A Stand-In for Dying

by Rick Moskovitz

  “So why can’t you?”

  “Because I...we don’t know how. This is all new territory, these multiple exchanges of identity. We don’t know how much the data degrades with each exchange, or even whether another exchange is possible. If we try, you could wind up severely impaired or evaporate entirely into the ether. It’s way too risky.”

  “So this is permanent?”

  “Perhaps so,” said Terra. “We’ll study the situation. Do some experiments. Perhaps we can figure it out, but it will take time. And there are no guarantees. Meanwhile, I’ll do my best to keep you alive.”

  “Both of us, Terra.” He grabbed her by the arm and looked straight into her eyes. “You need to keep us both alive.”

  “I’ll do my best, Marcus. As long as Ray doesn’t screw things up again, I’ll keep you both alive.”

  By the time Marcus got back to the penthouse, Lena had showered and was sipping coffee on the sofa, wrapped in a fluffy robe. When he entered the room, she stood wordlessly, scowling.

  “Not much of a greeting, considering I almost died,” said Marcus.

  “Whatever you’ve done, Ray,” Lena exploded, “it’s gone way too far. You’ve just put me and three innocent people in harm’s way.”

  “I’m really sorry, Lena. I’m glad you got home safely. I hope the others are OK.”

  “They’re shocked and bewildered, but they’re unharmed. I had no idea what to tell them when they came to.” She paused and looked away. When she reengaged his gaze, there was fire in her eyes.

  “Who the hell is Corinne, Ray?” she asked. “You called me Corinne when they took you away.”

  Marcus breathed deeply. In the fog of the stroke, he’d been left unguarded and had uttered the name that was most precious to him, the wife from whose side he’d been ripped by Raymond Mettler’s treachery. Now was the moment of truth. He’d have to trust Lena to share his secret and hope that Terra would spare her life.

  “Corinne,” began Marcus, looking straight into her eyes, “is my wife.” He paused long enough for the information to sink in.

  “Your wife? No. I’m your wife,” she protested, wide-eyed.

  Marcus held her gaze. For the next few moments, he felt as if she was looking through his eyes directly into his soul. Her face relaxed. She drew a long, deep breath, whistling as she exhaled, then drew back a step.

  “Who are you?” she asked. “And how did you get here?”

  “My name is Marcus, Lena, Marcus Takana. And it seems your husband has stolen my life.”

  “Marcus...and Corinne,” Lena said. “I was at your house to write your story. No wonder your eyes looked so...familiar. Not exactly Ray’s, but not a stranger’s either. So then it’s true.”

  “What’s true?”

  “Some time ago, Ray was acting oddly. I caught him examining himself in the mirror as if he was looking at a stranger. Then a while later, she showed up.”

  “Who?”

  “The redhead...Terra, a mystery woman. I asked him about her and he said she dealt with ‘final arrangements.’ He wouldn’t tell me any more. Said he couldn’t. It would somehow put us in danger.”

  “That would have been after the first exchange,” said Marcus. “It was an accident and only lasted a few hours, but it gave Ray a taste of my life...and my wife. Apparently, he couldn’t let it go.”

  “After that happened,” said Lena, absorbing Marcus’s words, “I found an item on the UDB that led me to a woman who swore that her husband had been replaced by an imposter before he disappeared entirely. She’d also seen a redhead whom I presumed was Terra. I tracked rumors about a secret project that involved exchanging consciousness between bodies. When I confronted Ray, he became agitated and refused to talk about it. Things got back more or less to normal for a while and I never raised it again.”

  “It was a condition of the contract...maintaining secrecy. We were led to believe that if we told anybody about it, they could be killed. I never breathed a word to Corinne.”

  “Contract...between you and Ray,” mused Lena. “How did it work?”

  “I was to undergo the Ambrosia Conversion to make my body immortal. Then Ray would get my body when he died. Neither of us knew the identity of the other.”

  “Why would you ever agree to such a thing?”

  “Because I was poor and desperate, and Terra offered me an unimaginable fortune. It enabled me to acquire the knowledge to create Takana Grass and solve the scourge of HibernaTurf. Dying seemed a long way off. It seemed worth it at the time.”

  “Until the accident,” said Lena.

  “Until the accident,” agreed Marcus. “And until Ray apparently decided that he couldn’t wait until he died to have my life.”

  Lena moved closer to Marcus. She looked into his eyes and cupped his face in her hands. The edges of her robe fell open.

  “I really enjoyed when you made love to me,” she said. “I hope…”

  “I did, too, Lena,” he said. “I felt a special connection with you. As lost as I felt when I suddenly wound up in this body, I feel safe in your arms.”

  “So, Marcus Takana,” she whispered, “it looks like you’re going to share my home, and my life. I hope you’ll also continue to share my bed.”

  38

  THE NEWS STORY came over the UDB: VICE PRESIDENT HAUER CONSIDERING MINISTER OF DISCOVERY MARCUS TAKANA AS RUNNING MATE.

