Seth was back at the lab and underwent daily interviews with the scientific teams, having no contact with the humans he regarded as his closest friends, Joshua and Vinod. Joshua’s physicians had ordered him to rest, and Langdon and Williams granted him and Vinod an extended leave from the project. Joshua had learned the details of the accident, and he replayed the events leading up to the Jeep skidding over the bridge over and over again. Rachael had urged him to turn back when the weather had grown poor, and he felt guilty that he hadn’t listened to someone who had great insight and was right about so many things.
Josh, it’s raining and getting colder. Are you okay driving in these conditions?
I’m fine. The Jeep seems to have good traction on this surface. No problem.
Are you sure? We could turn around at one of the overlooks.
I’m good to go.
“Damn it!” Joshua said out loud to himself one day while at home. He looked at the ceiling. “Rachael, I should have let you drive that day when you asked.” He remembered the incident in the Prius when Rachael’s quick reflexes had avoided an accident. “Maybe you could have gotten us out of that skid, and even if you hadn’t, it’d be you that would be alive, not me.”
After two months, Joshua’s doctors told him he had recuperated enough to resume normal activity, and he threw a backpack into his Impala and drove to the hills near Berkeley where he and Rachael had often hiked together. The solo trek felt surreal as he forced one foot in front of the other, wincing occasionally from the pain in his hip. He recalled their conversations and fluctuated between smiling and crying. He reached the spot where they’d been when they’d heard the CNN news alert that somebody had hacked into the lab’s computer system and revealed the existence of Seth. He slipped out of his backpack, sat, and leaned against his left arm in order to take pressure off his hip.
“Rachael, it’s Josh. This may be silly, but I felt for some reason that I could talk to you here because nature was so important to you. I don’t know if you can hear me or . . .” He lowered his head and cleared his throat. “You said you believed in God, and if you were right, then maybe you can. It’s funny, but after all this time, I still don’t know what I believe when it comes to spiritual matters, but suddenly I want to believe in . . . something. As much as I believed in you, that is. Your body was frozen in accordance with your wishes, and I think I now understand what losing Richard must have been like. The thing is, I thought we’d have an entire lifetime together before either of us would be calling the cryo facility on behalf of the other.”
Joshua looked at the valley and the surrounding fir trees before resuming.
“You kinda pushed your way into my life when you insisted on interviewing me the first day you showed up at the particle center. I was a rude jerk, but we sure moved past that quickly. You were so cool and confident, and within a day I felt as if I’d known you for years. Now, I long for those days.”
He laughed softly. “When we had dinner for the first time at Angelino’s, you launched into that persuasive argument that early life—the cell—couldn’t have just appeared on its own. You argued for a first cause. And you alluded to things happening for a reason, even the two of us meeting. But here’s the deal. If we were destined to meet, why were you taken from me? What kind of God would do that? And now I’m doubting even more than before. I’m pretty sure you’d have an answer, maybe something like there’s a big picture that we—that I—can’t see.”
Joshua nodded his head. “Yep, that’s exactly what you’d say, and I’d like to believe that, but even if I did, it wouldn’t make the pain go away. I admired your faith, but I never quite made it to the same place as you, and yet here I am, hoping that you’re listening. I’m a bundle of contradictions right now, and maybe I’m just talking to myself and the valley over there. But this is as close as I can get to you, or the memory of you, or . . . whatever.”
With difficulty, Joshua stood and dusted off his jeans. As he did so, he saw a small reflection coming from the ground five yards away. It was where the couple had sat minutes before the news alert. He walked over, knelt slowly, and clawed the dirt with his fingers until producing a slim aluminum digital recorder. His mouth hung open, for he remembered that Rachael carried a similar device wherever she went. She’d told him and Vinod on many occasions that she was always writing, whether in notebooks or in her thoughts, because she was an astute observer. She would point at her head with her index finger and say, “They can’t hack this.” Was it possible that this recorder had belonged to his fiancé? There was only one way to find out.
Hands trembling, he pressed the replay button and closed his eyes. A few seconds of static were followed by the voice of Rachael, but she wasn’t talking about research, Seth, or ideas for future articles. The content of the entry was far more personal.
“I’m going hiking with Joshua tomorrow,” the voice said. “I can’t wait, and it means the world to me that he wants to share this activity.” The words were punctuated with a laugh. “He wants to share everything, really, and that’s so endearing. He’s smart, romantic, and we really click. Always did, even from the first day we met, and then there was that incredible afternoon when Seth started communicating to us in the bat cave. That’s when I knew we were meant to be a team. The rest, as they say, is history. So where is it leading?” There was another laugh. “I know, and I hope Josh does too. I’m pretty sure he does.”
Josh clicked the device off.
“Oh, my God,” he said in a whisper, tears rolling down his cheek. “Rachael, I loved you so much. And yes, we both knew where it was going.”
Limping from the stress he’d put on his joints, Joshua started the trek back to his automobile, but stopped midway along the trail, looking at the handheld recording device. He shook his head and broke into a fresh wave of tears.
