I managed to ‘walk’ back to my office. I walked for about 6 blocks in LA before I pulled it off though. And the ‘blocks’ in LA are flipping humongous. My legs were burning by the time I managed to find my way back. Good thing too, because I felt a small measure of panic when I tried the first thousand times with no success. How I did it so quickly the first time is beyond me.
Just lucky? As soon as I managed to step back onto my street, 17th by the way, I pumped my fist a few times like Rocky. Its the eye of the tiger, its the thrill of the fight, risin’ up to the challenge… of our survival? No that’s not right. Eh, close enough. It felt like survival once I got back. I mean those blocks were looooong, man.
My office was the same office that I had left, and strangely, it started to feel like home already. That couch though, sorry Tony, but that couch will have to go. It is just plain nasty. If it was from the 1950’s, I would be shocked. I was guessing it was older than the United States. Shit was old, and not in a good way.
Out of habit, I emptied my pockets, but found that the keys and the wallet were missing. I panicked for the second time. I stepped outside my door again, and patted my pockets. Wallet and keys were there. I pulled them out, held them in my hands and crossed the threshold again. No steam, no smoke, no magic. One second, wallet and keys in hand, the next, poof. Gone. I stepped back out of the threshold into the hallway, and felt my pockets again. Wallet and keys.
I am an unwitting David Copperfield with the objects in my own pockets. I shut the door slowly while I shook my head in mild disbelief. Something to chalk up to the mystery of the Verse. I’ll figure that one out later. For now, I will get to work. Best place to start is to reread the open cases and talk to Tony.
PrimEstates vs Authority; V. Hale; and Miles vs Takai. Tony said the last one was minor. Start there.
Miles vs Takai. John Miles had incurred a damaging debt from Takai of the Angelus. He was looking to dispute it. Otherwise he was Colos-bound. It did not say that explicitly, but I picked up on the gist. Sounded like I just needed to hear both sides and pick who was right. Simple enough, I guess.
v. Hale was odd. It was a dispute between Michael J. Hale against himself? How the hell did that work? The dispute was over a commitment made to the Authority, yet the Authority was not a party to the dispute, and the commitment was not explained or mentioned. The details were super thin, probably will have to talk to Mr. Hale myself to even get a clue on that one.
PrimEstates vs Authority was a much larger file. A lot of pages with precedents and exceptions noted about the history of access to Prime for those that had departed. PrimEstates was a corporation of sorts that was looking to open super high end real estate markets on Prime to the highest bidder of those off-Prime in the verse. Essentially allowing ‘rich’ dead folks to have real estate on Prime. Of course, the fuckers were trying to find a way to take it with them. That made no sense either, but it probably would as I went along. (I hoped.) It seemed there were very strict rules about how Nexters (the term for Prime souls that had died and moved on) interact with Prime. My experience was so far contrary to most of the rules cited, but then again, Chuck had pointed that out right away.
Then the 800lb gorilla slowly, meekly, raised his hand and the big question finally, somehow, managed to barge its way into my conscious thought.
Who the hell typed these briefs up? And if I was a mediator of some sort, and we are talking trillions of souls in the whole verse, then all the fights and disputes would come to me? How the merry hell did all that work? I am just one guy. Even with all the time in the world, only one guy could not solve every single dispute across all of time and space. I flipped through the file again, looking for some secretary or typist notes. Nada. I grabbed the next case and did the same thing. Nothing. Third one, again nothing. Where the heck did the files come from? There was no typewriter that I had found in the office. These things came from somewhere then.
I finally (finally) reached out and grabbed the map.
“Hello?” Tony said.
“Hey Tony. Sorry for taking so long.”
“I don’t experience time in here like that, so don’t worry about it. You know how sometimes you get lost in thought and you don’t notice how quickly or slowly time is going by?”
“Yeah.”
“That is what being an abstract is like. No sense of time. Just thought. To me it could be a second since our last talk or million years. Doesn’t matter. What did you find out?”
“I read the cases, and then a guy named Oman stopped by.” I admitted.
“Oh, crap. I forgot about that. Did he explain what was going on?”
“Yes. Seemed a little odd.” I said.
“I didn’t have a chance to look into it. Sounded a little crazy. But I have seen plenty of crazy in my time.”
“Yeah, I bet.” I didn’t want to tell the saint about my little encounter with the girl at the center of that ball of crazy.
“What about the cases? Anything jump out at you?”
“You could say so. Who the heck writes these cases? Am I the only Adjudicator? How can I possibly serve all the cases that pop up? Back in the legal system on Prime, there are millions of cases a year, probably billions. I can’t do that.”
“True. You wouldn’t be able to. But the good news is the rate of cases is small. A handful a month. Most are minor. The system works pretty well. Of course, the Verse has had millennia to hammer it out. It better work well after all that time.”
“How is a case made? Is there a complaint box somewhere?”
Tony laughed. “Remember the career fair?”
“How could I forget?”
“There was a booth that you walked by for the Office of the Adjudicator right at the front. It employs a couple million people. Bureaucracy at its finest.”
“Why don’t I share a realm with them then?”
“You are where the buck stops, as FDR used to say. When something reaches you, it ends. When you end the case, how you end it is entered back into the Office, and future issues are alleviated before they reach you. What makes it all work is your impartial nature. You are separate because you have to be.”
“So somewhere out in the Verse, there are millions of people supporting what I do on a daily basis?”
“Yep.”
“No pressure then.”
“None at all.” Tony chuckled.
“And these files just show up on my desk?”
“Turn around. See the filing cabinets behind you?”
“Yes.”
“Its the first one. The top drawer. Pull it open. Take the new cases out. Put your closed cases in, push it shut. Done deal.”
“That easy?”
“That easy. Any questions about the open cases?”
“I think I need to track these folks down and talk to them. So not much to ask. Do you have anything?” I said.
“I hate to say it, but I am pretty certain I am fading. I can’t remember things. There are gaps… about my childhood. About my life. About everything. Don’t pick the map up again unless you need to really pick my brain… because every time you do, I become less.”
“Great.”
“I thought you would like that. Talk to you later, Doug. Good luck.”
“Good luck? I have no idea where to start.”
“Start at the beginning. See where it takes you. After all, you have eternity to figure it out.”