For years, he has had the same feeling: this almost-solved puzzle is not a question of what can happen but of what has happened. He has hugged sweaty American men and said gracious things from time to time about the enemy. He waited, like a good man should, for the women to be hurt, before he started. He appears to be indifferent, tolerant even, of your bullshit, and he certainly loves his country. Still, his almost-sad face reminds him of his father’s, and he suspects his sons will inherit this face, too. In his memory is the seder where his oldest son, who was eight at the time, asked why God hardened Pharaoh's heart, and his wife Sara answered that it was because you do not know who you are until you have faced someone who does not want you to be that person. This memory comes to him at strange times and unsettles him. He has never talked about it and despite your incessant harassment, he can’t quite bring himself to see a therapist.

Benji’s pajamas are navy blue sweats, because he doesn’t want to change twice in the morning. One, exercise. Two, shower. Three, suit. Four, coffee, an orange, state news, and of course, the state of your twitter account. Five, the call with his generals and the new list of the dead.

Every night before bed he recites the Shema. It is the only time he prays. Benji does not toss and turn. He simply closes his eyes and falls asleep. However, on this night he wakes up suddenly in the dark. His wife is standing over him. “I have sent her away,” she says, “I have sent her and the baby away.” Her face is unwavering but something in her eyes seems to him to be dying.

Benji is suddenly filled with dread. He is frantic. He launches himself from his bed and he is in the desert. In the desert, it is quiet, it is dark, and the stars are seemingly infinite. The heavens, he thinks, the heavens are quivering. He is scanning the horizon, he sees nothing but he knows he must move forward. Before he goes, he reaches down to lift a handful of sand and watch it fall through his fingers. He is happy with it, and the way it sparkles in the moonlight. Then he begins to run, but it is not the sort of running that leaves you breathless and in pain; it is the exhilarating kind. Onward, onward!

The night smells like spice and banked fires. Around him are tent flaps closed tight; inside them are his kin, whose bellies are full of good bread and red pottage. They whisper prayers over their hands, over their food, over their children.

Soon it is behind him and now he pauses, he falls to his knees. A slight breeze and he looks up. There before him is an angel. The angel has no more than two dark eyes, brown skin, a sharp nose and a dark beard. He appears in every way to be an ordinary man. But when Benji looks at him, he is overcome with fear, he finds he cannot look away, time seems to stretch, and when the angel finally speaks, he feels somehow as though the voice is coming from his own chest. “Binyamin,” says the angel, “Binyamin, are you Jacob that you must wrestle avinu malkeinu?” Benji looks up at the angel and says, “why do you chastise me?” The angel steps to the side and Benji sees a body. He stumbles forward, although he does not want to look.

On the ground there is a dead woman. Her face is still lined with tear streaks. Her hair is a light brown and falls in gentle waves around her shoulders. The stars are reflected in her dark brown eyes, though they stare at nothing. Her mouth is open and Benji knows it was a prayer on her lips. Her skin is deeply tanned but smooth, and she wears a handmaid’s dress – a plain brown scoop neck, with a knee length skirt and elbow length sleeves. A stone’s throw away, there is a newborn. The baby is lifeless, too, but his eyes are closed. It is obvious from the woman’s position that she has looked away from her child, that she could not bear to see him die.

Benji falls to the ground, his eyes filling with tears. He gathers the dead woman into his arms. “Why did you not save her,” he demands of the angel, “is anything too hard for the Lord?”

The angel says nothing, and when Benji looks up, he realizes he has been foolish; there is no angel. The great pain in Benji’s chest fades into a mist and then into nothing at all. He lays the woman down again and he sees that she is a stranger. He looks up into the night sky and sees no stars, only the moon shining in its usual place. He bows his head and says a prayer to Su'en, the great Moon God. He turns from the woman and walks towards his home. There is an emptiness in his chest that he does not question. As he walks through the desert, he gradually becomes aware of the smell of smoke. Something is burning.

