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| Photo by Jeff Weese |
It took a while, but Andi managed to really get the hang of
orchestrating a collection. Death had
been standing back to let her run the collections, giving little bits of
feedback and advice after each, but mostly Andi was just doing the job.
As she was getting more and more experience running
collections, she discovered something that surprised her. She was starting to know, upon meeting
someone, the manner of their death. So
she might pass a man on the street and notice that he had brown hair, a
mustache, worn out shoes and was going to die in a car crash.
She asked Death about it.
“Yeah, that’s how I see people too. Their death is just another part of who there
are,” Death said.
“Could it change? I mean,
could you see someone and know they’re going to die in an industrial accident,
and then see them again and discover it’s going to be pneumonia?” Andi said.
Death tried to think of the people she had seen more than
once, and whether or not the manner of death she foresaw had ever changed. She was pretty sure it had happened, but
couldn’t think of a specific example.
She said, “Yes, that could happen. I mean, people other aspects of their
appearance easily enough. If they change
the direction their life is heading, why wouldn’t the manner of their death
change? I doubt it’s a real common
thing, though. Most people are pretty
set in their ways. They determined how
their life was going to be early on, and stay right on that path. It doesn’t always makes sense, but that seems
to be how it goes. People are weird.”
Death was quiet for a moment, and then said, “Well, you’ve
got a handle on planning deaths, you’ve got the actual orchestration of a
collection down, you can step out of the world and manage to come back
again. I think it’s time for you to
learn how to travel.”
“Travel?” Andi said.
“Right. How to get
from point a to point b. You know,
quickly.” Death said.
“You mean how to travel like you?” Andi said. “Cool! OK,
when do we start?”
Death checked when the next collection was. They had nine minutes. It was enough to get started, anyway.
She didn’t think too much harm could come to
Andi, just some annoyance. Maybe a little
discomfort.
“We’ll start now. I
don’t expect you to get this right the first time, OK?” Death said.
“Um, OK,” Andi said. “I
don’t expect me to get it right either.”
Death smiled slightly and said, “Well, you might find the
results of getting it wrong unsettling.
So, what you need to know is that I will come and get you if you get
lost.”
Now Andi was feeling somewhat less enthusiastic, and a
little more concerned about what she might be getting herself into. Death was being a little bit too reassuring
for her liking. Andi was fairly certain
that things might be about to get pretty hairy if Death herself was trying to reassure her.
“How lost, exactly, can I get?” Andi asked.
“Well,” Death said, “You might just end up in the
neighboring building. Or you could end
up in the right building, but stuck halfway through a wall. Or you might, for example, end up somewhere
in Antarctica when you were trying to get to Detroit. This takes some practice, is all, and ending
up in the wrong place can be stressful.
So, just remember that I’ll be able to find you, and I’ll come get you
if you find yourself somewhere not quite right.”
Andi considered her options.
Potentially uncomfortable disorientation and the possibility of getting
trapped inside an ornamental boulder, or Death telling her that this wasn’t working
out and escorting her to the gateway for a belated crossing. Her concern was eased a little bit when she
remembered something important: if she got stuck in a wall, she was a
ghost. She could just step out of it.
Having gotten her confidence back, she said, “Great, what do
I have to do?”
Death thought about it for a minute.
“You know, I’ve never had to explain this to anyone
before. I can’t really tell you how to
do it, I can really only sort of explain what you need to do in order for it to
work. You’re going to have to figure out
how, exactly, you can do it,” Death said.
“OK. That wasn’t very
confidence inspiring, you know,” Andi said.
“Well, consider it an opportunity to become comfortable with
ambiguity,” Death said.
Andi didn’t answer, just continued looking at Death,
listening.
“OK, so it’s a lot like stepping out of the world, except
you’re not stepping out as much as you are stepping over,” Death said.
“So I’m taking giant steps here, OK, that’s easy enough to
understand,” Andi said.
“Right. So you’re
taking a giant step here. And in order to do that, you need to know where,
exactly, you’re stepping. Once you’ve
got it down you might be able to step without looking where you’re going, but
for now that’s not going to work,” Death said.
“OK. So if I’m here
in Dallas, and I need to get to Detroit, how exactly do I see where I’m
stepping?” Andi said.
“Focus,” Death said. “It’s like learning how to grab a
coffee cup. You’ve got to focus all your
attention on where you want to be, and you need to be completely certain of
where that is. Otherwise you’ll end up
somewhere else,” Death said.
