She explained that she ordered it from a manufacturer, who delivered it to a storage facility, and then she drove it in a rented U-Haul to the church in the middle of the night, with the group acting as movers.
“It’s taken my whole inheritance and savings to afford the building, plus the equipment—which cost thirty thousand dollars alone. Then there are the salaries of Sam, Patrick, and Ian, and I also pay five thousand dollars in cash to each woman who donates. Basically, I’m working at a huge loss. But, of course, it’s worth it.”
Trent squinted down the deserted street. His reporter’s curiosity had kicked into high gear. “How do you account for that huge loss of money to the IRS? Besides the investment in your cousin’s company for the church?”
Arianna nodded. “It’s an important question, and one that bothered me for months before this whole operation began. But I think I managed to get around it. Back in February, I took a trip to Europe and seemed to spend a fortune on MS treatments that I supposedly couldn’t find in the U.S. Actually, I put that money in a Swiss bank account, even though the U.S. government thought I spent it. Then I used it to buy the lab equipment. And that’s the cash I’m using to pay the scientists and the women who donate.”
Trent nodded. “So you thought everything out.”
“I had to. It would be too risky if the IRS could trace my money.”
They stood in silence for a moment.
“Talk about reclaiming your life,” Trent said. “You’re exhausting every resource you have.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
He nodded, thinking of the seemingly inanimate flasks. It might be tempting to choose your own life over those, he thought, but not if the cost was mass infanticide. Such a horror could never be justified; and how could she pretend it was? But then again, were five-day-old embryos really—really—the same as human babies? The Church said so, but how good was its track record with truth?
Suddenly a bothersome memory hit him.
“Wait, didn’t you say when we were at your apartment that you were going to church to practice religion?”
“I said to practice my religion,” she corrected. “That of furthering and bettering human life here on earth.”
He suppressed the words he itched to retort: When does human life begin? It did not seem like the type of question that could have an ambiguous answer. He thought again of what the Church said: Life began at conception. It seemed as straightforward as basic math.
Wasn’t it? He had never thought to question it, but now everything he had learned there seemed subject to scrutiny. Yet what other answer was there? Life began at conception. It seemed like wondering about the shortest distance between two points. He studied Arianna’s calm face and considered asking her, but thought better of it.
Instead, he vowed to research it the only way he knew how—on the Internet—as soon as he could. If anything was clear, it was that he had to be completely confident of the answer; for without certainty on this point, he could not move forward.
An unsettling twinge pulled him back to the moment. Something was still bothering him about their night in her apartment.
“But what about the Sistine Chapel?” he demanded. “The painting on your wall? Why would you have that if you weren’t actually religious?”
She laughed. “You have an eye for details, don’t you? Michelangelo’s work is inspirational to me because it conveys the same sense I have about the beauty of life, in a way that has nothing to do with religion.”
“Oh.” He watched the puff of his own breath disperse.
Arianna leaned against his chest, rubbing her arms. “Got everything straight so we can go home? I’m freezing.”
Everything, he thought, except the main thing.
It was a question he could not answer with any degree of conviction, and the only question that mattered.
* * *
Trent lay across his bed, racked by the thoughts rolling through his mind: I’m destined to murder. Whatever I do, I’m going to help kill embryos or help kill her. Somehow, somewhere, there had been a terrible mistake.
The clarity he had so briefly enjoyed in the museum was like a distant light overshadowed by a hailstorm. He pictured telling Dopp.
I know everything, he would say. Somehow, his mouth—a traitor to his heart—would form the words: You were right.
Dopp’s face would light up with all the triumph of an innocent prisoner finally exonerated. I knew it! he would shout. Perhaps he would pump a fist or, in a moment of feverish excitement, throw his arms around Trent. Then the police would be called and they would all converge in the alley, force their way past the steel door if necessary, and storm the underground lab. What if Arianna was there when it happened? Trent pictured her face, frozen in shock at his betrayal, and at the realization that she was going to die in jail.
He moaned. He could not bring himself to do it, not until he had answered the question once and for all: When does human life begin? It seemed impossible to imagine a truth different from the one he had always accepted.
He lifted his laptop onto his thighs and typed the critical question into a search engine. A list of websites popped up: godnet.com, prolife.net, christiansunited.org, humansforhumans.com, alllife.com. The list was endless. He clicked the first site, knowing what it would say.
“The fusion of an egg and sperm marks the beginning of a new life with a unique genetic map never before created,” read a statement posted on the site’s homepage. “This is an inarguable fact, and, as such, God endows each embryo with all the dignity and the sacredness of every human being on earth.”
Trent opened the next site.
The moment of conception marks the exact moment of personhood and of the human body, which God injects with a soul. You are no different in your later incarnation than you were at that very moment. Therefore, unborn babies have
