Abbreviated Life

Abbreviated Life

by Bob Miller

The screen flashed the same error message as it had the last five times he had rebooted the PC. Brady Connors looked with disgust at the text, System Allocation Resource Stopped, and pushed the reset button once again. The trouble was that he, as a well-versed computer programmer, had thought he‘d seen every possible error that Microsoft Windows could possibly generate, those of course ranging in the hundreds, and this to his memory was a new find. He had run his anti-virus suite immediately on the first error of course, so he was reassured that at least his computer wasn’t under attack. “Small consolation” he thought to himself as he surveyed the mess that was his desk on his first day back to work after a two-week holiday in Asia. The slim, nervous computer wizard paced around his cluttered apartment, pausing only to grab onto his head as it still throbbed as though he had a massive hangover. The trip had been great fun at the beginning, certainly, but about 5 days into the journey his laptop computer had experienced what appeared to be an outright hard drive crash, which was why he was forced to make the desktop hardware work for him. Then his body fell victim to a bug he had caught (“Malaysia? Singapore?” he wondered absently to himself), and that put a damper on further adventures he was planning in Bangkok and Hong Kong. In fact, the last few days of the vacation were a bit of a blur in his mind, starting with the trip to the emergency room and proceeding through the flight. He was happy that his parents had previously agreed to pick up his bags for him, which let him catch a quick cab back to his downtown Baltimore condo, a ride that he could not at the moment remember any details of. That was another thing on his list to do today - spend the obligatory 30 minutes with the folks so he could liberate his luggage. “First things first”, he reminded himself, as he knew that his boss Gina Washburn would be chomping at the bit to get him tracked onto one of her latest projects. Working from home certainly had its advantages for Brady, such as not having to get out of your PJ’s on a morning that you felt like death warmed over, but the yang of this yin was having to be accessible for his hyperactive boss at all moments, usually the most inconvenient ones from his perspective. As he glanced at the screen, the flash of blue (sarcastically referred to as the “blue screen of death” by computer insiders) he initially saw made him exclaim “SHIT!”, but just as quickly he was relieved by the transition to the boot-up sequence. “Another Mickeysoft dragon slayed” he sarcastically thought to himself as he made a mental note to research this new error. Hell, maybe he could be the first to get the word out about a new bug to his community of fellow comp nerds, a feat always to be relished. Preoccupied with getting logged into the company network, he didn’t notice an unusual difference to this day - he wasn’t drinking coffee, nor had he made any. Brady like most desk jockeys was a confirmed caffeine addict, so to be dealing with a new work day without his trusty shield of java in a ceramic container was typically unthinkable. But Brady had a raging headache and overall body malaise that wouldn’t go away, so concerns like food and drink were put on the backburner. He gave a small sigh of relief as the entry screen for his company’s web site began to fill in, but only a third of the way through the screen locked again, with yet another Windows error message appearing -

Destination Enterprise Activity Denied. “What the f....” - Brady couldn’t get the expletive out of mouth before the screen blinked once, then refreshed to a full screen of content. His e-mail application opened automatically as always, and he shuddered to think of how many dozens of messages he would have to digest. But there was yet another thing different today: only one message in the inbox, and it wasn’t from his boss. “Maybe they’ve forgotten about me” he exclaimed aloud to no one, for not only did he live alone; he had no pets of any kind. Brady just wasn’t the type to open up to either other humans or other species. He didn’t recognize the name of the sender, a Cindy Council, and the header, “Reunion?” seemed to have spam written all over it. Brady had installed sophisticated spam filtering on this machine though, and rarely had anything but pertinent messages come through. So after a quick virus scan yielded negative results, he opened the mail which had a picture attachment. The screen filled with an image that he didn’t recognize for the first few seconds. After staring at it, realization crept into his mind, mainly from the weathered letters on the side of the building: AGHS. “It’s my high school” he murmured, and for the first time in years memories of life at Aloysius Gaines High School, the original public high school in Potomac, Maryland, came coursing through his mind. Brady’s class had been the next-to-last to graduate from Gaines - it had been shut down due to not meeting safety standards for student habitation, and a modern high-tech version had replaced it a few blocks away. The last he had seen of it was driving by several years earlier, its stained, yellowing walls testimony to the lack of care it now received as a book warehouse for the school district. As he scanned the picture, the ivy hedges surrounding the front entrance, the one he used to enter the school each day for his four year stay there in the photo held his attention, but his eyes quickly crept to the text and he began to read: Dear Brady, We’ve been trying to reach you. I hope you get this in time, because our 15 year class reunion won’t be complete without you. We have so much to catch up on and so much to tell you, so please please please RSVP as fast as you can by return e-mail. We’re counting on you, so hurry and let us know you’ll come and we’ll send you all the details. Cindy (Woods) Council Brady held the obvious implausibility of the message - where was the reunion at? What date was it to be held? Where did the committee get his e-mail address from? - at bay because of a name that brought both recognition and emotion. Woods. Cindy Woods. The Cindy Woods that had stolen his heart as a tenth grader when she smiled at him across two rows in Mr. Levine’s science class; the Cindy Woods that had kept possession of it through the ensuing years of cheerleading, being elected homecoming princess and being the girlfriend of a succession of football, baseball and basketball heroes ; the Cindy Woods who he never once got the courage up to ask out on a date; the Cindy Woods who always smiled and said hello when they met in the hall, but never advanced the conversation past pleasantries - this was his mysterious e-mail communicator? For it had not been just a trivial crush in the life of young Brady Connors. He had opportunities for other girlfriends, and had even gone out on several.....”well, dates aren’t the exact word” he thought ... “nights out, yeah” with friends, among who would usually

