The Seven Adams

I’m staring at two other versions of myself. One of me is shorter, with dark hair and glasses. He sips at a cup of coffee and looks around without moving his head. The other one of me is a taller, bulkier version whose arms are tattooed and whose fingers rattle like bones against the table as he taps. Metal hangs off the second me’s face in balls, little spheres of silver that jut from lip, nose, and eyebrow. I speak to them, vaguely aware that I’m not telling them anything they don’t know. They are me, after all, after a fashion.

We’ve all been through the same thing, each living a life symmetric to each other’s, making choices that while different, still led us here: three of me at the same table in the same pub in Chicago. It’s not our first time together, not hardly, but this time I know it’s the last. After tomorrow, we’ll be scattered to the wind. The shorter me will be returning to his home in Massachussetts, and my tattooed self will be taking a trip across the world, to destinations as vague as his ambition. Now that our task is over, neither of them have any reason to acknowledge our past, neither of them care to be a part of what we’ve created. I don’t either, not really, but I’m responsible for this.

In eighty minutes I’ll be on a plane to New York City.

We speak; the words we say don’t matter. We’re all thinking the same thing. That after tomorrow, everyone will know the truth. The murders of over two thousand people will be acknowledged. The largest cover-up in human history will be revealed. The identity of the greatest man to have ever lived will be challenged.

I’m standing up. I’m shaking my hands, both the bulky and the smaller. I’m turning, and letting the pub door swing shut behind me. After tomorrow, I don’t have many plans. I have no home to go to, no place to hide. After tomorrow, my life expectancy will drop radically. If they haven’t found me within a day or two I’ll be surprised.

Me and the other Adams, we want to tell our story. After tomorrow, you’ll know. All of this, and all of what we’ve already written. It was close; we almost didn’t finish in time. In less than eight hours it’ll be twenty-five years. The world will be alive in celebration, in mourning. Ivan Gildrick, God’s first truly great gift to humanity (Jesus aside), dead a quarter of a century.

Tomorrow, our twenty-fifth birthday. The day we give the world the truth about the man we grew up thinking of as our father.

As our God.