Death is a dialogue between the Spirit and the Dust.

It's just after 11:00 PM in Los Angeles. I'm sitting in the front passenger seat of a silver 2001 Chrysler Sebring sedan, and that fact alone raises a thousand questions. Why a Chrysler? Why isn't it new? Does it have some special power? Is it company issue? Are there dealerships where he's from? I don't know how I'm going to make it through this. I fear a peek into the glove box would unravel the whole of existence as I know it.

I take a deep breath, and try to reorganize my thoughts. I just need to take this step by step. I pull out my tape recorder and hope magnetic recording devices aren't affected by semi-transference to a parallel plane. I looked in the instruction booklet; it didn't say.

"Okay, I guess I'll just start from the beginning. Tell me your name, and what you do."

"Oh. I'm an agent of the ULTA -- that's the Universal Life Termination Agency. The Lifecraft division, to be precise. I attend to the recently dead and assist them in their passage to the other side."

He shoots me an odd look. "Uh.. no. I said I'm a reaper, not the Reaper. There is no 'the' Reaper. That's always amazed me. Everybody for thousands of years has believed that death is just a guy. Just this one guy in a cloak running around swinging farm equipment at everyone around the world. Do you realize how inefficient that would be? We'd never get anything done."

This is going swimmingly so far. "Sorry, I guess I'm just used to the image. I suppose I should note for the record that you are not a skeleton."

"Thousands. They've all got their own jobs, and their own territory to cover. It's much easier when you divide it up. We have divisions for different kinds of life, and then there are departments within those for specific types. There's a department dedicated solely to reaping people who die of old age. Another group does only children. Another does domestic animals. And so on."

"Interesting. And what is it you do? You said something about the Lifecraft division?"

"Well.. not all of them. I specialize in actors and actresses. Were you, uh.. expecting something else?"

"I.. I admit I didn't really know what to expect. I just knew I was meeting death in some form or another. They weren't very giving with the details." I had been following the UTLA for a long time, piecing together information about their existence here and there, using all the little bits of evidence sane people ignore and crackpots make theories about. I was my own little X-Files investigator, without the simmering sexual tension and disappointing movie. About a month ago, I managed to make contact with one of their representatives and negotiated for an interview from there. I'd go into more detail, but I keep recalling something from earlier today: As I walked out of the ULTA building toward Fade's car, one of the division heads said to me, "Of course, you know that if you tell anyone else how to find us, we'll have to kill you." I think he deliberately positioned himself on the steps so that from my point of view, his grinning face was right next to the big sign over the door saying "LIFE TERMINATION." Just in case the irony hadn't caught up with me yet. "I hate to imagine how long you've been waiting to use that little chestnut," Fade said.

"Yeah, I know, you think people keeling over and plagues and murder and all that shit. I guess the Agency figured putting you with the human reapers might be a little too close to home. You'd learn a few too many things."

"But death isn't just about organisms. That's what the Lifecraft division is all about. When you create something, when you really put your heart into it.. well, you really put your heart into it. A little bit of you goes into everything you do. Something gets big enough, something gets worked on hard enough by enough people, and all that accumulated energy becomes a life all its own. Buildings have life. Paintings have life. Fucking beehives have life. It's not always beautiful and miraculous -- I know some guys in the department who are not looking forward to the day the KKK dies out -- but it's there."

"Are you kidding me? It was stamped out without a second thought in a line of a few million. There was no effort in that. No passion. That thing's junk. The factory it was made in, on the other hand, is probably a big grizzly bastard. I bet he smokes. Oop, we're almost here."

"My first stop for the night. Shawn Harrison." He picks up a clipboard he has tucked beside the seat and glances at it as he pulls up to a rather shoddy little one-bedroom house on the outskirts of town. "Last TV role was in 1996." He peers out the window at the grimy walls and cheap plastic gutters clogged with leaves. "Yeah, I'd say he's 'bout ready to go."

"I've never even heard of him," I say as we tromp through the jungle of overgrown grass in the front yard.

"Oh, sure you have. He was.." He checks the clipboard again. "Waldo Geraldo Faldo. On Family Matters. Y'know, the guy--"

"Eh, they were all dumb. That's just his character's name, I think he was officially listed in the credits as 'Guy Who's Not Urkel or Fat Man Yelling At Urkel.'" He touches a fingertip to the front door's handle and the lock clicks open. The door leads straight into the living room, where Shawn is sitting on an old couch, bag of Doritos in hand, feet propped up on a coffee table wherever he could find room between stacks of magazines and empty take-out boxes.

