The drive to Michigan is long and lonely. I play through all the CDs in my car—Nine Inch Nails, Led Zeppelin, Soundgarden, White Zombie and David Bowie—halfway through the first day. After it gets dark, I stop at a rest area somewhere in Ohio and sleep. The windows are one-way tinted; I can see out but you can’t see in.
That was one of the new amenities on the Mustang I discovered upon waking up that afternoon. The tinting, my repaired door, fog headlamps, and a week’s worth of beef jerky and bottled water. Inside the glove compartment was a wrist harness for a retractable blade, six inches long and serrated. The harness fits perfectly around my right wrist.
I arrive at South Main Street in Ann Arbor by 4:20 the next afternoon. The downtown area plays at being a big city; trendy restaurants, clothes shops, and chain after chain of corporate coffeehouses line the street. At night, the sidewalks will be choked with pedestrians, the restaurants full, the air buzzing with the collective need to have a good time. But I won’t be here that long.
I make several right turns and end up on Observatory Street. A big leafy oak tree spills shadow onto the road, and I park underneath it. The giant cemetery to my left sprawls out for acres, with a wrought iron fence seven feet tall around the perimeter. I step out of the car, pat my back pocket for my wallet, then walk up to the gates.
I stroll through the graves, idly looking at the markers. Here, James Burrill Angell, dead in 1916, US Minister to China and Turkey. There, Justus McKinstry, dead in 1897, a Civil War Union general. I meander through the grasses for three hours before she appears from behind a cedar tree. Waif thin, blonde hair chopped short and severe as if she cut it herself, bedecked in a thrift-store red dress. She looks around wildly, gnaws on her fingernails, and walks like a newborn colt with pigeon toes. The new conscript. My pupil.
"Hello," I say, and she jerks her body toward my voice. My steps are slow and careful; I don’t want to spook her. The newly dead are often skittish and confused. I remember my own second birth, waking up in a Dumpster, half a block from where my life had just been terminated with the unfortunate snap of an elevator cable, though I didn’t know it then. I wandered for a week, begging for change and sleeping in cold alleys, before the Master first communicated with me. I was standing in front of a bar, watching television through the window, when I realized that Ellen Degeneres was talking to me from the TV screen; I could hear her in my head. She revealed to me my name and my function and the existence of the LifeWeb, the endless sticky fibers that connect every human being to every other human being. I have since learned that the Master is not bound by gender, but manifests through either sex as he sees fit. I was about to drop to my knees in supplication when the bar owner erupted out the door and frightened me off with a crowbar. If someone had been there to guide me, the transition into symmetry would have been much smoother. At least I can use my knowledge to help along this frightened new inductee.
"Hello?" she says, her voice wavery, as if she’s about to cry. "Are you real?"
I smile and take another step forward. "As real as you are." I take my hands out of my pockets and hold them palm up so she can see they are empty.
"Who are you?"
"I’m here to help," I say, my voice smooth as velvet.
"Are you from the institution?"
She’s confused. That or she thinks she’s crazy. "No, I’m not from the institution. I’m a friend."
"What’s your name?" she asks, tilting her head and swatting at the air, though I can see no insects.
I tell her, then ask for hers.
"Sandrine," she says, her gaze wandering and distracted.
"Like the industrial solvent," I say. I’m only twenty feet away now.
"The what?"
"Never mind."
"Can you see it?" she says, then closes her eyes. "It’s everywhere."
"Yes, Sandrine," I say, stepping within conversation distance. "It’s what brought me here to find you."
She opens her eyes languidly and surprises me by not jumping at my sudden vicinity. Dark circles ring her eyes like a raccoon, and she has a small tattoo of the word purple done in green ink down the left side of her neck.
"You were looking for me?"
"I was sent here by our Master to teach you. That thing you see around you is the LifeWeb. The Master brought you back from death so that you may tweak the fibers of the Web and affect symmetry, balance."
"Balance, yes," she says and smiles abruptly. "Already done that. Balance balance teeter-totter."
"What?" She can’t have been put to work yet. That’s why I’m here. If she’s already adjusting the LifeWeb, the Master has been in contact with her. Then why was I sent here? My stomach drops and my skin goes cold as I realize the truth. I grab her by the arms and she whimpers and squirms in my grip. She kicks me hard in the left knee, but I remain standing.
"It’s because of Debra, isn’t it? Because I equalized her ahead of schedule. I was sent here so that you could discipline me in His name, right? Isn’t that right, Sandrine?"
Her right arm slips from my grip and she jerks away. As I reach for her shoulder, the movement activates the spring-loaded knife in my wrist holster. The serrated blade plunges deep into her throat, severing her jugular vein and splitting the green word on her neck into pur and ple. Her body tenses and her eyes go wide. She collapses to the ground and tries to say something, but all that comes out is a gurgle. And soon, the gurgling stops.
My knee and my head throb in unison. There is no rush from a LifeWeb adjustment. All I feel is hollowed out and empty. I’ve done something terrible.
I’ve permanently unbalanced the universe.