20:10 /// Scarred Region of Emotions

Elifasi’s furious that I’m going to “mingle and get sloshed.” He’s supposed to come along, but he forgot, as usual, trapped at work. He’d appreciate it if I sat at home all day, wagged my tail as soon as he came through the front door.

His caller ID visual is tacked to the back of the driver’s headrest, the framing electric blue, displaying him in his office.

“Ag, I don’t know how you expect me to just stay at home,” I say, sinking into the back seat.

“You’re the one that designed the damned house,” he says.

The Eli I first met before we married would’ve never spoken to me like this.

“And I seem to always be alone in it,” I respond, “just like these events and lunches where you cancel on me last minute. You don’t even bother to notify me anymore.”

“I supported you earlier in your career when you spent months working in different countries,” he responds. “I sacrificed all my life savings for your firm. It’s my time now.”

Staring at him, I remember those moon-drunk nights we’d talk endlessly, burrowing so deeply into each other that his thoughts became enmeshed with mine, and we seemed to be one person, tied together by similar dreams and a desire to settle down. We attended functions and made distant memories in places far from our country, on shimmering sands of beachside resorts, and in cities where the buildings touched the skies. For the first time in my life, after ceaselessly migrating from one myriad dead-end relationship to another, I’d finally found a person whose steady hand would always frame mine, whose eyes would leap into mine, the love diving into my body with certainty that I could trust he would always stay. He became the love I’d always desired in my family, a love I would not let slip away. For how long would it take to find another like him? In the years after marriage, the pressures from work inflicted cracks into our perfect lives: me, working months away from home in countries with visa restrictions that wouldn’t allow me to bring my husband along as my firm’s reputation grew to great success while his stagnant position at work threatened his pride. The more successful I became, the more his balls shriveled, and the quieter he became, reserving himself to the teeth of his thoughts while his glances glazed me with a sweet poison. What appeared as commitment in the past now reveals itself as possessiveness and a controlling tendency to make me stay. His steady hand is now a noose around my neck, and his love is a knife driven into my body, inciting a desperate fear within me never to leave. He can’t meet my emotional needs. After all, he doesn’t have it in him to be safe for me because he is not safe within himself. I have now become emotionally unavailable to myself. It kills me to know that I am dishonoring myself, and I can’t but find freedom in this prison of my body.

When the recession hit our industry, we pooled our funds to keep my firm operating, but that period made it difficult to get projects. We floated in the never-ending money woes he was spiteful of me for drowning us in. Is that when he stopped trusting me or stopped believing in us? Or is it when my parents wouldn’t give me access to my inheritance or when we lost our babies? Perhaps he relied on my status as a microchipped person, that I would always be valued less and struggle to rise the ranks, thereby always remaining below him, that when I changed that status quo, it hit him harder than if I were a microchip-free wife. Did all these things also turn me away from him so I could dip myself in Jan, in someone who accepted me and all I was?

“Ja, it’s your time,” I whisper, the words bitter. It satisfies him that I’m not putting up a fight.

“You should be happy by now,” he says. “You have a husband and a child on the way.”

“I am thrilled.” I repeat the words to his glassy reflection.

“Nelah, I know you’re upset about earlier, but can you understand why I was mad and worried?” Eli asks. “Can you imagine how life was before without microchipping people? People killing innocents without any alerts going off? A man could kill twenty people in months or years without being caught. I read a case centuries ago where a man spent years building an underground basement to imprison his daughter as his sex slave for a decade before he was caught. Shit like that won’t fly today. Unfortunately, only the microchipped are monitored, and you have to commit a crime to be endorsed with a microchip. The problem today is that not everyone is microchipped, so some crime slips through. Can you imagine how perfectly crime-free our country would be if everyone were microchipped?”

I’m stunned, and his words send a chill down my back. “It’s easy for you to say since you’re not microchipped,” I say. “Maybe we shouldn’t receive criminal bodies, because I’m suffering the consequences of someone else’s actions. Would you offer yourself, too, if you suggest that everyone be microchipped?”

He laughs. “Come on, babe, government officials hold such sensitive data that adding a microchip would conflict with the confidentiality of our work. Imagine if a body like ours landed in the wrong hands or we got kidnapped and our microchips hacked into. Such a breach of our nation’s data could compromise our country.”

“Basically, you’re against being microchipped,” I say.

