Page 41 of Any Given Lifetime
“Joshua,” his assistant, Rebecca, said from the doorway. Her new bob cut framed her middle-aged face. “You okay? You’ve been a little out of it lately.”
Joshua looked up from Dr. Green’s description of the anticipated dissolution of the nanites within the body, the most concerning and important part of the entire study to Joshua, and forced a smile. He took the time to notice how strong and tall Rebecca stood now, without even a hint of the limp she’d had before the nanites had completed their work on her curved spinal cord two years ago.
Despite what had happened to Lee, Joshua saw living proof in front of him (as well as within him, in his better-than-ever skin and health) of the importance of nanite technology. He wasn’t entirely against the application of it; he simply demanded more rigor in the testing if he was going to fund it. The belated realization that certain genetic markers could predict the failure of nanite dissolution was something that could have been avoided, as far as Joshua was concerned, had scientists been more cautious from the beginning.
“Yeah,” Joshua said. “I’m fine. Just tired.”
Rebecca nodded. “I guess it’s hard around this time of year, huh?”
Joshua cocked his head. “What do you mean?”
“Pete reminded me of it last night when I mentioned that you seemed down.”
“I’m not following. Pete reminded you of what, exactly?”
“They both died in fall. Your partners: Neil and Lee, I mean. I guess that must make autumn seem… Well, it must be kind of hard every year.”
Rebecca and Pete hadn’t even known Neil, and yet, thanks in part to Lee, and how he’d insisted that no one forget, they’d noticed a connection that Joshua hadn’t even seen until now. How had he not considered that Lee and Neil had both died in the fall? And it was autumn again now. Maybe that explained his unusual reaction to Dr. Green. Maybe both the long-ago trauma and the more recent one were playing with his mind.
Enormous relief flooded him at the thought that it was possible Dr. Green didn’t look so much like Neil at all. Maybe it had all been a trick of Joshua’s imagination brought on by a wave of unconsciously triggered grief. It tended to come and go. Joshua knew that from long experience.
His short-lived relief was crushed by a heavy thought: what if Neil Green wasn’t his Neil after all?
Joshua hoped he kept the rollercoaster of emotions from his face. “I’m going to be okay, Rebecca. Thanks for checking on me. Why don’t you go ahead and go home early. I’m closing up shop here, myself.”
Rebecca smiled kindly, moved as though to leave, and then paused. “Oh, and by the way, there’s some private stuff that came from that P.I. in Atlanta in your email. The flags on it notified my calendar that they were urgent. So, just a heads-up.” She gave a little wave and then hurried off to take advantage of his suggestion that she go on home.
Joshua’s throat went dry, and he waited until he heard Rebecca get her things to go, before ditching the file he’d been examining and accessing his email instead.
Pulling up the documents, Joshua skipped the accompanying write-up for the moment and moved on to the part that most immediately interested him. Adair had included three short videos of Dr. Green taken within the last fifteen hours, and Joshua opened those files with his heart in his throat. He didn’t know what he hoped to see—part of him longed for the videos to put an end to his obvious insanity, and another part of him felt unbearable grief at the idea that he’d been delusional all along.
The first video showed Dr. Green in a small coffee shop, grimacing over a steaming mug, while a young man with dyed black hair chattered at him. “Basically, what I’m trying to explain, is that Iron Brian was part of the mythopoetic men’s movement, and—”
Neil interrupted him. “You lost my interest at ‘mythopoetic.’”
The kid didn’t seem bothered and talked right on. “—that’s sort of relevant, because it’s rooted in Jungian psychology—”
“Jungian bullshit—” Dr. Green muttered.
“—and neopagan shamanism, which seems kind of quaint now, doesn’t it?”
“If you say so,” Dr. Green said, taking another sip of his coffee and frowning. “What is this crap?”
“The computers have been overheating the coffee all week.”
“Hey,” Dr. Green called toward the counter that Joshua could just barely make out in the background of the video. “I want my account credited! This isn’t coffee—it’s diesel fuel.”
The black-haired kid snorted. “Oh my God, freak. He probably doesn’t even know what diesel fuel is. Like, didn’t they stop using that—”
“Six years ago, not last century. Idiots. Everyone.”
“Grumble-grumble! You need some mythopoetical neoshamanism in your life, and you’d cheer right up.” The kid sparkled at Dr. Green, who seemed oblivious to his charms, and then the kid sighed and rolled his eyes. “Maybe you also need a good—”
“I’ll tell you what I need—” Dr. Green called over his shoulder again, “Credit my account, or I’ll go over your head and make sure someone else gets the illustrious job of sitting on their ass and watching coffee machines spit out crude oil.”
“You know, you’re never going to make friends this way,” the black-haired kid said, looking unperturbed. “Were you like this before? I mean, how did you get anyone to even fall in love with you back then?”
“I wasn’t like this.”
