First Person Peculiar (4 page)
Read First Person Peculiar Online
Authors: Mike Resnick
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #Fantasy, #Anthologies, #Science Fiction, #Short Stories, #Anthologies & Short Stories
I actually wrote a version of this story, under a female pseudonym, back in the mid-1960s for the only issue of an “all-women’s tabloid.” I never kept a copy, so this isn’t an exact duplicate, and I’d like to think I’m half a century better, so when an anthology where the theme fit opened up, I took another shot at it.
The Revealed Truth
Her first name was Helen. No one knew her last name.
She wasn’t a local resident, that much was certain, since everyone in town knew everyone else. She had been passing through, on her way from somewhere to somewhere, probably driving a little too fast, especially on the fatal turn, and a tire had blown out while she was heading south on River Road. Her car plunged right into the river.
It was only eight or nine feet deep, but her door was locked and her window open. She banged her head pretty hard on the dashboard, and before a pair of startled fisherman could drag her out of the car she’d drowned. They carted her off to the hospital, dead on—well,
before
—arrival.
Her purse had the name “Helen” embroidered on it. It didn’t seem likely that her wallet and registration had floated away, but they weren’t in her purse or her car, and a whole troop of Boy Scouts volunteered to look for them, or some other ID, in the water and along the shore.
Turned out they only spent about four hours searching. No, they didn’t find it, but word reached them that she’d been miraculously revived, and they concluded that she could probably tell the authorities her name.
I heard about it while I was working on my next Sunday sermon, something about gluttony being a worse sin than most people thought, and I was hunting up government figures on our increased national obesity problem when word of the miracle came through.
You know how people are always asking “Where were you when …?” When JFK died, when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Well, to tell you the truth, I was two years old when Oswald killed Kennedy, and I was still in single digits when Armstrong walked on the moon, but I will always remember sitting at my desk in the alcove just to the left of the main altar when news of the Miracle at Miller’s Landing came to me. Initially I was thrilled, as we all were, and I praised God for His power and His compassion.
Oh, I suppose we’d all read and heard about such things happening, but never in or even near our Miller’s Landing. Helen had been officially dead for two hours and seventeen minutes. Usually, when someone’s revived after that long, their brain is gone because it’s been starved of oxygen, but every now and then they come back just fine, more often from freezing or drowning than any other kind of fatal (or should I say temporarily fatal?) accident.
Since no one knew anything about Helen, we didn’t know what religion she belonged to, but everyone seemed sure she’d want to thank God for reviving her, and maybe get some counseling from a member of her church, so the word went out to me—I’m the local Baptist minister—as well as to Father Patrick McNamara and Rabbi Milt Weiss, my friendly rivals for our citizens’ souls. I couldn’t find any record of her, not only in Miller’s Landing, but any nearby communities. I wondered if Patrick or Milt were having any better luck.
I remember that I was having lunch over at Irma’s, like I always do on Tuesdays, when she serves up that wonderful tomato soup, and in came Patrick McNamara. He spotted me and walked over.
“Hi, Pete,” he said. “Mind if I sit down?”
“It’s a free country. Until Irma brings the check, anyway.”
He chuckled at that. “We missed you on the links yesterday morning.”
“Wedding arrangements. Billy Forrest and Lois O’Grady.”
“Hey,” he said with a smile. “That’s half mine.”
“You’re too late,” I said, returning his smile. “She’s converting.”
“Okay, you win this one,” he said. “But I’ll get mine back.” And I knew he meant next month’s Cain-Connors wedding. “By the way, have you heard about this drowned woman, this Helen someone-or-other?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I thought I’d stop by after lunch and see if I could do anything for her.”
“Oh. She’s a Baptist?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea what she is, but I thought at least I’d make myself available to her.”
“I was thinking the same thing. And just in case she
is
a Catholic, I’ll make arrangements to take her confession right there.”
“It’s got to be more meaningful when you’re mostly dead than when you’re mostly not.”
He chuckled. “Precisely.”
I looked out the window. “I wonder where Milt is?”
“Are you supposed to be having lunch with him?”
“No, we usually meet over at Herbie’s fish place on Thursdays,” I answered. “But he’s got a smaller congregation than you or me, so I figured he’d be Johnny-on-the-Spot to pick up another member.”
Patrick laughed. “He won’t find one
here
. If Lois O’Grady changes her mind, she’s
mine
.”
“No,” I agreed. “I meant that if he’s off to see Helen Somebody, he’s got to walk right past Irma’s front window to get to the hospital.”