“For the protection of our people. This is beneficial to us, Nelah. Come on, surely you can see that,” he says. “It’s the best job in the country. I have benefits that no ordinary citizen has, and having this authority and access to oversee the private lives of our citizens is a huge advantage; having the power to enact change down the line is what I’m aiming for. At least one of us must be the inside man. I want to reach the highest position to implement more policies to ensure that safety remains pure. We can’t all be chess pieces the government moves around; one of us at least must have that power. I’m doing this for you and me. For our family.”

Elifasi tends to look at things with rigid pragmatism. I thought his passion for public safety and national security was more altruistic than self-serving, and I wonder if he wants to advance to wield this power as his weapon.

“Well, I am proud of you,” I rehearse. “I hope it doesn’t take them too long to promote you again.”

I stare out the window at the blurring view of highways, skyscrapers, malls—headlights slapping my window.

My nerves twist: I’m about to see Jan.

Eli’s expression softens. “About this morning. I’m sorry, nè.”

“Ja, I know.”

His eyebrows rise, surprised, hurt. The call cuts.

My car meanders through the suburbs of Phakalane. Reaches the iron gates of the Golf Estate, where the checkpoint scans me through. A traffic of cars. Glamour and wealth don every bone and flesh. Five-star hotel. International speakers from the industry. Elegant. High-volumed ceilings. Voices swishing with alcohol. Laughter clinking with wine glasses. Lavish décor.

I find my table, mostly men heavily salted with ego. And Janith Koshal. Our eyes meet, that awkward tension I try to tightrope every time. He stops talking to his neighbor and comes up beside me. Pulls out a chair, scans the nametag on the plate.

“I’m sure Mr. Kgorosi won’t mind changing seats.” He settles down, painting the air with his cologne, unbuttons his suit jacket.

I stare into his eyes, a kohl-dark ring around each dusk-amber iris with hints of green, like an eclipse in reverse. His life’s filled with pitch decks, hungry entrepreneurs, crying twins, diaper changes, and a dying marriage, but I’m envious of him.

Janith Koshal is a forensic structural engineer turned VC investor in construction tech, managing partner at J&J Associates. He’s acted as an expert witness in court cases based on his analysis of failed structures. The company he invested in runs drones for property inspection and facilities management, which my firm has been using, and that’s how I met him, at the company’s presentation conference. Our seats were arranged next to each other. I remember him arguing with his wife on the phone.

Intelligence turns me on. His taut-muscled body is packed with it.

He leans back into his seat. “There’s news about you on the grapevine.”

My heart rams into my chest, hiccups, silences. The panic must show in my eyes. “About your firm,” he emphasizes.

“Oh.” My shoulders relax. A glass by my lips. Cold water down my throat. My trembling hand settles the glass back down. “What about it?”

“Sometimes a business needs corruption to survive,” Jan says. “But another alternative: just cry bankruptcy and go back to the drawing board. Failed businesses are learning curves to a successful one. Consider this one a stepping stone.”

The lights dim, the stage lights up, the food arrives, and silence falls as introductions are made on stage. I’m not listening, but staring at my food, poking at it, trying to push it down my throat.

“You look like you need a drink,” Jan says, getting up, guiding me out of my chair and out of the conference room through thick, carpeted hallways into the open air of a restaurant. Frogs burp into the night, the thick scent of fir trees. A golf course sprawls, blanketed by dark. And a pond, the silver glimmer of the moon on its surface.

A waiter arrives with two glasses and wine, decants it into our stemware. Its warmth slips down my pharynx, sends chills to my arms. I forgot how drinking numbs reality, incites the magic of the ordinary in my body. I run my fingers through my braids, untying them, letting them weigh down my back.

Jan eyes me intensely, turns serious. It disarms me. “Honestly, how are you?”

“Eish, I really don’t know where my life is headed right now,” I say bluntly, the wine loosening me up. It gets tiring, locking things up, being careful, especially with the recent betrayal of my subconscious mind. Even if I was still in the CBE, there’s nothing wrong with talking to Jan. “My marriage is messed up, and we might lose our daughter because we’re behind with payments, and I just don’t want to think about it.”

“Shouldn’t your husband be worried about that, too?”

“Ag, he has a laissez-faire attitude toward life. Believes things have a way of working themselves out, meaning me. I work out everything.”

“Jesus,” Jan says. “Why’d you marry him?”