Shawn seems unsurprised at the two people suddenly standing in his house. "Oh, he's out. He had to get some things."

Shawn, or what I now surmise to be the current form of Shawn's career, shrugs. "It's cool, I just hang out here. I still go out for the important stuff, though. Speaking of which, why are you here? And who the hell is that?" He points at me.

"My stenographer. I'm here because you're dead. But I think you've figured that out."

"But I'm not dead. I told you, I still go out. We still do auditions. We've gotten some really positive feedback, we just haven't yet managed to find the right project."

"Quality over quantity! Besides, It's not like I'm not doing anything. We've done several well-received off-Broadway productions."

"Hah. Yeah. You know what they call off-Broadway where I'm from? Life support. And I'm yanking your plug.

"Please, just give me a little more time, I know there's a gig just around the corner if you'd--"

"I don't want to hear it, dude, there's no use arguing." Fade traces a circle with his hand vertically in the air next to him, and from the center a swirling vortex opens up and expands until it reaches from the floor to about six feet up. Everything seems to blur and bend slightly around its edges, as if it was gently tugging on the fabric of reality. I resist the urge to poke it with something. "Now, I want you to get in this hole. Man, now everything sounds gay."

Shawn's career reluctantly stands up, bits of chips falling off his shirt, and walks toward the void. "So.. what's on the other side?" His voice has turned very quiet.

"Oh, lots of stuff. You'll meet all sorts of interesting people. The careers of the whole cast of A Different World must be in there by now."

"..For what? What could a career do to go to hell? Who could possibly-- Alright, Elizabeth Berkley's career might go to hell. But that's it. You're safe."

He nods, and that seems to be all he needed to hear. He steps through the portal, and it snaps shut as soon as he's in. Fade grabs the bag of Doritos. "Easy-peasy. Let's head out."

"Not real long, actually. 110 years or so. I was part of a big boost in our department during the early Vaudeville days, to help keep up with the growing numbers of performers. I've been pretty busy ever since then."

"Uh.. yeah." He shifts a little in his seat. "But I don't imagine that'll be any time soon."

He sighs. "Yeah. There's some serious ancient, arcane shit in the ULTA, stuff some of the newer guys don't even know about. The older folks like to spook 'em a bit by speaking in hushed tones about The Division With One Member, as they call it. The Death of Reapers. But honestly, I think we're all a little creeped out by it. No one's ever even seen the reaper who works there. No one who's lived, anyway. People just up and notice one day, 'Hey, the Metalsmith department doesn't have as many employees as it used to. Oh well.' The old folks told me those same spook stories when I was new. Talking about the guys in the Dinosaur department way back when. How they all were suddenly getting called up constantly, had huge workloads, and how it slowly dawned on them what was happening, and how you could see the fear in their eyes. Nobody'd seen fear in a reaper before." He scratches his arm absentmindedly for a moment. "Can we talk about something else?"

"Huh. Yeah. They're mostly technological. The current running joke at the agency is to harass all the new Internet guys. It's mostly in good fun, but I think some people seriously wanted to beat the shit out of Blip. He's got such a horrible name, he's already started off on the wrong foot. But on top of that, he's a new hire in the Culture department, in charge of Internet fads. I don't think one day went by that he didn't hear 'If I see that fucking dancing baby one more Goddamn time I'm going to rape you with a brick' from at least ten different people. He kept saying 'But it's not on the list yet!' Poor kid just wanted to play by the rules."

As we approach the next stop on the list, Fade once again consults his clipboard. "Lessee here, next we have... What the hell?"

Rounding the corner, the inside of the car is filled blue and red and back again, lights pulsing from an ambulance and police cars parked outside a nearby home. "Is that ours?" I ask.

We park down the road and walk up to the house, through a small crowd of onlookers and past paramedics and police officers. None of them notice us; I've been told none of them can see us. "Some of the more sensitive women might feel a little chill if you get close," one of the ULTA techs had told me, right before herding me into some monstrous device that set my whole body shuddering like I'd just been electrocuted. It shifted me to the plane of existence they operated on, they said. I decide to test this by making stupid faces and waving at people inches in front of them when Fade calls out to a man in the middle of the yard, scribbling in a notebook.

