Sign Here(5)

I grabbed my tablet and clicked Confirm.

It was go time.



* * *



—

BEFORE I GO ON, I suppose it’s important to know how time works down here.

Surveys say that this is a complicated concept for your spit glob of a brain, so we have designed a metaphor for your consumption. Imagine the entirety of existence is inside a post office. Earth as you know it is a wall of PO boxes, and Hell is everything outside of that. For you, inside your PO boxes, time passes. But for us, on the outside, time doesn’t exist. There’s no aging, no ticking pressure of mortality. No pressure to survive or procreate. Some Fifth Floor employees find it easier to hold on to the loose framework established on the surface, using words like “millennia” to describe the passage of time. This can help some people keep the insanity at bay, but ultimately it doesn’t matter. We are here, doing this, forever. But there is no second death, so we don’t have a choice!

You are all inside time, and we are outside. Got it?

When we get a request on our tablet, the place and time of the request will flash on the screen. When we accept, it is like opening a particular PO box. We are able to go into that time, secure the deal, and then return to our side of the wall. It doesn’t matter what the time is; I rarely pay attention anymore. But it allows for making deals across centuries, granting full and unlimited access to humanity’s gaping pit of need. The only time period we can’t access is the time we were alive. That’s so that we can’t go back and inform ourselves about our inevitable fate, which would cut down on the Hell workforce significantly. But I don’t notice this because I can’t remember when I was alive, and neither can the rest of us. Probably for the best.

So, this girl was upset about maybe not getting into college at some point in time, during which I, as a human, apparently never existed. After about a trillion of these deals, you stop caring about the rest of the details. There are a couple of other points they put in our orientation binder that you should probably know if you want to keep up. I’ll summarize them for you, but just this once.

Deals Department employees are allotted only a certain amount of time per deal. Whenever we select a new deal, the timer will reset, but if we spend too long in one place without signing a deal, our heartbeats (manufactured by the travel device for display only) will slow until the timer stops, and our unconscious sacks will be shipped back down to Hell, where we will be reassigned to the Downstairs immediately. That’s why I watch for symptoms such as weakness, inability to freeze time consistently, and physical pain. If I were to pass out, I’d know it was too late.

While on the surface, we have the (limited) ability to freeze time. This provides the chance to pause and check notes whenever a deal gets stuck, or when the performance of minor parlor tricks is necessary to make humans find us impressive and therefore trust us.

Some tablets can be customized to allow for multiple team members’ arrivals and departures. Meaning, if given a position of authority by KQ, I could hold on to a subordinate or subordinates when traveling, or ship coworkers back down to Hell if they were no longer contributing to a deal.

That’s enough education. If you don’t get it by now, you won’t make it on the Fifth Floor, and I’m wasting my breath.



* * *



—

I HAD TO SIT on the curb for a second before I could stand. It was a hard transition, going from Hell to Earth. But it was even harder on the way back. The air on Earth is so delicious. I can’t understand why you people insist on ruining it. It’s like you’ve been given the best feast in the world, and you let nine billion people use the table as a toilet. But then you freak out if your neighbor’s dog poops on your lawn.

“Can I help you?” I asked as I approached the girl. KQ made us practice our Trustworthy poses during every Thursday meeting, but the girl startled anyway. They always do.

“Who are you?”

“I’m the answer to your prayers,” I said. It wasn’t a total lie. I was an answer.

“What—how—?”

“You said you wanted good news, right?”

“Yes,” she said, the mailbox between us.

“Well, I’m here to help.”

“I—I can’t—” she said, looking at her front door.

“Don’t worry, they can’t see me. I’ve paused everything.” I reached my hand out just over her ear. She flinched, but I didn’t touch her. Instead, I plucked a butterfly from the air, frozen in flight. I placed the butterfly on the girl’s index finger and flicked my wrist. It fluttered into movement. I flicked my wrist again, and it dropped back to her finger. Her eyes went wide.

Humans always turn to putty around butterflies.

“So,” I asked, “how can I help you?”

“If I don’t get into Stanford, my mother will kill me,” the girl said, wide eyes welling. “I mean literally kill me. Like, I won’t be allowed to do anything.”

This is why I love Spec Threes: they have the softest expectations of what it means to die.

“I don’t know what to do,” she went on. “The letter should be in here, but I’m too scared to open the mailbox.”

“Don’t worry . . . ,” I said, pausing in the way that makes a person tell you their name.