Any Given Lifetime

by Leta Blake

  Joshua embraced him, feeling Neil’s sharp shoulder blades under his hands, the solid, wiry frame of him, and he was so full of joy that he almost couldn’t stand it. He pulled back to tell Neil that he was so glad he was there. They could finally do all the things they were meant to do together. But instead of Neil, his Neil, he was holding the young Dr. Green, who stared at him with Neil’s eyes. Joshua jolted with confusion.

  “Recognition is governed, in part, by the fusiform gyrus,” Dr. Green said.

  “What?” Joshua asked.

  “Joshua. Wake up. You know who I am.”

  “What?” Joshua asked again.

  “Wake up,” Dr. Green said. “This doesn’t have to be a dream.”

  Wake up.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Neil’s hands shook as he left the meeting with Brian Peters. It was one thing to have to exist in this world without Joshua while knowing he was out there, alive and completely out of reach, but it was another to try to do it without the benefit of his work as a distraction. And, as of fifteen minutes prior, he was out on a forced sabbatical. Sure, it was only twelve days for now, but it was twelve days of pure hell as far as Neil was concerned.

  The cherry on top was that it was Joshua who had gotten him into this situation.

  Neil didn’t wait to get back to the apartment before putting in a call to the Neil Russell Foundation. After haranguing someone named Rebecca, he was finally transferred to Joshua’s cell, and as the sound of the ring hit his ear, he nearly doubled over, suddenly nauseous with nervous anticipation that almost blanked out his rage.

  “Dr. Green?” Joshua’s voice answered, sounding every bit as overcome as Neil felt. “Can I help you?”

  “You sure as hell can,” Neil said, his tongue feeling thick, and his head swirled with lightness and blue dots. “You can call off your investigations, Mr. Stouder.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Neil tasted a surge of anxious bile in his throat. He didn’t know what he was saying. Words just came out. He held on to the side of the bike rack he stood next to and listened to them tumble from his lips like a sickness.

  “I know you don’t support nanite projects since your husband died, but the collateral damage here is too much. I’m not going to let you screw me over in a grudge against nanites or against me. I’m ethical and honest. I do the best work there is in this field and taking me out of the game isn’t going to result in better nanite outcomes. I need my job, Mr. Stouder. Not for money. Not for glory. And, believe it or not, not for my ego. I need it for my sanity. And if you had any clue at all why that is, you’d leave me to my work in peace. Are you listening, Mr. Stouder?”

  “Yes. I hear you, Neil,” Joshua said.

  Neil’s knees went weak, and his chest felt like it was being crushed in. “Then why? Why call Peters? Why ask him about my questionable hobbies and my activities? Which are, for the record, no one’s business. Not yours. Not his. I didn’t cause your husband’s death. If people had listened to me from the beginning, it wouldn’t have happened. But no! Who listens to a kid? No one.”

  “I do,” Joshua said. “I’d have listened to you.”

  Neil’s throat felt tight. “The hell you would have. And what could I have said? ‘Mr. Stouder, believe me. I’m twelve. I know what I’m doing.’”

  Joshua made a strange noise, and then Neil spouted off more. “Do you have any idea how important this work is to me? Do you know what it means when a massive donor calls a project head and basically implies with his questions that they might be interested in funding an immense nanite project, except for the pesky kid with a big mouth and weird hobbies?”

  “Maybe you could try controlling your mouth, Neil,” Joshua said, and his tone when he said Neil’s name was full of meaning. “Or you could try telling me more. About yourself. About your hobby. Why do you read all those books on reincarnation? That’s a strange topic for a scientist, don’t you think? Or maybe you want to tell me where you came from. I mean, where you really came from.” Joshua sounded almost panicked now, like he was on the verge of some sort of emotional freak-out himself.

  Neil’s dread ratcheted up in the face of it. Was this a trick? Would he say something that would incriminate his sanity and get him blacklisted from credible nanite research for life? “Are you…are you trying to sabotage my career?”

  “No, of course not. I’m worried about you.” Joshua sounded like he wanted to say something else, but had settled on the closest thing he could admit to.

  Neil scoffed. “Worried? About what, exactly?”

