NOTE: I'm not a big believer in trigger warnings, but I'll issue one here. There is an ugly memory in this chapter. It's from Marvin's childhood before he met Tom. I've put a row of asterisks (***) on either side of the paragraphs. If you're sensitive, skip those. You'll still know what happened, but you won't have read the ugliness. I did not write these paragraphs without purpose. They are NOT gratuitous. If they weren't important, I would have left them out. The decision is yours whether you read them or not.
Grim Memories
We climbed the steps from the platform up to the main concourse of Union Station in Washington DC. Lac was amazed by the grand space. “It looks almost the same as the one in Philly.”
I explained some of the history as I remembered it. “They were all built by the Pennsylvania Railroad back in the eighteen hundreds. From the late eighteen hundreds to the early nineteen hundreds there was this idea of cathedrals of industry. All the major industrial buildings were built grandly; train stations, power plants, factories. I read an article once where the author talked about how people at that time were moving away from their faith in God to a new faith in technology. Buildings like this were created to worship at the altar of iron and steam instead of humility and devotion.”
Lac pointed to the far end of the concourse where a fifteen-foot-tall Art Deco angel sculpture stood with its wings folded to its back. “Is that the god?”
“That’s exactly what I’m talking about. It’s called the Spirit of Transportation. The big bronze bas-relief in 30th Street station is the same deity. They tried to say that the technology was a gift from the Almighty, and therefore our development of it was according to the Glory of God, but that was all a lie. The people built the trains and connected the cities. They also built these cathedrals to worship their own achievements to the glory of themselves, not to God.”
Lac waved a dismissive hand in the air. “Sounds like Tower of Babel stuff.”
I was surprised by his observation. I didn’t think he was particularly well read. “Lacas, I’m shocked. Was that a Bible reference?”
He laughed as we left the station and paused to let our eyes adjust to the mid-morning sunshine. “Don’t be too impressed. I knew a little about Babel from my elementary education, but there was a historical epic that came out a bunch of years ago. It was one of those post-apocalyptic dramas set in the early two-thousands when the world was going crazy. The series was called ‘Babel,’ and it was about what might have happened if all the technology of the time collapsed at once.”
“It almost happened.” I said to myself. I didn’t say it aloud because I planned to tell the story once we arrived at our destination. Instead, I smiled at Lac’s honesty. I was happy that he admitted to not knowing something. Too many men would have allowed me to think they were smarter or better read than they were. Lac had no artifice about him. He was exactly as he appeared to be. I found him refreshing.
“Have you ever been to DC?”
“Never. I haven’t traveled much. My whole family is in Pennsylvania, so I always stayed close to home. I flew to Chicago once for an exposition of scientific glass from all over the world. The last company I worked for had a booth to display their wares and I had to go to help man it. That was a long time ago. Traveling by train is great. Much better than flying.”
I agreed and pointed to the south through Columbus Circle and straight along a wide avenue toward the Capitol Building. “There’s the real Tower of Babel; the old United States Congress.”
Lac sighted along my arm until his eyes came to rest on the massive Greek revival building. He didn’t have much to say about it. “Huh.”
“The dome is cast iron.”
“How do you know?”
“I was here on a field trip with school in 1997. We toured all the important buildings along the National Mall. We saw The Capitol, the Washington Monument, and the Lincoln Memorial.”
“In 1997?” He asked incredulously. “You were here five hundred and twenty-eight years ago. After all that time, you still remember the Capitol dome is made of cast iron. How the hell does that make sense?”
I reached for Lac’s hand, but he pulled away from me. “NO! None of that now. Just tell me.”
I didn’t understand his objection to holding my hand. “What?”
“I don’t want to see any memories, not yet anyway. Just answer my question.”
It was my turn to laugh, this time at Lac’s misunderstanding. “I’m not trying to show you anything. I just want to get moving. I noticed that when you’re confused or upset you tend to plant yourself. When I feel that way, I want to move. I’m happy to answer your question, but I’d like to walk while I do it. There’s a lot you need to see.”
He took my hand. We walked across Columbus Circle and directly south. Our route would take us between The Supreme Court building and the back of The Capitol to our destination at the Thomas Jefferson Library of Congress. I explained about my memory as we went.
“When I was downloaded into The System in 2007, the entirety of my memories were digitized. The memories I made from 2007 to 2053 all happened within The System. Those were stored just like any other data would be. Every night while I sleep, my implant connects with my digital self in The System to share my experiences from that day. While I don’t walk around with five hundred years of memories in my physical brain, I have ready access to everything I’ve ever done.
