You Are a Ghost. (Sign Here Please) Read online

  “Oh,” Nathan said. “Wait, but if I’m invisible, how are you talking to me right now?”

  “Obviously because I am a bureaucrat,” Brian said lightly.

  Only bureaucrats can see ghosts. If you have ever seen a ghost, you may therefore secretly be a bureaucrat.

  Nathan scratched his head (failing to notice that his hand passed clean through his head as he did so). The portions of his brain responsible for rationalization churned at record pace.

  “Oh well,” he said at last. “It’s a bother, but I won’t let it affect my daily routine.” He sat back down in the greenest chair he had and, while being very careful not to fall through it, delicately picked up the remote control. Unfortunately, whatever news story that the TV had been showing before, with the fast cars and the bright lights and the grape jam, had ended. The well-dressed male news anchor had turned to political news and was sharing an inaudible laugh with his female colleague. The scrolling bottom-of-the-screen text read, “Mayor Seen Campaigning.”

  As the disgustingly optimistic people who bother to buy calendars knew, it was election season in Dead Donkey again. The Mayor was in a tight three-way race to be re-elected. He was ahead, but his opponents - a corpse and a face painted onto the side of a bus - were gaining steadily on him due to his massive unpopularity. Nathan didn’t vote but had been following the election news with interest because he was in a unique position to sympathize with the corpse, who spoke to him in a way that no politician ever had before (which was, technically, not speaking at all).

  After a few ghostly fumbles, Nathan finally managed to press the unmute button on his remote and caught the newscaster mid-sentence.

  “-we have received numerous reports that the mayor was seen campaigning near the municipal library earlier this afternoon. The mayor strenuously denies the charges, insisting that he was off drinking at the time. That’s it for our election coverage this afternoon. Now, I thought just for a change, I could sit and listen, and you could read me the news.”

  The television newscaster quietly folded his hands and stared expectantly out of the screen. Brian goggled at him.

  “My neighbor, Mr. Fletcher, has been shooting at salesman again,” Nathan recalled aloud. “The ice cream truck and the mail truck crashed on the corner today and the drivers got out and tried to sort out the mess together, but halfway through they decided to invent something called ‘candy mail.’ I don’t know what it is but it sounds tasty.”

  “Are you reading the news to the TV newscaster?” Brian said in disbelief. “He can’t hear you!”

  “He can’t?” Nathan exclaimed. “Is that because I’m a ghost?”

  “No, it’s not because you’re a ghost - I mean, yes, technically that’s one of the reasons, but it’s not the principal reason - surely you know how TV works - look, Nathan, I hate you.”

  Brian crossed his arms and sat down.

  “That was a bit uncalled for,” Nathan said. “Just because I’m a ghost doesn’t mean I’m not a person.”

  “I’m not the one who explains things,” Brian said stubbornly. “If you want explanations, you’ll have to ask Ian. I’m just here to keep an eye on you.”

  “Oh. What are you going to do with the other eye?”

  “I hate you,” Brian repeated.

  “You are being very mean,” Nathan said. “Why did Director Fulcher send you?”

  “Probably because he hates you too. There was another reason, though.” A shadow of the sharklike smile that had manifested on Brian’s face before suddenly reasserted itself. He leaned back in his chair and began to recollect.

  Chapter 6

  About fifteen minutes previously, Director Fulcher had been pacing his office back and forth in agitation. Director Fulcher did not like pacing his office back and forth in agitation, principally because of the enormous amount of paperwork involved in wearing down the rug, but also because he did not like being agitated. Normally it was he who inspired agitation in others. Today, however, a single annoying, insignificant human - a human who was not even alive - a human who was not even a bureaucrat - had caused him more problems than he was accustomed to having. He had spent an unknowable amount of time contemplating Nathan Haynes (a duration which was, if properly measured, about ten consecutive minutes, but for timecard-compensation related reasons it was generally a good idea to declare time amounts like that unknowable, since it increased one’s paycheck by about a quizillion dollars), and had not come to any fast or easy conclusions about the man. Now that he had once again escaped from the afterlife into the world of the living, he had gotten away with breaking statutory regulations relating to the positioning and spiritual-geographic localization of souls on at least six different occasions.