  “After I denied the funding, I felt concerned about your mental health. I worried that you might…hurt yourself.”

  “Hurt myself? Are you kidding me? I’m not going to go put a bullet in my brain because you aren’t giving me money. I’ve had more reasons to off myself than that and made it through.”

  “Well, that’s comforting,” Joshua said in a tone that made it clear that it was not. Then he seemed to steady himself, and he came back sounding more professional and more in control. “Listen, as a potential donor to your project, I have every right to be concerned for your mental welfare.”

  “Oh, please. You’re not donating, so let’s call off this charade.”

  “I actually haven’t decided yet.”

  “Why? You’ve made it more than clear that you despise my work, that you believe I’m a bad risk, even implying that—” Neil was freaking out now. He was lost without his work, and this was too much. Pushed off the project in hopes of wooing Joshua as a donor, and trapped in this young body in the wrong time and place. Fucking Derek at night would never wipe this clean. He could feel everything closing in around him. He was in the middle of the road again, Magic’s leash just out of reach, with a truck barreling down on him.

  Joshua interrupted his babbling. “Will you just shut up for a second? You run your mouth when you really should listen, okay?”

  “Fine. Why are you considering funding a project that goes against everything you’ve believed in since your husband died? Everyone knows you’ve blamed nanites for his death. That you—”

  “Shut up. For once in your short, privileged life…just shut up.”

  “Short and privileged. That’s hysterical.”

  “Listen—” Joshua fell silent for a moment, clearly gathering his thoughts. Finally, when he spoke, he sounded like he was hedging on the truth. “You remind me of someone. I’d feel guilty if I didn’t try to help you.”

  “I don’t need your guilt, and I sure as hell don’t need your—”

  “What? You don’t need my money? I’m pretty sure you do, actually.”

  Neil’s heart raced hard, panic rushing through to own him, and, spontaneously, he disconnected the call. His legs trembled, his breath came in short, terrified pants.

  He sat down on the sidewalk to stop himself from falling over. He’d been a fool to apply for that grant. He’d been an even bigger fool to meet with Joshua in person. But calling him now had been the biggest mistake of all. He wanted to find a hole and crawl inside it. He wanted to go home to Alice and bury his face in her lap and cry. He wanted to tear off his own skin and grow it back as the man he used to be. Hell, he’d wanted that his whole life.

  Neil snorted. Maybe Joshua had good reason to worry about his sanity. Maybe everyone did.

  He didn’t know how long he sat there, but when the call came in from Brian Peters telling him that the Neil Russell Foundation was going to back the project, so long as Neil was in charge, and so long as Neil answered directly to Joshua himself, he found the strength to stand up and start walking back to the labs.

  Neil didn’t know if his overwrought nervous system had finally kicked in enough endorphins to override his emotional pain, but he felt as though every nerve and synapse was firing at once, leaving him with a single, atypical thought: “This is what the saints called ecstatic pain. Funny, because it’s feels like hell.”

  Hope. He couldn’t afford to have it. But i
t was there like a flare in his chest, burning hot and bright, promising phone calls with Joshua, promising pain, and maybe something more.

  Chapter Seventeen

  November 2032—Bowling Green, Kentucky

  The morning air was crisp in the lingering dawn, and Joshua adjusted his scarf before shoving his gloved hands deeper into his pockets. The cemetery was empty, as usual, but it seemed occupied in a different way by the low-lying fog that rose from the dewy grass.

  Joshua hadn’t visited in a while.

  At first, he’d come almost every day, just to remind himself that Lee was buried there and not away on some business trip or an extended vacation that Joshua could hop on a plane and join him on. But after awhile he’d stopped. He remembered the day that he chose not to go anymore—alone in Earl G. Dumplin’s, watching high schoolers jostle each other, ready to head out into their day filled with techno-babble that Joshua failed to understand. Just living their ordinary lives, in their ordinary ways.

  Joshua had swallowed hard and understood that that would be every day from now. Every day would go on without Lee. No amount of going to the cemetery or talking to his gravestone would change that. After that moment, Joshua hadn’t gone again for a long time, just like he’d eventually stopped talking to Neil. Life moved on, and whether or not it was fair, he was still in it, and so he had to move on, too.

