,” I said, “the man that walked by is directly responsible for the missing women in this neighbourhood.  I know the cops all think that the women down here are high risk, have risky life styles and can’t be properly traced.”

“Yeah!” said Susie – I’d honestly forgot she was there.

“But,” I continued, “that’s no excuse for you letting dozens of these women be lured to a farm in Coquitlam, murdered, chopped up and then fed to pigs.  Are you hearing me?”

He stared at me.  The expression was inscrutable.  “How do you come by this information?”

“Good grief; it speaks.”  I figured my exit needed to be dramatic.  I leaned toward him and whispered, “Because I’ve seen it.”  And then I let go, kind of like what the ghost was asking me to do with my own body back in 2010.  When I let go, I really hoped that Kelly would fall into the arms of the officer, dead.

***

I was back in the hospital bed, glowering at the ghost.  “Just what was that supposed to prove?”

“You tell me; you were there.”

“You put me there,” I was snarling.  I wanted to rip his face off.  Pity he was a ghost.

“You let me. But, let’s not argue.  It’s decision time.  Let go of your body, just like you did Kelly, and come with me.  An eternity of hanging around with the chance of being annoying … what could go wrong?”

This is the kind of situation where you want to do the exact opposite of the person asking you to do something.  However, there was a certain appeal, a hope of something beyond my life, whereas waiting for the end had the distinct option of there being nothing at the end.  It seemed clear the ghost’s interest in sending me back in time was to teach me how to come and go from dead bodies so I could do what he wanted.

When a ghost visits you on Christmas Eve, you can’t help but think of A Christmas Carol.  Form me, going back in time those two times was worse than that happened to Scrooge.  He at least knew he could not interact.  Regardless, I had basically the same question as Dicken’s character: why show me this if I’m beyond all hope?

In the end I thought it best to stick to my anti-social tendencies.  Hope might be for suckers, but quitting was for losers.

“I don’t know your name, ghost, but I’ve had a good think and I’d like you to go screw yourself and let me die in peace.”

And he was gone.

***

Two hours later I was not feeling very well at all.  I figured I had about seven liver cells left.  Then a medical party broke out in my room.  People were unplugging me and plugging me into different bits of equipment and generally acting panicked.

A doctor I’d not seen before shoved her face into my face.  “Mr. Jamison, I’m going to be your surgeon.  We’ve just received a matching liver.  Do you understand me?”

I nodded.

As I was rather briskly wheeled down a corridor, one of the nurses joining along was the ghost.

“Did you know this was coming?” I mumbled.

“Of course I did, you idiot.  If I can send you back in time I can at least know a liver was on its way.”

“Why?”

“I wanted to be sure you were worthy of the liver.  Use it well or I’ll be back, at which point you will have a very bad time.”

I passed out, I think, and went into the operating room.

Epilogue Christmas Day

“Tommy, can you hand me my cell phone?”  I was awake after the operation but still felt like a tube farm.

“Sure.”

I decided to text my daughter:  Santa brought your father a new liver for Christmas. Can we talk?

December 22, 2008

Mélanie Beauchamp was star gazing.

During the Christmas period of 2008, Vancouver had enjoyed unusual amounts of snow with lower than normal temperatures.  Mélanie thought she’d dodged the weather in Montreal by coming to Vancouver to visit friends.  Montrealers, at least, knew how to use shovels. Vancouverites, when they try to clear snow, seem to make the attempt with garden spades and flimsy plastic shovels.

Mélanie did not have astronomy on her agenda; she was, in fact, taking a break from teaching the subject.  However, when the heavens had parted on December 22^nd, she was thrilled to see Orion huge and clear above.  She scrambled to find her friends’ aging Celestron telescope after which she put it together on their top floor deck and began to look outward and upward.

Her friends had just left the rooftop deck – complaining of cold – Les Vancouvérois sont tellement poules mouillées, she thought, meaning Vancouverites were wimps.  As she took what she thought was her last glance through the telescope, she observed a smudge – an unfamiliar celestial object – on Orion’s belt.  (Orion is a large constellation; in the middle there is a band of stars that comprise Orion’s belt.)

Mélanie focused in on the smudge as best as her telescope would let her; she was totally unfamiliar with the object she was observing.  It reminded her of the way satellites and other artificial orbital artifacts reflect light, but the object did not move like something in orbit and it certainly did not look like any deep space celestial object.  Furthermore, she’d never seen anything like it in that part of the sky – and she’d observed Orion on far clearer (and colder) nights than this.

The Celestron had a camera mount meant for old single lens reflex cameras, which thankfully was compatible with her digital SLR.  Fortunately, she had set up the motor drive, which synchronized the telescope’s movements with the earth’s rotation. This allowed her to take some high quality long exposures.

She packed up the telescope, and returned to her friends’ living room where they had a hot cup of tea waiting for her.  Mélanie uploaded a couple of the images from her camera to her friends’ computer and posted the images to a network of astronomers.  She provided her GPS coordinates along with the images and simply said, “Anyone have any idea what the hell this is?”

December 24, 2008

Mélanie’s email account was full.

She’d not been thinking about her discovery much; she was certain some reasonable explanation would present itself after the holidays.  But, when she checked email at the time she planned to send out some Merry Christmas emails, she found that many of her astronomy associates were freaking out and sending her better resolution images of what she had observed.

The other astronomers confirmed that the object she had observed was indeed artificial and it was not produced by humans.

Mélanie wasn’t sure what to think.  As she sat in the living room, surrounded by Christmas decorations, near a tree with blinking lights, she felt limp.  A piece of alien space junk. This phrase repeated itself over and over in her mind.  She’d always believed that the universe was certainly big enough to have self aware, space-travelling life forms other than humans.  But it seemed very unlikely that humans would ever encounter them because of the vast distances between solar systems and the incredible age of the universe.  She imagined that this piece of space junk could be a million years old from a solar system hundreds of light years away.  Or not.

December 27, 2008

Mélanie’s voice mail box was full.

