I had an encounter again with August in the lounge earlier this morning. It was so weird. All my feelings of pity and tenderness toward him were gone, just a dull dread now. I couldn’t quite explain. At first I thought I had been swayed by Saligia’s opinion of the man. But what if I was just getting better at this Reading business? I did have a Fitzroy of 1200, whatever that meant.

But there was something else going on with him. The times we’d spoken in the past August had been so unguarded. Open. But now, there was no eye contact. Not from either of us. He wasn’t avoiding it. He was taking in everything, his eyes moving over everything. Not darting about, but caressingly. And when he would let those eyes glide over me—my fingers, my lips, my shoulders, it wasn’t prurient. I know how to deal with that. It was something else.

I did know, though, if he had looked me directly in the eyes I would have looked away.

I was initially drawn to August because he was unlike the other contestants. Most of them wandered about in a fog like so many toddlers roused from nap time. But August was curious from the very beginning. He hungered for answers.

I saw in him a kindred spirit. I, too, wanted answers.

But these last couple of days…well, his hunger seemed specific. He had become a spider, waiting, watching. I think he’d found, if not the answer, some important answers—answers he will not likely share with me. Answers that had given him purpose.

I couldn’t blame him his secretiveness. I had my share of secrets. But with August, from his view point, everything had to feel so urgent. He came through a strange door into a world he did not understand. And he had been told he would soon depart through another door. To another world? Perhaps. Perhaps, though, to nothing at all. I could only vaguely imagine how he must feel.

Saligia was afraid of him. Lydia felt some sort of maternal impulse toward him. Sy saw him as a villain in a soap opera. Me? Well, true he now gave me the creeps, but I still felt I owed him answers. The same way I felt I owed answers to all of the contestants. It was just that he was the only one who seemed to want them. But I didn’t have the answers to his questions. Or even my own questions.

I had hoped that once I became a fully integrated part of the show, I’d finally know what was really going on. Not so. Well, I guess I was slowly piecing things together.

Just what was the “necessary service” Lydia spoke of which we were supposed to be providing?

The closest anyone had come to making an unambiguous statement was the day in the studio when Sy glanced across at me. I was probably chewing on my thumb, looking lost and worried.

He told me that the game show was moral in nature. The entire production team served as karmic arbitrators for the contestants. I was now part of that responsibility.

Before that, I’d never given much thought to how Sy opened the show every evening with his high energy musical theme, adding some electronic echo effect to his glib banter. His flowery metaphors about virtuous contestants being allowed to climb a ladder to the “pillowy clouds” of paradise. And those others—the ones who had tainted their lives with an overabundance of vice—they could expect to plummet down into some hellish “unforgiving swamp.”

If the show was literally rewarding the most righteous, then whose moral compass was being used?

And who or what sent us these reincorporated people?

That they had died, of this fact I no longer doubted.

With Saligia’s help, I had peered into each contestant’s entire existence, from that chaotic and fidgety moment of birth, to that tragic moment of death, whether it was swift, or so slow it was hard to discern—like how when you pull on taffy and it gets thinner and stringier and at some point it can’t hold itself together anymore and those cottony fibers of sugar separate. But there was always death when Saligia let me look into those lives.

What a place to end up. On the set of a game show…to have the fates of one’s afterlife decided. An unforgivably vulgar situation if you stopped and thought about it. And then we sent them off to, where? Heaven? Hell? Some sort of reincarnation, with the winner getting a flashy, superior new life? Enlightenment? And what of the loser? Was it straight to the glowing charcoal pits of hell? Or, perhaps, reborn as a dog or some species of intestinal parasite?

I was trying to catch a glimpse of this other place with my experiments of remaining, well, plugged into the contestants as they left us. But I felt I might not be understanding all of the impressions I had managed to experience.

I took the elevator up to the penthouse.

Sy had told me to come up whenever I wanted. So, why not? I had nothing on my schedule for the next couple of hours.

When the elevator doors opened, I immediately felt like an intruder. I would had assumed that there would be a door to knock on. But, no. The elevator opened right into Sy’s home.

There he was. Dressed in a paisley Nehru jacket and tartan Bermuda shorts. He stood at a kitchen island near the center of the enormous room. The entire space was open—the full top floor of La Vida Tower—with windows looking out to the city spreading away in all directions. The only obstruction to the epic view was the elevator enclosure in the dead center that I had stepped out of.

