It seemed I had become a spy.

Not that it had been my intention. I just sort of slid into it.

Maybe not a spy in the full sense of the word. I didn’t even know what real spies did. But it wasn’t like I’d be toppling governments, assassinating heads of state, or seducing diplomats.

All that was far removed from my life.

My life was ordinary.

As ordinary as the place where I went every Sunday morning, just before noon, to report on my activities of the past week.

The Omega Hotel in downtown San Antonio was what people used to call a transient hotel—maybe even a flophouse. I remembered they had those in the old movies I watched on TV when I was a little girl.

The Omega’s battered wooden door off the sidewalk was unmarked, but if you looked above it you would see the rusted sign no larger than a washcloth. The easiest way to find the Omega Hotel was to look for the Voyager 2 space probe embedded in the pavement of Soledad Street. It didn’t fall from the sky or anything. Just appeared there one day, during the Changes. Plucked from wherever it was, out beyond Pluto, and materialized in downtown San Antonio. I don’t know what makes if different from Voyager 1. And if you ask me, it seemed more likely it was some facsimile from the Smithsonian or wherever. But when the Changes were involved, “likely” was a relative term. I mean, things aren’t supposed to pop instantly from one place to another, regardless of whether that magical journey was two thousands miles or two billion miles.

So, once you located the space probe, there you were. When you stepped into the cramped entryway, there was nothing but a flight of squeaky stairs. At the top, on the other side of the swinging door, was the lobby of the Omega Hotel. My destination.

When I arrived, it was like any other Sunday morning. A bank of buzzing fluorescent lights illuminated the blue-green walls. It was almost cozy with several overstuffed sofas and armchairs. A few men could always be found there, dozing or flipping through outdated magazines. The residents of the place had come to expect me, and they barely lifted their heads in acknowledgment.

If my aunt Marta were to ever join me on my visits to the Omega Hotel—not that she had a clue about my life as a spy—she would scan the men snoring in the chairs and nod knowingly. “Nothing in this place but lechers and unshaven abuelitos,” would be her summation.

I sat in my usual chair in the alcove. Then I placed my wristwatch flat on the coffee table in front of me—this, however, was not my typical behavior, but today I needed to keep track of time.

As if on cue, Fran appeared from the hallway that led to his room. He liked to call the lobby his parlor. I guess it served as a more comfortable place to meet guests if you happened to live in a humble residential hotel with rooms that could barely accommodate a bed and a chair.

When he sat across the table from me, Fran’s eyes lingered a moment on my watch, but he didn’t say anything. Fran was in his forties. Thin, but with a big round face that was always smiling. He was younger, neater, and generally more personable than the other men who lived at the Omega. Clearly neither a lecher nor an unshaven abuelito.

Actually, Fran was practically family. I’d known the man all my life. I mean, he almost married Aunt Marta. And because, even before the Changes, my family had been reduced down to just two—me and Marta—that made “practically family” more important than some might think.

“You’re looking as radiant as always, Rosalinda,” he said.

I realized from how he leaned forward in his chair that he wanted to get straight to what he liked to call “the debriefing.” So I didn’t waste my words on small talk.

“Wednesday evening,” I said, knowing that was all he was interested in.

“That was a weird broadcast,” he said, nodding slowly.

He didn’t know the half of it. He wasn’t there. All poor Fran could go by was what he saw on the TV.

“So, what happened?” Fran removed a tiny notebook from his shirt pocket and pulled a pencil from where he kept it behind his ear. He sat back in his chair to await my report. “What really happened?” he added in a probing whisper.

He was playing it calm. But I knew he was anything but. His investment—me—was finally paying off.

You see, Fran got me my job as a lowly production assistant on Serpientes y Escaleras. Well, the official title was trainee. Someone he knew on the show pulled some strings. I had no idea who, but from the way Fran reacted to anything I told him about my daily activities at work, it was clear that this someone wasn’t sharing any information.

Fran considered himself a skeptic. True, he accepted the concept of the show—Serpientes y Escaleras—that somehow the dead had been brought back to life. The metaphysics didn’t trip him up. It was the why that activated his skepticism. Why had the dead returned? If you embraced the greater conceit of the show, the dead had been resurrected so that their past lives could be examined by the show’s cast of psychic actors. This did not sit well with Fran. He doubted something so important as the passing of moral judgement upon the dead would be given over to a TV game show.