The message from her boss at McGill started with the phrase: “Mélanie, what have you done?”

There was a message from Bob McDonald, from CBC’s Quirks and Quarks, requesting a call back.

An intern from the Discovery Channel was requesting a call back.

Mélanie dutifully recorded the names and numbers in her book, but the only person she called back was Pierre Gautier, the Chair of the Experimental and Observational Astrophysics division of McGill’s Department of Physics.  She told him what had happened – hadn’t he checked his email on the 23^rd of December? No, he was in the Eastern Townships with his mother who was still annoyed that she lost her rotary phone a few years back – and it wasn’t until he got back to Montreal that he also was blitzed with calls and email.

Mélanie and Pierre agreed that the reason there was not more press coverage was that the discovery occurred over the holidays and that Barak Obama’s impending inauguration was preoccupying much of the US government.

“How do you want me to handle the press that has already called me?”

“Well,” Pierre replied, “I think that you should call them back and limit your answers to the knowledge you have and avoid speculation.  Prior to that, study all the data that your colleagues have been sending you.  You’ll probably be a bit famous in our circles, but honestly I can’t think of anyone better to handle the media.  It would be disrespectful to you were anyone else at the university to speak on the subject.  It’s not like you’re a 10-year-old backyard astronomer.”

“Pierre,” Mélanie replied, “I know some 10-year-olds who have better telescopes than what I used to observe this thing.”

“That may be,” he replied, “but according to the worldwide astronomy community, you spotted it first.  They are starting to call it the Beauchamp Object.”

“Vraiment!”

January 5, 2009

Mélanie was back in Montreal and preparing for her first class of 2009.  On her non-academic to-do list was:

– Buy new phone with unlisted number – Set up new email to give only to trusted family and friends – Run through the trajectory calculations sent from Paul in South Africa – Get to the gym – Call Mom about Dad’s doctor’s appointment

Pierre walked into her office and put a shiny new Blackberry on her desk.

“What’s this?” she asked.

“I never can get you on the phone, so I made the University buy this one and it’s listed as a computer tech support phone.  No one knows it’s going to you.  I set you up with a new McGill email account with no ties to you.  The Philosophy department was glad to help; and they can’t track their computers or phones worth a damn.”

Mélanie crossed the two items off her list.  “You must be psychic.”

“I am merely well-informed,” said Pierre.  “You think you are busy doing press work now, wait until Paul’s trajectory numbers make the main stream media.”

“You analyzed them?”

“No, no.  A friend at NASA analyzed them.  But just you wait, I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”

Later that night, Mélanie finished her own review of Paul’s trajectory numbers.  The Object was indeed heading in Earth’s general direction.  She’d been telling the press, over and over, that The Object was an ellipsoid 350 km long, 140 km at its widest and 70 km at the highest.  It was moving slowly and tipping end over end at a frequency of one revolution every hour.  When asked “what’s it made of?” the answer was “no idea”; when asked “where’s it from?” the answer was “no idea;” when asked: “where’s it going?” well … now it was time to revise her answer.

This “Beauchamp Object” or, to use NASA’s preferred nomenclature, an ESADO (Extra Solar Artificial Debris Object), was going to pass very close to Earth.  This “ESADO” was 35 times the estimated size of the meteor that is attributed to the extinction of the dinosaurs.

“ESADO” made Mélanie think of cheap Spanish wine.  She left her apartment and headed to the nearest Dépanneur to buy a bottle.

January 20, 2009

Mélanie was watching Barak Obama’s inauguration on TV.  “Does he know?  Does he believe it?”

February 24, 2009

Mélanie was back in front of her TV, watching Barak Obama give his State of the Nation speech.  In the past month, the media had been running with the story of the Beauchamp Object (the term still made her blush) reporting that it was heading toward Earth, and that NASA and all official agencies were being very tight lipped.

Mélanie hoped that President Obama would tackle it in his speech tonight.

Madam Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, and the first lady of the United States, who’s around here somewhere.

I have come here tonight not only to address the distinguished men and women in this great chamber, but to speak frankly and directly to the men and women who sent us here.

I know that for many Americans watching right now, the state of our economy is a concern that rises above all others, and rightly so. If you haven’t been personally affected by this recession, you probably know someone who has: a friend, a neighbor, a member of your family.

As the speech went on, focused almost exclusively on the economy, Mélanie fretted.  The recession wasn’t going to matter a damn if the planet was struck by 2.7 million cubic kilometres of unknown metal.  As she listened to the speech, she could feel that it was winding down.  But Obama surprised her.

There are surely times in the future where we will part ways. But I also know that every American who is sitting here tonight loves this country and wants it to succeed.

I know that.

That must be the starting point for every debate we have in the coming months and where we return after those debates are done. That is the foundation on which the American people expect us to build common ground.

And it’s with the idea of common ground that I must confirm some information you may already know. Major media outlets have been reporting a large artificial object, known as the Beauchamp Object or an ESADO – NASA can explain that acronym for you – is heading to Earth within this calendar year.

I’ve met with leading scientists and they tell me that The Object is most likely to pass us by, but there’s a chance it might not.  If it hits us, it would cause incalculable damage.

I have therefore ordered NASA and related agencies to suspend all other work until we’ve assessed the Beauchamp Object and dealt with the risk.

Because someone made this object, someone not of our Earth, we face technical and spiritual questions in addition to our immediate fiscal crisis.  We live in truly incredible times.

But I am certain that America and the world will come together and lift this nation from the depths of challenges, particularly if we put our people back to work and restart the engine of our prosperity, if we confront without fear the challenges of our time and summon that enduring spirit of an America that does not quit, then some day, years from now, our children can tell their children that this was the time when we performed, in the words that are carved into this very chamber, “something worthy to be remembered.”

Thank you. God bless you. And may God bless the United States of America. Thank you.

Mélanie got a text message from Pierre:  “You are going to be very, very busy.”

March 16, 2009

David Letterman was winding up his monologue.

