Soul Census - War of Shadows - Book 1

Chapter 1.4 - The Atrium

Earth Date: 9th of April 1933 CE
Location: The Atrium, Soul Sphere, Earth

Despite telling them he did not want a full history lesson, Maddock ended up getting one every time he asked a simple question. From all the crazy gum-bumping, he was able to retain a few useful bits.

Apparently, there was life after death, and that motion picture he had seen earlier was actually himself in another life—right before he died. Now, normally he would have told them that was a bunch of hooey, but he’d seen enough already this night to shatter what few truths he clung to… not that he had many to begin with.

Of course, that wasn’t the topper. They were also part of a secret government agency called Census, which was something like an embassy between the living and dead. There was even some kind of communication between the suits here in Census and the dead people’s embassy. Crazy stuff.

“So tell me this, cupcake,” Maddock said. “Why don’t we tell people about all of this? About how there’s more to us than just worm food in the end and that there’s life after death and all that?”

“Many reasons,” Black said.

As the three of them walked down a hallway, Maddock could sense her trying to avoid eye contact. Actually, it seemed she was trying to avoid looking in his direction at all. I guess she didn’t like him.

“Many reasons, huh?” Maddock pressed, purposely stepping in front of her to break her stride.

She crossed her arms and gave him a deadly look. She was a real bear cat, all right—he liked that.

“The main reason,” Wolfe began, trying to step in between, “is so they don’t see life for what it really is.”

“Yeah? And what would that be?” Maddock said.

“A game,” Wolfe said.

“Don’t trivialize it, Agent,” Black said, shifting her fire onto Wolfe now.

“I wasn’t, Director,” Wolfe said. “I was simply stating what the populace might think.”

The Director kept her gaze on Wolfe. Maddock wondered why all the fuss.

Black said, “Then you better make it clear that those are not your opinions—lest others get the wrong impression.”

Wolfe pursed his lips. “Of course. My apologies, Director.”

Maddock was amused by the spectacle. They sure give this dame a ton of respect.

She turned to Maddock next. “Life is a sacred contract, Mr. Maddock,” she said. “Not a game. Not ever a game.”

Maddock didn’t know what to say to that. “Not sure what I was in my past life,” he said. “But I’m not a philosopher in this one, doll.”

The three of them walked on, tailed by a few of the other bimbos. After a few minutes, the skirt had enough of what she called “degrading terms of endearment” and scrammed—leaving mostly just him and Wolfe to continue on. Too bad, as she was a lot nicer to look at; and he was sure she was just starting to like him.

Wolfe soon led him through a long hallway, patrolled by countless other plugs—men and women. Same exact suits too. Maddock wondered how many people worked in this place.

As he looked around, he noticed for the first time that he could not find any obvious source of light, yet everything had an even glow to it… and no shadows either. Weird.

“So let me get this straight,” Maddock said. “One of your jobs is to be an embassy between living and dead people, right?”

Wolfe sighed. “A better way of saying it is it’s an embassy for communication between our government and the governing spirit groups.”

“Embassy, huh?” he said. “You know, you probably don’t know this about me, but I’m not exactly the diplomatic type.”

Wolfe gave a chuckle.

So the guy actually does have emotions, Maddock thought.

“Fortunately for you, diplomacy is only one department in Census; there are others. You are a good fit for something else.”

Maddock was about to press him on that when they turned a corner that opened up into a cavernous room. Like most of the construction he had seen so far, it had something of an underwater or seashell-like appearance, with ragged lines etched into all the surfaces.

Filling the inner part of the room were rows of sophisticated-looking machinery. Switches, wires, and blinking lights adorned the machines. Dozens of workers operated them, walking up and down the aisles, tending to them like crazed cooks in a kitchen. All of them sported long, open white coats. It was the first time he’d seen these guys wearing anything but suits.

Wolfe called the scientists wizards and explained that they referred to this room as the Atrium, and that it served as the nerve center of the entire complex. All of the machines in the Atrium were indecipherable to Maddock, except for one that caught his eye. It was a light-up sign with the numbers one through five vertically set on it. The number three was the only one illuminated. He stopped Wolfe to ask him about it.

