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We’re on the move again, and Inez is getting to the heart of the explanations.
“Everyone in the Merge was like you once,” she says. “We lived on Earth and led normal lives. Then each of us was murdered.”
She looks at me to see how I’m taking the revelation. I’m numb, staring at my feet as we tromp along.
“You don’t come to this sphere if you die of natural causes,” Inez continues. “If you fall and snap your neck, or get buried in an avalanche, or suffer a heart attack, your soul goes somewhere else. You only end up in the Merge if another human kills you. This sphere is a place where the murdered can tie up loose ends and chase our dreams for a while before departing for whatever lies in store for us next.”
“What is next?” I wheeze, thinking about Dave.
“We don’t know,” Inez says. “We know there are other spheres – some of the early Merged had contact with people in them in the past, and there are rumours that they helped us create this place – but we can’t see beyond the Merge.”
I stare at her, finding this almost impossible to believe.
“You were real, like me?” I grunt.
“I’m still real,” she says.
“You were alive.”
“I’m still alive, relatively speaking.”
I roll my eyes, frustrated. “You were one of the Born,” I growl.
Inez smiles. “Correct.”
“Then you were killed.”
Her smile fades. “Yes.”
“How?”
“An enemy of my father’s tried to abduct me. I fought back and he struck me with a club. A piece of bone snapped and dug into my brain. I died quickly. There wasn’t much pain.”
The way she says it, I’m convinced she’s not lying. She might be crazy (I kind of hope that she is) but she believes what she’s telling me.
“Then what?” I ask softly.
“My body reformed here and I began my new life.”
“How did you reform?”
“We’re delivered into the Merge in fresh bodies,” she says. “They’re the same as our old ones, only without injuries or diseases.” She taps her forehead. “I wouldn’t have got very far if that piece of bone was still digging into my brain.”
“This is insane,” I whisper.
“No,” Inez says. “This is the Merge.”
I shake my head. I’m so full of questions that I don’t know which to ask first. “So you get killed, come here, enjoy the extension to your life, then die again?”
“Pretty much,” Inez says. “Life’s as precarious here as in the Born, but if you’re lucky you get to bow out at a time of your own choosing. Of course a small number of people don’t want to leave, and try to eke out a living here indefinitely — there’s no limit to how long you can stay in the Merge.”
I frown. “Won’t they die of old age?”
“We don’t age,” she says.
I stop and gawp at her.
“I look the same now as I did the day I was killed,” she says.
“How long ago was that?” I ask in a daze.
“About four hundred years,” Inez says lightly. As my eyes grow rounder, she pinches my cheek. “Don’t freak out, Archie.”
“I thought... you said... you only stayed here... for a while,” I stammer.
“That’s right,” she says, “but a while can be a lot longer in the Merge than in the Born.”
She starts walking again and I follow in silence, my brain churning.
“It’s hard to get your head around, isn’t it?” Inez says, and I nod helplessly. “Acceptance is easy for the Merged. Our brains get filled with information when we’re delivered. We hit the Merge running, fully informed.”
“Did you go back to Earth for revenge on the person who killed you?” I ask.
Inez pulls a face. “Nobody ever goes back to target a Born who did them wrong.”
“I don’t get it,” I grunt. “How can you not be mad as hell about it?”
She shrugs. “It doesn’t bother us. If you’d been killed on the bridge, and you knew the killers were going to butcher the rest of your family, you wouldn’t try to stop them.”
“Yes I would,” I say hotly.
“No you wouldn’t,” Inez says, and raises a hand when I open my mouth to protest. “We know that if someone we love is killed, their soul will wind up here. If they die of natural causes, they’ll go to a different sphere. Nobody’s ever truly lost.”
My throat closes and my eyes fill with tears. “Dave...” I whisper. When my foster brother drowned, I feared that was the end of him. Now I’m being told there is an afterlife, and he’s guaranteed to carry on somewhere. It’s wonderful, and my heart fills with joy. I just wish I could share the news with George and Rachel.
“Are you OK?” Inez asks.
I nod and we walk on in silence again. I put thoughts of Dave to one side for the time being and think hard about everything I’ve been told.
“Inez,” I finally murmur.
“Yes?”
“What’s it like to live for four hundred years?”
“Well,” she says with a twinkle in her eye, “nobody ages in the Merge, even if they’re Born, so if you’re really that curious, stick around and you’ll find out.”