Secrets; I Tried To Keep Us Together, You Were Busy Keeping Secrets

The Big Deal

'You know, between you and me,' he would say conspiratorially, 'Between you and me, there are some Souls that choose quite ridiculously mundane lives, purely on account of the fantastical deaths which they know wait for them at the end.'

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'How fascinating,' the Poor Soul would reply, obviously impressed.

'Oh yes! Take this life, for instance. Well, it ends when, in the midst of bitter recriminations, your divorced partner decides they can control their grief no longer and plunges you both into the blades of an automated farming contraption! Just imagine that, will you?'

'I can't,' The Poor Soul would sadly reply.

'Well, of course you can't!' Quince would be enjoying himself by now, 'Not now you can't - but if you take this life, then you'll be able to ...'

The Poor Soul would be all too eager to jump for the life at this point, but Quince liked to play things out a bit.

'And if that isn't enough, then how about this?' he would leaf quickly through the life and find something that seemed half-interesting, 'You don't lose your virginity until you're forty - forty! - but when you do ... well, look at this!'

He would lean closer and show the life to his client.

'What is this?' the curious Soul would ask, perhaps slightly alarmed.

'They are quite common in the time when you will live, I am given to understand.'

'And this?'

'Horns, I believe.'

'And also this?'

'It appears to be a very small species of fish. Although quite what it's doing thereis anybody's guess.'

'Ah.'

'Although, of course, you don't have to guess. You could find out!'

The Poor Soul would be nuzzling towards him eagerly by now. A no-sale would be out of the question.

'And then there's the way you find out about your real parents, I mean wow ...'

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And on Quince would go, until he grew tired of his sport, and allowed his client to pass through the life he held out, unto what lay beyond.

Quince liked his job, and was never lonely, despite the complete absence of any real company. In fact, this was one of the reasons he enjoyed it so much. Here, he was the exception. Next to the Poor Souls he was a real standout, something special, something different. Here he was a Big Deal.

Occasionally he would wonder if it might not be nice to have a change; sometimes he even found himself pondering a life with an almost personal interest, wondering what it would be like to experience first-hand some of the things that seemed to go on in them. He had always held the opinion that life was almost certainly overrated, and probably something of a fad. But as non-time wore on, he began to wonder more and more whether he could perhaps be wrong. After all, he had never had any complaints ...

One day - or night or, at any rate, instant - a most curious thing happened. Quince was perusing a life he had picked at random from the apparently infinite mass of them that jostled forever just below him. He had observed the death first, as usual, and had been mildly amused to see it involved a religious element of frightfully complex, vaguely hopeful, and magnificently erroneous conceit. After this he had leafed through the layers, seeing nothing more of particular note, until he was stopped short by a component that inspired in him a most unusual feeling.