The New World: A Novel Read Free Page A

with sadness rather than anger and disgust. She did not stand up and shout,
That
’s not how it was supposed to be!
She and Jim were going to be together forever in oblivion, and now this fool was inviting the whole church to an imaginary afterlife that Jane wouldn’t have any part in.
    “It’s a mistake,” she had told Brian. “You have to understand. He wouldn’t have believed in what you do. I know he wouldn’t. He didn’t believe in anything but
right now
.”
    “I know it must be a shock,” Brian said. “And I’m very sorry. But it happens very commonly. I can tell you you’re not the first spouse that’s been surprised like this.”
    “It’s not what he
believed
,” Jane said, as if Brian simply hadn’t heard her. “And what you’re talking about isn’t even possible. So, please, just tell me what I have to do to get his head back from you.”
    “I’m sorry, Dr. Cotton,” he’d said. “What you’re asking for—
that’s
not possible. The way we understand the situation, that would be like killing him. Do you see what I mean?”
    She did not see. Or rather, all she could see when she tried was Jim’s head frozen in a block of water, an enormous novelty ice cube. Or she saw his head being lowered by the hair into a bubbling and spitting pool of liquid nitrogen, then accidentally dropped on a marble floor, his features scattering every which way in shards. Or she saw his pale bloodless face suspended in a tall jar of blue barbershop disinfectant, eyes lifeless but not blank, still full of horror at how he had fallen for a bait and switch. She demanded proof that they had actually done what they had been contracted to do, that they hadn’t just wrapped his head in toilet paper and tossed it out in the hospital trash.
    “Of course,” Brian said. “We maintain full video documentation of the vitrification process.” And while Polaris wasn’t required by any law to show that to her, they certainly would, if she wanted them to. Did she want them to?
    He waited very patiently while she failed to answer, not hanging up or even asking if she was still there. And when her silence transitioned to quiet sobs, he waited even a little longer before he said, “I really am sorry, Dr. Cotton. I’m so sorry for your perceived loss.”

 
    She wasn’t really a spider. Jim had not actually become a pig. They weren’t really on a farm. It was a sort of staging area. A virtual (anteroom), as the spider revealed to him, shaped by the deeply embedded influences of his native culture and the inclinations of his recovering imagination. The client always started someplace comfortable and familiar.
    Started
?
he asked. He was fancy-stepping in a circle in his pen.
    Yes
. She was busily weaving letters in her web.
It is the nature of one (antechamber) to give way to another as your (incarnation) proceeds, as though through rooms, until you exit into the (real) world
and go on to conduct your (Examination) and make your (Debut).
Sometimes there are many rooms, sometimes there are just a few.
Jim pondered this while she finished her message:
delicious pig
.
    I don
’
t think that
’
s what it
’
s supposed to say
.
    The spider shrugged her tiny gray shoulders.
    Why
(real)
,
he asked,
and not just
real
?
    Now she frowned.
As before, there is a distance
between what I understand by that word and what you understand by it.
    I
’
m not even sure what I understand
.
    It
’
s not predominantly a matter of understanding. Would you like to move on to the next (anteroom
)
?
    Oh yes
.
Definitely
.
I don’t want to spend the future as a pig.
    Then take us there
.
    How do I do that
?
he asked.
Let’s start with the short answer
.
    You have already done it once.
    But I’m not even sure of what I did, exactly.
He paused, waiting for her to help him out somehow
. What did it look like to you?
he asked.
    Well,
she said,
it appeared to be a deployment of the right kind of curiosity and imagination. A forceful but