Second stop - Age 80

(Arthur Kirkland has his second heart attack)

Matthew had grown up in Montreal. He played hockey — and was extremely good at it. He was, in fact, so good that when he moved to America for college, he played for the varsity team (although he hadn't been allowed to try out until he was seventeen). The saddest thing that ever happened to him was when he broke his leg two months into his second season and it'd never really healed perfectly. Even today his breath still hitched every time he stepped down on that foot.

"And you?" Matthew asked him. "You never talk about yourself."

Francis didn't talk about himself because there was nothing to share. Nothing he particularly wanted to share, anyhow. "I've been working for Roderich for over a decade now," he said, shrugging, although Matthew probably already knew that. He flipped Kirkland's medallion over in his hands and scrubbed aimlessly at its surface. "Roderich is something like your average, uninteresting businessman — only with a two foot pole constantly in his ass."

"Is that an innuendo for something else?" Matthew asked, smiling. Francis liked his smile; it was chock full of honesty and humility and something else. "You know how he's married to Mrs. Héderváry? Everyone always talks about her like she'd make something of a good lay, but I doubt she'd want to sleep with them anyway."

Francis checked the hospital clock. He thought he knew where (or when) they were, and if he was not mistaken, Kirkland should be arriving any moment now. His files had said heart attack.

"Who's everyone?"

"Oh, you know."

Matthew probably didn't want to give any names away. Objectifying misogynists though they were.

They fiddled their thumbs for another few minutes more in complete silence; Matthew then taught Francis how to play chopsticks. Halfway through their sixth game Francis was so into it that he almost missed Kirkland being wheeled in on a stretcher, surrounded by three paramedics. The two stood up respectfully as the stretcher passed and then they followed them into the ER, invisible.

"Remember we're going in and out," he hissed at Matthew. "Grab a memento from him and then leave. No staying behind to offer helpful life advice, no contacting him to discuss world events, no touring his past. You got that?"

Matthew apparently didn't, because one of the nurses ran straight through his body and he jumped instead of nodding his head. "Hey," Francis said.

"I got it." Matthew laughed and did a little twirl right into the exact same nurse. "This is so cool!"

Pay attention to me, Francis almost snapped, before realizing that both their attentions should probably be on the old man wheezing his lungs out. They fell silent as they watched Kirkland from the corner of the room as the doctors tried to revitalize him.

It was the first time Francis really considered if Kirkland had any other family members. He tried swallowing around the knot in his throat but couldn't, so he decided to gag instead. Matthew beat him to it. The boy had gone from giddy to tragic-looking in seconds; he'd probably never seen anything like this, poor chap.

They waited until Kirkland was finally stabilized; the nurses left him by himself in another room. Later, the hospital might try to contact his relatives — and it wouldn't take long for them to realize he had none.

Francis placed the used war memento gently on Kirkland's chest. It was a memory from the future, so it would disappear after a while. They couldn't use the same memento twice, so he began removing the oldest artifact it looked like Kirkland had on him — a carefully knitted scarf. "Wait," Matthew called, stepping forwards. In seconds, he had turned on his visibility and interactivity with his watch, and was adjusting Kirkland's sheets.

"What're you doing?" Francis asked, appalled.

"What does it look like? I'm blatantly disobeying your orders."

Well, Francis could see that.

It took a few seconds for Francis to figure out that Matthew wasn't going anywhere soon, so he pulled up a chair and took out his phone and began reading his recently downloaded electronic version of W Magazine. It was just a job, he told himself. Nothing personal. And it didn't have to reflect who he was as a person — not unless he wanted it to.

Giving a shit about his client on anything more than a business level was definitely not his job.

"You're too caring for your own good, Williams," Francis grumbled.

Matthew smiled but ignored him.

When Kirkland woke up a few hours later, the first thing that came out of his mouth was "Alfred?"

"No," Matthew said hurriedly. "My name is Matthew. Can I do anything for you? Are you thirsty?"

