How Innocent is "innocent"... is there a tape measure? Or some electronic device that you can use ... something like the Scientology e-Meter in order to measure just how pure someone might be? How can some mere mortal do something like this? Can they? Or.. do they need me...

I'm a collector of sorts. Some people are fascinated by circles of vinyl... relics of a bygone era... some few still enjoy stamps... those things that fascinated in the days when people sent actual letters. Ah, Bernice... woman in her 90s showing me her collection of rare stamps "I didn't even know that Monaco was a real country until I got this stamp." Nice woman... but not nice enough, I'm afraid.

Then there's people who collect cars... a lot of good that did for that Tate guy, although people like him are... none of my concern... Or boats, or guitars, or... well, its endless the material trappings that these... humans will collect.

Ah, but I give myself away. I try to refer to you as "people" rather than "humans"; but it is quite hard to remember... to forget. I'm... well, time has forgotten exactly what I might be. Some say that the Reaper had a child with a human, while others say that I'm a spirit who somehow became material. But it isn't important to me how exactly I came to be, rather what matters is what I am and what I can do. And its simply this: I can read your soul. I can measure anyone as a person in the same way that people imagine that their God can. I can see your faults, your vices, but also your works of charity... your hopes, your dreams, your revenge. I can see every drop of it.

None of this interests *me* very much. I have my own dwelling place, complete with land to grow what I need. From being quite wise hundreds of years ago, I have investments to sustain me indefinitely. So I have no real reason to need - or want - to know the intimate details of these mortals.

(Ah, mortals... its a funny thing... I've lived long enough to not be able to count my own years... but I really don't know... am I immortal?)

I met Bob some years back. It was a more or less random thing. You see, I can feel impending tragedy... I am.. almost drawn to it. One could say that this "trait" comes from my possible father... the Reaper. I'm not fascinated in any morbid sense by impending death... I don't enjoy suffering; on the contrary, it fills me with some kind of melancholy. Yet my essence is irresistibly drawn in its direction.

Sometimes I blink and find myself in a new place. And in this case, I was next to a new person. Bob. He was staring intently at the same thing that blinked me next to the train station... an out of control locomotive that was about to crash past the not quite strong enough barricade and annihilate part of the station. That's when I noticed that Bob was wearing a cape. Unconsciously, my eyes rolled. Not only did the superhero not have some fancy name with which to adorn himself; he also wore a cape of all things.

"Fancy I meet you here Bob." I said, dripping with sarcasm voiced from some unrecognizable part of me. "So, one is quite... interested in drama? You could have already stopped this, you know?"

"Shh!" He almost whispered "I have to pick first."

"Pick?" I asked, truly bewildered. "There's no picking involved here. Just fly to the train and stop it, its quite..." I paused when he placed his finger on my lips.

"I have to pick the sacrifice... one innocent person in exchange for unlimited power."

Without taking him seriously for a second, or even taking a pause to think, I pointed to a certain non-descript man of Welsh extraction. he was operating a hot dog vending cart. Divorced, no contact with his children. A decent fellow, but not without faults... Of all the "innocents" he was... the least innocent, one could say.

Bob, without knowing who I was or why I pointed to that man, then himself pointed. The man had a sudden cardiac arrest, after which Bob flew so fast to the train i could barely see him do it. One could see (or imagine) the sweat coming off his forehead from the excruciating effort to stop the train; but stop it he did.

They say that Bob the Protector saved 110 people on the train, and perhaps just as many in the station. What they don't know is that starting that day... with my help in identifying the "least innocent" innocent person to sacrifice... Bob dealt with a lot less guilt for his acts of heroics.

And that first sacrifice that I helped with? The hot dog vendor? Well, someone had to come for his soul. And that? That was the first time that I met the being who might... *might* have been my father...