Jeremiah nodded. Brent was right. But as the moment got closer, and with the alcohol clouding his mind, he found his thoughts drifting in unexpected directions.

“Do you think the clone has a soul?” he asked after a moment.

“A soul? I think you’re asking the wrong guy. I don’t buy in to any of that stuff. But I guess he thinks he has a soul.”

“Is that enough, do you suppose? Just to think you have a soul?”

“I think it has to be enough,” Brent said. “For most people that’s all you get.”

“But does that make us human?”

“Maybe it does,” Brent said.

“I don’t know,” Jeremiah said, leaning back and closing his eyes. “It can’t be that simple. That clone’s not actually human. Just thinking he is doesn’t make it true. He’s just a copy.”

“Yes,” Brent said, “but he doesn’t know that. He thinks he’s you. So, whatever you feel, that’s what he feels, too. And all I’m saying is that, when you come right down to it, it’s the same thing. If he thinks he’s human, maybe he is.”

“Well,” Jeremiah said after some reflection, “he can believe anything he likes. Doesn’t make it true.”

“So,” Brent asked after a moment, “are you asking because you’re worried about your own immortal soul?”

Jeremiah pondered this for a moment. He remembered a time when he was very young, six or seven at most, and his mother found him in the backyard running hose water into an anthill and laughing as he did it. He’d felt a certain giddiness in watching that hole flood and all the ants come scurrying out, most of them only to drown where they stood. His mother had never liked the ants in the yard, so, at first, he couldn’t understand why she’d been so angry with him. But she turned the water off, yanked him by the arm and dragged him back into the house. He remembered she’d had real tears in her eyes while she scolded him harshly for what he had done, spouting off about how those ants were only going about the business of being ants and didn’t deserve such cruel treatment.

“You’re a good boy, Jeremiah,” she’d told him. It felt more like a plea than a character assessment. “You’re a good boy.”

He wondered now what kind of a mark it would leave on his soul once he killed the clone. What, exactly, was it he’d be killing? After all, he considered, wasn’t this thing just going about his business of being Jeremiah? He didn’t know he was a clone. It wasn’t his fault. In fact, he thought, the clone might be the only one completely blameless in all of this. He tried to push those ideas out of his mind. He couldn’t afford to get stuck. He had to stay focused.

“No,” he said finally, but without conviction. “I have no concerns about my own immortal soul.”

“Let’s drink to that,” Brent said.

“I’m done. I’d like to be able to see straight. You drink like this out there?”