Steven James - The Bishop

I scoured my files, looking for anything we might have missed until 7:30.

Nothing.

I rubbed my head.

Went back inside the house.

As I gathered my things to leave for my class at the Academy, I noticed a voicemail from Ralph: “Hey, man, Brin went to work early, found her friend, just called. Missy Schuel. That’s her name. The lawyer. I don’t have a number, but she’s got an office on 11th St. NW. See you at 11:30.”

I looked up the number, phoned her, left my name and number as well as a brief summary of my situation, then asked her to call as soon as possible. Then I stuffed the letter from Lansing’s lawyers into my computer bag so I could refer to it to answer any questions she might have.

Finally, before heading to class, I left a note for Tessa: “Call me. We’ll set up a time and place to meet for lunch.” I thought about adding, “There’s some stuff we need to talk about-like your dad trying to take you away.”

But that’s not the kind of thing you tell someone in a note.

Computer bag in hand, I left for the Academy.

Astrid and Brad had met on DuaLife, a website on which you create avatars, or online identities, and live another life as anyone you choose. Marry, if you want to. Have children, get divorced, start over. Whatever you like. You could be a man or a woman, straight or gay, young or old.

A prostitute.

A banker.

A priestess.

Or a serial killer.

Or a victim.

She’d found Brad on one of the newer continents, one that was designed to cater to the unique tastes of adults.

But it wasn’t cybersex that brought them together.

She’d been experimenting at the time, exploring ways to control and manipulate people, and ended up deciding to be the continent’s first female serial killer.

Of course, since the site’s users have invested so much time-and in some cases, money-into creating their online lives, you can’t just kill the other avatars without asking for permission or negotiating with their NowLife creators.

So, counting on the fact that, even in DuaLife, people would want their fifteen minutes of fame, Astrid had posted a notice that she was looking for volunteers who wanted to be lured in, overpowered, and then slaughtered.

And she’d been right about people wanting their moment in the sun. Two men and one woman had responded almost immediately.

Those had been her first few games.

But it was only online.

Only imaginary.

And besides, none of those first three victims had been all that relationally or intellectually engaging and, as a woman with an IQ of 142, Astrid started longing for someone a little more intriguing to kill. Then, in one of her online chats with potential victims, she met Brad.

The Brad avatar was a twenty-eight-year-old oncologist. A fundamentalist Mormon who’d never married, he enjoyed hiking, golf, college football, and reading philosophy.

Of course, in NowLife, he might have been a forty-five-year-old Buddhist single mom who liked classic movies and judo.

Or anyone else.

That was part of the fun. A whole new life played out in your imagination.

Though it was possible that in NowLife he might be a woman, in their initial emails, Brad had responded to her questions in a way that seemed unmistakably masculine. He also appeared to exhibit the qualities she was looking for in a NowLife man.

Sometime after meeting him online, she’d begun to wonder what it would be like playing these games of life and death and destiny on real people.

She’d invited him to her DuaLife apartment and was getting him drunk so she could more easily subdue him before killing, but that’s when she started to have second thoughts.

“Why do you want to die at my hand?” she’d asked him. “Why do you want me to kill you?”

“Because you’re a woman.”

“A woman?” On her computer screen she saw that he had finished his vodka. She poured him another.

He took a sip. “In Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Nietzsche wrote, ‘A real man wants two things: danger and play. Therefore he wants woman as the most dangerous plaything.’”

“So, to a man, a woman is a plaything?”

“Yes.” He downed his drink. “And the more dangerous she is, the more desirable. The greatest danger, the greatest pleasure.”

“But I would be the one playing with you.”

“Yes,” he’d typed.

When he didn’t elaborate, she’d responded, “I thought you believed in God, and yet you read Nietzsche? The man who said ‘God is dead’?”

“You can find flowers even in a field of weeds.”

So.

Nice.

Perhaps it was time to see if Brad might just be the one to partner with her. She’d typed, “How much danger and play can you handle?”

And after a pause he’d replied, “How much are you offering?”

Oh yes.

“I think it’s time we met,” she typed. “In person.”

And so they had.

And sex had followed. And so had love. And now, though she hadn’t yet told him, so would a child.

A new family grown from their DuaLife encounter.

As they’d gotten to know each other, they’d chosen to keep using their DuaLife names, rather than use their real ones. A way to extend the fantasy. To keep the illusion alive.

DuaLife.

NowLife.

Becoming one and the same thing.

It hadn’t taken them long to learn the art of killing, and then the art of setting others up for their crimes.

She’d found that, just like his avatar, the NowLife Brad believed in God, and yet, despite his religious convictions, he seemed surprisingly willing to take the life of other human beings whenever she required him to do so.

Now, as she lay in bed with him, she slid her hand to her stomach, where their child was growing. A second heartbeat inside of her. The child of their passion and desire.

A new life. To be taught and molded. Just like her man.

He stirred.

“You’re sleepy this morning,” she said.

“I killed two people last night. That can really take the life out of you.”

“Ha.” She smiled. “Doesn’t God say killing is wrong?”

“No one acts in complete congruence with his convictions.” He still sounded half asleep. “Admittedly, this is one area I need to work on.”

She ran her fingers through his hair. “That sounds like a line from a made-for-TV movie. That’s not enough of a reason. Not for you. There’s more to it, isn’t there?”

“Saint Paul wrote, ‘That which I do, I don’t understand. For I do not do the good I wish, but the evil I do not wish, this I do. I am a wretched man! Who will rescue me from this body of death?’ The inner war is the burden of all who believe.”

She trailed her finger along the edge of his scars. “Brad, Brad, Brad, you are my little enigma, aren’t you?”

A slight hesitation, perhaps a hint of intimidation. “Do you know anyone who is not?”

“Not?”

“An enigma.”

“Well, if you’re right about God, darling, I imagine you’ll go to hell for the things you’ve done.”

He was quiet.

“Any quotes on that? On the enigma of hell?”

He thought.

She smiled. “I got you this time.”

“Francios de Fenelon.”

“Who’s Francois de Fenelon?”

“He was a priest in the seventeenth century. He observed that you can see God in all things but never so clearly as when you suffer. Perhaps hell, where people suffer the most acutely, is where they begin to see him the most clearly.”

She laughed at the absurdity of using a priest to justify a journey to hell in order to discover God. Only Brad could come up with something like that. “Well,” she said. “If God exists-”

“There is no ‘if.’”