I finished my pie and coffee, treated Patrick to a coffee as well, and after I had paid Irma we got up, walked out into the sunlight, and strolled the two blocks to the hospital.
“Well, son of a gun!” said Patrick. “Look who’s here. What a surprise!”
“I love you, too, Patrick,” laughed Milt Weiss, who stood at the registration desk. “Hi, Pete.”
“I didn’t see you walk past Irma’s,” I said.
“I drove. And since I have a direct line to God, let me state, rather than guess, that you’re here to see the remarkable, resurrected Helen.”
“Of course,” I said.
“She’s in Room 314,” announced Milt. “Shall we proceed? No sense doing this in relays.”
We joined him and entered the elevator, which let us out a few seconds later. We walked down the white, antiseptic corridor to 314 and went into the room.
“Good afternoon,” said the nurse. “I’ll go check on some of the other patients while you’re here.”
“How is she?” I asked. “Will she live?”
The nurse nodded.
“Must be in serious condition,” said Patrick.
“Not really, not for what she’s been through.”
“But you look so grim.”
The nurse shuffled uneasily. “She’s not what you expect.”
“What do you mean?” asked Milt.
“You’ll see,” the nurse said, and then she was gone.
We walked over to the bed, Milt on the right side of it, Patrick on the left, me at the foot, and stared down at the women. She seemed fiftyish, but her horrible experience and her weakened condition could have aged her ten or twelve years. Her hair was a dirty gray, her skin wrinkled, and though the blanket covered her loosely, she looked to be about fifteen or twenty pounds overweight.
She opened her eyes.
“Good afternoon, Helen,” said Patrick, taking her hand and holding it gently.
She stared at each of us in turn. I looked for softness, or perhaps gratitude, if not for our presence, then for the simple fact of being alive, but all I saw … well, I couldn’t be sure if it was annoyance or contempt.
“How are you feeling, Helen?” asked Milt.
“I just died. How do you
think
I feel?”
“Grateful, perhaps?” I suggested. “A merciful God has allowed you to live again.”
“What do you know about God?” she said.
The question took me by surprise.
“I am a minister,” I said. “If there’s any way I can help …”
“And I am a rabbi,” said Milt, “and this gentleman across from me is a priest. No one knows your religion, so we came together to see if any or all of us could bring you spiritual comfort.”
“I don’t need it as much as two of you do,” she said and gave a nasty smile.
I frowned. “I’m afraid I don’t quite follow you, Helen.”
“I remember everything that happened
while
I was dead, everything I saw and heard, and everything I learned.”
“I’m sure you did,” said Milt soothingly.
“I’m not lying and I’m not crazy! I was
there
! I saw, and I remembered. Only one religion is true, and when I’m a little stronger, I’m going on television, to tell the people what I experienced. They deserve to know the truth, to know which religion is true and which ones are as phony as a three-dollar bill.” She set her jaw. “And no one is going to stop me.”
“Delusional,” said Patrick sadly.
Milt nodded his head. “Absolutely delusional.”
I sighed deeply. “I agree.”
“What you think doesn’t matter any more. I
know
. And I’m going to let everyone else know.”
“Get some sleep,” said Milt, backing away and walking to the door.
“We can call the nurse if you want,” added Patrick, also walking to the door.
“I don’t need a nurse. God sent me back with a purpose. I plan to fulfill it.”
“I’m glad to have met you, Helen,” I said, joining them at the door. “And I hope you regain your strength very soon.”
Then we were out in the corridor and walking to the elevator.
“What do you think?” asked Patrick with a worried expression on his face.
“Crazy as a loon,” said Milt.
“I don’t know,” I said. “She sounded pretty sure of herself.”
“Delusional people always do,” replied Milt.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t become a mass delusion,” said Patrick.
I turned to him. “What do you mean?”
“I don’t care what
she
thinks she knows. But what if she can convince others—like a television audience—that she’s right, that two of us have been living and teaching a lie?”
“More to the point,” I said, “what if she
is
right?”
I could tell both of them had been thinking the same thing.
“If she is,” said Milt as if trying to make himself believe it, “I expect to see you both in temple next week.”
“Church,” said Patrick. And then he added softly, “I hope.”
The elevator arrived, the doors slid open, but none of us got on. We just stood there, each lost in his own thoughts.
Finally Milt said, “You know, I think perhaps we should see her one more time before we leave.”
“I agree,” I said promptly.
“Me, too,” added Patrick.