What was really going on? Fran wanted to know.

My skepticism ran deeper. While the Changes had rewritten the definition of “impossible,” when it came to reading minds and raising the dead, I wanted strong evidence. True, I had gathered some information that hinted at such things, but if all of it was real, why was not at the top of my list. Mostly I wanted to know where. Where did those people—those people who had once been dead—go when they left the show?

“Okay,” I began. “You saw when the contestant screamed?” I knew Fran had. The entire town watched the show. And Wednesday night everyone saw something never seen before. A woman chosen from the audience just started to howl in pure terror. I was there in the studio and watched the crew scramble to cut the broadcast.

“Oh, I saw it,” Fran said. “The contestant was named Connie, right? She yelled like a gibbering banshee, and then she shouted out a few words. But those words were bleeped.”

“Yeah.” I leaned forward so Fran could hear my whisper. “She said, ‘I remember it now! I died!’ And we went straight to commercial.”

Fran’s eyes grew huge. He grinned.

“I knew it!” he hissed. “Clearly not a scripted moment.” He opened his notebook and scribbled a couple of lines. “And then what?”

“She ran off the set,” I said. “No one was prepared for that. Right out the door and into the hallway.”

“Go on.” He held his pencil at the ready.

“That’s it. I stayed in the studio. I mean, it’s my job.”

“But they brought her back.” Fran furrowed his brows and looked off into space in the general direction of a snoring abuelito slumped in an armchair. “I mean, after the commercial break, there she was.”

“Did you see her face?” I asked.

His eyes grew even larger.

“I did not.”

“That’s because they got someone else. A similar build. Matching outfit. But not her. Not Connie. They selected another woman from the audience.”

“Incredible,” he muttered as he wrote furiously. When he finished, he looked up, waiting for me to continue.

I shook my head and told him that was all I had.

He nodded and put his notebook back in his pocket.

I might be Fran’s spy, but I, too, had a need for answers—what Fran called my “deeply personal and secret agenda.” And because those were answers I could only get from the people on that TV show, we both knew I’d continue to snoop and gather information.

“You’re doing great work, Rosalinda,” he told me. “Just keep your head down, and your ears open.”

“Sure,” I told him.

“I noticed you’re keeping an eye on the time.” He pointed at my watch on the table. “And you’re dressed fancy for a Sunday. I know you’re not a church-goer. Got a date?”

Fancy? That was a stretch. I was in my normal work clothes. Khakis and a tan blazer that I tried to keep from getting too wrinkled.

“Someone called while I was still asleep,” I said. “Marta left me a note before she headed off to morning mass.”

I handed Fran the piece of paper with Marta’s curvy handwriting.

Rose, honey, your work called. They need you to report at noon. Today! Something about an emergency meeting.

“On a Sunday?” Fran sat up, excited. “That’s not normal.”

“No,” I said.

“Well, I can’t wait for our next debriefing! Now, you had better hurry off. And don’t forget. Head down—”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know.”

Fran could be so single-minded.

###

Lionel used to laugh at me when I would put on a serious outfit, be it for school or work, and say how his little sister would never make a believable adult. I was doing my best to prove him wrong today as I walked quickly down St. Mary’s Street to La Vida Tower which rose from the heart of downtown San Antonio. I maintained my decorum, though I was breathing a bit heavy and I almost shrieked like a little girl when from out of nowhere a plastic bag flapped inches past my face like some spiteful bird.

When I pushed my way through the revolving doors on the ground floor, I checked my watch against the clock on the wall above the potted ficus tree.

On the elevator ride up, I flicked a bit of lint off my blazer, straightened my canvas shoulder bag, and reminded myself to stop slouching just as the doors opened on the 29th floor.

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Why had I been summoned into work on Sunday? Were they firing me? Did they know about those “debriefings” at the Omega?

Miles was standing at a table behind his reception desk fussing with a coffee carafe.

“On the dot,” he said to me with a smile when I stepped from the elevator.

He looked so calm and in control with his dark blue jacket and tortoiseshell glasses. Now if only he would shave off that unfortunate attempt at a mustache, so sparse and wispy that it made him look like he was still in high school, though I believe he was about ten years older than me.

“What’s this all about?” I asked in a hushed tone.

“Special meeting. One of the Network executives has come out from Los Angeles to help us through this difficult time.”

