"'Tis a glorious thing to lay down your life for another,” Father Andrew said in his piping old-lady voice, “just as Christ laid down his to redeem us all."
"Yeah, well Christ didn't have to think about some old geezer parading around in his body after he bit the big one, wearing his favorite hoodie or stuffing his bra."
"Charlsie, I'm sensing serious reticence here,” Sister Angela said. “This choice may not be for you."
"You think?” Charlsie bolted onto her feet and gazed around the peaceful sanctuary. Somewhere in the background, machinery hummed. She could feel it vibrating up through the stone flag floor. “I don't know. I was really planning on like—you know—going."
Father Andrew's eyes were as beady as a bird's. “Why don't you participate in the Donation Guild for a few days, maybe even a few weeks, before you make up your mind? It could bring you a measure of peace, either way."
And, because she couldn't think of any alternatives, she found herself saying yes.
* * * *
Charlsie went back to school the next day, having already intercepted one call to her mother from the Principal's office, wanting to know if she was sick. She ignored Krissi and Amy and Madison who giggled and whispered and rolled their eyes as she walked by. They didn't matter. No one did. She had something else in her life now, something secret and important. None of those air-brains could say that.
And since she wasn't burdened with friends or a social life anymore, she found herself with a lot of time on her hands. When she wasn't working at the temple, she wound up doing some of her homework out of sheer unadulterated boredom. It was strange, but the more of it she did, the easier it got. Sometimes, now, she actually understood what the teacher was saying in class, even in Trig. It was a startling, rather heady feeling.
She did meet new people at the Second Life Temple, Phillip who was forty-one and miserable, having just lost his IT job—again, and Marsha, in her fifties, who was going through her third divorce and had this teensy problem with alcohol. There were Sherry and Alex and Roger and Stacey and Reg, each with his or her problems, just some of the many miserable souls haunting the dim hallways of the temple complex. Most were eager to share their stories, but she shied away from getting close. There was no point, because, like her, they were all on their way Out.
Each day, they met at the temple, then put on the navy blue robe of an acolyte and took care of the housekeeping chores in order to free up the priests for more important work. As time went by, they began instruction on how to tend the vast network of computers in the underground complex beneath the temple itself. This was where personalities of the dying were downloaded into the servers and where donated bodies had their suicidal personalities chemically wiped.
There was some disagreement, she learned, as to whether consciousness was actually transferred or merely duplicated. That was obviously a big deal to the supplicants, though it really didn't figure into her end of the situation.
Sometimes, Charlsie would get a glimpse of one of the dying when they applied for a new body. They came in droves, many more than the temple could serve. All of them met Sister Angela and Father Andrew, so Charlsie supposed they understood the risk they were taking in this grab-bag style exchange.
The acolytes were not permitted to mingle with supplicants, though. Sister Angela said the church didn't want to influence potential donors unduly. If you wanted to lay down your body, you should do it for the right reason. Unlike some of the antiquated religions taught, the Church of Second Life didn't consider it a sin if you didn't want to live in this world anymore, but on the other hand, it was selfish to throw away a perfectly healthy body when so many desperately ill people could put it to good use.
It turned out that one of the acolytes, Phillip, was quite good at hacking computer files, having acquired a lot of experience during what he termed his “misspent youth.” He'd already scanned the Second Life code and had a theory that the Church's prized random selection algorithm wasn't quite as random as it was supposed to be. The sexes got switched, he said, when matching new personalities to donated bodies rather more often than chance should indicate.
One night the acolytes all went out for pizza after their shifts and Phillip reported that he'd learned by reading supposedly secure files that Sister Angela's body had once been Bill “The Bomber” Atkins, a notorious prize fighter who'd killed three men in the ring. Father Andrew's bird-like form had been donated by Maria Selves, a famous anthropologist who had inadvertently wiped out an entire Amazonian culture by exposing them to the flu virus. Each had compelling reasons for wanting to leave the world behind, but it was getting harder each day for Charlsie to remember why she wanted to go.