“My implant and my relationship with The System makes accessing the information intuitive. It’s almost like a search engine from the days when The System was known as the internet. No matter what I’m doing, my implant works to make the relevant memories available. Since we were coming to DC today, it retrieved all the knowledge I have of this place, including the fact that the Capitol Dome is made of iron.”
“I don’t understand.” Lac said, like the statement was an oft-repeated refrain from an ancient church hymn. “You said you connect at night, but you have access to the memories now as well?”
I tried to clarify even though the concepts were difficult to verbalize. I pressed my hands to my chest to emphasize my physical self over the digital one. “Even this version of me is part of The System. The body I live in was grown in a lab from my original DNA. It was created as an empty vessel for me to inhabit. Just like my consciousness was downloaded into The System from my original body, a fragment of my consciousness was downloaded from The System to this body in order to animate it. My implant facilitates the transfer of information between my physical brain and the data of my consciousness. When I’m awake and dealing with the world, I don’t have the mental capacity to maintain a full connection. The connection becomes superficial, a program running in the background. I can only connect completely when I’m unconscious.”
Lac nodded that he understood, but his face remained scrunched like he wasn’t completely sure. I shrugged helplessly because I didn’t know how else to explain it. Luckily, I didn’t have time to try again because we’d arrived at our destination, The Library of Congress.
The edifice was a great box of grey stone that was ornamented with columns and other Roman-inspired gingerbread. The upper-floor windows echoed the White House with alternating arched and pointed lintels. It had a flat roof with a railing around the top, like people should be allowed to stand up there to experience the view, though the railing was nothing more than decoration.
I climbed the grand outdoor staircase to the first level and walked around behind the upper staircase to a plain metal door with a security scanner next to it. I put my hand on the scanner for it to read my palm. The security system made a neutral-sounding beep, and a tiny aperture opened above the palm scanner. I held my right eye to the aperture. It scanned my retina and made another beep. A lock clicked and I pushed the door open.
A concrete staircase led down into the dark. I flipped an old-fashioned light switch and waited. Fluorescent fixtures that were mounted to the wall flickered to life and cast an eerie bluish-white glow onto the grey concrete. I started down the steps.
Lac balked at the top of them. “Where the hell are you taking me?”
“Into the distant past.”
Lac raised his eyes to the blue sky and had a long look like it might be the last time he’d ever see it. He took a deep breath and followed me down. The security door clanged shut behind him. “You always take me to the nicest places.” He teased to lighten the mood.
I tried to explain why the facility was where it was. “After World War Two there were two philosophies of government and economics in the world. The west was capitalist and democratic. The east was communist and authoritarian. Neither power was willing to peacefully coexist with the other. Each treated the other like it was an existential threat. Because the powers had just come through a global conflict, neither was in a position to fight an open war for dominance. Instead, they settled into what became known as The Cold War. That period of global tension lasted for fifty-years, from the late 1940s until the fall of the Soviet Union. The fall took almost a decade to happen. It started in the late 1980s and went through the 1990s.
“During the time of The Cold War, each power built offensive and defensive systems. The nuclear missile system that the hackers were trying to take control of was a part of the offense. The tunnels we’re about to enter were part of the defense. All through the fifties and sixties, there was real fear that the Russians would try to destroy the United States with a preemptive nuclear strike. Vast amounts of money were spent on shelters to protect the government from the possibility of annihilation. A huge amount of Washington DC was excavated, and bunkers were built. These were to protect the people and the apparatus of government. The shelters were constructed beneath all the major government buildings and connected by a maze of tunnels.
“Once the USSR dissolved, there was no more need for these shelters. The government maintained them for a while but soon sought for another use. Because they are deep underground, they tend to stay cool. There is also plentiful water available from the nearby Potomac River. The solution for the shelters and tunnels was to fill them with machines.”
I reached the bottom of the steps and moved along a concrete corridor. I stopped at a plain steel door and pushed it open. Inside was a huge facility filled with nothing but the whispering sound of solid-state electronics and the soft gurgle of circulating cooling water. I turned another light switch on. More fluorescent tubes flickered to life. Before us was row upon row of computer servers; so many that the racks stretched beyond where we could easily see. I held my hand out to the space. “Welcome to The System.”
Lac stepped over the threshold and peered between the rows. “It doesn’t look like much, does it?”
