Tuesday, September 15
9d 9h 14m
Hazel Huck liked games. She liked them a lot.
She liked games of skill (chess and crossword puzzles), she liked games of chance (Yahtzee and Risk), but the games she liked best of all were role-playing games. From the off- line worlds of Dungeons & Dragons to the online universes of EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, and World of Warcraft, Hazel liked nothing better than to lose herself in someone else’s skin. To be a giant elf warrior with 150 hit points was to be invincible; she spent every free moment she was allowed living in those worlds. It was how she fought against the ebb and flow of her daily grind.
Hazel was a square peg in a round hole. From a well-to-do family in Huntsville, Alabama, she should have, at seventeen years old, been preparing for her debutante ball. Her classmates at the Florence Nightingale School for Young Women seemed obsessed with their coming-out parties. But not Hazel. To her, the notion of officially entering society seemed anachronistic at best and embarrassing at least. Her parents, attorneys with a practice focusing on maritime law, were disappointed but respected their daughter’s independence.
Other than schoolwork and family obligations—chores, visits with aunts and uncles, mandatory attendance at church on Sundays—Hazel lived in a virtual world. Her closest friends were members of her Warcraft guild. And why not? They were interesting. She’d never met them, but she knew more about them than she did any of the girls at school. One was a middle-aged businessman from New York; another a high school girl from Bolivia; another claimed to be a published science fiction author, though he (she?) would never reveal the names of his (her?) books, stories, or publishers. It didn’t matter. You could be who or what you wanted in that world, not only in the characters you played but in the stories you told.
In her first foray into online gaming, Hazel was nervous about her own story—or what she thought was her own lack of story—so she made one up. She claimed to be in graduate school studying English literature at a university “somewhere in Europe.” Other people seemed impressed, and before she knew it, there was no escape from her lie. To make her online persona seem plausible, she conducted exhaustive research into the most important English lit doctoral programs in the UK and France. She was always ready with some new tidbit of information to support her tale. Over time, she came to believe that this character—whom she publicly called Tess—really did exist. It was too late to tell people she was a high school student—a freshman when she first spun this particular yarn and now a senior—from Alabama. She embraced the fiction and let the lie stand.
Hazel was casting a Circle of Healing spell when an instant message from a Warcraft friend popped on the screen. The IM said:
!
and included a link to Jared’s eBay listing.
But Hazel wasn’t laughing.
***
Ethan Overbee liked his executive assistant, Monique. He liked her a lot.
He liked the way she would anticipate his need to reschedule a meeting. He liked how she knew which of his underlings were allowed access to him, on which days, and how long they were to be left waiting in his anteroom. And he liked how she always seemed able to deflect calls from his girlfriend, or his mother, or his sister. But most of all, Ethan Overbee liked the things Monique would do for him when he closed the door to his Santa Monica office.
It never occurred to Ethan that he made Monique feel like a high-priced prostitute, and that her sense of self-worth was so permanently destroyed she couldn’t even look in the mirror without wanting to throw up. It never occurred to him because it couldn’t. Unlike Jared Stone, Ethan Overbee was a man completely and utterly devoid of empathy.
In later years a team of geneticists would discover a particular DNA marker (on chromosome 15q) that was responsible for human empathy. A subsequent study would determine that successful heads of state, corporate CEOs, and avid weekend cyclists were missing this particular marker in a much higher proportion than the rest of society. Ethan, it would turn out, could be counted among their ranks.
So it was no surprise then that Ethan was not only obsessed with his bicycle but, at thirty-two years old, was the youngest man to ever hold the position of deputy executive in charge of programming for the American Television Network. ATN was the crown jewel of a media empire—comprised of television, radio, and newspaper outlets around the world—that managed to offend just about everyone, but also managed to draw record numbers of viewers, readers, and listeners year after year. A New York Times op-ed referred to ATN as a “mirror reflecting the darkest parts of the American soul.” If Ethan had bothered to think about it (he didn’t), his pragmatic side might have agreed.
What he lacked in empathy Ethan made up for in appreciation, lavishing luxurious gifts on those people who treated him well. He was feeling especially appreciative of Monique—who was, unbeknownst to Ethan, still in the bathroom crying—as he browsed eBay listings in search of the perfect gift.
He knew that Monique “simply adored” the actor Heath Ledger. Normally, he would just make a few phone calls and Ledger would appear in his office ready to take Monique out to lunch. But the guy had overdosed on drugs, so Ethan was reduced to actual shopping. Talent, he thought. They’re all the same.
There were nearly two thousand items listed on eBay, but none of them seemed right. Ethan felt that a signed photo or a piece of a movie costume that Ledger had worn was too mundane. A thought occurred to him: perhaps there was some piece of memorabilia connected to Ledger’s death. He wondered if that was too morbid but couldn’t see how it would be.
The press said Ledger’s death was an accident, but Ethan didn’t believe it; he searched for “Ledger suicide.” As he was perusing the few macabre items that the search results returned, he saw a “People who viewed this item also viewed” link. One of them had the curious tagline, “Human Life for Sale.” He clicked it.
And that was how Ethan Overbee came to see Jared’s listing.
***
Sister Benedict Joan liked the Internet. She liked it a lot.
She liked the way it helped her spread the Word of God through her blog, christscadets.blogspot.com. She liked how it allowed her to stay connected with the other warriors in Christ’s army from around the world. And, most of all, she liked how the Internet allowed her to see and fight against the never-ending stream of smut, irreverence, and blasphemy that was determined to destroy decent society. A less optimistic woman would have been overwhelmed by the pornography and violence that seemed to fuel the pulse of the World Wide Web. Not Sister Benedict; it gave her purpose.
As prioress of the Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration, she was a leader in her community, and she felt a personal responsibility to protect the nuns and novices under her care. This meant much more than providing food and shelter; it meant doing everything in her power, small though that was, to help fashion a world informed and infused by the teachings and love of Jesus Christ. You could say that the only thing Sister Benedict Joan liked more than the Internet was Christ himself.
The Sister was a throwback. Since Vatican II, most nuns had kept their given names, becoming Sister Ella, or Sister Casey, or Sister Jordyn. To Angela Marie Taggart, keeping her own name seemed anathema to true Catholicism. The nuns she idolized as a little girl—with their piety, their obedience, their almost martial beauty—had taken the names of male saints, a tradition she felt bound, at least in part, to uphold. She saw her name as both a stern and a reassuring presence for the young women of the convent, not to mention the students at Annunciation Catholic School, where she taught third grade. You just didn’t question someone named Sister Benedict.
Her earliest childhood memory was of a Catholic Mass, and she knew from that moment, as a four-year-old, she would devote herself to Christ. What she didn’t understand then, and still didn’t understand now, was why she was the only one. Week after week parishioners would line the pews of St. Mary’s Church and sit reverently beneath the high stained-glass windows, standing, sitting, and kneeling when told, and opening their wallets and hearts when asked. They would smile with visceral sincerity as they said, “Peace be with you; and also with you,” to one another. If they all believed in the Lord and in his teachings, that what was in the Bible was true, that it was God, the King of Kings, the Creator of All Creation, the Master of their collective fate they were there to celebrate, how is it that they could only be bothered to worship once a week? Shouldn’t this be a full-time job?
This is what Sister Benedict Joan was thinking about as she powered up her laptop. Like always, she had no answer. She shook her head and sipped her Earl Grey tea.
The Sister liked to watch the computer go through its electronic ablutions: loading Windows, loading the antivirus software, checking for updates, and checking e-mail. She imagined it was guided by the hand of God, though she knew it was the minds of the men who created such technological wonders, and not the wonders themselves, that were the real evidence of divine grace.
