The Reincarnation

David was jostled awake by the motion of the car. “Where am I?” he asked groggily.

He looked around. The world was flying by the window of the car he found himself in. Hannibal slept on his lap. Looking to his left, he saw Laura, biting her lower lip in concentration. It was dark, and she peered through the windshield at the area ahead of them where the headlights cut a swath through the darkness.

“Where am I?” he said, louder this time. “Laura?”

Distracted, Laura glanced in his direction. “Let’s just say, for now, that I’m kidnapping you. We’ll have time for questions later, once we’re safe.”

David was bewildered, but petting Hannibal, decided he trusted Laura to know what she was doing. He remained awake, trying to see what he could through the darkness surrounding the car. He couldn’t see much. With some miles between them and the Lab, Laura slackened her grip on the wheel and relaxed a little, sitting back in her seat. “You must think I’m crazy,” she said.

“Well, you have looked a bit crazy staring into the windshield with your lower lip clenched between your teeth.”

“I’m sorry, Dave. I’m just coming to grips with what I’ve done. You don’t understand the extent of what we’re involved in.”

“No, I can’t say that I do. The nice nurse that’s been taking care of me since I woke up from a long sleep I don’t remember is taking me on a tour of a world I haven’t seen in twenty-five years. That’s about the extent of what I know.”

“Well, it goes a lot deeper than that. You’ve just scratched the surface.”

“And what lies underneath it?”

“You name it.” She paused. “David, I pulled your file at the Lab. They didn’t plan on letting you go skipping on your merry way once you were up to it – they planned to keep you there forever. Your life would have become devoted to ever more tests on what they called their Golden Child.”

“Come on, once I was up to it and they were satisfied with the results of their experiment, they’d let me have a life. Why would they wake me up just to enslave me?”

“Because you’re the first, David. And more, you were designated for reincarnation. Who knows what they had in store for you.”

“Designated? You mean the certificate?” David’s dream played in his mind.

“The certificate has nothing to do with it. That was just a way for the Church to find out more about their followers’ children. Don’t think they didn’t know you were skeptical about the Church. They counted on it, in fact. Most of their followers’ children were skeptical. But the Church found a way to involve them anyway.”

“And how’s that?”

“The cancer, David. You never had cancer. I couldn’t believe it when I found out. That was the final straw that made me take you away from them.”

“Laura, what are you talking about? I know I had cancer. Jesus, I lost so much weight.”

“Bullshit. I saw your record. According to it, they gave you a drug to make you lose weight, to make you feel even worse. It was all part of their plan.”

David remembered how much sicker he felt after his visits to the Church clinic. He had always assumed it was a reaction to the treatments – that he would feel worse before he got better. “But what was wrong with me?”

“Basically nothing. There were a lot of new diseases creeping up then. Stuff this country hadn’t seen yet. You probably caught something that you couldn’t figure out what was. You did live in a city. You were exposed to the world’s germs every time the subway stopped at the airport. You could have had anything, but it certainly wasn’t cancer.”

“The Church wouldn’t do that. I mean, those films I watched –”

“The films?! Propaganda, David. Sure, the Church is involved in a lot of good things, but they only do them to clean up messes they’ve made in the past. And they only get involved if it’s profitable. The Church is evil, David, get that through your head. I had no idea just how evil until I looked into your record and started exploring all the other stuff in that damn computer.”

David was silent. He was flabbergasted. He was reminded of a time when he was younger, looking over the edge of a cliff. The drop off was over a hundred feet. A friend was with him at the time, and he pushed David’s shoulder. After a few seconds – the seconds where David imagined the vast view ahead of him expanding to fill his mind as he toppled end over end, foot to head, bouncing off the decline and eventually landing with a thud, the kind an overripe watermelon makes when it explodes on a wet concrete sidewalk from twenty stories up, and wondering the whole time, all the way down, whether there would be enough of his brain attached to his spinal column when it impacted for David to hear that thud, and to feel it – his friend pulled him back and said, “Ha, saved your life.”

“Maybe I was just being paranoid,” David said. “My friend died of cancer, and I just figured that’s what I had, too.”

“You probably weren’t the only one to think like that. Over the years they’ve collected lots of guinea pigs – hundreds – and the last few days you’ve been nothing but bait in their next trap.”

“And what were they trying to catch this time?”

“Your soul, David. They’re heavily into reincarnation. They’re obsessed with the soul. They’re trying to figure out ways of identifying where it goes and if and how it comes back. In your case, they’ve been drooling for decades.” She took a deep breath. “What happens to a person’s soul when they are clinically dead, but then return to life? You were going to answer that for them, David. You were their guinea pig, their rat in a trap.”

“Are you saying I don’t have a soul?” David stared at her, confused.

“No, but maybe somebody else doesn’t.”

“You’re gonna have to help me out here.”

“You were dead, David. Your body quit functioning and your soul left you. They knew that your soul had to go somewhere – at least they thought it would – so when they froze you they put a slew of pregnant women in the operating room with you. As soon as your vital signs started shutting down, they cut them all open – gave them Caesareans. And they had a bunch of fertile women there, too. When you were going down, they artificially inseminated them. They weren’t sure when the soul entered the body, so they covered all their bases. They acted scientifically. They wanted to see if they could find out where your soul went, somehow control it – transfer it. They used you as a test, David. Do you see that now?”

