Colin MacGregor

Transcript of 30-JAN-2003, interview with potential PLE Agent Colin MacGregor continues.

For awhile, I wasn't sure what to do. It's not like I was hungry, or tired. I stayed at the warehouse for quite some time before anyone showed up.

I wasn't sure why I stuck around. I guess I thought that since I was a ghost, I had to stay and haunt the place where I'd died. Yeah, it's obvious now that I was being stupid, but what can I say? It was all new to me.

I guess there was some attachment to my body, too. I mean, there I was, half floating face down in a dingy bathtub. Not the cheeriest of sights, but I didn't want to just leave me...it...whatever there.

I'm not really sure how long I was there, that time sort of drifts in and out of fuzziness in my memory. The science lads tell me it's because I didn't have as much strength of will as I've since developed.

Eventually, though, someone did come around to take a look. Maybe it was the smell - I imagine several cartons of leftover sushi in the trash combined with...well, with the obvious results of a corpse floating in stale water for the better part of a month made for about as nasty a smell as you can imagine.

The man who came in was mid-30s, with short brown hair and a trenchcoat. He announced himself as an FBI agent, one Agent Carver.

No, that's not a name I'm likely to forget. The same agent who was supposed to protect me from the Yakuza in the first place. Of course, I didn't know this at the time, more's the pity.

Carver searched the warehouse, called in for some sort of team, forensics I assume, and immediately started bragging to them about how he'd cracked the case.

And to think, at the time, I was appreciative of the man. True, it would have been nice if he'd gotten there a couple weeks earlier, but at least my Da would know what had happened to me and my body would get a decent burial.

Anyway, the FBI agents very respectfully bagged up my remains and took lots of photographs. Spread dust everywhere, though I knew Ako had been wearing gloves. It was all very impressive and professional seeming, they even noted the types of food he'd ordered and the name of the restaurant.

Satisfied that they would find what they needed, I stayed with my body as they loaded it into an ambulance to take to the hospital.

By the way, if you're ever in a position to watch your own autopsy, all I can advise is - don't. It's really disturbing.

I did get to see my granddad at the hospital there. He identified my body, and I could see the pain in his face as he had to see what was left of me.

He'd always been so strong, it nearly destroyed me to see him broken and crying in the waiting room. I wanted so desperately to hold him, and tell him I was allright. Except for the fact that I wasn't, and couldn't.

I simply sat next to him and wrapped arms he couldn't feel around his shoulders as he cried. I could see the threads - the same strings I'd pulled on Ako - running through him. Through everyone, in fact, though I was just now beginning to notice.

Strange as it seems, I drew some sort of strength from his grief, some understanding of what it was I had become, and as he walked out, I pulled ever so gently at the strings around the man who'd never seemed so old before.

He stopped then, whether he heard me or felt my touch, and he straightened up. He set his mouth into a line and suddenly he was the pillar of strength I remembered.

I followed him around the hospital then, watching over him tending to the details and arrangements for transporting my remains back to Ireland.

It was while listening to his conversations with the doctors that I learned two things.

One, that Ako had been caught, but the charges had subsequently been dropped. Granddad angrily told anyone who would listen how the D.A. had blown it, some sort of mistake in processing that allowed my murderer to walk free.

Upon hearing this, an anger like I had never known swelled up in me, and I tore myself away from Granddad, rushing out of the hospital. I had no idea where I was going. I just wanted to find my killer, track him down somehow, and make him pay for what he'd done.

I'd gotten several blocks, just running, before I began to calm down. I knew, as rationality set in, that there was no way I could find the man. What would he do, go back to the warehouse where he'd killed me? Bloody unlikely.

At least I'd established that I didn't seem to be bound to the location of my corpse. That was when the other realization hit me.

Hey, when you're dead, and don't have to spend most of your brainpower on things like breathing, and metabolising, and all that other stuff I ignored in biology class, you get these little flashes of insight all the time.

Anyhow, my grandfather had been arranging for the transport of two sets of remains. I'd sort of noticed the duplicates, but had been paying more attention to his angered retelling of what had happened to Ako.

I rushed back to the hospital. Another perk, I suppose, of my new state. I can run all day and not be tired.

Grandad was just finishing up with the Doctor, who gave him a firm handshake. The folder of paperwork was on the desk between them, closed, dammit.

But, with a little pull...I touched the doctor on the arm, pulled on one of the strands, and his hand opened the folder. He glanced down at it with a confused look, before closing it again, but I had time to read the names inside.

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Last Updated: January 2, 2004 by Blake Sorensen