Thread Twice Cut

Day 1

Day 1Darkness but a voice spoke. “I have repaired you.” The voice was deep and full, almost as if God himself had spoken. A kind voice, a caring voice, an understanding voice. “I have inserted a small memory device in your brain. This was done so that when you next die, I can bring you back with your memories intact. No matter what, from now on I will always be able to bring you back to life.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say. I had no idea who I was or where I was. I knew I must be dreaming, but it didn’t feel like a dream. Then something black lifted up and off of me and it floated away a short dis­tance. It floated there, stock still, looking like a floating black toaster —whatever a toaster was.

The black thing spoke again, “You lacked a mem­ory device in your brain when you died so I could not restore most of your higher memories. I am sorry.”

“Who am I?”

The black thing settled silently back down to the dirt a dozen paces distant. “You never told me your name so I cannot tell it back to you. But you did tell me that you were married and that your wife and two chil­dren died.”

I tried to remember being married but couldn’t. “It’s all gone,” I said. I felt sad but couldn’t understand why.

“You called me Ralph before you died, but my real name translated into your language is Angel.”

“You don’t look like an angel.” I tried to picture an angel in my mind, but I came up empty.

“The device I placed in your brain is not just memory, it is an artificial life capable of recording all your senses too. Your every experience stored in abso­lute detail, even better than you can remember them yourself.”

“Does it have a name too?”

“In your language it could be called Soul.”

I rubbed my chin and noticed my hand. It was a young man’s hand. I gazed at it and wondered how that could be. I looked at the Angel Ralph and said, “I’m the only one here without a name.”

The Angel lifted again. I noticed high in the sky beyond it, hundreds, no, thousands of meteors burning down through the sky. All of them at different angles and in many different directions. “What are those?” I asked with a glance at the Angel. “It looks like a movie version of an alien invasion.” But then I realized I had no idea what a movie was.

“I told my planet how three humans here saved me, and how all three gave their lives to restore me. My planet refused to send any more help because of the way we were shot down. But now they have sent more Angels. Smaller ones, but they are just as capable as I am. We will find and heal as many of you humans as we can. We cannot let this civilization die.”

“You said I’ll never die.”

The Angel rose up again. It paused there, far above my head, and said, “Never permanently. We can­not allow it. No human will ever be allowed to die again.”

I watched it fly up and away. I watched it fly until it was just a dot among thousands of black dots pep­pering the sky. “Bye, Ralph,” I said. “I mean Angel.”

“Thank you,” the words spoke in my mind. It was like telepathy, but I knew it was the memory, the Soul, that Angel had put into my brain.

“You are the only human on Earth that can call me Ralph.”

“Oh,” I said. “But now you’re called Angel.” But this time there was no answer.

I had a long way to walk, I knew. I now felt healthy and young enough to walk all the way west. And if no one was alive there then up north and even up to where it snowed if that became necessary. “How about that,” I said and smiled. Then, oddly, I missed the wife I couldn’t remember and the kids I never knew. It was like remembering and being sad about shadows. Imagine that, me getting to live forever and them dead. Whoever they were.

I ran to the top of the hill, and it felt good to run. I wasn’t breathing hard at all. In the distance I could see a road, wavering water-like in the heat. How could I know that was a road? I felt as if I could run all the way down to it.

Off to my left a rattlesnake rattled harshly on a distant flattened boulder. I watched it rattle its alarm for me to come no closer and realized that the snake and I shared something. Neither of us had a name.

“Unless,” I said to the snake, “I call myself Rattle. Then we will both share a name.”

The snake stopped rattling and curled on the warm rock. It scales glistened beige-green.

I started down the hill and onward toward the road. “Rattle,” I said as I walked. “A good name.”

The air was hot and dry, no wind, not a speck, not a cloud in the Angel-dotted sky. Silent, not even the distant yapping of coyotes. Silent except for the crunching of my steps, one after the other —forever.