"Well, you know. People are always scared of you guys. They're never afraid of me. Teenagers don't write angsty poetry decorated with skulls about how Brad from Hey, Dude isn't acting anymore. So, where is he now?"

Gloom stops scribbling and slaps his pen down into the spine of the notebook. "Don't even get me started. Typical bureaucratic bullshit. Get a load of this. This dude buys some heroin. Drug dealer gives the money to the kingpin. Kingpin uses money to buy guns. Guns are used in a drive-by where some little girl gets killed in the crossfire. Now you know Goddamned well this guy had nothing to do with that shit. And you know Goddamned well that there's no way he's going to get a formal charge for it. But he still gets marked for murder, he still gets thrown in L3, and I still get an extra stack of paperwork coming out of my Goddamned ass while those pinheads investigate it. I'm getting sick of this shit."

"Aw, man. I feel for you, dude. And that guy really doesn't deserve what he's probably going through right now in Holding. I thought maybe they had thrown him in for doing Sidekicks." Fade chuckles.

I take the lull as an opportunity to butt in. "So, what do you do now, Fade? Isn't his career still here?"

"Your mother," Fade says. "And no, his career isn't here anymore. There's a link there I have to sever. If he dies before that happens, anything attached to him goes with. I'll have to catch up with him later on the other side. From the sound of things, he's not going anywhere any time soon. Nothing left for us here, then. I'll catch you later, Gloom."

"Does that happen a lot? People who'd rather burn out then fade away, and all that?"

"Not a whole lot, but it does happen. Usually people who burn out aren't actually at the end yet. They're pretty far from it, they just get overwhelmed. The rest are content to let themselves slide slowly into oblivion, eating cereal out of the box and watching Judge Judy in their underwear."

"Yeah. Most aren't. They know it, they've got eyes. That's the nice thing; they don't fight it. They've known for a long time, they just have to be willing to accept it. Some of them, like Shawn, put up some half-hearted attempt to extend their lives by some paltry amount of time, but most don't see the point in it. I knock on the door and it's like, 'I've been waiting for you.'"

"I mean, there's rare occasion. Milli Vanilli, those guys didn't believe it at first. Because they were still on the top of their game. But once they saw the news, saw what people were saying, even they realized pretty quickly it was over.

I'm really lucky in that most of my clients can see it coming. They can prepare. I honestly don't know how the guys in the other divisions do it. How do you tell someone that? How do you just walk up and say 'Oh by the way, some dick got piss drunk and slammed into a parked car, which then crushed you and your friends who were sitting on the curb. So you're dead now, you'll never do anything you ever wanted to do, because of which end of the fucking parking lot you decided to sit on. Come this way, please.' 'Sorry, I know you were just trying to make money to feed your kids, but because of some military operation you've never heard of, somebody halfway around the world decided to blow you up. Time to go.' I wouldn't be able to handle it. Those guys get more pay, and better benefits, but they earn every bit of it."

We drive on in silence for a while. I watch people go by on their way to clubs, to restaurants, to work. I can't help but begin to see little hourglasses over their heads. I try to shake the thought from my mind.

Fade checks his list again. "You wanna get something to eat? We've got some time before my next appointment."

We stop in a McDonald's, which is unsurprisingly empty at this time of night, save for a young couple eating quietly in a corner booth. The lone clerk is turned away from the counter, gossiping with the drive through operator about how someone named Sheena had gotten fat. I instinctively go to the register before I remember no one can see me. Before I can ask him about it, Fade casually walks to the back of the kitchen, and emerges with a cheeseburger and two boxes of fries. He hands them over the counter to me, and grabs a cup. "Coke good?"

I watch the clerk demonstrate, to hysterical laughter, the degree to which Sheena's obesity has escalated. "Do they not notice the floating burger and self-operating soda fountain?"

"No, because there is none. To a certain extent we're all allowed the ability to shift things we come in contact with between the two planes. Not big things, not living things, but the little stuff one might need to use here and there."

"Does that mean you stuck your finger in my soda so they wouldn't see it pouring out?"

Fade grabs some ketchup packets and we take our pick of tables. I continue the interview in between bites.