I twist the wine glass stem in my fingers, watch the light flow through it. “To be honest, I was scared, terrifyingly alone. I wanted to settle down, and I kept thinking about the good parts of him, which lately I’m struggling to recall.” I lean back into the chair, sighing. “I just thought our issues were fixable. But I’m the only one who’s willing to work on the emotional breakdown between us.”

“Why the hell do women do this?” he asks, leaning forward. “Stay with someone when they deserve better?”

I sigh. “We’re having a baby. I can’t just leave. He’s really not all that bad.”

A breeze tousles his pitch-black hair. Jan shakes his head. “You sound like my sister. She blames herself for all the bad guys she gets. She’s sticking with this one fucking asshole because she’s thirty-one, and she’s terrified of getting back out there, having to deal with one new horndog after another. Rather the devil she knows, which is kak, I tell you. She still has a hundred years left until her lifespan expires. But she just won’t hear it.”

Every citizen can accumulate 210 years per lifespan through a minimum of three body-hop seasons; it used to be 420 years per lifespan, but it was cut in half due to body shortages and the need to afford others an opportunity. Once those 210 years elapse, they’re registered into the Consciousness Bank until a body becomes available. This is the first body-hopping season of my third lifespan. As with every delivered death, my first and second lifespan memories have been erased. But you still remember the basics: how to ride a bike, drive, cook . . . like dying and waking up as someone else.

With the amnesia of reincarnation and its confidentiality clause of the past, it frustrates me that I don’t know what I left behind. What am I without my memories? Am I a completely new and different person from my past life? Do I carry the same habits, thoughts, and predilections? Or have I been reincarnated into someone completely different? Who were my previous parents? Did I have any children? I’m grieving for things I can’t remember, which is the injustice of consciousness transfer because what else are we losing that we don’t know?

Although, some lifespans carry more than the allotted three body-hop seasons since there are instances where a citizen needs to go through more than the minimum number of bodies. Suppose we become sick or get into a car accident such that our current body is too damaged to suffice as a refuge for our souls. In that case, every Motswana citizen is offered one free body per lifespan, unlike other African countries. Body-hopping is commonplace, and my parents and brother are in the minority who opt out of it. “Then why are we drawn to body-hopping if we can’t remember ourselves?” Mama asked me once, completely dumbfounded by this fascination. It’s seen as a solution to wealth inequality that Africans have endured, to curb Black tax and conjure generational wealth that you can accrue from selling your body since many African families have never had access to affluence that only a touch of immortality can bring them.

But if you commit suicide, you revoke that right. First- and second-­year lifespanners adopt this strategy, selling off their 210 years, which is mainly obtained by foreigners with passport privileges who can declare citizenship through this form. Chinese, Indian, British, or American people possess some of our people’s bodies. Most of the Batswana I see walking in the city, I wonder what white souls colonize their bones.

“There is no future with such a body,” Yemi told me. “Hence this body is dead. We are born in dead bodies that make it easier to bury them, revoke them, and claim ones that will give us a better future.”

Many Batswana have successfully migrated overseas using this scheme with less struggle than other African natives, given that Botswana historically had low migration compared to other countries.

Besides, you retain your memories if you body-hop within one lifespan. It’s only when you transition from lifespan to lifespan, sepa­rated by the limbo stage of being on the waiting list, that amnesia happens. There’s no science to back up why we lose our memories, but some say that the limbo stage is where the memories disperse in that disembodied state of being. I had to wait for fifteen years before receiving a body, as my memories eroded in that gap. Maybe technology will advance in the future, and we’ll be able to retain our memories.

“This whole thing of not remembering previous lifespans,” Jan says, “you could be meeting a relative from a past lifespan and sleeping with them without even knowing it.”

I raise my hands. “Ja-nee. Technically, it’s not incest since the bodies aren’t blood-related, but still.”

Jan winces. “I’ve met people who have ten lifespans. That’s two thousand years in this world!”

They’re the elite one-percenters: entrepreneurs, celebrities, business moguls, judges, and lawyers, and they can maintain this status and protect their interests by exploiting advantages that are open to them. I often wonder if one of those benefits is that they keep their memories, which keeps them still clinging to their fame. After all, what would be the point of wealth if it wasn’t guaranteed in the subsequent lifespan?

“Your father’s had eight lifespans, so you don’t have to walk far to know one.” He tilts his head, annoyed. “Everyone knows about your father, Jan,” I add to smear that curious look off his face.

