Lester

  The desk flies across the room, colliding with the far wall.

  “Goddamn it!”

  The darkness swallows my words. I’m trying to reorganize my office. It is not going well.

  I concentrate again on my desk. I can’t see it in the dark, but I can feel its presence, just as surely as I…used to be able to feel my arms and legs.

  Up.

  UP!

  The desk shoots up like a rocket, hits the ceiling, falls to the floor, and explodes in a shower of spilt drawers and printer paper.

  “God DAMN IT!

  It has been hours with nothing to show. I’m tired and I’m frustrated.

  “I quit!” I resolve into the darkness.

  *

  Time passes.

  In the first-year lab on the main floor, the shadows lengthen, day ends, darkness falls, and the sun rises anew.

  *

  You can’t sleep when you’re dead. Not really. Maybe that’s why ghosts in horror movies are always so surly…or maybe they just can’t figure out how to move dishes around without smashing them.

  In the darkness, I can’t even read. There’s nothing I can do to pass the time.

  Finally, boredom overpowers frustration and I resume trying to clean my room.

  *

  The one desk is probably a write-off. I wonder how I managed to throw it so hard—or at all. That energy had to have come from somewhere, and if it came from my consciousness itself, what would happen if I used it all up?

  Experimentation first. No sense worrying about these questions until I can answer them. And to answer them, I need to be able to actually move objects.

  Chairs.

  Lighter than desks and probably won’t explode if dropped—at least, not the rinky-dinky plastic one where Original Lester used to force lab students to sit during office hours. I feel one lying over in a corner of the room.

  I regard the chair from all directions; concentrate on it. Maybe I don’t need to give it commands; maybe it should be as natural as flexing a muscle…

  The chair leaps in slow motion a metre into the air, tumbling end over end before abruptly dropping back onto the ground. Well, that’s some progress. Frustratingly little, but some.

  It’s like mastering the interface for a computer game that I never signed up for and can’t quit. Inwardly (whatever that means), I sigh and try again with the chair. Again, it leaps in slow motion, but now I try to remember that it’s part of me. I feel the breeze through the chair’s metal legs, the texture of the plastic, the disorientation of its spinning.

  I am the chair. The chair is me…

  This is stupid.

  The chair drops like a stone to the floor.

  “Goddamn it!”

  I’d gotten close that time, but my idiot mind had sabotaged me. What else was new?

  I’m trying to be a room, but I don’t know how to be one. All I know is how to be a man.

  Maybe that’s the key.

  Lester Briggs had been a man; when he’d died, I’d absorbed much of what he was. But he looked at the world from a single perspective: saw with a single pair of eyes, walked on legs, manipulated his surroundings with arms. Surely, I must have absorbed some memory of that, along with his conscious thoughts?

  I try to “see” the chair from a single perspective a few metres from it, approximately where Original Lester’s head would have been. If I can withdraw my consciousness from the chalk, then can I concentrate it somewhere too? The rest of my perception—the “telemetry” from the rest of the room—is still there, but I try to block it out—just enough that I can operate autonomously.

  I search for the memory of having legs and walk forward on them.

  I remember having a spine, and bend down with it.

  With the memory of my arms, I grab the chair…

  It’s weightier than it should be, but it moves. Not as easily as when moved directly, but with greater precision. I tense my imaginary muscles and pull it upright.

  Objectively, it’s a trivial accomplishment. Yet I feel pride greater than any I’ve felt since…

  Actually, I can’t recall ever feeling pride in this office.

  I spare a moment to bask in my alleged glory and take a deep breath with my imaginary lungs. Now there’s the rest of the room to see to.

  *

  More time passes.

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  I set the chairs and desks right-side-up and drag them to appropriate locations. Papers and books must be tidied and put in their appointed drawers and shelves.

  The work is arduous—harder than it would be if I had real muscles—and proceeds fitfully. Many times, I hold objects in my hands, remember that I don’t actually have hands, and feel them fall from my grasp. Occasionally, I quit outright, determined to feel sorry for myself no matter what Tamika says. Then I decide that that’s a stupid way to spend eternity and keep soldiering on.

  Eventually, the room ends up only slightly messier than it was before I trashed it, which I count as a victory. It would help if I could take out the garbage, but I make do.

  I hope Tamika will be proud of me.

  *

  Another day goes by, and now I’m focusing mostly on my aspect in the first-year lab. For a while, I even try getting back into Julia’s chalk, but if it’s still there, then it’s someplace quiet and dark.

  Where’s Tamika? They said they’d be back; I remember it. But anything could have happened to them on the outside, literally anything. Maybe they’d frozen to death, or been eaten by cannibals, or maybe a Fairy had turned them into a warthog. Maybe they’re off haunting a room of their own now.

  Where are the other students? Where are the profs? Surely Dr. Chen couldn’t have been the only one who’d felt bound to her research? Where were my officemates? Maybe the Fairies had had a change of heart and killed everyone after all. Maybe the food had been a cunning ruse to turn everyone into zombies—

  Zombies like my body before it had been vaporized.

  Don’t think of that.

  Oh God, but there had just been feet! Nothing left but feet, smouldering away a bare handful of metres from the first-year lab. Feet I’d used to walk on. Feet my mother (what was her name!?) had played “this-little-piggy-went-to-market” on when I’d been a baby. My mother whose name was—

  Enough!

  Being a mad scientist is less glamourous than the movies make it seem; they tend to downplay the “mad” part. I’ve got madness down. Now I need to do the science.