The alarm sounds and his eyes pop open. He sits up and blinks once, twice. The night recedes. In the hours he’s been asleep, the dead have piled higher, presidents and prime ministers have given statements, the U.N. has become outraged again, and you have been tweeting furiously. He looks towards the Pilates machine and sighs; he has always felt that Pilates were a fundamentally female pursuit, but his doctor is a nag. He slides out of bed, dressed for exercise already. The sun is up, and Bibi Netanyahu is an atheist again.

The things that bother her pass like buzzing insects momentarily clouding her vision, and she calls someone - probably her mom - to complain, but even this is not real complaining, it’s a ritual. It has been a long time since her heart has been broken, since she was deeply uncertain about anything, since she wondered fundamentally who she is and who she might be. She is happy. She wears two rings, and they’re both probably slightly too small for her finger and if you look at them, you can catch the image of a youthful excitement for a moment. Her marriage is stable and he does love her, even though he has a habit of leaving his boxers on the floor and never does the dishes even when it is his night to do the dishes. Plus he wouldn’t go to that one concert with her either. But when she thought her cat was having a hypoglycemic event, he got up at 2 AM and drove them to emergency and paid $600 to find out it was just a hairball and he wasn’t even mad.

She doesn’t vote, not because she doesn’t vote but because nobody she knows cares about that stuff. She’s just “not really into politics.” She’s a foodie though, and a film buff. By foodie, she means that she knows what to order off a Thai menu and by film buff, she means she’s a Disney-Pixar superfan, plus that one Carry Grant movie.

Her friends make facebook events for their birthday parties, hosted at places like Dave and Buster’s, and Applebee’s. She makes a Twitter account but never uses it and can’t remember her password anymore.

When she has a bad day, she posts to her bestie group text that Betsy’s out of the office again so she had to sign for the delivery and haul packages in and then she spilled some wine on her favorite sweater and she found out her internet plan is out of its promotional period. Her boss texted and wants her to cover two extra shifts next week. Nobody tells her these are first world problems because it doesn’t occur to anyone that there’s more than one world.

There are some things she knows: don’t have sex on the first date. Don’t accept a drink from a stranger at a party, or even someone you know but not very well. Keep your promises. Treat other people the way you want to be treated.

There are also things she doesn’t know she knows. She enjoys Jasmine tea very early in the morning, when she can watch the dawn. The peace in those moments she has never used language to describe. She knows what it’s like to want a baby and lose it, the ghost futures that whisper from graves in her mind are a little bit like the time her identity was stolen but also a little bit like the tea in the morning. To the very atoms of her being, she cannot imagine wanting an abortion but then, she supposes that God has a reason for making different kinds of people.

She has donated to hundreds of Facebook fundraisers, and ran (okay, walked) the marathons for this thing or that one, served on the local animal shelter’s annual fundraising gala planning committee for seven years running now, and organized meal trains for sick co-workers.

When she gets mad at her husband for not doing the dishes for the fourth time in a row, when it’s his night, even, she does not say, “we need to talk about your sexism.” She says, “when you make me do the dishes on your night, it feels like you don’t care about me,” and then he doesn’t feel angry, he feels sad, and he does the dishes, and he says he’s sorry, and she says she knows and it’s okay. And it is okay. And she sends her friends a text about how he did them and said he was sorry and they all heart the message and none of them tell her that it’s a red flag.

She has a keychain that says “wordle addict,” but she hasn’t played it in months, not since she started using her mindfulness virtual gardening app. She is secretly afraid her husband will die before she does, and she will have to put on a brave face and she will be able to tell that people feel sorry for her.

She means to lose the fifteen extra pounds, especially in the early Summer, but then her husband always says to her he hates it when she does that. She says, “does what,” and he says, “act like a girly girl.” She says, “well what if I want a bathingsuit body,” and he says “we have traditions. we always split the banana split.” He’s stubborn, she relents. Yes, he does know what he’s doing, and yes, she does too. It’s their ritual.

Emily is looking at her dead self. Dead self. What a thing to even think, right?

