I stopped, surprised. “You’re taking a mobile Grid interface?”

She nodded. “Sabin said he’d get me one.”

I began stroking her hair again. “Do you want us to keep in touch, Abby?”

She leaned toward me and touched her soft lips to mine. “Yes, Creighton, I do.”

49

Abby left early to go to Sabin’s. When she arrived, a small group had already assembled in his living room. Sabin introduced her to the gathering and served refreshments while people got acquainted. The experience felt so different to her than the dinner party at Lauren’s, which now seemed eons ago.

The group finally quieted and turned its attention to Abby. Her eyes met Sabin’s, and she smiled, then turned to the group. “I’m not sure where to start. In the jungle the whole village used to get together every evening. There was no outside entertainment, of course, so we would tell stories and laugh and talk about the day. They were all believers in Jesus, and—” She stopped.

Sabin leaned forward. “What is it?”

“I just realized something. All the time I was in the jungle, I felt like even though we were all believers in Jesus, we never had a real church. I’d hear my parents talk about what their church was like in the States, and I’d think, ‘We don’t have a building or clergy or anyone who stands up and gives a sermon.’” She thought for a moment. “But the church—the gathered ones, as they called it in the New Testament—is just a group of people joined to Jesus, getting together to share his life. He is the head. We are led by him.”

She looked around the group. “This, the way we are right now, is how believers in Jesus met in the New Testament. They didn’t have all that other stuff. They just had Jesus living in them. His life flowing among us—that’s what he wants.” She looked back at Sabin. “I’m sorry. I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s just start with Jesus, shall we?”

Midmorning I went to the university. I wasn’t looking forward to a day alone at my office. I dawdled about with various administrative tasks and communications that had accumulated during my absence. I glanced over the syllabuses for the courses I’d be teaching. I already had lectures prepared for one; the other class was new. With my new brain it only took an hour to complete lesson prep for half the term.

I finally decided to tackle something I’d been putting off: checking Cleary’s memory stream. I was twenty-four hours late to the task. I simply didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to return to the scene of Cleary’s memories—the remnants of a man whose existence I’d conspired to erase.