“If you will just sign here and the loan for your museum is yours.”
“How about that? Just need to write the eleven letters that make up Norman Agate?” Norman replied, wiping the mucus from his nose. “Now I will finally be able to break ground on the future home of Steve and all of his companions.”
“Pardon?”
“Oh Steve is-” But Norman was not able to finish his thought because at that moment two men burst into the room.
These men wore suits, nice ones with matching ties and vests. Norman immediately thought that these men would never be the kind to catch a ride from him on his pedicab. He thought these men would have been more likely to speak into a watch to summon a helicopter than to climb on to the back of his cab.
“We can’t let you do it Norman. It isn’t meant to be.”
“What do you mean? What can’t I do? And…and why not?”
“Your museum Norman, we know about it. We know what your real intent is for it. We know that it isn’t going to be the geological sensation that you tell everyone it will be. We know you intend to use it to house all of the pebbles you call friends. But if you do this, if you build this museum, many powerful people will become quite angry. And that is something people like us do not want to happen.”
“How, how do you know all of this?” stammered Norman?
“We know everything about you. We know that you remember your birth. We know about the turtle and the gull. Our information gatherers know a lot about your memories of your mother. We even know about Geology school. Norman, this won’t fix it. This museum will only bring you suffering.”
“Well how about that? But what you don’t know is that I am willing to risk it all for the sake of Geology. For the sake of Steve. Hand me the document Mr. Bankman.”
At that Norman seized the loan agreement and hastily scrawled Norman Agate onto the paper before the suited men could stop him.
Unfortunately for Norman, the suited men who knew far too much about him weren’t racing to stop him from signing the document. Instead they each calmly reached inside their expensive black suits and pulled out a handgun. The moment Norman put down the pen and turned to them with a smile of triumph on his face, they shot him.
Norman didn’t see it coming, but once he was hit he saw everything. He saw every corner of the room, every detail of every object. Had he thought to do it, he could have counted the threads on the suit. Two hundred Italian wool threads he would have counted.
But as Norman hit the floor, he only saw one thing. He saw his pebble, Steve, fall from his pocket and land between the floorboards.
“Steve!” cried Norman.