“To think that the Petrins can make complete and authentic backups of themselves so that they never die. All I have is a digital backup of your voice, Rachael, but it’s not the same. It’s not your DNA. It’s not you. But it’s something—maybe a piece of your spirit. That’s beyond my pay grade.”
He placed the digital recorder in his backpack and continued up the trail. He decided that he would listen to other files on the device, but that would come later—maybe months or years down the line. The sound of her voice was precious, but it was also painful.
He turned and glanced behind him, half expecting to see the gorgeous reporter that he’d fallen in love with following his footsteps. She wasn’t there and never would be.
Joshua was summoned to the particle center two months later. He knew it was time to get back to work even though it would be hard to function in the very place where he and Rachael had grown so close—and so quickly. But he missed Seth and Vinod, and the request to return to work had been transmitted by Robert Langdon more as an order than a friendly request. He walked into the atrium and was greeted by Charlotte Lloyd with a warm smile and a brief “Welcome back.” The gesture was meaningful to Joshua, who was grateful that some things always remained the same. He took an elevator to a conference room on the second floor and found Vinod sitting by himself, feet propped on the table. The two men had talked over the phone but hadn’t seen each other since Joshua’s stay in the hospital. Vinod knew that Joshua had grown more than a little introspective. Better, he thought, to give him space. He’d resurface when he was ready.
Vinod rose and gave his friend a one-armed hug so as not to stress his arm or hip. “How ya doin’, man?”
“Surviving. Just going through the motions.” Joshua shrugged. “The pain never seems to let up. How do people get through something like this?”
“I don’t think anyone ever really does, at least not losing someone as close as Rachael. You guys were soul mates in the truest sense of the word. It gets better over time, but I think some level of pain is permanent.”
“I also have some guilt that I’m dealing with,” Joshua said. “I should have turned the J
eep around that day, or I should have let Rachael drive. Things would have been different.”
“You’re not the only one with guilt,” Vinod replied. “Remember that I was the one who asked her to move to the back seat so I could control the radio. She may still be around today if I hadn’t done that. But we can’t keep doing this to ourselves, Josh. What happened, happened. There was nothing malicious in our actions, but like I said, some level of the pain we are feeling is permanent.”
Joshua was silent for several seconds. “I appreciate your honesty, Vinod. And I agree with you. I’ve been going over all this in my head for months now, and I’ve come to the same conclusion. And while it may always hurt, I wouldn’t want it any other way. She’s a part of me. If I ever got over it . . . nah, this is part of the deal. Funny, huh? Petrins use digital technology to hold onto things forever. Endless copies. People, on the other hand, have the human heart.”
Vinod flashed Joshua a bittersweet smile. “That’s exactly what Rachael would say. And you know what she’d add?”
“What?”
“That maybe the human heart is enough.”
Joshua laughed out loud for the first time in months. “You know, you’re right. That’s exactly the way she looked at things. So what about you?” Joshua asked as the two men took adjacent seats at the table. “You’re not wearing a concert tee shirt. That’s a first.”
“I can’t, man. It hurts too much. I was always introducing Rachael to a new band, and every shirt I pick out in the morning reminds me of her. She didn’t just tolerate my affinity for classic rock—she really got into it.”
“Yeah, certain memories are real killers. I’m thinking of selling the Harley. I eventually taught her to ride, and she was getting pretty good. But the memory of her wearing the black leather motorcycle jacket that Rodrigo bought her . . . it’s too much.”
The men sat in silence, enveloped by memories of Rachael.
“So what’s this big pow-wow about?” Joshua asked. “Langdon sounded insistent that I attend.”
“I don’t know either. I picked up on the same urgency when Williams called.”
“Is everything okay with Seth?”
“Pretty much,” Vinod answered. “We took him cross-country and let him walk around some cities and national parks. Otherwise, it’s been interviews as usual, not that anything revealing has come of them. Everything’s—”
“Let me guess,” Joshua interrupted. “Redacted.”
“Yeah. It seems to be the most important word in his vocabulary. Hardly seems fair. We show him our planet, and he conceals just about everything. I understand that the petrins have a few billion years of development that they can’t share, but you would think that Seth could cough up a bit more info once in a while.”
Joshua rubbed the well-kept beard that he’d grown in recent weeks. “I suspect that we’re pretty low in the pecking order when it comes to civilized planets, but maybe that’s not surprising. We’ve only had radio for about a hundred years, so we’re hardly out of the cradle as far as Petri is concerned.”
Vinod sat back and folded his arms. “But it’s an old cradle, Josh. Life started here about three to four billion years ago, with meteors bombarding Earth when it was relatively young, and it didn’t take long for life to appear.”
“And?”
“My point is that it almost feels like we’re penalized for being technological newbies. Or that there’s some great cosmic scheme that we’re too dumb to understand. Does that make sense?”