She opened her browser and checked her blog. She never liked the name Christ’s Cadets, but all the good names—Christ’s Warriors, Christ’s Knights, and Christ’s Soldiers—were already taken. There was one new comment, which was a bit unusual. While Sister Benedict felt certain that people read her blog, they rarely left comments. When they did, they usually took the form of “Get a life, you f***ing joke,” only the “uck” wasn’t blocked out.
This new post, like the few others, was anonymous, and it simply said, “This must not be allowed to happen.” Beneath that plea was a link to Jared Stone’s eBay listing.
***
Sherman Kingsborough liked life. He liked it a lot.
At twenty-three years old, Sherman was already stinking rich. He was the happy recipient of a trust fund bequeathed to him by a father who’d made millions war profiteering during Vietnam, and who had died on Sherman’s eighteenth birthday.
Sherman’s mother had returned to her native Korea when he was a little boy (his father had more or less dispatched her like she was an unwanted employee), and he never had contact with her again. Sherman was, incorrectly, led to believe that his mother had abandoned him. With no siblings and no parents, and having grown up in a world of excess and extravagance, Sherman’s moral compass was left to drift unchecked. It spun round and round, never quite finding north.
It wasn’t surprising, then, that Sherman used his newfound millions to indulge every whim and fetish imaginable. From sexual encounters too deviant to name or number to keeping the most exotic endangered animals as pets, only to eat them for dinner, Sherman had denied himself nothing. If his brain thought it, he did it.
It wasn’t all depravity and debauchery, though. Each time Sherman found himself plumbing the depths of his darkest impulses, he would follow it with a noble gesture. When he fired his father’s entire household staff because of a spot on a wineglass, Sherman spent two months working at an ashram in India. A week after he told a fifteen-year-old high school girl he loved her just to get her into bed, ditching her in a seedy hotel room the next morning, he flew to the Bering Strait to clean oil-soaked gulls that had been caught in the wake of a tanker spill. And after evicting a poor family from one of his father’s many real estate investments—a dilapidated apartment building in Queens, New York—Sherman climbed to the top of Mount Everest as part of an expedition that was raising money for Habitat for Humanity. Each gallant act a counterbalance to atone for one of his sins.
It was an unbreakable cycle that seemed to be (like Sherman actually was) on methamphetamines. He never stopped to catch his breath, never took stock of who he had become; he was afraid of what he might find.
After six years of living such a high-octane life, Sherman Kingsborough was bored out of his freaking mind. For the man who had everything, or at least had access to anything, there seemed to be nothing left.
But Sherman had felt this way before. After he summited Everest, he was sure he had peaked, a pun he repeated to himself through the entire descent, but found traveling with opium smugglers in Pakistan to be a whole new high (the latter pun unintended). It seemed that whenever he was out of new things to try, a previously unknown path presented itself. It’s better to be lucky, he liked to say, than good. It was the guiding principle of Sherman Kingsborough’s life.
It was also the first thought that came to his mind when he saw Jared Stone’s eBay listing.
***
Jackie was lying on her bed staring at her new iPhone, scrolling through Neil Gaiman’s Twitter feed. In the few weeks she had owned the phone—she and Megan had each received phones as gifts for the new school year—it had become an extra appendage for Jackie, never more than a few feet away, almost always in her hand. She was already plugged into every social network she could find—Twitter, Facebook, Instagram—but almost never participated. She was a lurker, a voyeur.
That’s just how she was wired. Jackie was not the kind of student who raised her hand in class, she was (usually) not the kind of daughter who questioned her parents, and she was not the kind of Internet user to voice her opinion. Jackie was perfectly satisfied to troll without ever reeling in the net, though she wondered if her failure to participate made her a troll of a different kind. The only person with whom she interacted online was Max, and he lived in Saint Petersburg, Russia.
She and Max were participating in a social media exchange program through their respective schools. Jackie didn’t want a friend in another country—she had enough trouble with friends in the good ol’ U. S. of A.—but the teacher made it a required assignment. When she found out that her randomly assigned partner was a boy, she had a bit of a meltdown.
But Max turned out to be nice. He was fascinated by American culture and would pepper Jackie with questions when they were online together, which was usually during her morning free period in the computer lab. He was most interested in American movies and seemed obsessed with American directors like Martin Scorsese, Cameron Crowe, and Steven Spielberg.
So far they hadn’t talked about anything really serious, mostly just music and movies and what kids wore to school. Max had already dated three different girls, which made Jackie embarrassed about her own nonexistent love life, but luckily, Max never asked. He also played the guitar, which she thought was pretty cool.
Maybe it’s because she knew they would never meet, but somehow talking to Max felt safe. Jackie found herself stepping out of her comfort zone with him, and she liked it. Plus, she couldn’t help thinking that, maybe, he had a little crush on her.
She was just starting to get lost in a daydream about Max when the doorbell rang, pulling her back to the moment. Jackie being Jackie figured someone else would answer it.
***
Jared Stone read his listing for the fourth time. He couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d forgotten something:
*HUMAN LIFE FOR SALE*
Forty-five-year-old man with four months to live is selling his life to the highest bidder. You may do with him as you please—slavery, murder, torture, or just pleasant conversation. A human life, yours to control, yours to own. Buyers must live in a state or country with a law allowing assisted suicides, and the buyer bears the cost of transportation and tax. There is a reserve for this auction.
If there was something missing, he couldn’t put his finger on it. He’d worked on the listing in a moment of true lucidity, so maybe the feeling tugging at the corner of his consciousness was just the tumor. But still …
The listing had been live for only five hours, and already there were seven bids. These early bids were from a collection of society’s fringe actors. Their purchase histories showed a fondness for Nazi artifacts, medieval weaponry, and Hello Kitty collectibles. The highest bid from this group was $900, so far from the reserve of $1,000,000 that Jared had to laugh.
The doorbell rang, and he heard his daughter Megan scream, “I’ll get it!” as she thumped down the stairs, taking the steps two at a time as she always did.
Megan was a strong, self-sufficient girl, and he had no worries about her ability to accept, understand, and process his death. It would be traumatic, no doubt, but she would persevere. She was one of those kids who moved through life with a natural ease.
His older daughter, Jackie, was a different story.
Jackie allowed herself to exist in the shadow of her younger sister, never stepping into the light, never establishing who she was. She was small and tender, and Jared loved her more than life itself. It was worry about Jackie more than anything that propelled him to roll the dice with the eBay listing.
Jared heard a group of muffled voices at the front door, followed by “Mom! Dad!” from Megan. He pushed himself back from his computer and went to find out what was going on.
“Um, honey,” his wife, Deirdre, was saying, having reached the door a few seconds before he did, “is there something you want to tell me?”
Right, Jared thought on seeing the half-dozen camera crews and twice that number of reporters, now I know what I forgot.
***
Just as Jared was being besieged by the media at his front door, the glioblastoma was feasting on a memory from Jared’s second Christmas, when he, Jared, was one and a half years old. The memory was hidden so well that the tumor had to drill down through a rarely used sector of Jared’s brain to find it. The drilling was such a shock to Jared’s system that it caused the tumor’s host to stumble forward and fall into the arms of his wife.
The tumor was oblivious to what was going on in the world outside Jared’s brain. It was too enamored with the “snow boat”—the name with which Baby Jared referred to his first sled—to pay attention to anything else.
