“I’m sure they still are.”
I glance at Matt: He’s holding his jaw in his right hand, and his forehead is distorted and distressed. His dark eyes are clouded over like a rainstorm. He’s affected by these people he’s never met. Maybe it’s because of Audrey, or maybe he’s just empathetic in general, but Matt’s reaction makes me question my own. I have to be honest: For all the times I’ve logged on and researched the program, I haven’t often dwelled on the ones who died for real. In this moment I realize that I haven’t thought of them much at all.
Have I taken on some of Cassie’s robotic tendencies after living with her all these years? Or is it just my developing scientific mind that makes me look at the program so coolly? Or is it the program itself? By teaching me that death is optional, has the program desensitized me to
How will I react if Audrey dies?
Or should I say
Thrusting that morbid thought from my brain, I wave away the list. I hear Matt inhale next to me like he’s been holding his breath for a while. I consider logging off but decide to keep going since Matt seems so sucked in. I open the folder where they keep the files on all the victims: one for each, living or dead. They’re not numbered— they all start with F-339145, and then have a random letter after the program identifier—so it’s hard to tell which folder belongs to which person. Matt watches as I play a silent game of eeny, meeny, miny, moe.
When I open “moe,” I immediately recognize Mason’s handwriting. The page is dated December 5, 2001: the day of the bus crash.
Back when the program started, apparently God was paranoid about the Internet and made agents take notes on paper. Eventually, he got over his technophobia and had all of the paper files scanned in and then destroyed. But the handwritten notes are the most real. As I look at Mason’s harried scrawl, I actually
“Wow,” I murmur.
“What?” Matt asks.
“Nothing, it’s just the handwriting,” I say. “It’s Mason’s, and it looks so… crazy.”
Matt nods, but he still looks confused. I point at the date.
“This was the day of the crash,” I explain. “The agents had to take quick notes between patients. I’m sure it was chaotic. And it had to be so frustrating for them. Mason and the others were supposed to bring twenty-one people back to life with only a syringe, and that’s it.”
Matt lets my words sink in for a few seconds. “But if the drug didn’t work, they tried other ways to save you guys, too, right?” he asks.
“No, that’s the point,” I say. “To truly test the drug, they could
“But…” Matt’s words fade.
“Can you imagine being a doctor and knowing all these lifesaving techniques and not being able to use them?” I ask.
“Kind of like having a sister with cancer and knowing about a lifesaving drug that she can’t have,” Matt says, staring right at me.
“I guess so,” I say quietly.
“Sorry,” Matt says.
“Don’t apologize. You’re right.”
Matt steers the conversation back to the screen. Or rather, he looks at the notes and starts reading. Not really knowing what else to say, I read, too.
“Damn,” Matt says quietly, shaking his head.
“Sorry,” I say again. “I wanted to find one for someone who made it. I can’t really tell which file is for which kid.”
“What happened to her parents?” Matt asks, ignoring my apology. I swipe away the notes and open another file in Kelsey’s folder. It’s a signed oath. I close that and find the relo detail sheet: Mr. and Mrs. Stroud, who had no reason to go through a name change, now live in North Dakota. At last contact, in 2011, they were “functioning normally.”
Except that their daughter’s dead.
Matt doesn’t say anything more, so I open another folder. The first file is similar to the page of notes on Kelsey, but it’s for another bus kid, written by another agent.
“
“I know,” I say, quickly closing the file, then tapping the air to open another. Thankfully, it’s for someone who responded to Revive: Gavin Silva, now Gavin Villarreal. I exhale loudly as I move my hands to page through details of his Revival and relocation to New York.
“I know him,” I say. “He’s super cool.”
“Oh, yeah?” Matt says weakly. I can tell he needs to hear some good news as much as, if not more than, I do.
“Yeah,” I say. “Revive worked for a lot of us. It gave us life.”
I feel like I just walked out of a haunted house: My nerves are frayed and I’m post-stress tired. I pause to regroup. Then I try to explain to Matt the pros of the Revive program.
“So, this guy, Gavin, is twenty-two now,” I say in a measured tone. “You’d like him; he’s really funny. He’s in art school and he does these insane drawings. He sent me one for my birthday last year…. It’s that one of the face, in my room?”
“Yeah, I saw it.”
“Anyway, Gavin’s life is