be that one girl he knew from the Chess or Physics Clubs who he just knew, either from the grapevine or from the obvious looks sent his way, would jump at the chance to be with him. But he was spoken for, because in his rich fantasy world of teen romance, Cindy Woods was the Alpha and Omega. “If only she had known it” he thought with a bittersweet sentiment. His well-developed bullshit detection system now arose to gain control over the confusing scenario. “It has to be one of those SchoolBuddies.com types of scams”, he thought with disgust. But that didn’t keep him from staring at the name for a considerable time, and the idea of actually replying began to ferment in his mind. He was caught between the longing to relive a memory, and the specter of the embarrassment of falling for a clichéd Internet ploy. His indecision lasted for but a few seconds, as he clicked the reply button. He would at least call the bluff of Cindy (Woods) Council by making her contact him in real time. Dear Cindy What a surprise to hear from you! I’ve lost contact with virtually everyone from Gaines and never would have expected that you of all people (he hoped that his implied meaning would get through here) would be the first to get in touch with me. How did you find my e-mail addy BTW??? Anyway, I’m PROLLY interested but I need to find out more b4 I commit (“does she get the e-shorthand stuff?” he wondered, but left the computalese in the reply anyway). Here’s what - call me at this number - 612 3246754 - anytime you get a chance and we’ll talk RT. Maybe we can IM after that but I’d just like to make sure this is really you first. I’m sure you’re really busy 2, so no rushes, no worries. ...............BC He paused to reflect upon the language of the e-mail, specifically the espeak abbreviations he so liberally interspersed his communiqué with. The early years of the Web had been like a secret society, one with its own secret codes and handshakes to enter the virtual clubhouse. Brady and his circle of RT (real time) and VR (virtual reality - on the Web only - friends) had either originated or at the least popularized many of the shorthand’s/acronyms used in e-talking, such as: b4 = before prolly = probably btw = by the way addy = address WTF! = what the F$%# ROTFLMAO = rollin’ on the floor laughing my ass off ... and so on and so forth. He glanced at the clock at the bottom of the monitor and had a sudden start - 2:30 in the afternoon. Hadn’t he awakened at 10? “There’s no way I’ve been up for more than an hour” he thought emphatically, but his mind was once again interrupted. System Allocation Resource Stopped Destination Enterprise Activity Denied ...flashed one at a time across his screen, floating as free text rather than in a Windows box. “This is seriously F’ed up” was his last thought as a wave of extreme fatigue swept over

