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before we arrive.” I said.
    “No problem, sir.”

    I woke up at eleven thirty. The GPS display showed us navigating through the messy split of Routes 95 and 91 in New Haven . Bob headed north on 91 toward Hartford .
    He looked at me in the rearview mirror. “Did you sleep well, sir?”
    I nodded. “The bed was great.” I grabbed the remote and tracked our path. I noticed the Manhattan section showed a detour—our limo had circled Central Park .
    “What’s with the Manhattan tour?” I asked.
    Bob looked at his display. “That loop you see there? I made a pickup while you were sleeping.”
    “What kind of pickup?”
    “One of our members was returning some items to his soul line collection.”
    “Couldn’t he use an overnight delivery service?”
    “He is using one. That’s my job. The items are priceless, and we cannot trust just anybody to deliver them. Only we know how to do it right.”
    “You take your job pretty seriously.”
    He nodded. “I am the number one driver in the Mid-Atlantic region.”
    Good for Bob. “What is he returning?” I asked. “Can I see them?”
    He shook his head. “Only he and the depositary clerks will ever see them. Even I don’t know what’s inside the package.”
    At least Soul Identity seemed to take privacy seriously. That would make my job easier—once I found out what it was.
    “Do you use SI Delivery for your own deposits?” I asked.
    “Yes, sir.”
    “Does a driver come to your house in a limo?”
    He laughed. “No, sir, I handle my own transactions.”
    “What kinds of deposits do you make?”
    He seemed to hesitate before answering me. “Sir, many non-believers think what we do is strange.”
    He got that right.
    Bob continued. “We’ve been persecuted, thrown out of our homes and towns, and even burned and drowned as witches and wizards. We’ve learned to be cautious about sharing too much with non-believers.”
    “Yet you’re sharing all kinds of information with me.”
    He sighed. “I am, but Mr. Morgan says you need to understand so you can do your job. And, sir, I fully expect that you’ll become a believer once you see what we’re all about.”
    And though I thought Bob was over-optimistic about my impending conversion, that wasn’t where he was heading. “You’re asking me to be careful with what you tell me.”
    He nodded.
    “I’ll be careful.”
    Bob took a deep breath. “We collect dolls.” He winced as he said this.
    “Dolls?”
    He nodded.
    “What kind of dolls?”
    “The kind that kids play with, sir.”
    “Who’s ‘we’”
    “We, sir?”
    “As in, ‘we collect dolls.’ Does all of Soul Identity collect dolls?”
    He shook his head. “’We’ means my previous selves and me. My soul line has collected thousands of dolls over the past thirteen hundred years. It’s my turn now, and then my futures selves will be adding even more.”
    “You must have quite a collection.”
    “We do, sir. One of my predecessors had them on display at a doll museum in London back in the nineteenth century.”
    I had nothing to say.
    After a few minutes of silence, Bob pointed at a billboard advertising a Chinese all-you-can-eat lunch buffet. “How’s that look?” he asked.
    “It’ll do,” I said.

    “So why dolls?” I asked when we returned to our table, our plates heaped with noodles, egg rolls, and General Tso’s chicken.
    Bob sat down and pulled his chopsticks out of their wrapper. “My soul line founder was an eighth-century noblewoman living in Breton March, France . The Basques ambushed and killed her husband as Charlemagne’s army returned from its Spanish campaign. She made ends meet by delivering packages between Soul Identity and the royal court. Before she died, she assigned us the task of assembling a doll collection.”
    It sounded like Bob had recited this story many times before. “Why is it that every time somebody talks about their past lives, nobility is involved?” I asked. “Nobody ever seems to come