25

I stopped by the office early and left a note for Vani and Hyen, informing them that I was at the university, following up on a lead in the Snatcher case. Hyen was probably going to chew me out for not being a "team player," but I was of the opinion that I was a much better team player than him since I was the only one who had ever played on a team professionally.

The university had been hit hard during Kuvira's attack, with more than half the buildings so badly damaged they had to be torn down before they fell down. Everything else had been hastily patched back together with earthbending, and construction workers outnumbered students two to one. It was chaotic and noisy, and a man in a truck honked at me as I walked down a dirt-paved pedestrian walkway, looking for a building called Gurshen Hall. Why they couldn't just use normal addresses with numbers and named streets was beyond me. Then again, the unnecessary complication probably weeded out some of the stupider students. If you couldn't find your classes, you probably had no place going to university.

I asked a passing student for directions, and managed with minimal difficulty to find the building and room I was looking for. Gurshen Hall, room 12-B, Introduction to Spiritual Studies by Visiting Student-Professor Insook.

I was a few minutes late, so I slipped in as quietly as I could and took a seat at the back of the amphitheater-style classroom. Insook stood at the professor's lectern down below, gesturing with a piece of chalk while she talked.

"Good! Now, those of you who have completed the reading will know that Guo Hin Lo debunked the theory less than a century later, thanks to his observations of the koi fish on his pilgrimage to the Northern Water Tribe. Two points to whoever can summarize his alternative."

A girl in the front row raised her hand and Insook pointed at her with the chalk.

"It is not that some spirits have physical forms and some do not, but rather that some chose to bring their physical forms from their world into ours and some did not."

Insook nodded and paused to write something on one of the papers scattered on her lectern. "Correct. Of course, Hin Lo's theory would not be widely accepted for another fifty years..."

I listened, entranced, as Insook, with occasional help from her students, recounted a thousand years' worth of philosophers arguing about what counted and didn't count as a spirit. It was amazing to me that all these people, dead for centuries, had spent their lives trying to answer questions I never would have thought of.

"And don't forget," Insook called as the hour ended and the students began packing up their notebooks, "If you'd rather not take the midterm exam, come to my office to participate in my experiment instead!"

That sounded ominous, but the students didn't seem to care.

I waited for the majority of the students to leave, then walked down to the lectern.

"Professor Insook." I bowed to her, eliciting a small smile. "Fascinating lecture."

"If you're being honest, you're in the minority," she said, tidying up her papers and erasing the notes she'd made on the blackboard. "Did you see how many of them fell asleep?"

I glanced back at the seats. All of the students were gone, so if they had fallen asleep, they'd at least woken up at the end of the lecture.

"How have you been?" she asked.

"Good," I said. "I had the day off yesterday."

"You should have visited then." She dusted the chalk off her hands and turned to face me. "What?"

I blinked and wiped the confusion off my face. I hadn't had the time, but even if I had, I didn't know if I would have thought to come visit. That, plus being surprised to learn that she actually wanted me to visit...

"Nothing. Do you have some time now?"

"Yes, but do you?" She looked me up and down, indicating my uniform, then frowned. "You're not here to arrest me or anything, are you?"

I snorted. "No. I do have some official business to do, but since you gave me this," I showed her the schedule she had given me, "I thought I might stop by."

Insook smiled. "Cup of tea in my office?"

I accepted her offer and followed her down into the basement of the building. Judging from the exposed pipes and the signs of recent earthbending, I suspected the basement hadn't originally been intended for regular use.

Insook's office was a weirdly shaped little room that she shared with three or four other student-professors that someone had tried to make at least somewhat bearable. A couple of mover posters were glued to the walls, and someone had mangled and jury-rigged an electric clothes iron, turning it into a contraption that could boil a pot of water. It looked like a housefire waiting to happen, but I figured the people here were too smart to allow that.