him, his eyes fluttered before closing shut and he slumped back into his chair tasting the first fruits of dreams. In his dreams, he was back in the hospital emergency room in Hong Kong. Everything had a sepia tone to it, like a photograph from long ago, perfectly matching the skin tome of the concerned medical professionals who hovered about him. The nurse in charge of him, who was quite cute he observed, left him for a time and came back with an obstruction to his view of her lovely facial features - a mask. Then his doctor returned to the room and he too had a barrier on his face. “Why are you all dressed up for me?” Brady thought to himself in his dream, and maybe he had said that in reality too, but it was just too hard to remember. “AAAGGHHH”, he awoke from his dream with a start, his head pounding like a bass drum with a rolling thunder being trapped within it. “Oh Christ!” he exclaimed aloud, and he staggered out of bed in search of Advil. The phone rang just as his hands grasped the bottle, and he ignored the peals for some seconds while he unscrewed the cap, and then swallowed the gel caps without the aid of any water. He then lurched to the phone, first inspecting the number on the Caller ID, only to find that the space, usually filled with “Name Unavailable” if the number didn’t register, was blank. Weighing the odds that it might be an unwelcome caller, on the seventh ring just before it went to voice mail he pressed the “Talk” button. “Hello”, he tentatively offered. He could hear an intake of air on the other end, and then a distantly familiar, yet somehow alien voice replied “Hello Brady, it’s Cindy....Cindy Woods from Gaines. Thanks for getting in touch” His heart immediately increased by several beats, but he kept his voice under composure as he replied “ My God how long has it been Cindy?” he queried, more of a lack of anything original to say than honestly wanting an answer. “Fifteen years almost to the day, you wear wearing a baby-blue tuxedo and I was in taffeta”. “How does she remember?” he wondered to himself. Yes, it was the baby blue tux that he had worn to the graduation night party held at the gym. “Brady, I, “ she began as her voice hesitated, “I’ve been chosen to contact you, since the others haven’t had any luck with it”. “Others?” he thought as she continued. “Jimbo Nelson? Chas Green?”, he mentally ran down the list of friends he had long ago lost contact with. His confusion grew as the silence on the other end of the line seemed as though they had been disconnected. “Cin...” he started, but she had began to talk again and he quieted to listen. “Look at your computer, there’s a message that will help me explain” she instructed him. Brady turned in a vague state of disbelief to his monitor. The screen saver which had been plying geometric patterns simultaneously turned off and a page with portrait photos appeared on the screen. Seven shots were visible, and he recognized the style immediately. “Graduation pictures” he blurted aloud to the empty room. Transfixed, yet driven by a need to figure out what was going on, he inched closer and the first glimpses of recognition came over him as he viewed four photos with captions underneath, arranged in a circular pattern surrounding a fifth, empty space.

The impish face of Greg Porta in the top left corner, frozen in time from 15 years before, reminded Brady of the thumbtack set in his seat during one freshman English class. It was much more painful than Greg had intended because of Brady’s knee-first entry into the chair. Brady had wanted to extract revenge, but was inhibited by his fear of any physical violence, a neurosis that began with daily ass-kickings he absorbed in elementary school. Those beatings had gone on for a long time until Brady could no longer hide the physical scars from his parents. This lack of response led Greg to continually torment him throughout that year. The kids in class seemed amused by the age-old saga of the bully and victim, and respect for Brady’s suffering was markedly absent. “Why don’t you just kick his ass, he’s smaller than you” his friends would tell him when he bitterly complained about Greg’s continual torture of him. But the truth was, every fight he had ever been involved in had left scars that wouldn't heal, so he endured the pain 'til the end of the semester, after which Greg had somehow fallen off the map - a wondrous development for the dreading sophomore Brady. The picture under Greg’s was not as recognizable, but after a few moments of searching his mind Brady came up with a name - Melanie Gross who had sat beside him in French class. She had always “kinda sorta” hung out with Brady and his group of techno-nerds/goth/ disaffected teens. As in, she would hear of a get-together and simply materialize there, and no one had the heart to tell her to get lost, even though she seemed woefully out of place. The lantern jaw in the picture reminded him of the reason that she never seemed to have a boyfriend, and what was worse no one hardly bothered to ask even if she had. She was always, just, there. As his eyes traced to the bottom right corner, Brady drew in a breath sharply. “Oh Christ. why does HE have to be involved with this?” Derek Nilson was the prototypical jock extraordinaire, the captain/quarterback/star of practically every sport he played. That resume of course placed him in completely opposite social and academic circles to those Brady had ran in. Such separation from teens so different from him of course wasn’t a bad thing for Brady, except for the dread of gym class, where the jocks would terrorize those less-gifted males with myriad sorts of hazings. Derek had been a specific tormentor of Brady at least twice, and the sting of the wet towels he had used to strike Brady’s naked butt in the shower was not easily forgotten. The upper right quadrant on the screen was the face he had been looking for, the one that fit the voice he was talking to - “oh shit!” he exclaimed internally about his absent-mindedness - it had been over a minute since he had spoken. “Cindy, you still there? I’m looking at your pic right now”. Looking didn’t do justice to the worshipful observation Brady was giving the digital image. “She was so beautiful then, bet she’s still off the hook” he dreamily thought, but his reverie was interrupted. “So you’ll agree to be part of our reunion?” she asked, her voice seemingly growing more indistinct by the moment. By now, Brady’s thoughts of the day, getting back to work, all had subsided into this: there was something very strange happening, but he felt powerless to stop it from occurring. “Yes”. “There was a pause of a few seconds, and then (did he detect a sigh of relief?) Cindy replied, “I’m so happy you’ve finally decided to join us”. “Finally?” he shook his head in wonder at the word, but what was beginning to occur stopped any further inquiry. Light began to project out of the monitor as Brady, five

