"OUR SOULS JUST TOUCHED"

"As I was holding Sarah, looking into her eyes, her face seemed to start changing shape.   I was transfixed.   I felt like I was in a trance.   Sarah's face seemed to encompass all womanhood.   She looked like Cleopatra, like the Queen of Sheba.   She looked like the essence of love, of sex, of female beauty.   She looked as though every woman from thousands of years of human existence was touching her spirit and putting their essence into her.  

I gazed, and wondered momentarily what Sarah was seeing in my face.   I got lost in the profusion of female essence that looked back at me.  

And then, there was a flash.   It was as though two electrical wires had short-circuited.   I threw back my head, as did Sarah.   Deep in the back of my brain, it felt like some circuits had flashed that had never before come to life.   I had no idea what had happened.   I looked back at Sarah and she was no longer every-woman, she was back to being Sarah, my love Sarah.  

I broke the silence.

"What just happened?" I whispered to my love.

"Our souls just touched," she whispered back, matter-of-factly, as though something like that happened every day.

"That was for real, wasn't it?   We didn't just imagine it?"

She nodded ever so gently.   "That was for real, Eusebio.   Yes, it really happened."

As we lay there, in the corn field, as I felt Sarah's soft flesh around me, as our breathing enveloped each other's breasts, I realized that something very special had taken place.   There was a bond that had formed between Sarah and me that was beyond any ordinary meaning.   Our souls had touched.   Part of me was now in Sarah, and part of Sarah was now in me.   Nothing could ever undo that."

"if i should die today, that's ok"

Tragically, Eusebio and Sarah's love was short-lived.   In the prime of her life, Sarah is diagnosed with ovarian cancer, a disease unheard of among d-humans but still terribly present for Primals, who have not been genetically enhanced.   By the time of the events of Requiem of the Human Soul , as Eusebio puts it: "Sarah was no longer with me.   Only deep within my soul."

Years earlier, as Sarah lay dying, Eusebio vented his rage against the founder of the Humanist movement, Jessica Goodrich, who had laid down the founding rule of the Humanists: not to permit any genetic enhancement because of the risk that the soul might be destroyed.  

But here's Sarah's answer to Eusebio:

"Don't do this, Eusebio," Sarah said one day as I vented my anger at Jessica Goodrich.   "Suppose she was right?   Eusebio, that day, years ago…   That day, when our souls touched…"  

She looked at me and I nodded back.   "That has meant more to me than anything.   All these years, we've shared our lives together in a way I never dreamed was possible.   There have been so many times when I've said to myself, if I should die today, that's OK, because I've felt such happiness on this earth.   If Jessica was right, and their genetic engineering does something to the soul, then we might never have known life the way we've known it, never have known love the way we've known it - if they'd optimized our DNA before we were born.   Would you have been willing to take that risk?   I don't think I would.   I'd rather have it the way it's happened, cancer and all.   I wouldn't lose what we've had together, not for anything."

I looked straight at her, and tried to pierce the veil of her sickness to see if she really meant what she had just said.   I just couldn't tell.   Was she trying to believe it to make herself feel better as she lay there in her living hell?   Was she just saying it for my sake?   I couldn't know.  

"OUR SOULS WILL STAY CONNECTED"

For Sarah, her love with Eusebio – the sharing of their souls together – meant everything.   In the last days of her life, as she lay there getting weaker and weaker, here's the promise she entreated from her love:

"Eusebio," she whispered.   I got closer to her to hear what she was saying.  

"When I die…   Take my ashes…   Wait until the first rainy day… I mean, real rain… Take my ashes to your friendly oak tree… Your totem…   In Jerry's back yard… Pour my ashes into the roots, mix them with the rain.   That's where I want to be."  

She was gaining her strength back as she spoke.

"I'll always be there, with you, with your totem, Eusebio.   I'll become part of your oak tree, and I'll never be alone.   Our souls will stay connected, even after I die.   Part of my soul is already in you.   And another part will be one with your totem.   Then I'll never be alone."  

She looked intensely at me.   "Promise me, promise me, Eusebio."

I promised her, as the tears flowed out of control, down my cheeks and splashing onto Sarah's soft, hollow face.

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