The man pressed a button and his zipper went up on its own. “New hoodie, new technology,” the ad had said, and the ad was right. He was in his train seat, looking up at the row of screens. One was programming (a woman deep in conversation with her boss), one was advertising (insurance of course), and the third was information about the journey (current time, current weather at current location, speed of train, time to final destination). All were available through bluetooth headphones that had been handed out at the beginning of the trip. The man had slept the first hour or two, woken briefly when the chime sounded for lunch, dozed off for another forty-five. Throughout, his seat mate had been awake, assiduously writing in a large red ledger. She had boarded the train at the second stop, said a pleasant hello, and asked him to help her put her bag on the overhead rack. He had complied enthusiastically—he would have no matter who had asked, but the fact that the request was coming from an attractive woman about his age in a clearly expensive skirt and top did not escape his notice. He noticed her noticing his hoodie, which meant she probably knew how much it cost. Right after sitting down, she had stood back up to retrieve the ledger from her bag, at which point she had started writing in it. What she wrote was numbers, seemingly a random string, appearing on the page at a clip. She filled one page, turned it, filled a second, started in on a third. Her manner was not rude at all, but it was focused, and he soon lost interest in the moment and drifted off. Each time he had woken, he had glanced over to see her still writing numbers in her ledger, and each time he had weighed the appropriateness of asking her about it. Now he felt the time was right. “Excuse me,” he said. “Can I ask what you’re writing?” She answered without pausing. “This is information,” she said. “About?” he said. “About all of us,” she said. “As you know, each of us when born is assigned a number.” “A Social Security number?” he said. “No,” she said. “That’s just for Americans of course. Every human gets a number. So I am writing down all those numbers, in alphabetical order by name, which I am not writing.” “So a code?” “You could say that,” she said. “So a directory?” “Not only,” she said. “I’m writing the identifying number of every living human, which is ten digits, and then after that I am writing the time of death, which is twelve digits.” “Death?” “Yes,” she said. “Demise. Expiration. The passing out of conventional existence. Twelve digits because hour hour, minute minute, day day, month month, year year year year. I’m using military time not standard of course to avoid inserting any letters.” He tried a joke. “Have you gotten to me yet?” “Yes.” She did not change her tone or even look up from the page. “You went by about twenty minutes ago. You were sleeping.” “So when does it happen?” “What?” “Death?” “I can’t tell you that but I can tell you the number and you can figure it out.” “Okay.” “She rattled off a string of numbers. “You remember it?” he said. He was impressed. “Sure,” she said. “It’s the same as my number.” She repeated the string. This time, something sounded familiar. “That first part,” he said. “It’s the time?” “Yes,” she said. “Weird,” he said. “Because the time you said is basically right n…” He was drowned out by the screech of the train as the brakes tried and failed to grip the track. There were no survivors.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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