feet away, stood transfixed. The light separated as by a prism, swirled for brief seconds, and then congealed into an image of a person standing just to his left. “Holograms!” He shrunk back, not so much in fear as in amazement that such an advanced technological event was happening in his own apartment. The seemingly projected image only four feet away from him now became more distinct, until Brady recognized the full-fledged form of Greg Porta, just as he had looked in high school. “Brady please listen, it’s important this time....” “THIS time?” Brady responded incredulously, losing cognizance that he was talking to a projection rather than a flesh-and-blood being. “Yes, there have been other times we’ve tried to contact you, it’s important for you to stay quiet while we try to explain what is happening”, ‘Greg’ replied. Brady felt that every molecule of oxygen had been sucked out of his lungs. Holograms were recordings, not interactive. There was little in the pipeline of technologic advancement that he was not privy to, and there was not even a hint of such a breakthrough in communications. The overwhelming appearance of this apparition emerging from his computer and interacting with him rendered him mute, both vocally and internally. “Good”, the Greg figure said, “stay still and just hear us out”. Brady’s overtaxed mind was now presented with the sight of two more swirls of light energy coalescing into figures standing before him. He sank to the ground, dimly aware of needing to scream from fear, but somehow being blocked from doing it. The other two figures now seemed as sharp as Greg’s did. It was, not to Brady’s surprise, Melanie and Derek, but as with Greg it wasn’t what the Melanie and Derek of today should look like, but rather frozen in time. While Greg looked no more than 16, Melanie seemed more college age, perhaps 20, and Derek even older, perhaps twenty-five with a bit of thinning hair and a sight paunch where there once had been six-pack abs. The Derek figure spoke, “Brady, we each have something we have to say to you. It’s important for all of us that you hear us and accept. But you have to turn that mind of yours off for just awhile. Brady could barely generate a nod; his back slumped against a wall, his body unable to move from shock. Greg began, “I am so sorry for tormenting you in class that year. It’s not an excuse, but my parents were divorcing then and I was so full of anger. You were just a target because I knew you wouldn’t fight back, but it was wrong of me and I ask for your forgiveness”. Brady haltingly said “Okay, I forgive you Greg; it wasn’t that big of a thing”. “Oh yes it was”, Greg retorted. “Remember how you were embarrassed in front of Cindy? How you were about to get up the courage to talk to her, but after I abused you, you felt less than a man. “Admit it, Brady”. Brady relived the incident with Greg again briefly, but this time kept the context. There Cindy, sitting beside him in that 9th grade class, had smiled invitingly so often before the tack incident. Afterwards, she avoided his gaze and the humiliation seemed to linger forever. “Okay Greg, you’re right, it did hurt me and I wished you hadn’t done it”. Brady came a bit out of his shock at the absurdity of speaking to a ghostly image and said. “All

right, who slipped the acid into my coffee?” he spoke in a demanding tone. “Think this isn’t real Brady?”. The figure of Greg now began to move, as in slowmotion, yet within a second he was standing directly over Brady. The shell-shocked programmer had not time to protest as Greg’s hand descended upon his head with a firm icy grip. “AHHH!” Brady screamed, as his seventeen tentative explanations for the phenomena happening in his apartment suddenly evaporated with the stunning PHYSICAL sensation of Greg’s viselike hands. The veil between illusion and reality seemed to be shattered with this one act. “I’m sorry, I know from prior experience that this is very disturbing to you, because of the type of person you are. Me, it was a lot easier, I knew I was flirting with disaster by racing my Camaro too fast, so I wasn’t surprised when I crossed. Maybe I wanted out, huh?” he flashed a grin for the first time. “Experience? Crossed? Wanted out?”. The concepts were circulating around Brady’s mind with no time to slow them down to analyze. “I’m done now, I have to wait for my next, it’s Melanie’s turn”. And with that, the image of Greg disappeared. “OH MY GOD!” erupted a voice in Brady’s head, but he had no time to articulate this sudden burst of incomprehensible fear. “Reader’s Digest version Brade”, the Melanie-like figure said in a forceful manner as she inched closer. “Bottom line is I had a crush on you that wouldn’t stop. And it didn’t Brady. Ever. Even after we had graduated and I had gone to Vermont for college. I had done everything short of climbing in your bedroom window and getting naked for you. But you didn’t notice me Brady, not ever. You were nice of course, in the most distant way possible, but you never once looked at me like a woman. “So I decided to change things. I allowed my art teacher to seduce me. I allowed myself to fall in love with him, knowing all the while that he was married and I was just his flavor of the semester. And I allowed him to break my heart, and for that to destroy me. And that was all my responsibility Brady - the pills, the note, leaving everyone far before I should have. And the hatred I carried in my heart for you not loving me, that’s my responsibility too. And that’s why I’m here, to let you know that it was not your fault, and to ask your forgiveness for hating you”. Brady was silent, not because of shock or fear, but rather his mind was racing with possibilities, few logical, that would explain what was happening at this moment. “This is Dickens’ Christmas Carol and I’m Scrooge” he thought in a facetious vein, but that didn’t last but a brief second as the figure of Melanie flared with energy and seemed to swell in size. “Don’t make a joke of this Brady; it’s important for both of us that you forgive me - now!” The seeming telepathy between himself and Melanie left him gasping in wonder. Whatever rational explanations were left for these phenomena had now disappeared. Brady suddenly had an urge to slap his face, hard with both hands, as if the shock would make this go away, but after he struck himself there was no change, just pain added to his amazement. Caught between fright and wonder, he managed to squeeze out a simple thought - “you’re forgiven”. The Melanie-figure shrunk both in size and intensity, and he heard a quick “Thanks Brady” before the light was extinguished and he was left again alone. The incomprehensibility of what was occurring was now giving way to an anticipation of

