Isaac is sleeping. Finally.
How easily I fall back into the role of father and caretaker. He is a helpless child. Certainly older than my daughter, but not by much. And he is much younger in the mind.
I didn’t see him much before this. Maybe caught a glimpse when the Senator brought him by for his bi-annual checkup. Wispy little man, wouldn’t stand up straight, and stared for too long, in a condescending sort of way. Still does. Although now, the look is much more sinister.
And Elba…what a hopeless woman! To think I looked up to her. She dotes on him, too. Too much. She coddles him. He is wholly dependent on us, yes, but he is still a man, and shouldn’t be softened so. Hasn’t he been feminized enough? Think of his dignity, woman! Countless times I’ve walked into the main laboratory to find them in hushed conversation that quiets on my arrival. If they are plotting something, then I will wring it out of him. Though I can’t let my thoughts get to me. She is a frail old woman. He is bound to his bed.
She is the reason we’re here, she is the one blessed with the ability to reincarnate the dead; God works through her hand. In staying by her side… may he also work through mine.
I keep them alive, I hold the keys; yet it feels like they watch over me.
It has been five years now since she came back. I…wish she was all I lived for. But. Without fail, every time my eye falls on him, it's like one of those tubes is connecting us at the chest.
I mustn't dare sever it.
No man on this cursed, blank earth has artificially lengthened a life so long. The hands of a god, she says. And she is right. My daughter tells me I can help other people out there, too, and I am sure they do exist! And that Elba is wrong, wrong, but how can she be wrong? If she is wrong, doesn't that make me wrong? But why would my little girl lie? Perhaps both truths are truths. There are people, but they are all dead. There is a world, but it is wiped clean. We can make it live again…