That’s the last thing I remember thinking – ha-ha, mortality – before Emily started to hyperventilate, and oh my god the corpse, the body, the grey body with brown hair and closed eyes, I think it moved. It did move, motherfucker it’s sitting up, what the hell – and Emily is moving towards the body and the body is crying, she’s crying, they’re both crying – they’re – bang! the next thing I know, Emily is down, blood seeping out of her skull. I spin and James is standing there, gun still pointing at the body, and he looks so angry, it makes my stomach turn. And I’m thinking, where have I seen his face before?

You might wonder how a person ends up in the room with a walking corpse, a girl, and a demon. It’s like this – God needed my services. I’m a private investigator.

So – from the beginning, yeah?

I’m in my office, it’s rainy, the place is shabby. The building has an elevator, at least. I like an elevator because once you’re in, you’re in. But I don’t hear the ding. You bet your ass I’m listening for it because I’m broke.

Nah he didn’t look special. I mean he was cute if that’s what you’re asking. He had this snaggle tooth I kind of dug. He said “hey – you the PI, Lyra?” He said, “I might have the kind of case could change your life.”
I said, “sure, go ahead, change my life.”
He said, “you ever heard of Emily St. Vincent?
I said, “the teenager who disappeared what, eleven years ago now?”
He said, “see it’s like this. She’s over at Matheson’s. She’s healthy except one thing.” Matheson’s is the local loony bin.
“Which is?”
“She claims that eleven years ago, she killed herself.”
“Seems like you have some evidence says she didn’t, though.”
“Something someone might investigate, don’t you think?”
“Oh Christ – look. You pay me and I’ll go see this Emily St. Vincent.”
He named a figure that was higher than I would have high balled for which left me kind of worried. That kind of money means you might die, usually. I know what you’re thinking, you seen the hard-boiled PI shows or whatever, but I love my shabby ass office, and going home to my cat Buttbutt, a book and a Diet coke. Yeah, Diet Coke. Deal with it. Point is, I don’t have a death wish, and I’m not skinny, and I don’t want to fuck, not secretly, not openly, not at all. Capiche?
“So what’s your name, even?” I ask. He looks at me a moment and then he starts to laugh.
“I always forget this part,” he says, “because I don’t like to lie. How about George, I’ve always liked that name. George.”
I give him a look, “George, I say, George, you on the run from the law, George?” He laughs pretty hard at that and then he says, “No Lyra, God as my witness,” ha ha ha, “I do not run from anyone or anything.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Sure,” I say, “half upfront, and I’m off to Matheson’s.” George looks at me a minute.
“Lyra,” he says, “I know you can do this. You’re going to be okay.” That’s probably the first inkling I had, because normally that would be creepy as hell, right? But somehow it just felt – right. I said to him, “George, is there something I should know?”
“Yes, Emily St. Vincent keeps talking about someone. She calls him the purveyor.”
“Like a – like a drug dealer? ”
“Of a sort. He sells... camouflage.”
“What the hell does that mean?”
“Here’s half.” I stare at the big pile of money. I sigh.
“Okay,” I say, “Okay. How do I get ahold of you?”
“You can just call my name, you always can. You’re the right person for the case, Lyra.” Then George, he just walks out. And for whatever reason, it doesn’t occur to me to stop him.

Matheson’s is modern as hell, vending machines on every floor, secure check in, leave your technology at the desk ma’am.

It is definitely Emily St. Vincent. Her hair is thin, brownish blonde. Neither well styled nor unkempt. Her hospital gown is white with a repeating pattern of poppies, the orange and red and yellow of the flowers pop out like a garish fuck you in a place that’s so sterile, hard to believe people become less suicidal around here. Her eyes are grey, but a weird grey, almost greyscale, as if I’m looking at an article. A missing person’s picture in the back of the newspaper, where they put the pictures of people they’ve given up on. A mouse type. Her skin is so pale, she’s a real delicate blur.
“Hello,” she says, and it’s the strangest thing. I see her lips move, I do, I know she’s said hello. But I have to focus hard to hear. “Difficult,” she says, “to talk to someone when you’ve killed yourself.”  So. Getting right to it then.
“Okay,” I say, “okay – Emily, look, I’m here to help.” She’s startled.
“Oh,” she says, “you’re the first person in a week who could hear me. The janitor’s going to be back soon.” I stare at her, trying to hold the image steady. She looks at me sadly. “It’s the camouflage,” she says.
“Who the fuck are you?” says a voice behind me. I jump, but by the time I turn, my face is stone. I do a real good gargoyle.

