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ordered mind, quite impressive. And scary as hell. The apartment was a statement devoid of emotion, full of the weight of absolutely nothing; it amazed him, made him feel claustrophobic, as if the air was suddenly palpable and able to cushion him if he but leaned against it.
    The sudden thought that the spirits of the departed members of the Latimer family were at this moment infusing the fifteen by ten metres of their former living space rocked Emmett momentarily, but was swiftly rejected as so much hokum. It was, he quickly told himself, a lingering autonomic response, a remnant in the human psyche of the way things used to be.
    A sudden religious urge to consider the transmogrification of the human soul as something more than ashes was silly and not the kind of thought which the Assistant Director—soon to be elevated to the Directorship?—of the modern ovens in Toronto Nation’s Crematoria was expected to have. Such thoughts were nothing more than sympathetic magic, a throwback to other centuries when faith in God or Allah or Buddha or Koresh or Moon or a thousand others vied with various degrees of success for the minds and hearts of the population on Earth.  Whatever those deities, or demi-deities, or outright phonies had once  represented, they were now so much historical rubbish. Religion had not been popular in the world since Jeffrey Meilgaard had chugged his cocktail of contagion down in the old U.S. more than twenty years ago and everyone’s God had stood by silently and watched him do it.
    Emmett, trained to be responsive to people’s needs in time of death, frequently impressed on his staff and local affiliates that sympathy and compassion should be allowed to flow like sweet champagne within the confines of the Crematoria’s Goodbye Rooms. Family members were encouraged to weep before they were presented with the bill and an invitation to return to the realities of modern Mall-life.
    Yet, the regret which he was now feeling was a stone in his gut.  Leigh and Gordon had been his friends and he allowed himself several moments of mourning on their behalf. Cathy, that sweet little girl, was as good as dead, now that she was lost to the Outside. Surely, Emmett reasoned, if there was a God or Supreme Being then it was more likely the Lord of Misrule or, better yet, the Lord of Chaos. Either would be, in his opinion, more appropriate to the history of human civilization. 
 
     
    Emmett considered the unnerving possibility that the Grief Team would also be paying him a visit. As everyone knew, such an event could presage the termination of parental rights for any shadow of suspicion which fell across a husband or wife charged with raising a child through Stage Two would be bad news delivered abruptly with no chance of reprieve.
    Every citizen in the Malls was aware that the Grief Team was empowered to do whatever it wished, short of breaking the moral code upon which all citizens’ rights were based. The days of police brutality were memories which only a handful of citizens now close to termination themselves might still harbour from the early-00’s, before viruses made law enforcement on the streets virtually unnecessary. The Grief Team’s methodology more than adequately allowed for the humane and lawful treatment of parents and one home visit was always enough to ensure compliance with whatever the Bluebands had in mind. Rumours, chiefly emanating out of Square One, spoke of other, more sinister methods but these were surely unfounded, spread as they undoubtedly were by discontented Mulls. After all, who had ever been dragged away and shot? No one he knew. Any disappearance would be noted in the Stream somewhere and thus answerable to the Mayor. At least that was how he perceived his rights: this was not 2002 and cops were no longer using citizens on the streets for target practice .
    Would they search his home?
              Would they find that all-important package?