The Oklahoma Review, Spring 2014

belief think that when one dies, one simply ceases to be. The other school of thought embraces the notion of an afterlife, where one's soul continues to exist even after the body fails. What happens then is a matter of great speculation. Reincarnation, Heaven, Hell, another plan of existence; all are considered likely alternatives to the final destination of the human soul."

Does it bother you that you will die? the boy looks out the window to the hanging man.

"It does not fear death, it only concerns itself with the primary directive. Upon completion or failure of its primary directive, it will have served its only purpose and it can be deactivated."

The boy stares at it with eyes rimmed with tears. It reaches over and sets the beans down upon a small, antiquated ottoman and stands over the figure, reaching over and tucking it in with great tenderness.

"Will you help it?"

How? "When it either completes or fails its primary directive, would you assign it another?"

Yes. I want you to stay with me.

A pause.

I'd like to see the ocean one more time. Or do you think I'll go there when I die? Do you think heaven might be in the ocean?

It hesitates for a nanosecond, a lifetime of silence for it but completely imperceptible to the small boy laying there and dying beneath a stained white blanket. It reviews the primary directive and answers accordingly.

"Without a doubt."

For a while, the streets are silent.

It patches into the microphones again and watches from the second story. The boy is napping, so it has no other pressing tasks on which it must concentrate and as it scans the sidewalks outside the house, it takes note of a man sprawled face down three feet from th beach house's front door. There is an irregular spattering of blood beneath him that has dried in the sun, looking like an artist's abstractions done in a thick, burgundy street chalk.

As the morning viscously yields to afternoon, however, the ragged hole in the torn world outside the solid wood door grows larger when bull whip cracks of gunfire coming from the east 60