Unmarked, shiny, and red, like a mid-life crisis convertible, the sled was a thing of beauty. Baby Jared did his Baby Jared dance, basically running in place and laughing, as he held the sled’s yellow string. He didn’t know that it was meant to be used in the snow, but it didn’t matter. It was, according to his scale of the world, huge, and it was his.
The feeling was pure unadulterated joy. The tumor was so happy it thought it would cry, if it had eyes, tear ducts, or tears, but it was just the same. The experience was as tender as if it were happening in the present, in the physical world.
For her part, Deirdre caught Jared and helped him to the floor. He collected his thoughts, such as they were, pushed himself up, managed to stand without falling over, and turned back to the throng at his front door.
The tumor didn’t even notice.
***
“There’s something wrong with Dad.” Megan burst into the room, stopping in the doorway, breathing hard. Jackie kept her eyes glued to her phone.
Megan cleared her throat. “Did you hear me?”
Jackie had heard Megan but just figured that her little sister was trying to find a new and sinister way to torture her. For reasons Jackie never understood, it had become a favorite pastime of Megan’s. She’d find the one thing that mattered most to Jackie and use it as a weapon against her.
Once, years earlier, Megan had asked: “Is there a boy in your class named Kevin something or other?” She was in fourth grade, Jackie in sixth; and the question made Jackie’s heart stop.
Kevin Memmott sat in front of Jackie. He was an ordinary boy with an easy way about him, and he was Jackie’s first real crush. Each morning when he entered the class and said hello to her, Jackie’s palms got sweaty and her stomach felt like it was shrinking. She would put her head down and mutter hello from beneath her bangs. He would shrug and take his seat, and they wouldn’t talk again during the day. To Kevin, it was a forgettable routine. For Jackie, it was their routine.
“There is a boy named Kevin,” she told Megan. “Why?”
“Oh, no reason, just that I heard him talking to another boy … about you.” Even at nine years old, Megan was as good at baiting her sister as a professional fisherman was at tying a fly on the end of his line.
“What were they saying?” Jackie asked, looking at her feet and twirling her finger through her hair, trying but failing to pretend like she really didn’t care.
“Well, I heard them saying … ” Megan paused, and even though they were in the privacy of Jackie’s bedroom, she lowered her voice, like she was telling a secret and didn’t want anyone else to hear. “I heard them saying that he likes you!”
Every person who has ever had a crush believes, in their heart of hearts, that the object of their affection feels the same way, even though there has never been any outward sign of it. Jackie spent so much time imagining that she and Kevin were girlfriend and boyfriend that Megan’s lie was just too easy to believe.
Megan could see that she had the hook in her sister’s mouth, and all she had to do was reel her in.
“He was talking to some other boy in your class, Scott something or other.” Scott Yee, Jackie thought, Kevin Memmott’s best friend. “He said he really likes you, and wants to ask you out, but just wished you would dress nicer.”
The next day, Jackie, who never wore anything other than blue jeans and loose-fitting sweaters, donned the same dress she had worn to church on Easter Sunday just a few weeks before. It was faded pink, hung down just above her knees, and had a big bow in the back. Her parents were so happy to see Jackie come out from under her shell that they couldn’t help but ooh and aah over her at the breakfast table.
When she got to school, Jackie waited out front for Kevin Memmott, just standing there in her pink dress, everyone doing a double take as they passed by. When Kevin finally arrived, Jackie lit up like a high-powered flashlight.
She mustered the courage to say, “Hi, Kevin,” as he and Scott Yee approached.
“Huh? Oh, hi,” he said, not even noticing her.
An instant later, another boy, Jason Sanderson, with his thick glasses, uncombed hair, and a prematurely pockmarked face, walked up. “Boy, oh boy, Jackie, you look pretty today!”
Jackie liked Jason well enough. He was a nice boy, though utterly unaware of his surroundings, as if part of his brain was always somewhere else. The frumpy appearance combined with the absentminded-professor demeanor made him a favorite target of the other children. It made Jackie angry that they picked on Jason; once she even stepped outside her comfort zone and came to his defense. But on this day, the day of the Easter dress, Jason Sanderson was the last boy on Earth she wanted to see.
Then, from somewhere behind her, Jackie heard giggles and snorts; both she and Jason turned around. Megan and her friends were standing nearby, doubled over in laughter. Jackie knew right away that, though they usually brayed like hyenas for no reason at all, this time their laughter had purpose.
She turned and ran all the way home, staying in bed for two days pretending she was sick but mostly just crying under the covers, partly from embarrassment and partly because she couldn’t understand how her sister could be so mean.
So when Megan came into her room now and said, “There’s something wrong with Dad,” Jackie’s guard was already up.
“Uh-huh,” she answered.
“Look outside. We’re on TV.”
Jackie was skeptical, but there was something different in her sister’s voice. She went to the window.
A throng of reporters was dissipating on her front lawn. Some were packing up sound equipment, some were capturing a last shot of Jackie’s house for network news B-roll, and some were walking to their cars. It was like a flash mob had met, played their prank, and were now heading home.
Jackie started for her door to go downstairs, but Megan caught her arm.
“Jax,” she said, her voice catching, “don’t.”
Then the two sisters sat on the bed together, something they hadn’t done in years, and Megan told Jackie everything she’d heard.
“Wait. Daddy’s dying?” Jackie asked when Megan finished.
Megan nodded and burst into tears. She flung herself into Jackie’s arms, sobbing into her big sister’s chest. Jackie was too stunned to react right away. But crying is like yawn- ing; once one person starts, the other person can’t help but join in.
***
The defining emotional moment of Hazel Huck’s life happened when she was seven years old. Her dog, Boots, was drinking out of his bowl, lapping mouthful after mouthful of water while Hazel waited patiently behind him. It was a well-rehearsed script they acted out with glee each morning.
Boots would lick Hazel’s hands and face until she woke up and then lead her to the door. She’d let him out, watch him do his business, let him back in, and feed him. Hazel would then stand exactly nine steps behind him (nine was her lucky number) and watch him eat. Each morning Boots would assault his kibble as if it were his first meal in weeks, making sure he chomped every last piece, and then drink half his bowl of water. When he was done, he would turn around, see Hazel, wag his tail, and nuzzle his wet face into her belly.
On this one morning, after he was done with his water, Boots turned around, wagged his tail, took a step toward Hazel, and fell over. Hazel screamed.
The vet, a tall thin man with a tall thin nose, a wide thin mustache, and a high thin voice, said, “Brain tumor.” Hazel, a precocious seven, was pretty sure she knew what that meant. A lump was growing on Boots’s brain.
“Can you scoop it out?” she asked.
Her mother burst into tears when she saw the hopeful look on Hazel’s face. The vet got down on one knee so he could look Hazel in the eye. “I’m sorry, precious, I don’t think we can.”
The day they buried Boots in the backyard, Hazel did all she could to fight back the tears. She didn’t think Boots would want her to cry. When the last shovelful of dirt was thrown on his grave, Hazel let go, and it all came out. She ran into her house, flung herself on her bed, and didn’t come out of her room again that day.
When she saw Jared Stone on the news ten years later, with his wife and dog, talking about his brain tumor, the memory of Boots came flooding back. She went straight to her computer and sent a message to her fellow Warcraft guild members with the subject: “Alert! Alert! We have to help Jared Stone!”
***
The evening Ethan Overbee saw the news clip of Jared, any thought of his assistant, Monique, went right out of his head. His first thought was, Holy shit. This was followed by his second thought, Holy FUCKING shit! These two thoughts were followed by a complex series of thoughts that formed the basis of a new idea in Ethan’s head. He needed to act fast.
