Lester

  “Hello?”

  There’s a light in the darkness. My door is slowly being opened and someone is scanning my room with a flashlight. I can’t see her with the light turned away from her face, and I don’t recognize the voice.

  Should I recognize her? Would the real Lester recognize her?

  “Hello?” she repeats. “I heard some crashing down here just now, and—it sounded like a scream. Is anyone here?”

  If I say nothing, she’ll go away.

  “Go away,” I say.

  “Are you alright?” she asks, stepping into the room.

  “No.”

  “Do you need help?”

  “You can’t help me.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” she says, righting one of the chairs that I managed to knock over and sitting down on it. “I don’t even know what your problem is.”

  “Right now, my problem is you. Go away.”

  Real Lester wouldn’t have been that rude.

  “Oh yeah?” she laughs. “What was it before that, when you were screaming and throwing tables around?”

  “What’s wrong with you?” I blurt. “A creepy disembodied voice in a pitch-black abandoned laboratory tells you to go away and you think: ‘I’m going to have a chat with it’. I mean, who does that, honestly?”

  “Psychologists, I suppose?” she replies. “That’s what I am by the way—well, psychology student. Well, I’m thinking of majoring. And I find that, when people have reached the point of wallowing in the dark and screaming, a chat is often what they badly need.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m not a person.”

  “No? You’re awfully talkative for a houseplant.”

  “You might be surprised.”

  She sets her flashlight down on a desk that I’ve knocked ajar. I catch a glimpse of brown skin and blue hair. “My name is Tamika Potts. What’s yours?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “No? Well then what am I going to call you?”

  “Nothing. You’re going to go away.”

  “I think I’m going to call you…Bubsy!”

  “‘Bubsy’!?”

  “Well, you’re welcome to suggest something better, Bubsy.”

  “Lester Briggs,” I admit. “My name is Lester Briggs. Well—it was Lester Briggs. Or…someone else’s name was. But he’s dead. He won’t mind.”

  “Lester,” Tamika repeats. “Nice, solid name. Not a fan of the ‘Briggs’ part, though; isn’t that what they call holding cells on ships?”

  “You’re one to talk, ‘Potts’.”

  She laughs. “I suppose I walked right into that one. Can I see you, Lester?”

  “No. The lights are out.”

  Tamika laughs again. “Suit yourself, then.” She rests her feet up on the desk and starts whistling.

  “…Okay, seriously. What are you doing down here? Are you looking for food? ’Cause someone already took all of it.”

  “No thanks. Surprisingly, I’ve already eaten today. Mammoth.”

  “You’re a strange girl.”

  “I’m neither,” she says. “Everyone is eating mammoth these days and I’m actually nonbinary. My pronouns are ‘they/them’ for preference.”

  “Yeah, well I’m an empty room who identifies as human. My pronouns are ‘it’.”

  “Oh, how witty and entirely original you are,” she—they—deadpan. “With hilarious jokes like that, you could probably get a job as an aging comedian with his own Netflix special.”

  “Sorry,” I say (and, to my surprise, I mean it). It occurs to me that I know what Netflix is. Apparently, Real Lester must have spent more time watching movies down here than he did thinking about his mom. Somehow, that only makes me feel worse.

  “Tell you what,” Tamika says. “I’ll tell you what I’m doing here if you do first.”

  It’s going to be a doubly hard-sell after being a snarky asshole, I realize.

  “…Alright,” I say. “Here’s the thing: I wasn’t actually joking. You’re in an empty room and I’m a ghost.”

  “Oh.”

  “You don’t sound anywhere near skeptical enough.”

  “No, it makes sense. And why would I be skeptical about ghosts at this point? You’re practically mundane compared to some of the things since the Shift.”

  “That’s…a fair point.” Despite myself, I feel vaguely insulted.

  “Not that there’s anything wrong with mundane,” they add. “I actually really miss mundane.”

  “You really know how to make a guy feel special.”

  “So, you’re a guy then?”

  I think about it. “Lester was. Real Lester, I mean. The student who died in here. I seem to have absorbed his sense of identity. So yes, I suppose I’m a guy.”

  “Should I use ‘he/him’ pronouns then?”

  “I guess. Yeah. Whatever. Knock yourself out. Anyways, you still need to tell me what you’re doing down here.”

  “Promise not to laugh?”