  *

  My first instinct is to create an imaginary body in the first-year lab. This doesn’t work. In my office, I haunt everything; here, I only haunt one book. And yet, I should be able to move things—by magic, if nothing else. That was how Dr. Chen’s Fairy had said it was supposed to work: changing the world through force of will alone.

  What else had he said? Everything has a soul, and magic is a matter of getting other souls to do your bidding.

  Well then. It was just a matter of negotiating with the souls of the lab equipment. Easy.

  Now: where were those souls?

  *

  Upon consideration, I’ve concluded my best bet is to go through the first-year lab manual, conducting each experiment in sequence to see how the results differ from expectation. I need a few things for this; the first is equipment, which is stored in the closet behind the far wall. The second is the lab manual itself, which is stored in a cabinet at the front of the room. I’m situated on a desk about two metres from the cabinet; I should get the manual first.

  For want of a better idea, I direct my attention toward the cabinet. “Psst!” I shout out loud. “Psst! Hey, cabinet!”

  The cabinet says nothing.

  “Cabinet! I need you to open!”

  The cabinet turns out to be stubborn.

  Of course, it couldn’t be that easy, could it?

  “Fine! Be that way!”

  A split second later, I realize how stupid the situation is and break out in a fit of ugly laughter. Oh god, I wish I had tear ducts. Stupid bloody cabinet!

  It would be so easy if the cabinet were in my office; then I could control it. But here, I’m powerless. I’m not the spirit of this room, but an invader, a foreigner, a—

  Who is the spirit of this room?

  Silly question. No one has died here. It wouldn’t be haunted.

  But that wasn’t what I meant, was it? I may be the spirit of an office that thinks it’s a man, but there had already been an office before Original Lester went and offed himself in it. It must have had a spirit.

  So: who was I before I was me? And is there someone like that here? Surely there must be professional courtesy between “genius locis”; but how do I get in touch? Where even is it?

  All around me, obviously. But all I can see are surface-level details—walls, workbenches, desks, pieces of the whole. The spirit—if I’m any guide—should lie somewhere behind this, like one big picture made of thousands of little ones. I just need to take a step back…

  As best I can, I block out all telemetry from my office and focus hard as I can on the first-year lab. In my mind, I form a polaroid image from the light incident on my book from each side. Still, it’s just fragmentary bits and pieces and—

  It comes into focus. I can see not just the room…but the Room. And, at some level, I understand that it can see me too. Not the book I’m haunting, nor my office; but me.

  “?”

  The thought—if you can call it that—does not come in anything so advanced as words. Just a vague impression of a question. But I know instantly that it’s coming from the lab itself. I can imagine its consciousness as a sort of waveform—slow, simple, uncomplicated. Its thoughts are primitive, but they’re there. Did I used to be like that?

  “Umm…hi.”

  “?”

  “My name is Lester Briggs. I’m…well…a ghost, but I’m a lot like you.”

  “?”

  “I’m the spirit of a room. Like you. A…a…‘genius loci’.”

  “?”

  “You know, we’re…we inhabit a particular region in space. Rooms. You know?”

  “?”

  This is getting nowhere. It’s like talking to a newborn baby; there’s a consciousness, but it’s too damn simple.

  Think, Lester! It’s a laboratory—a lab for first years. What would it know about?

  “I’m a student,” I try.

  “!”

  The sentiment is unmistakably excited. If nothing else, it recognizes the concept of a student, and the association seems to be positive.

  “I’m here to do an experiment.”

  “!!”

  In a strange sort of way, I feel like I’m holding a stick up for a puppy. “You know what an experiment is, don’t you boy?” I can’t resist saying.

  “!”

  In my metaphor, the lab is running around in a circle, barking excitedly.

  “Now…I need a lab manual,” I say, picturing it in my mind: a thick booklet of printed paper with the text formatted in LaTeX. “Do you know where I can find one, boy?”

  “!!” the lab “barks” happily. I don’t even need to say another word before the genius loci goes off to fetch it for me. The cabinet at the front of the classroom spontaneously unlocks with a “click” and throws itself open; the very manual I’d asked for flaps giddily toward me and deposits itself on the table beside me.

  “What a good boy!” I exclaim reflexively. Did Original Lester have a dog? I assume he must have. I wish I could scratch the lab’s spirit along the scruff of its neck, but neither of us have body parts, so instead I rub my haunted book against the tabletop as best I can manage. The lab (metaphorically) pants in blissful gratitude.

  I look at the cover of the manual. PHYS-1101 – Introduction to Physics Laboratory Manual. “I think I’ll call you ‘Intro’,” I tell the lab.

  “!” Intro exclaims, wagging its metaphorical tail.

  “Alright,” I say. “Could you turn the page for me, Intro?”

  “!”

  The page turns obediently; after a few seconds, I coax the lab into turning through the front matter, statistical explanations, and error-calculation formulae. Finally, the title page for Experiment #1 – “Measuring the Density of a Cylinder” looms open. For a moment I debate skipping it, but then decide that nothing can be taken for granted anymore.

  “Okay, boy,” I mutter. “This is where the fun begins.”

  *

  Grateful as I am for Intro’s boundless enthusiasm, it can be a lot of work getting him to do anything complicated. To make matters worse, a lot of experiments require electronic apparatuses, so I need to modify their procedures. But despite the difficulty, the results are unambiguous—and almost unbelievable under the circumstances.

  After long hours of work, I finally make my way to the end of the manual and study the results that I’ve tabulated by “hand” in my office. I feel Intro pressing expectantly against my consciousness.

  “Well, boy,” I say at last. “According to these results…it doesn’t look like the Shift happened at all.”