Kirkland shook his head and lifted a trembling finger to poke Matthew's chest. "Alfred," he insisted with a solemn look in his eyes.

"Matthew." Matthew gently removed Kirkland's hand and placed it back on the bed. "I'm going to get one of the nurses for you. Francis, look after him!" And then he was out of the room, off to see through with his saint-like duties.

Kirkland's eyes flickered over to Francis, who'd turned on his visibility. It might have been a trick of the light, but when the old man's eyes made contact, it looked like they widened, just a bit, like the other was surprised to see him.

"That was definitely Alfred," Kirkland said calmly, as though he hadn't just suffered his second (was it second?) heart attack. "Trouble is, Alfred's been dead for some time now. And he sure didn't look like that when he left; he was well past his prime. Who the hell are you?"

"That was not Alfred, mon ami," Francis said, sighing, and putting away his phone. "I'm Francis. In reality, we are not actually here. We do not exist. We're just fragments of your imagination, scattered fly-aways from your disoriented mind trying to re-collect itself after suffering a traumatizing experience. Hallucinations. Personified ghosts from your sub-sub-conscience."

"Yeah, right."

A worn-out looking nurse entered the room with a glass of water and a harrowed grin slapped on his face. "How are you feeling, Mr. Kirkland?" he asked kindly. Francis felt sorry for the fellow; they were in the same boat, having to work late-night shifts.

"Good. Actually, I feel like I could run a marathon."

Would you say you feel like you're being reborn? Francis mused.

After the nurse tended to Kirkland, he turned a piercing glare at Francis and Matthew (who stood with hands folded behind him). "I don't believe you two were given permission to be in here."

"Oh, but we were," Francis said, before whipping out his Sigmund Corp. badge, turning it so that only the nurse could see it. The nurse blinked before leaving without another word. Francis was glad they were still in that point in time where his badge actually meant something; traveling another two decades or so back and taking out his badge would only earn him puzzled stares.

"So, what are you two, government spies or something?" Kirkland croaked from his bed. "What kind of sadistic bastards are you guys, messing with a poor old man's brain like that when he woke up right after suffering a heart attack? Hallucinations?"

Francis shrugged at Matthew, giving him a I-have-no-idea-what-this-senile-man-is-talking-about look, but he didn't think that Matthew believed him for a second. The younger of the two excused himself to use the restroom, leaving just Francis and Kirkland alone once again.

"You could say that. Actually, we were just passing by when it looked like you were about to wake up," Francis responded. "We had to visit someone here in the hospital right now. "

"So go back to your call of duty. What're you sticking around with me for?" Kirkland gave Francis a squinty-eyed look, before his entire face turned red with embarrassment. "You're just here because no one else is. You feel sorry for me, that's why."

"Not at all," Francis said, raising his hands in mock surrender.

"You mean, you wouldn't have visited a lonely old man if you noticed he had no other visitors? Asshole."

"What is wrong with you?" Francis snapped. He didn't want to be unnecessarily cruel to someone with as many wrinkles as Kirkland had but the other just kept on pushing all of Francis' wrong buttons. "Why are you so interrogative — and, and — what do you want from me?"

"Look, Francis, I don't need your pity. I need you to get your frog face the fuck out of my room right now before I call for security."

Francis stood up, cheeks ablaze. "I cannot believe a person can be so rebuking and pointlessly defensive as you are. I have caused you no harm. You have only called me names and sworn at me —"

"Security! Security!" Kirkland yowled at the top of his lungs.

Francis was out of the room in seconds. Well, that escalated quickly, he thought to himself bitterly as he marched down the hall, turning off his visibility just when two nurses ran past him into Kirkland's room. Kirkland had definitely been more accommodating when they'd talked just a few hours ago. The side of him Francis was seeing now was probably his true self — a nasty, brutish, ugly side that Francis was already beginning to loathe.

Matthew would find Francis ten minutes later with his head in his hands, seated in a plastic chair in the lobby. He would leave and come back with some coffee, black like the way Francis liked it. Francis would accept it graciously and drink it heatedly.