  “I have no lungs.”

  “You’re talking, though.”

  “Right. Okay. I promise not to laugh.”

  “I’m a peer-support counsellor. Was. I figured that there might be a lot of people who could benefit from my help, but—well—I’m just a student. I needed to pick up the textbooks from the office.”

  “That doesn’t explain why you’re in the physics building.”

  “No. Well, that’s why you need to not laugh at me. See, I figured that, what with everything, maybe I should read up on, you know, parapsychology, and—well—I found a few books on that in the library too. But they all make vague references to ‘quantum’ stuff and—”

  I laugh.

  “I figured: ‘Maybe I should get a quick explanation’—would you please stop laughing!”

  “Sorry.”

  “But yeah, I was looking for…I don’t know…maybe a professor or something when I heard this almighty thumping and screaming and followed it down to this office. Which I see you’ve trashed. Hence the thumping. Well done. Very loud.”

  “Well, I’ve good news and bad news,” I say. “The good news is that Real Lester was a physics grad student, knew all about quantum mechanics, and even had several books on the subject—some of which are almost readable. The bad news is that it’s not going to help; mainly because physics doesn’t work anymore, anyways, but also because all those parapsychology guys have no idea what they’re talking about.”

  “You’re probably right. I’d like to decide that for myself, if you wouldn’t mind.”

  If I had a body, I would shrug. “Help yourself. I think I threw some book with a title like…‘How to Teach Physics to Your Dog’ across the room during my…outburst.”

  “Thanks a bunch.”

  Tamika runs their flashlight over the floor until they find the book lying splayed open in a corner.

  “Don’t let me keep you.”

  “Actually, I wouldn’t mind staying, if it’s okay with you. At least for a little while.”

  “…I guess. Why though?”

  “See…like I said, I’m out to help people. And frankly, you look like you could really use my help.”

  “I’m not a person.”

  “And statements like that are why I think you need my help.” They return to their seat. “What makes you so sure you’re not the real Lester?”

  “Rumpelstiltskin.”

  “What?”

  “Well…not Rumpelstiltskin. You know, a Fairy. Someone who would know these things. A…friend of mine got him to answer ten questions about magic truthfully and one of them was about ghosts.” I briefly summarize what Dr. Chen said.

  “And you’re sure he wasn’t lying?”

  “Dr. Chen seemed to believe him. Apparently, the Fairies take their deals very seriously. Plus I…” I wish I could just disappear. “I can’t remember my own mother’s name. Lester’s mother’s name. Real Lester.”

  “And, if you don’t mind my asking, where is ‘Real Lester’ now?”

  “He’s dead, weren’t you paying attention! He’s nowhere! Even his corpse was destroyed!”

  “So…” Tamika reasons. “If there’s no ‘Real Lester’ left…doesn’t that make you Only Lester? And thus the real one by default?”

  “That’s semantics.”

  “It’s not, actually. You’re you. We can agree on that, right? You are you, regardless of…well…who you are. And Lester—let’s call him ‘Original Lester’, if you don’t mind—was someone else, or so you say. Okay. He’s dead. Nothing more can ever happen to him. But you still exist. Things can still happen to you. You can still grow as a person—”

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “I’m not a—”

  “And in fact you already have grown as a person,” Tamika cuts me off. “You got to experience dying. You met up with this Dr. Chen; you heard the truth about what you are. And don’t get me wrong; it sounds like you’ve had a lot of awful, traumatic experiences. But they’re your experiences. Original Lester didn’t have them. You may have started off as a copy of him, but you’re not anymore. You are now the canonical version of who Lester Briggs is.”

  “Alright,” I concede. “Whatever. He was Original Lester and I am…‘Lester Salt & Vinegar Flavour’ or whatever, and we’re both real. What difference does that make?”

  “I think it makes quite a lot of difference, don’t you? It’s the difference between being a person in your own right and being a shitty no-name-brand knockoff person.”

  “…I guess.”

  “At the very least, you can stop thinking of yourself as ‘fake’. Eh?”

  “Yeah,” I concede. “But…I just hate that I can’t remember everything he knew.”

  “I can see how that would be frustrating.”

  I doubt they can, but I say nothing.

  “If you don’t mind my asking—and you don’t have to answer if it’s, you know, traumatic or whatever—but how did Original Lester die?”