"Sorry again for running out," Insook said once we were settled at her desk, each with a cup of scalding hot tea. "I didn't know what to do and I think my feet just kind of decided..."

"Don't be." We'd already talked about it and I didn't see the need to repeat everything again. I set the tea on her table and met her eyes, doing my best to look deadly serious. "But I do want to ask you, should I be worried you're doing experiments on your students?"

Worry overcame her, and then she laughed. "What? No! It's not like I'm giving them shocks or, or making them live on an abandoned island somewhere."

I dropped the serious face. "What are you doing?"

"Well. You know I've done some research into historical spiritual beliefs. So, what I've done is I've taken one of the old rituals I've found, and I'm trying to see if it actually produces any measurable effect."

"Huh. Does it?"

Insook shook a finger at me. "I can't tell you that! Not until I publish my results. Besides, I haven't had enough volunteers yet to draw any meaningful conclusions."

"That explains the bribery."

"It's not bribery! It's an alternative option to the exam. Perfectly above board."

I wasn't so sure about that, but anti-corruption law wasn't exactly my specialty. "What's the ritual?"

"It's more like a guided meditation than a ritual. Have you ever heard of chakras?"

"No. Should I have?"

Insook shook her head. "Not unless you like to read ancient texts from the other side of the globe."

I knew the other side of the globe was just ocean, but figured she had to mean the eastern edge of the Earth Kingdom. "So, what are they? Bugs?"

"Chakras are pools of swirling energy within the body, flowing from the tailbone to the top of the head. My texts claim that if you 'open' each chakra," she said, making quote marks with her fingers in the air, "you'll gain some kind of enlightenment or spiritual powers."

I raised an eyebrow. I had learned plenty about anatomy and chi paths in my firebending training and never once heard of any "swirly pools of energy."

"I know! If doing the ritual has the chance to give someone spirit powers, why isn't it something everybody knows about? Why isn't everybody doing it all the time?"

These all sounded like good questions, but... "Why not?"

"My theory, to put it simply, is that people forgot. I don't think the idea ever spread far beyond the eastern coast of the Earth Kingdom, and then between the burning of the Air Temples and the Hundred Years' War..." She shrugged. "Something like a hundred-thousand texts got destroyed in the Eastern Air Temple alone."

I made a sympathetic noise. "Has it worked in your experiments?"

Insook opened her mouth to explain, eyes wide and excited, but she hesitated, pulling back. "Didn't I just tell you I can't tell you?" She smiled and took a sip of her tea. "I have a way you could find out though."

"Oh? What's that?"

"You could participate in my experiment," she said in a sing-song voice. She made it sound like she was joking, but there was an intensity in her eyes that said otherwise.

"Okay. Sure."

Insook blinked. "Wait, really?"

I shrugged. "Why not?"

Insook squealed and leaned across the gap between our chairs to give me an awkward sort of hug. "Ooh, thank you! You don't know how badly I need participants."

"You're welcome. Maybe you could help me with something too?"

"What kind of something?" She pulled at a loose strand of hair, twisting it around her finger.

I cleared my throat. "It's for work. I'm looking for someone who can tell me something about 'old souls'—people who remember parts of their past lives."

"Oh. Sure! I could tell you about that. What do you want to know?"

I got out my logbook. "How does it work? Is there a way to tell if someone is an old soul?"

"Beyond someone just saying they are one, you mean."

I nodded.

Insook closed her eyes and tapped one finger against her nose, thinking. After maybe a full thirty seconds, she opened her eyes again only to stare off into space as she spoke. "It's like this. Think about spirits. They're not like animals. They don't have cells, they don't reproduce like we do, they don't even have to eat. So, what are they?"

"Uh..." I said, at something of a loss. What did she mean by cells? Like prison cells?