  Director Fulcher’s first move was to send Brian to annoy Nathan. This was, as Brian had suggested, because Director Fulcher hated Nathan. He also hated Brian, a man who was constantly complaining about his wholly mundane and unremarkable first name and forever annoying Director Fulcher to change it. Fulcher adhered to the ancient principle, “keep your friends close and your enemies bunched up tightly together in one place where they can be easily exploded,” so he’d sent Brian to Dead Donkey. That got both of them out of the way.

  The remaining problem was that although Nathan was no longer wreaking havoc in Fulcher’s department, misfiling files and forming misinforming forms, Nathan’s own papers were less in order than ever before. Fulcher was under statutory obligation to trap the souls of the deceased in the afterlife. In the past, when Fulcher had restored Nathan to life, he had at least arguably been alive. Now, Nathan had returned to life as a ghost, which meant he was a dead soul in the world of the living. That meant Fulcher had failed to enforce legal statute, and enforcing legal statute is one of the two primary functions of bureaucracy. The other primary function of bureaucracy is to ensure that nothing that is even conceivably useful or helpful to anyone could ever, ever happen, not that Fulcher was worried about that. Someone would get something done in his department over his cold, dead body.

  However, the failure of the first principle was deeply concerning to Fulcher. Failing the first principle meant he had failed as a bureaucrat. Failing as a bureaucrat meant he was about to get a visit from someone even more powerful and terrifying than himself, someone whose managerial authority had reached dizzying heights as yet unplumbed by the likes of Nathan Haynes, someone whose very name caused low-level functionaries to quake in terror. All Fulcher could do was wait and hope he would survive the encounter with this much-feared and malevolent superior.

  Finally, at exactly the time that was dictated by protocol, there was a knock at Fulcher’s door, and when it opened the statutory two seconds later, Fulcher’s immediate supervisor walked in.

  Veteran readers may recall from the first book in the You Are Dead series that it is possible to decipher a bureaucrat’s rank and power solely on the basis of his tie. Ian, for example, as a scum-sucking middle manager, wears a tie with a triple-windsor knot. Functionaries below him wear ties with fewer and fewer knots, all the way down to the bottom feeders of bureaucracy, who merely have a one-sixteenth-windsor knot, and that is if they are lucky. Attentive readers will also recall that Director Fulcher does not wear a tie. You might therefore reasonably wonder, and indeed be applauded for wondering, what sort of accessory Director Fulcher’s immediate superior had if not a tie.

  Overdirector Powell carried a cane with a skull on it. Now, the thing about people who carry canes with skulls on them is that they tend not to be very nice people. Indeed, it is difficult to carry such an item and be anything other than an utterly terrifying person. There is something about a cane with a skull on it that lends itself to intimidation. It must be the cane part.

  Although the cane with the skull on it tended to draw the eye, Overdirector Powell had several other striking qualities. She was a dignified, elderly, bureaucratic woman wearing a gunmetal gray business jacket, the color of which happened to almost exactly match her
short-cut steel gray hair and equally gray eyes. Her gray eyes, as the cane suggested, were not warm and friendly, but rather sharp, angry, and flashing. Her bony but formidable fingers drummed on the handle of her cane with irritation as she strolled into the room, with the cane’s hardened tip striking ominously against the carpet as she entered.

  “Sit down,” she told Director Fulcher. Her voice was quiet but not soft. It was quiet like how the jungle goes dead quiet just before you are eaten by a rare breed of superpanther.

