Three weeks later
Saturday, November 29
Cincinnati, Ohio
6:18 p.m.
Over the past few weeks I’d finally had the chance to begin truly mourning the loss of my daughter.
I cried a lot. Prayed a lot—and didn’t hear from God as much as I would’ve liked. But I found new reassurance in my faith and in his promises to be there for me, even when I walked through the valley of the shadow of death.
Which was where I felt like I was—the shadow of Naiobi’s death looming over me.
My faith didn’t solve my sadness, but it did give me someone to hand my sadness to. And I reassured myself that at least that was the first step toward healing.
I visited Naiobi’s grave several times and laid fresh flowers and carefully folded origami rabbits on the site. And each time I was there, I thought maybe it would get easier, but it didn’t.
However, thankfully, it didn’t get worse either.
Jordan’s last words to me had been, “I’ll see you soon.”
At the graveyard, I whispered them to my daughter.
In Scripture, David wrote that our days are like a passing shadow, James that our life is but a vapor that appears for a little while and then vanishes away.
A shadow.
A vapor.
Heaven is the breath of life that lives on.
So, I’ll be with Naiobi again, and with the one who loved us both enough to die for us. Heaven is where love comes out ahead.
Life is so precious and brief and fleeting, and it was like Rodriguez had said to me—experiencing all that it has to offer without despairing at its brevity truly did lie at its heart.
He was in custody and awaiting trial at an undisclosed facility. Nick had assured me that he was locked away somewhere that even he couldn’t escape from.
“He said he’d come after us,” I told Nick.
“He’s not going anywhere.”
Jordan’s central processors were never found.
Trevor offered to buy me another Artificial, but I declined. For some reason it just didn’t feel right to replace Jordan like that.
The day Jordan had drowned in the river saving that little boy earlier this month I’d taken him to the Terabyne production plant and they’d backed up his system files. At first when I returned from Washington to Ohio, I thought maybe we could use them to reconstruct him, but Trevor had been right—there was no way to capture the true essence of an Artificial’s consciousness, even when you backed up their files.
Jordan was a machine. A highly advanced machine. But he was as mortal as any human being is. It was right that his consciousness couldn’t live on into infinity on a hard drive. It felt more honest to let him die, just like all of us will one day do.
There’s no holding on to this life forever. Not for humans; not for machines.
I was looking through my closet for an outfit to wear to church tomorrow when a knock came at the front door.
I answered it.
Nick.
Scruffy. Just the way I like.
“Hello, Reverend Hathaway.”
“Well, hello, Special Agent Vernon.”
I’d seen Nick several times since the incidents in Washington. He was recovering steadily from being stabbed and his broken wrist was set and on the mend.
Now, he was holding something behind his back, and when I peered to the side to see it, he turned so I couldn’t tell what it was. “I came to check on you,” he said.
“So, is this an official visit or an unofficial one?”
“Which would you prefer?”
“Unofficial.”
“Then that’s what it is.”
“In that case, please come in.”
He did, still hiding the item behind his back.
“I bought you something,” he said.
“Oh, really?”
He handed it to me with a bit of a flourish.
A violin case.
“My violin!” I exclaimed.
“Yes. I found the woman who bought it. She struck a hard bargain, but she came around when I explained how special the violin was to the woman it’d been stolen from. And how special that woman was to me.”
“You couldn’t have stated that any better.”
“I worked on the wording on the way over here.”
“Aha.” I took his hand. “Nick, thank you. I mean it.”
“Just one thing I ask.”
“What’s that?”
“I get to hear you play. But to do that, you’re going to need to do one thing.”
“And that is?”
“Let go of my hand.”
“Right.”
I did.
As I removed the violin from the case, I asked him, “Did you ever find out why Anastasia stole this in the first place?”
He shook his head. “I’m not sure. Prints, maybe. To set me up. Maybe to set us both up. Who knows. Motives are a hard thing to pin down—especially when you’re talking about a mentally-deranged robot.”
“Good point.”
I tucked the violin’s chin rest under my chin and took a moment to tune the strings, then I laid the bow against them and closed my eyes.
It’d been a long time since I’d played, and at first the notes eluded me and I wished I had the music in front of me, but then, after fumbling my way into the tune, I entered it fully and the music found me.
“That’s beautiful,” Nick said softly. “What is it?”
“‘Wiegenlied’ by Brahms. Opus forty-nine, number four. It’s a lullaby that was on the music box I used to play for Naiobi when she was still in my womb.”
“You’re right. Music played by a human hand does sound better than when it’s played by a computer.”
“It’s not flawless, though. Not nearly perfect.”
“It’s better than perfect. I think I’d enjoy hearing you play more often.”
“I think that can be arranged.”
And I let the music become part of me.
Part of us.
To carry in our hearts, together, long after the song was done.