We have a good show for you tonight, folks … Julia Roberts is here.  <<huge applause>> Our musical guest is Bell X1 and, to lighten the tone a little, we have Melanie Beauchamp, the lady who discovered the huge piece of space junk that threatens to kill us all.  <<pause>>  And I was worried about Leno’s new show … <<cut to commercial>>

Mélanie was pacing the Green Room in an elegantly sexy, but not actually comfortable, Dior suit that her mother insisted she wear.  “How the hell did I end up here?” she thought.  A fight-flight response did not begin to describe her nerves.  Julia Roberts, her security guard and press agent passed Mélanie.  To the entourage’s annoyance, Julia Roberts stopped and said to Mélanie, “Are you nervous?”

“Absolument, uh, yes, of course!”

“Good,” Julia said, “you’ll do great.”

This left Mélanie and the two Julia handlers to watch the show on the Green Room monitor.  As Letterman greeted Julia, she whispered to him, “Is it OK if I stay for your interview with Melanie Beauchamp?”

“You can stay on my couch as long as you like,” said Letterman.

Julia stayed fairly close to the usual topics of family and funny happenings on the set of Duplicity.

And when we get back, Melanie Beauchamp, ladies and gentlemen.

“Julia’s not coming off,” said Handler 1.

“She has to come off; we have an appointment.”

“She’s not coming off,” they said in unison and turned to Mélanie and continued.  “Did you know she was staying on?”

“Uh, no,” was Mélanie barely coherent reply.

A Letterman staffer said, “Ms Beauchamp,” we’re ready for you.

Ladies and gentlemen, please give a warm welcome to Melanie Beauchamp, who was the first to observe what NASA’s calling an ESADO.  <<pause>> I hope someone got paid a lot for that dumb term.

Mélanie walked on stage to healthy applause and a strangely jazzy rendition of “It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)” by REM.  Dave greeted her and gave her a brief hug.  Julia Roberts stood and kissed Mélanie on each cheek.  Once settled on the couch, Dave motioned Paul, and said, “OK, Paul, that was weird.”

Letterman:  I have to tell you Melanie, for a scientist you look great.  In some cases better than some A-listers I get on the show.  <<Julia makes a face>> Present company excluded.

Beauchamp:  Of course!

Letterman:  Because Julia’s here, I’ll jump right in and ask, “Who are you wearing?”

Roberts:  It’s Dior, Dave.

Beauchamp:  It’s my mother’s fault.

Letterman:  How’s that?

Beauchamp:  She owns a dress shop in Montreal and she said “There’s no way you are going on Mr. Letterman’s show and not wearing something nice!”

Letterman:  She called me “Mr. Letterman”?

Beauchamp:  “Monsieur Letterman,” to be exact.

Letterman:  Wow.  I think I could get used to that.

Roberts:  Calm yourself Dave.

Letterman:  Melanie, there are so many questions in my head about this ESADO thing that I guess I’ll just ask the obvious, “what the heck is it?”

Beauchamp:  Well, there’s no consensus right now.  We know for sure that it’s not an asteroid or a comet because of its shape, which is kind of a disc, a shape that just does not appear in nature.

Letterman:  So, somebody made it?

Beauchamp:  Yes.

Letterman:  But, it’s huge.  215 miles across?

Beauchamp:  Yes, about that.

Roberts:  And if it hits us?

Beauchamp:  That would be bad.

Letterman:  How bad?

Beauchamp:  Really bad.  The meteor that people say led to the extinction of the dinosaurs was only about 6 miles wide.

Letterman:  Ouch.  But it’s not likely to hit us, right?

Beauchamp:  Again, there’s no real consensus on that either.  We will know for sure this December, but what I’m hearing from NASA and the European Space Agency is that they don’t like how close it will come.

Letterman:  I hear the bookies in Las Vegas won’t make odds on it because if it hits, they can’t collect.  <<laughter>>  But the real question is, can we do anything about it from here?

Beauchamp:  In my opinion we should use the Space Shuttles to examine it up close because, how cool would that be? And, I’m sure there has to be some way to change its course so it won’t hit us.

Letterman:  Would you want to go in the Shuttle?

Beauchamp:  Of course!  But I am not qualified.

Roberts:  I read that you have two degrees and are a tenured professor.

Letterman:  I thought I was the one who had research staff.

Beauchamp:  Well, if you want someone from Quebec who’s really qualified, you want Julie Payette.  She’s already an astronaut, she has a Master of Applied Science in Computer Engineering, is a commercial pilot, speaks five languages, has about 600 hours of space time, is a classically trained musician, and is a mother of two.  I’m a big fan of hers but thinking about what she does in a day tires me out.

Roberts:  Dave, you should have her on the show too.

Letterman:  I will, if we live.

Back at her hotel, Mélanie was too tired to think.  She carefully extricated herself from the Dior suit, showered, put on comfortable pajamas and flopped into bed.  Although it was dinner time, she did not care.  She was asleep.

March 17, 2009

Back in Montreal, Mélanie was at her mother and father’s house trying to fill them in on every detail about the Letterman experience.

“Maman, if you keep asking questions, it won’t be worth watching the show.”

Letterman came on the TV and the three of them watched in silence.

“You were brilliant,” said Mélanie’s father.

“The dress really worked; you looked lovely,” said her mother.

“I’m going to bed,” said Mélanie.

Once comfortable in her bed, her phone rang.  Mélanie looked at the display.  PAYETTE.  “Oh crap,” Mélanie thought.  “‘Allo?”

“Mélanie, c’est Julie Payette.“

“Comment va-t-il?“

“NASA m’a appelé dix minutes passé. Merci beaucoup; Je suis assigné à la mission.”

“What mission?”  Anything to do with NASA compelled Mélanie to speak in English.

“The Shuttle missions to move The Object.  Had I known someone talking about me on Letterman would sway crew assignments, I’d have hired a press agent!”

April 10, 2009

Mélanie walked into Pierre’s office at McGill.  She placed a hand-written note in front of him:

Stop the dirty lies you dirty bitch – there’s no such thing as aliens – God created the earth and us in His likeness.  You’ll pay for you’re lies bitch.

