“I’m here because I come here every day,” she says, her voice breaking just slightly. “I come here to watch my son’s last moments. To see him happy. To know that instead of coming straight home from the store, where I’d sent him to pick up eggs, he swung by Jameson’s to get a quick drink with friends. To know that I called him, yelled at him, and guilted him into coming home, and because I did, because he peeled out of the parking lot at that exact second to get home to me, he died.”

She takes a breath, covering her mouth with her hand. I hear her whimper and choke it back. I feel the tightness in my chest winding.

“But I can’t change it, Andre. That’s one thing I cannot do. You’re right, fuck the rules. I can’t change it because that’s my code of conduct. Because those are the lines I live by and will not cross. Because if we do not have lines, Andre, with all this power that we have, what will we become? We cannot, even with this power, choose to change things just because we don’t want to feel pain.”

“But why can’t we?” I argue. “There is a line between abusing power and using it to make the world better, Mrs. McIntyre. You’re smart enough to know when not to cross that line.”

She chuckles, but it’s one of those chuckles that is filled with sadness instead of comedy.

“Stronger men and women than me have thought that they could do exactly what you’re suggesting, Andre. And every time, they realize that they have done more harm than good. And it breaks them.”

She turns in her seat to face me and touches my shoulder, forcing me to look at her.

“It will break you too. You will make one change and find two other things that you need to change. You’ll change those two, and then find four more. You’ll never be happy. You’ll never create the world you want, and before long, the world you now reside in will become so different, so horrific, that you will do anything in your power to end it.

“But, more importantly, just because we have won the genetic lottery, doesn’t mean that we get to be immune from heartbreak. That’s what makes us human, Andre. And when you have a power that exists outside the law, feeling human is the only way you remind yourself that you are human.”

Another group of college students comes out of Jameson’s. Police cars speed by. The group looks up, but they continue on with their conversation, heading to their cars.

She sighs, leaning back in her seat for the first time. “Did you consider what would happen to you if you went through with this? To your liver?”

“I’m willing to take that chance.”