“How did you find this place?” he hisses. He’s wearing a janitor’s outfit, but it doesn’t suit him, something about it just aint sitting right. When his eyes flit over to Emily, I see this look, this loathing so deep, it makes me queasy.

“George sent me,” I say, calm like, “because Emily is a cold case.”

“Cold,” whispers Emily. Only she isn’t whispering, it’s just you have to strain to hear.
“Shut up already,” says the man who is not a janitor, “what’s worse than a bitch who won’t shut up? A dead bitch who won’t shut up.” The way he says it, though, it’s like, he really thinks she’s dead.
“Could you excuse us,” I say, “maybe you could clean in here later.”
“I already cleaned,” he looks at me as if to say hello? Are you stupid? I look at him blankly, waiting.
“I suppose you don’t recognize me,” he says, and before I can point out drily that I do not recognize the janitor at the local loony bin, no, sorry, Emily’s whisper stops me cold.
“The Purveyor.”
Now I’m looking at him closely. Thinking back on it, I can’t tell you what his hair color was, or his eye color, or what the janitor’s uniform looked like even. All I can say for sure is he was pale, almost translucent, and he was angry. His eyes were just bottomless pits of cold anger, the long kind, the kind that gets passed down to children.

“Emily,” I say, finally, after a good long stare, “why don’t you tell me exactly how it is you ended up here?” I wonder if the purveyor is going to stop her, but he doesn’t. Instead, he looks at her for a second, then walks right out. For whatever reason, it doesn’t occur to me to stop him.
“I was…I think, thirteen,” she looks at me, “when they --,” she stops for second, “—well they used to sniff me.” I wait for her to elaborate. She doesn’t.
“Sniff..?” She nodded.
“Sniffing. They used to pin me against the lockers, catch me on the way home from school. Deep sniffs.”
“Why…”
“I remember the neck was the worst,” her hand reaches towards her neck, “someone’s face pressed up against you, and you can’t even really tell who it is, just makes you want to…disappear.” She looks sad for a moment. “It didn't stop you know, the sniffing. I just wanted... to smell like nothing at all, to blend in. I remember the feeling of them pressed up against me, but their faces, they’re blurs. I can’t remember their faces. I think—I think I was the last one left who smelled like something.”
“What do you mean?”
“On my seventeenth birthday, I got my first ever detention. Distraction, Mr. Bovern said. Can’t be tolerated. I remember sitting in his classroom after school, with my new journal. It had this skeletal rose on the cover, I loved it. I was seventeen.
He looked up at me, and he said, “Well Emily. It’s time to talk business.” I remember thinking – who? Who is that? Why did I think it was Mr. Bovern? He looked so angry.
He said, “Emily, Emily, aren’t you tired of getting sniffed? I was stunned. The first time anyone had acknowledged it.”

I could just imagine her startled face. Why yes, pretty exhausted, now you mention it.

“He said, you know what your problem is?  You need to be sanitized, standardized, just like everybody else. Would you like that, Emily? To blend in? You would, wouldn’t you? And I looked at him and looked at him because he sounded like he was about to offer me the impossible. He said, ‘they call me the purveyor. I’m in the camouflage business. 100% guaranteed no more sniffing.’”

The janitor’s face came floating back, a dead bitch who won’t shut up.

“It’s simple, Emily,” she whispered, “so simple, Emily. It’s time to get rid of that smelly bitch. Just get rid of her. And I --- I saw my reflection in the window. Only she was crying, I think – she was so sad, and so scared. She was hugging that rose journal to her, and when I reached out she shrank back. But there was nowhere for her to go, of course. Where could she go? I wrapped my hands around her neck.”

That’s when I realized all my mind chatter had just dropped off. As if every thought in my head stopped to grieve, that’s how it felt.