“Yes, well.  He doesn’t spell your correctly, does he?”

“Pierre …”

“Yes I know.  It’s getting too much.  I have a confession to make:  I asked the IT department to filter your email because we were getting worried. People’s vitriol increases as we get closer to contact with The Object.  People are focusing on you and that’s not good.”

“But, I don’t want to quit.  Or hide.”

Pierre’s desk phone rang.  He picked it up.  “Yes, yes, send them in; the timing’s perfect.”

Mélanie stared at Pierre.

“I took the liberty,” he continued, “of asking for some security help.  Since you are crossing borders all the time, I contacted a friend of mine at the Canadian Border Services.  They, in turn, asked sister agencies for resources.”

Three large men entered Pierre’s office.

“Mélanie, please meet your shadows.  James, Luc and Konrad.”

Mélanie looked at the three men.  She was five-foot-eight, an OK height, but these guys were at least six-four.  And built like brick walls.  She shook their hands.

James spoke first; he had the distinct tone of someone who chewed gravel.  “Yes, Ma’am we will be taking shifts covering you 24/7.  Our respective departments did a risk assessment and at this time we feel that our presence should deter the basic crazies from annoying you.”

“24/7?”

“Yes, Ma’am.  Three eight hour shifts.”

“I guess I know where to go for a last minute date, then, eh?”

“If necessary Ma’am.  However, I think I can speak for the three of us, when I say we aren’t much fun.”

June 12, 2009

Mélanie was waiting in the Green Room for The View.  Her talk show circuit had seen her on the road so much that she was starting to get used to the process.  She had the feeling that NASA and the other Space Agencies were using her as a distraction from their planning process.  She knew that the CPUs were likely wanting to melt under the demands to simulate the mission to move The Object.  Her not-so-inner scientist wanted to know what they were thinking.

One of The View‘s production assistants said, “We’re ready for you Ms Beauchamp.”

Whoopi:  We are thrilled to have on the show today Melanie Beauchamp, the McGill Professor of Astronomy who first observed what is now called the Beauchamp Object in the night sky.

Mélanie gave all the ladies a quick hug hello: Joy, Sherri, Elizabeth, Barbara and Whoopi.

Whoopi:  So, I understand you’ve been on the road a lot!

Beauchamp:  It’s true, but this is an opportunity that you simply cannot turn down.

Joy:  What I want to know is … what’s with those guys with you?

Beauchamp:  Ah, my “shadows.”  A gift from the Canadian government I can’t turn down.

Whoopi:  Are you saying that because this Object is alien – I can say stuff like that; I used to be on Star Trek – that people are blaming you?

Beauchamp:  Certainly I am a person associated with this situation.  The Object has brought up many questions that have seemed to have unhinged people.

Joy:  And those big men to keep the nutcases away from you?  I kind of like the dark-haired one.

Beauchamp:  Luc? Oh, he’s fine.  But you don’t want to watch these guys eat.  It’s scary.  <<laughter>>

Sherri:  Now with this being a panel of women interviewing you, is it just luck that they found a scientist who dresses as well as you?

Beauchamp:  Oh thank you.  When your mother is insistent on haute couture and bonne comportement it doesn’t matter how much of a geek you are under the garments and make-up.

Sherri:  You have such a cool accent.

Barbara:  Of course what we want to know is what is NASA doing about this piece of space junk?  If it hits us, it’s end-of-the-world stuff.

Beauchamp:  NASA and other agencies are keeping the analysis secret because they are likely in a brain-storming phase.  If you get distracted by reactions to ideas that you may throw out anyway, it tends to waste time.

Barbara:  Do you get any advance warning of decisions or plans they make?

Beauchamp:  Maybe a little.  But by the time I do my own analysis, the information is out there.  I don’t like talking about stuff until I figure it out.  I think people expect me to make it simple.

Elizabeth:  What’s your favourite theory about where this Object is from?  I’ve seen a number of your interviews and you never really answer this question, but I’m dying to know what makes sense to you.

Beauchamp:  You’re not going to let me dodge that question, are you?

Elizabeth:  No way!

Beauchamp:  OK, this Object is not moving very fast.  Assuming it was made in another solar system, it’s been on the move for literally thousands, maybe millions of years.  I think it’s an artifact (maybe part of a space station or space ship) of another civilization – one that has long since vanished.

Barbara:  You don’t think anyone’s on The Object now, do you?

Beauchamp:  No, The Object is not under power and there’s no variation in its temperature.  If there was activity on or in it, something would show up.  A lot of telescopes have looked at this thing now.

Whoopi:  Wow, I just never thought I’d be in a real life Star Trek episode.  We’ll be right back with Melanie after we get some bidniss done.  <<cut to commercial>>

July 4, 2009

Two days earlier, Mélanie had received a preview to the plan for the Shuttle mission to move The Object.  It was ambitious.  At first glance, almost insane.

Mélanie’s popularity required her to rent a different apartment in Montreal.  It was a tiny flat – she didn’t need much as she was on the road so much – but it allowed her to escape for small periods of time.

Barack Obama was on TV, giving a July 4 speech.

As we celebrate our amazing country as it faces an historic economic challenge, I have the privilege today of giving you an update on our “Outer Space” problem.

The Beauchamp Object is still coming toward Earth and our best scientists do not feel it’s good enough to sit on our hands and hope for a miss.  We need to make sure this Object is out of our way.

These same scientists also don’t hide their curiosity about The Object – we all share it – and I agree that we can’t miss an opportunity for study.  But, I said to them: “safety first; curiosity second.”

In concert with all world space agencies, with a command centre on the International Space Station, we will launch in December all three Shuttles in our fleet to meet this threat.  Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour will be loaded up with portable thrusters that will be attached to The Object.  Then the thrusters will be fired up in a controlled manner and will change the movement of The Object and take it out of our way.

This plan to me embodies both American spirit, ingenuity and a new found ability to co-operate with other nations.  What I have seen in the world in our ability to rise to challenges has made me more proud than I thought possible to be an American and citizen of the world.

