Just

By Kevin J. Phyland

Billy Glickmann’s Reincarnation Index was a paltry 421, based on the recorded karmic remnants of past lives he had hosted, measured back as far as the Mongolian steppes in the twelfth century, and probably beyond.

So nobody famous. Not even infamous. Just an unbroken line of wage slaves, the self-employed and the unremarkable.

But Billy was about to change that. 

He had occasionally wondered about who he had been in those past lives, which just showed how little he really understood about the newly-discovered karmic dimensional overlays. He hadn’t actually been anybody else. The overlays just attached themselves to a newborn if there was one nearby at the time of their host’s death. And they were inaccessible to the host except under extraordinary circumstances.

Billy had recently been asked to join a social club. A group of mostly young men who gathered at a pub on Friday nights to drink beer and eat party pies, or walk the streets on Saturday nights yelling things at seemingly random people.

Billy was not numbered amongst Nature’s scholars. He was an overlarge young man of nearly twenty, with a look of vague puzzlement permanently dwelling on his fleshy face. His mother, while secretly a little dubious at his newfound popularity, was also glad he was no longer alone in his room all the time.

“Off to the Social Club, Mum!” he would yell as he left Friday nights. “OK son,” she would reply.

“Going down to meet the lads, Mum!” he would shout on Saturday nights. “OK son,” she would reply.

Billy liked Friday nights best, despite the silly speeches Evan always made. Billy was a little afraid of Evan even though he was shorter and skinnier than Billy. Evan always looked at Billy like a lizard watching a big fat fly.

Evan seemed to blame ‘scientists’ for everything wrong in the world. Unemployed? Scientists. Poor? It’s the scientists. Billy couldn’t make head nor tail of it. So he tuned out and waited for the party pies to come out.

Then a strange thing happened to upset the routine.

Evan sent a message that there would be a special meeting on a Tuesday evening and just a few were invited. Billy was one of those selected.

It was with a mixture of excitement and vague unease that he travelled to a street address not previously known to him and met Evan and another social club member named Todd. He only knew Todd vaguely but he had been reasonably kind to Billy, and hadn’t taken part in the ‘nishy Asian’ ritual where they shaved his head when he joined.

Evan got to the point. They were going to make a statement against scientists by sending them a present.

It seemed an odd way to do something according to Billy but sending a big box of chocolates was indeed a nice gesture. Todd looked nervous and upset however.

“I’ll watch out but I won’t be delivering anything like that!” he said and crossed his arms.

Evan nodded. “It’s Billy I want for this,” he said. “He looks innocent enough.”

Billy smiled but tremulously enquired why he had to do anything with scientists in it if they were so bad.

Evan blew noisily through his lips. “It’s Zionists, not scientists, you fucking moron!”

Todd broke in. “Easy Ev, he doesn’t mean anything by it. He still says National Social Club, for chrissakes.”

“Ok, ok.”

Evan explained the trip to Billy. All he had to do was take the box of chocolates to the Gethsemane Maternity Hospital and go to the third floor and leave the chocolates for a Mrs. Gale. The name he had apparently gotten from a newspaper announcement. Then he was to leave the hospital and come back.

It seemed easy enough to Billy and he took the box and left.

The box seemed unusually heavy to Billy, almost a kilogram he thought. Lots of chocolates then. Billy smiled and hatched a little plan of his own.

Once outside the hospital he studied the box. The picture showed the outlay of all the chocolates and he figured he could take all four corner ones and the symmetry of the layout would still be there. Billy frowned. He didn’t think babies should eat chocolates anyway. Certainly not chocolates with a Use By date almost two years ago.

His resolve firmed. He took the box back to the shed at the back of the house where the three men had met. Evan looked like a snake had appeared out of the blue sky and dropped into his pants. Todd just ran in terror from the shed.

“Look,” began Billy as he pulled the lid off the box. Which promptly exploded. Bits of Evan and Billy blended together in the blast for a moment then mostly vaporised. Identification was only possible through dental records.

Billy’s mother was sad for a while, particularly when she found that Billy had apparently joined a National Socialist movement and become anti-semite. She had no idea what that was, and the pain passed over time.

But at the moment of Billy’s death, a newborn not far away — at the Gethsemane Maternity Hospital in fact — received Billy’s karma dimensional overlay. 

Much enhanced by his inadvertent karmic good deed. Which only seems just.

About the Author

Old enough to just remember the first manned Moon landing, Kevin was so impressed he made science his life.

Retired now from teaching he amuses himself by reading, writing, following his love of weather and correcting people on the internet.

He’s been writing since his teens and hopes he will one day get it right.

He can be found on twitter @KevinPhyland where he goes by the handle of CaptainZero and his work is around the place if you search using google or use the antisf.com.au archive.