seeing the one who had intrigued him into this scenario to begin with. “BOO”! Brady jumped six inches into the air with a scream at the voice that exploded into his right ear. The Derek apparition had apparently decided it would be more comfortable to be seated about a foot to Brady’s side. “What the fuck did you do that for?!” Brady shouted as he inched away while regaining his composure. Derek didn’t moved, simply smiled and said “Old habits die hard, bud. I’m trying to get better, they’re teaching me ...” (“They”? Brady was quickly falling out of his acceptant attitude toward his visitors. An odd feeling also had crept up, a sort of deja vu that he had heard this things before, but where?) “ ...about how my actions create, like these effects, they call ‘em ripples, that go on to change people’s lives way down the road from where it started. Freaked me out dude, don’t mind tellin’ ya. So when I was, like, bustin’ your chops in school, to me it ended there, but for you it went on way longer. And I’m truly sorry man, cause it wasn’t just you, and even if you forgive me I still have to wait a long time to make things right with everyone else. So can we be buds?” The absurdity that Derek Nilson was in his presence asking for forgiveness for hazing that had long ago been put out of Brady’s mind was the straw that tipped his sense of reality over. He began to laugh, deep belly laughter that rolled off the apartment walls. Derek laughed along, at first tentatively, then full-forced along with Brady. As their laughter subsided, Brady for the first time since the phenomenon began felt relaxed. “So Derek, I forgive you, but first you have to tell me, are you dead, are you a , a .... ghost?” Derek appeared to contemplate the question for a second and began to respond, “That night after I signed the free agent contract with Buffalo, my agent took me out on the town. It was the best of everything dude, food, booze, and gawd the women!!” Derek was grinning, a smile that seemed to Brady to be mixed with more than just a little pain. He rose suddenly and stood facing the door away from Brady. So there was that one special girl, you know, the one I just had to hook up with cos I would be leaving the Big Apple the next mornin’ ya know? Well, she was special allright, so fuckin’ special that it cost me everything”. As Derek’s agitation in telling his story increased, Brady could see visible flashes of orange and red light shooting out from his silhouette in the darkened apartment. Derek continued, obviously making an effort to control his emotions now. “So we were gettin’ it on in my hotel room, I’m like so wasted but still want to bag this chick, and then she starts to get freaky, ya know, wants me to rough her up and stuff. Well, I may have been a bad ass on the football field, but I had never been nothin’ but nice to chicquitas, you dig? So I tell her, ‘no way, I’m not into that!’, and she starts to calm down a little bit, except she wants to get on top, which is always fine by me ...., at least it was, ... so then she gets this idea of tying me up to the bed with her leg stockings. It’s not my bag, but I was so turned on that it was like ‘what the hell!’, so I let her and it was cool....at first.” Derek started to pace as he spoke. “So I’m right on that edge right, she’s on top pumpin’ me and I’m about to get mine, and then she grabs a pillow and pushes it down on my face. I freaked out for a sec but then I started to get off like a rocket, so I rolled with it. I passed out just as I went, but she wasn’t finished so she kept holding the pillow on my face. I came to and my body was on fire, felt like I was drowning so I pushed her off top of me as hard as I could. What I didn’t know for a few seconds was that she flipped