Mélanie fretted.  What she read and was hearing from people willing to talk to her off the record was that everything about this mission was at maximum.  There were going to be an unprecedented number of shuttle launches to put equipment on the International Space Station.  The distance that The Object was going to be engaged was at maximum distance for the Shuttles.  The strain on the astronauts was going to be huge.

But what was simple was the idea for moving it.  The thrusters they had in mind were cheap to make, relatively light, and could be networked by computers to manipulate the thrust.  A large number of thrusters would be needed but the level of control would be significant.  Overall, it was a much less dramatic solution than trying to blow up The Object or something equally Hollywood.

Her phone rang.  It was Pierre.

“Hello?”

“Mélanie, can you come to Ottawa with me tomorrow?”

“Why?”

“The Prime Minister wants to see us on Monday.”

July 6, 2009

The cab from the hotel dropped Mélanie, Pierre and Konrad – the security agent on duty at the time – in front of Parliament Hill.

Hill Security escorted the three to the Prime Minister’s Office where they waited.  Eventually an Aide to the Prime Minister ushered all but Konrad in to meet Stephen Harper.

The Prime Minister shook their hands and asked them to sit.

“I have to say that you two have done an excellent job representing Canada during this situation with The Object.  I’ll be frank in saying that I’ve taken a fair bit of flak for not meeting with you sooner.”

“What can you do about the press, hein?” said Pierre.

Mélanie was shocked by Pierre’s glibness, but kept silent.

“I’ll get right to the point here.  First, I want you two to know that I want you to keep the good work you are doing going.  There’s a lot of speculation and fear-mongering going around and I appreciate you sticking to the facts.  Second, I know that you have security.  Has it been adequate?”

Harper looked directly at Mélanie at this point.

“Ah, yes.  The three principal agents have been totally professional and I feel safe,” said Mélanie.

“I’m glad to hear it.  I want you to know that if you need any further protection, we will arrange it.”

“OK,” said Mélanie.

“Third,” continued Harper, “President Obama has arm-twisted the world governments into funding this mission, the cost of which is massive.  He’s using a formula of percentage of GDP.  What I really want to hear is that this Beauchamp Object – I’m sure you are thrilled that name took and not that ESADO name that NASA’s trying to use – is for real.  That the threat is real and that we have no other choice but to commit to the mission.”

Mélanie was shocked that someone at this level of government could harbour any doubts given the readily available data on The Object.

Pierre was a faster talker.  “Prime Minister, I assure you that this is for real.  The closer The Object gets to Earth, the more the odds improve in favour of it hitting us.”

Harper turned to Mélanie.

“Yes, sir,” said Mélanie.  “I crunch the numbers as I get them from our sources and there does not seem to be any doubt.”

“OK,” said Harper, “What about the plan that NASA’s come up with?  It sounds complicated.”

“It’s only half complicated,” said Mélanie.  “The brilliant part is to employ the many thrusters instead of trying to find a single source of movement.  This gives much more room for the unexpected and in the end delivers more control over the moment.  Our own technical limitations are what make things complicated.  We would rather meet The Object deeper in space.  But, the Shuttles have limits.  Other limits include payload per Shuttle, which is why so much gear has to be taken up to the Space Station ahead of time.  Since we don’t have a clue what The Object is made of, they have to plan for different scenarios when they try to move it.”

Pierre cut her off.  “Prime Minister, she could go on for days.  The point is that in our opinion – and we’ve literally been at the problem longer than anyone – NASA and the other Space Agencies have come up with a risky but do-able plan.”

Harper looked at them both.  “Well, I guess we’re in with both feet.”

August 31, 2009

Mélanie was dipping her feet in Lake Massawippi.  She was hiding at Pierre’s mother’s cabin in Quebec’s Eastern Townships where it was stinking hot (32 Celsius) therefore she was outside in a bathing suit, sitting on the dock.  She was away from the media and the science of her life, but the presence of Luc reminded her that she was not back to normal.  He looked ludicrous in regular undercover cop clothes.

“Luc, get a bathing suit and come in.”

“Sorry Ms Beauchamp.  I’d love to, but one photo of me in the water with you would ruin us both.  How about next summer?”

“You think there’s going to be a summer for anyone next summer?”

“A man can hope.”

November 27, 2009

A strange hush was coming over the world.  With the exception of people for whom the stress of possible global disaster had unhinged, crime was down, the markets were flat. All commodities were static with the exception of wine and spirits; it seemed many people were self-medicating. Everyone waited, even though contact with The Object was not due until December 23.

Meanwhile, Mélanie was on CBC’s The National.

Mansbridge:  Mélanie, it’s good to have you on the show again.

Beauchamp: It’s good to be back, Peter.

Mansbridge:  We are less than a month away from the final stage of the mission and you are the envy of every journalist in the world because you have been involved since the beginning. What do you think of the chances of success?

Beauchamp: Chances are hard to calculate when there are unknown variables. But, I know from talking to so many people that the best people in the world are doing the work.  The Object has given the whole world a common focus never seen before.  There’s no reason the mission won’t succeed.

Mansbridge:  It’s difficult to avoid pointless speculation, but I am really curious about your views on one concept.  The Object seems unerringly aimed at Earth. With Space being so huge, isn’t that unlikely? Which makes me wonder, was it intended for us all the time?

Beauchamp: I think The Object being observable by us at all is unlikely. The fact it’s drawn to Earth is, in my view, the result of the angle at which The Object entered the solar system and Earth’s gravitational pull.  The Object has taken years and years to get here.  If this were deliberate, it would be like throwing a baseball at someone, but instead of throwing it with speed, you’d get on your hands and knees and roll it along the ground to your intended target.

Mansbridge:  <<laughing>> This is why the media likes you.  One last question: once the Shuttle crews get their eyes on The Object, do you think there will be clues as to its origins?

Beauchamp: Oh do I ever hope so.