  “Suicide,” I reply simply. “I—he—hung himself.” I feel surprisingly little as I say this, as if I’ve already used up all the emotions I have to feel on the subject.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  A thought occurs to me. “You said you were a student-support counsellor, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you think you could have talked me out of it? If it had occurred to me to see you, I mean?”

  “I—” Tamika begins. “I don’t know. I think…I’m not comfortable speculating. I would probably have given you a referral.” They pause. “I’d like to think that I could have done something.”

  “Me too.”

  “I mean, I don’t know the details of your case, but…in my experience…when most people are reaching the point of considering suicide, it’s kind of a spur-of-the-moment thing. It’s nice to think that a friendly conversation is all that you need to save someone’s life. Of course, it was a little bit different during the Shift, just because so many people were convinced it was going to be the end of the world.”

  “That’s always seemed odd to me,” I say. “I mean…if it’s the end of the world, anyway, why bother killing yourself?”

  “Get out while the getting’s good, I guess? Maybe they thought they’d suffer if they waited.”

  “If any of them ended up like me, they must be feeling pretty stupid right now.”

  “…And what about you?”

  “I never thought the Shift would be the end of the world, if that’s what you’re asking. Or…well…if it was, then it would come immediately. Here one minute, gone the next.”

  “So, may I ask why you did it then?”

  “Because I’d just wasted five years on my damn PhD thesis!”

  Tamika erupts into laughter. “Sorry,” they say, getting a handle on themself. “It’s not funny at all, is it?”

  “It kind of is,” I admit. “In retrospect.”

  “So,” they say. “It sounds to me almost as if it wasn’t so much that you wanted to die as it was that you wanted to live.”

  “I certainly had a funny way of showing it, if that’s the case.”

  “What I mean is…we all have certain expectations of what life is supposed to be like, right? Which we pick up from our families, our friends, our cultures, religions, you name it. You might think that you should be going on adventures; getting married, having children; getting a nice, big apartment and going to bed with a supermodel every night—I mean, I don’t know you, but I would guess that you probably have some conception of what it means to live well.”

  “To be respected in my field.”

  “There you go. And, if you are like every other grad student I’ve ever met, at no point when you were picturing ‘the Good Life’ did you think, ‘Wow, I sure wish I could spend half a decade underpaid and overworked in a windowless basement—”

  “Doing work no one cared about,” I interject. “Not even me towards the end.”

  “Right? So how you come to think of it—tell me if I’m wrong—is as a sort of obstacle that you must overcome before getting to the Promised Land. You know, it’s hard going, but once you get past it, you’ll finally get to live the life you deserve.”

  “You’re not wrong.”

  “So, you work at it. You face the challenge. Every day for five long years, you get out of bed, go down to your windowless lab, and bash your brains out to get your degree. And then—just as, maybe, you’re starting to think an end might finally be in sight—”

  “Somewhat in sight.”

  “Somewhat in sight,” they accept, “it’s pulled out from under you. Like Lucy snatching the football from Charlie Brown. The Universe itself literally seems to be out to get you. It’s Sisyphean—”

  “Sorry?”

  “You know, Sisyphus? In Greek mythology, he was this dude who was condemned to spend eternity pushing a boulder up a hill.”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell,” I say. “Real—uh—‘Original’ Lester might have heard of him. I don’t think he was into that sort of thing, though.”

  “Too bad. It’s fascinating. And possibly practical now, come to think of it. Anyway, the point is, you lost sight of the Promised Land; life wasn’t what it was supposed to be, and you no longer saw any chance of it becoming that. So you gave in; you had a moment of weakness. And you killed yourself. But ultimately, it wasn’t because you wanted to die, was it? It was because you wanted a better life. A proper life. Does that sound just about right?”

  I spend a moment thinking about what they just said. “Yeah,” I reply finally. “That sounds about right. But what difference does it make? It’s all too late now, isn’t it?”

  “Is it?”

  “Well, I’m dead, aren’t I?”

  “Are you?”

  “What is this double-talk? I’m literally a ghost! Of course I’m dead, I just told you I hung myself!”

  “No, you told me Original Lester hanged himself. You, ‘Lester Salt & Vinegar Flavour’, seem to be very much alive.”

  I am unable to think of a reply; if I had a mouth, I would be tongue-tied.

