Ascribe;
you do it all the time.
Your eyes sketch in the world in pencil strokes of monomolecular script as they scan the whatever of colour.
The Redsplodge is not a bus until you focus on it; without the voice saying cobble, cobble, cobble, car, person,
all would be grey unity.
An eyeful is a monotheistic mistake, lacking the discernment of pagan differentiation.
It is not the one blurry god to those who listen with their eyes. It is the specific and unique shoe,
the fractally dissolving cloud,
the hard and painted roadsign.
Reblurring the surroundings is a sign of despair. You let the solid station platform and its shiny adverts recede to a mere letterbox of fuzz designed to stop you being robbed, of your bag or your train. Other senses become purposely ineffective; the speech of commuters fades to the

buzz of infrequent country bees; the cold bars of wood, that would get called a bench if you looked at it with fully open eyes, are now nothing more than a light touch framing what is no longer thought of as bones, flesh, skin, guts, vitals or even your body.
It hangs without ascription. Because it can never be verified.

Having dropped the world and the present your cosseted, closeted thoughts turn to the future, after the train, in the other city. You arrange your mind with a mechanical logic that you have observed in those who have received professional help with their lives but which you taught yourself.
First your basic fix,
the strong idea which you start from whether moving from this city to that, or that to this.

Although you resent the historical and cultural implications the basic fix is you upon the cross, even to your pantheistic brain the message of the nails and the holy pariah cut deep enough to focus.
The next image is pure futurism as you picture a black polymer bodybag slowly climbing, under its own power, up your cross and around your form. You take a chance and allow your letterbox of warning to shut; the thick oil that fills the black bag smears soothingly across your face.
Your new senseless skin hardens to a lacquer finish, trapping the world outside. Your rough shape, which in its simplicity is all that remains of you, floats free from your precious luggage and hangs, at your command, above the quiet station and you begin to brief yourself.

Oliver, Oliver, Oliver.
There can be no mistakes.
Oliver, Oliver, Oliver.
There must be no recognition.
Oliver, Oliver, Oliver.
You must be James Oliver, through and through.
There must not be a flicker of anyone called Mclean.

In your armoured state of arousal you uncouple James McLean’s mental carriages and they go off muttering, like Annie and Clarabel, into the mists of your deep mind. From out of that convoluted, cerebral maelstrom come, clinking and puffing, the carriages of James Oliver’s possession. There is the metallic Ping and satisfying Clunk of a good coupling,
and the process is a success.
The evil cloying oil pours from your face and underneath you find James Oliver on the cross.
You are James Oliver and you set him free.
You step down off the cross into the cold Scottish station, refreshed and calm. No one has stolen your black bag.
The critical joker in your heart notes that if you were really Christ then the chances of finding your possessions on your return would be slim.
The flaw in the system is that what makes you both Oliver and Mclean is your baggage, your mentally enshrined personality can flit and dive for all its worth you must still carry the same burden when you open your eyes.
Although you are now Oliver you carry the heavy, black case of Mclean,
the tubes of perma-crete,
the jars of skin thickener,
the applicator endoscope packed in a bundle with a cheap four-pack of sterilising spray,
McLean’s prized Ultrasonic Bone Shaver.
And though you have been Mclean all day you have expertly tooled James Oliver’s tall animal-case from appointment to appointment, fed his beasts and scratched his prize hog-dog behind the ears at quiet moments.
Both of your loose clans of customers, at least the true regulars, those that you have cared for for twenty years or to whom you sold their first Retrieving Gerbil, they know from your luggage that there is something else of you that they don’t ever see. They know without having asked any questions as respectful friends, in this land, tend not to. What you can carry, what you can freight is your livelihood. Kind people might say, in Glasgow, that they hire you for your kind face but you know that their eyes are searching for your palliative bag as you come round their door.

