Chapter III, pt. iv - Interlude

Make the world go away. How could you sleep, perchance to dream, when you know you are asleep roughly a third of the time and awake roughly two thirds of the time and you are dead most of the time and you are born some of the time?
It didn’t affect her the same way it did him.
“It,” she said, “it’s like a drug.”
“Did,” he said, “did I say that…?”
“…Or did you say that?” she said.
How could you sleep when you’ve got six billion voices in your head …
“… and most of them have nothing to say?” she said.
“How?” he said.
The birds began their morning reveille.
“Soon,” he said, “the sun will be in our faces…”
“…and we’ll be asleep,” she finished.

The Godhead spoke.
And so it was that he was not born from man as all others, man from man, but from science, man from science. First, he was one cell, then two, then four, then eight, and on and on, until he was enough cells that the mass became aware of itself. He popped into existence in a test tube.
From then on, the process sped up exponentially, until he had bodily achieved thirty years of growth in only three days.
He was born again, from the blood, and come in to life for the first time.
The memories of the true Adam had been imprinted on the DNA and passed to this new born man, made in the image of the one who donated the material of life.

The original Adam, the perfect being, the one who could see through the motivations and deceptions of others now spoke to him. He who was spoken to was not a forgery, or an imitation, but a new Adam, and the first of his kind. A Test Tube Man, born not of physical union, but of a new technology and a new kind of morality. He was Miracle Man, a man come from death and nothingness, into existence. An extra person, an extra soul come to earth that was not accounted for in the divine plan. He was the Dead Man, a body without a soul. His life was truly a gift, and with it came a larger responsibility.
Why was he given this gift?
What was this responsibility?
He saw his death, the death of the original Adam.
He saw his birth, the moment of self awareness of the new Adam.
He saw his life, his memories, and he saw that they were not his own.
Was it all just a dream?
Am I dreaming?

Leah was reinvigorated, energized, but something fundamental about the experience of oneness was lost on her. He could see it. He could see it on her face and he could see it in her mind. She was changed, sure, but not in the way that he was.
He just laid there.
“It’s two o’clock,” she said, “time to get up.”
The sun shone onto the bed through the blinds.
“Every time I move,” he said, “an earthquake splits the land.”
She rubbed her eyes, too tired to wade through the mysteries of his thoughts. She wasn’t tired of what he had to say or what he had to show her, it’s just her mind didn’t work so fast when she woke up.
“It’s late,” he said, “I’ve got to get going.”
“Stop that,” she said, “I hate when you do that.”
She kissed him on the forehead, rolled out of bed and got dressed.
“Yeah, I’ll be fine here,” he said, preemptively answering her question.
With a kind of uncertainty she kissed him once more and hurried out the door. He hadn’t moved a muscle except to speak.