At home, her detachment led to quieter evenings and less arguing with her two younger brothers. To explain where she went after school each day, she told the ‘rents, Charles and Anna, that she had a part-time job down at Burger King. That kept them off her back, and they seemed to think she was finally becoming more responsible. What a laugh.
One day, though, about three weeks after Charlsie had enlisted in the Donation Guild, she had just ducked into the locker room to don her blue robe when her dad stuck his head through the door.
"Charlsie?” He stepped inside, still wearing his suit and red-striped tie from work, looking around, dark hair mussed, obviously aghast. “I thought you were up to something, but I was hoping it was only drugs! What are you doing in this place?"
"I ... work here,” she said, her heart hammering.
"These people are notorious nut cases!” he said. “Everyone knows that! Get your stuff. We're going home!"
"I can't,” she said, thrusting her arm into the blue robe's sleeve. “I have to work my shift. They're counting on me."
"You don't have a shift,” he said, crossing the room to take her by the arm. “Not anymore!"
"Is there a problem?” Sister Angela's sturdy form appeared in the doorway.
"No, Sister,” Charlsie said, freeing her arm. “He was just leaving."
"That's no sister!” her dad said.
"Inside, she is.” Charlsie sighed. “Just go home, Dad. We can talk about this later."
Her dad whirled upon Sister Angela, hands fisted. “She's underage! I'll sue you people six ways from Sunday!"
"Charlsie?” Sister Angela said with a note of disapproval.
"I'm eighteen—almost,” Charlsie said, her voice fading on the last word.
"I told you to get your stuff!” her dad said.
"No,” she said, surprising herself. With trembling fingers, she buttoned up her robe. “Like it's my life and I can do what I want with it. And right now, what I want is to work my freaking shift!"
"These people will kill you!” he said. “They'll flush your personality out of your brain like yesterday's dead goldfish, then hand your body over to some stranger!"
"No, we won't,” Sister Angela said, “not if she isn't of age.” Her battered male face glanced at Charlsie.
Her father loosened his tie as though he was ready to go ten rounds with Sister Angela. “Well, she's not!"
The two men regarded one another. Her father had a temper, but he'd never been very physical. Charlsie bet Sister Angela could take him. “Just because I'm not of age doesn't mean I can't volunteer for the Donation Guild,” she said. “I'm not breaking any rules by just working here, am I?"
"No,” Sister Angela said quietly.
"I am old enough to drop out of school,” Charlsie said, facing her father, “and I will, unless you let me keep my job!"
"No, you won't!” Her father seized her arm and dragged her out the door.
She gave up trying to get free and just rode in his gray van in thin-edged silence, huddled against the passenger door. There was peace at the temple, weird as that sounded. She liked working there, sweeping and polishing, hanging out with the other volunteers, entering data into the servers. She had the lowest error rate of all the new acolytes. Father Andrew said so. That meant somet
hing. She'd never been the best at anything before.
"It's a cult, Charlsie,” her mother said that night after her little brothers, Eric and Tom, had been sent to their rooms. “There was an exposé on Entertainment Tonight just last week! In spite of what they claim, they don't save those sick people. The brain patterns are duplicated, not transferred. The original personality still dies."
"Besides,” her father said, sweeping his arm around the living room with its home theater sound system, Mega-High-Def TV, and the latest in computer gaming technology, “why on Earth would you want to kill yourself? You have a loving home, a generous allowance, a bright future.” He had a desperate gleam in his eye. “What could be so wrong with your life that you'd want to abandon it to some stranger?"
"We're signing you up for counseling,” her mother said, “and you will go!"
* * * *
"So you want to kill yourself?” The shrink leaned forward in his chair, looking expectant. His fingers played with a cigarette lighter, flipping the top up and down, up and down. Dr. Fusselman was ferret-faced and fortyish, all edges with narrow dark eyes that followed her every move as though he were stalking her. His spacious blue-carpeted office had dumb fake trees scattered about like she was supposed to be fooled into thinking they were outdoors. He even played birdcalls on a sound system hidden in the wall somewhere.