“That is our Cycle Condition—CycleCon for short. It is a status of the overall health of the Soul Sphere.”

“Health?” Maddock said. “What do you mean by that?”

Wolfe began babbling something, but what Maddock saw next took all of his attention—the strangest of sights he had seen so far in this place.

Emerging from the ground, it was a gray-colored monolith that towered over everything, probably seven stories high. It was concave in shape and looked a bit like a film screen. Multicolored lights in the shape of symbols and moving pictures continually appeared and disappeared from its surface. It seemed like some huge notebook that magically wrote, erased, and then redrew symbols and pictures.

Floating in front of this monolith, about three meters up, was a rotating globe of Earth. Countless points of light twinkled from within the landmasses. Some of the lights were white; the majority were red. He noticed that the oceans and parts of the northeast US were mostly unlit.

“What do the lights mean?” Maddock said.

“Soul signatures,” Wolfe said, as if that answered his question.

Maddock could have pressed, but he wanted to avoid a history lesson. He instead continued inspecting the monolith. The symbols and pictures were alien to him, but toward the very top he made out the only thing he could understand: a bunch of M’s and C’s… Roman numerals.

As he attempted to add up the numbers, they changed on him—7,324 was the last count on the left side. The right side had a number too, but it was too long to add up. A big number, whatever it was.

“What’s that up there?” he said.

Wolfe tried to follow his gaze. “What?”

Maddock snapped his fingers and pointed. “There, four-eyes—the Roman numerals.”

Wolfe shot him a scowl. “You haven’t heard a damn thing I’ve been telling you, have you?”

“Pipe down, Wolfey,” Maddock said. “And yeah, I’ve seen your lips bumping and some sound come out. It’s just that I think much better after I’ve had my cup of joe and ciggy—and so far you’ve come up short on both, pal.”

Wolfe lowered his face to rub his eyes. As he did so, his glasses slipped off. He stumbled trying to save them, but Maddock’s reflexes caught them instead. Wolfe looked up at him, probably uncertain how to interpret Maddock’s grin.

“Answer the question,” Maddock said, dangling the glasses high in the air. “Or I’m going to make you two eyes less.”

“I would,” Wolfe said. “And I am also trying to get you some of that coffee you keep asking for, but it’s still a long walk to the coffee machine, and you will get plenty of questions answered along the way. But this will only happen if you can manage to develop the virtue of patience within your collection of vices.”

Maddock smiled and gave the glasses back to him. “Just spit it out, but save the history lesson for someone else,” he said, again pointing at the monolith. “What is this thing?”

“That thing is the Soul Census,” Wolfe said. “It tracks the progression of souls as they reincarnate and allows us to home in on any that need to be dealt with.”

“I thought this whole place was Soul Census?”

“You need to listen better,” Wolfe said as he rubbed a cloth on his lenses. “I already said that this place is called the Soul Sphere. But the device is the Soul Census.”

Maddock continued staring at the Soul Census while listening. The number on the left counted down, and the other counted up.

“The Roman numerals… what do they mean?”

“That—7,324,” Wolfe said, pointing to the left number, “is how many lost souls are left. And that”—he pointed to the number on the right—“is how many have been recovered. Those numbers are our job. Our job is to decrease the number on the left.” Wolfe raised his spectacles in the air. ”You see, there are places all around the Earth where lost souls gather—some people call them haunted places, and the souls, they call ghosts. We are sent to these places to help them… to recover them and lead them back here to the Soul Sphere.

“With the aid of certain devices that we have constructed with help from our spirit friends, we can contact these lost souls, recalibrate their energy, and bring them here—to be released so that that they can join their brethren on the other side.”

“Hmm,” Maddock said. “So it’s like we’re the border patrol for ghosts.”

For some reason Wolfe made a face. “We are more than just a border patrol!” he spat. “We are an embassy for the living, among many other things that you probably wouldn’t understand yet.”

Maddock shrugged. “Well, call it whatever you want. I’m still not following what my part is in all this. I get the feeling I’m not the kind of guy that would normally be part of all this.”