  “You know, it’s interesting,” Tamika goes on. “I’m not sure how much of the news you’ve been getting down here—”

  “A little,” I say. “Julia filled me in on the whole ‘conquest’ thing. It sounds…ridiculous and unbelievable, but also bad.”

  “That’s fairly accurate. It’s gotten a little better lately, just because the Prime Minister apparently slept with the new Fairy Viceroy to get her to give us food—”

  “I have missed a lot.”

  “Anyways, they nailed copies of the speech she gave at her installation ceremony to the doors of all refugee shelters around the country. I just found it interesting—and this shouldn’t be taken as any sort of endorsement by the way—that the Viceroy presented the Shift and the Conquest as a sort of rebirth. She basically framed the modern world—well, what had been the modern world—as being inherently dehumanizing, and claimed that, now that she was in charge, we’d all go back to living life ‘as we should’.”

  “That sounds like obvious propaganda.”

  “No doubt. But in your case, it might not be terrible advice. Instead of seeing yourself as having died, it seems like it would be far more helpful—more accurate, even—to see yourself as having been reborn. Does that sound fair?”

  I hesitate. “I suppose. Yeah.”

  “So tell me, Lester,” they say. “If you don’t mind: what is it that you want out of life?”

  “Love, I suppose,” I say. “Respect. Intellectual challenge. Enough money to pay for everything that needs paying for and still have a bit left to play with at the end of the month.”

  “All good things. Let me frame it differently, though. What prevented you from having these things in your old life?”

  “This fucking room!” I exclaim without a thought.

  “I see. That’s…unfortunate.”

  “That’s one way of putting it.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, can you leave it at all?”

  “Sort of.” I fill Tamika in on what Dr. Chen discovered about how my consciousness is distributed.

  “Wait, so you mean that part of you is outside even now? As we speak?”

  “Yes. No. Maybe—I don’t know, actually. She tried to talk to me, and I just—I did not want to. And I think…I kind of withdrew from the chalk a bit, somehow? But for a while, yeah, I was both here and on a frozen river with Dr. Chen.”

  “That is so freaking cool!”

  “It’s goddamn weird is what it is.”

  “I can imagine. Okay, so this room. I know that it sucks, but at least you can get some fresh air. Could we...spruce things up around here? Maybe get some light, for one thing? Some houseplants, some art, some posters?”

  “Are you seriously suggesting that all I need is a little redecorating?”

  “Well, not all that you need, but it couldn’t hurt, could it? I mean, there’s a well-documented link between the condition of one’s living environment and their mental health—”

  “Probably because us crazies can’t be arsed to clean.”

  “Okay, yes, but it’s not strictly one-way; if you have positive surroundings, it gives you positive feelings.”

  “And if you have ugly 1960s concrete-block surroundings, you may just end up hanging yourself from a drainpipe.”

  “Okay, so why not make them a little better? Some light would probably be nice, eh?”

  “Yeah,” I admit. “Okay. It’s a good suggestion.”

  “Okay, so there’s the room; was there anything else that you hated?”

  “My advisor—well, no, not really. We just had a bad working relationship. I dreaded every meeting with him; it just seemed like I would never measure up to his expectations.”

  “Well, he’s not around anymore, and, under the circumstances, I think you can probably assume that you don’t have to answer to him anymore.”

  I’m surprised by how much of a relief that is. “There was also the work.”

  “You mean, because it was junked by the Shift or—”

  “Before that, even. I don’t know. I used to be excited by physics—way back when, back in undergrad. It’s just, I don’t know… It was this idea that the world is not only understandable but a sort of…fractal puzzle, you know? Like, you could look anywhere and find more and more amazing things the closer you looked.”

  “And you lost that feeling at some point.”

  “Yeah. I guess it’s partly just because, as a grad student, you need to hyperfocus on one specific subject. I just started to feel like a sort of…line worker in a physics factory. Like…I’m doing science by rote, but there’s no real passion for it anymore.”

  “Like you’re alienated from the products of your labour.”

  “Eh?”

  “Sorry, just me riffing on the line-worker analogy. Go on.”

  “There’s really nothing more to say; it was fun and then, at some point, it became a chore.”

  “You know, I hear that complaint a lot from grad students. Heard. But in a way, you’re kind of lucky, aren’t you?”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Well, whatever else the Shift did, it basically wiped your slate clean. Your entire field is a blank page. To come back to that line-worker metaphor of yours, your factory basically burned down.”