“It isn’t much in the realm of physical reality. A computer server is just a thing, a collection of wires and diodes and silicon chips. Only when they are brought together in a facility like this one do they become more. You’re looking at the storage capacity for quadrillions of bytes of data and more processing power than I have words for. When you reduce it to its most basic building blocks, all of it is just ones and zeros. There is an entire universe inside these machines, but none of it with anymore intelligence than a poorly behaved two-year-old.”
“Why a two-year-old?” Lac asked with a sidewards glance.
“Do you know any two-year-olds?”
“Sure, I have a cousin who’s got a two-year-old.”
“They’re awful, aren’t they?”
Lac turned bodily to face me. “She’s not awful! She’s cute.”
He misunderstood, so I tried to clarify. “I’m sure she’s cute. The point I’m making is that a two-year-old is an awful human being. They’re not socialized yet. They’re selfish and they scream whenever they want something. They can’t moderate their emotions. They can’t play with others. They’re howling little balls of need.”
Lac shrugged like he still didn’t see my point. “She’s two.”
“Right, she’s two. As compared to a fully formed functional person, she’s a terror. As compared to other two-year-olds, she’s right where she needs to be. I wasn’t attacking your cousin’s kid. I was making an observation that computers, with their inability to reason, are very like two-year-olds.”
“I get what you’re saying, but my experience with The System is different. I use the artificial intelligence feature all the time. It helps me with restaurant suggestions and shopping lists. I’ve used it to plan get-togethers with friends. It seems smart enough.”
I shook my head. “What you’re calling ‘intelligence’ is really just monkey see, monkey do. The machine has immense processing power and speed. It tracks the patterns in your behavior and suggests things that fall within the pattern. It also has access to massive amounts of information. Because of all the data it has available, it can seem intelligent, but it will never have a new idea. The only thing it can do is regurgitate information based on algorithmic formulae.”
Lac stared into the server racks while he chewed over what I told him. I could tell he was surprised by it. “I always thought the machine had its own intelligence. I never realized it was an illusion.”
“That’s good. Calling it an illusion is exactly right. It’s like a man who is book smart, but who has no common sense. He might be able to design a skyscraper, but if he tried to manage its construction, he wouldn’t be able to mediate an argument between the builders. The former task only requires information and calculation. The latter requires creativity and people skills.” I beckoned Lac out of the server room and back into the corridor. I shut the lights out and closed the door. “Let’s go to the lab. That’s where both the problem and the solution came about.”
We walked along the corridor, deeper into the facility. The atmosphere was stale because very little fresh air was ever brought into the facility. The heating and cooling systems were built to serve the machines, not the humans who tended them. Since the machines only needed to be kept cool, the air was recirculated until it smelled like an exhalation from a corpse. Beneath the staleness was the faint metallic tang of electricity. The facility consumed tons of it, enough to power a medium-sized city.
In spite of the ravenous hunger the facility had for power, or perhaps because of it, every space within was still lit with ancient fluorescent lights. The government installed them when the tunnels and shelters were converted to data centers. They also bought enough spares to fill a warehouse, so even though the technology had long been surpassed by more than a dozen other technologies, there were still plenty of five-hundred-year-old ‘new’ parts on hand to fix what was there.
The lights buzzed and cast ugly bluish light on everything. Even Lac’s permanently tan skin looked washed out and blotchy. As pale as I was in good light, I must have looked like an apparition under the glow of the flickering tubes.
Lac seemed uneasy because of the distance we traveled underground. “You said these tunnels went under all the buildings. Couldn’t we have gotten to where we’re going on the surface?”
I shook my head even though I felt that Lac’s eyes were not on me. “The building that once existed over top of the lab is gone. It was demolished in the early twenty-third century when the governments of North America merged and relocated away from Washington. Many of the entrances to this place have been sealed to restrict access. The computer systems don’t need the amount of service they used to. Back when this facility was first built and brought online, it would have taken a small army of technicians to maintain it. For the last hundred years or so, the systems have been largely self-sufficient. I’d be surprised if someone visits more often than once a month.”
“What does that mean?”
I realized I hadn’t drawn a conclusion from my recitation of facts. I tried to complete my thought. “It means that frequent access points are not needed. In fact, the more difficult it is to get in here, the better for the security of the facility. The machines can’t defend themselves and there are still people who would like to harm this place.