We weren’t there long, maybe two or three minutes. Then we signaled for the nurse.
“What happened?” the nurse asked, as we stood back and let her approach Helen’s bed.
“She suddenly moaned and seemed to have trouble breathing,” said Patrick, as the nurse signaled a Code Blue, summoning what I like to call the Resurrection Squad. We stuck around, but it was obvious that this time her death was permanent.
Finally they covered her face, and the three of us walked slowly to the door.
“To come back from drowning, just to die again when she seemed on the road to health,” said Milt to the nurse. “Such a shame.”
“A tragedy,” added Patrick, as the three of us headed back to the elevator.
“A pity,” I agreed.
***
I wrote this in 1984, for a chapbook collection titled Unauthorized Autobiographies. It was the first of my stories to be selected for a Best of the Year anthology (by Jerry Pournelle, if you need someone to blame).
Me and My Shadow
It all began when—
No. Strike that.
I don’t know when it all began. Probably I never will.
But it began the second time when a truck backfired and I hit the sidewalk with the speed and grace of an athlete, which surprised the hell out of me since I’ve been a very
un
athletic businessman ever since the day I was born—or born again, depending on your point of view.
I got up, brushed myself off, and looked around. About a dozen pedestrians (though it felt like a hundred) were staring at me, and I could tell what each of them was thinking: Is this guy just some kind of nut, or has he maybe been Erased? And if he’s been Erased, have I ever met him before? Do I
owe
him?
Of course, even if we
had
met before, they couldn’t recognize me now. I know. I’ve spent almost three years trying to find out who I was before I got Erased—but along with what they did to my brain, they gave me a new face and wiped my fingerprints clean. I’m a brand new man: two years, eleven months, and seventeen days old. I am (fanfare and trumpets, please!) ***William Jordan***. Not a real catchy name, I’ll admit, but it’s the only one I’ve got these days.
I had another name once. They told me not to worry about it, that all my memories had been expunged and that I couldn’t dredge up a single fact no matter how hard I tried, not even if I took a little Sodium-P from a hypnotist, and after a few weeks I had to agree with them—which didn’t mean that I stopped trying.
Erasures
never
stop trying.
Maybe the doctors and technicians at the Institute are right. Maybe I’m better off not knowing. Maybe the knowledge of what I did would drive the New Improved Me to suicide. But let me tell you: whatever I did, whatever
any
of us did (oh, yes, I speak to other Erasures; we spent a lot of time hanging around the newsdisk morgues and Missing Persons Bureaus and aren’t all that hard to spot), it would be easier to live with the details than the uncertainty.
Example:
“Good day to you, Madam. Lovely weather we’re having. Please excuse a delicate inquiry, but did I rape your infant daughter four years ago? Sodomize your sons? Slit your husband open from crotch to chin? Oh, no reason in particular; I was just curious.”
Do you begin to see the problem?
Of course, they tell us that we’re special, that we’re not simply run-of-the-mill criminals and fiends; the jails are full of
them
.
Ah, fun and games at the Institute! It’s quite an experience.
We cherish your individuality,
they say as they painfully extract all my memories. (Funny: the pain lingers long after the memories are gone.)
Society needs men with your drive and ambition,
they smile as they shoot about eighteen zillion volts of electricity through my spasmodically-jerking body.
You had the guts to buck the system,
they point out as they shred my face and give me a new one.
With drive like yours there’s no telling how far you can go
now that we’ve imprinted a new personality and a new set of ethics
onto that magnificent libido,
they agree as they try to decide whether to school me as a kennel attendant or perhaps turn me into an encyclopedia salesman. (They compromise and metamorphose me into an accountant.)
You lucky man, you’ve got a new name and face and memories
and five hundred dollars in your pocket and you’ve still got your
drive and ambition,
they say as they excruciatingly insert a final memory block.
Now go out and knock ’em dead,
they tell me.
Figuratively speaking,
they add hastily.
Oh, one last thing,
they say as they shove me out the door of the Institute.
We’re pretty busy here, William Jordan, so don’t
come back unless it’s an emergency. A
bona fide
emergency.
“But where am I to go?” I asked. “What am I to do?”
You’ll think of something,
they assure me.
After all, you
had the brains and guts to buck our social system. Boy, do we wish
we were like you! Now beat it; we’ve got work to do—or do you
maybe think you’re the only anti-social misanthrope with delusions
of grandeur who ever got Erased?