straight back slamming her neck into the footboard. It broke her neck, and she died right there man”. Brady was aghast at this unexpected turn of the story. “Derek, that’s ... wow, that’s so bad, I’m sorry for her and for you”. “Thanks dude, I wasn’t quite finished yet”. Brady felt slightly chagrined at having interrupted what for “Derek” was obviously still a painful retelling. “....so I think to myself, “Derek you’ve really fucked up now”, cause when I could breathe again and I saw her....twisted up like that, I knew that there was no explaining this to anyone where it could come out right. I wasn’t afraid, understand, just..., well I knew what I had to do. I had done something wrong and no one would ever believe that it was an accident. So I walked to the balcony, didn’t hesitate at all, just jumped. 16th floor”. “Derek” grew quiet and looked off into the distance. “Now telling this to you, it doesn’t seem so bad, but when I had to tell her that I was sorry for my part of what I had done, and I had to apologize to him, who would have been her son” “Would have been?”. The spinning in Brady’s head continued as he tried to absorb the metaphysics of the “world” that was being presented to him. A question was beginning to form in his mind, a terrible one that he wanted desperately to stop growing, but.... “Why don’t I remember this?” Brady suddenly asked of himself, shutting out “Derek” for the moment. Though Brady paid little attention to sports, an event of this magnitude would have surely been all over the news and would have somehow seeped into his consciousness. But there was no recall of this from his memory. ....so things are , like, balanced now (Brady noticed the emphasis) and I can go on with life. “Life??” Brady spat back Derek’s last word as a question. “Yes, you dweeb, life. I’m alive, you’re alive... “OF COURSE I AM!” Brady shouted back, feeling emboldened enough to raise himself to a standing position. He was now close to eye level with “Derek” who was standing four feet from him. “....she’s alive, we’re all alive, dude, that’s not the problem. This turn in the talk had destroyed the bravado that Brady had generated. His shoulders slumped, he collapsed again onto the floor. “Who’s she, and what exactly is the problem, Derek?” “Derek” did not reply, but instead vanished just as the prior two former classmates had. Brady scrambled back up, feeling a need to anchor himself in his physical reality, but the structure of his situation changed before he was even on his feet. The walls, floors, ceiling, furniture and appliances that had remained within constant vision during the series of apparitions now themselves disappeared, replaced by nothing more than a fine, gray mist. “Don’t be afraid Brady”. The soft voice that had lured him into this psychedelic episode projected from behind him. Brady whirled and saw the figure of Cindy Woods emerging from the indistinct background. He felt an urge to rush up to her, hold her tightly, taste her lips, even to make love to her. But he could not move a muscle of his body as she stopped a few feet from him. “I know how difficult this is for you. It was for me too. I’ve seen you go through

this so many times Brady, and I hope this has to be your last. That’s for both of us”. “Brady, you are dead. You died on your trip to Asia, in Hong Kong. You were one of the first fatalities of a deadly virus named SARS. You don’t believe this has happened though. You have not believed it for a long long time. “No dammit, I don’t believe it, I will not believe it, I don’t even believe you are real. See!” Brady lunged at the figure of Cindy, feeling nothing but hostility. He reached her position with great velocity, except “she” offered no resistance as he passed through her, hitting his body awkwardly on the wall which had suddenly reemerged to stop his momentum. Brady gasped with pain, but was interrupted by Cindy’s voice, which now had a sharper tone. “You’ve got to stop torturing us Brady!. I don’t have any choice but to keep trying to reach you. Just listen to me for a minute, do not shut me out!” Brady was stilled by the urgency of her voice and simply said “go ahead”. “Those computer error messages you’ve been getting?” Brady nodded, forgetting to even be surprised at the impossibility of her “I thought maybe that would make you think, make you question what’s going on. Why you haven’t been able to call your boss. Why you don’t really remember how you got back to your apartment. Why you haven’t been able to contact another human being. Think, Brady” Cindy demanded. Brady’s mind was running at red-line pace, furiously trying to launch a logical rebuttal. The messages, what were they, System Allocation Resource Stopped and Destination Enterprise Activity Denied? “Yes Brady, why hadn’t you ever seen those before?” Cindy questioned. “Maybe it’s because they don’t exist” she continued emphatically. “They were a code to you, the great hacker”. Code? Simple codes are mathematical he thought. Either progression or operation-based. Other than that..... “Remember Mrs. Joseph in 10th grade English, how much she liked acronyms?” Brady had a flashback to the small woman who put up “ASSUME” on the chalkboard on the first day of class, as a tool to implore kids to ask questions rather than, as she so daintily said “make an ASS out of U and ME”. Brady couldn’t contain a chuckle at this memory, but then grew silent as he acronymized his recurrent error messages. System Allocation Resource Stopped = S +A+R+S = SARS Destination Enterprise Activity Denied. = D+E+A+D = DEAD SARS. DEAD. “Brady, you are dead ..... virus named SARS” echoed through his mind seemingly without beginning or end. After what could have been 10 minutes, or ten hours to his grieving conciousness, “Cindy” sat beside him. She put a hand on his shoulder as he opened up his eyes, tears still streaming down his cheeks. “Why do I feel like I’m alive, Cindy?” “Because silly , you ARE. Derek told you, we don’t die, only our physical bodies do. “So why do I look like myself, why do you look like I remember you?”