“There are a couple militant factions of Luddites who would like to destroy all technology and return to an agrarian society. Also, in spite of my digital self’s best efforts, there are some terrorist groups who would like to plunge our government into a technological blackout. They don’t realize that The System cannot be destroyed just by destroying this facility. It would take the coordinated destruction of at least five facilities just like this one even to reduce the processing power enough to hamper day-to-day operations. The fact they’re ignorant of that is by design.”
“Who’s design?”
“Mine. My consciousness exists on these servers. If they and the others like them are destroyed, my long life would end. I don’t always like my situation. There have been times when I wished for death, but I don’t want to be murdered by terrorists either. As long as I’m alive, I can work to make the world a better place. Once I’m dead, all that ends.”
Lac put his hand on my shoulder to stop me. I guessed my words had struck a nerve of some kind. “You don’t want to be murdered.” He said like the statement was a question.
“Of course not.”
“What about all the people you killed in your original life? Do you think they wanted to be murdered?”
I’d been expecting the question since I admitted to my former occupation, but I hoped it would come later, after I had a chance to explain more about myself and how I got my endless life. “Why are you bringing this up now?” I asked in frustration.
“Last night, I managed to convince myself that you were right to do what you did. I saw the details of the crimes the man in Las Vegas committed. He hurt so many children. I believed you were right to stop him. I felt the same about Tom’s father. He was a terrible person, and he deserved to be punished, but I can’t reconcile myself to his murder. The more I think about it, the more it seems wrong. It may be expedient to take bad people out of society like pulling weeds from a garden, but it leads to a dangerous place. Murder and mayhem can’t be the solution. They just can’t be.”
“Alright, Lacas, I knew we’d wind up here eventually. I hoped we could talk about this later, but I see how important it is to you. I suppose we can deal with it now.” I leaned against the smutty concrete wall and crossed my arms over my chest. I deliberately planted myself so I wouldn’t pace while I talked. I lowered my eyes to the floor. “Ask your questions. When you’re finished, I’ll fill in the rest. You’ve got the right to know.”
Lac crossed his arms to match mine. He leaned on the wall opposite me. “How many?”
“Eighty-seven.”
He gasped but didn’t say anything. The silence drew out. It sliced through the passing time like a knife. I felt Lac’s eyes upon me, but I refused to look at him. I didn’t want to see the judgement on his face. I kept waiting until he broke the silence. “I don’t understand.”
I heaved a breath and blew it out. I had an idea of how to explain, but I hesitated. The only way I’d be able to make him see would be to share a memory. The memory was brutal. I didn’t want him to see if there was no chance of us remaining together. I left the decision to him.
“I love you, and I don’t want to hurt you, but I also don’t want to lose you. If there is a chance that you can accept the things that I’ve done, then I’ll offer an explanation in the form of a memory. It’s an awful memory. I don’t want to show it to you, but it’s the only way I know to try to make you understand. If the number I just gave you is an insurmountable obstacle between us, then you should save yourself the nightmare of enduring it.” I pointed along the corridor toward the Library of Congress. “The exit is back that way. If there is no way you could ever offer me forbearance for the things that I’ve done, then you should leave me here.”
I heard Lac shift his feet on the concrete floor. I didn’t look up to see if he’d changed positions or just made himself more comfortable. “You’ve told me to go three times now. Why? Don’t you care about this relationship?”
“Of course I care, but I won’t beg. I don’t want you to stay because you feel bad for the sad little boy that I used to be. That’s not a foundation for a lasting relationship. I want you to stay because you want to stay. You either have to accept me and everything I am and everything I’ve done, or you must leave.”
“What will you do if I leave?”
“I’ll cry, probably for a long time. Eventually, I’ll go home. When I get there, I’ll gather your things from the house, and I’ll send them back to you at the glass shop. Then I’ll cry again. Eventually the wound in my soul will scab over and I’ll move on with my life. What other choice would I have? I can’t undo what I’ve done, and I can’t force you to love me in spite of it. I would hope the fact that I’ve been honest about my past should count in my favor, but you have to decide.”
Lac crossed the hall to stand directly in front of me. He put his thick fingers under my chin and tilted my head back until our eyes met. “Yesterday, you said you were unrepentant. Are you?”
I shook my head. “I said that because I was mad. I was angry with you for judging me. I guess I was angry because you called me out on something about myself that I don’t like.”
Lac took his hand from my chin and held it out to me. “I’ll go with you. Whatever you have to show me, I’ll endure it.”