David suddenly remembered this – the sound of the gurney wheels on the linoleum. The doctor’s orders. It came back to him in a shuddering spasm. “So that’s why Dr. Persey kept asking me if I remembered anything from right before I was frozen.” David swallowed hard. “Who were these women?”

“Mostly poor women they picked up off the street nine months earlier. Some were volunteers from the Church. It’s not important who they were, but what they were getting involved in. Ever since they woke you up, MCA’s been following these women’s children around. Trying to see what happened to them. Trying to see what became of them once your soul came back to you.” Laura turned onto a different road and continued. “They didn’t learn anything. As careful as they were, they didn’t know if the soul went directly out of a body and into another. They didn’t know if it hung around for a while and then came back. But none of their subjects had any behavioral problems once you woke up. They brought them all in for testing. They got nothing.”

“Was all this going on under my nose?”

“No, MCA is huge. They had these kids out in labs all over the country. If anybody got your soul, the Lab doesn’t know who it is.”

David froze. “So that’s why they held the press conference – no wonder Dr. Persey was in such a hurry. He was probably getting orders to speed the process up.”

“Exactly. They figured if they couldn’t find the person, they’d have them come to you. Anybody who’d woken up Saturday morning without a soul would be bound to look for an explanation. It was a stupid move as far as I’m concerned. How could they be so sure about any of this – how do they know if the soul comes back at all? But the Church doesn’t give in easily. They want that other person, too. So you went on the air, saying to America and the world, ‘I’m OK, everything’s fine.’ Once they had that out of you, you’d served your purpose.”

“And then they could do whatever they wanted with me.”

“Right. The funding would roll in to continue the project, and you’d be living the rest of your life as their servant. I couldn’t stand it anymore.”

“So you kidnapped me.”

Laura snorted. “I wasn’t going to wait around for some soulless lunatic to show up. And I couldn’t let you become just one more of their experiments. I like you, Dave, I like you a lot. Your courage over the last few days has really changed the way I look at things. We’d always treated you like a cadaver. But you’re alive, you’re back, you’re human.” She ran her finger under her nose. David couldn’t see well enough in the dark, but he suspected she was crying.

Once he felt she was ready, he asked, “How long have you known all this?”

“Two days. Do you think I could have worked there if I had known all along?” she asked rhetorically, her eyes wide in the lights from a passing car. “I got into their main computer. In there, they’re very open about all this. They’re proud of what they’re doing. They think they’re working on orders from God. As soon as they devise a technology, they claim it was God’s will that they have it. And they have no hesitation about using it however they please.”

Laura pulled off the road and parked the car in a motel parking lot. The motel was in bad shape. The roof was peeling off in most places, revealing a dull silver color underneath the maroon shingles. It looked like bone poking through mangled flesh. The outside walls were badly in need of paint. It was 3:15 in the morning.

“Let’s get some sleep. A few hours at least. We’ve got to get rid of this car in the morning. It’s the first thing they’ll look for.”

“Whatever you say, Laura. You’re running the show.” David winked at her and she returned a wry smile.

Laura paid for the room, and came back to the car with a key. “105. Sound like a lucky number?” She had calmed down, really smiling.

David got out of the car and slipped into the room with Hannibal. “How much time do we have?”

“Two hours. I’m not going to chance any more than that.”

David looked out the window into the parking lot. The car he had been in was white, and had “MCA” emblazoned on the door. “You stole one of the Lab’s vehicles?” He was stunned.

“Borrowed. I borrowed it. They’re not going to find us in a few hours. Persey’s not up at night, Peggy’s probably still asleep, and no one will miss me until my shift starts. Come on, let’s get to bed.” Laura walked into the bathroom. David could hear water running, and went in to her.

“Laura?”

She was washing her face. Water ran down her neck, and was sopped up by her shirt. Without her nurse’s cap on, her auburn hair cascaded down her back in soft ringlets. She was beautiful. David put his hands on her shoulders. She looked into the mirror, seeing him in the reflection.

“I know this probably doesn’t make any sense now, but I’ll explain more in the morning.” She was upset again.

“Laura, I trust you. I know you did the right thing. Even if I don’t understand all of it yet.” David mouthed the words to comfort her, but couldn’t decide if he believed them or not.

She turned to face him and reached out her hands. They came together at the small of his back. She hugged him and rested her head on his shoulder.

“I didn’t know what to do, Dave. They had you right where they wanted you. There was no time to think about it anymore.” She was sobbing.

“Don’t worry, Laura. We’ll get out of this thing. I didn’t spend half my life in a freezer to come out of it as somebody’s pin cushion. You did the right thing.” Though who knows what will happen if the Church catches up to us, David added to himself.

He shut out the light in the bathroom. They walked into the main room still wrapped around each other. There was only one bed. David threw back the covers, and they lay down together.

They were exhausted, but faced each other, and held each other.