Hey Nostradamus! By Douglas Coupland

middle of whatever I'm doing, saying 'Oh, I say,' and it's freaking me out, and I'm supposed to be used to
this sort of thing."
"How did you connect the voice to my name?"
"That's almost the easiest part. I emptied my head and used a pencil on white paper in a dark room and
your name and number came out. It's not too far a stretch to get a phone number when you get such a
weird, specific message like 'Oh, I say' delivered in a Rex Harrison baritone."
"Why are you doing this?"
"Heather, I'm sorry you feel this way. But there's no game-playing going on here. I don't want money. I
don't want anything. But there's still these words pumping out of wherever. I just want to make sure I'm
not cracking up. Oh, I say. Oh, I say. Oh, I say."
I was silent. In the other room the kids were bickering.
"Heather, look. I've never told anyone this before, but I'm not really a psychic. I'm a fake psychic. I look
at people's faces, their jewelry and scars and footwear and shirts and you name it. I pretty much feed
them what they want to hear. You don't even need too much intuition to do it. I'm surprised there aren't
millions of psychics out there. It's a total racket."
So much for me being a living lie detector. "How can you mess with people's lives like that?"
"Messing? Not at all. I give them hope, and I never raise their expectations too high. The only thing most
people want is a bit of proof, however flimsy, that people they once knew are thinking of them from the
great beyond."
"Most people? What do the other people want?"
"They want a conversation with the dead, but I can't do that for them. Because I'm a fake. And even if I
could, a conversation with someone in the great beyond might not be the smartest thing to facilitate."
"But you're a fake. You said so yourself."
"I am, Heather. But this 'Oh, I say' thing - it's the only potentially real signal I've ever picked up on my
antenna, and frankly it's scaring me."
"What do you want me to do?"
"Just tell me that it means something - that it means something real."
"Allison, give me a second here."
I put the wineglass down on the counter. There were lipstick stains on it. Why was I wearing lipstick to
baby-sit the kids? The icemaker rumbled and stopped, and the fridge's humming entered second gear.
"Okay," I said, "It means something."
"Oh, thank God."
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