I didn’t take his hand right away. I lowered myself to sit on the dirty concrete floor and patted the ground next to me. “You should sit.” He sat and offered his hand again. I took it. “I’m sorry for this. I wish there was another way, but I don’t know it.”
“I’ll be alright.”
“I hope so.” I connected my implant to his and shared the memory. I shared it so he and I could watch the scene from the past and neither of us had to live it. Watching would be hard enough.
I was seven years old. It was late October. Most kids would be looking forward to Halloween and all the candy they’d get from Trick-or-Treating. I didn’t look forward to any of that. I barely understood what it was. The weather was cold. It had been raining, and I was soaked. I didn’t have a coat or an umbrella. I’d been walking for hours because I didn’t want to go home. The woman had sent me out on a delivery. I did my job. I brought the baggie of crack to the right place, but the man who took it from me didn’t give me any money. I knew the woman would be upset. I didn’t want to go home because she would beat me, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go.
Eventually, I got so cold, I was afraid if I stayed on the street I’d die. I was afraid of the woman too, but I didn’t see any choice. I went home. She screamed at me for being late. When I told her I didn’t get any money, she stopped screaming and did what I knew she would.
She took off her shoe and turned it around so she could hit me with the heel. She smashed my face with it. When I put my hands up to protect myself, she shrieked for me to put them down. I lowered my hands.
She smashed my face with the heel of her shoe over and over until blood ran from my mouth and nose, and until my face was swollen and bruised. I got lightheaded from the beating and fell. She leaned over and kept hitting my body, my stomach and my back and my legs. She was so much bigger than me, and I didn’t have any flesh to absorb the hits. I felt every stroke all the way to my bones.
The man who was with her at the time tried to stop her. He saw the blood and said she was going too far. The woman threw her shoe across the room and booted me in the stomach with the other shoe. I retched and coughed. I didn’t vomit because there was nothing in my stomach. There hadn’t been for two days. As a final insult to my very real injury, the woman took a cigarette which had been burning in an ashtray and drew on it. When the ember was bright and as hot as it could get, she jerked my pants down and stubbed it out on my left ass cheek. The pain was blinding. I passed out from it.
When my seven-year-old self lost consciousness, I returned us to the present. I released Lac’s hand. He slouched like a child who had been punished for acting out. His shoulders were rolled in and his head hung down so far it was practically in his lap. He wept with miserable sobs.
Lac said something, but his voice broke, and the words didn’t form. He sniffed and cleared his throat and tried his voice again. “You were helpless. You were just a child, a little boy. She screamed at you like you were a cockroach from under the refrigerator. She just kept hitting you. It was like she enjoyed it.”
I agreed. “I think she did enjoy it.”
Lac finally raised his head to look at me. His face was wet with tears. “How could she? How could anyone?”
“It would be easy for me to tell you that she was an evil person and leave it there, but I don’t think anyone starts off that way. Once upon a time, she was a little girl, an innocent. Someone made her the way she was. Someone used their own hatred to fill her with hatred. I would pity her, except she learned the wrong lesson from the brutality she must have suffered. In response to the monstrous treatment she received, she became a monster. She let evil fill her. She embraced it until she was irredeemable.”
“Is that your argument, that she was evil?” Lac sniffed and wiped his face. “What gives you the right to decide who is irredeemable and who isn’t?”
“No one. I showed you that memory to provide context for the actions I took later. With her every action, the woman destroyed my innocence. She proved to my impressionable young mind that evil people will always be evil until someone stops them. Tom stopped her. He put a bullet in her brain right in front of my eyes, then he took me home to be his son. I loved my adopted father. He was the only father I ever knew. I thought Tom did the right thing. I thought I was doing the right thing. I thought my actions were right because a world with fewer evil people is a better world. I was wrong.”
“So, you’re not unrepentant?”
I shook my head. “It’s hard because when I was doing those things, I felt like a crusader. I thought I was a hero to every helpless person. I still believe that I saved people, but at what cost? As you said, what gives me the right to judge? Nothing.” I held my hands up like I was giving a sermon. “Judgement is mine, sayeth the Lord.” I let my hands drop and shrugged. “I don’t know how much we’re supposed to leave in God’s hands and how much we should handle ourselves. I don’t know what the right answer is. I know my solution was wrong and I paid for it. I’m still paying.”
“You paid? How?”