As Mélanie was leaving the CBC studios in Toronto, her phone rang.  It was Pierre.  “They want you at Cape Canaveral as soon as possible.”

“Why?”

“They figure they owe you as much and, it seems, they consider you their lucky charm.”

December 23, 2009

Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour were all in orbit.  Mélanie had the pleasure of meeting all the crews as they boarded the orbiters.  She had wished Julie Payette special luck as she boarded Endeavour.

She could not imagine how brave these people were to be undertaking such a mission.  She felt that she was just the mouthpiece – she had not done anything but review their plans, and talk about them in plain language with the public.  Now these men and women were going to execute the most dangerous space operation ever conceived.  The price of failure was unimaginable.

Konrad was shadowing Mélanie that day.  They walked down a corridor toward an office they’d set up for her, but she was interrupted by a Mission Control Specialist.  “Ms Beauchamp, they’re ready for you in the VIP mission observatory.”

She and Konrad were ushered to an unmarked door and led in.

Inside were some of the more famous faces in the world.  They all had comfortable chairs that watched the status screens and live feeds of the mission.  President Obama interrupted a conversation with some aides and approached her.  “Ms Beauchamp, a pleasure to finally meet you.” And they shook hands.

“The honour is mine, Mr. President.  You can call me Mélanie if you wish.”

“Well, Mélanie that’s great.  I hope to be able to introduce you to Michelle, Malia and Sasha later.  They find all this technical stuff pretty dry so they’re taking a break.  The girls think you are pretty cool.”

“That’s terrific; thank you for inviting me.”

“It seems fitting.  You better take a seat, if I’m right the Shuttles are about to make first visual contact.”

Mélanie was seated and watched the big screen resolve.  The radio chatter from the Shuttles and Space Station were piped into the room.  The Object looked like a dull grey disc.  As the Shuttles moved into position, the perspective was lost and the whole screen looked grey.

Endeavour was in charge of the scientific research.  The mission had been allowed a very narrow window of time where it would take samples and do visual recording of the surface.  Endeavour lit up the surface of The Object and everyone in the VIP observatory gasped.  Once the light hit the surface, a variety of markings, which seemed impossible to be anything else but language, appeared.  “Are you all seeing this?!” said Endeavour.

“Yes,” replied Mission Control.  “Stay focused.  We’re on a tight time line.”

Mélanie thought that – assuming the plan worked – a whole new discipline of xeno-linguistics had just been born.

Each Shuttle had special equipment to deploy the small thrusters.  The trick was to make sure they all attached in the pre-planned location.  Each thruster would have just the right momentum to reach The Object and would issue a tiny bit of thrust to keep it stuck on the surface.

It was going to be well into the next day before the job was complete and the thrusters could be fired.  No one on the planet missed the point that due to the limitations of how far the Shuttles could travel from Earth, The Object had to come dangerously close to Earth before the plan could be executed.

December 24, 2009

Mélanie did not sleep and did not stop blogging on her computer.  She took bio-breaks only as needed, kept a video line open to her parents, and really did enjoy meeting the Obama girls.

So far the mission had gone according to plan.  They were 90 percent finished with the deployment of the thrusters.  Then the worst sound you could hear on the radio came through.  “We have a problem,” reported Atlantis.  “A thruster has got away from us – looks like its gas tank burst.”

“We’re hit,” reported Endeavour.

“What’s going on?” asked Obama.

“Get me a camera on this!” ordered Mission Control.

The VIP observatory screens showed a scratchy image of Endeavour‘s tailfin.  A large portion of it had been broken off.  Endeavour was listing oddly.

“Endeavour, do you have attitude control?”

“Yes,” reported Endeavour.  “We are in the process of getting ourselves back into position.”

“Any other damage?”

“All systems normal; it looks like our damage is strictly external.”

“Stand by.”

Mélanie was feeling light-headed.  Endeavour was not coing home.  She figured Mission Control was wondering what to do.

“Endeavour,” called Mission Control.  “Deploy the rest of your thrusters asap.  Once you are done, get yourselves to the Space Station.  We stick to the plan.”

“Acknowledged.”

It was 10:43 PM eastern time. The Shuttles had moved off and the thrusters on The Object fired up.  The calculations for how much thrust had been repeated, simulated and repeated endlessly.  Now it was time to see if the math worked.

It was going to take more hours of watching monitors to see if it worked.  Mélanie thought the waiting would drive her crazy.  It occurred to her that if it did not work, the only humans left would be those on the Space Station. They would be short lived witnesses to the end of humanity.

December 25, 2009

By 2 AM, Mélanie was personally sure that the crisis had passed.  But it was up to Mission Control to call it.  They were confirming with the International Space Station that their ground-based readings were correct.

At 2:12 AM eastern time, Mission Control announced:  “We are relieved to report ‘mission accomplished’.”

“Not a bad Christmas present,” said President Obama as he worked the room shaking hands and hugging everyone he could find.

Mélanie’s three shadows stood nearby.  She threw herself at each one in turn and kissed them hard.

A text message came in from Pierre.  “I guess you can take the day off.”

Tom entered his Yaletown apartment, put his laptop case on the hall book case and concluded that Christmastime was a bad time to visit the doctor.

It was December 22, a Monday, and it was nearly 1 PM.  He had chosen not to go back to the office after his visit to the doctor.  He had text-messaged his staff to say he was afflicted with a bad case of It’s-Nearly-Christmasitis: a good lie that involved them not hearing the tone in his voice.

His wife and two teenaged sons were out: school or work or shopping or something.

Tom looked out his living room window onto the view – a great view, but one that did not give him any pleasure.

It was a rare sunny December Vancouver day.  Tom felt he could not stay in and decided to rebel against his doctor and go for a walk.  But where?  On the coffee table rested a newspaper insert touting what to do in Vancouver at Christmas.  Stanley Park.  Christmas Train.

The Lion’s Gate Bridge should do fine, thought Tom.

He powered off his phone, put it in his pocket, grabbed a scarf and stepped out the door to the elevator.