I approached the kitchen area. On the huge island table was spread an assortment of transistors, wires, silvered-tipped vacuum tubes, and all manner of electronic equipment I wouldn’t even know how to describe. Sy held a soldering gun over a plastic circuit board with hundreds of wires poking out. He didn’t look up when I stopped to stand beside him.

“I know it’s not showtime, yet.” Sy let a drop of molten metal fall delicately into place on the board.

I supposed that was his way of asking why I was here.

I felt embarrassed, suddenly not knowing that exact reason I had come up.

“I’ve found myself preoccupied with thoughts of life and death,” I found myself admitting.

Sy removed his work gloves and looked down at the counter. He shook his head, as though in defeat.

“This stuff isn’t easy,” he muttered. “Not by a long shot.” He pointed to a stack of worn and dog-eared books. “The technical manuals don’t help much. They just make me feel ignorant.” He turned to me with his charismatic grin. “And what I want to feel like is Dr. Frankenstein making his big discovery! I’m not proud to admit, Rose, but I’m in over my head. Just like you, right? Your thoughts about life and death? Sheesh!”

“Well, it’s what we do, right?” I asked. “Deal with all that stuff?”

He sighed and stepped around the counter to place his hands on my shoulders. If this were a scene from an old movie, he’d begin explaining to me about the birds and bees. He needed to be clenching a pipe between his teeth so he could dramatically remove it.

“When you came to us, Rose, I had a feeling about you. You’re smart. Driven. Fearless. From the very beginning, Lydia was so flustered with your Fitzroy score that she ignored the rest of your personal file.”

“My file?”

He turned away and rummaged in a low cabinet before standing back up with that same manila folder I’d seen him consulting back when I got my promotion.

“I stole it off Lydia’s desk weeks ago and never managed to return it. Anyway, here’s the thing. Lydia doesn’t know anything about your brother. But after what happened with Bianca and her emotional breakdown, I tend to side with the good doctor in her general concern about the mental state of our staff, particularly the Readers.”

I didn’t care for the way that Sy was talking to me like I was some emotional child.

“I can assure you—”

But he didn’t let me finish.

“We all have our emotional scars, Rose. Trust me. And yet we carry on. So, if you want to talk about your brother and, well, your feelings—”

“I don’t know what all this has to do with,” I trailed off, having no idea how he had segued from my dilemma about life and death to my brother, Lionel.

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

“I’m talking about the reason you came looking for a job here,” he said. “It’s obvious. Well, to me. But let me be honest with you. To the best of my knowledge and my observations we have no control over who comes to us through the arrival portals. It’s random. It’s such a long shot that your late departed brother will ever come to us.”

He had left me speechless. I was completely pushed off balance by what he knew and what he did not know. About me. And about my brother.

“I appreciate the candor,” I finally said because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. “I guess, mostly, I wandered up here because I’m at loose ends,” I added.

He nodded and placed my folder on top of the stack of electronic books.

“I had really hoped you came to tell all about your experiments,” he said, giving me a hopeful wink.

“Experiments?”

“Playing at being Eurydice. Or was it whatshisname who went into the underworld to get her back? Orpheus?”

“You mean me staying mentally connected while the contestants leave us?”

“Precisely. I’ve been wanting to give you time to process your experiences and all that, but I’m quite curious.”

I was surprised. Sy was not only admitting that he didn’t know something, but was wanting me to, well, educate him. I felt like I was back with Fran at the Omega Hotel.

“Friday was, well, interesting,” I said. Sy nodded, encouragingly, and moved forward to rest his elbows on the counter to listen. “When that contestant stepped inside—”

“Priscilla?” he interrupted.

“Yeah, Priscilla. When she walked through Door Number One, I did this thing.”

“Thing?” Sy furrowed his brow.

“A shift in my posture, you could say. It feels like leaning back, just a few inches. But not with my physical body. And instead of letting go, I increase my grip, my mental grip. That was right when you began to blast the theme music through the studio. Applause sign flashing, audience screaming..and when that door slammed shut, I was there, inside that little white closet behind Door Number One. In there with Priscilla. I felt the floor drop away and I fell—we fell—so fast there was no time to think. But it wasn’t about speed or anything frantic or…I mean, time moved at a different rate in my head than it did in the TV studio. Slow, but highly energized. And then she landed. That’s the only word that fits. Priscilla landed. That was when the connection ended.”