And the wild part is that they were right: most Erasures make out just fine. Strange as it sounds, we really
do
have more drive than the average man, the guy who just wants to hold off his creditors until he retires and his pension comes through. We’ll take more risks, make quicker decisions, fight established trends more vigorously. We’re a pretty gritty little group, all right—except that none of us knows why he was Erased.
In fact, I didn’t have my first hint until the truck backfired. (See? I’ll bet you thought I had forgotten all about it. Not a chance, friend. Erasures don’t forget things—at least, not once they’ve left the Institute. What most Erasures do is spend vast portions of their new lives trying to
remember
things. Futilely.)
Well, my memory may have been wiped clean, but my instincts were still in working order, and what they told me was that I was a little more used to being shot at than the average man on the street. Not much to go on, to be sure, but at least it implied that the nature of my sin leaned more toward physical violence than, say, Wall Street tycoonery with an eye toward sophisticated fraud.
So I went to the main branch of the Public Library, rented a quarter of an hour on the Master Computer, and started popping in the questions.
LIST ALL CRIMINALS STANDING SIX FEET TWO INCHES WHO WERE APPREHENDED AND CONVICTED IN NEW YORK CITY BETWEEN 2008 A.D. AND 2010 A.D.
***CLASSIFIED.
That wasn’t surprising. It had been classified the last fifty times I had asked. But, undaunted (Erasures are rarely daunted), I continued.
LIST ALL MURDERS COMMITTED BY PISTOL IN NEW YORK CITY BETWEEN 2008 A.D. AND 2010 A.D.
The list appeared on the screen, sixty names per second.
STOP.
The computer stopped, while I tried to come up with a more limiting question.
WITHOUT REVEALING THEIR IDENTITIES, TELL ME HOW MANY CRIMINALS WERE CONVICTED OF MULTIPLE PISTOL MURDERS IN NEW YORK CITY BETWEEN 2008 A.D. AND 2010 A.D.
***CLASSIFIED. Then it burped and added: NICE TRY, THOUGH.
THANK YOU. HAS ANY ERASURE EVER DISCOVERED EITHER HIS ORIGINAL IDENTITY OR THE REASON HE WAS ERASED?
NOT YET.
DOES THAT IMPLY IT IS POSSIBLE?
NEGATIVE.
THEN IT IS IMPOSSIBLE?
NEGATIVE.
THEN WHAT THE HELL DID YOU MEAN?
ONLY THAT NO IMPLICATION WAS INTENDED.
I checked my wristwatch. Five minutes left.
I AM AN ERASURE, I began.
I WOULD NEVER HAVE GUESSED.
Just what I needed—sarcasm from a computer. They’re making them too damned smart these days.
RECENTLY I REACTED INSTINCTIVELY TO A SOUND VERY SIMILAR TO THAT MADE BY A PISTOL BEING FIRED, ALTHOUGH I HAD NO CONSCIOUS REASON TO DO SO. WOULD THAT IMPLY THAT GUNFIRE PLAYED AN IMPORTANT PART IN MY LIFE PRIOR TO THE TIME I WAS ERASED?
***CLASSIFIED.
CLASSIFIED, NOT NEGATIVE?
THAT IS CORRECT.
I got up with three minutes left on my time.
My next stop was at Doubleday’s, on Fifth Avenue. The sign in the window boasted half a million microdots per cubic yard, which meant that they had one hell of a collection of literature crammed into their single ten-by-fifty-foot aisle.
I went straight to the True Crime section, but gave up almost immediately when I saw the sheer volume of True Crime that occurred each and every day in Manhattan.
I called in sick, then hunted up a shooting gallery in the vidphone directory. I made an appointment, rode the Midtown slidewalk up to the front door, rented a pistol, and went downstairs to the soundproofed target range in the basement.
It took me a couple of minutes to figure out how to insert the ammunition clip, an inauspicious beginning. Then I hefted the gun, first in one hand and then the other, hoping that something I did would feel familiar. No luck. I felt awkward and foolish, and the next couple of minutes didn’t make me feel any better. I took dead aim at the target hanging some fifty feet away and missed it completely. I held the pistol with both hands and missed it again. I missed it right-handed and left-handed. I missed it with my right eye closed, I missed it with my left eye closed, I missed it with both eyes open.
Well, if the only thing I had going for me was my instinct, I decided to give that instinct a chance. I threw myself to the floor, rolled over twice, and fired off a quick round—and shot out the overhead light.
So much, I told myself, for instinct. Obviously the man I used to be was more at home ducking bullets than aiming them.