  Of the approximately one quizillion cosmic bureaucrats, there were very, very few who would have dared to tell Director Fulcher to sit down in his own chair, but this was one such person. Fulcher wordlessly sank behind his own desk, while Overdirector Powell seated herself in a chair between two of his plants. Neither Powell nor Fulcher was aware of Nathan Haynes’ theory of why people kept plants in their workplaces (to absorb gaseous byproducts of arguments), but the exchange they were about to have would have proven him absolutely right.

  There was a moment of silence while Powell shuffled her skull cane from one hand to the other with practiced ease. Director Fulcher watched it (it did tend to draw the eye), and as he did he suddenly wondered, for the first time ever, whose skull it was. He also remembered that his predecessor had mysteriously gone on an indefinite leave of absence after misfiling a Form 558686 - Report On Departmental Misfiled Forms and had never been heard from again. He felt a cold sweat break out on his brow and licked his lips, trying to think of something to say in his own defense.

  However, before he could make a sound, Overdirector Powell started to speak.

  “As you will doubtless recall, Director Fulcher, of all the individuals who pass through our processing stations, I am only willing to meet with those who have been canonized and Nobel Laureates. Do you know why that is?”

  “I do not,” Director Fulcher said.

  “It is because nobel laureates and saints tend to be either very, very good people or very, very smart people, which means they are either smart enough or inherently good enough not to make me angry. I do not meet with other arrivals because they might make the mistake of angering me. People who anger me have a nasty habit of taking indefinite leaves of absence from existence.”

  So that was what had happened to his predecessor. Director Fulcher licked his lips, but again said nothing.

  “Tell me, Fulcher. Have you ever heard of a recent invention called edible cement?”

  “No.”

  “Neither has anyone else anymore, because its inventor, a nobel laureate in chemistry, made the mistake of thinking he was too important to behave civilly in my presence and angered me. I’m angry again today. Do you know what’s making me angry?”

  “Na-”

  “Yes, Nathan Haynes,” Powell said. Her voice was still not very loud, but then again neither is the strike of a cobra. “I understand that you have allowed a man who is best described as a brain-dead idiot not only to outfox you time and time again and trick you into signing a contract exempting him from all known protocol, but you have also now allowed him to return to the physical world as a spirit! That is in violation of the fundamental universal legal principle of the separation of life and death. Ensouled beings who die must have their souls confined to the afterlife. Your sole purpose, Director Fulcher, the entire reason for the existence of the processing stations, is to make sure that this one simple task is completed satisfactorily, without any ghosts illegally running around the world. Ghosts, whose legal status vis-a-vis the laws of gravitation and electromagnetism are not well defined.”

  Fulcher, whose mind had been pumping furiously to come up with some way to defend itself from becoming the new topper on Powell’s cane, finally touched bases with his vocal chords. The Director began to speak.

  “With respect, Overdirector, we have made great strides in legal jurisprudence in that area. The nuclear strong force now affects ghosts almost the same as the physical beings-”

  “And a great help that will be when we begin to produce fissile ghosts,” Powell answered sardonically. “I do not care how much progress you have made in rectifying the particulars of ghosts. The fact remains that Nathan Haynes’ disembodied soul has returned to his home city without the proper visa. He is, in effect, an illegal immigrant to life who has just hopped the ultimate border fence. I would like you to tell me how this happened.”

  “Overdirector, since its creation, my department has processed almost a hundred billion humans and well over a billion badgers and this has never happened before. Nathan Haynes is a problem individual-”

  “Given your repeated failures in this case, I am starting to suspect you are the problem individual, Fulcher! How will you fix this Haynes issue?”

  Fulcher, knowing his job and his skull were on the line, took a deep breath.

  “It is not within our legal remit to simply teleport him back to the afterlife, as convenient as that would undoubtedly be,” began the director. “Instead, I submit that Nathan Haynes will, after a period of time as a ghost, decide he wants to interact with the physical world and work to acquire a new body for himself to inhabit. After he acquires this body, he will inevitably die - as he does so very frequently and with great gusto - then return to receiving, where he will once again be trapped in the afterlife and be unable to leave. This will end the Haynes issue.”

