Sarah

Someone was coming down the path. He was a man, somehow official and shoddy looking at the same time. The official elements of his person were encouraging, enough so that Sarah was prepared to accept the other less impressive aspects. Officialness meant that he might be coming on official business. At present, there was only one bit of business that needed official attention, and that lay mostly beneath the tree. There being someone whose job it was to think about what lay beneath the tree would hopefully relieve Sarah of the burden of ever thinking about it again.

Despite these hopes Sarah found it impossible to complete ignore shabbier bits of the man, if only to better distinguish him from other officials. He had a pale creased face set between rapidly receding hair and a small pot belly, the whole package wrapped in a collared shirt and tie. He was sweating heavily, primarily from his hairline and breastbone, if the apparent moisture on his shirt and brow were to be any guide. His walk was a shoulder first shamble with a limp that became more pronounced with each step. Those shiny shoes must be murder across uneven terrain. Taken together these did not create a flattering picture, but there were two things above all that Sarah found most perturbing about the man. First was the rather unflattering black fanny pack that swayed beneath his belly, making the belly more than it was. The second was that he was walking, something which almost no one did inside the park. Still, it was simply a relief not be left alone with it any more.

When he was almost to Sarah she stood, slapping the seat of her pants as she did so, and in so doing grinding any dirt further into the canvas. The man stopped in front of her and pulled a napkin from the fanny pack to blot his forehead and glanced over her shoulder to the accident.

When they were both quite settled he spoke, “hello, I’m Richard Spindal. I’m from IPS.” He stuck out his hand and she took it.

“Sarah Spivak, arborist.”

“I know.” His eyes went back to the tree. “It’s over there?”

“It,” she had been thinking of the body as an “it” as well, as if the act of dieing violently had robbed the person of all identity, had rendered a human being into an object. “Mostly yes, I mean it’s a little bit spread about.” Then again, she didn’t know, and couldn’t know, a thing about the person so “it” would have to do.

“Okay, I’m going to go look at it, take some pictures. I’d appreciate it if you stayed until I’m finished.”

“I really don’t know anything about it, I just happened to be here.”

“Oh, I won’t have many questions, I just want a ride. My feet are killing me.”

Sarah surprised herself with a laugh, “yeah okay.”

“I guess I’d better get to it. Recycling will be getting here soon.” He took a pair of thin rubber gloves from his fanny pack and started putting them on as he walked toward the tree.

Richard

Richard stopped just short of the tree. This was nasty. The body had been ripped apart, like a club hitting a newt. Bits and pieces had spread the sides and behind the tree, creating a gory parabola. He ruffled through his fanny pack and pulled out a pocket computer. The computer worked as a camera, among other things. He started taking stills, working his way from the trunk to end piece of debris on the left. The last bit was a shoe, the foot still in it. Must be aerodynamic. He walked back to the trunk and got ready to work his way down the other side, wondering why he was doing it. Got your cause of death right here chief, seems that when he hit the tree at terminal velocity his body exploded, at least that’s the theory the lab boys are giving me.

He lined up the trunk in the viewfinder and snapped a shot. There was something… He looked at the trunk, there were a few inches of bloody rope ending in a frayed bit of fuzz. The rope was a heavy-duty nylon weave just a bit thinner than Richard’s pinky. He put the computer away and found a small plastic bag. He tugged on the rope, it held fast. He could see that it was spliced into a loop, it was caught on something buried the tree. He put the bag on the ground and got out a small folding knife. He began digging and whittling around the rope. The wood around the rope was crushed and splintered; it was easy to dig out. There was the glint of something metal. He dug some more then gave the rope another tug. This time it came lose. There, swinging at the end of that little loop of rope was a loop of metal, dented and twisted, but still whole, still holding the rope. He put them both in the bag and walked back toward Sarah. She was waiting for him in the cart.

“You ever climb these trees Sarah?” Richard asked.

“It’s the best was to get up them.”

“Sure. Do you use rope?”

“On the big trees, yes. Especially if I need to bring tools up.”

“What to you think of this?” He handed her the bag holding the rope.

Sarah took the bag and gave it a quick look. “It’s a bit of climbing rope and a beat up karabiner.”

“Like what you use?”

“Yes.”

“How much weight can something like this hold?”

“They say a ton, I’ve never had the opportunity to experiment.”

“Huh.” A two hundred pound man hanging off the column would weigh about 15 pounds. “That’s good to know.” Richard got in the passenger seat of the cart. There was a green truck coming down the lane, recycling coming to take away the nasty bits. Richard decided he would rather not hang around for the cleanup operation.

“One more question, and then we can get out of here. You ever see rope like this break?”

“No. You can cut it, but you need a sharp knife, and it’s still a pain in the ass.” Sarah put the cart in gear and pulled off.

Howard

Steve Phips was dead, and Howard had killed him. All Howard had to do was ask a favor. Going outside, the vertigo, the breathing mask, it wasn’t for someone as preoccupied, as exhausted, as Howard. Steve had gotten stuck mucking out the filtration system on the salmon tanks. It was probably the only assignment less pleasant than Howard’s. So Howard had asked for a swap, and Steve had gratefully accepted. In the end it didn’t come out even, Howard had spent a few hours up to his elbows in Salmon shit and Steve had spent half an hour welding and four minutes drifting toward death.

Howard didn’t even hear about Steve’s fall for a few hours. The salmon bilge was stinking and isolated, and nobody thought to find him. Nobody even knew that he had traded jobs with Steve. He didn’t find out until he crawled out of the bilge for a break. “Howard’s dead, poor guy’s tether snapped…”

Howard hung back, he wasn’t dead, but he didn’t want to spread the good word just yet. The tether had broken, a tether that would hold a close to a ton in normal gravity, in the core, it was close to unbreakable. Accidents happened, people got hurt, were killed, for no other reason than they were standing in the wrong place when somebody made a mistake. This was another accident, Howard had been standing in the wrong place, when someone made a mistake, let the wrong thing slip, and now Steve was dead. Some people are just unlucky.

He went back in the bilge. He had some thinking to do, besides Howard liked salmon. Getting the filters clean kept the salmon going, gave him a chance of eating one again some day. Howard wouldn’t stay dead for long. Sooner rather than later someone would notice Steve was missing, that it wasn’t Howard’s body down on the ground. The accident wasn’t finished, wouldn’t be finished until Howard was dead or they were dead. He needed to get moving, to take action, to go into hiding, to do something, and to do it now while they thought he was dead. That’s what desperate men did, they acted; keep swimming or drown. Howard stood in that foul smelling room and cleaned muck out of the filters.

Note: Due to poor planning, shoddy work, and corruption at City Hall, this will be the last section of Schrödinger’s Pilgrims to be published for the forceable future. Our engineer tells us that the foundations being laid in these early chapters will in no way be sufficient to task of supporting the rest of the story. He assures us that if we were to go against his advice, massive rents in space time would turn Hill Valley California into a den of gambling and prostitution. Given these dangers we feel we can not go on publishing until such time as the necessary structural improvements can be made. We would apologize for the inconvenience, but we feel certain that our mother will understand.