***

His condo was near Homer and Pacific.  When he walked to cross Pacific (on the green light) he heard the screeching of brakes and saw a woman, on her cell phone, driving with her left hand that also held a cigarette.  She waited for him to walk further into the intersection and then raced through, never looked at him and vanished.  Self-absorbed, Yaletown, entitled, rich, empty-headed chick.  Tom thought.  At least it was a 2008 blue BMW M6 convertible.  Nice car.  Pity about the driver.

As if spoken by someone right beside him, Tom heard an Afrikaans-accented voice: “You know, Tom, back in Cape Town we used to say that BMW stood for ‘Break My Window’.” Tom never laughed harder than when he had hung out with Boyle.

Tom looked to the right as if Boyle were actually standing there.  But he wasn’t of course; Tom hadn’t seen Boyle in 20 years.  Not seeing Boyle would continue; he’d been brutally murdered in the 1990s during a carjacking in Johannesburg.  They had met doing post-grad work in Cape Town.  Tom’s sense that Boyle had been right beside him did not lift until Tom had reached Davie Street.

At Davie, Tom turned left and headed west.  The incident with the car made him ponder cars.  As a mode of transportation, the car was insane.  Usually one person was driving in something 20 or 30 times their weight, burning fuel that, were the exhaust fumes pumped into your house, would make you sick and force you out of your home.  Tom wondered who first ever approved the mainstream development of the automobile.  Wouldn’t some King somewhere have been shown this?

Officer of the Court:  “Your Majesty, I present Herr Karl Benz.”

King:  “How do you Herr Benz?”

Benz:  “I am vell, your majesty.  I vill be demonstrating today zee internal combustion engine as it applies to a horseless carriage.  Shall vee proceed outside?”

King:  “Why outside?”

Benz:  “Safety, your majesty.”  (This should have been the first clue.)

Once outside, Tom imagined Benz showing the King a simple car driving around a gravel pathway.

King:  “Herr Benz, what’s that smell?”

Benz:  “Er, engine exhaust your majesty.”

King:  “Will they all smell like that and burn the inside the Royal Nostrils?”

Benz:  “Vee are verking on zat problem.”

King:  “Hmm.  Where does this exhaust go?”

Benz:  “The vind takes it away.”

King:  “Away where?”

Benz:  “Away.”

King:  “And you envision many hundreds of these on the roads of the kingdom.”

Benz:  “Yes, your majesty.”

King:  “Riiiiiight …”

***

Tom was nearing Burrard Street and realized that, despite his sense that cars were silly, he had not seen a bus.  Despite all the moaning people do about how horrible cars are, public transit as an option was also insane.  One bus ride on a hot summer’s day with a smelly, loud, mentally ill alcoholic was enough to put anyone but the most desperate off transit.  In your car you can listen to your music, smell your own smells and talk on your cell phone (until they ban it) as loudly as you want.  Buses have leaking noise from iPods, more variety of smells than Marrakesh’s market on a hot day, and drivers with feet that suffer from Random Use of the Brake Syndrome (RUBS).

Tom felt that meeting destiny was best done on foot.

Continuing down Davie Street and crossing Burrard was like changing worlds.  The cultural diversity expanded.  Old, young, Asian, straight, gay and more.  Tom thought he always had good “gaydar,” but in the West End he simply assumed that men holding hands was a key indicator.  He couldn’t help but laugh at the recent US election where a (sort of) Black/African American President was elected and at the same time the African American population in California voted to define marriage as being between boys and girls only.  Tom’s mind was jumping about like a frog on a hot plate and he recalled one of his many recent sick days at home on the couch.  On Halloween Wanda Sykes was a guest on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.  Tom couldn’t recall how she had led into it, but Sykes argued that it’s harder to be gay in America than Black because one did not have to come out of the Black Closet or reveal a hidden Black Lifestyle.  Tom started snickering and realized that it was funnier to remember this than it was to watch the first time.  In some ways he felt that he didn’t deserve to find this funny; he was white, straight and could only consider him self middle-aged if he planned on living to 102.

***

Unsurprisingly, at Thurlow Street, there was a Starbucks.  Tom felt that his journey would be better with a latte.  His feet were starting to hurt and he hadn’t even got to Stanley Park yet.  He joined the line up and stood behind a woman in yoga gear who had a spectacular butt.  Tom wondered just how much money that Chip guy at Lululemon had made dressing women in pants that made almost any ass look good.

It also seems, Tom thought, desperately unfair that I can’t pat this bottom or say, “Jesus, your ass is fantastic, can I see more?”  Or perhaps something less threatening like, “Thank you for showing me your ass; it makes me feel better by dumping the right chemicals into my brain.”  Ironically, were he caught looking, he would be considered a pervert when in fact he was just highly heterosexual – or at least he was until he got sick.

At the counter she ordered “A tall soy milk latte with a shot of sugar free vanilla.”

Tom took extreme effort not to laugh but stay focused on her ass.

When she turned to leave, and head to the pick up counter, she smiled at Tom and said “Merry Christmas.”

The Starbucks barista said, “You were looking at her butt, right?”

“How could I miss?  Grande Latte extra hot.”

“Sure.  She knew, you know.”

“How?”

“They all do.”

“I guess it’s not just Santa Claus who’s watching.”

***

Continuing down Davie Street, Tom reached Broughton Street and saw the first clear view of the ocean and the mountains.  He stopped, partly to catch his breath, and partly to admire the view.  The road started downhill and so did some of the people.  There was a crazy guy holding his hand in the shape of a gun, using his index and middle fingers as the barrel.  He was “shooting” at something, but Tom could not figure out what.  The nutter had a salt-and-pepper beard, work boots, blue jeans, a sweater that could not possibly be warm enough and the stiff-neck posture of a man who is off his meds.  Tom kept walking.

Further west there was a police car and a paddy wagon in the process of rousting a young couple who had “drug dealers” written all over them.  Tom felt they could not have been more obvious had they had Buy Heroin Here tattooed on their foreheads.

