Judges

Chapter Two

Infinity

I wake up in a room with bare walls and a carpeted floor, and everything is white. A boy, around seventeen, stands in the middle, with blonde hair and kind eyes, and he looks down at me. I roll my eyes at the sight of him.

"So you're awake. Took long enough."

"What do you want, Alastair? You jerk, I told you how I felt about coming back." I sigh and pick myself up off the floor, and rub my eyes.

"You went into the City of Palaces, didn't you?" He pauses, and when I don't answer, he continues. "I'm supposed to tell you what your next job is."

"I thought I was done," I say, "When I said I would like to go on with the rest of my existence, after the Judging in New York, last month, you agreed that I was done."

Alastair pulls a chair up for me, and I sit. "That wasn't last month, Augusta. That was six years ago."

I gasp, and he pats me on the shoulder. I've stayed out since 1988. That means it is 1994 now... I had forgotten that time does not exist for the dead. It only exists for the living.

"Six years? When I left, I said I was never coming back. I mean, I knew you would call me back out here for something, but I expected around fifty years at the very least. But six? Are you kidding me?"

"It was years, Augusta!"

"It felt like two seconds. Leave me alone!"

"Actually, it was around 188,697,600 seconds, but who's counting?" He asks, and laughs at himself.

"Alastair, leave me alone. I said I had a problem with this job, I made that pretty clear. The last time was bad, okay? Terrible, actually, and I'm never doing it again." I sigh. "Please, just stop."

"Augusta, we get that you don't like this. I think you said, and I quote, 'this is a bunch of crap, I'm not doing this anymore, I can't take it!' and that was very enlightening. But, really, you never said what actually happened."

"It's because it was awful, and I don't like to think about it. I'm dead, I shouldn't have to deal with this." I flop down in a chair that sits in the corner of the bare room.

"Augusta, it has been nearly a hundred years since our deaths, could you please catch up? I need you to focus. We have a particularly difficult one down there."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean he is difficult to understand. To judge. The big shots said you were our most levelheaded and unbiased judge, so they want you to do this last one. Then they're letting you go and do whatever the hell you were doing before." He laughs, and leans back in his recliner. "But there will be a change this time. I think you ought to know about it before you go down there and make a fool of yourself, doing whatever you usually do."

"I never agreed to this." He stares at me. "Fine. What's the big deal?" I'm getting irritated, who does he think he is?

He laughs. "You're going to have a physical body this time; you're not going down as a specter. You have to speak to him, and learn about him from him."

"What? That's how the entire system works. We go down, they can't see us, we watch them, judge, and leave. I don't need to deal with other people interacting with me to judge someone. I just need to see how he acts."

"Don't you think we've tried that? We've already tried everything you think you can tell me. This... kid... has baffled us. I'm getting ready to request to see what he's thinking, even though that's against about every rule we have here..." He grows red. "Look, we need you to talk to him. As a human. Could you just do that?"

"I suppose." I mumble.

"Good. Your name is Augusta Hayes, and the year is 1994. You'll know everything else you need to know when you wake up."