The woman sighed. “I am never going to get the hang of this job. Just when I think I am figuring something out, I find out that I am not.”
“Frustrated, Semolina?”
It was Carrie, the head of the department. She always seemed to pop up when Semolina, or any of the other Watchers, had a problem. There was a rumor that had spread that said there were actually a hundred identical Carries. Like most rumors, it was both fun to think about and completely untrue. There was only one Carrie, but she was efficient at being exactly where she was most needed.
“Frustrated with myself, I guess,” Semolina answered. “I thought I knew what was going on, but then something like this happens, and I know I still don’t have a clue.”
Time didn’t exist in the standard sense in the Universal Life Center, so there was no way for Semolina to know how long she had been serving as a Watcher. However, she knew she was among the least experienced. All around her, other Watchers deftly handled their pyxis, using it to scoop emotions and feed The Machine. Semolina watched far fewer people’s lives and still ran into difficulty.
Carrie touched Semolina’s pyxis, then dragged the image inside it to her own, identical cylinder. She pulled the image up, so that it floated in the air between them. She moved her pyxis counterclockwise. As she did, the image moved backward. She saw a man running toward another man. A brief scuffle ensued, then the other man walked to his vehicle, grabbed a gun, and shot the first man. The scene shifted to the man who had been shot, now sleeping on the couch.
“Tell me what is confusing you.”
“He didn’t kill himself.”
“I agree. He acted rashly, and those actions resulted in his death, but he didn’t kill himself.”
“Then why did he go back to his starting point? I thought once he lived his life to completion, he got to go on.”
Carrie nodded and smiled. “I understand your confusion. Would it help if I told you that I once made exactly the same mistake?”
Semolina met Carrie’s kind eyes. “I suppose. So, why was he forced to start over?”
“Because he hasn’t solved the dilemma he was restarted to solve yet. He was started over to give himself a chance to work through the things he needed to. He’s making progress on that, but he doesn’t appear to be there yet. That’s why The Machine restarted him. I know it’s frustrating, and hard to understand, but I have come to accept that The Machine and its algorithms are never wrong.”
“So, the fact that he lived what appeared to be a complete life cycle isn’t enough?”
“Sometimes it is. My last life, I was stuck in a horrible cycle. I was eligible to move on, but I was so stuck in a well-worn path that I couldn’t find my way out of it. One of my own True Family members had to come and kill me to set me free.”
“I’m never going to understand all this.”
“I said the same thing, and look at me now.” Carrie laughed at how ridiculous that sounded. “When I woke up in the white room, I was so confused. I expected to wake up back on my parent’s couch, like I had done thirteen times before. If not that, then I expected to be in line for judgment. Heaven, Hell, all that.”
“Quite a shock, then.”
“It was. In a secret part of myself, I held on to those ideas long past the time I knew they couldn’t be true. I found comfort in them.”
“That’s true, isn’t it,” Semolina said. “There’s comfort in the old beliefs, even when we have every evidence that they are wrong.”
“It’s another way we work on ourselves, I suppose. The sanding off of our rough edges.”
Semolina nodded at the image of the sleeping man in her pyxis. “So, everything is fine here, then.”
“All is as it should be. It will be all right in the end…”
“If it’s not all right, it’s not the end,” Semolina finished for her.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Scott McKenzie woke with a jolt. A wordless scream escaped his lips. He threw the heavy quilt away and winced at the pain in his shoulder. He looked around the living room in a daze.
Hot tears coursed down his cheeks. Tears of fear, frustration, anger.
Cheryl rushed in from the kitchen. She saw Scott in distress and rushed to him. She sat on the couch and held him to her. He nestled his head into the comforting nook of her shoulder.
“Shh, it’s okay, Scotty. It’s better that she’s not suffering anymore.”
Of course. She thinks I’m upset because Gran just died. For her, that was only a few hours ago. For me, she’s been dead for more than fifty years.
Down the hall, the toilet flushed and Earl walked back into the living room. He glanced at Cheryl holding Scott, comforting him, but didn’t say anything. He sat in his chair and looked out the window.
Cheryl held Scott’s face in her hands. There were tears in her eyes. “You okay, Scotty? That’s silly, isn’t it? None of us are okay right now, are we? How could we be?” She hugged him to her. “But, we’ve still got to eat, and dinner is on the stove.”
She stood, wiped at the corners of her eyes with her apron, and hurried back into the kitchen.
Holy God, I don’t think I can do this again. I’ve lived this life too many times. I’m tired.
Many people, at one time or another, think I can’t do this anymore. Typically, for those people, they have a choice. If it’s about a job, or a relationship, they can make a change in those things. For someone in Scott’s unusual position, it’s a different matter. If he couldn’t do it any more, what option did he have? If he killed himself, he knew he would simply start over in the same place.
Scott spent the first month after he woke up in 1972 sad, depressed, and moping. He had spent an entire lifetime planning, studying, memorizing, and preparing for a life when he could fix many of the world’s wrongs. On his very first assignment, he had failed.
He had failed to take care of a killer. He had failed that killer’s victims. He had failed himself.
Again.
Cheryl and Earl watched Scott lay and limp around the house. They had never had to deal with someone in his position before—someone just returned from the service so obviously broken in mind and body. The truth of the situation was, they didn’t have any real idea what his situation was. They saw him as a wounded warrior, broken by a war and returned home to find his own path.
The truth was, he was all of that, and more.
It’s possible Scott would have followed the path of misery and self-pity for a long time—perhaps a lifetime.
Earl Bell was not the kind of man to stand by and watch that.
Mid-January days in Evansville, Indiana tend to melt together. Overcast skies and rain were the order of the day, unless a stray snowstorm blew through.
One of those gray days, sitting in the living room with Scott, Earl blew on his coffee. The television was on in the corner and Scott was half-heartedly watching it. Earl had noticed that Scott did everything in low gear these days.
“Scott, I need to talk to you.”
Scott stood up and hobbled to the television and switched it off. He may have been depressed, but he still gave his grandfather the attention and respect he deserved.
“Yes, sir. What is it?”
“I know this life has dealt you a lousy blow.”
Change that to lives, and I agree with you, Gramps.
“So, you can dig yourself a hole and pull it in after you, if you want, but that leads to nothing good. Hiding from the world only feels good for so long.”
In a way, I guess, that’s what I’ve been doing since I woke up here the second time around. First, it was booze and drugs that helped me hide away. I got rid of those, but then I went and hid in my little cabin. In a way, that was digging my hole and disappearing into it, too. In my own way, I was hiding from the world. As always, you’re right, Gramps.