I left the gallery, hunted up a couple of Erased friends, and asked them if they’d ever experienced anything like my little flash of
déjà vu
. One of them thought it was hilarious—they may have made him safe, but I have my doubts about whether they made him sane—and the other confessed to certain vague stirrings whenever she heard a John Philip Sousa march, which wasn’t exactly the answer I was looking for.
I stopped off for lunch at a local soya joint, spent another fruitless fifteen minutes in the library with my friend the computer, and went back to my brownstone condo to think things out. The whole time I was riding the slidewalk home I kept shadow-boxing and dancing away from imaginary enemies and reaching for a nonexistent revolver under my left arm, but nothing felt natural or even comfortable. After I got off the slidewalk and walked the final half block to my front door, I decided to see if I could pick the lock, but I gave up after about ten minutes, which was probably just as well since a passing cop was giving me the fish-eye.
I poured myself a stiff drink—Erasures’ homes differ in locale and decor and many other respects, but you’ll find liquor in all of them, as well as cheap memory courses and the Collected Who’s Who in Organized Crime tapes—and tried, for the quadrillionth time, to dredge up some image from my past. The carnage of war, the screams and supplications of rape victims, the moans of old men and children lying sliced and bleeding in Central Park, all were grist for my mental mill—and all felt unfamiliar.
So I couldn’t shoot and I couldn’t pick locks and I couldn’t remember. All that was one the one hand.
On the other hand was just one single solitary fact: I had ducked.
But somewhere deep down in my gut (certainly not in my brain) I knew, I
knew
, that the man I used to be had screamed wordlessly in my ear (or somewhere) to hit the deck before I got my/his/our damned fool head blown off.
This was contrary to everything they had told me at the Institute. I wasn’t even supposed to be in communication with my former self. Even emergency conferences while bullets flew through the air were supposed to be impossible.
The more I thought about it, the more I decided that this definitely qualified as a bona fide Institute-visiting emergency. So I put on my jacket and left the condo and started off for the Institute. I didn’t have any luck flagging down a cab—like frightened herbivores, New York cabbies all hide at the first hint of nightfall—so I started walking over to the East River slidewalk.
I had gone about two blocks when a grungy little man with watery eyes, a pockmarked face, and a very crooked nose jumped out at me from between two buildings, a wicked-looking knife in his hand.
Well, three years without being robbed in Manhattan is like flying 200 missions over Iraq or Paraguay or whoever we’re mad at this month. You figure your number is up and you stoically take what’s coming to you.
So I handed him my wallet, but there was only a single small bill in it, plus a bunch of credit cards geared to my voiceprint, and he suddenly threw the wallet on the ground and went berserk, ranting and raving about how I had cheated him.
I started backing away, which seemed to enrage him further, because he screamed something obscene and raced toward me with his knife raised above his head, obviously planning to plunge it into my neck or chest.
I remember thinking that of all the places to die, Second Avenue between 35
th
and 36
th
Streets was perhaps the very last one I’d have chosen. I remember wanting to yell for help but being too scared to force a sound out. I remember seeing the knife plunge down at me as if in slow motion.
And then, the next thing I knew, he was lying on his back, both his arms broken and his nose spouting blood like a fountain, and I was kneeling down next to him, just about to press the point of the knife into his throat.
I froze, trying to figure out what had happened, while deep inside me a voice—not angry, not bloodthirsty, but soft and seductive—crooned:
Do it, do it.
“Don’t kill me!” moaned the man, writhing beneath my hands. “Please don’t kill me!”
You’ll enjoy it,
murmured the voice.
You’ll see.
I remained motionless for another moment, then dropped the knife and ran north, paying no attention to the traffic signals and not slowing down until I practically barreled into a bus that was blocking the intersection at 42
nd
Street.
Fool!
whispered the voice.
Didn’t I save your life? Trust
me.
Or maybe it wasn’t the voice at all. Maybe I was just imagining what it would say if it were there.
At any rate, I decided not to go to the Institute at all. I had a feeling that if I walked in looking breathless and filthy and with the mugger’s blood all over me, they’d just Erase me again before I could tell them what had happened.
So I went back home, took a quick Dryshower, hunted up Dr. Brozgold’s number in the book, and called him.
“Yes?” he said after the phone had chimed twice. He looked just as I remembered him: tall and cadaverous, with a black mustache and bushy eyebrows, the kind of man who could put on a freshly-pressed suit and somehow managed to look rumpled.