"Pfft. Like I said, my job is pretty mundane 'cause it's all so foreseeable. There are no wacky accidents or crazy situations." He munches on some fries and thinks for a moment. "There was this one guy, though.."

"It was about 1994. I'm at this big movie premiere. I'm going after this old actor, he hasn't had work in years, and he's about to make an ass out of himself which will preclude him from ever being invited to another premiere again, thus fully terminating his career. So I get that done, and I'm just checking out the scene, seeing who's there, and suddenly I see this guy. And I swear he looks familiar. I'm like, 'I know that guy. I know I know that guy.' So I head down there, and sorta sneak up on him, sorta crouch-walking down the aisle, staying behind him, and then when I'm close enough, I jump out in front of him. And motherfucker, there he is. We both go 'You?!' at the exact same time. 'I already took you!' I say. 'No, no, that was just a near death experience,' he says. 'You were in a movie with talking Goddamn dogs,' I say. 'If you'd been any more dead you would've been cutting the ribbon at the opening of the Mattress Hut off I-85. What the hell are you doing here?' And he starts feeding me this story about how he'd been on the other side, he was getting settled in, when suddenly he hears this voice in his head. This weasely, nerdy voice whispering all this shit in Latin. But with a lot more cursing. And he feels himself being pulled down, and suddenly he's back with his body again. He couldn't explain it."

"There was nothing I could do. I checked with my superiors. His career took off for a second time, and I just have to leave him be until it fails again. Which it will, let me assure you. Next time, though, maybe I'll just let him wallow in it. Let him bleed dry 'til he's begging for me to take him. Just like I'm doing with Christian Slater."

Fade takes notice of something over my shoulder. He's staring intently at the couple in the corner, his head cocked like a confused dog. "Excuse me a moment," he says, and taps his finger in the air twice, like quietly rapping at an invisible door. A small ball of light materializes in the spot he tapped.

After a moment, a voice responds. The light orb pulses slightly in rhythm with the words.

"Yeah, it's me. Where are you, man? You've got a client over here, and I think she's about ready to go."

"You're not going to get back here in time. You want me to grab this one for you?"

"You mean you'll owe me one less beer. Which should put it in the low hundreds now."

"Yeah, I made that a little too easy. I'll send her over to the lobby, you can catch her there, okay?"

"Just a buddy of mine from the department. This'll only take a second." He checks his watch. "Make that three seconds. Two.. One... Now."

Reasonably calm, the woman eases her way out of the booth and begins waddling towards the door, while the aforementioned Jeremy circles in a panic around her, checking to make sure they've got everything, walking with her while holding her stomach as if the baby might fall out, returning to the booth to check for things again, back to her, back to the booth to grab what's left of the food, changing his mind, dropping the food and running out to the door to start the car.

This circus is enough of a distraction that I don't at first notice the person now occupying the couple's booth. It's the woman, again, but significantly less pregnant, in a sharp blue business suit. She looks confused, unsure of whether to get up and run or not. She starts up, and begins walking to the door when Fade speaks.

"I am death. Not exactly your death, but I'll have to do in a pinch. It's time to go."

"What? That's preposterous. I closed a multimillion dollar development deal last month. I've still been managing the office even while I'm on leave. I just got a huge raise. I'm as healthy as ever."

"You must work for a very stupid boss if he's giving raises to people who can't decide to walk out the door."

"Unless, of course, it was because you knew something wasn't right. Maybe because you and your raise and your multimillion dollar deals were the furthest things from her mind at that point."

"S-So, so she's busy right now. I won't deny her that. But I'll be ready when she returns. We're not done."

"But she said. She said she would come back. She'd take some time off to raise the baby, but she'd be back. She promised. We had big plans."

Fade gets up and reaches out into the air. He opens a portal, the same as he did for Shawn. "Death is what happens when you're making other plans."

At first she looks as if she's going to scream at him, but the anger simply drains from her face. They know it's coming. They just have to accept it. She folds her arms up tight and hangs her head, and slowly walks into the opening.

The portal closes, and Fade stands alone in the middle of the restaurant, the gossiping clerk still with her back to us.

"Yeah." We're both quiet. "I mean, what kind of big executive eats at McDonald's?"

"Depending on your choice of shlock to grow up watching, either Tommy from Eight Is Enough or Buddy from Charles in Charge."