“Los Angeles?” I hadn’t met anyone from, well, much of anywhere since the Changes. It seemed so odd to think that there was anything beyond San Antonio.

“You can take this and save me a trip,” he said handing me a tray filled with ceramic cups and the coffee carafe. He walked over and opened the double glass doors leading into the office suites behind his reception desk. “You’ll find them in the studio.”

Coffee? I had been called in to serve coffee?

Well, it was better than getting fired. And what better place for a spy than at an emergency meeting.

I hurried through the empty hallways. It seemed Sundays were quite a change from the chaotic bustle of the work week.

At the end of the dingy corridor I came to the heavy well-oiled door with the red sign: Studio, Enter Quietly. Luckily it was ajar and I was able to use my hip to push into the soundstage where five evenings a week we would broadcast Serpientes y Escaleras.

I stood a moment just inside the door, unmoving. I liked lurking in the shadows. Peaceful, intimate. Usually the place had every bulb in the overhead grid at high intensity. Colored lights strobing, applause sign flashing, music blaring, audience cheering.

Did they often have special meetings up here? On the weekends?

I noticed that a folding table had been set up in the center of the stage. A couple of the lights above had been turned on and they dropped dramatic pools of illumination down on the three people seated at the table.

A slim woman who I had never seen before sat at the head of the table giving serious scrutiny to some sheets of paper on a clipboard. She had on a tailored black pantsuit and wore her blond hair in a bob. Silverio Moreno sat in a comfortable slump, legs crossed at the knees. He stared off into the shadows. He wore a lavender paisley silk smoking jacket with black velvet lapels. Dr. Lydia Hetzel, who worked with the contestants, perched on the edge of her chair. She was a bony woman with perfect posture and even though it was Sunday, she wore her standard white lab coat and had her white hair up in a bun. I watched as she shifted her attention from Silverio to a shadowy form off in a corner. That’s when I realized Saligia Jones was sitting alone on a stool, arms and legs crossed, looking at the floor.

Were they waiting on me? Miles had said I was right on time.

I moved quickly in and slid the tray of coffee and cups into the center of the table.

The woman in the pantsuit snapped her head around in my direction. When she saw the coffee cups she immediately lost interest in me.

Silverio, however, smiled at me and pointed to a chair beside him.

I walked around the table and sat.

“She’s sitting,” the woman in the black pantsuit said. “Why is the coffee girl sitting?”

“Rose?” Dr. Hetzel said, noticing me for the first time. She raised an eyebrow and seemed as confused about my presence as was I.

The woman in the black pantsuit leaned further across the table than I thought was possible to better read my name tag.

“Trainee?” she said, bafflement edging toward anger. “Trainee? Well, who else is going to be popping in? Hair and makeup? Catering? So, who invited this child?”

I heard from behind me a creak. I assumed it was Saligia fidgeting on her stool.

Silverio pulled a manila folder from inside his jacket. It seemed unlikely to me that a smoking jacket would have interior pockets that large, but Silverio Moreno was prone to the unlikely.

He placed it on the table. Rubber-stamped to the front was Property of Human Resources, the Network.

When he opened it up, he read aloud: “Rosalinda Aguilar.” He paused, looking up at me. “Meet Ida Mayfield, Vice President in charge of something or other, the Network.”

“Pleased to meet you,” I said, turning to the woman. I could see from her scowl that the feeling was not mutual.

“This is the reason I called Rose in today,” Silverio said, pulling a sheet of paper from the folder.

Silverio? Was he the one who spoke to Aunt Marta? She’d keel over if she knew that she had taken a message from the Silverio Moreno.

“Our Rose scored a 1200 on the Fitzroy Scale,” he continued. “That is amazing!” He turned and gave me a little bow. Then he addressed Dr. Hetzel. “You have everyone take these tests, Lydia—why didn’t you tell me about Rose and her amazing score?”

“I’ll admit it is an unprecedented score,” Dr. Hetzel said, not sure where she should look.

“And so what does that mean?” asked Ida, only mildly curious. But not me. I was very curious. I mean, to the best of my knowledge, I wasn’t particularly good at anything. “What might one do who has a score of 1200 points on the Fitzgibbon Quiz?”

“Fitzroy,” Dr. Hetzel corrected.