Andi thought about the times they’d left some backwater town
in Alaska following a collection and then had another collection in an urban
center in Australia.
“How can I be completely certain of where I’m going if I’ve
never been there before?” Andi said.
“We’ll deal with that when we get to it,” Death said. She checked the time. They still had five minutes to the next
collection.
Death continued, “OK, so we’ll start small. Look across the street. Do you see that fire hydrant?”
Andi looked across the street. There was a fire hydrant less than one hundred
feet away. Piece of cake, she could
practically just jump that far.
“Yeah, I see the hydrant,” Andi said.
“OK, what I want you to do is step over to it. Just focus as hard as you can on that
hydrant, and when you feel ready, take the step,” Death said.
“That’s it?” Andi said. “Focus and take the step?”
Death smiled, “That’s the best I can explain it. You’re just going to have to figure out how
to do it.”
“OK,” Andi said.
Confidence, she
thought. Just stay confident. Focus on the hydrant, then step over to it. No problem. I can do this.
Andi stared at the hydrant for a full thirty seconds. It was yellow, with grass growing up around
it a little bit. She stared at it until
she couldn’t see anything but the hydrant.
Then she closed her eyes, and stepped.
When she opened her eyes a fraction of a second later, she
saw corn. She looked around a little
bit. She had no idea where she was on
the planet, but where ever she’d ended up, she had managed to step into the
middle of a corn field. The corn was
taller than her, and she regardless of the direction she turned, she couldn’t
see anything but more corn.
She suddenly felt very alone, very lost, and very afraid. Back when she’d been learning to drive, she’d
managed to get herself pretty well lost, but that didn’t compare to this in the
slightest. She wanted to just run along
the rows of corn for as far as she had to in order to find the end of the row
and escape the field at least, and maybe figure out where the hell she was.
She’d never felt so disoriented, ever.
“You stepped a little further than across the street,” Death
said, next to her. She sounded mildly
amused.
Andi turned and hugged Death before she realized what she
was doing. After a second, she realized
what she was doing, and let Death go again.
Death looked a little uncomfortable.
“Well, I guess that was sort of an intense experience for
you,” Death said. “That’s
understandable, you left Dallas and ended up in the middle of Iowa without
intending to.”
She checked the time, “Come on, we’ve got a collection to
attend to. I’ll handle this one while
you regroup, and then we’ll try again.”
The next collection was pretty routine, a twenty four year
old woman in her Chevy Malibu got in a head on collision with a Ford F-350
pulling a huge RV on a mountain road in Nevada.
The woman hadn’t had much to say, just quietly went with Death and Andi
and crossed over without a word.
When they got back, Death checked to see when the next
collection was. Twenty minutes. It was tempting to try and get something to
eat, but she decided it would be best for Andi to get right back to learning to
travel.
“OK, well, let’s try travelling again,” Death said.
Andi’s heart sank a little bit.
“Already? I feel like
I need more time to recover,” Andi said.
“If we wait any longer you’re just going to develop a big
fear of it, and then you’re really going to have trouble. I was right behind you last time, and I will
be this time too, so there’s nothing to fear except maybe a little confusion,”
Death said.
She looked around a bit.
The road they were on at the moment was actually pretty busy, and on the
off-chance that Andi was nearly successful this time, she didn’t want her to
step into the middle of the freeway.
Nothing bad would happen, but it would be pretty scary to look and see
traffic bearing down on her.
Well off the road behind them, there was a perfect,
two-armed cactus close to a big boulder.
Death pointed it out to Andi.
“Try to step over to that cactus,” Death said.
Andi wasn’t feeling very confident, and wasn’t sure she
really wanted to try stepping anywhere near a bunch of plants that were kind of
known for being pointy and sharp. But
the alternative sucked too.
So, she said, “OK, here goes.”
Andi did her best to put aside her fear of ending up just
outside of Timbuktu staring down a bunch of very confused lions. She focused as hard as she could on the
cactus.
A thought popped into her head just as she stepped, I knew I should have taken that left turn at
Albuquerque.
Death had actually been expecting Andi to show up somewhere
in the vicinity of the cactus. Maybe a
couple hundred yards away, but, you know, not that far off. However, Andi vanished and did not appear
again.
Death felt for her, and found her somewhere in coastal
Maine.
Well, at least she
ended up somewhere pretty, Death thought.
She was about to follow Andi when her phone beeped at
her. She pulled it out, and checked to
see what the deal was.
The deal was an immediate collection.
“Damn it,” Death said.