Ethan had only been at the studio for three years, but already he felt he was languishing in the shadow of the executive in charge of programming, Thaddeus St. Claire. Thad had taken Ethan under his wing and was grooming him for the top job a decade or so down the road. But young people, especially young, rich people, and especially young, rich people missing a certain marker on chromosome 15q, don’t wait years—let alone decades—for things to go their way. Ethan saw an opening now and was going to take it.
“Monique,” he barked into his speakerphone. “I need to find someone who just posted something on eBay. It’s urgent. Do we have any contacts there?”
“I’ll check, Ethan,” she answered, betraying no hint of the revulsion she felt in simply hearing his voice. “Can I ask what this is in reference to?”
“I’ve just discovered the reality TV series of the century.”
***
Sister Benedict Joan had her doubts about the veracity of the eBay listing. Certainly no one could be foolish or Godless enough to sell himself into oblivion. But that night she saw the man on the late news.
She was surprised at how young, nice-looking, and reasonable he seemed to be. He stood nearly six feet tall and had hair the color of apple pie, a pleasantly wide mouth, and caramel eyes. He even professed to have faith in God.
He did seem a bit confused during the interview, and when asked why, he claimed it was the result of the tumor growing in his head.
Of course, the Sister was not pleased to hear Mr. Stone’s views on euthanasia.
“Until this happened, I honestly didn’t know which way I would vote,” he told the reporter, referring to the bill before the Oregon legislature. “I only hope I live long enough to cast a yea vote.”
An evil thought flashed through the Sister’s mind: she felt satisfaction that God would strike Mr. Stone down before he could use his legislative power to wrap man’s greatest sin in the cloak of governmental protection. Of course, the Sister’s brain didn’t seem to process the paradox of its own thought, that Jared was being swayed to vote in favor of euthanasia by the very tumor the Sister believed to be an instrument of God. In any case, the Sister knew enough to recognize a wicked thought for what it was; she crossed herself three times and turned her attention back to the TV.
What caught the Sister’s attention most was that Mr. Stone lived in her parish. She didn’t know if he was a Catholic, but one needn’t start out a Catholic to die a Catholic martyr. And if Sister Benedict had anything to say about it, Mr. Stone wouldn’t be dying for a very, very long time.
She reached for the phone to call the monsignor.
***
When Sherman Kingsborough first saw Jared Stone’s listing, he knew he had to bid, but he didn’t quite know why. When he saw Jared on the news, a face now given to what had merely been a notion, his interest bloomed into an obsession. His brain went through a kind of mental gymnastics as it considered what to do with Jared:
Maybe I could perform brain surgery, he thought. I can be the first man to execute a full-brain transplant, maybe replace his sick brain with a healthy monkey’s brain. That would be funny. But even Sherman realized he would need so much training that he wouldn’t have time to succeed. He filed the idea away for future reference.
Maybe he could turn the man into a suicide bomber. But Sherman didn’t have anything he wanted to bomb, and that seemed kind of pointless.
Maybe, he thought, I could just kill him.
Sherman let that roll around his mind for a bit. Yes, kill him. What would that be like? Would I feel powerful, like a god? Would I feel sad? Not knowing what he would feel like was all the impetus Sherman Kingsborough needed. This was something new, and that made it desirable.
For the record, Sherman’s brain didn’t have any damage to the anterior prefrontal cortex, nor did he have an excess of monoamine oxidase-A—two of the more likely indicators of violent behavior or lack of a conscience. No, Sherman was just bored to tears and desperate for a new experience.
He began to contemplate how best to murder someone, and none of the options felt quite right. Guns weren’t sporting, lethal injections were boring, and while drowning had a certain appeal, it seemed as if it would be over too quickly. Maybe, Sherman thought, bidding on this guy’s life isn’t really worth the trouble.
He spent time surfing the Web for ideas and was about to give up when he came across a reference to a 1932 film called The Most Dangerous Game: a shipwrecked man washes ashore on a remote island owned by a deranged Russian who plays a game hunting humans.
“Hunting humans,” he said aloud after reading it. “Hunting humans.” Sherman’s brain conveniently ignored the part about the “deranged” Russian, seeing only what it wanted to see.
He knew that the man who had posted the eBay listing had a brain tumor—it was a central point of the news story—but he didn’t really know what that meant. What if, by the time he purchased his prey, the guy was comatose? No, he needed a victim who would run, hide, and fight back.
As he had learned from his father, when you need a piece of information, go to the source. Sherman composed a note to Jared using eBay’s contact form, sent it off, sat back, and waited.
***
Jared was still reeling from his encounter with the media. They’d descended on his house like the Portland rain. The lights, cameras, and blitzkrieg of reporters felt like a vise grip on his right temple. Or was it the tumor making his head hurt? Or did the lights and cameras and reporters make the tumor hurt, which made his head hurt? Whatever the case, his head was throbbing, again, and his focus was all but gone.
When he finally closed the front door, he hardly noticed Deirdre and Megan standing there, both crying. He half crawled, half stumbled up the stairs, Trebuchet trailing at his heel, and practically fell to the floor in his office lair, nudging the door shut with his foot.
The part of his mind that was aware of the outside world expected Deirdre to follow him, but she didn’t. Jared and Trebuchet were alone in the dark. He could hear the dog panting, could feel his breath on his arm. This, more than anything, helped to center Jared. He reached in the direction of the dog’s warm breath, felt for his ear, and gently scratched just behind it, Trey’s favorite thing in the world, or at least Jared thought it was.
Butch tree, Jared thought, making an anagram out of his dog’s name.
Trebuchet licked his lips and put his head down with one big sigh, his panting calmed to an even measure, a metronome of the living. The two of them, Jared and his faithful companion, drifted off to sleep at almost exactly the same time.
8d 11h 39m
Jackie woke up next to Megan, the two of them snuggled together on Jackie’s twin bed, Megan snoring gently.
Everything came flooding back to Jackie: Megan’s report of what her father had told the newspeople at the door; how her father had collapsed; the fact that her father was dying of a brain tumor. She understood precious little of what was happening and wanted more than anything to talk to her dad, but she couldn’t.
For her entire life, Jared had been Jackie’s anchor. No matter how bad things got for Jackie, her dad was there to make it better, even if only a little. But now, the bad thing was her father. The realization was paralyzing.
Jackie didn’t know what else to do, so she sought solace in the one place she felt safe: the vast, anonymous ocean of the Internet. The clock on her computer said it was nine p.m., much earlier than she thought.
First she looked for her father’s eBay listing. Jackie didn’t believe this part of Megan’s story; it just couldn’t be true. Her father would never do anything like that. How could he?
But there it was. “Human Life for Sale.”
She read it once and started to well up. She quickly clicked back to Google, which helped to bring her to a state of equilibrium. Little did Jackie know that each click on the World Wide Web released a microscopic hit of dopamine, anesthetizing her brain and dulling her senses. It was as habit forming as smoking.
Next she needed to sort out the part of Megan’s story that made the least sense. What the heck is “ Youth in Asia”? Jackie wondered. She’d made her sister repeat the phrase three times. Jackie typed it into Google.
The first result was for a 1980s British band that Wikipedia called “anarcho punk,” whatever that was. They had only one record, and that was something called “a cassette album,” whatever that was.
The second result made a lot more sense. It was also a Wikipedia entry, and it was for euthanasia, which was apparently pronounced like “youth in Asia.” Jackie had heard of euthanasia. She knew it had something to do with a person deciding to end her own life, usually because she was really sick. The article said it was also sometimes called physician-assisted suicide.