“That part comes later. As for this, I admit I was wrong. I admit that killing is wrong except in some very specific instances. I repent the lives I took when I worked for The Organization. I do not mourn the death of those people, because they were evil, but I regret that their deaths were caused by my hand. The only one I do not repent is the junkie who broke into the house. I killed him in self-defense.”
Lac played with his hands in his lap. “You keep me off balance, you know that? There’s so much more to you than meets the eye. The first time we met, I thought, ‘look at that cute little twink.’ When I saw you in the showroom with your eye up to that butt plug, I almost fell on the floor laughing. I was really attracted to you. My other boyfriends have all been big guys like me. I never paid any attention to anyone shorter than six feet. The way you played along with me in the shop that day really turned me on. That’s why I rushed to make your coffee pot, because I couldn’t wait to see you again.
“Since then, I’ve had a ton of fun with you. You stole my heart. You’re so kind. You cook for your dog. I never met anyone who did that. I thought, ‘here’s a guy who’d be a great dad.’ Then, I found out you want the same things I do; a big family, a peaceful life, and time to enjoy each other. I started to work out our future in my imagination. I assumed that I’d be the breadwinner, the protector, and you’d be the gentle nurturer who could raise our kids. Between yesterday and today, I found out how strong you really are and how ruthless you can be. You’re much tougher than I am. You’re more capable even though I’m physically stronger. I don’t know what to do with the things I’ve learned.”
I was honest with Lacas. I shared my own dreams for our relationship. “I never paid any attention to men bigger than me. I also never considered anyone with a kink. In spite of our physical differences, I think we match very well. I love being your small spoon. I love being able to retreat into your arms. You make me feel safe.”
Lac rubbed his palms on his bare knees. “But…but you’ve done things I could never do. I don’t like to admit it, because it makes me feel like less of a man, but I’m jealous of your competence. In the memories you shared, you went into every situation without fear. When you and Tom were in the abandoned house, you tried to go in front of him. I would have been terrified. If it came down to a fight, I couldn’t protect you, you’d have to protect me.”
I took a risk and put my hand on top of Lac’s. He flinched, but he didn’t pull away. “It’s not about fighting. There’s so much more to the safety you give me. No one has offered me refuge since Tom. Every one of my spouses let me stand between them and the world. They took my strength for granted. You’re the first person who offered to be strong for me. You’re a man, Lac. You’re a big, strong, swaggering man. You work a sweaty hard job and you’re hairy and smelly. You’re unashamedly sexual. When you hold me close, when you pull me into your body and wrap me in your strength and your scent, I surrender to you. I give up all my strength and my vigilance. I release my cares because you’re there to protect me. I love that.”
“But, it’s an illusion.”
“No, it’s not. Everything you offer me is real. I surrender to you because of the strength of your resolve. I could teach you the rest. With as big and strong as you are, in three months I could make you unstoppable. I could never teach the force of will that you have, the willingness to protect those smaller than you, your natural leadership. Those things are exclusively yours. The rest is just technique.”
“Teach me? You mean, you can still do all those things?”
“The world is not as dangerous as it used to be, but it’s not completely safe either. I’ve trained each of my bodies to be as capable as my original one. I still train with weapons. I keep myself sharp to protect those I love. I don’t kill for a living like I used to, but if someone were to harm or threaten to harm one of my children, or my husband, I would end them.”
Lac turned his hand over to hold mine. I took comfort from its tight warmth. “It’s kind of scary to hear you talk like that, but it’s reassuring too. Would you really teach me? If we’re going to have a big family, I want to be able to protect them. I don’t want you to have to do that alone.”
“Are we going to have a family? Don’t offer me something and pull it away. Are you going to be able to deal with who and what I am? I’ll warn you just this once that I won’t stand for having my past thrown in my face whenever you decide to take issue with it. If you agree to have me, you must accept all of me, just as I must accept all of you. I don’t ask forgiveness for the things that I’ve done. I didn’t do them to you. I have not wronged you, so you cannot forgive me. As I said, I ask your forbearance. For us to go forward together, you must reconcile yourself to the fact that I did those things.”
Lac opened his hand, and I worried he was going to withdraw it from mine. Instead, he closed his grip even tighter. “You admitted your actions were wrong and said that you paid for them. Will you tell me how you paid? That will make a difference.”
I squeezed Lac’s hand back. “We’re not far away now. If you’re willing to keep going with me, I can show you.”
Lac stood and pulled me to my feet. He brushed his clothes off and slapped his hands together to scatter the dust. “I’m ready.”
We continued along the corridor.
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