one of us to stop the madness, to take a bold step into the future.
William never saw it the same way I did. And I don’t know if I can ever forgive him for it.
He was the true love of my life. The love of every life I’ve ever had, and I don’t like the counting of lives anymore. It makes me weary. But this was my first one, so it was different. It was special. It was the time I made my first decision to jump.
We were Catholics, both of us, but I never really took it to heart the way William did. He rose up in the morning and went to bed in the evening with his prayers. Granted, everything around us was changing. The Pope had made some radical changes recently, and the one before him was maybe even more liberal, if that was possible. So what we had wasn’t the same as what our parents before us had.
It all started when the Pope took the ban off resurrection. “It’s not the unpardonable sin,” I think that was how he phrased it in the beginning. It took a few years, but then pretty soon almost everyone I knew got the implant. Even my mom. Two of my sisters, Kelly and Coleen, decided against it, which didn’t surprise me since they made all their bad decisions together.
But my husband, William, he wouldn’t even talk about it. If we were ever divided about anything, this was it.
“One life was all God gave us,” he told me one day when we were herding the sheep into a different pasture. “It’s all I want.”
“But we could be together for almost five hundred years,” I argued. I had calculated it all out, from Life One to Life Nine, carefully reading between the lines of the contract. I knew each of the resurrected lives began in a body about twenty-one years old and that you would live to be about seventy-two. So with no accidents or major illnesses, a person could live to be around four hundred eighty-eight years old.
It wasn’t forever, but it was damn close.
I’ll never forget the look he gave me right then. The sunlight came down through the trees, touched him on the face, set his hair on fire and made his eyes glow. It was like the Almighty had taken residence inside him for a few moments.
“We can be together for all of eternity,” he said. “It doesn’t take a blasted Fresh Start implant to give us what God already promised.”
“But—but that’s not the same,” I said. “This is guaranteed—”
Another stony glance. He looked like Moses just after he stepped down from the mountain, when he had the Shekinah glory of God shining all around him. I wished the sun would set.
“Guaranteed? You don’t think Jesus rising from the dead was a guarantee?” he asked. “Not a promise from God: ‘Look here, this is what I can do for you’?”
“I don’t know,” I answered.
“Since when don’t you know?”
“Since always. I never knew for sure.”
“Catherine, my love, you’re swimming in treacherous waters.” He paused for a long moment. “Are you having doubts about your faith, or are you telling me that you never really believed?”
I took a deep breath, afraid of what I was going to say next.
“What I’ve been trying to tell you—” I stopped to lick my lips nervously. “What I’m telling you is that I got the implant. Yesterday. I just signed up for resurrection.”
“Did you now.”
A silence hung between us then, like the distance between two continents.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Chaz:
Sun splattered the near empty streets. Only a few drowsy commuters passed us, all yawning and sipping coffee from paper cups. Apparently everyone in the Big Easy had a rough time last night, me included. Angelique and I stopped at a French bakery and picked up a couple of beignets drenched in powdered sugar. Her mood lightened and she laughed while she licked her fingers. Most of the city was still asleep when we got back in the car and drove over to the head office.
So I wasn’t expecting the voice memo that came blasting through my Verse.
“Stand by for the latest Nine-Timer Report—”
Felt like I’d been standing by my entire life. Right now I was waiting for India to self-destruct. I was glad Angelique didn’t have her smartphone implant yet. Explaining the end of the world wasn’t on my to-do list today.
“Explosions rocked the suburbs of Jaipur, India, a few hours ago,” the newscaster said.