Chapter 4

Emerging from the deeps, I was both blind and deaf. No one, other than another ghost, can appreciate the sheer hell of sensory deprivation. You meat folk never get it. You always have your pulse and respiration as input. Sea sonar does not work in the air. Pressure sensors calibrated in tons per square centimeter give no reading at all in air. A frantic review of circuits not used for nearly half a century, taking nearly 20 milliseconds, gave me a single functional camera for vision. I grabbed at it like a drowning man grabs a life jacket.

Liverpool had changed.

I plead guilty to not paying much attention to the news - that is meat business, not ghost business - but the changes in a city I once loved shocked me. The well known area around the docks was under water. The cathedral, that metal teepee where I was married, was now an island in a sea of chaotic water and broken concrete levees. 

I wonder if my wife is still alive, and what she is doing. I am dead - legally and in fact - so have no claim on her. But I do wish to know. I sometimes think it is a pity that women tend not to survive the ghosting process sane. I have always preferred their company to that of men.

We talked about it a lot on the Atlantic ridge. GHST 22100, or Guy in life, always claimed it was because women were closer to the life force than men. They went insane rather than dealing with the half life we lead. Honestly, I don't know.