She produces a small vial of amber liquid. “Laced with DMSO for fast action.” I stick out my tongue. “How deep do you want to go?” I hold up three fingers. She administers three hundred micrograms, more or less, first to me, then herself. The alcohol solvent mildly burns my tongue. I momentarily see stars. My belly tumbles in anticipation. My skin tingles.

We had determined, by cross-referencing my recovered memories, that my most recent life had be that of Norman Hartweg, a no-name playwright from California, who was best known as Tom Wolfe’s snitch for
The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. This act of questionable loyalty turned out to be a massive break in my past-life recollection efforts, as it documented an otherwise mediocre, unmemorable turn at the Wheel. I like to think my soul knew it would be so.

“Norman” is the only of the six files marked by a proper name; the others are labeled, “Asian Field Officer (Mongol?) c. 800-1200”, “Eskimo Fisherman (undated)”, “Flutist, (Middle East?)”, “Rabbi, c.14?? (Europe,
poss. Spain), “Anasazi Corn Grinder (Female) c. 100-1300,” and “Miscellaneous”, which naturally contains random scattered impressions that could not be otherwise cataloged.

The problem is that, at least using Llewellyn’s technique, memories emerge much like stray recollections from a distant past during the current life-sudden moods, flashing images, fragments of conversation. Unlike recall within the present incarnation, however, there is no context. It’s a bit like trying to place a familiar stranger-but without the knowledge of which hangouts you’d frequented, jobs held, or schools attended.

Perhaps a computer analogy is in order. After all, man has created the machines in his own image. Every so often, it becomes necessary to completely replace the hardware. Naturally, you want keep all the information from your old hard drive, but to accumulate files from several generations of upgrades will quickly monopolize the memory availability on the new computer.

So a compromise is reached: compressed archiving, which preserves the essence of the data while making it inaccessible without a special application. You never use most of that stuff, anyway.

Unfortunately, the file names were converted to an unintelligible dialect of Sumerian by a malicious virus. The only way to see what’s there is to randomly decompress and hope for the best.

Maybe I’ll cast a spell when I get home. Haven’t done that in forever. Seemed easier just to buy things. My spiritual health, I realize with a heart- stopping flash, has never been more precarious. When did I get to be so…worldly?

Somewhere between the signing and cashing of the check, I dimly recall.

She answers the door wearing a low-slung pink chemise and no bra, judging from her smooth, tanned cleavage and prominent nipple bumps. Two rows of perfect white teeth shine between her inviting, ruby lips. Her brown, curly hair is down, fluffy, a tendril resting on each of the breasts I am involuntarily ogling. A part of me wants to take her right there in the doorway, but my calmer head prevails.

“Victor…come in, have a seat. Let me grab a drink and we’ll get started.” I watch her ass as she struts across the room. Miniskirt. My blood is boiling.

“So, did you find out about the biopsy?” she asks innocently, which has the effect of ten gallons of icewater on my lust. Why is everybody suddenly so goddamned concerned about my health?

Especially psychics?

“No…listen, today I want to try to put some things together from my last life. I’ve had some odd dreams lately.”

She nods her beautiful head, and goes over to the bottom drawer of a filing cabinet. “Your life as a Merry Prankster, right? Let me get my notes on that one.” She chooses a folder marked “Norman,” extracts it and sits down, setting her drink, which turns out to be coffee, on the appropriate table beside her. “Do you, uh, want anything, before we begin?”

Most past-life regression professionals stringently discourage the use of chemical agents for experiencing their services, and recommend avoiding even the most innocent of drugs prior to a session.

Llewellyn Reece is not among them. In her care, I have consumed psilocybin mushrooms, MDMA, LSD, and Ketamine, and a host of strange herbal brews from the dark jungles of the hot wet ancestral lands, all of
which evoke a different phase of memories. Her policy is to match the subject’s psychedelic state by ingesting the same prescription-to be on the same “wavelength”-but it in no way hampers her effectiveness as a therapist. Llewellyn has a fantastic capacity for any amount of any drug, from either a biological quirk, specific tolerance to each, or supreme discipline over her body and mind.

“Acid,” she explained, “is for ‘birth’ experiences. E can bring you back to when you met a soulmate. K summons the sensation of dying, and mushrooms can take you to the interstice between lives.” Her justification was that these drugs were actually analogous to chemicals produced at these momentous times in the brain itself.

My first impulse is to demure; then I think better of it. “Dose me,” I say. “I should be frying for this. After all, I practically tripped my way through that entire incarnation.”

A lump rises to my throat. “What do you see?” Crazy Bear sees auras and animal totems, and is regarded by several mutual acquaintances as a gifted clairvoyant. According to his third eye, I am, like him, a bear; though he claims I am a diminutive, lusty koala, while he himself is a Ukrainian black bear. The totem represents the last form, his theory holds, that a given individual occupied, prior to being human.

“I’m not sure. Maybe I’m just projecting my gloominess. That happens.” He looks uncomfortably around the cafe. “Look, I shouldn’t have mentioned it. It’s good to see you. Be sure to let me see your drafts. I have to run. I think I’ll go home and take a nice, long, decadent bath.” He offers his hand.

“Yeah, I have to be getting to my appointment. She can be vicious when you’re late.” We simultaneously rise and part.

My step is more leaden as I resume my trek down Religion Row, as if I somehow contracted Crazy Bear’s depression. Maybe it’s that place, I theorize. What the hell kind of a name is that, anyway, Ennui? And such a dump, really, considering those prices. No wonder it’s always nearly deserted.