“Anyway,” said Emily, “I can tell you where the body is.”

**

“Have I ever led you wrong? Have I ever lied to you?” Sargent Panker wasn’t having any of it. Panker’s a fat man, and any time his temper gets a little exercise, he goes real pink in the face. Reddish brown beard, I figured him for an Irishman. Good man, couple of daughters who scare the daylights out of him, nice wife who specializes in meat and potatoes. Full figured lady herself, I’ve never known them to turn someone away. Unusual for a cop, but Panker’s alright. He doesn’t go in for the complicated stuff, and I feel some kind of way dropping this in his lap.

“You understand you are telling me there’s a body in the St Vincents’ back yard that looks exactly like Emily but is only kind of Emily? And you want me to put her parents through that obvious horseshit?”
God help me, I thought. Panker’s phone rang. Shooting me another glare, he picked up. Suddenly he’s looking at me again, only now it’s a look that says what have you gotten me into, now?
Then he says into the phone, “In the back yard? Would it be, say, two feet south of the old tulip patch? How did I know? Lyra’s here. Yes, she’s got – well you’re never going to believe it, let’s just say, we have two potential IDs on Emily now. Yeah --- one of those be careful what you wish for things, right? Okay. Okay. Well get the damn thing exhumed or whatever and I’ll meet you… Fine. No, Lyra can bring her in. Yeah, okay. See you.”
Panker looked at me. I waited.
“Lyra.”
“Sargent Panker.”
“That was James, they’re bringing the body into forensics. We’ll need DNA from the Matheson girl too. I want you to bring her in. James will meet you.”
“I don’t know James.”
“Detective James? Oh, he’s been with us…well I can’t even recall how long.”
“James his first or last?”
“Believe it or not, both. Detective James James.”
He gets up. “You’re a pain in my ass, Lyra. But if we close the St. Vincent case…well, maybe I’ll see about a bottle of champagne.” The good thing about Panker is he doesn’t worry too much about things. Far as he’s concerned, there are two possible IDs on Emily St. Vincent which was two more than he had an hour ago. Bad thing about Panker is, he doesn’t worry too much about things. Far as he’s concerned, Detective James James is just one more detective than he had an hour ago.

Panger would have gone red in the face if I told him I was going to the house. But it’s the job. You don’t not go to the house. You don’t not look at the body. You know? The parents are there, and they’re quiet like. Mom’s got this wavy dark brown hair about down to her shoulders, beginning to grey, sad brown eyes, but there’s still something about her lips, like they’re waiting on a smile, they haven’t quite given up. She’s a skinny thing like Emily, and the way her eyes watch the diggers, I don’t think they’ve told her about the living one. The Matheson’s girl. The dad stands back, arms crossed. He’s got a blue shirt and jeans on, not exactly heavy but you wouldn’t call him built, and he looks, well, a little resentful. I get it, I do – he probably wonders why he got the short end of the proverbial stick, and then on top of it, why it took the an entire police force and so many years to go from the living room of a missing girl to her back yard. But even he gets a kind of white in his face when they pull out the body. It’s perfect. I mean it’s perfect. I don’t know much about what a dead person buried some eleven years is supposed to look like, but this body looks like it’s been made up for a damn wake is what, and if that isn’t weird enough – there’s the notebook. You telling me eleven years underground and the notebook’s gonna come out pris-fuckin-stine? Pardon my French.

I stole the notebook. I did. How I got away with it, you’re wondering, well here’s the truth. Crime scenes are chaotic as hell and if you can get behind the yellow tape, you can really get away with just about anything. Thought I was caught for a minute though, when mom looked at me – Melly St. St. Vincent. Won some beauty pageants back in the day. Somehow though, I just knew she wasn’t going to be a problem. She was looking at me a kind of way, I think a little sad, but also a little hopeful. She said something I’ll never forget as long as I live.
“There’s more than one way to die, you know.” I looked at her a long time. What I said was just as much nonsense, but I think – I pray – it registered. I said, “I’m looking, Melly, I’m paying attention.” She nodded at me, and the smiled that haunted her face made a flash appearance, a cameo in a tragedy, but it was something. I took the notebook and I left to get the girl.

