Afterlife (14 page)

Russell:

The funeral service began in all its horrible glory, black-cloaked man of God spouting empty words of comfort, a low-toned unintelligible drone. I wondered where he got his information. He safely skirted mention of any holy books, from the Bible to the Koran to the Bhagavad-Gita.

Then they lowered the much-too-small-to-be-real caskets into the ground. It started when the dirt was tossed in, earthen clumps that thudded, dark and dismal. A moan, heart-wrenching and pitiful, began to circle overhead like a flock of carrion birds. One of the mothers collapsed to her knees, her face buried in her hands. Then beside her, another woman began to cry, chest heaving, sobbing without pause. In a few moments it spread like a California brush fire, started in the valley where the parents stood and then swept up the mountainside, where the VR audience hovered above us. It felt like the whole world burned with sorrow.

We were being consumed by death. It was something we had ignored too long, and now, like a fire-breathing dragon,
it raised its ugly head in our midst; it dared us to pretend we were anything more than mortal.

The fire burned and we couldn't put it out.

 

We were leaving. Numb. Broken.

I felt like someone had dragged me through a minefield of broken glass. Raw and bleeding, with a hundred invisible slivers that continued to cut.

Someone grabbed my sleeve. I ignored it at first, but they wouldn't let go.

“Please.” A woman's voice.

I looked behind me and saw Mrs. Norris. I couldn't remember her first name. All I could see was a little girl's face superimposed on top of hers. Madeline Norris, eight years old. Dead.

“Please, can't you make an exception? Just this one time—” Her voice came out a ragged whisper as she pulled me closer. “Bring her back, bring my Madeline back. She was eight. That's old enough, isn't it? Resurrection would work on her, wouldn't it? Have you ever tried—”

I folded my hand over hers. Wished I could change my answer.

“No, Mrs. Norris. I can't. It doesn't work on children.”

“But can't you try? Just this time, try it,
please
.”

“I'm sorry. I wish…I wish there was something, but…” My voice trailed off, my words stumbled over one another, helpless and ineffectual.

“I just don't understand.” She stopped walking, stood still as the crowd rushed over her, a flood of black coats and lowered eyes. She just faded away as the mourners struggled to get out of the cemetery as quickly as they could.

I wanted to comfort her. In my mind I could hear Dad explain it and up until today I think I had always believed him.

“Resurrection doesn't work on anyone younger than twelve,” he told me one cold winter afternoon.

I had argued with him, tried to figure out what we were doing wrong.

“It isn't what we're doing,” he said. “It's us. It's the way we're made.”

“I don't understand,” I said.

“Children, they belong to God.” He shrugged. “We just can't take what belongs to Him.”

At that time it seemed to make sense.

But today, as the crowd rolled over Mrs. Norris like a tidal wave, I wanted to ask God why He didn't take better care of the things that belonged to Him.

Chaz:

There weren't many times when Russ asked for my opinion, when he even thought that I might have some idea worth listening to. I'm not sure when our “great divide” took place, when we drifted off into our separate universes and became more like rivals than friends. It was probably around the time our father died, although I think it had been brewing below the surface for a few years. You can't always put your finger right on the spot that hurts.

But there was one time, when I was about thirteen and he must have been fifteen, when Russ needed my help. I was someplace else in the plant when the accident happened, so I only heard stories that trickled down, whispers spoken when no one thought I was listening.

Dad was training Russ to perform the jumps, showing him how our satellites would transport the dead bodies, how we'd get the pre-ordered clones out of storage, then sort through the memories so the Stringers could keep the ones they wanted. But no matter how much we planned ahead, we always struggled with a nebulous potpourri of “what-ifs.”
Things that could go monstrously wrong: what if the memories got mixed up; what if we used the wrong clone; what if the Stringer got lost somewhere in transit?

On this day, there was an unexpected Edgar Allan Poeesque what-if.

What if the Stringer wasn't all the way dead when we started the jump?