It is your drugs and drops that stoke up and draw out the weak flames of their old souls.
There is no need for you to carry both men’s luggage, it could be stored at little expense and though Oliver has little money Mclean has much to spare.
There is no need for you to carry both men’s luggage, beyond care of the animals and McLean’s residual paranoia about the attractiveness of his black bag. You know, from years carrying it, that there are very few who can resist relieving their aches and pains, if only for the stolen afternoon that stolen supplies can afford. You shake your head at the tragedy, if they wanted eternal rest, eternal comfort then they should employ you, in Glasgow, as Mclean. Mclean can sort you out, even if you do say so yourself. In your little bag, that is right now clamped under your right arm as you sit on the bench, in your little armoured bag there are cunning

technological marvels which can render the most extended lifespan comfortable. As Mclean you are free to help people, you can choose who to deliver from pain and have every confidence in achieving their delivery. As Mclean you are free to be a craftsman, an artist, an architect, a carpenter. Bones must be planed just so.
To unwind the years, and to keep the artificial past viable and strong is a labour that must unite mind’s eye, steady hand and long experience if it is not to be just a hideous facade.

The train arrives when you have your eyes wide open and you busily assign the patterns with values to fill in the scene, complete with people, clothing, expressions, nasal hairs, mobile phones and oily smell, not just details either, relationships, interactions, movement.

Although it is in many ways easiest, when boarding a train, to get on first and defend your space, Oliver doesn’t do this.
You wait until everybody else has boarded,
you pet the hog-dog and the commuters and holidaymakers eye it from their seats.
You wheel the imposing, never-quiet basket-trolley to the first door of first class and make an attendant help you get it aboard the huge shuttle in Scotland’s loom.
Then you pause; and take stock; visibly, in front of all the interested carriage eyes, as they focus and ascribe values to what they think they see.
When you come the other way, as Mclean, nobody notices that the doctor’s big luggage contains animals; they give him a respectful berth.
But as Oliver you swap respect for attention and you will talk to everyone on this train, whether they like it or not.
With the pretence of feeding the occupants you half-reveal the contents of your menagerie. As it is first class only the large and obviously extortionate wares are highlighted. As if escaping a mendatic monkey slyly holds onto your sleeve and is hoisted within reach of a table. The lithe and silent primate lopes gently and discretely as a butler onto the plastic edge and all eyes in the carriage follow it to the next table as if they are watching tennis. While they are distracted;
people who think they are clever like monkeys, strong like monkeys, violent like monkeys; you put the humming-song birds on the top of the trunk, the noise will just add drama to the Monkey’s telling of silent fortunes three tables away, it won’t yet draw their attention back to you. Even though the whole carriage is men you won’t be selling any quick-dying flowerbugs for them to take home to their wives. You only sell things, only in Edinburgh, only as Oliver, that you would want to keep forever. You don’t sell the Mendy-Monkey, it isn’t really for sale to the public, but you pretend to try, at a price that could fetch three better, more brainy Mendys if the suckers decide to buy. Being Oliver you don’t set the humming birds off until you are leaving first class, a punishment for the rich folks, make them wish that anyone still gave them a tune for free, or an equal's smile: either.
As you enter the disorganisation of Not-first class the birds sing an anthem of three years ago which can still bring a tear to the right eye. The monkey reads westerns in the comfort of his hammock, the hog-dog runs ahead to find a seat; it is the second hog-dog too faithful to sell this year. Is makes its endearing noise and hassles the oldest passengers for food. The old tend to see all life as unruly, needy, demanding and it is sometimes best to present that face to them first, if you wish to gain their trust. The begging hog-dog is perfect at this form of charm. She is as human to them as the monkey is to business class.
Oliver is the poor boy after all and you pretend to need the business as you move down the train, pretend to yourself as much as to the punters. You gain a wife and children as you move down the train and they will starve if you do not make a sale. You hit a wee gold mine in the first
couple that you see. You trap them by means of a pair of caged, Locating Lovebirds, strong enough to lift their spidery, spherical, silver cage and fly to their table. You go to retrieve the birds and end up selling him a humming bird imprinted upon a locket of honey, that must be kept
filled, at his expense, or the bird would die. He looked a little displeased that the source of the wonderful music was alive and a little more that he would have to send to me for special honey from now on to maintain his relationship. You really throw yourself into Oliver and sell her a clip
for his shoulder that attracts another bird, a bigger, blacker, cooler one, and now she must pay the piper also. You can't wonder how long they will last, heartbreak is a personal thing.
You are at the mid point of the train when you expect to meet the ticket inspector, you will pretend not to have a ticket and maybe will refuse to pay before you produce one of your first class season passes and laugh and pretend to sell him a nonexistent rat to carry sandwiches about instead of a trolley, which is equally nonexistent. But first you see another possible sale, and this one you really do want to make. A pair of twin girls sit side by side, staring out of the window; they might not even know that there is a seller of exotic animals on the train!
You take a pair of twin cats from their sleep and their basket and lay them lovingly on the table between the girls and their dad. The two near-kittens lie curled like yin and yang in a single sleepy ball. As they rouse and move apart it becomes slowly clear that their staggering, bumbling, fluffy movements identically mirror their sibling’s. Each cat turns around to look at the room at the same moment, each finds something to consider cattishly at the same moment. They are perfectly synchronised but it is not freaky, it does not look artificial or imposed. It seems mere luck, on somebody’s part, that they stay perfectly aligned. They are both free to turn and go in any direction but they go there and return to a centre that they share.
So concerned are you to extol the symbolism and the majesty of these simple cats and the value that they would have, to the right owner, that you do not think of anyone behind you until you feel a hand on your shoulder.
Assuming that someone wants past in the aisle you stand and give them room.
But the presence behind you does not move and you turn to see a man in a suit and a man in an animal proof suit. You have one of those, though better made and better maintained, and alarms go clamouring inside your mind but you smile and put yourself up on the cross as fast as you can. The alien feeling of being the centre of a monotheistic universe washes through you with the pain of the alien metal through your wrists.
Ad-libbing, before the process is complete, you wordlessly hand your ticket to the man in the suit.
He wordlessly takes it from you and looks at the first class season pass, wordlessly he hands it back to you.
You turn back to the twins with a smile.
Before you can speak the hand is on your shoulder again but the hand cannot feel the invisible oil coursing off your body and there is not a glimmer of worry in your eye.
“Could I see your ticket again, Sir.”
It isn’t a question but the officer is unsettled and the voice is strained. The throat had been gearing up to say, in official tones,
“James Oliver: I arrest you under sections one to twelve also thirty to thirty-four of the animal aberration act 2035.”
You give him your Mclean ticket again and this time he remembers to give it the Genuine-Reflection Test.
And it is real, of course, you are James Mclean.