Some say that when the grandparents die in powerful families, they bypass the waiting list and are shuffled instantly into a teenage body introduced as a child of so-and-so within that family. So how could I begin to have that power as an individual to retain my previous identities and memories when those in governmental positions are primarily men, who supposedly say our memories are lost, which puts us in a vulnerable position to control, who microchip us to keep us in line, while they keep their positions to themselves in reincarnation. As successful as I am, how could anyone with less privilege achieve this feat?

Jan muses, eyes surveying the few dining clients at the far end. “My nephew is my-great grandfather, who ‘passed away’ last year.”

My mouth hangs open.

“Yes, the rumors are true,” he says. “Perhaps this will persuade you of how important you are to me that I will divulge family secrets. It’s quite easy to explain it off and to create birth certificates of a new family member.”

“Were you an ancestor of the family?” I ask.

He shakes his head. “Not every relative has the same privilege, and not everyone in our family gets this advantage. You must prove your allegiance to the family to earn such rights. I was just recently born compared to our ancient relatives. And given my recent activities, those benefits were rescinded from me even though I enjoy some.”

“How do you show your allegiance?” I ask.

“If the family wants you to destroy a certain company, you do so. If they want you to marry a certain someone, you do so. If they want you to kill, you kill, without question—that has never happened. It’s just a way to show you how much of yourself and your values you must sacrifice for the family.”

His casual tone is bizarre and keeps me silent. If my affair with Jan, who’s from a very powerful family, is exposed, it will have devastating consequences for me. I drink my wine to melt the fright away from my body.

A blank look. Jan rubs his jawline, shakes off the disturbing remark. “That’s another reason why my sister wants to be a carer now. Thinks life will be easier that way, that she can be free and choose who she wants to be with. She’s met some carers who are in stable, long-term relationships, with good jobs, good homes, and a welcoming community. Says they’re happy people who look to settle, unlike our one-night-stand society.”

The cut-off age for a body is seventy years, at which point it’s taken over by a carer’s consciousness at a retirement center, who will routinely care for the body until death sets in. During this period, the body donates organs and biological material for stem cell research and to the cloning bank desperate to resolve the body shortage supply. It’s nothing fancy, being a geriatric; when the body’s on the brink of death, the carer’s consciousness is removed and placed into another geriatric.

“Eish, Jan, I’m so sorry.”

Jan leans forward. “I know it’s scary to start again not knowing what’s next or when you’ll finally be happy. But you can’t reach happi­ness if you choose to remain landlocked in such a terrible situation. I hate to see you both choosing lesser-than because you’re afraid. What if choosing your husband destroys the perfect future you could have? With an intimate, caring partner?”

“I’m not afraid,” I lie.

“Right.” He taps the table. “Do you really want such a man to be the father to your child?” I look down at the wood grain of the table. “Your desperation to have a kid gives him power.” His hand brushes mine to soften the cold words. “Don’t tie your self-worth to his opinion. Be careful. Sometimes the wrong reasons keep us clinging to the wrong relationship. If you want to use him to have a kid, sure, but remember there’ll be consequences. There’s nothing shameful about getting divorced or being a single mother whether you’re thirty or two hundred.”

The realness of his statement sobers me. But he wants me, and men can be very convincing to bring you toward them. What if he’s just saying all of this to bring my walls down so he can sleep with me, use me, then discard me? I’m finding it very difficult to trust anyone because it feels like kindness is extinct nowadays.

The light dazzles his irises, a smile tickles lips. “One question: Who wouldn’t want to be deeply intimate with you?”

It stills me. I take another sip, ignoring his tempting flirtation. “I hear you. But everything is crumbling around me. Just a bit much this morning. Nearly got arrested. Almost flunked my CBE. For kidnapping.” His mouth drops. “A baby.”

His intense eyes grasp me. A tingling feeling vibrates up my thighs.

“It’s not true,” he whispers. “You lost four babies.” At this, he touches my hand, only slightly, to soothe the blow of that statement. “That will always be used against you.” He leans forward conspiratorially. “Is your microchip recording us now?”

“You’re checking to see if it’s safe to talk to me,” I say. “No one feels safe talking to a ‘wiretapped person.’ Isn’t that what they call us? A walking, snitching police tool.” I swirl the wine glass, the light slipping in it. “I understand. That’d fuck up your divorce proceedings if someone illegally got hold of our conversation, my footage. Media would have a field day: VR investor fucking the Black Womb.”