“Because that’s your choice. You choose what you look like, what your surroundings are like, the people you want in your life. Nothing is forced here.” “Here?” The next logical gap was waiting to be filled. “WE don’t know exactly where “here” is, we just know it is Somewhere Else than the physical world. It looks like it a great deal cause that’s what people seem to want. But there are rules, and one of those is why all of us are here for you”. “So Greg, Melanie and Derek too. huh?” Brady was at least out of his shocked mode. “Yes, and maybe you can put together why they were here, why I am here to help you accept your new reality. “Unfinished business, right?” “Yes, and just by your forgiving them they are now free to move ahead with their own destinies”. Brady took a moment to digest this information. “So what exactly is our unfinished business, Cin?” “I’m glad you asked, the first 50 times or so we tried this we never got close to this point”. “So how many times have you guys tried to get me to accept my death? And what would have become of me if I had never listened to you?”. “After awhile, numbers become irrelevant, so lets say that we have become well practiced at getting your attention. I’ve learned a great deal about patience, more than I would have ever wanted” she said with a wry smile. “If you had stayed stubborn then you would have awakened each morning like you did this one, but with no memory of it ever happening before, and we would have been forced to keep trying to get through to you. You see, that’s another absolute over here, along with loose ends having to be tied up, free will cannot be violated, so that’s why you had to agree to the reunion in order for us even to have access to convincing you”. “So we could have all been stuck like that ‘til the end of time?” “There is no end to time, Brady” she replied simply. Brady had an involuntary shudder at the unreality he had been trapped in. He felt pure gratitude to Cindy and the others who had freed him. “So what’s your story, Cin? I know about Greg, Melissa and Derek, how did you die so young? “You really never watched t.v., did you?” Cindy said teasingly. Brady could only nod his head in agreement. “After high school, I went to college and majored in broadcast journalism. I got a job with channel 4 in D.C. right out of school, and let me tell you it was the high life. I became involved with, and later married, an assistant to a Senator, so life was high-profile parties and glamorous nights on the town. What I didn’t know is that my gorgeous husband Craig Council was secretly dealing cocaine to some very influential people on Capitol Hill. One night, he screwed up by getting a little too high, left some out in the car console, and when he was caught speeding on the Beltway the police officer arrested him for possession with intent to deliver. He called me to bail him out, and of course I was upset, but I was still so in love with him that I was willing to stand by him”. “The men he was selling cocaine to had another reaction though. Afraid that he would name them as users to get out of a prison sentence, they arranged to eliminate their

problem by killing him. So for me, it was a getaway weekend in Virginia to forget our problems, but for their hired assassin, it was an opportunity to stage a clean hit. I barely saw the car coming up from behind us on the rural two-lane road, he was going so fast, and it felt like I was flying as our car left the road and hit the tree at about 80 miles per hour”. Cindy grew silent, as Brady absorbed this, “So your husband, what happened to him?” “Oh. we parted right after that. We really had nothing in common, except both of us being beautiful, and over here that means nothing because everyone is as beautiful as they want to be”. “All right, I guess I’m ready, what do you need to apologize to me for?” Brady had held off saying this because he was afraid, like the three earlier visitors, Cindy would disappear as soon as she had said her peace. “It’s not me silly, it’s you that needs to apologize to me and to our daughter” Brady could only shake his head like a Parkinson’s victim in the throes of an attack. “Daughter?” was all he could even muster as a coherent thought. “I think it’s time to get reacquainted Brady”. The voice that belonged to those words came from behind him, and he whirled to his feet as a figure emerged close to him. It was a female, about 5 feet 10, who looked to be about 35 years old. She was striking, not in a classical beauty manner, but her appearance radiated a feeling of strength and towering presence. “This is our..... “This is Emma, who would have been our daughter in our last lifetime Brady”, Cindy calmly interrupted, “would have been IF you had broken down your insecurity complex and my silly defenses and we had gotten together. That’s why the memories of school plagued you so much, why no other girl was good enough for you, in fact why all of us are here together, instead of still being alive on Earth” “But, I... Brady broke down in a torrent of tears. He felt indescribable guilt though he couldn’t understand exactly what his role in this cosmic drama was. “It’s ok, Daddy”. Brady felt arms around his shoulders, but they were not the arms of an adult woman, but rather those of a little girl, HIS little girl, who appeared to be about 9 years of age. A feeling of love and acceptance like none in his comparison flooded over him. “You didn’t know what would happen. It’s the thing they call the Butterfly Effect on Earth. You’ve heard of that, right Daddy?” Brady nodded, remembering the hypothesis that the fluttering of a single butterfly’s wings in China could produce the start of a chain of reactions that would culminate in a strong hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean. He remembered mocking this absurd notion. Somehow, after the events of today, he was much more receptive to it. “Remember back in 10th grade how mommy used to smile at you? You were supposed to take that as a signal to get to know her better. By 11th grade you were supposed to go out together, and during 12th grade you two were supposed to get carried away one night and have unprotected sex. Mommy was supposed to get pregnant with me. The two of you weren’t supposed to get married, but you would have stayed in my life and helped keep me positive when mommy was going through her string of hot boyfriends that drove Italian sports cars...” Cindy sighed as she slumped down on the other side of Brady. “Do my