Over by the window, fish swam in a huge tank, darting around submerged rocks over and over, looking trapped. The air reeked of carpet cleaner. She'd been coming here two days a week for three weeks, the financial equivalent of a Florida vacation for the entire family, her mother reminded her at every opportunity.
"No, I don't want to die, not anymore.” Charlsie sighed because he started every session with the same stupid question. She examined her tangerine-polished fingernails. Who was taking her shift down at the temple? Sister Angela had promised to teach her how to download a supplicant's personality, which would have been awesome. Now, she'd never get to do it. “Will you just give it a freaking rest?"
"I can't help you if we don't get to the root of the problem,” the shrink said. His bushy eyebrows quirked. His voice lowered. “Let's dig a little deeper today. I know you're hiding something. Have you ever been—abused?"
"Eeuww!” She sat up straight in her chair.
"Something drove you to that kind of desperation,” the shrink said. “Are you having an affair with one of your teachers, or does someone come into your bedroom at night?” His eyes narrowed even further, which she hadn't thought possible. “Is it your father?"
"You are totally gross!” She bolted to her feet, then tottered a bit on the spike heels she'd worn to cheer herself up. “I can't do this anymore!"
"Charlsie, sit down,” he said, as though disciplining a wayward dachshund.
She fled out his office door, past his goggle-eyed secretary, who looked a bit like a fish herself. There were even more fish in a tank in the waiting room, big splotchy ones with blubbery lips. This guy had a real thing for scales and fins, she thought as she snatched her jacket from the coat tree. He should get help.
Outside, she pulled off her shoes and then ran for a block, dodging pedestrians on the sidewalk, old ladies and young mothers with strollers, startled sparrows feasting on a dropped hot dog bun, a stray cat. She finally stopped with a stitch in her side beneath an old oak. Even though it was overcast and cold, sweat poured down her temples. She blotted her face on her jacket sleeve. This was all just too lame. Maybe she couldn't remember why she'd wanted to off herself in the first place, but new reasons were rapidly surfacing.
Her feet still hurt from wearing the tight shoes, but the sidewalk was freaking cold, so she put her heels back on. Her father would drop by the office in half an hour to pick her up, and when he got there, the shrink was bound to rat on her. There would be more trouble at home. They might even try to send her to that stupid boarding school in Pennsylvania they'd been threatening. Things had been so much more peaceful when she was just quietly arranging her death. Too bad she hadn't succeeded.
A maroon city bus loomed at the end of the street and she realized she was close to the bus stop. On a whim, she dug in her purse for change. She had maybe an hour before her father caught up with her, just enough time to check in down at the temple and see how things were going these days.
* * * *
Someone had been working in the gardens, she noticed as she walked up. Debris had been cleared, the earth readied for new beds of flowers in a few weeks, once it warmed up a bit. She saw a figure in the distance and hurried. Was it Sister Angela?
But when she got closer, she found it was Phillip, the IT guy, dressed in the navy shirt and trousers of the Order rather than an acolyte's robe. He was perched on a stepladder, patiently cleaning a stained glass window portraying the downloading of an ecstatic personality. “What's up?” she said from below.
He looked down. “Sorry?” There was no sign of recognition in his gaze.
"Dude, I know I've been gone,” she said, “but it hasn't been that long. Found out any more goodies about Sister Angela's past?"
"I—think you must have known my—body—before,” he said, climbing back down the ladder. His movements were awkward and he fumbled at the rungs. “I haven't been—myself—very long."
His affect was entirely changed. It was like he was shorter, rounder, even younger. He regarded her with zero recognition. Phillip had donated, she realized suddenly. A chill swept over her. This was someone else entirely looking out through his hazel eyes.