  “And how do you intend to confine him here once he has died?” Overdirector Powell demanded. “After all, he escaped here within minutes of the most recent time he died.”

  “I don’t know,” Fulcher admitted.

  Powell looked very displeased with this answer. Her fingers began to drum most ominously on the skull-top of her cane.

  “You don’t know,” she repeated. “A most unsatisfactory answer. Director Fulcher, I am upset by this entire affair. You have failed me for the second-to-last time! Either you will successfully get Nathan Haynes’ papers in order and this entire department strictly in conformity with cosmic law or your next failure will be your last.” She rolled back her wrist to check her watch, the face and hands of which also had little skull motifs all along the edges. It was difficult for Director Fulcher to read the watch from where he was sitting, but the device seemed to indicate that the current time was death o’clock.

  Powell observed the object for a second, then pulled her sleeve back down.

  “Our meeting has reached its time limit,” she said sharply. “I must keep my next appointment. I have to go and censure a saint.”

  “You have to censure a saint?” Fulcher asked with surprise.

  “Not have to so much as want to,” Powell replied.

  “Censuring him because you want to? Is that entirely fair?”

  “He probably had it coming,” she answered, then without further ceremony, turned to leave. The rap-tap-tap of her cane against the floor was audible with every step she took, until she finally disappeared from the room. Fulcher waited until she had gone, then stood and started to pace back and forth to try to decide what to do about Nathan Haynes.

  Unbeknownst to either of them, Fulcher and Powell had not been alone for the duration of their conversation. Brian had not, as Fulcher imagined, headed to the real world to confront Nathan Haynes, because he had not yet filled out the immensely complex forms required to do so. Instead, he had shrewdly secreted himself, unnoticed, behind one of Fulcher’s several large potted plants and observed the exchange between his two superiors in secret. As he did, several ideas to turn the situation to his advantage struck him. It was an open secret that Director Fulcher did not like him. The truth was Brian did not really like Director Fulcher either. He would go to the real world to keep an eye on Nathan, as he had been ordered to do, but he would have some fun along the way. Brian signed on the dotted line of the necessary form and vanished as the powers of bureaucracy sped him on his way to life.

  Chapter 7

  Brian told Nathan much or all of what he had heard in Fulcher’s office, though he had a sneaking s
uspicion Nathan was not listening. He suspected this because Nathan kept trying to fiddle with the TV remote and was whistling something that sounded much like an old cereal jingle. At the end of the story, Nathan then proceeded to hover over to the television and remute it without the remote control, greatly amplifying Brian’s suspicions that he was being ignored.

  “Have you been listening to me?” he demanded.

  “I think so,” Nathan answered. “What did you say?”

  “I hate you,” Brian repeated. “What in the world are you doing?”

  Nathan was trying to change his shoes. In that instant, Brian decided he would totally give up pointing out to Nathan that there are many, many things that ghosts do not need to do. Changing their shoes is one of them, first because ghosts do not walk, they hover, and second because there is no way that the shoes will actually stay on their feet for long, and will instead probably phase through their ethereal extremities and fall back down onto the floor.

  “I’ve decided to go for a walk,” Nathan explained, and struggled to pick up one of his shoes. “Some fresh air will do me good and I want to clear my head. I’ll go down to the park.”

  “You don’t walk anymore. You’re a ghost. You float.”

  At this, Nathan stared down at his feet. They were indeed hovering a good six inches off of his floor, with no contact between him and the carpet whatsoever.

  “Good,” he said cheerily. “Then I won’t need these.” He stopped trying to put on his shoes and maneuvered over to the door. “I’m going to go for a float in the park,” he announced. “Would you like to come, Brian?”

  “I do not have a choice,” he answered. “I was sent here to watch you, so I have to come with you wherever you go, even if you go somewhere stupid, like a kangaroo kennel or a color factory. However, I do intend to make both you and Director Fulcher as miserable as possible while doing so. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to get Director Fulcher fired in the process.”