“What do you mean, exactly?” Sy tilted his head. “Was it abrupt? Like when someone had tripped over the plug to the TV?”

“More like the aftereffects of a muscle tremor, or an echo. I hold it all in my mind as long as I can. Those thoughts and impressions of the contestant—images, emotions. It fades away pretty fast. But I feel the pleasure and relief at having arrived safely at a welcoming destination. I don’t know where it is they go, but the place is filled with soothing green light.”

“Green,” he muttered, nodding. And then, louder: “The contestant is happy? Or you’re happy?”

“Both, I suppose. And there was a face.”

“A what? A face.” He laughed. “Is the face happy, too?”

“No. No emotion at all. Faint. Very faint. I couldn’t even guess as to its gender.” I shrugged. “Maybe I just imagine that last part. But that is all I can remember from Friday night. Monday, also.”

“If I recall correctly,” he said, “both were winners. So, now we have a notion as to what’s on the other side of Door Number One. And?”

“Okay,” I said, and I knew he could hear the nervousness in my voice. “I am curious, too—and a bit scared—about traveling with someone through Door Number Two. But I can’t just hop from one head to another. At least not yet.”

“I see.” He held me in his gaze, waiting.

“I can stay with anyone that Saligia connects me to,” I explained. “Even after she’s pulled away. But, as luck would have it, the last contestant has usually been the winning contestant. And that means, of course, Door Number One.”

“Not last night,” Sy said softly.

He was right. The final contestant to play last night lost—he had gone through Door Number Two.

“I saw it on your face,” Sy said with a chuckle. “You chickened out.”

“I did. But one day….” I held up my hands. What else could I say?

“Well,” he said, “when that day comes, let me know what you find on the other side. As for right now, I can see you’re still discombobulated. At loose ends.”

“Am I?”

“Why don’t you head up and check in on Sal. She’s been moody all morning. Two loose ends make more sense than one, right?”

I wasn’t sure about that sort of logic, but because he had put his gloves back on and lifted the soldering iron, it was clear I had been dismissed.

But, upstairs? To Saligia’s place?

I’d never been to the roof. And how would Saligia feel about people barging in on her?

I spotted the ladder, over beside the elevator.

Why not?

I headed up.

The rungs of the ladder were padded with foam-rubber and gaffers tape. At the top was a metal panel with a large black lever. I pulled it, and a hatch opened easily on pneumatic pistons. I climbed up and out into the sunlight, marveling how the hatch closed, slow and with a hiss of air.

A warm breeze pushed my hair about. No clouds in the sky. The brick structure behind me that sat atop the elevator shaft obscured part of the roof—that part I assumed where Saligia’s shack was. That could wait. I filled my lungs with fresh air and looked west to the courthouse and San Fernando Cathedral.

I was turning around, trying to decided whether to go find Saligia or climb back down—you know, chickening out again—when I heard a loud metallic clang.

“Confound you!” a voice cried out.

I peered around the corner of that brick cube which contained the elevator machinery. A woman in coveralls was crouching down, fighting with a socket wrench.

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “I was afraid that was directed at me.”

The woman looked up with an open smile. A red bandana held her short hair from her face. There was an oval name tag at her breast embroidered with the name Nora.

“Don’t mind me,” she said. “I’ll be out of here in a jiffy. Well, no more than two jiffies.” She turned back to the iron panel she was trying to replace. “Maybe three jiffies.” She paused and looked back up. “Hey, you’re the girl from TV! You’re Rose. Where’s your red dress?” She chuckled, proud, perhaps in her powers of deduction, and returned to her work.

I looked across the roof. There it was. Saligia Jones’ shack.

So small. Like a garden shed. It looked insubstantial, like a gusty wind would take it away. As I moved closer, it seemed less flimsy, and roomier than I had first thought.

I heard a scratching sound from behind it. When I rounded the corner, Saligia looked up in surprise. She was surrounded by large wooden planter boxes filled with herbs spilling over their edges. Oregano, dill, and basil.

“Rose!” she exclaimed, clutching a tiny trowel in a gloved hand. “I had thought I was up here all alone. Well, just me and that elevator girl.”