"My name is Brother Shawn,” he said, putting down his Windex bottle and roll of paper towels. He wiped his hands on his pants, then held one out. “My parents have moved out of state and I don't know if I want to live with them anymore, so for now I've joined the Order."
She shook his hand with a sense of numbness. Phillip was gone. The two of them would never dig through the files for confidential information again or go out for a late snack with the other acolytes. Anger surged through her. She'd known better than to make friends here, but then she'd gone ahead and done it anyway. Spaz-brain!
"I had leukemia,” Brother Shawn was saying, “since I was six. None of the therapies worked and believe me, we tried them all. I had chemo, radiation, and then a bone marrow transplant. I would get better, but then it kept coming back. In the end, the doctors said I had two months, maybe less, when my parents finally let me come here."
"How old are—were—you?” she asked.
"Fourteen,” he said. “This—” He waved a hand at his pudgy forty-year-old body. “—well, it's going to take some getting used to. It creeps me out seeing this old dude's face staring back from the mirror. I mean—look at me! He didn't take very good care of himself."
One leaves, one stays, she thought. That was the Order's creed. The impact of its meaning swept over her. Offing yourself was for-freaking-ever. Somehow, she hadn't quite processed that before.
"Just keep telling yourself ‘Each day is a gift,'” Sister Angela's rumbly voice intoned from behind. “You'll soon settle in. Welcome back, Charlsie."
"I can't stay,” Charlsie said, turning. “My dad is bound to catch up with me. I just slipped away to see how things were here."
"Proceeding normally,” Sister Angela said. Her heavy boxer-arm draped over Brother Shawn's new shoulder. “Phillip declared himself ready to go last week and we concurred. After processing, we presented his body and then the random selection algorithm downloaded Shawn."
"I've been waiting three years,” Shawn said, “though inside the computer, you can't tell it's taking that long. One minute, you're puking your guts out, afraid to share air space with anyone because your immune system's flat-lined, and the next, you're in a new body.” He smiled shakily and regarded his spread fingers. “The good thing is that, even though this one has some serious miles on it, nothing hurts anymore. I can go roller blading again, maybe even try snow boarding and surfing."
"God knew when the time was right for you to tak
e up new flesh,” Sister Angela said. “He picks better than we ever could for ourselves."
A familiar gray van screeched up in the parking lot. Doors slammed. Voices shouted in the distance. Charlsie glanced over her shoulder. It looked like both her dad and the shrink were hot-footing it through the church parking lot. Abso-freakingly great.
"Charlsie, get away from those lunatics!” her dad yelled, waving his arms frantically.
"Guess I have to go,” she told Sister Angela. She glanced at Brother Shawn's shy smile trying to plaster itself on Phillip's older face with mixed results. “I was never really going to do it, though. I see that now."
"That was pretty much understood,” Sister Angela said. “Most people your age don't really want to lay down their body when they come to us. They're just confused and unhappy. They need a chance to think, a kind of cooling off period."
"I'd still like to volunteer though,” she said.
Footsteps were pounding closer.
"The work is hard,” Sister Angela said. She rasped her fingers over her five o'clock shadow thoughtfully. “Everyone who comes to us is in pain, either physical or mental. The people with whom we work closest often choose to leave this world and it's always difficult to see them go. Phillip was very dear. In fact, he delayed his departure several days because he insisted on completing the scheduled maintenance on all our servers before he left us. I will miss him."
"I'll sue you within an inch of your sorry lives!” her father was yelling. Dr. Fusselman, the shrink, lurched along in his wake, breathing hard, evidently not in nearly as good physical condition, which wasn't saying much. Her dad had never been one for working out.
Brother Shawn glanced at the approaching men, his brows raised. “What—?"
"Don't ask, dude,” Charlsie said. She rolled her eyes. “Believe me, you don't want to know."
Her father rounded the last empty flower bed. “You can't—you can't—” He wrenched at his tie, then leaned over and braced his hands on his thighs, fighting for breath.
"Need to hit the gym once in a while, Dad?” she said.
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