"I already hate our client," Francis complained to Matthew as the younger listened patiently by his side. "He is an unseemly, angry little British man who possesses absolutely zero manners or tolerance for other people. No wonder there was nobody by his bedside besides us."

"He might have a tragic back story for all we know," Matthew said, reservedly.

"I don't care if he was betrayed and murdered by his best friend in another life. It is no excuse not to treat other people with common courtesy and like a human being."

"Want me to go talk to him?"

"Please! You seem to have better luck with him. Except for the fact that he thinks you're, you know, his old lover whom he wants to marry so much he hired us to change his entire life for him."

"Time has a funny way of doing things to people, shattering and bringing them back to familiar faces and places they once loved. I don't mind that he mistakes me for someone else. I think it's a lapse I can overlook."

Of course that was something the understanding, talented prodigy Matthew Williams would say. Francis smiled, proud. "Go on, then."

"Well, you should come with me," Matthew said. "But turn off your visibility. We might end up learning interesting things from our client."

It turned out that phenom Matthew Williams was not only academically gifted, but exceptionally social when he wanted to be. Within minutes he and Kirkland were chatting away like old friends, Kirkland having apologized for misplacing Matthew's face, and Francis suspected more than ever that Kirkland really was just a lonely guy on the inside who simply wanted someone to share experiences with.

He mainly shared experiences about Alfred.

When he did, his entire face would light up. Francis watched him closely, from the way his wrinkles would gather around his eyes and the way their pale greyness seemed to light up with a hint of a gorgeous green. Francis was as intrigued by Kirkland as Matthew was; he was drawn to the stories that fell from Kirkland's lips and the poetry he waxed and the invisible lines he drew in the air with his hands. Maybe it was sad that Kirkland would lose these memories. And maybe it wasn't so sad at all.

"I always believed that everyone has a hole to fill in their lives," Kirkland told Matthew. "And Alfred was perfectly attuned to fill mine. The stars aligned to make him."

The stars aligned to make him. It was something only a pretentious, still-in-love fool would say in this day and age. Then again, Kirkland wasn't really from this day and age. Francis suspected that Kirkland lived and breathed in his past; the moment Alfred had left the world, a part of him had died too. There was no Kirkland of the present except to live long enough to wait for the invention of Sigmund Corp. and the miracle of a new existence.

"I've never been in love myself, Mr. Kirkland," Matthew said, laughing along with Kirkland. "There was this girl I used to kiss in the janitor's closet after class. I thought I would have done anything for her. And you know what? I probably would have, if she'd asked."

"And the man you were with? Do you think he's ever been in love?"

Francis froze. Matthew did, too, well aware that Francis was in the very room with them, watching on silently.

"Francis doesn't like to talk about himself. I don't know anything about him, actually."

"Do you know why I asked him to leave my room, Matthew?"

Francis thought about how Kirkland had barely asked him to leave — more like hit him over the head with it and threatened him until he ran out.

"Because he's those kind of men I can't stand. Ostentatious, arrogant, insensitive. Fake."

Each word struck Francis like a blow in the chest, and his fingers wavered dangerously over the 'visible' button on his watch. They wavered. He wanted to defend himself. But they didn't meet their intended goal, because Kirkland continued.

"Because I've lived a long life and I've met men like him. I used to be that kind of man, myself.

"And I know how hard it is to break out of a shell when you're firmly clasped inside it."

"Thank you, Mr. Kirkland," Matthew stuttered, unsure of what to say. It was time to move on. He muttered a quick something about having to leave, rising to shake the other's hand.

Francis' heart was also stuttering. He'd had many clients in his decade-long experience at Sigmund, but there were none who could have lit quite the same sort of flame in his chest the way Kirkland did just then.

"Please," Kirkland said, smiling. "Call me Arthur."

Arthur suddenly made Francis feel nostalgic for a something that wasn't there yet.