Page 4 of Deja Who
TWO
“So what was it?”
“Wrong question,” she told Chart #6116. “‘Who was it?’ would be more accurate.”
Chart #6116 rolled her eyes. “I never bought into that past lives crap. It’s just one more thing to blame your problems on. I mean—Ibelieveit,” she added when Leah raised her eyebrows. “I’m not one of those weirdos who say there’s no such thing as past lives, that we’re just here for one lifetime and then go to heaven or hell or wherever.”
Ah, the afterlife. You don’t have to learn anything in your single solitary lifetime, and then you can live in the sky forever after! Unless you live in a lake of fire beneath the earth forever after. Well, there were stranger theories.Tabula rasa,for one. The goal of goals, an ideal so unlikely as to be mostly unattainable.
What would it be like, born with a clean slate? Nothing tomake up for? Nothing to relive or regret? It was such an amazing concept Leah couldn’t grasp it. Like trying to explain the science of reproduction to a preschooler: “He does what? And thenwhathappens?”
“It does seem to defeat the purpose of living,” Leah put forth with care, shaking off the daydream. “No point in trying to learn from your mistakes since this is your only chance to get it right... it calls a lot into question.”
“Exactly. I’m not a Denier. ButI’min control ofthislife. Whoever I was before, they had their time. Now it’s my turn.”
“That mind-set can work,” Leah said carefully, “sometimes.” It depended on who the person used to be. And what that person used to do. If in her past lives #6116 was, say, a humanitarian who mentored needy children in her spare time, then sure. Except... “About seventy percent of the populace can remember some or all of their past lives. But it’s fragmented, they get flashes. Or they remember it all but they don’t feel it.” One of her patients had explained it as being akin to watching a movie. You might care about the characters on the screen, but no matter how the events unfold, it doesn’t affect the viewer on a personal level. “Or, in your case—”
#6116 shuddered. “Nightmares. But they never bothered me before.”
You weren’t escalating before.“Sometimes a traumatic event will change how a person perceives their past lives.”
“Why are you talking like you’re narrating a documentary? I know all this.”
Leah ignored the bluster. It was barely possible the woman would hear what she was really trying to say. “I’ve had patients who didn’t have any sense of who they used to be, but then aloved one dies, or they survive a violent trauma—assault, rape—and suddenly they’re flooded with images of who they used to be.”
Then there were the others, the last group, the smallest percentage. About 5 percent of the population not only remember their past lives perfectly, and feel them on an emotional level, they are able to help others accesstheirpast selves. And to this day, scientists were still arguing about why.
Once upon a time, Insighters were routinely burned alive, thought to be in league with Satan. These days, nobody burned and Insighters were only in league with whatever HMO covered their patient. The meds helped, too, of course.
“Well, none of that stuff applies to me. I was getting along just fine and then I started having nightmares where I was the judgeandthe defendant. We even had the same terrible hairstyle!”
“Traumatic,” Leah replied, and managed to keep a straight face.
“You don’t know the half of it. And then I dreamed I was on a cruise. Well, a slave ship. But it was like a cruise, because I was white, so I didn’t have to row or anything, y’know? Food sucked, though. I kept waking up hungry. And seasick.” #6116 made a shooing motion, waving off nightmare-induced motion sickness. “So the meds worked. Right? I mean, obviously, you’ve got that ‘I’ve got a secret’ expression all you Insighters are terrible at hiding.”
“Not all of us,” Leah mumbled. She made a mental note to work on hiding her expressions better. Just because she was jaded didn’t make it right to be lazy, too.
“I always thought it was kind of a joke. Medication + Insighter = hello, memories! But I could almost feel you digging around inmy brain. Peeking. Spying.” Leah made no comment, just let the silence stretch out. A pity #6116 was only interesting when she allowed her paranoia to show.
“Peeking and spying,” she replied. “Yes, that’s about right.”
“What’s wrong with me?”
What isn’twrong with you?
Don’t worry, #6116. You’re in good (bad?) company; there’s plenty wrong with me, too.
Insighters had come along, evolutionarily speaking, shortly after man took up hobbies like cave painting and wearing the fur of the animals they clubbed to death. They weren’t always called Insighters, but at least they weren’t alone in that the names of their persecutors changed, too.
From shamans to witches (the Salem witch trials were a particularly bad time to be an Insighter), from pagans to Christians, from water dowsers to spiritual mediums, rhabdomancy to haruspices, and today Insighters. Tomorrow, Leah thought with morbid humor, “those weirdos who knew everyone’s past life before we killed ’em all.”
Though they were accepted (with reservations) as essential medical personnel, her kind had rarely had it easy. People who knew things they shouldn’t have always, always been feared. Leah could remember researching as a teenager, shivering at how in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, not only was it legal to kill an Insighter, there was a strict protocol to be observed: Pluck out the eyes first. Burn the rest. Bury the ashes. Salt the earth the ashes were in.
And never speak of this again. Can I get an amen, brothers and sisters?
Today it was about clean offices and HMO plans, receptionists and patient referrals. Once upon a time it had been the ducking stool and hot pincers; the modern version (paperwork!) was almost as bad. It was always unpleasant, but at least Insighting was no longer an automatic death sentence.
Unless, of course, you were the late, somewhat lamented Ginny Devon, formerly of Portland, Maine, now embarked on her fourth life, hopefully. Ginny Devon had been less than two years out of graduate school (doctoral thesis: “A Child Shall Lead Them: Children’s Insights from Arthur Flowerdew to Shanti Devi”) when she was murdered by a patient’s disgruntled husband, a serial cheater who didn’t appreciate being told he’d once been Henry VIII.
