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He needed a way out. And, hiking in the preserve, with the September sun beating down on his scalp and hot dust in the air, he knew what he had to do.

They climbed Meadowlark Trail to the highest point in the park. Tricia walked slowly, to allow him to keep up. But his knee ached, and his abdomen hurt, and it was impossible to keep pace with his young wife.

Finally, they reached the summit. It was the view that they had always loved: the grassland, rolling out below them, the San Mateo Bridge slicing through the blue bay, the white salt ponds that looked like pools of cream in the water.

‘Look at me,' he said. His shirt was soaked with sweat. He was short of breath. Tricia, twenty years younger, hardly seemed winded. Her forehead glistened with perspiration, but she seemed vibrant, strong.

‘You're out of shape. That's all.'

‘I'm getting old,' he said.

‘Who's feeling sorry for himself today?'

‘I'm not feeling sorry for myself,' he said. ‘I feel defeated. Like I've lost a chess game. All I want to do is knock the pieces off the board and start again.'

‘What are you talking about?'

‘I can't win. If the Kid testifies, I'm finished. I might go to jail. At a minimum, I lose everything. And I don't see an end to it. I don't see an end to Neiderhoffer digging around. I don't see an end to the lawsuits. I don't see an end to some punk terrorizing us. I need a way out.'

She squinted at him through the sun. ‘That doesn't sound like the man I married. That doesn't sound like Timothy Van Bender.'

‘That's what I'm trying to say. There is no way out for Timothy Van Bender. Timothy Van Bender is trapped. That's why I don't want to be Timothy Van Bender.'

He called Dr. Ho's cell phone and, after a brief conversation, they agreed to meet at the office on Sand Hill Road at nine o'clock the following morning. Tricia and Timothy drove there together.

Dr. Ho led them into the waiting room. ‘Hello, Katherine,' he said to Tricia. He nodded to Timothy. ‘Mr. Van Bender.'

Tricia grabbed Dr. Ho and hugged him. ‘Dr. Ho, thank you. Thank you so much.'

The little Chinese man's eyes barely peeked over Tricia's shoulder. He looked surprised. ‘It's quite all right,' he said, into the fabric of her shirt. He extracted himself from the hug. ‘Come,' he said. ‘Let's go into my office.'

He led them into the tiny closet that was his office. The space was almost completely occupied by his old metal desk. On the floor, piles of papers and stacks of manila folders covered the carpet. Timothy and Tricia stepped over them carefully and slid into the tight chairs in front of his desk.

‘Excuse the mess, as usual,' Ho said.

He found a folder on his desk and opened it. He scanned the contents. ‘So,' he said, ‘how has everything been, Katherine? Is it the way we discussed?'

Tricia nodded. ‘It was strange at first. Getting used to it. The tastes are different. And the smells. But otherwise, I feel … like me. I feel healthy. And you know what else? I feel happy now. Much happier than before. Honestly, Dr. Ho, what you've done is wonderful. I can't ever thank you enough.'

Ho seemed pleased. ‘Good, good.' He closed the folder, looked up at Timothy. ‘But of course, that's not the reason why you're here.'

‘No,' Timothy said.

‘Mr. Van Bender, you want me to perform the backup procedure on you?'

‘That's right.'

‘Yes. After we spoke last night, I thought a great deal about our conversation. I'm afraid I can't help you.'

Timothy was surprised. ‘But I thought—'

‘Yes, I'm sorry, Mr. Van Bender. I'm a doctor. This is a medical procedure. It's not a get-away plan. I haven't spent twenty years of my life and millions of my investors' dollars to help you commit bank fraud.'

‘I'm not doing it to commit fraud,' Timothy said.

‘Then why are you doing it?'

To get a second chance, Timothy thought. To knock the chess pieces off the board and play again. ‘Because,' Timothy said, ‘I have no other choice.'

Dr. Ho clasped his hands together on his desk primly. ‘Mr. Van Bender, I agreed to help your wife because she was sick. She was going to die. You …'He gestured to Timothy. ‘You're fine. There's nothing physically wrong with you. I can't simply give you a new identity. That's not what this is about.' He thought about it. ‘It's not right.'