“Clearly,” Wolfe said. “However, there is more to you than even you realize, or you would not be here. You are to join the enforcement division of the Agency—which helps to find lost souls and deals with incursions for those that should not be here.”

“An enforcement division… that ‘helps,’ huh?” Maddock said with a chuckle. “Yeah, okay, I’ll pretend to believe that part.”

Maddock pointed at the monolith.

“With those numbers, what’s the point of getting me so late in this game? Seems like the majority of the work is already done. Number of lost souls up there is not a big number, especially with how many suits you got working for you here.”

“I wish that were true,” Wolfe said, putting his glasses back on. “But the last of these souls are the most powerful and also the most… confused. This makes them dangerous at times. They also cause other issues with the Cycle.”

“Cycle? What Cycle?” Maddock said.

Wolfe sighed. “When are you going to open those ears and listen? The Cycle is the birth, death, and rebirth cycle of life. Reincarnation itself.”

Wolfe took a step closer to the monolith. He then looked over to the wizards and gestured to one of them.

“Begin the séance,” Wolfe said to the scientist.

The entire chamber suddenly darkened, with the only light emanating from the machinery and the monolith. All the suits and wizards stopped what they were doing to stare at it; Maddock guessed this was something they thought important.

“Greetings, Caretaker Akshat,” Wolfe said to it, then looked at his wrist. “It is April ninth, 1933 CE, at 15:52:32 GMT… mark!”

“Who’s this Akshat? Who are you whackos talking—” Maddock began, but was interrupted by a static-like noise that washed over the entire Atrium.

From within the white noise, a voice spoke. “Soul… Census,” the voice said, sounding broken at first. “Agent… Wolfe. I can… hold this séance open for… thirty seconds.”
“Thank you, Caretaker,” Wolfe said. “This will not take long. Please show us the nearest Cycle to our location.”

Wolfe turned to Maddock and pointed to the Earth globe. Maddock watched the globe spin. It seemed to focus in on a point of white light, which became increasingly brighter and then suddenly darted across another part of the globe, where it became dim again.

“That was the birth and death of a Soul Guide—advanced souls who volunteer to participate in the incarnation process: to be born into a human baby, live a full life, and then die. In that time, it will complete some important tasks that affect the overall future of mankind. That process is called the Cycle.”

Wolfe turned away toward the monolith. “Caretaker, thank you. You may close the séance,” he said.

The lights in the Atrium came back on, and the suits and wizards dispersed, going back to their original tasks.

“Who is this Caretaker you were talking to?” Maddock said.

“That is not something you’re ready to understand,” Wolfe said. “All I can tell you is that he operates the Soul Census Monolith from the other side.”

“What—now you’re going to hold out on me?” Maddock said. “Don’t stop now, Wolfey. I’m actually listening.”

The twit seemed unmoved. “My explanation will have to suffice for the moment, Maddy.”

As Wolfe was talking, Maddock noticed a light on the Earth globe dart across and dim out.

“You said that light was birth and death,” Maddock said. “That whole thing lasted seconds. Were these guys just dying at birth or what?”

Wolfe smiled. “You’re observant for a change. You are right: it did seem to last only a few seconds. However, the reality is that it lasted much longer. You see, that soul lived an entire life, maybe sixty or seventy Earth years, then its body died in what seemed like seconds to us as observers. I know you’re probably not going to understand this fully. Did you ever read the story The Time Machine by H. G. Wells?”

“Never heard of it,” Maddock said. “But then I never could much afford books.”

“I see I have my work cut out for me,” Wolfe said. “The Soul Census has the ability to exist in a different dimension—a timeless dimension. The fact that we can even see those lights move across is a product of our application of thought, providing a filter of time to the event so that we can see it unfold more slowly and—”

“It didn’t happen more slowly,” Maddock interrupted.

“It depends on your perspective. If time is instantaneous to you, then those few seconds are much slower than no time at all.”

“Yeah, okay,” Maddock said, waving his hand dismissively. “Forget I asked. You said something about these souls being dangerous. How do we deal with someone who’s dead? And how can they be dangerous? I mean… they’re dead?”

Wolfe shook his head. “The body dies; souls don’t. You remember what I said earlier about the Rapture?”