Joshua leaned forward and looked Vinod in the eyes. “More than you know. I’ve had the same feeling almost from the beginning, and I shared my concerns with Rachael on more than one occasion. Maybe we’re paranoid, but I feel that there’s one redaction that trumps all the others, one that we’re not smart enough to even ask about.”
“Maybe we should confront Seth,” Vinod suggested.
Joshua shook his head. “Nah. If we’re right, he might close down the entire gig. Better to keep the lines of communication open.”
“Probably right. Then again, maybe—”
The door to the conference room opened and Seth walked in, flanked by the obligatory security personnel. The detail positioned itself outside the door, which Seth closed as he approached his friends.
“’Sup Josh, ‘Sup Vinod,” Seth said as he took a seat next to his friends. “Josh, nice to see you again. How are you doing?”
“I’m doing okay,” Joshua responded. “Just trying to live with the loss.”
“I understand,” Seth replied. “Rachael’s death has hit all of us, including the collective. We aren’t used to death. The wager that the collective had on your engagement and the updates I provided about your romance gave the collective a connection to you both.”
“Vinod and I were just discussing survivor’s guilt,” Joshua replied. “Something the victims of an accident feel when they survive and one of their loved ones doesn’t.”
“I understand,” Seth replied. “Maybe I have some of that too. I’ve been looking into the physics of what I did at the bottom of the river, but I know that the first airbag could only lift the weight of two humans, so I picked the two closest to the front which were you and Vinod. I didn’t realize the smaller driver’s airbag had a hole in it. I thought it could lift Rachael. I’m sorry I couldn’t do more.”
“You did everything you could,” Joshua replied. “Vinod and I wouldn’t be here without what you did.”
“That’s right bro,” Vinod said as he grasped Seth’s hand. “You saved our lives. We’re grateful for that.”
The door to the conference room opened, and Langdon, Williams, and Porter walked in and seated themselves.
“Good morning, guys,” Williams said. “I appreciate your coming in on such short notice.”
Williams wasted no time in addressing the room as her head turned towards the android. “Seth, a few months ago you issued a request for us to build you an android body so that you could move about our world freely and interact with both its environment and its inhabitants. Despite misgivings, we granted you that request, and now we have a request of our own.”
“And what is that?” Seth asked.
Williams sat back in her chair, twirling the arm of her reading glasses in her right hand after glancing at a folder on the polished surface in front of her.
“As you know,” she began, “we’ve been fighting a viral outbreak for well over a year, and we haven’t been able to contain it. We had a private meeting in Washington yesterday with the head of the Centers for Disease Control, and their revelations aren’t encouraging. The reason we haven’t been able to control our current outbreak is that we’re not dealing with Ebola any longer. The current virus may have originated from Ebola, but it has radically mutated. It’s not the same strain we saw the last time there was an outbreak. In fact, we don’t even know that it’s Ebola at all. Its capsid, or outer shell, now resembles the influenza virus, which is highly contagious. This means that besides being transmitted by direct contact, it’s stable in the atmosphere, just like influenza, and can be transmitted by just breathing it in, a fact that we didn’t know until recently. Unfortunately, this new capsid has also enabled the virus to significantly extend its incubation period.”
Joshua appeared unsettled. “So more people are infected but don’t know it?”
“Essentially, yes,” Williams continued. “Individuals don’t start to show symptoms for up to a year even though they’re infectious two weeks after exposure.”
“And people come into contact with them without thinking they’re in any type of danger,” Vinod said.
“Exactly. It’s really the worst scenario for a virus, something that has a long incubation period, during which time the subject is infectious. It’s stable in the atmosphere and highly lethal. The CDC estimates that at this point, ninety-seven percent of the world’s population has been exposed even though they’re asymptomatic. Random sampling from blood donated at blood banks aro
und the world has confirmed this figure. Current projections show that the other three percent will be exposed within a year. The CDC has developed antiviral medications that will delay death for six to nine months in most individuals once they start showing symptoms, but that’s all we can give them.”
“And there’s no cure,” Langdon said. “Not even a vaccine in development that shows the least bit of promise.”
“But surely there are some people who are naturally immune to this virus just as there are some who never got HIV,” Vinod said.
“Yes,” Williams said grimly. “We’ve identified twenty-two individuals who are completely immune, and extrapolating from this, we estimate there may be about four thousand people worldwide, but this is just conjecture. The rest of us are going to die sooner or later.” She paused and looked at those sitting around the table. “And that includes everyone in this room. We’ve confirmed that we are all infected. Quarantine is not a viable option at this point.”
“Four thousand,” Joshua said. “That’s not enough to continue the species considering that they may be spread all over the planet. Humanity’s going to die off.”
“That’s correct,” Porter said. “Our calculations show that there’s not enough time to develop a vaccine. Even if we had a promising lead tomorrow, it would take time to test and manufacture a vaccine, and that’s forgoing clinical trials that would normally take years.”
“None of this has been made public for fear that mass panic might ensue,” Williams said.
“You directed your remarks to me when you began speaking,” Seth noted. “You alluded to my request to have your engineers construct an android for me.”
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