“I can see why people want to believe,” Dion told me. “I’m not just a petulant kid, like you think. I’ve wondered, I’ve asked. God doesn’t make sense to me. But sometimes, looking at infinity and thinking of myself just . . . not being here anymore, I understand why people would choose to believe.”
Ivy would want me to try to convert the boy, but she wasn’t here. Instead, I asked a question. “Do you think time is infinite, Dion?”
He shrugged.
“Come on,” I prodded. “Give me an answer. You want comfort? I might have a solution for you—or at least my aspect Arnaud might. But first, is time infinite?”
“I don’t think we know for certain,” Dion replied. “But yeah, I’d guess that it is. Even after our universe ends, something else will happen. If not here, then in other dimensions. Other places. Other big bangs. Matter, space, it’ll continue on without end.”
“So you’re immortal.”
“My atoms, maybe,” he said. “But that’s not me. Don’t give me any metaphysical bull—”
“No metaphysics,” I said, “just a theory. If time is infinite, then anything that can happen will happen—and has happened. That means you’ve happened before, Dion. We all have. Even if there is no God—even supposing that there are no answers, no divinity out there—we’re immortal.”
He frowned.
“Think about it,” I said. “The universe rolled its cosmic dice and ended up with you—a semi-random collection of atoms, synapses, and chemicals. Together, those create your personality, memories, and very existence. But if time continues forever, eventually that random collection will happened again. It may take hundreds of trillions of years, but it will come again. You. With your memories, your personality. In the context of infinity, kid, we will keep living, over and over.”
“I . . . don’t know how comforting that is, honestly. Even if it is true.”
“Really?” I asked. “Because I think it’s pretty amazing to consider. Anything that is possible is actually reality, given infinity. So, not only will you return, but your every iteration of possibility will play out. Sometimes you’ll be rich. Sometimes you’ll be poor. In fact, it’s plausible that because of a brain defect, sometime in the future you’ll have the memories you have now, even if in that future time you never lived those memories. So you’ll be you again, completely, and not because of some mystical nonsense—but because of simple mathematics. Even the smallest chance multiplied by infinity is, itself, infinite.”
I stood back up, then squatted down, looking him in the eyes and resting my hand on his shoulder. “Every variation of possibility, Dion. At some point, you—the same you, with the same thought processes—will be born to a wealthy family. Your parents will be killed, and you will decide to fight against injustice. It has happened. It will happen. You asked for comfort, Dion? Well, when the fear of death seizes you—when the dark thoughts come—you stare the darkness right back, and you tell it, ‘I will not listen to you, for I am infinite Batmans.’”
The kid blinked at me. “That . . . is the weirdest thing anyone has ever told me.”
I winked at him, then left him lost in thought and walked back to Audrey. I wasn’t sure how much of that I actually believed, but it was what had come out. Honestly, I don’t know that the universe could really handle everyone being infinite Batmans.
Perhaps the point of God was to prevent nonsense like that.
I took Audrey by the arm, speaking softly. “Audrey, focus on me.”
She looked at me, blinking. She’d been crying.
“We’re going to think, right now,” I told her. “We’re going to scrounge everything we know, and we’re going to come up with a way out of this.”
“I can’t—”
“You can. You’re part of me. You’re part of all of this; you can access my subconscious. You can fix this.”
She met my eyes, and some of my confidence seemed to transfer to her. She nodded sharply, and adopted a look of complete concentration. I smiled at her encouragingly.
The door to the building up above opened, then shut.
Come on, Audrey.
Zen’s footsteps rounded the building, then she began working on the lock down into the cellar.
Come on . . .
Audrey snapped her head up and looked at me. “I know where the body is.”
“The body?” I said. “Audrey, we’re supposed to be—”
“Zen’s company doesn’t have it,” Audrey said. “I3 doesn’t have it. The kid doesn’t know anything. I know where it is.”
The door down into the cellar opened. Light flooded in, revealing Zen silhouetted above. “Mister Leeds,” she said. “I need you to come with me so I can question you alone. It will only take a short time.”
I grew very cold.
20
“Oh hell,” Audrey said, backing away from me. “You need to do something! Don’t let her kill you.”
I turned to face Zen—a woman dressed in chic clothing, like she was the CFO of a Manhattan publishing company, not a paid assassin. She walked down the steps, feigning nonchalance. That attitude, mixed with the tension of the call above, told me all I needed to know.
She was going to eliminate me.
“They’re really willing to do this?” I asked her. “It will leave questions. Problems.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She got out her gun.
“Do we have to play this game, Zen?” I replied, frantically searching for a way to stall. “We both know what you’re up to. You’ll really follow through with orders that are so incompetent? It leaves you in danger. People will wonder where I’ve gone.”
“An equal number will be glad to have you out of their hair, I assume,” Zen said. She took out a suppressor, affixing it to her gun, all pretense gone now.
Audrey whimpered. To his credit, Dion stood up, unwilling to face death sitting down.
“You pushed them too hard, Mister Crazy,” Zen said. “They have it in their heads that you’re trying specifically to destroy them, and so they have responded as any bully does when shoved. They hit as hard as they can and hope it will solve the situation.” She raised the gun. “As for me, I can take care of myself. But thank you for your concern.”