America's North Shore Journal

isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, believe me. Try dying a couple dozen times and see if you get excited the next time it happens.

They finally called the virus “The Wandering Jew Disease”. Never found a cure for the couple dozen of us who were in that building when it got released. And, yeah, you can die for good. Sam managed to throw himself into a blast furnace. Total incineration did the trick for him. Little Darlene, the intern, found out that tackling a suicide bomber to prevent him from entering a school will also kill you permanently dead.

You see, I’m not quite sure I want to be permanently dead. So I just go on. The CIA gave me this nice job, doing things no one else dares to do. Heck, most of us Wanderers ended up working for one clandestine service or another. Except Scotty. He’s a Mormon, and has dedicated his life… lives to spreading the faith in distant lands. Where they kill you for spreading the faith. Over, and over, and over and…

The hard part about being a Wanderer is seeing everyone you loved grow old, and die for good. After a few decades, you kinda give up on friendship and love and settle for affection and companionship. You know, pets. I have a cat, my fifth.

Every few years someone wants to make a movie about my life, or wants me to write my memoirs. I hate the idea. Every scene, every chapter ends with “And then I died.”

It’s not as bad as all that. The government sees that we’re well paid. Nothing but the best. And, every few years it becomes the “in” thing to have a Wanderer at your party or your club. And the gals who just have to have a Wanderer, well, let me tell you… Rock groupies are nothing compared to Wanderer groupies. One time I had a heart attack right in the middle of…

No, I swore I’d never talk about that day, with the dwarf, the goat and the chainsaw. Curious though, tattoos don’t heal over like other wounds. And this tattoo is a doozy.

My plane leaves for Peking soon. I have some, er…, wet work to take care of in North Korea. Keep your eyes on the paper. I’ll probably die again.