An opened his eyes.

  He was sitting in his usual seat, at his usual desk in Limbo - the pce where he found himself every time a call came in. Only this time, unlike all the others, he remembered everything. The painfully familiar town under the summer sun, the strange kiosk and the “employee” who had detachedly hurled himself into the horrible, slowly spinning vortex. That vortex. The man in the long white robe, untouched by the unleashed catastrophe. His cool hand…

  An shuddered. Grabbed at his belt. The rod was still hanging there, which meant his job wasn’t finished yet. He stood up. His hands and back still ached from the struggle against the hurricane pouring out of the mysterious vortex. He tugged at his shirt and headed toward the clerks’ counter.

  His pid fnnel shirt. Soft. Worn thin. Perfectly suited for someone who was constantly being sent somewhere else. Had he been wearing it when he first arrived in Limbo?

  Passing one of the pilrs that vanished upward into the yellow haze, An saw the counter. The women in their severe outfits stood behind it, straight-backed, rigid as a drawn string, shoulder to shoulder. A blonde. A tousled bck-haired one. A redhead with hair like a crown.

  Without slowing down, he pulled the rod from its case on his belt. Now it seemed to weigh a ton. He stopped, fighting the tremor in his hands, and millimeter by millimeter raised the rod in front of him, pointing it at the women. They had sent him on calls so many times…

  Hadn’t they?

  This time, everything was clearly wrong.

  “…?”And again - not a sound, only a sensation: surprise, panic, a question.

  He touched the counter with the rod.

  A pilr of white light filled the entire space inside it. The sound that accompanied it made him think of a massive sb of pumice scraping across a gigantic bathtub. An gnced aside, searching for the figure in the white robe - but no one was there. Then, abruptly, everything stopped. The pilr of light vanished. The grinding ceased. The rod dropped and hung limply from his outstretched hand.

  The space inside the counter was empty, faintly smoking.

  “Fired,” An whispered, smiling for the first time in an endless stretch of time.

  He coughed from the smell of burning and ash, and when he looked up again, the counter was no longer smoking. The women - the “clerks” - were standing behind it once more. Perfect. Neat. Severe. Haughty. Ordinary.

  An felt a jolt. His hand was empty, and the belt was gone. His rod - the thing they all feared. The tool that could fix anything.

  Were they all involved?

  His vision began to blur. Consciousness slipped away. The st thing he remembered before bcking out was the “clerks” looking somewhere over his shoulder, hands csped before them as if in prayer.

  Interesting, An thought, just before losing consciousness completely.