The main thrust of the argument in favor of euthanasia, Jackie read, seemed to be that people had the right to make up their own minds about when they lived and died. Jackie had never given it any thought before, and her immediate reaction was that any kind of suicide was wrong. They had taught her at Sunday school that life was precious; it was God’s greatest gift. Suicide, she’d learned, was a sin.
But her gut reaction was different. In her heart, Jackie believed that people should be able to make up their own minds about anything they wanted, as long as it didn’t hurt anyone else. That should include when they lived and died, shouldn’t it?
But the most interesting part of the Wiki entry was the role Oregon, her home state, played in the history of euthanasia. She clicked a link for something called the Death with Dignity Act. She was surprised, and maybe a little proud, to learn that Oregon was the first US state to protect doctors who helped terminal patients end their lives. She was even more surprised to learn that the state legislature, her father’s legislature, was considering a major expansion to the law right now that would also protect family and friends who played a role in helping the terminally ill end their suffering. That meant that her father, who was dying of a brain tumor, was also voting to make it legal to die a little sooner. Unbelievable.
Jackie’s head started to swim; it was all too much for her to process. She was already fifteen years old and had stellar grades, but her emotional experience did nothing to prepare her for this.
Jackie’s eyes nearly popped out of their sockets when she saw that her father’s quote to the reporters—from just a few hours earlier on her front stoop—was already referenced in the article. The speed at which information traveled was mind-boggling to Jackie.
Retreating to the safety of Facebook, Jackie looked for Max, but he wasn’t online. It was twelve hours later in Saint Petersburg, so she didn’t really expect to see him.
Jackie needed to tell someone about what was happening with her father, and Max seemed like the safest bet. Maybe it was because he was so far away, almost like he wasn’t real, like he couldn’t hurt her. Whatever the reason, she decided to send him a message:
Jackie
I know it’s the wrong time for you to be online, but I just wanted to say hi. So, hi. Okay, really, there’s more than that. Maybe I’ll look for you tomorrow.
She read her note over and smiled at the thought of how her father would send her Facebook messages addressed to “Dear Jackie,” with a closing of “Love, Dad,” never really understanding that you didn’t need to identify yourself in a world where your identity traveled with you.
Thoughts of her dad brought Jackie back to Earth. She tried to put those thoughts aside until she could figure out how to process them. She went back to mindlessly scrolling through her news feed, letting the dopamine wash over her frontal lobe. After a while, she crawled back into bed with Megan and drifted off into an uncomfortable sleep.
***
Jared opened his eyes, but the room was trapped in darkness. There wasn’t even light seeping in from under the door. He knew he’d been having a dream, but he couldn’t remember any of the details. (The glioblastoma had eaten it.)
The total absence of light made Jared realize that he’d slept for hours. Our shelf sport, he thought, making another anagram. At least he seemed to have his faculties.
He knew his first order of business was to find his wife and daughters, explain everything, and try to set things right. But he wasn’t quite ready. He reached for Trebuchet and felt the fur on the dog’s abdomen, once black, now mostly gray, rising and lowering in time with his own rhythmic snoring. Trey grunted, acknowledging his master without fully waking up.
Pushing himself up on his elbows, Jared made it to his desk and brought his computer back to life. Time to see if there are any new bids, he thought.
There were none. But he did have a new message in his eBay in-box.
Dear Sir—I’m interested in placing a bid on your auction titled “Human Life for Sale.” I’m a serious bidder with sufficient resources to meet your reserve and more. My question is this: Are you physically and mentally fit? Are you able to run, jump, crawl, climb, and react to new circumstances? Have you ever used a gun, knife, or bow and arrow? I’m interested to know what kind of life I’m bidding on. Thanks in advance for your answer, and sorry about your predicament. I hope I can help. You can respond to me via eBay, or you can send an e-mail to SKingsborough92@gmail.com.
Jared had to read the note five times before he was con-vinced he had read it correctly. “Ever used a gun, knife, or bow and arrow?” he asked the still-sleeping dog. “What the heck am I getting myself into here?”
Frightened, he lay back down and closed his eyes.
***
Ethan Overbee was the first to place a real bid.
Technically, he didn’t have the authority to spend $100,000 of the studio’s money, but in the world of television networks, a hundred grand was how much meeting planners spent, not programming executives. No one would question it. No one except Thad St. Claire, and that was exactly the point. In Ethan’s mind, this was the beginning of the end for his mentor.
Thaddeus St. Claire was an old-school network executive who had clawed his way to the top. His first job for ATN had been forty years earlier, in the ad traffic department. He worked long and thankless hours to make sure advertisements for Tide and All laundry detergent didn’t run in the same commercial break. From ad traffic, he moved to a junior position in network operations, to a junior position in programming, to a senior position in programming, to the deputy executive in charge of programming.
The executive in charge at that time was a septuagenarian with a penchant for Soupy Sales–variety hour specials and gin and tonics. Thad did the network and the world a favor when he ended the career of his predecessor. It’s true he did it by exposing his boss’s weaknesses to the network president and board of directors, but it was long overdue.
The move gave Thad, somewhat unfairly, a reputation for being ruthless. (Thad’s assault on the character and behavior of his boss was more an act of mercy than of aggression.) But reputations become reality, and Thad’s reputation was all the justification Ethan needed; ascension by assassination, he convinced himself, was morally acceptable.
Never mind that Ethan had been out of Wharton for only three years. And never mind that Thad had handpicked, trained, and groomed Ethan for the top job if Ethan would only wait.
Not wanting to leave it to Monique to enter the bid—Ethan wasn’t about to trust something that would change his career to a glorified receptionist—he entered it himself. He saw right away that he hadn’t met the reserve.
He still hadn’t made contact with the seller, some guy named Jared Stone up in Portland. Monique had tracked down his home number and address but had been unable to reach him. Ethan, who was working long past dark and was alone in the office, decided to try for himself.
Answering machine.
He put the phone down and considered his options. As he did, a new idea started to take root.
***
Sister Benedict had never met a Cardinal before, which was funny, as she had already met two Popes. Of course, those “meetings” were actually mass rallies where she was lucky enough to have been granted a spot on the rope line so that she might have a chance to kiss the Pontiff’s ring. At the time, she thought of it as the Rope-a-Pope Line, and then immediately crossed herself for blaspheming. Today’s meeting with Cardinal Trippe was a face-to-face, sit-down affair, which, of course, began with the Sister on her knees.
It hadn’t been easy for the Sister to gain an audience with the Cardinal. The officious priest who served as a buffer between Cardinal Trippe and the world was more than a little skeptical when the Sister first called to request the Church save Jared Stone’s life. The priest had dismissed her with grace and not a little condescension, the way a parent dismisses a child angling to stay up past his bedtime. The priest denied her request. But Sister Benedict would not be deterred.
She and the Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration spent most weekends in service to the community. On one such weekend, they had painted the interior of the rectory of a nearby parish. The presiding bishop was so appreciative that he kept repeating, “If there’s ever anything I can do for you, Sister, just ask.”
She called in the favor, and the audience with Cardinal Trippe was granted.
Sister Benedict Joan’s mind was racing as she kissed the Cardinal’s ring. She’d spent hours finding out everything she could about the man and was going over her mental notes, steeling herself to the mission at hand.
Cardinal Matthew John Trippe, whose name was pronounced “Trippy,” was the archbishop of the metropolitan province of Portland, which included dioceses in four northwestern states, and he was everything Sister Benedict was not. He was young and charismatic, and, far worse, he eschewed tradition, believing the Church should start down a path of change. He embraced Portland’s LGBT community, welcoming them to the flock; he wanted to see women take more leadership roles during mass; he believed in climate change and the need for conservation; and while Sister Benedict knew the Church had a true and deep-seated responsibility to care for those in need—as she herself had often done—this man actually seemed to believe that wealthy people should be compelled to share their hard-earned gains with the indigent. To the Sister, this was anathema to the entire idea of charity; it was socialism.