Somebody along the way, some doctor or lab technician, made a wrong diagnosis, and this Stringer was still alive. Just barely. So when Russ started the download, it caused a horrible ripping inside the jumper. He flopped like a fish on the gurney, sparked back to a half-alive state, although most of the important stuff was already gone. He screamed and tried to break free. We didn't use restraints on the dead bodies, never needed them, so when he lunged forward he yanked off the connector wires and broke off the implant—a long, tube-like needle that we insert deep into the brain—that is, if the Stringer still has a brain.

Dad and some of his techno-wizards dashed into the room and tried to calm him, to hook him back up. Apparently everybody knew that this guy wasn't going to live, no way, no matter how valiantly he tried to fight death. I don't know all the medical details here, but he'd done some serious damage to his current body that couldn't be repaired. The bottom line is, Death was coming down the hallway and looking for this guy's room.

Meanwhile, Russ waited at the controls, like he'd been told. From where he stood, he could see this guy's clone, hooked up and already partially downloaded; he watched the clone move, saw it lift an arm at the same time as the Stringer. Saw it turn its head in the same direction.

But then the Stringer suddenly collapsed. Dead. Really dead this time.

At that same moment, the clone jumped off its gurney in
the other room. It went through all the same movements that the Stringer had done just a few minutes earlier, until finally it fell to the floor, silent.

All the guy's memories got fried in the process. And the soul—the Stringer's fragile, almost indefinable essence—escaped.

There was nothing left but an empty carcass and a damaged clone.

Dad tried to tell Russ that it wasn't his fault, but my brother didn't believe it. He went through an inner turmoil, quiet and self-destructive.

Over the following months, I saw darkness and fear rise to the surface in my brother's eyes at strange times, when he thought no one would notice. Until one night when I walked into his bedroom and found him alone at his desk, pretending to work on his journal.

One sleeve was rolled up and I saw a series of cuts on his arm. Self-inflicted and precise. As soon as he heard me behind him, he hid his arm.

He looked sick, like he had the flu.

“Whaddya want?” he asked, forcing a teen bravado that failed. He tried to mask the scared look in his eyes, but he was a second too late. I'd already seen it.

I don't remember why I went into his room. I probably had a question about my homework, but it vanished the moment I saw his arm.

I sat on his bed. Hoped he would say something. He didn't.

“It wasn't your fault,” I said, wishing I could make the pain go away.

He laughed, a sardonic, twisted noise that sounded more like a sob. “Of course it wasn't. We're life-givers, not takers. I was just doin' my job.”

But I knew it wasn't that simple. I knew that there was
something else going on, deep inside. I waited, quiet, hoping that he would tell me what it was. I never really expected him to open up the way he did. A hush fell over the room, thick as swamp water and just as dangerous. I imagined reptilian beasts hidden below the surface, waiting to bite, to pull one of us under. There came a point when I realized that I didn't want him to talk. I didn't want to know what was driving him mad anymore. I just wanted to leave and forget about it.

That was when he looked at me with hollow eyes. That was when he started to talk.

“I just…I just don't know how I can keep doing this crap,” he confessed. “I feel like my soul got sucked out when that Stringer died.” He stared at the floor, as if he could see invisible monsters swimming in black water. “I know it's not my fault, but I feel like I killed him. Like I pulled the switch too soon, or I hooked up the clone wrong. Or maybe I shoulda seen somethin' on his chart, some red flag, some misdiagnosis…”

Just then I saw a shadow move on the wall, like a long alligator snout raised above bayou water, ready to strike. I think that we both saw it, that we both knew something had always been there, just below the surface, stalking us. Hungry. Insatiable.

“I feel like I swallowed a rock,” he said, “like my heart is missing and I got this damned rock in its place.”

Russ had never opened up like this to me before. I didn't know what to say.

His eyes searched the room, as if the answer would be written on the walls and he would find a window of escape. “What should I do, Chaz? I don't know how to get rid of this rock, or this darkness that surrounds me. I don't know how to live when somebody else died because of me.”

I didn't know the answer. And I didn't have the power to save him. I only had a vague memory of hope, something I'd heard over and over but never really put into practice.