‘It's not right?' Timothy asked. ‘It's not
right?
Are you out of your mind? Nothing you've done in this office is right. Ask my secretary, whose brain you erased, if that was right.'

‘I kept a copy of it,' Ho said, ‘so that, when the time comes, I can restore her—'

‘That's great, Doctor. That must be a great comfort to her. That she's been stored in a computer file somewhere. You're a real fucking humanitarian.' Timothy stood up and leaned over his desk. Ho slinked down in his chair. ‘You listen to me, Ho. You and me are in this together. You helped my wife, and that's great. I appreciate it. But you did it for your own selfish reasons – whatever they are – to show investors you have a business, or to get some cash in the door, or maybe just to make sure everything works right. Maybe you weren't even sure, and Katherine was your guinea pig. You know what? That's fine. It did work, and that's great. But we are accomplices in a crime. Do you understand that, Frankenstein? We stole someone's body. We erased somebody's brain. Think about it. That will not look good to your investors. And it will not look good to the police. Should they find out.'

‘Are you threatening me, Mr. Van Bender?'

‘Yes,' Timothy said, ‘absolutely.' He bent down and lowered his face to Ho's. He looked at Ho's little wire-frame spectacles, pressing the skin of his nose. ‘In fact, let me make it very clear. If you don't help me, I'm going to take you down with me.'

Timothy kept his face just inches from Ho's. He stared at the man, at his small, fine features, his smooth skin. He waited.

Ho said, ‘Well I suppose I could help you one more time.'

Timothy agreed to pay Dr. Ho a hundred and fifty thousand dollars by wiring funds into the same Citibank account that Katherine had used a month earlier. Dr. Ho's instructions to Timothy were similar to the ones the doctor had issued before: Timothy would need to find a ‘vessel' – a body into which Timothy could be restored after the backup procedure was done. And there was one other complication that Timothy had not considered.

‘You'll need to commit suicide, of course,' Ho said to him.

Timothy was surprised by this.

‘It's the same thing I told your wife. It's unacceptable to have two extant copies of the same person,' Ho said. ‘More than the ethical issues it raises, it creates complications. Complications are unacceptable. Ideally, we would terminate one branch as soon as the backup and restore process is completed.'

‘Terminate one branch?' Timothy asked.

‘Kill you. But I will not participate in your death in any way. That's up to you.'

‘I see.'

Ho said, ‘I want you to be prepared for how difficult it will be. Because you will still be you. Once you have been backed up, you – Timothy Van Bender – will be living a life independent of the copy you've made. Do you understand what I am saying?'

Timothy did. He wondered how he would do it, and if he would be able.

‘But remember,' Ho said, ‘your backup will be living its own life, independent of your initial branch. That should give you comfort.'

The plan was elegant and beautiful. He could solve all of his problems with one bold action. Was the original Timothy Van Bender suspected of murdering his wife? That problem would be solved, since Timothy Van Bender would commit suicide.

Did the original Timothy Van Bender face a ruined reputation and endless legal problems? Was he being terrorized by a malevolent drug addict? Those problems would be solved, since Timothy Van Bender would vanish from the face of the earth.

The plan required him to choose a ‘vessel.' He needed to choose someone young, of course. He needed to choose someone healthy. He needed to choose someone who, if not wealthy, could rapidly become wealthy, without raising any suspicions. He needed someone, in short, who could assume the enjoyable aspects of Timothy Van Bender's life, but none of the burdens. There really was only one choice.

‘Hey, Kid,' Timothy said into his cell phone, as he and Tricia drove home from Dr. Ho's office. ‘I'm just checking in. I know Friday's your last day in the office.'

The Kid's voice sounded far away. ‘Yeah, Friday, right. I want to say that I'm sorry about the way things are ending. I hope there are no hard feelings.'

‘Absolutely not,' Timothy said. ‘In fact, I was thinking: maybe next week, after you've had a chance to unwind a little, we can all get together for drinks. You know, me, you, and Tricia. Sort of like old times. How does that sound?'

The Kid sounded surprised. ‘That sounds great.'

‘Good,' Timothy said. ‘All right Kid, I'll see you tomorrow in the office.'