As she knelt before the Cardinal and thought about these things, Sister Benedict almost shivered with disgust. Cardinal Trippe was like one of those awful Protestant priests who play guitar from the altar and sing “Kumbaya.” She secretly thought of him as Cardinal Hippie.
From her research, she could see only two things she and the Cardinal had in common: their innate sense of piety and a shared belief in the sanctity of life. At least Trippe, liberal fool that he seemed to be, still opposed abortion. It was this last fact on which the Sister was counting.
Sister Benedict stayed on one knee until the Cardinal bade her “get up, Sister, get up. Have a seat.”
They were meeting in the office of the Portland diocese, where the Cardinal performed mass each Sunday when he wasn’t traveling. It was a modest, plainly decorated space. The only sign of opulence was a solid gold crucifix on the wall behind the Cardinal’s desk.
“Tell me, Sister, what urgent matter brings you to this good office today?” Sister Benedict had to admit that the man did exude a kind of charm. His teeth were unnaturally bright, making her wonder if he’d had them whitened. The sin of vanity, she thought to herself. The truth was that the Cardinal came from a long line of people with very strong tooth enamel and he had been a near fanatic about oral hygiene from the earliest age.
“Life itself, Father,” she answered. Trippe cocked an eyebrow and waited for her to continue. “The man on the news, the one with the brain tumor. The one who has put his life up for sale on the Internet. He’s here, in Portland! And unlike that unpleasant incident with that Schiavo woman in Florida, where the family intervened, it appears that the only issue here is money.”
“And tell me, Sister,” the Cardinal asked, “how do you propose we intervene?”
“Simple, Your Grace. We buy him.”
“Come again?”
“We bid on his eBay auction, and we buy him. And once he’s ours, we use all means at our disposal to keep him alive.”
“Sister, I’m fairly certain the Holy See would not look kindly on nuns buying and selling human lives with church money. That went out with the Inquisition.” His smile suggested that she would see the wisdom of his words and that this meeting would end. Cardinal Trippe, a good and decent man, was not prepared for the depth of Sister Benedict’s resolve or for her growing obsession with Jared Stone.
“Not buying and selling, Your Eminence. Buying and cherishing. There are any number of Catholic hospitals in the Northwest. Surely a man of your influence could persuade one to take this man as a patient.”
“I see,” Cardinal Trippe said, sounding as if he did not see. “And how does keeping this one man alive benefit our Church?”
“Because, Your Grace, all human life is precious. We honor the Lord with every soul we save in this world and prepare for the next.”
The Cardinal nodded as he fished an almond out of a small bowl on his desk and chewed it slowly, carefully. Sister Benedict sensed that she had piqued his interest and decided to go for broke.
“And because, Your Eminence, saving this man, keeping him alive, will be a news story to end all news stories. The press will camp out in this man’s hospital room for months, perhaps even years. All the world will look to our province, to your province, as a shining example of true divinity.” The Sister knew it was a bit of a Hail Mary, a term she had once thought blasphemous but now understood. She hoped that she was interpreting the whiteness of the Cardinal’s teeth correctly, and that an appeal to his vanity would be the deciding factor.
“Tell me, Sister, have you ever used eBay before?” the Cardinal asked, sitting back in his chair. He was swiveling it slightly from left to right, making the Sister feel as if she and the entire room were in motion.
“No, Your Grace.”
“I have. My mother is a big Frank Sinatra fan, and I was able to find an original pressing of his 1955 album In the Wee Small Hours. Not my cup of tea, but Mother loves it. I got it for fifteen dollars, including shipping. A bargain. It’s really a remarkable use of technology.”
The Sister had not counted on this, on the Cardinal sharing her fascination with technology, and it made her light up. “Yes, Your Grace, I couldn’t agree more. And now it will afford us an opportunity to do the good work of the Church. If we can win the bid—”
Cardinal Trippe held up a hand, indicating the Sister should stop. “I’m sorry, Sister, we cannot, as I’m sure you will understand, actually appropriate the money to bid on a human life.” She started to protest, but the Cardinal cut her off again. “I understand what you’re trying to do, and it is laudable. The circumstances really do afford us a chance to demonstrate our commitment to life, to all life. But we cannot spend so many of our resources to save a single life when that money can help so many others.” The Sister was crestfallen, her mind racing for a way to sway the Cardinal, when he continued. “However, there is a much smaller sacrifice we can make that can perhaps stop this troubled young man—what was his name?”
“Jared Stone, Your Eminence.”
“To stop Mr. Stone from going through with his ill-guided attempt to sell himself, while also accomplishing your goal of shedding light on the sanctity of life.”
“A smaller sacrifice?”
“Yes, Sister, a much smaller sacrifice. You will sacrifice your good standing on eBay.” The Sister looked perplexed, so the Cardinal leaned forward to explain his idea.
Seven hours later, Sister Benedict Joan bid on Jared Stone’s life. The $1,000,000 was exactly enough to meet the reserve and to make the Sister and her Mother Church the leading bidder.
***
Deirdre Stone liked her house. She liked it a lot.
She liked the garden she and her daughters had planted under the bay windows in the front yard, with roses, hydrangea, and a holly bush; she liked the pale green color she and Jared had painted the living room walls when they first moved in; she liked the way that color had aged and matured with the house, with their relationship; and she liked the worn, comfortable couch that was her spot late at night to unwind from the day, after the girls went to bed and Jared had fallen asleep in his office.
On this night, Deirdre spent what felt like an uncountable number of hours curled up on that couch, crying.
After she watched Jared retreat to his office, stumbling up the stairs following the onslaught of media, she slammed the front door shut and collapsed on the sofa. Megan ran upstairs, no doubt telling Jackie everything that had happened. The girls stayed up there, never calling out for her, never asking about dinner.
Deirdre finally cried herself to sleep, woke up, and cried some more.
She tried to distract herself with television and work e-mail—Deirdre was the executive assistant to the CFO of a multinational insurance company with a West Coast office in Portland—but she couldn’t concentrate. She put her head back down and sank into a restless sleep, her dreams a jumbled narrative about cancer, coffee, and New York City.
When she came to in the middle of the night, there were no more tears. She felt hollowed out, like there was a big, gaping, sucking hole at the center of her being. The only thing left to fill it was anger. Deirdre didn’t cry anymore because she was too mad to cry. She stomped up the stairs and practically kicked in the door to her husband’s office.
“I just have to know, what the fuck were you thinking,” she barked into the room. She stopped short in the doorway. Every other time she opened this door, Jared was either sitting cross-legged in the desk chair in front of his computer or napping on the futon that doubled as their guest bed. He wasn’t there now, and for a minute Deirdre thought he wasn’t in the room. That’s when she noticed him lying on the floor.
“Oh my god!” she cried and dropped to her knees. “Jare?” She shook him, and his eyes flicked open.
“Oh, hey, D.” He smiled up at her. “I must’ve dozed off again.”
“What are you doing on the floor?”
“Reducing external stimuli. Helps me focus. I think.”
Deirdre lay down on her back next to Jared and stared at the ceiling. It was hard to see any detail in the low light.
“Does it hurt?” she asked after a long minute of painful silence.
“Does what hurt?”
“Your tumor.”
“Oh, right, of course. Sometimes. Yes. Headaches. Mostly, I just feel confused. And I’m starting to forget things.”