  But the dream about the bees had overwhelmed him again in the night, and after he’d gone back to sleep, he’d dreamed of Neil and Dr. Green again. He’d woken up sweaty, sick, and desperate, but he thought he finally knew what he had to do. First, though, he needed to talk to Lee, and so he stood by the completely ordinary grave with a completely ordinary gravestone, with his hands in his pockets and a terrified lump in his throat.

  Lee Michael Fargo

  B. December 5, 1984 D. November 28, 2030

  Beloved Husband and Dearest Friend

  He remembered the discussions he and Lee had had about death during the illness caused by the nanite damage.

  “I don’t want to be cremated,” Lee had said, a dark look on his face. “It’s not logical, but I was in a fire, and I survived it. I don’t want to put my body in one again, even if I’m not really there to feel it.”

  Joshua had agreed easily. “Whatever you want.” And worry pulled at him, not for the first time, over his decision to have Neil’s body cremated. He’d done what he thought Neil would have wanted at the time, but there had been no way to know for sure.

  In the end, Lee’s body had been laid to rest in a plot that Lee had chosen himself, in the middle of Crescent Hill Cemetery, without an empty spot beside it.

  “Because you should be cremated, babe,” he’d said. “That’s what you’ve always wanted, and that’s what you should do. I know you love me. Whether your body’s ashes are in the creek with Neil or buried in the ground next to me doesn’t change that.”

  Joshua had changed his will after Lee’s death to dictate that half of his ashes should be dumped into the creek on Stouder Farm close to where he’d poured Neil’s remains, and the other half interred with Lee’s grave. Laid to rest with both the men he’d loved.

  Despite himself, and thinking of Dr. Green, Joshua wondered if he’d have to change his will yet again.

  “So, look,” Joshua said, his voice quavering with the puff of condensed heat that left his mouth, “I think I’ve gone and lost my mind. And it’s safe to say it’s your fault. If you were still here, I’m sure you’d keep me grounded and all of this wouldn’t have happened. You’d laugh at me, and I’d accept that it was just a delusion.”

  Joshua’s gut churned with the lie.

  “Okay, so, maybe not. That’s the thing, Lee. This is the most real thing I’ve felt since you died. It doesn’t make sense, and I can’t tell anyone, but he’s my Neil. I know he is.” Joshua blew out a slow breath, tightness inside him making it hard to speak. “I think he knows he is, too.”

  A blackbird cawed from a tree near the edge of the cemetery’s boundaries, and Joshua looked up to the sky, seeing the rapid brightening from the east.

  “I talk to him by phone every day. It’s been three weeks now, and I can’t go twenty-four hours without calling him. I get the shakes if I don’t hear his voice—he sounds just like him. And ever since he’s softened toward me, I can tell our conversations scare him, too.”

  Joshua remembered the day before, how his hands had trembled as he’d called Neil to ‘check in’ on the progress of the protocol development. Neil had already told him it would take a few weeks to design the specs so that everyone would be satisfied, and yet Joshua called daily with the excuse of making sure that things were going as planned.

  “Yes, we’re still on track,” Neil had said as a greeting, his deep, gruff voice sounding annoyed and yet indulgent at the same time. “Yes, it’s all in the same place as yesterday. Yes, I will not rest until I have everyone’s signature. Yes, that’s a lie, because I slept four whole hours last night. Anything else, Mr. Stouder?”

  Joshua had chuckled softly, his stomach wrestling itself in excitement and nerves, just like every time he spoke to Dr. Green. His brain had tripped around looking for another reason to keep Neil on the phone, though. And just when it had seemed like Neil would disconnect the line if he didn’t speak, Joshua asked desperately, “How’s your mother?”

  There’d been a small hesitation before Neil had said, “Fine. Why the small talk, Mr. Stouder? If you have something to say, just say it. I don’t have time to pretend like you give a damn about my family.”

  “I give a damn,” Joshua said, remembering Adair’s video of the woman with her face in her hands. “I know you’re an only child, and I’m keeping you busy. Just wondering if you’ve called your mother lately.”