No, that’s not it. It’s that creepy death prophesy. I shudder. He’s in a bad mood, I temporize, and he just wanted to bring me down. Despondency craves fraternity.

Why, then, did he rush so to change the subject and take leave of me before I could return to it? So I’d be that much more shaken and uncertain. But it doesn’t ring true. His flaw, if anything, is an excess of honesty; I can’t imagine Crazy Bear being cruel enough to inflict that sort of dishonest prank on a whim. I’ve always known him to be obsessively ethical within his unusual framework, even to a fault.

He was being philosophical, cryptic, declaring a generalization; only my superstitious mind took it for a prediction. Which brings me back, loopishly, to, why didn’t he just say so, when I was so obviously freaked? The only interpretation which seems to explain his action is

I’m going to die.

Well, everyone is. Maybe he saw something fifteen, twenty years down the line, and thought I was too jelly to take even such long-term news. Maybe I am. I still haven’t called about the lab results.

I’m never going to write that book.

It had never seemed important, before. The plans I mentioned to Crazy Bear were concocted on the spot, in fact; the matter of a follow-up to Desert Trance had listed somewhere between skinny dipping in my Jaccuzi with models, and bringing the Porsche in for an overpriced tune-up on my to-do schedule.

Now, with the reaper’s shadow killing my buzz, writing just one more seems to be the most urgent necessity of my existence. “Goddess,” I mumble. “I know I’m an ungrateful wretch.” This is how I usually begin after long periods of unpious silence. “I’ve turned my back on you, and I don’t blame you for not talking to me anymore. I’m greedy, I’m arrogant. I flush with pride over the words you whispered in my ear. I’ve neglected my rituals. But, oh, Goddess, if ever you loved me, if I pleased you only a bit in serving as your word processor, let me live long enough to deliver another volume of your love to the world. In the name of the Moon, Earth and Sun, I pray. Bless my work, if not my life.”

Which brings me to Llewellyn’s. I put the morbidity on a back burner, and check my hair in the obsidian reflection near the elevator. Maybe I am in love with her. Ridiculous.

He takes a scoopful of hummus with his pita bread. “The novelty wore off after a week or so. One day I scored a ten-dollar bill from this guy with his son. A cop had pulled him over for DUI, but having the kid in the car had gotten him a break. He was supposed to cool it for a few hours before trying to drive. ‘Son,’ he said. ‘Remember Old Pappy, the nice old man from in front of the corner store? He’s in Heaven now, but I always give to the street people in his memory. I want you to always do the same.’ It brought tears to my eyes, but also a sick feeling to my stomach, which though empty, was still counterfeit. I was nothing like sweet Old Pappy.”

“I went into a nice restaurant, and had a decent, vegetarian meal, and thought about all the ring dings and baloney sandwiches on starchy whitebread I’d been poisoning myself with, and started thinking I could open just one account, and eat like this every day, and stay each night in a hodie, and I knew it was over. I was still living a lie. Worse, I was stealing from the real homeless, taking donations that rightfully were earmarked for them. So I called the bank, unfroze some funds, and took a bus back here to contemplate what an irredeemable piece of shit I am.” He folds his arms, his tale told. “I’m losing my faith in anarchy.”

“My, you are selfish,” I remark. He looks hurt. “I asked you ten minutes ago how you were and you still haven’t asked me how I am. Let’s talk about me.”

“You’re right,” he says sullenly. “I’m a narcissistic pig. Okay, how are you, Victor?”

“I am fabulous. I’m on my way to see Llewellyn Reece. Thank you for giving me her number, by the way. She has amazing…abilities.”

This gets him to smile wanly. “She’s very insightful.”

“When I’m with her, I’m so comfortable. I feel I can tell her anything. She always knows just what to do.” I grin like a schoolboy.

“Just don’t fall in love with her. She’s a witch, you know.”

I’m not at all sure what he means by this; he’s the last person I would expect to express religious prejudice, particularly against witches. “Well, ah, it’s strictly professional…”

“Watch your heart, is all. She’s a player. Don’t ever think you can cage that bird. A confirmed free agent. It’s all about power for her. She gets off on what she brings out in you.”

I shake my head. “It’s not like that. It’s…therapy.”

“Have it your way. Then why are you so damned cheerful, if you’re not gone roses-are-red on Llewellyn?”

“Because the sun is shining, the birds are singing, I drive a Porsche, and, unlike you, I know how to appreciate being affluent. It’s not a tragedy, you know. People work very hard, all their lives, to get the thousandth part of what you have, and most of them fail. If you have anything to feel guilty about, in my opinion, it’s thumbing your nose at the advantages which fill the dreams of the world’s great unwashed. How ungrateful! It’s a crime not to be enjoying every minute of it.” I call the waitress and order an eight-
dollar specialty drink and a bagel with cream cheese. She is moderately attractive, straight blond hair and bright hazel eyes, ten pounds on the chunky side, which can be soft, so I flirt with her, mostly to prove to Crazy Bear that I am most definitely not in love with Llewellyn Reece.

“Anyway, I’m glad that’s working out. How’s the writing coming?”

Wrong question. “Well, I’m toying with several ideas, nothing at the paper stage yet, of course. I think maybe I’d like to do some science-fiction, or more like ‘psi’-ence fiction,” I coin, tapping my forehead to clarify the homophone. “Something about auras, or TK, or secret societies, or maybe even reincarnation. I certainly have the material. I feel this tremendous pressure, though, to be original. I think that’s holding me back, The next novel answers a question I’ve been torturing myself with: was success a fluke, or do I really have ability? So, naturally, I’m taking my time.”

“Well,” he says ominously, “be careful about that, too. You may have less than you think.”