“Don’t. Ever. Say that about yourself.” He clasps his fingers beneath his chin. “I was more worried about what would become of your life if our recorded interaction got into the wrong hands.”

He scans our perimeter, finds no one close by or watching. Fishes something from his suit pocket: a black button-sized object with a red LED light.

“What’s that?” I ask.

A smile lurks upon his face. “It’s safer if you don’t know, but I want to tell you something without someone listening in.” He rests his thumb against it, and it lights up blue. “Now, where were we? Right, in regards to your evaluation, the CBE doesn’t read through the hazy, complex emotions. It just computes fact into motive purported by your past, the most painful events shaping your modus operandi.”

“Eish, I don’t know, Jan. It just all felt real.”

“How could it not? It fucked with my self-esteem when I was a teenager. I went for therapy. To help me trust myself more than I trust what the CBE tells me I am. Don’t believe anything the CBE tells you. Don’t.” His thumb rubs my hand. “Your subconscious is bloated by your anxiety, your trauma—and the CBE magnifies that into something dangerous. You’re not dangerous. You just need to heal. The city has so many broken people whose consciousnesses are being sent to prison. But, God, I want to see you heal.”

“I killed my babies,” I say, flicking hot tears from my face. “They died inside me. I don’t deserve to heal. What about them, Jan? Who’s going to heal them back to life? And that baby I took from the hospital. That was going to happen.”

“Because your need for a child is greater than your need for life. That infested the CBE. It wasn’t your fault,” he says.

I stare at his hands, moon-pale. “Izit? What did the CBE tell you about yourself?”

He leans back. The cool air quickly replaces his warmth. He stares at the sky. “My father married this woman, his second wife, after my mother . . . passed away. I was only twelve years old. I’ve never considered her a stepmother—she’s not a step closer to a mother. My father was always busy. He thought she was looking after me, but she was abusive . . .” He gulps. The sharp protrusion of his Adam’s apple scurries up and down his neck. “Sexually.”

I gasp.

“I never understood why abuse victims felt ashamed until I felt that shame and guilt.” He stares long at the table’s edge, draws inwardly into his memories. “I was ashamed, a boy growing into a man, and this wasn’t supposed to happen to men. Something was wrong with me. She’d spike my drink to overpower me . . . and . . . she’d point out my body’s response as me having fun.”

I touch his hand, brush his face. “It’s okay.”

He clasps his hands into fists. “I never wanted shame or guilt to silence my truth. Fear destroys people. The world tells us to bury our emotions, use masculinity as a weapon. I wanted to be both strong and soft, but . . . I struggled.” He watches me intently, checks if this is okay for me, this place he’s taking me. He’s more worried about me than he is for himself, which both pains me and seduces me with his kind, noble act, his emotional transparency. I want to stay in this, in him, this safe horizon. I nod for him to go on. “I felt so violated, so meaningless—I erased myself from the world by terrorizing my wrist with a knife.”

I clasp my hand to my throat, wrap my soul around his heart, his pain. “Yoh! You were a Suicidal?” I stare at his wrist—it’s clean, without scarring.

He pulls back the sleeve. Covers it. “Ja, that’s how the CBE feels. That’s what it does.”

The light by our table flickers. My elbows burn from the pressure of the table, and I realize we’ve leaned closer to each other. “If you were a Suicidal, how are you still here?”

Jan takes a breath. Peers into his wine glass. “My father bought a body from an eighteen-year-old Punjabi intern at a Kenyan firm.”

My throat tightens. “What?” I lean back. Stare at his body. The crow-black hair. The whiskey-gold eyes. Not originally his.

“The kid . . . had a lot of debt,” Jan explains. “His papers were arranged, and he was transported here. I was . . . mad at my father. After a couple of months, I left home, and went to varsity. Became depressed. Anxious. All the time. It was exhausting. People couldn’t understand it. They’d tell me to chill out, and go for drinks—only drinks and drugs made it worse. Then I didn’t know how to handle them, now I do. For my evaluation, I was no longer the abused; I was the abuser. I was immediately evicted from my body and processed to be sent to prison.”

“A second time? Mara, if you’re virtually incarcerated, you’re never let out.” Except me.