All that remained was the money.

It was well and good to come back as the Kid, unencumbered by murder indictments or fraud charges or a gimpy knee, but it wouldn't be fun to live off eighty grand a year in a four-plex behind the Safeway.

The Kid would need cash, at least a few million dollars' worth – enough
to allow Timothy to enjoy the lifestyle to which he was accustomed.

The next day at work, Timothy shut the door to his office and called his lawyer, Frank Arnheim.

‘Frank,' Timothy said, ‘I have a legal question for you. Let's say I knew I was going to die, and I wanted to leave liquid assets to someone and avoid probate. What's the fastest way to do that?'

‘You care about taxes?'

‘No.'

‘You have two options,' Frank said. ‘A revocable living trust is one. That'll take you some time to set up. It's faster to just go to a bank and open a Payable On Death account. You name the beneficiary when you establish the account. Then, when you die, the beneficiary just walks into the bank with a death certificate and some form of identification, and the money is his.' Frank paused. ‘Why? You planning on going somewhere?'

‘No,' Timothy said.

‘You're not going to do anything stupid, are you?'

‘No,' Timothy said.

He set up the POD account at Union Bank that afternoon and within an hour began the process of liquidating his assets and transferring cash into the account. He sold his stock portfolio, which was about six million dollars, and then liquidated his IRA (another four hundred thousand). There was not enough time to take out a second mortgage on the Palo Alto house – a process that would have taken several weeks to close – or to move money from the Van Bender trusts into the POD account. Those assets would need to pass through probate, which was unfortunate, because there they would be slowed by the inevitable lawsuits that would hit Timothy's estate after his suicide. But Timothy figured that, after taxes, the Kid would wind up with an immediate windfall of about four million dollars, which would be a good start, and which Timothy could live comfortably off for the year or two it would take for the rest of his assets to pass into Tricia's hands.

He couldn't marry Tricia, because there was no final proof of Katherine's death. Without a death certificate, the best he could do was change his will, and to leave the remaining assets to his former secretary. That process took exactly one hour on Friday afternoon. They drove to the office of Jack Decker, Esq., the Van Bender family lawyer in San Jose, drew up a new will document, and had it notarized and witnessed by two of the law firm's secretaries.

When they left the office, Tricia hugged him and said, ‘Soon this will all be over.'

The entire process of transferring Timothy Van Bender's wealth to his new vessel took seventy-two hours.

44

Timothy Van Bender scheduled his own death for the evening of Wednesday, September 29.

He would asphyxiate himself in his Palo Alto garage by running a garden hose from his BMW tailpipe into the car.

It was important that Tricia and the Kid – both beneficiaries of his death – not be present during the suicide. It was important also that they have an iron-clad alibi, and that they be somewhere far away from Timothy's garage when he died.

The Plan, then, was this. On Wednesday evening, Timothy would invite the Kid over for dinner. He would spike the Kid's drink with valium – the strategy that had proven successful with Tricia weeks earlier. When the Kid passed out, Timothy and Tricia would drive the Kid to Dr. Ho's office. There, Ho would perform the backup procedure, digitizing the contents of Timothy's brain, and then restore it into the Kid.

Next, the Kid – now inhabited by Timothy – would drive, with Tricia, to SFO airport, where they would board the red-eye to New York, which departed at 10 p.m. The process of buying tickets, showing IDs, and boarding the plane would establish Tricia and the Kid's alibi. In the meantime, at exactly ten o'clock, as the flight was taking off, Timothy Van Bender – the original Timothy Van Bender – would end his life in the dark garage of his 1930s Tudor.

The only problem with the Plan, Timothy knew, would be the final few minutes. Would he be able to drive back to his house and end his own life? He would, after all, still be Timothy Van Bender, still the same man, in the same aging body, with the same will to live. The other Timothy Van Bender, his backup, would be checking into a flight at SFO with Tricia. Wouldn't he want to go along?

But the more he thought about it, the more he believed he could do it. It was simply a question of will. And one thing he had was will – not smarts, just a blind confidence in his own ability to get out of any mess. Yes, he could do it. He had done harder things than that. Besides, with a little Scotch and a few valiums, how hard could it be?