Saving a Romance, Supervising Ghosts

            I was drifting incorporeal through a college student union room. There was a professor sitting across a round table from his senior editor for the school newspaper. (I don't know exactly how I knew that, but I did.) After they finished discussing business, which included the editor's resignation, as she was taking an early degree to go to work for a local paper, they stood and hugged.

            The hug went on for some time. They both looked at each other, and simultaneously they leaned in to kiss one another. I stopped being incorporeal by taking possession of a student who was about to protest. I steered my stolen body away. It was somehow important that these two be allowed to have this moment. I knew that they would get together and their child would somehow be critical to the future. I went to the food line and purchased a couple of desserts, walking outside, I let my host go, mouth full and only slightly confused by what had happened. I figured the romance would be well sealed by the time the person finished chewing and got back into the student union.

            Next, I found myself at a wine cellar and grocery store where ghosts were stocking the shelves. I told them "Thank you,” just in case no one had thanked them before. Since they were doing work I'd been asked to oversee. The owners hadn't bothered to tell me I'd be overseeing ghosts. I noticed that one of our product lines was exclusively on the top shelf, so asked how the shorter customers were going to be able to get to them. The ghosts milled around a bit and then rearranged the product and the one next to it to be across three shelves each. They seemed pleased when I thanked them for solving the problem. Not that I could see them.

            The owners then came a got me out of a meeting and everyone was pointing at me saying it was my fault. They led me back into the winery kitchen where there were ghosts cleaning pots and pans and reorganizing the equipment. I could see this bunch; they were all in the white kitchen uniform or in tuxedo type jackets. The cooks and bus boys were cowering in a corner. The owners wanted me to talk to the ghosts and get them to "calm down." 

            I went over and talked to the cooks and bus boys instead, telling them to go ahead and go back to work, just say out loud what you need, and to say "thank you" and "please" when asking for things. I also suggested that they phrase their requests as problems needing solutions, as that seemed to be the ghostly motivation for this haunting, to be problem solving and useful.

            I then went into the maelstrom of swirling kitchen tools and presented the ghostly host with the immediate problem that needed to be solved; my kitchen staff was frightened of the zooming activity level, especially where it featured sharp knives and the like. All of the sharp items immediately were placed on counters, and the other items were suddenly being carried well overhead.

            The kitchen staff slowly made their way back to their posts, led by the bus boys, who could spend much of their time out of the kitchen anyway, and then the cooks, ducking under the stream of clean dishes from the washer. The Cooks soon found that they only had to ask for what they wanted and someone was handing it to them. In about a half an hour, everything was humming nicely. One of the cooks told me he was OK with this, as long as he didn't have to actually see them. I asked who could see the ghosts, and only one dish washer indicated that she could see them. I asked if she minded. She said she didn't but "I better not see any of them in the restroom with me!"

            I saw the ghosts nodding, so knew that wouldn't be a problem. By the time I left, some of the ghosts had figured out that they didn't have to walk on the floors, and were hovering well up overhead passing pans from the stove up over the light fixtures and then down into the sinks. I made a note to buy a drip pan to prevent spills into the lighting fixtures. Apparently the ghosts couldn't do any actual washing, something to do with running water, but they were keeping the dirty and clean dishes moving between the cooking and cleaning areas.

            I felt that the partnership was going to help make the winery kitchen an even greater success. The owners were a little taken aback, but I pointed out that ghosts had been keeping their store shelves straightened out for years without any negative incidents. It wasn't really hurting them, because the free labor they got was well worth the extra pay they had to offer their workers to stay on.

            As the dream was fading away, I realized that I was actually one of the ghosts, not one of the live workers, but strong enough to be seen by even ordinary folks. That was weird, and caused me to wake with a start.

 

Ad astra per technica,

FF