Matheson’s. First, there is no Emily. Then there’s an Emily but you can’t just sign people out for a few hours unless it’s – oh it is police business? What do you mean that Emily. That can’t – what – I better call my supervisor. What’s that? Whatever the police need? Well you’d think if they were going to sue, they probably would have over the whole food—right, right, hush hush. Liability, yes, we’ll cooperate.

So, it’s Emily – who is agitated as hell in the passenger seat -- and me -- I’m not doing so hot either. Lifelong agnostic, lover of the simple things, toting some ghost to Forensics.

Detective James James is waiting for us. Emily sees him and for some reason only God knows, she starts to laugh. He looks back at her, his eyes empty, weirdly empty actually. Like a silencing grey void.

“Forensics,” he says, opening the door and pointing inside, and it’s funny because this is exactly what I always pictured investigating a corpse would be like.

Until the body sits up, I mean. I don’t have a reference for this, never saw the point of horror flicks. Anybody in my line of work skirts the line often enough anyway. “Fucking Stockholm syndrome bitch,” said James behind me, which yeah, in retrospect, probably should have been a clue. Now I think about it, there was something pretty peculiar about the way they were looking at each other. And yeah, the whole thing was crooked from the jump, but even so, you look at Emily, she really looks like she’s about to be sick and the body – her body sitting up off the cold slab, I can sort of understand how that might make a person queasy. But the body, the body is staring at Emily like Emily’s the resurrected one, like Emily is going to save her. Meanwhile Emily looks like Emily is going to barf. The thing that bugs me though is James James, he never seemed the slightest bit surprised, and there was just something damn familiar about him. Shooting the moving corpse – a panic reaction, they say. Easy justification, yeah, but I don’t think he was a damned bit panicked. Body was up off that slab and about its staring business for a good several minutes before he pulled that trigger. No I think he was waiting for something, and that for some odd reason makes me think of the way that Emily laughed when she first saw him. Plus there’s the other thing, how it turns out Detective James James doesn’t fuckin exist. Pardon my French.

When the police finally came, only one body was recovered. Emily St Vincent’s one and only body. Panker swears up and down the cop is an FBI guy, and the FBI says why on earth would we send a guy to a smalltime situation like that, a one state one body situation, and we don’t have anyone by that name and I think didn’t Panker say James James had been around for years? But I’ll tell you why I really think he never existed – nobody goes around calling themselves James James. He would’ve been Jay, or Jamie, or something. Whoever that man was, all I can say is I’d never seen him before when he stood outside forensics, but I swear I knew him, or at least I know someone who gets angry exactly the same way he does, a pale face, long skinny lips, eyes like voids..

The bullet that came out of the gun – this thing’s older than time, said forensics, this bullet was special made from metal so old we can’t date it. Oh duh, I thought, you need special metal to kill a corpse. Then again, well, all I’m saying is, one body was recovered, which is great for the newspapers, but for me, the only person standing in the room that’s still standing today, I don’t think there was much in the way of spin. I can usually tell when someone wants things to seem a type of way, but Emily had a claim on that corpse, and it had a claim on her, and me, I think it’s likely James James was waiting for the moment those claims got claimed, and maybe in that split second, maybe right then, there really was only one person, Emily St. Vincent, in body and mind, ready to be taken out the old fashioned way. With an old ass bullet. Pardon my French.

Afterward, Mr. G is in my office again. He’s got the second half.
“You have a natural immunity, really impressive,” he says. He looks very admiring so I thank him as if I understand and he laughs. The sound of his laugh is like being curled up in bed when there’s just enough rain out to make it cozy but not off putting, you know?
I watch him for a minute. “Mr. G,” I say, “George.”
“You want to ask, so ask.”
“Will I ever see you again?” He looks at me for a second, then he closes his eyes, and it seems – yeah I know how it sounds – it seems like he’s…checking. Then his eyes open and he gives me that snaggle tooth smile and he says, “no.” He gets up. “Goodbye Lyra. I’m proud of the way you handled that, you were really there.”