"Information." Insook answered her own question. "A set of instructions—how to look, how to behave and interact—held together with ectoplasm. Now, all material things have a little spirit in them, including people and animals. So, when you die, usually, that glob of spirit information dissipates, like it would if a true spirit was destroyed. But sometimes, if you happen to have a bigger or more coherent spirit information glob, it won't dissipate and instead will adhere to a blank slate."

"A baby," I said, though my mind was reeling.

"Precisely," Insook said as questions tore through my thoughts. Did I have ectoplasm in my arm, not metal? If Spikes had left information in me, what kind of information was it? What did that even mean?

Insook leaned towards me, head tilted to one side. "Are you okay?"

I blinked. "Yeah. I'm fine." I took a sip of tea to prove it.

"Really? Because you look pale. I mean more pale. Extra pale?" She blushed. I didn't know why, but it was cute. "Anyway, to answer your original question, the only verifiable way to prove someone is an old soul is to corroborate their previous life's memories. There's devices that'll detect spirit energy, but nowhere near the degree of precision you'd need for what you're thinking of."

"Uh-huh." That was much like I had expected, though the implications for the reason why left me with, frankly, too many questions. I made a note and tried to get through my most practical questions as quickly as I could, realizing I was due back at the office sooner rather than later.

Insook told me what more she could before I had to run and she had to prepare for her next class, but she did give me a peck on the cheek as I headed out the door with the promise that she would call me again sometime soon. I thanked her and said goodbye, and that was it. Bolin would have said it was unromantic, but that was his opinion (as I imagined it in my head), not mine.

####

Back at the office, I sat at my desk, feet up among the papers while Hyen and I tossed a ball back and forth, discussing what I'd learned from Insook. Everyone else was out and about, leaving us free to act like children.

"There has to be a better word for it than 'congealed glob of spirit energy,'" Hyen said throwing the ball to me with a practiced overhand.

"Insook said 'spiritualized memories' to mean the same thing. How about that?" I caught the ball and passed it from hand to hand before throwing back it again.

"Sure. I guess it doesn't matter. She didn't say how to ID someone with this thing, did she?"

I shrugged. "Same way you'd confirm an alibi. Ask around, cross-check stories, get written records."

"No magical detection technique though."

"No."

We sat in silence for a minute, Hyen bouncing the ball against the ground.

"What do you think?" I prompted.

Hyen grimaced, sucked in air between his teeth. "Three things. First, double-check the known victims, besides the two we already confirmed, and find out how many, if any, were old souls. Or whatever you want to call them."

"The parents might not know, if the kids never mentioned it," I pointed out.

"True." Hyen threw the ball at me and I caught it one-handed. "But we can't do anything about that. Second thing is legwork. Find more of these people in the city, keep tabs on them, see if any of them have gone missing."

"How? We don't have that info in our database. Run an ad in the paper?" I offered as an answer to my own question.

"Maybe. Or see if they have a club or something. I'm sure not going door-to-door."

I threw the ball at him. "Third thing?"

Hyen put the ball back in his desk. "Third thing is why a spirit would want to go after these people."

I pulled at my chin in thought. I'd had some time to consider it on my ride back to Headquarters. "I don't know how much this changes our earlier theory that the spirit is attracted to people with extra spiritual energy. It probably still is. But..."

Hyen remained silent as I put my thoughts to words. "It's looking for memories. Chunks of information. It wants to know something."

Hyen murmured agreement, motioned for me to continue.

"It's gotta be a pretty big, major spirit to have a goal like that, since minor spirits are just too..." I winced, not wanting to insult the magical beings worshiped by humans everywhere.

"Weak?"

I shook my head. "Stupid. And like, think about the kind of information it's going after. Memories of being human. If it wanted to know... I dunno... learn how to build a radio or how to drive a car, couldn't it look someplace else? There's libraries in the spirit world."

"There's not a spirit of humanity, is there?" Hyen asked.

"I don't think so." What would a spirit like that even look like? How would it act? People were all so different, I didn't think a single entity could represent the entirety of humanity. I shook my head. "I'm wondering if it's the spirit of a person. A ghost."