“This thing, this guilt”—I paused, uncertain how to express what was in my heart, especially when I knew that a black monster was swimming through the room—“it isn't between you and that dead guy. Not really.” I thought I heard the swish of a reptilian tail. “It's between you and God. He's the one that you need to talk to.”

“Do you think I haven't tried?” There were tears on his face now, glimmering in the darkened room. His own personal river of pain. “I feel like He hung up the phone on me. Like He isn't taking my calls anymore.”

“Then let's call Him together,” I ventured. I expected him to laugh and tell me to leave, to go back to my pretty little childhood while he drifted off into dark, unfamiliar streets. I expected the black water to swell, to come to life, to swallow him whole right in front of me.

But that wasn't what happened.

Instead Russ lowered his head and wept. Then he got off his chair and knelt on the floor. I suddenly forgot about the monsters and knelt beside him.

For the first and only time in our lives, my brother and I prayed together.

My life changed after that. From that point on I knew God in a different way. It isn't something I can easily put into words and I don't even try very often. For the first time I realized that heaven was real and I wanted to go there. And I wanted to make sure I never saw that swimming black monster again.

I don't know what happened inside Russ. Because we never talked about it. A few days later he went back to work in the plant. But he never performed a jump again. Not even after he took over Fresh Start.

After we prayed together, the darkness that had surrounded him disappeared.

Until that day I stood in the cemetery and watched all those kids put to rest in the dirt.

And this time I had a feeling that it was after me.

Chaz:

The crowd began to move—somnambulistic—zombies walking through a desolate wilderness. I had reached my own ground zero. My lowest, darkest point.
After this, it gets better
, I decided.
Somehow.

Russ and I hugged briefly, then parted ways. We were going to meet back over at the hotel suite on Bourbon Street; he was going to pick up Isabelle—him and a small army. I was going to try to forget about this, finish up my week with Angelique. We had an emergency board meeting scheduled for the next morning. A crew was trying to put together a makeshift VR connection with our plants in India, and we needed to do some damage control before the media could—

Someone brushed up against me, blocked my way. The crowd snaked past. Bodies without souls or purpose. I lifted my head to see who wanted a piece of me.

Skellar.

I was too tired to be surprised.

“Just what kind of game is your brother playin'?” he asked.

“What are you talking about?”

The crowd had thinned. Only a few stragglers remained and none of them were listening to us.

“Maybe you're just as bad as all the other 'sitters and maybe you're not, I don't really care,” he said. Maybe that was his way of apologizing for letting one of his mugs fry my hand. It still didn't make up for his snake-pit interrogation tactics. “But your brother is in trouble with some nasty Uptown boys—”

“Look, we're not afraid of you or your mug buddies.”

“I'm not talkin' 'bout mugs. These guys make us look like Girl Scouts.”

I grinned. It was about time Skellar realized his team wasn't so tough.

“You ever seen this woman?” He spun a hologram in his palm. I watched as a dark-haired beauty in a lab coat checked her makeup, then glanced over her shoulder to talk to someone I couldn't see. I thought she looked familiar at first, something about the way she held her head, maybe a glimmer in the eyes. But I'd never seen her before. At least that was what I thought until I heard her voice when the audio kicked in.

Still, I couldn't quite place her.

I shook my head. “I don't know her,” I said.

“Well, this girl, Ellen Witherspoon, she went missing 'bout three days ago. She was workin' on some pretty important stuff. These people are lookin' for her. Gotta lotta money too. They'll pay almost anything to find her. And your brother was the last one to see her.”

“You think Russ is involved in this?”

“Maybe. Don't really matter what I think. It's what they think that matters.”

I raised my eyebrows.

“The way I see it, she mighta jumped. And she's got
some mighty important information that this Uptown crowd needs.” He paused. Looked around. “Word has it there's a new game in town.”

“New game?”

“What you guys got down at Fresh Start is nothin' compared to what's comin'. You'll be outta business in less than a year when this stuff hits the streets.”

He just walked away then. Didn't ask me any more questions. Didn't ask to look at our Stringer records to see who had jumped in the past two weeks. But it didn't really matter.

Because I suddenly knew the answer.