He thought about it, wondering again, as he had for months, who he really was. “I’m nobody,” he said. “Just a face in the crowd.” He paused, just a moment, then looked at her squarely. “Do you know where I can find the dealer your business manager buys from?”
“Yeah,” said the girl, tapping the ashes from her cigarette. “Yeah, I think I can help you out.”
38
Wednesday, August 22
8:00 P.M.
The Amber Sykes Show
114 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
“Hi, everyone!”
The audience cheered, and Amber Sykes waved back enthusiastically.
“Welcome to the show!” said Amber. The audience continued cheering, egged on by large signs just off camera, and slowly quieted as the signs dimmed. “We’ve got another great lineup for you today, starting with the guest that everybody’s been wanting to hear from, possibly the most controversial figure in America—maybe the world—please welcome Guru Kuvam.”
The crowd cheered: not everyone could book a guest like Kuvam, but Amber wasn’t just anyone. She’d gone from fluff reporter to talk show host in record time, thanks mostly to her ReBirth launch coverage, and eventually Kuvam had actually approached her about being a guest. Amber walked to the side of the stage and shook the Guru’s hand as he entered—a tall man, lanky but powerful, clad as always in distinctly nonstandard clothing. Today it was a Peruvian serape, thick and wooly and brightly colored. His shirt and pants were loose beneath it, simple and unadorned. His feet were sandaled. He embraced Amber, kissing her on the forehead, and the young host was quick enough to milk her momentary shock into a laugh from the audience. She led the man to the couches in the middle of the stage, and when he sat he crossed his legs, yoga-style, on the center cushion. Amber sat on the other couch.
“Welcome to the show.” She gestured at his crossed legs. “Make yourself comfortable.”
“The lotus pose helps energy flow unimpeded through my central core.”
“That’s … exactly what my yoga instructor keeps telling me,” said Amber. “Now. Can I start with the big thing first?”
He smiled knowingly. “Everybody does.”
“You’re dead.”
The audience laughed at that one. They’d heard the explanations before—it had been weeks, after all—but Amber wasn’t a news anchor, and this was not an in-depth interview. Her frankness, that vague sense that she was somehow out of her depth, was what made her show unique. She was playing it well, and her producers loved every minute.
“There is no death,” said Kuvam. “I was shot, I left, and I returned.”
“So there is death,” said Amber, “it’s just that yours didn’t last very long.”
“Is death not defined by its permanence?” asked Kuvam. “It is an ending—of consciousness, of thought, of metabolic function. But no longer. Now endings, too, have ended, and there is nothing left but everything. Life and light.”
Amber hesitated just a moment in her answer, shooting a sidelong glance at the audience. “But I guess—and this is probably the second-most obvious question—but I guess that this is probably just ReBirth, right?”
“That’s what I said.”
“I’m talking about the lotion,” said Amber, “not the … metaphysical principle. You’re not the real Kuvam, you’re a friend or a follower or something, who took his DNA and made yourself into a copy of him. Right?”
“Again,” Kuvam intoned, “that’s what I said. You speak of ReBirth, the trademark, as if it were different from the spiritual rebirth of a human spirit. The life that flows through us, as a species, is connected. I am Kuvam; I was Kuvam; I have always been Kuvam. The body I inhabit is but a single facet of who I am and who, by extension, we all are. A single organism, not just human but encompassing all life. Eternal life.”
“But it’s eternal life as someone else,” said Amber. “Whoever you were before you were Kuvam, that’s not who you are anymore. Right? Not everybody wants that.”
“Do you want to die?”
The Internet picked up that sound bite almost immediately; before the next commercial break it had already become a meme: “Kuvam Threatens X,” insert your favorite movie/celebrity/politician/animal here. Amber, for her part, stumbled only a moment before responding.
“Not … anytime soon.”
“But eventually, then, you want to die? You choose death?”
“My lawyers are going to run us both ragged with this,” said Amber, visibly shaken, “so let’s just clear the air right now and say, for the record, that you’re not actually threatening my life?”
“There is no threat but impermanence,” said Kuvam, “and your own desperate need to cling to an identity you can’t maintain. Humans age. Skin sags. Muscles and brains atrophy. You will never again be the person you are right now, in this moment, and yet you boldly choose to die rather than give it up.”
“That’s…” Amber stumbled over her words, overbalanced by the Guru’s sudden swerve. Her producers shook their heads, screaming counterattacks and advice into her earpiece, which only confused her further.
“Who are we?” asked Kuvam, looking now not at Amber but at her audience, at the camera that broadcast his face to millions of homes and computers and phones across the world. “Do you know who you are? Do you know what makes you you? We are the ships of Theseus, broken and repaired in an endless cycle. Does your body persist? Every molecule in it, every cell, is different from the molecules and cells that constructed it at your birth. Are you still the same person? ‘Through my mind,’ you say, but does your mind persist? Your memories ebb and flow like the tide—you have lost more of your mind than you can ever regain. Are you still the same person? ‘Through my soul,’ then, that ethereal anchor that never changes and never dies: God’s serial number to mark you at the gates of heaven. Is that truly all you are? If you are less, then what does it matter? If you are more, then what more? You are not your clothes, your car, your bank account, your youth. Your body will age, your face will fade, your friends will leave; there is nothing of you that remains but the memories of others and even those, too, will disappear like mist in flame. What are you clinging to? Why do you resist the inevitable? The earth has offered you no choice but oblivion, and we as a species have filled that void with hollow dreams, but ReBirth has changed everything. True immortality—not spiritual immortality, not post-mortal immortality, but the literal continuance of your physical, tangible life. It is the great revolution of the soul, our chance to throw off our chains, to break out from the chrysalis of earthbound dust and become more than we ever dreamed—”
“It’s time to break for a commercial,” said Amber, jumping in as the stage manager cut Kuvam’s microphone feed. Her voice wavered. “But stay tuned because my next guess is going to blow your socks off: a female lawyer who used ReBirth to turn herself into a man, applied for a new job at the same company, and is now earning twice what she made before.” She smiled hollowly at the camera. “Coming up next on Amber Sykes.”
39
Saturday, August 25
10:08 P.M.
Somewhere in New Jersey