  There was a snort from Neil, and Joshua could imagine the eye roll that accompanied it. “I’m trying to get a project off the ground so that the asshole providing the big bucks for it will get off my back. I’ve been a little preoccupied. But, for the record, I spoke with her this morning, and she’s still alive and kicking, and for some strange reason happy that I am, too.”

  Joshua barely refrained from admitting that he was happy about that, as well, and that talking to Neil, hearing his achingly familiar voice, so long gone and yet suddenly right there in Joshua’s ear again, made him believe impossible, ridiculous things.

  “Now.” Neil had sighed. “I have things to do. If you could leave me alone for ten minutes, I might actually accomplish some of them.”

  There was something in Neil’s tone, though, that made Joshua think that he didn’t really want Joshua to leave him alone, that he really wanted Joshua to find another reason to stay on the line, and Joshua sought frantically for one.

  “Maybe I should come down and see what’s happening for myself,” Joshua had said. “After all, we’re talking about a lot of money.”

  “No!” Neil had exclaimed, causing Joshua’s head to rock back in surprise, and his warning flags to rise. “We’ve got it covered. Your input will just…mess everything up. You wouldn’t even know what you’re looking at. Either you trust me or you don’t, Mr. Stouder. Make up your mind.”

  The panic in Dr. Green’s voice had sewn through Joshua like a golden yanking thread, and he’d listened to the silence of the disconnected call for a few seconds before hopping into motion. Within minutes, he’d set up a schedule with the pilot to fly down to Atlanta the next day.

  “So, here’s the deal: I’m going down there. In two hours, I’ll be on the plane,” Joshua told Lee’s gravestone. “It’s unreal, I know, but I have to see him again. I have to know, Lee.” Joshua hesitated, feeling like he was betraying Lee by saying it, but he needed to admit it all the same. “I’ve missed him so much, and I’ve wanted him every day since he died. If it’s him…if somehow this is real, and it’s really him, then I have to go be with him. I need him, Lee. I need him so much.”

  Joshua stared in amazement down at where his feet mashed the grass at
the edge of Lee’s grave and swallowed a lump in his throat. Crawling on his leather shoe, despite the onset of early winter, despite the frost and the morning cold, was a black-and-yellow bee. Joshua watched as it arched and thrust its stinger into the leather, delivering its message, before flying away to die alone. Joshua’s eyes filled with tears, and he bowed his head.

  “Thank you,” Joshua whispered. “Thank you for understanding me.”

  Neil poked at the lines of code, messing with the commands again, trying to tweak the acceleration rate down a bit in order to lower the risk of damage to the cell membrane. He groaned and rubbed a hand over his face. He hadn’t slept, but at least he’d been able to bury himself in the work enough to put aside the nervous excitement of the prior day’s phone call with Joshua.

  Neil didn’t know how much more his adrenal system could take—each day was a jolt of fear, joy, nerves, love, and anger. He didn’t even know how to sort through everything he felt when Joshua called, but he knew that he wished Joshua wouldn’t call, and he knew that he’d suffer beyond his ability to endure if Joshua didn’t.

  The previous afternoon, during a fifteen-minute coffee break, he’d listened to Derek rattle on and on about a new poem that he was picking apart for another literature class, and he’d nodded at the right moments, keeping up the appearance of giving Derek any attention at all. He truly didn’t give a damn about how well words hung together, or what they might mean if twisted in different directions, and if various lenses of wishful thinking and subjective analysis were applied. But he liked Derek and wanted to keep him as a friend, so he put up with the nonsense.

  “Neil,” Derek had said eventually, a hint of frustration in his voice. “Are you listening? I mean, I know you don’t care, but are you at least absorbing my words?”

  Neil had nodded, but the truth was he’d been obsessing over Joshua’s threat to come check out the project in person. The thought of seeing Joshua again, shaking his hand, smelling his aftershave—it was too much. Neil couldn’t even consider it without feeling so full of everything that he wanted to yell, strip his clothes off, and race around the campus naked and wild with primal energy he couldn’t begin to contain. Joshua needed to stay away. Neil couldn’t live through seeing him again, not unless he could have him for real. And he wasn’t banking on that.