An age-carer of great reputation and fortune, a person capable of buying an entire stock of animals on a whim but incapable of controlling those animals once you are on a train. You bring the policeman to see that first your ape ran away and then your hairy pig and who knows how many birds and that kind people had offered to buy the beasts to take them off your hands. All you really wanted were the Whittling Mice for Christmas but the man in the station sold you the whole thing.
“these two delightful girls are interested in these twin cats, would you like to buy the monkey for a couple of grand, I am assured that it can take dictation and keep accounts?”
“We have reason to believe that there are restricted insects concealed in these cages.” James Oliver would have been shocked to hear his business slandered so, he would have complained, he would have been embarrassed in front of all these strangers. James Mclean didn’t bat an eyelid. To him it was just another interesting oddment that he had picked up for a song.
“May we search for and remove these insects, Sir?”
The complete impossibility of your obtaining false identification meant that it was a question this time.
“By all means.”
The man in the animal-proof suit moves forward and opens the locked lower drawer of the massive trunk easily. From within scuttle the hundreds of cockroaches that you laboriously trapped within to conceal the valuable ones. They all make a bid for freedom, running as if to
save James Oliver from disgrace, running towards the warm dark of seats and clothes and passengers. The animal-proof man is wise to this method of evasion and as the sea of crawlers surges forward he flicks a switch and the insect army is pulled inexorably into a specially made vacuum and imprisoned.
“Thank you Sir.” The man in the suit sounds truly grateful and the two men leave the carriage.
Elated that your first ever brush with the law is over you sink into the chair beside the father of the twins and since they know now that you aren’t an animal dealer it is much easier to sell the kittens.
As James Mclean there is no further reason to travel down the train.
You relax your body in the seat but your mind is exited.
You have never been to Edinburgh before.