"By all rights it should've been. He's been floating by on the Cameron loophole for the past several years, but I'm done with that. He's through."

It's the dead of night by now, and all the lights in the house are off. It's a much nicer place than Shawn was stuck with; maybe I should get in on some of this loophole action myself. We walk in and head upstairs to the bedroom, where Willie is sleeping soundly, and drooling profusely.

"Aww," Fade coos. "He's like a little angel. Let's not wake him." He flutters doe eyes at me.

"You're a physical manifestation of death and that's the first creepy thing you've done all night," I whisper. I know nobody in the real world can hear me, but I feel compelled to stay quiet anyway.

"I'm here to take you home, of course. You've led a rich, full life, and blown it all on coke and whores, and now it's time to go."

"What? This is what you got me up for? You must have the wrong guy. I still work more regularly than some big name actors."

"Yeah, I've been meaning to talk to you about that. You've had your fun with this, what do you call it? Super Jesus?"

"Right. Well that's all well and good, but I'm afraid you can't continue to count this as a career."

"Yes, exactly. You have a stage show. You're a grown man who dresses up in spandex and pretends to fight with laser swords in front of thousands of people several times a week. Your videos are made on the cheap and sold in Christian bookstores to concerned grandparents looking for a 'hip' way to make God 'cool' with their grandkids. I've reaped people who've got a lot more going for them than this."

Aames' career hops off the bed. "Now you listen here-- who is that?" He points at me.

"Oh, that's God. He's just hanging out. We're gonna go hit the bars later. Really throws your whole dog and pony show out of whack, doesn't it?"

This only makes Aames angrier. "You listen here! What I do means something! I teach, I bring the light of God to children! What I'm doing is important! You go ahead and collect all the bimbos and wannabe stars who do a low-grade slasher flick and call themselves actors. I might not breaking box office records, but what I'm doing has real value."

Fade nods solemnly. "Yes, value. Value.. to Christianity. You're not in my territory any more, bub. Reapply as a minister if you want, but you're not getting any farther with me." He opens the portal, and Aames latches onto the bed.

Fade grabs Willie's legs and pulls as hard as he can. "C'mon, Willie, don't make this harder for yourself! Think of all the boozed up Hollywood sluts from your old days that you'll get to see again! It's just like looking through a yearbook! Except you're in it! And dead!"

Aames' grip starts to slip. "What about Kirk Cameron? He's doing the same as me! You can't take me if you don't take him!"

"Yes, and his day will come.." Fade tries to keep hold of Willie legs as they kick wildly in the air. "..but inexplicably, people actually watch his movies. Lots of people. People who are old enough to drive. Hell, people who are old enough to do long division."

Aames reaches up to get a new hold on the bed, but that temporary loss of pull is all Fade needs to rip him away from the bed completely. Still holding him by the legs, Aames wailing and yelling all the while, Fade spins him around a couple times and hurls him into the portal. When it seals up, the room is once again silent save for some snoring.

The list is complete for the night, and so Fade is on his way home. He stops by the ULTA building to drop me off and say goodbye.

"Just tell the receptionist who you are, they'll take you from there and get you home safe. Hope you had fun."

"I dunno. It just seems sorta... depressing. I'm not afraid of death anymore. I'm afraid that I'll die, and the guy waiting for me will say 'Hi, I don't really know what I'm doing here. This isn't my normal department, but I think I know where you're supposed to go.'"

"So, what, you were expecting choirs of angels to come down and herald the arrival of every new soul?"

He sighs. "You know, you guys will be a whole lot happier when you stop waiting for the Final Answer. You keep looking for someone or something to spell it all out for you. You tried religion, that didn't work, you tried science, that didn't work, and now you think, if nothing else, when you kick the bucket someone's gotta jump out of the clouds and finally let you in on the joke. You've seen the movie, now you can watch the behind-the-scenes featurette about how the miracle of tornadoes came to life with computers and green screens. What's so bad about not knowing things?"

"I dunno, I think it's fun. The less you know, the more stuff you don't know you can't do. Knowing what your place is in this world would do nothing but keep you from doing anything else. Not everything needs an elaborate, meticulously-crafted purpose."

"You do that. Well, I guess I'll see you later. Well, I won't, but you know what I mean."

We wave at each other, and he drives away. I walk up the steps to the ULTA headquarters, entirely unsure of anything that goes on inside or out.