Hyen looked at me in surprise. "A ghost. Yeah, maybe. Some kind of lost soul—or whatever—wandering around, wanting to be human but unable to reincarnate. It's a good theory, but we should see if we can't think of anything else." He wasn't dismissing the idea, just reminding me that it was dangerous to get too invested in one single idea and blind yourself to other options.

I nodded and turned the conversation back to more immediate, practical things. "So, legwork. How is your leg?"

"Stinky, but otherwise fine." He got the ball out again and tossed it to me. "How's your arm?"

"It's fine."

"Really?" He motioned for me to pass the ball back.

"Yes, really." I tossed, Hyen caught.

"Then why do you only throw with your left?"

I blinked.

"I know you're not a south paw. Did you ever go to the doctor after that kid attacked you?"

It took me a moment to remember my falsehood about the kids who had tried to steal my bike. "It's just taking a while to heal."

Hyen grunted and didn't press the issue.

####

The Snatcher case continued to plod along. Hyen and I were busy, but it felt like the progress we got wasn't proportional to the amount of work we were putting in. It was a wonder Vani hadn't reassigned us yet.

Back home again, I collapsed on the sofa and just sat there for a long minute, wondering if it was worth the effort to try to meditate, or if I should just make some dinner and listen to National Variety Hour. Food and entertainment won, though I did have one chore first. I got up, found the morning's newspaper and took my daily photo.

The roll of film was going to run out soon, and I still hadn't figured out how to get the pictures developed. Asking Bei Fong to do it was probably my best bet, but I didn't want to have her see the photos. I ought to do it though, especially since I had to talk to her anyway about the adventure Opal and I went on.

Photo taken, I put my shirt back on. The scales were still spreading of course—there was an uncomfortable patch on my shoulder blade now—but at least it was in a somewhat predictable and uniform way. Easier on my psyche than periodic surprises at any rate.

With that out of the way, I went to the kitchen and started up the stove and the radio. A singer warbled over the airwaves, a little too old-fashioned and cheery for my taste, but at least she had a nice voice.

The phone rang a few minutes into my prep and instantly my heart was in my throat. Insook had said she'd call sometime soon, but was that same day too soon to count as "sometime soon"? I turned off the radio and answered the phone.

"Hey, bro."

"Bolin? Don't tell me you finally joined the modern era and got a telephone."

"I'm at Grandma's."

I winced. "Is everything okay?"

"She's fine. I don't need an excuse to visit." There was a pause, and then a husky whisper, "It's ramen night."

I smiled to myself. "Tell everybody hi for me."

"Aye-aye, captain." There was a pause, and then in a quiet voice Bolin said, "Opal said you had something to tell me."

"Oh. Yeah, just not over the phone, okay?" Grandma had a party line and a house full of relatives. Not exactly private.

"Okay. I'll stop by after work. Can I tell Grandma about Insook?"

"What? No."

Bolin gasped. "Did she not accept your apology?"

"Yes, she did."

"But things aren't going anywhere."

"No, we're still talking."

"By talking, do you mean dating?"

"I..." I resisted the urge to hang up on him. I didn't really want to talk about this, but it was like Opal had said—he was my brother and I was supposed to talk to him, even if all he ever did was tease me about these things. "I don't know. I talked to her today and she said she'd call me sometime."

"Mm. Taking it slow. You gotta make a move sometime though. Isn't she moving back to the North Pole eventually?"

My heart sank. "Yeah, I guess she is."

Bolin launched into a story about some friend of a coworker who followed a girl to the Fire Nation, but got cut off by a cousin trying to use the line. I let him go and returned to my cooking, thinking about transoceanic travel and the disappointing inconvenience of it. I winced as something spasmed in my arm and the pan I was flipping dropped from my grip, spilling vegetables all over the stove. I shuddered and cleaned up the mess, thoughts derailed.