***

When Davie met Denman, Tom crossed the street and moved onto Beach Avenue, which led straight into Stanley Park.  He found a sign saying he was in Stanley Park; at this point Tom realized he wasn’t sure what direction to go.  He could have taken the Sea Wall route practically from his apartment’s back doors, via False Creek, but he’d wanted a more direct route.  He dimly recalled there being a small playground and a road that went around Lost Lagoon Lake.  It took only a few minutes to reach it.  On his way there, he found a group of tourists admiring four raccoons.

Better be careful, Tom thought, they’ll take you hostage for your food. Remember what happened in Germany!

Tom was recalling an article he had read that raccoons had become a menace in Germany after their deliberate introduction. Apparently a moron had asked a crazy guy, specifically Hermann Göring, for permission to release raccoons to “enrich the local fauna.”  The concept of Nazi raccoons made Tom smile.

Upon further observation, Tom noticed the tourists were feeding the raccoons; the critters were stationed almost directly below the sign that instructs people not to feed the wildlife.  Tom veered away from them so that they would not see him laughing.  He then found a map of the park and he figured out a way to get to the Causeway, which was a kind of mini highway that cut through the middle of Stanley Park, giving access to the Lion’s Gate Bridge.

By the time he had walked over to the pedestrian underpass that let him gain access to the sidewalk on the Causeway, Tom realized two things: this was a longer walk than he thought and his feet hurt.

Cars hurtled past him as he walked up the grade toward the bridge.  His mind was becoming less focused, but somehow he could only think of absurd things.  He caught a whiff of skunk, and he wondered if someone on the newly elected Parks Board would try to argue that Stanley Park was a wild space.  This ludicrous debate had kicked in when a massive wind storm had damaged the park in 2006.  Tom imagined himself at a Parks Board meeting trying to argue for the reintroduction of native species to the park, namely bears, wolves and deer.  Tom could imagine the cricket players of Brockton Point whacking black bears with cricket bats.  He also wanted to argue for shooting permits to eliminate black and grey squirrels that had been imported from Ontario and Quebec.  In fact, forget shooting the squirrels.  Let the wolves and coyotes eat them.

As his feet continued to pulse painfully in his shoes, and certain tender areas were starting to chaff, Tom wondered if he was going to make it to the bridge at all.

He focused on one step at a time and let the noise of the rushing cars put him in a neutral mental state.

***

He reached the Prospect Point off-ramp that goes into Stanley Park – the spot where the tow truck always waits for someone on the bridge to break down – and Tom said, “Oh for Christ’s sake!”

Tom realized he was on the wrong side of the road.  He had no intention of contemplating his ultimate destiny looking into Vancouver Harbour from the Lion’s Gate Bridge.  He wanted to look west, to see if he could see Vancouver Island (it was a clear enough day) and imagine the open ocean beyond.

The cars on the Causeway were running two lanes north and one south, and were all going no less than 60 km/h.  Even if he could sprint across the road, he’d be road kill before he could take his first deep breath.  This was not a fitting end.  Tom imagined the comments at the funeral:

Mourner 1:  How’d he die?

Mourner 2:  Tried to cross the Stanley Park Causeway on foot.

Mourner 1:  What a goddamn idiot.

Then Tom remembered he could leave the Causeway via the off-ramp and go over an over pass, which was in plain view in front of him, and cross over to the other side.

He trudged up the road, which was not meant for foot traffic, and traversed the overpass, from where he caught a glimpse of the still-under-upgrade-construction Prospect Point café.  The tricky part was walking down the west side off-ramp road.  It had a very sharp curve to it; he noted that cars were not paying attention to the 30 km limit as they blasted past him.

It was dark in the woods and he realized, although the sun had not set, it was low in the south west.  It would be a terrific view from the bridge – if he ever got there.

Back on the correct side of the Causeway, he finally got onto the foot path on the west side of the bridge and made it to mid span.  He leaned against the railing, panting, sweating and wondering what the hell he thought he was doing.

Tom reached took a breath.

He looked from left to right.  His first view showed the trees of Stanley Park, the Sea Wall path, and in the distance, he could faintly make out Vancouver Island’s mountain range.  Only one freighter was anchored, looking forlorn.

Looking straight ahead, he identified the point of land behind which Horseshoe Bay hid, with its ferries to Vancouver Island and the Sunshine Coast.

To the right, of course, was West Vancouver.

Suddenly all Tom could think of was the Mayor of West Vancouver, who had recently been re-elected with a margin of only 635 votes.  Completely without control, Tom’s mind flooded his visual memory with this image:

And Tom could not stop laughing.  Ever since the mayor had been embroiled in allegations that the West Vancouver Police had had drinking parties in the police station, she was on the news nightly with her astonishingly retro hairdos – ones that made Tom recall his mother’s friends.  His memories came from being six years old and Tom the little boy wondering: how the hell do they sleep with hair like that? Doesn’t it break?

Tom leaned against the Lions Gate Bridge railing and laughed until he was in tears and finally spent.

Once his breath settled, he heard Boyle’s Afrikaner voice.  “Laughter is certainly the best medicine Tom, but I recommend laughter and beer.”

Tom wiped his face with his sleeve and noticed the sun had just started to touch the trees of Stanley Park.  He figured he’d better hurry if he was going to get somewhere useful while it was light out.

With a distinct limp – his feet felt like two squashed watermelons – he walked back to Stanley Park and the exit to Prospect Point.  He pulled out his cell phone, powered it up and rang his wife’s number.

“Hi Honey,” she said.

“Hey,” Tom replied, “I need a favour.  Can you pick me up at the Prospect Point Café?”

“Really?  How’d you get there?”

“I walked.”

“Get out.”

“Yep.  Could you also find the boys and bring them?  We need to talk about my last appointment at the doctor.”

“Jesus. Tom.  I might be an hour by the time I round up the guys.  Are you OK?”

“I’m as OK as a second medical opinion and beer will make me.  I think the café is still licensed.  Take your time; I’ll rest my feet and enjoy the view.”