weaknesses always have to be made fun of?” Emma laughed at Cindy’s feigned discomfort. “May I take over, Emma dear?”. She nodded assent. “Yes Brady we were supposed to hook up, it was an agreement that the three of us had made before we two went back into physical life in 1970. We were supposed to create Emma, who would have been born in 1989, who would have survived my wild ways during the 90’s, and would have grown to be a remarkable woman, first in her law class at Georgetown, the youngest female representative in American history, and in 2036, with us looking on, she was to have been inaugurated as the first woman president of the United States. Because you flitted your butterfly wings in a different direction, all of that has changed”. Emma took over. “Greg was in your life to give you an easy victory, to build your confidence about defending yourself. He agreed to play this role because the two of you had been friends over many lifetimes together. Imagine that, he incarnates just to be a punching bag for you, and you never throw the first punch. That’s why he left life soon after that - this was his only task. The funny thing is, you had been a warrior in a past life, so schoolyard fights should have been a breeze. What we didn’t count on is how much distaste for violence you had come out of that experience with”. “Derek was to be your next mountain to climb. You were supposed to call him out in front of everyone at school and beat his big jock ass for tormenting you so. This would have made Mom want you more than anyone... “Always been a sucker for the macho man” Cindy butted in with an impish grin... ...and would have humiliated Derek so much he would have quit the football team, which means he would have never played pro football, which of course means he never would have been in that hotel room with that girl, and both of them would be alive today without the foggiest notion of what tragedy could have happened to them and to all of those whose lives THEY affected. NOW do you get the Butterfly Effect?” The blow of this unexpected turn hit Brady hard. The guilt that had been wiped away by Emma’s love now came back in full force. “No Brady, DO NOT take the weight of the world on your shoulders. There is an alternate path for everything” Cindy quickly interrupted his self-loathing. “Emma, this is my deal from here on”. The young girl nodded, gave Brady another enthusiastic hug, then stood up and morphed back into her adult physique before departing. “Will I....” Brady halted, already feeling the pang of separation from a loved one he had just met, at least within his conscious memory, “get to see here again?” “Yes, of course, there’s time for everything but first we have to get your head cleared of all this negativity. I know that you are truly sorry; I feel that - you don’t have to verbalize it. “I have so many questions, like why did they all apologize to me when I’m the one that fucked everything up. And what about Melissa, what did she have to do with this scheme?” “Melissa was our backup plan in case you didn’t make a play for me. You were supposed to hook up with her, which would have done two things - you would have thought of yourself as a manly stud rather than a scared virgin, and it would have given you confidence to pursue me. For her part, she would have realized soon after getting together with you that you really weren’t her type, and she would have gone on to have a very successful lesbian relationship with one of her female professors at college, one that

they were slated to be in for over thirty years” “As for the apologies, they truly meant that because no matter why we create the ripples on the surface of existence, we have to own our responsibility for them. It’s what keeps this train from running off the tracks, at least that’s what the Elders say - and they’ve never been wrong before” she added brightly. “So who I start to ask forgiveness of?” Brady, now totally humbled, asked of Cindy. “Well, silly, that’s why I sent Emma away, ‘cause you have a lot of ‘splaining to do” she said laughingly. “Cindy Woods Council, first things first drop the last name”. “Agreed!” “Cindy Woods Connors” “Oh yea, that’s lots better” she whooped, “Cindy Connors, I love, you, I realize I’ve always loved you, and I’m so sorry I screwed things up”. “You’re forgiven my love, but next time let your hormones rule you instead of that nerdy brain of yours”. “But I always wanted you! I just didn’t know how to make it real” “You’ve got about ten years until we get our next chance to go back to Earth and try this thing again, so I suppose that I could get you addicted to me by then. “Especially” she arose as she was talking “since you thought I was so hot at 16” Cindy then morphed into the 10th grade goddess that Brady remembered her as most vividly “you can have another chance at it”. She began to seductively unbutton her blouse as her pupils dilated in anticipation. “Oh one more thing lover. Remember how I said you would have awakened every day into the same world unless we got through to you?” Pulse pounding, Brady nodded quickly. “Well lover, it’s the same rules here. Until we go back to Earth to meet again, every day we awaken we will desire each other for the first time, kiss for the first time, have each other for the first time. Does this sound inviting?” As he slid into her embrace, he reflected on how wonderfully alive it felt to be dead, and hoped that Earth might misplace their reservations for next time around.