“Like what?”
Jared propped himself up on one elbow and looked at her. He pursed his lips and tried hard to concentrate on Deirdre’s question. “I’m not sure,” he answered.
“Oh, sweetie,” she said, tearing up. “I was just making a joke.”
Jared paused for a second and then smiled. “Oh, I see. That is pretty funny.” He put his head back down.
They lay there for a while, like two kids in a summer field looking up at the stars.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked, keeping her eyes focused on the ceiling.
“I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said I forgot.”
“Is that true?”
“No,” he said quietly. “I suppose it’s not. I guess I wanted to figure out how to make everything okay first.”
“And selling yourself to some psychopath on eBay was your answer?”
“Like I said, I’m confused. I’m not even really sure what I’m saying to you right now. Am I making sense?”
Deirdre rolled over to look at her husband to see if he was serious; she didn’t see a hint of irony or mischief on his face.
“Don’t you think the girls and I can take care of ourselves?”
“I guess I didn’t think,” he said. They were both quiet for a while before Jared added, “Although, you know, I did get a bid for a million dollars. I think it’s from a hooker or something. The name is SisterBJ143.”
Deirdre rolled onto her side, facing away from Jared.
“What?” he asked, taking her hand. “I won’t do anything you wouldn’t want me to do.”
“Then don’t die.” She said it so softly she wasn’t sure Jared had heard her. When Deirdre rolled back over, she saw serpentine streaks of tears carving rivers on her husband’s cheek.
“Oh, Jare,” she said and took his hand.
They both cried and hugged and hugged and cried.
Then their lips met, and they began to kiss.
***
Jackie was sitting in the back of the class, her usual spot, slumped down in her seat, trying to evade the notice of her chemistry teacher. Maybe if she had been more nonchalant about it, the teacher wouldn’t have noticed, wouldn’t have zeroed in.
Esther Markowitz stood five feet two inches tall but still managed to tower over every one of the students in her class, including Jackie, who was a good three inches taller. Patches of pink scalp showed through the teacher’s short, frizzy hair, and she had some kind of monstrosity—a mole, a wart, a boil—at the corner of her right eyebrow. Her demeanor matched her appearance to a T.
“Miss Stone,” she boomed, walking toward Jackie. “Perhaps you can tell us how many joules are in a mole.” She arrived at Jackie’s desk, standing ramrod straight and perfectly still.
Jackie kept her head down.
“Look at me, Miss Stone.”
Jackie looked up, but she couldn’t make eye contact with Mrs. Markowitz. She wondered how the woman had managed to become a “Mrs.” Who would marry such a witch?
“Well?” the teacher asked.
Jackie had no idea; she never had any idea.
“Jackie?” Mrs. Markowitz said.
Jackie didn’t answer.
“Jackie?” she said again, this time louder.
Jackie just stared at the front of the class, her eyes searching for some clue to the answer to the question, searching for some way out.
“Jackie!” Mrs. Markowitz yelled, grabbing Jackie by the shoulder and shaking it with more force than such a diminutive person should have been able to muster.
“JACKIE!”
Jackie opened her eyes and saw her sister. Megan was gently shaking Jackie’s shoulder and whispering her name, trying to wake her from a dream.
It took a minute for Jackie’s head to clear and to remember where she was and what was going on.
“Huh? What time is it?”
“It’s like two in the morning,” Megan whispered, “but listen!”
Jackie went still and listened. She heard laughing. No, crying. No, something else. “What is that?”
“I think it must be Dad. I’m scared.”
“C’mon,” Jackie said, taking her sister by the hand. They slunk out of the bedroom into the pitch-black hallway. They edged along the wall, moving closer to the sound until they were outside their father’s study. As soon as they got there, Jackie recognized the noise for what it was. Her parents were making love.
Jackie wasn’t sure how she knew, since she had never even kissed a boy, but there was no mistaking it. She looked at Megan and saw that her sister had figured it out, too.
“Gross!” Megan said.
“Sssh,” Jackie told her, and led them both back to Jackie’s room. They crawled back into bed together, and in a matter of moments Megan had fallen back asleep. Jackie lay awake for a while longer and smiled for the first time in that long, miserable day. If her parents were still able to make love, maybe her father’s illness wasn’t as bad as it seemed. Maybe everything would be okay.
***
Glio—the name by which the high-grade glioblastoma tumor now thought of itself—didn’t know what was happening, but it was lighting up Jared’s brain like a football stadium at night.Glio really, really, really liked it. He stopped to watch.
It was the first time Glio thought of itself in the masculine. “I am he,” it said, or he said, to no one in particular. Or would have said had he been able to form words or even make sounds.
The show ended in one ginormous explosion of color and light, then faded like the evening sky on the most perfect night. Glio sat in wonder for a moment before returning to the work at hand, picking off his host’s memories one by one—the sheriff’s badge Jared got for his third birthday, a big dog biting him on the cheek when he was six, running away from his family at an amusement park when he was ten because his cousin was teasing him about his fear of roller coasters. Buoyed by the light show, Glio’s hunger intensified. It was a feast to end all feasts.
The pièce de résistance was Jared’s first real kiss. He was thirteen years old, on vacation with his parents at some long-forgotten resort in the Berkshires. The girl’s lips were covered in a fruity gloss that surprised Glio, just as it had surprised Jared. He expected them to be moist with saliva, not sticky with raspberry. He could feel the gloss adhere to his own lips, or Glio’s idea of lips, holding him in place, making the kiss last. The girl’s name was lost to Jared in the ebb of time, but Glio found it. Gail.
He could see her face: a wide mouth, eyes so rich in color they were almost lavender, and a button nose. Glio had no way of knowing that the memory had been enhanced by Jared’s brain. But it didn’t matter. It was like manna from heaven.
After the kiss was over, the memory consumed, Glio drifted off into the hypothalamus and, like his host, fell asleep.
***
Hazel Huck’s shoulders sagged as she stared at her computer screen.
“A million dollars,” she said aloud to her empty bedroom.
From the very beginning, Hazel’s plan had been to raise money to purchase Jared on eBay and then return him to his family, to allow him to die with dignity, comfort, and cash. She had succeeded in getting pledges totaling $15,000 from her online gaming friends. She had called in every favor—sold every piece of handcrafted virtual jewelry, hired her level sixty-five druid out for future quests, and sold every ingot of gold in her war chest for pennies on the dollar. It was a remarkable feat for a seventeen-year-old girl.
And then it went viral.
All of a sudden, Warcraft characters Hazel had never met were wearing “Save Jared” T-shirts over their chain mail and leather armor. There were player vs. player melees in which the losing party would agree to donate X dollars to the cause.
Blizzard Entertainment, the über gaming company behind World of Warcraft, caught wind of what was happening in Azeroth and pledged to match whatever funds were raised. The money was collected in an account set up by one of Hazel’s guild brothers who, in real life, was a banker. Hazel’s $15,000 swelled to $150,000 almost overnight, and then doubled with the Blizzard match. But it was still many, many leagues from the million-dollar reserve and opening bid. The effort, spectacular though it was, failed.
Hazel couldn’t explain why Jared’s cause had become so important to her. Yes, it started with Boots, but now it was something more. Her life needed meaning. Jared Stone’s plight made her realize that fighting imaginary monsters to get to virtual treasure was a pleasant diversion, but not something to aspire to. Here was a chance to help a real human being.
In the end, though, it turned out to be moot.
“A million dollars,” she said again.
Hazel turned off the screen, flopped on her bed, grabbed her weathered copy of The Fellowship of the Ring, and fell asleep reading.