“My Mind-Cell was on its way to incarceration.” He looks down, bristles with shame. “My father . . . intercepted it. Bought the body of a twenty-two-year-old Bengali in South Africa whose family wasn’t doing well. You’d swear he has a roster of these desperate kids. He didn’t care if the body didn’t match our identity. He was this close to getting me an Afrikaner body until my grandfather stepped in to take control of the situation, given that this body and the children it procreates would be heirs of the Koshal name. And my grandfather wanted something that looked valuable. Regardless of what body he got, I feel strange, not belonging to this family. I feel lost most of the time. I don’t know if perhaps there are lingering feelings the original owner left in this body.”

One would assume that the powerful lose access to their relationships and identities from previous bodies, but reports suggest otherwise. They retain their wealth and stature through each lifespan through the connections and favors they pull from the government, thereby fortifying their power. After all, Jan’s father was able to obtain not only one but two bodies for Jan across our borders, who still recalls his memories and keeps the Koshal identity clinging to his bones.

My mind swims in anger, confusion, and hurt. You can only sell one or several bodies, equating to thirty years per lifespan. Otherwise, everyone would over-sell and destabilize the economy. Even if you sell your body before your 210 years expires, you’ve forfeited any remaining years. This structure is so unfair to the destitute—they’re desperate for money and survival. Those poor boys lost their years to people like Jan, who cleared away their problems with money. And it’s so unjust because Jan’s lifespan didn’t expire; he didn’t accidentally die. He was a Suicidal, yet he’s possessed two bodies illegally?

“How did your father intercept your imprisonment?” I ask.

He sighs. “One of two ways: he owns highly established companies in which some politicians have shares, or he might’ve called in a favor or bribed someone.” He shrugs. “It happens. He just never told me how.”

“You escaped incarceration through illegal means.”

“My father intercepted my incarceration through illegal means,” he corrects me.

I’ve seen the back of his neck, and it’s naked, free of any metal parts. “How come you don’t have a microchip?”

“My case file was destroyed. My forensic evaluation was edited to construe innocence and purity.”

“I have a microchip.”

“I know. It’s not fair. I’m privileged because of corruption. Whilst women are easily predicted as future criminals for the tiniest thing. And we get away with every illegal activity.”

“I have a microchip because the previous owner committed a crime,” I continue. “I’m suffering from this infertile body with its surveillance system because of their crime, but you get to do all that and still be free and have kids.”

“I am sorry. I am so sorry.” He peers at me, eyelashes touching the ridge of his brows. “Do you hate me now?”

I’m taken aback. He stares at me, hoping that I will hate him. If I hate him, I’m a hypocrite. I was on the same journey today, and my husband intercepted it. “No,” I answer. “I’m jealous. I shouldn’t hate someone because of envy.”

His eyes widen, first with confusion and then with relief. “Thank you.”

I stare at him, wondering if the rumor is true that some men are exempt from the amnesia we suffer from when we begin new lifespans. “Do you remember your previous lifespans?”

His eyes slide sideways. “Not like the others, the guys I know. Just some parts here and there, like déjà vu sometimes. A twenty-year-old kid that may be my son. I saw him at an expo I was invited to. Started talking to him. He had this scent that hit me hard and I felt this deep connection to him. So I’ve been sponsoring him since then.”

“This is bullshit,” I growl, “because I’m stripped of things that could trigger memories—at least you have something. I have nothing that connects me to my past.”

What if I had a child, a child who could get that same opportunity from me, but is suffering because we’re separated by this amnesia wall?

Jan casts his eyes downward, unable to offer anything better than an apology. “I know relatives who have that privilege, higher men in society, higher than my father. But they’re legally bound to not speak of it, else they’ll lose their memories.”

My eyes bolt out at the incredulity of it. “They get to keep their memories just because they have balls and a dick?” I stare ahead, empty. “I wish I was a man. I have no interest in being a man or a woman—I’m not one. I don’t know what ‘me’ is supposed to be because no matter my label, the world will treat me based on how I look.” A sharp grief slashes its way through my chest, suffocating me with the desperate need to remember the people I’ve left behind in my previous lifespan, as if a chasm separates us and all I need to do is jump and reach them. But there is no chasm. My memories have been yanked out of me.

Jan twiddles his thumbs. “I think it serves a dark agenda. I’ve heard some locker-room banter reveal they prescribe women amnesia so they don’t remember what was done to them. That and other illegal activities.”