Ida Mayfield pivoted her entire body to face Dr. Hetzel. Clearly she was not used to being corrected.

I watched from the corner of my eye how Silverio’s lips were beginning to curve, ever so slightly. He found this all entertaining.

Before I could learn what the Fitzroy stuff was all about—I didn’t even remember taking the test—we were suddenly joined by another member of the production.

Michael entered our circle of light, somewhat out of breath, and placed a thick stack of papers on the table in front of Ida Mayfield.

“Michael Larkin, I’m guessing,” Ida said. “You’re late. And they speak so well of you. Please,” she pointed to the one empty chair. “We saved you a seat.”

Michael looked around the table and nodded to Silverio and Dr. Hetzel. When he saw me, his nod slipped a bit off axis. I thought he might say something, but Ida cleared her throat impatiently, so he took a seat.

Ida leaned forward a bit, in that predatory manner of hers, and poor Michael froze in her gaze.

“Yes,” Ida said after an uncomfortable interlude. “I remember you from the show.” Michael smiled. And then stopped smiling. Cautious. “I don’t tune in to your little TV show too often,” Ida continued. “Sy and Saligia, well, we’ve crossed paths before. But now I recognize your face, Mr. Larkin. You’re one of the show’s two mind readers, correct? Other than Saligia, that is. You’re bigger. On the TV, I mean.”

I could tell Silverio was having a hard time stifling a laugh.

“We call them Readers,” Dr. Hetzel said, but Ida wasn’t listening to her.

“So, Michael, bring us up to date on the incident,” Ida said. “You’ve put together a report I understand?”

Michael nodded and muttered, “Um, yes.” He looked across the table at the stack of papers he had placed beside Ida. They were not quite within his reach, so he was reduced to pointing.

“Ah.” Ida tilted her head down an inch. She slid Michael’s report closer and began slowly turning the pages.

The incident, that was why we were all here. Well, I still wasn’t sure why I was included. Incident. That was the word everyone kept using. I was here in this very studio Wednesday night. I saw when that terrified contestant suddenly dropped to her knees in front of the camera and screamed so loud that the sound man flung off his headphones in pain. Then, she (the contestant) leaped to her feet and ran past the cameras and out the door.

Beyond that, nothing but rumors. Rumors I did not share with Fran. Rumors of that distraught woman flinging herself out the window at the end of the hallway. Falling 29 stories. To her death. And to the best of my knowledge, death didn’t happen any more. Not since the Changes.

I watched Ida read. Watched and waited. I wanted to know what really happened to the contestant. I wanted to know a lot more. There were so many secrets about this show. Secrets that, for some reason, a trainee wasn’t allowed to know.

“Comprehensive,” Ida said, leafing through the pages. “But a bit dry. Let’s take a look at the video from Wednesday night’s show. I believe I handed off the tape I brought with me to one of your tech people.”

The sudden and awkward silence was broken by Silverio’s laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Ida demanded.

“The Changes left us her in San Antonio with some technical challenges,” Silverio explained. “We can send our show out to our local home audiences, and even out to you folks in LA. But, sadly, no recording. Live broadcast is all we can do.”

“I understand your limitations,” Ida said, with a thin smile. “That’s why I came with a recording of the show. The Network keeps archives of all the programming at the LA offices.” Ida looked around the room. “Didn’t someone gave the tape to your director?”

“That would be Hal,” Silverio said. “And I don’t think you fully understand our limitations.”

Saligia slipped off her stool and stepped into the circle of light. She faced the tech booth half way up the wall.

“Hal?” she called out. “Are you up there?”

I looked up to the glass window. I could make out the bluish face of Hal, lit by a video monitor. His hair in wilder disarray than usual.

“Indeed I am, Saligia,” answered Hal’s amplified voice.

Saligia smiled. “If you could, please, explain to Ms. Mayfield why you can’t play the tape she provided.”

“How does one explain the Changes?” I was fairly sure Hal had given his voice some assertive reverb. “The fact is, I haven’t seen a video deck capable of recording or playback since, well, October or November of 2020. Disappeared the same week as all my hunting rifles.” From his dim silhouette I saw him lift his hands in a shrug. “I’m surprised that you folks in LA still have that sort of gear.”

“As am I,” Silverio said, leaning toward Ida. “Why hasn’t the Network provided us with some recording decks?”