“Not another history less—”

Wolfe cut him off: “The Rapture killed over seventy-five million people—an event that the history books call the Black Death. The truth is, the disease was caused by this.” He motioned around them. “The Soul Sphere… this entire building we are in right now. It poisoned their souls and the disease was just how it manifested physically in their bodies.”

Maddock waited for him to continue, but he stopped there.

“Go on, Wolfey,” he urged him. “I’m still listening.”

This time Wolfe bit his lip at the nickname. Guess he doesn’t like it.

They resumed their walk while speaking.

“Very well,” Wolfe said. “The Soul Sphere crashed on Earth. It was not supposed to crash—it was supposed to stay in orbit pretty much forever. But something happened and it crashed, nearly wiping out the entire population of both Earth and the Spirit Realm.”

“Wait a second… what do you mean, Spirit Realm?” He pointed up. “You mean up there? Like in the sky?”

Wolfe shook his head. “I need to stop this tour and just sit you in an orientation room to read the basics…”

“No!” Maddock said. “I don’t like to read. Just keep going with the Rapture thing.”

Wolfe turned away and led him away from the Monolith as he spoke. “The Spirit Realm is basically where spirits—our souls—are born and live for the majority of their existence. It’s not in the sky; it’s in another dimension, like another world that you can’t see with your eyes.

“The Soul Sphere’s most important role is to regulate the reincarnation process. Essentially to make sure that souls are able to go back and forth between their bodies on Earth and the Spirit Realm. It also facilitates the process of choosing a body, as well as some other functions.”

They reached a wall that Wolfe leaned into. As he did so, the wall seemed to cave in, and then he motioned for Maddock to follow. As Maddock stepped in behind him, the wall popped like a bubble, and when he reached the other side, it receded and reformed into a wall. They were inside a room that appeared to be a galley with long tables, and they seemed to be alone there.

“When the Rapture happened,” Wolfe said as he led him across the galley, “the souls of those seventy-five million were… damaged by the impact. The trauma caused these souls to be lost—drifting on Earth, sometimes manifesting themselves as ghosts or demons, or possessing the bodies of other humans, causing all kinds of mischief. As you might imagine, this has been going on for a long time.”

They reached a coffeepot, and Wolfe poured a cup. Maddock grabbed the cup and took a sip. It was cold, but he didn’t care.

“So the Soul Sphere crashed somewhere in New York, right?” Maddock said.

Wolfe nodded. “Yes… how did you figure that out?”

Maddock waved around. “I’m guessing this place would be too hard to relocate, so you probably just moved right in. And something else …” Maddock spun his finger in the air. “That globe back in the Atrium didn’t have as many lights in the northeast… particularly in New York. Am I right?”

Wolfe nodded, now pouring himself a cup. “Yes. Soul Census is, ironically enough, blind to the very part of the world where it sits. Now… we need to end this topic, as I’m afraid I need to take you through some training.”

“I don’t need any kind of train—”

“Yes you do,” he heard a voice from behind say.

He turned to see Black, holding a hanger with a suit for him.

“If you want this,” she said, “you need to finish training—no exceptions, no room for discussion. Either you do it or you’re back on the streets. Understood?”

Looked like she wasn’t giving him much choice.

“All right,” he said, beginning to unbutton his shirt.

“What-What are you doing?” Black said.

“Need to try the suit out,” he said.

“There is a private room we can take you to…” Black began, but then Maddock dropped his pants.

Despite her exaggerated display of disgust, she did not look away.

“Don’t blow your wig, doll,” Maddock said. “I need to know how it looks before I start any kind of training. It has to look good on me. Oh, and you …” He snapped his fingers at Wolfe. “Bring me a mirror.”

“Never figured you for vanity, Mr. Maddock,” Black said, putting the suit on a nearby table, then stepping away.

Maddock grabbed it, never letting his smile drop. “A lot you don’t know about me, honey,” he said, stuffing a leg into the trousers. “Maybe if I stick around here long enough, you’ll get to discover some of it firsthand.”

Director Black shook her head, then strode off.

“Yeah,” Maddock said. “She definitely likes me.”