My hands clench into fists, grip the anger fibrillating through this cold air. “We’ll never, ever be free, will we?”

Jan strokes my hand. “I am so sorry, love. I just heard whispers. Something about Matsieng’s blood, the Murder Trials—I don’t know.”

“Matsieng’s blood?” I ask, shaken by this revelation.

“The waters in the Matsieng’s caverns are bloodlike and have properties that the Murder Trials committee often finds new uses for.”

“What do they use Matsieng’s blood for?”

“According to one of my father’s informants, it helps the committee with the ceremonies to test the microchipped people during their purity test. They say there is too much power in Matsieng’s blood, that a drop of it could kill a person or change the body’s properties—what that change involves, I have no idea.”

“Is that true?” I ask.

“Religious people from various countries come to Matsieng’s blood to cure diseases and problems in their lives, but I never believe in such propaganda.” He shrugs. “Not even my father knows. I’ve no idea what he did to get his sexual harassment cases cancelled. His name is my name.” He clenches his teeth, flexes the muscles in his jawline. “I have to carry this shameful name that he wears proudly for the things he’s done. I carry that. Work tirelessly to clean its reputation, but that’s all people remember: the Koshal Rape Files. As if I performed that evil. I wish he could feel my anger, that it could teach him a lesson, kill his invincibility . . .” He teases his fingers into his scalp; the vein on his forehead protrudes, throbbing with anger. He slows his breathing, catches me staring wide-eyed.

Tension locks me into place, something pulses in my ears. “Your hatred, Jan, I never thought you felt that way about your father.”

He swallows. Stretches out his hands from their folded rage. “Better not speak about him, else the devil will hear.”

I tremble because I know he’s referring to his father as the devil, and I wonder if Aarav has ever abused or punished Jan to keep him under his thumb.

Jan exhales, shifts the conversation elsewhere. “Anyway, I know it’s illegal to body-hop from a non-dead body to a purchased one but, if you want, I could make it possible for you.”

My chest becomes light, and I stare at him, shocked. “How?”

He takes hold of a salt shaker, says, “Things could be put in place such that”—he topples the salt shaker—“you suffer an accidental death.” The salt spills from the cavernous body of the shaker, and he pats at some salt crystals with his finger, transferring them to a napkin. “We’ll have a body ready for you. The body you want.” His eyes flick to me.

My mouth hangs open. “You mean you’d design my murder and procure me any body I want?”

He nods. My mouth runs dry from the sickening, delightful offer. My hands are sticky with sweat. A rational thought hits me. “You’d give a body to the woman you’ve been pining for, who won’t ever give you her body nor the relationship you desire with her? Is this because I won’t sleep with you now that you think you can buy me with a new body? Perhaps you feel that once I’m no longer tethered to this body, I will be free of the husband and any attachments this body has, finally giving you the free rein to conquer me. I’ve been fucked over by Eli, and I won’t walk blindly into another situation. So, what is your true agenda? What game are you playing?”

“I don’t understand it, either,” he adds thoughtfully. “I only care to see you happy.”

“Bullshit.” I shake my head. “I know I’m desperate, but no, I won’t resort to corruption.”

He smiles. “I know.” Takes off his jacket, and I realize I’m cold when he wraps it around my shoulders. “Sometimes you think you’ve healed, but the past returns in the form of your wife. That’s why I’m getting a divorce.” His eyes bore into me when he emphasizes, “I can only heal if I stop the pattern from repeating—as difficult as it can be.”

He’s inside me, and I’m scared, but I want to be as courageous as him. I clear my throat. “That was brave of you to relive everything by telling me. When people share intimate stuff about themselves, I don’t feel so ugly. I feel like I can survive because they did.”

“You can survive.”

Is this what they call emotional infidelity, this scarred region of emotions that we walk through to immerse ourselves into waters we willingly swim through? I’ve never had a man be this transparent about his scars, his thoughts and emotions before. Is this the bright future I could have with someone? Or is it the honeymoon phase of a relationship before it burns out?

Jan stares at me for a long time without speaking, his eyes soft, musing, and it feels as if I’m lying in calm but dangerous waters. I want to drown in him.

He folds his arms on the table, leans in, eyes focused on me. “I wish I’d met you before Mel. It’d have been much easier for us, don’t you think? We’re both ambitious, family-oriented, deeply passionate people. Imagine the life we’d have built, the empire we’d have created for our family. I don’t think your husband realizes the woman he has; he doesn’t know how to handle the power that you are—he’s losing the point. You are not something to handle. That’s just limiting you. I don’t know why people like us must have such obstacles, no?”

