The intensity of her gaze unnerved me, tossing ice water on my plans with Andria. “Just give me the highlights.”

“There aren’t many. Each of your past lives has ended brutally, each death associated with an act of evil perpetrated by someone acting on an impulse dictated by the darker side of human existence. Darkness is the absence of light, the light being the Creator’s life force—the energy shared by every soul. In the earliest life I was able to glimpse, I saw you as a Hebrew slave, beaten to death by your Egyptian taskmaster. In another incarnation you were born and raised in Spain, the son of an Orthodox rabbi. Through your eyes I witnessed the Spanish Inquisition herd you, your family, and tens of thousands of Jews onto wooden sailing ships and taken out to sea, only to be tossed overboard and drowned by your Spanish captain.”

“This is ridiculous. I don’t remember any of this.”

“Regression therapy would bring everything to the surface. Regrettably, there is no time.”

“Maybe after we surface. Right now, I really have to—”

“In your last life, I saw you held captive as a young boy in a Nazi concentration camp. I felt your wrath at the Creator as you witnessed your mother being sent to the ovens; I experienced your desperation and fear when you were delivered into the hands of Josef Mengele, a psychopath who performed genetic experiments on Jewish children.”

“Stop!” My heart was racing, my skin lathered in perspiration. “Why are you telling me about these nightmares?”

“Not nightmares, Robert, past lives. Each leaving an indelible imprint on your karma. In Buddhism, we call yours the spirit of the Hungry Ghost. Filled with rage from past lives, consumed by a terrible emptiness, you live your life trying to correct the past. The Hungry Ghost possesses a mouth the size of a needle’s eye and a stomach the size of a mountain. You are destiny’s castaway, Robert, a man who has witnessed the darkest days of existence. Now you live again, but only to change history.”

“Not history, Dharma. Hatred. Greed. Violence. All the darkness you imagined. My goal is to accelerate human evolution beyond the bounds of man’s ego. ABE is the prototype, the first step to reach what you’d call Nirvana. While you’re mining energy on Europa, I’ll be back on Earth, enlightening civilization.”

“You cannot achieve enlightenment while hanging on to anger.”

“ABE can. Think of it as the candle that illuminates the darkness. If it was created from my anger over the Great Die-Off … over the suffering and loss of my own family, then so be it.”

ABE zapped me with its chronometer—9:11 P.M. “I’m late. Thanks for the insight. Maybe we’ll try that regression therapy after you defrost.”