One second I am in a car, hurtling through space, sailing down an embankment.

And the next I am in my bed, staring at the ceiling, and a particularly nasty cobweb hanging in one corner.

Usually when you wake up from one of those dreams, one of those this-is-it, we're-all-gonna-die numbers, you experience a lingering moment of panic.  You've just checked in with the reaper.  Glimpsed a preview of that day, years distant if you're lucky, when it won't be a dream, just a cold, hard fact.  And yet as I lay there, tucked beneath the covers, I felt calm instead.  Almost serene.  After all these months of questions and confusions, of false leads, dead ends and go-nowhere theories, I finally had an answer.

I knew what was going on.

And knowing, the rest was easy.

I've always been leery of our brave, new world.  A world where we're all connected.  But still, when it's time to track down some obscure song lyric, or find a replacement pilot light assembly for a fifteen-year-old greenhouse heater, I have to admit there are advantages to living in the future.  It turns out that the Great State of Utah Highway Safety Administration has a highly detailed, unfailingly accurate data base of all major traffic incidents, infractions and collisions, available to the general public at the click of a mouse.  Do mice click?  I thought they squeaked.  Turns out Nevada has a similar site, just as thorough, just as user-friendly.

By checking the transplant calendar, I could figure out which day it was last spring, that fateful day when the person I called Simon first wandered into my life.  April 19th, in case you're interested.  And then, just to be safe, I went back another six months, because I'm no expert in metaphysics, and maybe these things take a while to set up, what with the paperwork and all.  Which left me, in the end, with just over a year of records to dig through.  And to make matters even simpler, I could eliminate most entries, the DUI's, the speeding tickets, the minor fender benders.  Because I was going for the big grand prize.  Capital F, for fatality.

Say the word ghost, and what do you think?  Some kid on Halloween night, in an old sheet, with two holes cut out for his eyes.  Or maybe it's a squeak on the stair, a chill in the room, or that mysterious blob of ectoplasm.  The point is, our heads are so full of prejudices, preconceptions, that when the real thing comes along, bites us on the hand, we can't even recognize it.  Of course he was a ghost.  How could he be anything else?  Which also meant, of course, that I wasn't, hadn't been, crazy.  Just sensitive.  Aware.  Exactly the kind of tuned-in, turned-on human being any dead person would be happy to hang out with.

So I finally had it all figured out.  Or did I?  After checking the on-line records, going back a full year for both states, I discovered there'd been no fatal, single-vehicle accidents involving a Charles, a Chuck or even - just to be a safe - a Simon.  Not unless my thirty-something techie was actually an eighty-one-year-old resident of Salt Lake.  So he wasn't dead.  But my grand theory was.  Either it was back to square one, back to me being crazy, or something else had happened.

Something else.

A something else that kept me busy for the best part of a month.  A something else that kept me on-line, on the phone, on tenterhooks.  A something else that convinced me to lie, cheat, fabricate and connive, to do whatever it takes, and which finally led me here, to this day, this place, this moment in time.

"Can I help you?"

"Yes, I'm here to see Charles.  Charles Ames."

She smiles.  Nods.  Hands me a very nice, very glossy pamphlet with a picture on the cover, a young child holding a red balloon.  Visiting Your Loved Ones.

"He should be in the Atrium right now."  She sees my confusion, goes on to explain.  "We like to make sure they get lots of daylight.  Just take the main hall, and follow the blue arrows."

I thank her.  Find the hall.  Follow the arrows. 

This place is called Avera.  Which sounds like a pain reliever, and which, in a way, it is.  It is not a hospital or a hospice, an assisted living or a skilled nursing facility, or any of those safe, bland, disingenuous terms we use for the places we get sent to before we die.  It is located on the outskirts of Redwood City, on a big, quiet, beautifully landscaped lot that actually includes quite a few redwoods scattered around the premises.

Visits here are arranged by appointment, so I've made my call in advance.  And I have the feeling, after talking to the receptionist, that there used to be quite a few of us dropping by.  People from work mostly, plus a contingent of hardcore fans, offering up prayers to Z'aajnor, the god of all true gamers.  Still, I had no trouble booking a slot.  It has been almost a year after all, and hope tends to have a short shelf life. 

The hallway is carpeted.  The walls a gentle off-white.  And instead of an intercom, or monitors beeping away in the background, all I can hear is some kind of nondescript instrumental music wafting through the air.  It does not, in short, feel like a place for sick people.  In fact, it doesn't feel like any place at all.  More like a moment, suspended in time.  That moment between when we draw a breath in, and when we slowly release it again.  The moment when we choose to either live, or to die.

The atrium, when I find it, is huge.  Light floods down from several skylights, and one whole wall is nothing but glass, a series of interconnected windows that face out towards the carefully sculpted grounds.  But it's not the room you notice, it's the people.  Ten or twelve of them, each one stretched out in some kind of reclining bed, and covered with matching baby blue blankets.  The beds, which are wheeled, have all been lined up to face the windows, perfectly parallel, equally spaced, with almost military precision.  Seeing them there, it's a statement.  An insistence.  They're not just lying there, passive, inert.  They're watching.  Watching the world go by.

And yet their eyes are closed.

Some of them look old and fragile.  Some seem almost healthy, young.  There's the same mix of gender, race and skin tone, that carefully random blend, you'd see in an ad for Coke, or car insurance.  Moving closer, I want to study each face, read the story behind those drawn lids, but somehow it feels wrong.  Intrusive.  There's nobody else there in the room, or at least nobody standing, and for a moment I feel as though I'm the one who's got something wrong, the one who's sick, aberrant.  It would be easy, so easy right then, to just turn around, go home, pretend this place doesn't exist.

And then I see him.  Half-way down.  Right next to a bald, elderly man, his gaunt skull speckled with liver spots.  Maybe it's just that, the contrast, the disparity in age and appearance, but his neighbor looks so young.  So untouched.  He's always been pale, but his skin seems now to almost glow with a soft, bluish light.  And there's something about his face.  When you look at a person, you can pretend all you're seeing is an assemblage of parts, a nose, a mouth, two eyes.  But really what you're seeing is what animates those parts, the thoughts, the emotions.  The self.  You see it, know it, but somehow forget the fact.  Until the moment it's no longer there.

I take a few steps.  Bring myself closer.  I am the anxious parent, stealing into the nursery, afraid to wake the baby.  But this baby won't wake.  Not soon.  Maybe not ever.

Staring at him, I feel angry, pissed off.  At myself.  At the world.  At the lottery we call life.  I'd taken my bite of the apple, and missed a few nights sleep.  But the one he'd tasted had been tainted.  Poisoned.  Sleep was all he had left.  

"So that's me."

I almost jump out of my skin. 

Then turn to find him right next to me, staring down at his own blank face.