***
Sherman Kingsborough saw the $1,000,000 bid and panicked. He hadn’t yet received an answer to his query about the seller’s physical and mental state, but he had so worked himself up about the chance to kill another human being that he had to get in the game. His bid was $1.2 million.
It was a worthwhile gamble. Besides, to Sherman, it was really just pocket change.
He had settled on a Hunger Games–like test of skills in which he and Jared would be turned loose in an enclosed wooded reserve. They would be given scant supplies, minimal survival gear, and neither would be allowed to leave until the other was dead. He had already begun scouting locations and hiring staff to make it all happen.
But without Jared, it would all be academic. Sherman needed to win that auction.
***
Sister Benedict couldn’t tear herself away from the computer. She had been sitting there for ten hours, only getting up once to use the bathroom.
She refreshed the page every two or three minutes, a solemn promise to herself that each click of the mouse would be the last, that she would turn the computer off and tend to her duties, returning to the auction later, closer to its scheduled end time. But, despite her best efforts, Sister Benedict was human, and she simply could not look away.
Since the auction began, three different young nuns in training had entered the Sister’s office seeking guidance in resolving personal disputes. With each interruption, Sister Benedict looked up from her computer and said, “God gave us brains and hearts to figure out how to fix our own problems. Don’t come back until you can tell me what path the Lord has shown you to solve this crisis,” the word “crisis” dripping with the sarcasm of absolute authority. The Sister was so lost in the world of the Internet that she had no idea what any of the novices had said to her. For all she knew, one of them was pregnant. (None were.) But still, she couldn’t stop clicking that mouse.
The Sister was aware that her bid was a canard, a red herring, and that she and the Church had no intention of paying the money. Cardinal Trippe’s plan was for the Sisters of the Perpetual Adoration to make sure that they won the bid. When the auction ended and it was time to pay, they would simply renege. In this way, they would block Jared Stone from going through with his plan.
“But aren’t we committing a kind of sin?” the Sister had asked the Cardinal, confusion etched on her thick brow. “If we do not intend to complete the auction, then bidding on the auction is a kind of lie, is it not?”
“Do you know the story of Rosa Parks?” Cardinal Trippe asked.
“Of course, Your Grace.”
“Then you know that Ms. Parks broke the law by sitting where she sat on that bus. Yet what she did was still right.” While Sister Benedict grudgingly acknowledged that the law restricting where black people could and could not sit was wrong, she still thought that Rosa Parks should have followed the rules. Though she, the Sister, was politic enough to know to keep that to herself. She also had to bite her cheek to stop herself from correcting the Cardinal from using “Ms.” when he should have been saying “Miss,” something she did with her students at the Annunciation school.
“It was a form of civil disobedience,” the Cardinal said. “What we’re doing is the twenty-first-century version of the same. Call it social disobedience. It is wrong that this man can sell his life on eBay, so we will block him from doing so, peacefully, passively.”
Dear Lord, the Sister thought, give me the strength to deal with this fool. Next he’ll be talking to me about that Indian martyr in the diaper.
When Sherman Kingsborough’s bid came through at $1.2 million, the Sister immediately bid it up to $1.5 million. Even though the bid wasn’t real, she couldn’t help but revel in the appropriation of such a large sum of money. Perhaps, she thought, I can still convince the Cardinal that when we win the auction, we should pay the price and bring this man under our care. The Sister had, unknowingly, become intoxicated with a feeling of power.
***
Ethan Overbee watched the bidding war heat up. He watched, and he waited.
***
Sherman Kingsborough had barely finished submitting his bid when his offer was trumped. The original bidder had upped the ante to $1.5 million.
“Son of a bitch!” he said to an empty room. Or not so much empty, as filled with garish trinkets designed to flaunt his wealth, including a life-size replica of Michelangelo’s David. The truth was Sherman hated art. But an older woman he had lusted after a year earlier convinced him that all men of wealth and power covet great works of art. “It’s a measure of one’s place in the world,” she had said with an air of certainty. Sherman never really got it but indulged the woman’s passion for sculpture and painting. She seemed worldly and wise, and for a brief time he thought he was falling in love. He wasn’t.
Not to be outdone on eBay, Sherman immediately raised the going price for Jared Stone’s life to $2 million. “Take that, bi-otch,” he said to an original member of the Terracotta Army, smuggled, or so he was told, out of China on a rickshaw. (If his paramour—with whom Sherman had grown bored and dumped—had done her homework, she would have known the clay soldier was a fake by the decidedly angled features on its face, and the “Made in Taiwan” scrawl etched on the sole of the soldier’s left boot.) Sherman didn’t know that his competing bidder was a woman, and he definitely didn’t know she was a nun. He just called everyone “bi-otch.” It had become his thing.
He, too, watched, and he, too, waited.
***
Sister Benedict Joan said five Hail Marys and crossed herself twice as she increased her bid on Jared’s life to $2.5 million. The Sister had deluded herself into believing that she would prevail with the Cardinal and that Jared Stone would be hers. The irony of it was lost on her completely.
“Ha!” she cackled when she saw that she was once again the auction’s new top dog, immediately covering her mouth and giggling, looking around to make sure no one was there to witness this act of hubris.
***
When Jared woke up, he was lying on the floor of his office, covered with a blanket. Sunlight bent around the edge of the curtain, leaving two long, white stripes on the carpet.
“The White Stripes,” Jared said aloud. Seethe with trips. He looked around the room. “Deirdre’s gone, if she was ever here.” He couldn’t be sure. Trebuchet was gone, too, and he realized he was alone and talking to himself.
Jared had been dreaming about something, but he couldn’t remember what. It might have had something to do with his first kiss, but as he sat on the floor and racked his brain, or what he feared was left of his brain, he couldn’t remember any details. At that moment, he wasn’t entirely sure he’d ever been kissed. But then the memory of the previous night came flooding back. That, at least, was still intact.
Stretching his back and neck, Jared eased himself up and over to his computer. The high bid was now $2.5 million, still from SisterBJ143. “Are there really one hundred forty-two other SisterBJs?” he asked the computer screen.
When he looked at the bidding history, Jared saw that one other bidder—the man who had submitted the unsettling questions about his physical and mental acuity—had come in at $2 million.
A bidding war was exactly what Jared hoped would materialize. He hadn’t answered the man’s letter, and now thought it wise that he had not. To Jared’s way of thinking, this was an “as is” purchase. He didn’t need to give anyone a leg up.
Then a strange thing happened.
Jared refreshed the page, hoping to see the two bidders egging each other on, but when he did, his auction disappeared. At the same time, he saw a flag on the page indicating that he had a new e-mail message in his account. Figuring there was a connection, he opened his in-box. This is what he found:
Dear Seller—We regret to inform you that your auction, “Human Life for Sale,” violates eBay’s usage policies against listing humans or human remains as sale items, and as such, the listing has been removed. All bidders have been released from their obligation, and you are hereby prohibited from listing this or similar auctions in the future. Should you have any questions, please address them to Customercare. Any subsequent violations of our usage policies could lead to your immediate suspension from eBay. Thank you for your time.
Jared didn’t know if he should laugh or cry, if he was relieved or distraught. It’s not that he was caught between conflicting emotions—though he was—it was that the tumor, at the very moment, happened to be sampling the part of Jared’s brain responsible for emotional comprehension. It was both amused and touched by the conflict going on around it. Synapses were firing and misfiring like a bad cell-phone connection. To Jared, it just registered as more confusion.
Either way, his eBay experiment was over and he was none the richer. He let out a long slow sigh.
And that is exactly when Jared’s cell phone rang.