Orbit

So many things he should have changed. So many times he played it safe.

Oh, great!he chuckles. I find the true meaning of life with less than two days of it left. Impeccable timing!

He can see a lot of things more clearly now, having chronicled his entire life and come to the conclusion that at best he would give it a C minus.

No. Not even that good,Kip thinks. As an adult, I give myself an F.

Then again, what sense does it make to spend the remaining hours whining and crying and carrying on? Nothing will change as a result, except that he’ll lose the chance to add to his narrative. Besides, death will be a new begi

Kip feels a shudder ripple through him, a primal fear of what’s on the other side of that one-way door he’s facing. He remembers the adage that there are no atheists in a foxhole, and there are certainly none in Intrepid,but somehow all his philosophical thoughts about this existence and what happens next and why are being spread out on a table for some future universe to look at, and perhaps judge.

Or not.

In any event, he’ll know in two days how right or wrong he was, but suddenly all those musings seem infantile and untrustworthy.

Kip closes his eyes and forces his mind back to his narrative. It’s safer there, like a warm and familiar room with four walls and window shades he can pull against reality. Intrepiditself has begun to feel a little like that, and for two days he’s been able to stay uniquely focused, living his life over again.

Amazing, that focus, he thinks. Like Samuel Johnson said, “The prospect of being hanged in a fortnight most wonderously concentrates the mind."

He shakes his head. Johnson was talking about two weeks. He has two days.

But he also has the keyboard in front of him and a hard drive that doesn’t know the difference between the real life he’s been writing about and the life he wishes he’d had and all the things he should have done.

Virtual reality, virtual life. What is it they say in Hollywood? Do a rewrite? Good. I’ll rewrite my life the way it should have been.

The idea begins to take hold, bringing a faint smile. It would be like taking control, having the power to determine his own destiny, rather than just being along for the ride. He can get just as crazy about it as he wants. He can replace his parents with a keystroke, have the brother he always wanted—maybe even an identical twin—and when it comes to girls, the possibilities are unlimited. The cutest gals in school will be his. The homecoming queen, the sexiest siren in town. Forget Lucy, he’ll marry a drop-dead gorgeous Ph.D. with a stand-up comedie

Maybe I’ll earn a Ph.D. Maybe two. Perhaps a Nobel Prize for some discovery in one of the hard sciences, after a short but stellar career as an Air Force ace. No, not the Air Force. The Navy. I’ll become a Navy carrier pilot. Top Gun.

He lets the thoughts swirl, thinking about all he’s ever heard about someone creating his own reality by doing little more than what he’s contemplating. Just… creatingit.

If it’s all in my mind, then what’s the difference?

Suddenly he’s paging back through what has become a massive document, looking for the place where he first began to regret the way things were going.

That would be age fourteen.

No, he decides. Earlier. Age nine, before he noticed girls.

No,he corrects himself, I was noticing girls by age eight, I just didn’t have a clue what to do with them.

He finds the spot he was looking for around page forty and begins highlighting everything afterward, page after page of his life the way it was.

He opens the main hard drive and locates the file and deletes it, leaving the hundred twenty page document on the screen as the only remaining record.

It is as I make it. And maybe it all was a dream, both good and bad.

His finger is over the delete button now as he thinks about all he’s written, two days of electronic scribbling for forty plus years of an unfinished, imperfect life. How many fellow humans have wished for a rewrite, he wonders. How many have wished for a chance to go back and do it all over again?

His index finger touches the delete key lightly, hovering there, waiting, knowing that if he presses it, all he’s highlighted will disappear. As if it never was. As if he’d never lived it, never married Lucy, let alone lost her, never been devastated by his son’s rejection because there will have been no son. One keystroke to do away with the lost years of obeying someone else’s flight plan of what life should be like, and suddenly the bile of resentment is rising in his throat, the recollection flooding back of the lifelong, aching feeling that something was missing from an equation that, by his dad’s book, was complete.

Two days to rewrite it all. Why not?

He pushes firmly, hearing the click, as over a hundred pages disappear into cyberspace.

Time to start over.

Chapter 31

The limo headed for ABC’s local studios and the West Coast Good Morning Americaset will be ready in ten minutes, but Diana Ross is having trouble tearing herself away from her laptop. She knows she should have been sleeping, but it wasn’t possible. Deciding to shower and get put together by midnight, she’s worked the laptop ever since.

There is,she thinks , no other subject being discussed! It’s turned into an All Kip, All the Time Internet.

In New York, through Web co

Diana looks down at her coffee cup suddenly as if it’s betrayed her. She’s drained the contents without realizing it.