  It was accompanied by a photo of the Minister and his family. He and Corinne flanked sweet Natasha in the middle. They were all smiling. From the background, he realized that it was an old file photo, taken before the switch.

  Marcus had avoided looking at pictures of his family until then. It would have been too painful to contemplate. Now that he had stumbled across this one, grief and longing cut him to his core.

  “If I could only just see them again in the flesh,” he thought, “even for just a few minutes. Maybe I could find a way to say goodbye.”

  The thought nagged at him for days. It wasn’t as if they existed in another world. They were less than an hour away on the vacuum tube transport. He could slip away from Lena for less than a day to scratch the itch that was getting harder and harder to ignore. Then perhaps he could return to Lena and immerse himself more fully in their life together.

  He plotted his visit to his former life. He’d go on a Sunday morning when they were likely to be together. He wondered whether Ray was now participating in the rituals of the Church of the Double Helix. From what he knew of Ray, he wasn’t a religious man. In fact, he was known to be an atheist. But then, Marcus hadn’t been religious before the Church came into his life. Its special magic had transformed him. Was it possible that it had also worked its magic on Ray? Or would Ray at least have gone along with it to maintain the ruse of his identity?

  Since Marcus and Lena began giving away Ray’s wealth, the antipathy of the public toward Ray had substantially abated, along with its preoccupation with him, enabling him to stay more under the radar in public. His anonymity was further helped by the enormous changes he’d made in his physical appearance. As long as people weren’t filtering his appearance through augmented reality, he could often blend into a crowd. And church was a setting in which most people left their technology paused for a few hours of communion with a higher power.

  Marcus waited for a weekend on which Lena was traveling for a story. He slipped out shortly after midnight and made his way to the tube station. Once inside the pod with the doors closed, he felt the burst of acceleration lasting less than a minute, followed by an almost complete absence of sensation. While he could track the forward motion of the pod by the flashes of light passing rhythmically by his porthole, when he closed his eyes, he felt motionless...almost weightless. The only sound was the soothing music piped into the capsule. Before he knew it, he felt the pod decelerating at the end of its run. And then it stopped. Fifty minutes from start to finish and he was on the East Coast in the DC station.

  Marcus parked the leased hovercar down t
he street from the brownstone mansion, waited and watched. Dawn had just broken on a clear Sunday morning. The streets were still empty, even in one of the capital’s most densely populated bedroom communities. In this neighborhood, though, the houses were surrounded by generous tracts of land and many were fortified with tall iron fences or stone walls. The Takana home was notable for the lush foliage that completely hid the lower level from view behind the black wrought iron fence.

  His patience paid off. After several hours, a steel gray vehicle glided through the gate onto the road. Ray activated his vehicle and felt it silently lift off the surface beneath it before moving forward. He maintained a respectful distance as the two vehicles left the neighborhood and navigated onto the elevated ringway. The third exit took them to the familiar country road that led to the church.

  The gray vehicle came to a stop in front of the building. Ray, Corinne, and Natasha emerged and entered the church. Marcus parked his car around the side, entered through the front and ascended the stairs to the balcony. From the front row, he watched the pews fill up on the ground floor and spotted the Takana family sitting together in the middle of the third row.

  As the people filed into the Church of the Double Helix, the music of the pipe organ wafted through the building. It sounded viscous as honey and sweeter as it poured out of the organ pipes, the notes fed straight into the instrument from the patterns in the Coded Word, stirring his memories of the happier times spent within these hallowed walls, sitting with his family just a few rows from the preacher.

  The Takanas were now surrounded by a sea of heads, mostly as bald and shiny as theirs. Even embedded within this throng of peers, Ray and Corinne’s regal bearing set them apart. Eight-year-old Natasha stood straight and tall, carrying herself as someone destined for nobility.

  The preacher entered from the side of the stage and ascended the pulpit, resplendent in a silver robe embellished with holographic images that sparkled in the laser light that bathed the pulpit. She raised his arms and the assemblage rose to their feet. The scene was at the same time both palpably familiar and oddly distant.

  The preacher held her arms out in front of her and gestured for the congregation to be seated. Huge holographic images of double helixes flanked her as the service unfolded, with readings from the source code interspersed with musical interludes choreographing the rotation of the helixes. As they turned, segments lit up sequentially in seemingly random order, signifying portions of the code that bore the scriptures. During some of these interludes the congregation vocalized in unison sustained tones that emanated from the core of their bodies and together filled the entire volume of the church with commanding resonance.

  It was during the sermon that Marcus noticed a man at the other end of the balcony who also seemed focused on something other than the preacher’s words. Like Marcus, he was dressed very differently from most of the congregation, an apparent outsider. He not only had a full head of reddish brown hair, but also a closely cropped beard covering his face. As Marcus observed him more closely, his gaze seemed to be directed toward the same section of the congregation in which his family were sitting. When the organ music resumed at the end of the service and people began filing out, the man maintained his focus until Ray and his family stood and moved into the aisle. Then he hastened toward the balcony door and bounded down the steps.