I go for the jugular. “If you hadn’t met Mel, you wouldn’t have your twins.”

“I was talking about Mel, not my girls,” he corrects me. “I wouldn’t lose them for the world. I still want them to be part of my life. I want to be a part of your life, too. It’d still be much easier for us, getting rid of the deadweight. If you weren’t married, you wouldn’t hesitate.”

“Mara, don’t you feel like you’re still repeating patterns?” I ask. “You’re attracted to damaged women. I’m damaged.”

“Damaged women who don’t want to heal. You want to heal,” he says.

I push aside the flurrying feeling of a man wanting me, a man I want. “There’s no point in talking about that. I’m very loyal.”

But my muscles are sore, the headache slips away, the vague taunt of tension rests on my shoulders. The restaurant’s almost empty, and soon I should go home. I’ll find it empty, my husband only coming in at four or something. I’m thinking again, the last thing I need. I wish to switch my thoughts off. I don’t want to go home. I don’t want to be alone in the dark with my thoughts.

His eyes are flaming gold, intense. “We can do it according to your rules. Meet occasionally to chat, have drinks. Anything you want. You’re in charge.”

Power. I am in power for once.

“Book one of the hotel’s suites,” I say.

His eyes widen. Smiles.

I wait by the bank of elevators as he pays for a room. I won’t kiss him or do anything so disruptive to my marriage. I’ll just harmlessly lie in his arms. That’s it. That’s all I need.

I feel bad as we make it upstairs. I feel sorry for him. That he likes me. And I’m using it, especially after what he just told me. And this could be a vulnerable time for him, his crumbling marriage, and that he doesn’t mind being used if it affords him some tiny pleasure. But what pleasure can a man get from lying next to a woman he desires? Maybe we’re using each other, then.

We pour out into the hallway, he uses the keycard, and we flow into a luxurious penthouse with picture windows peering into the dark speckled with lights.

“Let’s be dangerous,” he says. Tucked in between his fingers, a plastic sachet of white powder.

I step back.

“What’s wrong?” he asks.

“They’re going to see this.” I chew on my lip. “My microchip’s footage will be part of my next CBE. Our friends were the forensic panel in my last one. They don’t even visit anymore. My microchip, it has a backup recorder. It will legit film us, our sex tape. Oh God.”

“Shh,” he whispers. “Stuff like that is confidential. They don’t disclose anything to anyone. Not even friends.”

“And the drugs?” I point to the sachet.

“Don’t worry about that. I’ll handle it.”

“Even if we muted our voices somehow, they have professional lip-readers who’ll use the footage from the EyeCam. What if the next CBE, they tell my husband about you?”

Jan purses his lips. “I’ll handle it. I promise.” He kisses my forehead, the tip of my nose, cheeks, and lips. I believe him, given the fact he’s gotten away with two illegal body-hops. “I want to meet you more in a way that no one—not even an AI machine—will flag our meetings,” he whispers. “I’ll make that possible. You’re safe. You’ll always be safe with me.”

Acquiescing, I yank my heels off, soak my feet into the thick carpeting.

He tilts his head. “I’m glad we’re back to business.”

He removes his shoes, tie, cuff links, and I fold his jacket onto the couch. Stand at the edge of the bed. My dress whispers against my skin as it falls. His arms slide around me. I haven’t been touched with love in such a forever time. My hands find bare skin beneath his shirt. His breath halts.

I must be forgiven for today.

“You drive me crazy,” Jan whispers, voice a velvet rope slipping around my neck.

I feel him in and around me. My shriveled lungs hang dry on my rib bones, my breaths desperate to escape into his mouth, his lips, his hands. “I missed you,” I whisper.

He is the skyf I used to smoke. There are parts of me that still don’t belong to me, that belong to him, scattered in reds and blues. I bite my tongue, knock back the desire, only it poisons me from inside. He smirks, sees the emotion bleeding from my eyes.

Karma meets me on my knees. I burn on his tongue. We tear our skins off, soul-mix on a bed, on a table of heated drugs until we’re bone-fused. We stay like that, hour upon hour, as a peaceful sleep enthralls my body. This quiet moment stokes the growing embers between us.

But who will it cremate?