How would he know? Well, you know my theory. Later that night, I’m replaying it again and again in my mind. The way he just said no. I guess I thought it would feel worse. The way he said it though, it was like he had good news and sitting there on my couch with Buttbutt, the image that came to my mind was Emily, reaching out towards her reflection. I think I understand. I can’t explain it, but I think I get it. I crack a diet coke and open my book – a journal with a rose on it. Everyone deserves to be seen.

When the Wordletting was originally decreed a state mandated holiday, there were protests, of course. In the famous case of Alberg V. United Earth Confederacy, it was held that requiring ritual performance did not violate the Precepts of Freedom so long as no person was asked to commit to any shared set of ideals. In fact, the judges determined that the Wordletting played an important role in civic wellbeing: through this outlet, the good people of the world could dispose of the irrational anxiety that there was some kind of larger, inherent structure which threatened Freedom. State scientists had shown long ago that in fact, the individual and his property were the necessary entities of the only naturally arising social order that could be objectively understood as Free. From those studies came the realization that in order to capitalize on that knowledge, and produce a conglomerate that represented the Precepts of Freedom, some kind of intervention would be required to counteract the evolutionary glitch which lent the illusion that emancipation could be achieved communally. This was a social construct, the sociologists explained, that was used to justify particular kinds of governance, including laws that were not fundamentally about simple safety, but instead focused on some kind of sumtotal object. Such an object was strenuously objected to by articulate statesmen, as it required both a type of identification with and contribution to a system that was not entirely within the domain of the individual: it was an obvious threat to the Precepts of Freedom. An intervention to deconstruct the illusion of society was designed by a committee of experts, and the fiftieth anniversary of the first Wordletting was fast approaching.

And that was why Sartrovsky’s job was so important. Of course one of the basic necessities of the ritual was the “soft seat,” a feature to induce a particular mood. It was discovered through psychological testing that soft seating promoted the act of sharing, through verbal discourse, the porous state of one’s proper domain. Of course, outside the Wordletting, this was an act of treason, and that is why there was only one factory for seat cushions, which worked year round to create enough cushions for the event. It was also important that every material used in the creation of the cushions be biodegradable. Ownership of seat cushions was known to be a danger to the individual, and so the post ceremony cushion burial was also within the purview of Sartrovsky’s employer.  Sartrovsky’s closest ally, Nicholas Thurt, worked one factory over where a certain amount of specialized skill was required to make instruments for producing musical tones which had been revealed by both hard and soft sciences to also help induce Expressions of Porousness. Sartrovsky and Thurt had been best allies for a few years, ever since their numbers had come up together for the Practice of Continuity. Each month, by lottery, a certain number of men were called to equip the scientists with the necessary means for reproducing the individual. This, referred to as the Practice of Continuity, was a civic duty that was understood as both proper and tedious. Egg extraction, which women were obligated to participate in, was a far more invasive procedure and was thus only done once every three years, and the gap was widening as scientists began to develop storage that could keep the harvested eggs productive for longer periods of time. Nine months later, as mandated by the State, Sartrovsky and Thurt returned to the scientists. Both Sartrovsky and Thurt received a female child. Thurt’s was called Yani and Sartrovsky’s was called Anna. The children were pre-named and randomly assigned within the cohort of men. For the first six years of their life, they were kept away from women, as it had been shown that interaction with women at a young age can result in a tendency towards Expressions of Porousness. The women had a far more important role. At the end of those six incubatory years, it was the women who taught the children how to bleed their bodies, and how to do this with the stoicism the procedure required.

It was determined by state scientists to be only natural, in the way of eating and breathing, that there should be a regular practice for limiting the porousness of individuals and preserving and defending the Precepts of Freedom. Early on, scattered experiments indicated that brief physical pain produced a certain chemical reaction which could replace the treasonous act of the verbal Expression of Porousness. Studies like these had to spend a long time in committee of course, but eventually it was decisively concluded that small cuts made with fine blades in the morning, evening and as necessary, significantly reduced the likelihood of verbal Expressions of Porousness. Among the children, the cutting was something that had to be learned. Crying was, of course, strictly prohibited, except at the Wordletting, but children under six were not considered subject to that law. After the age of six, they went to the women for training, and those few who were unable to learn the proper passivity necessary were taken care of in a quick and painless manner by the same scientists who had produced them. Over time, certain traits were discovered among the specimens that produced anti-passive neurological disorders.