  “That’s a funny definition of ‘luck’ that you have there.”

  “It’s all in how you contextualize, I guess. I mean…don’t get me wrong, I don’t mean to belittle your suffering, but…well…it just seems, from where I’m sitting, that pretty much all the things that made you miserable—that drove you to the point where you were willing to, you know, hang yourself—are either gone or can be worked on.”

  “And I got a whole slew of new problems to take their place.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not. I mean, you have a chance to start over—literally, to start over on everything. You get a mulligan on your entire life! I mean, who does that? Just—to me—that sounds like luck. In a way. Doesn’t it?”

  “…I suppose.”

  “So, I guess the question becomes: given that you’ve started all over…what do you want to do now?”

  It’s an interesting thought. Except: “What difference does it make? I’m stuck in this room. I am this room.”

  “Okay,” Tamika acknowledges, “I’ll grant that you have a bit of a mobility issue—”

  “Are you seriously suggesting that I should look at being dead as if it were a disability?”

  “Well, why not? At least if you think about it that way, you can start to look at how to accommodate it. And it doesn’t sound like conceptualizing yourself as a condemned soul is exactly working out for you.”

  I entertain the idea for a moment. “Okay. So, supposing I do this, supposing I could even find some way of accommodating my ‘disability’—what then?”

  “Well, that’s up to you, isn’t it? Given that you’ve started all over—”

  “What do I want to do now? Yes, I heard you the first time. But I don’t know! It’s not an easy thing to just decide on!”

  “And it’s not supposed to be! People spend years and years thinking about it; it’s one of those ‘human condition’ things. But let me ask: what did you want to be as a kid?”

  “I wanted to be a scientist! Like I became. But…I wasn’t the real sort. A proper scientist, like—this is a bit embarrassing…”

  “I won’t tell anyone, I promise.”

  “Like Doc Brown, from the Back to the Future movies, or the science officers on Star Trek! Where I could, you know, become an expert in everything and make amazing and useful inventions and go on adventures! But it doesn’t work that way in real life.

  “Or at least,” I say, with sudden realization, “it didn’t.”

  In the shine of the flashlight, I see a broad, toothy grin spread over Tamika’s face. “Well,” they say. “I’m no scientist, but it seems to me that, when everything you know is wrong, there’s an awful lot that you have to learn.”

  “That’s what Dr. Chen thought. Damn it, I wish I knew how to get back in contact with her!”

  “Do you know when she’ll be back?”

  “I don’t even know if she’ll be back. She’s running off to Faerie with Not-Rumpelstiltskin. She’s asking him questions.”

  “Well, if you don’t mind my saying so, that seems like an odd way to do science.”

  “Well, we were doing experiments before”—before I watched my body go up in a flaming conflagration—“before Not-Rumpelstiltskin showed up.”

  “So, why don’t you keep doing experiments? I mean, you’re in a physics lab, for heaven’s sake!”

  “I’m in an office. All the lab stuff is upstairs.”

  “I could carry you,” they offer. “A piece of you, anyways.”

  “I couldn’t even move the equipment.”

  “Why not? You trashed this office, didn’t you?”

  “That was different. Undirected. I was just…destroying anything I could.”

  “I mean, to me that just sounds like you need to work on your fine motor skills.”

  “Look,” I say. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do but I kind of just want to…”

  “Spend your afterlife sitting in the dark?”

  I say nothing.

  “Listen,” Tamika says after a minute or two, rising to their feet. “Thanks for the book. I should be getting back to the Shelter. I’ll come back and check on you later, okay? I promise.”

  “Wait,” I say, just as they reach for the door.

  “Yes?”

  “That book is haunted. By me.”

  “Oh. Yeah, I suppose it would be, wouldn’t it?”

  “There should be a non-haunted version in the library. I’m not sure exactly where, but somewhere in the stacks labelled ‘QC’, along with the rest of the physics.”

  “Hey, thanks.”

  “But—”

  “Yes?”

  “I…suppose I’d be grateful if you could take the haunted version to the first-year lab in 1L07. In case I feel like experimenting after all.”

  In the darkness, I can’t see Tamika’s face, but I imagine them smiling as they reply, “You got it, boss.”

  Enough wallowing.