  Marcus followed and upon reaching the ground floor found the bearded man and four or five other people obstructing the space between him and the Takanas. He’d hoped for an opportunity to get a better look at them close up, to see Corinne’s radiant face again and hear Natasha’s voice. He’d even imagined that if he could get close enough, he would smell the jasmine emanating from Corinne’s body.

  As soon as his family emerged from the church, the gray hovercar pulled up to the door and the driver let them in. Right behind the gray car a white vehicle pulled up. The intruder entered on the passenger side and the car sped away in the same direction. By the time Marcus got to his car, both other vehicles were long gone. He assumed that they were headed home and sped toward their house on a shortcut.

  As he pulled into his street, he watched the gray car disappear behind the gate. The white vehicle had pulled over on the opposite side of the street several houses back. Marcus drove past the entry gate and parked around the corner. From his position at the side of the house, he could barely make out Ray and Corinne through the underbrush getting out of the car. Natasha was no longer with them, perhaps dropped off on the way at the home of a friend. Once they were inside, Marcus peered around the corner just in time to see the driver’s side door of the white car open.

  The driver, a rugged looking young man with wavy blond hair crossed the street and moved swiftly down the sidewalk in front of the house. Marcus flashed back with alarm to the same man watching Natasha from across the corral. He held a cylindrical object in his right hand that he flung over the fence with inhuman force. It soared across the yard and landed just in front of the entry door, rolling the last few feet across the stoop.

  The explosion knocked Marcus off his feet and blasted open the front gates. A fireball enveloped the house. Marcus got to his feet just in time to see the white car speed away. His heart was pounding and he felt himself scream, but no sound came out. In fact, his whole world had fallen silent following the blast, a fitting accompaniment to the hollowness that gnawed at his gut.

  Marcus ran across the fallen gate toward the front door, but the flames spitting from the opening forced him back. He ran around the back of the house to find the kitchen door blown out. Smoke billowed from the opening. He pulled off his shirt, wrapped the fireproof fabric around his face, and plowed into the house through the smoke. The kitchen was empty. He ran into the hallway and stumbled over a body.

  Corinne lay unconscious at his feet, while Ray lay motionless just a few paces away, barely discernible in the smoke. The fire had entered the long hallway at the front of the house and was moving quickly toward them. Marcus could feel the intensity of the heat on his bare chest. He could only save one of them.

  If Ray perished, the possibility of Marcus ever having his life restored would be gone forever. And if he tried to save either one of them, he would risk his very survival. But there at his feet was the woman he adored and had been yearning to be with ever since his life was stolen.

  With a burst of strength reminiscent of his former body, Marcus scooped up Corinne’s limp form and carried her out through the kitchen and the smoke. He ran another fifty feet beyond the house before collapsing to the ground with Corinne still in his arms. Another fireball shot flames toward them through the door and the framework of the house began to crumble.

  When he laid Corinne’s body on the ground, he brought his face close to hers and couldn’t feel her breath. He pinched her nose tightly shut, sealed his lips over hers, and expelled a mighty breath to fill her lungs. She coughed, then drew a deep breath of her own. Marcus brought his lips back to hers and kissed her softly.

  Marcus didn’t hear the sirens approaching in his still soundless world. He rolled onto his back to see the rescue personnel in their reflective suits sweep Corinne’s body onto a stretcher and roll her away. By the time they came back for him, he was gone. The rented car was barricaded by the rescue vehicles and he fled on foot. How would he ever explain what he was doing there when the house was firebombed? With the white car long gone, he’d become the prime suspect.

  He longed to know whether his sacrifice paid off, but had no way to know for sure whether Corinne would survive. Now he had a more immediate problem. The police would identify him from the rented hovercar and would soon be looking for him. Where could he hide in this too transparent world? And how could he ever clear his name?

  Marcus navigated to the edge of the neighborhood via side streets and alleys until he reached a more densely populated section and emerged onto a busy thoroughfare. His flight had continued in silence until then. Now sounds were beginning to filter back into
his awareness. Footsteps galloped toward him from the distance to his right and he took off in the opposite direction.

  His pursuer gained on him fast. He glanced behind him just long enough to see a shock of blond hair. Marcus was breathing hard as the pursuer closed in. With his last burst of energy, he swerved into the street and saw the red hovercar barreling toward him just as he felt the palm of a large hand land on his back. If only he were back in his own body with powerful legs propelling him forward. Instead, his leaden limbs rooted him to the pavement in a killer’s grasp.

  39

  SUNDAY MORNING. Ray was awake at the crack of dawn. He was lingering over a second cup of coffee and catching up on the news of the day when Corinne and Natasha came to breakfast.

  “Ready for church?” asked Corinne.

  “Wouldn’t miss it,” said Ray.

  He’d accompanied them to the Church of the Double Helix every Sunday since the switch. The first time, he was reluctant, being a confirmed atheist, and had anticipated being bored to tears. It had turned out to be an uplifting experience. The music and the liturgy were hypnotic. And when he heard the story of the Coded Word that had been discovered in human DNA, he was intrigued. By the third visit he was looking forward to it, finding an odd sense of peace within the walls of the church.