Yani had one such disorder, and had been disposed of in this manner prescribed. Sartrovsky knew that Thurt was a good man and therefore would hardly be bothered by this. Yet at the Wordletting last year, Sartrovsky couldn’t help but notice that Thurt had cried when the children had passed them during the procession into the Soft Seats. Obviously, crying was allowed at the Wordletting, but it was inadvisable to focus tears on any specific topic, as that sometimes seemed to induce anti-passivity behavior in the coming year. Still, Sartrovsky had seen with satisfaction that his best ally Thurt had completed another year with a perfect Cutting record and no citations for or warnings to do with porousness at all. On the evening of the fiftieth Wordletting, Sartrovsky remained confident in his choice of best ally.

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There is a room with cushions and soft light. Music flows from reed instruments that do not have long lifespans and voices sing as if they have been waiting for release.  The room is beautiful, but Anna doesn’t know the word beautiful, so she calls it overflowing. This is her first Wordletting, now that she’s seven, now that she’s graduated top of her class in Cutting.  Everyone is happy with her and she doesn’t tell anyone that at night she thinks of her friend Yani and cries. Once she saw Thurt cry, too, but she doesn’t tell anyone that, either.

Anna has a memory in this room of Yani singing a song, when they were small. The song made her feel like she was overflowing, but now it makes her feel like she is drowning. For a while, she expected to see Yani in some places, but they were empty places now. Sartrovsky had explained to her that expectation was not real, it was better to use predictability. Sartrovsky said that he could predict for sure that Yani wasn’t coming back.

The music gets softer as the women and men in robes and masks come in, line up across the front of the room, and face the United Global Confederacy. Everyone is there. Nothing is televised, nothing is recorded. Everyone in the whole world is in Kioskope today.

The people settle into their soft seats, and the ritual begins.

“We are here now,” sing the masked performers. “We are here together,” respond the people. Anna feels as though strings of lights are turning on inside her, from her toes, up up up! And then in a low voice, the chanting:

I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely I am lonely

The chanting grows louder and louder and when the cacophony is so loud that no individual can be heard within it, the lights go up bright, and the people begin to wordlet. Anna hears people talk about their feelings in rushed whispers: “The room at home is cold, and the food is meager, and I don’t always want to get up in the morning.” “I remember a poem my grandmother wrote.” “I have seen the sunlight through the window and thought about ephemeral things.” “Sometimes I want to be touched.” “I practice hugging my pillow, so I don’t forget. How to hug.” “The best joke I heard this year goes like this: why did the chicken cross the road? Don’t call it a road, we’ve never built anything together.” Anna thinks this is a strange joke and looks over. She is surprised to see that it is Thurt. He isn’t talking about his feelings, and Anna guesses this is because he is like her, he wordlets in his pillow at night, when he can’t take it anymore. Anna guesses this because she knows that Thurt misses Yani as much as she does, she knows that Thurt is the only person who knew Yani like she did. Thurt looks at Anna, Anna is overcome by a strange sensation and she awkwardly wraps her arms around Thurt. Thurt looks surprised – he knows that no one has taught Anna how to hug. Then he realizes that the room is watching them. They are in trouble. Thurt closes his eyes, and decides not to make the same mistake twice. He puts his arms around the girl Anna and whispers, “it’s okay. I miss her too.” The confessions have stopped. The chanting dies down. Everyone is looking at the man and the child. Sartrovsky thinks about wringing his hands and decides it’s too dangerous. There is utter silence. Somewhere, some official person with an official title attempts to reinstate discipline, pulls a plug, and the lights go out. It is in this total darkness, where no can see, that certain things become clear. People begin to reach for each other.