“Not my department,” Ida muttered. She looked down at the table and took a deep breath. “I forget how primitive you people are in these rural markets.” She turned to Silverio, lowering her voice. “And, if you ask me, that man up there’s been drinking.”

“I don’t judge,” Silverio said. “Not when we ask someone to come into work on his day off.”

“Dysfunction to the left and right,” Ida said.

“I should point out,” Michael said, “that our production staff moved swiftly in devising a plausible story when we came back from the commercial break.”

“A seven-minute commercial break,” Ida said. “But, you’re right. Pulling a replacement woman from the audience and dressing her in similar attire is to be commended. Quick thinking to have her facing away from the camera as she and that man were escorted through the doors. But, how did this happen?” Ida turned to Dr. Hetzel. “Don’t we have safeguards in place?”

Dr. Hetzel sighed. “It is the first time something like this happened. The truth is, until now no reincorporated contestant with severe mental issues has ever appeared in our arrival pods.”

“That you know of,” Ida said.

“Her’s were clearly deep repressed memories,” Dr. Hetzel said with a sad shake of her head.

Reincorporated contestant? Arrival pods? This was exactly the sort of information I wanted to learn. But I was getting too much too fast.

“Now,” Ida said, looking around the table. “What’s the story with this Reader who couldn’t meet with us? What’s her name, this mind-reading partner of Michael’s?”

“Bianca,” Dr. Hetzel said.

“It is my understanding that she was able to perform her duties quite fine Thursday and Friday. And now I’m to understand she’s taken a leave of absence?”

Dr. Hetzel nodded.

Ida looked at her clipboard. “Our surveys show this Bianca is very popular, particularly with the female viewers. And now we have to replace her?” She looked across at Dr. Hetzel. “All because of some sort of psychic bruising nonsense?”

“Even if we put aside Bianca’s deep emotional trauma,” Dr. Hetzel said, “there is a more pragmatic issue. Bianca’s fear of another incident has destroyed her trust in the process. She can no longer make herself receptive. And as such, she is useless as a Reader.”

“She seemed to comport herself well enough Thursday and Friday,” Ida said.

“Bianca was scared,” Saligia said. “She couldn’t connect and she was pretending.” Saligia sighed. “The poor woman was just acting.”

And there it was again. The jargon I didn’t think I was supposed to be hearing. Receptive. Psychic bruising.

One thing I hadn’t told Fran was that when Connie screamed, Bianca, the Reader, who was psychically connected to her, screamed as well. Screamed and then collapsed. Fran wouldn’t have seen, because Bianca wasn’t on camera at the time.

Could it all be real? Television wasn’t supposed to be real. Well, not television shows like this.

This was one of the important things I needed to know.

Fran wouldn’t approve, but I just couldn’t keep my mouth shut any longer.

“Wait a minute. You’re not suggesting that this psychic stuff is real?”

Ida snapped her head around to stare at me. I felt blood rushing to my face. Ida shifted her attention to Silverio.

“This distinguished neophyte of yours is greener than I had been led to believe. You’re putting her on air tomorrow night? Lord help us all!”

“What?” I gasped. “Tomorrow night?”

“Not to worry,” Dr. Hetzel said to me. “We have our standard orientation. We’ll just need to accelerate our normal schedule. Michael will help you along, isn’t that right?”

“Of course,” Michael said, though he appeared quite doubtful. And I could not ignore the patronizing edge to his voice.

I sat there, baffled and paralyzed as the meeting ended and people headed out of the room.

Everyone but me and Silverio. He was still in his cozy slump.

“What just happened?” I finally brought myself to ask.

“You are dazzled by good fortune, is what happened,” he told me. “Your brain will catch up soon enough. And don’t be nervous. Stage fright is a fairytale dreamt up by cowards.” He grinned. “You’re going to be wonderful!”

“On TV?”

“And best of all, Rosalinda Aguilar, Trainee,” he said, unpinning my name tag and throwing it into the shadows, “you’ve been promoted.”

He placed a lanyard around my neck from which dangled a more official ID that had my name, followed by the designation, Associate Producer.

“It comes with this,” he added, placing a key on the table in front of me. “A master key into every room of La Vida Tower.”

Was he serious? I held the key lightly, half expecting him to laugh and snatch it away.

“No secrets can hide from you any more,” Silverio whispered in my ear. And, after a pat on my shoulder, he left the studio.