“Sy said it’d be okay.” I looked around. “What a view!”

“It’s my sanctuary. The gardening, especially. It helps me quiet my mind. Let all those irritations waft away. They always come back because, well, life. In a couple of hours Sy has a business lunch at some restaurant and, of course, he needs me to go along with him.”

“Oh, I don’t mean to intrude.” I didn’t want to add to her daily irritations.

“What?” She smiled. “Don’t be silly. Come inside. I’ll make some tea.”

I followed Saligia into the shack.

Inside, I could see that the place had been constructed of bricks and heavy timbers. The large windows on two of the walls helped to give the place a sense of spaciousness. There was a table, bookcase, and two armchairs. Against the wall across from the door was a narrow bed covered with cushions.

Saligia placed a kettle on a hotplate.

We sat in the armchairs.

“I don’t get guests,” Saligia said. “Other than Sy.”

She looked at me. I realized I had laughed.

“Guests,” I said. “Always that word, right? What people call the contestants. Well, Dr. Hetzel, for one. It’s her favorite euphemism for—”

“I hate that term, REINCOR. Even reincorporated arrivals, which is how Michael puts it, thinking he’s softening what just sounds like a slur.”

“All of this,” I stammered, looking for the words. “It’s just so—”

“Crazy?”

“So unnecessary,” I finally said. Wasn’t that how Marta described the Great Expanse? “And those poor people who come to us…we owe them something. Answers, at the very least.”

“And where do you expect to find these answers?”

I looked at her, surprised, I guess.

“Rose,” she said quietly, “we’re all in the dark. Everyone.”

Everyone? I wasn’t buying it. Maybe Saligia and Sy were lost and grasping at shadows. But what of that awful Network woman?

“There are two things you know for certain,” Saligia said, getting up to pour the boiling water into a ceramic pot in which she had placed a handful of loose tea leaves. “People come to us through those pods on the 28th floor. People who have lived full and complete lives. They were born, struggled, loved, worked. And then they died. Yes. They died. Most—if you haven’t realized this already—died months or a couple of years before the Changes. Where they wait until we receive them, I have no idea. But, eventually, we do receive them. We get to spend some time with them. And then we send them on their way. That’s the second thing you know. They leave us for another place. A place where they arrive at safely—you learned that firsthand. No screaming, no terror. No being flayed alive or dunked into a caldron of molten lead.”

She began pouring tea into the two cups.

“That’s pretty much all I know, as well,” she added. “As for our guests, we treat them with compassion. I don’t know what else you think we owe them.”

Well, at least I owed a thing or two to myself.

“I want to stay in the mind of a contestant who goes through Door Number Two,” I told her. “You know, all the way to the other side.”

Her hand shook, just enough to slosh a few drops of tea onto the table.

“Curiosity should have its limits,” she said, reaching for a towel.

But I was nowhere near my limits. I wanted to know so much more.

“Look Rose, I know you’re going to do whatever you decide to do, but, if you want to know my thoughts on the matter, well, sometimes the best course of action is to garden and enjoy a nice cup of tea. You’re young, but it helps to have a place free of the unknown. You need time to breathe. To be still.”

“But don’t you want to learn—”

“Rose, you have no idea what I’ve learned over the years. I’ve had this, this thing—and please don’t ever call it a gift—my whole life. It did not come to me because of the Changes. And I’m confident you can develop the same skills. Fully develop them. You’re special, too. But it comes at a heavy price. Everyone has an ugly side. Every saint you meet will have some vile, toxic cesspool somewhere inside.” She tapped at her temple with a finger. “I’ve spent decades teaching myself tricks to shut out most of it. And I backslide. I do, Rose. I get curious. I start picking, prying. And it’s always horrifying. Then I start drinking to shut it out. It’s a miserable cycle.”

I glanced over at her. Was she peering into my thoughts? Because I disagreed with her. When she helped me, during the show, to get into the minds of the contestants, I saw and felt and intimately remembered their most cherished and their most shameful moments. It all seemed so perfect, flaws and all. Beautiful. Even the ugliness.

“Those people we choose from the audience are strangers,” Saligia said, so I guess she was listening in. “But let me tell you, it’s different when you find yourself in the heads of friends or lovers. Let’s talk about something else.” She pushed a jar of honey across the table to me.