Excerpt

“How can they charge me for something I didn’t do?”

Ramsey’s lawyer tapped his pen on the table, and shuffled the papers stacked on the desk.

“Reincarnation matching confirmed your identity. You were a serial killer who committed suicide rather than face justice. You did it.”

Although the office had been busy when he came in, it fell silent when he came in. Ramsey felt the silence as darts on his skin, each one a condemnation.

“That was my prior life. I’ve never had so much as a parking ticket.”

“I’m telling you the facts, not my opinion.”

He didn’t acknowledge the faces of the law office workers all giving him the side-eye through the plate glass windows as they walked by.

“I’m innocent.”

Evan, as his lawyer insisted Ramsey call him, hesitated. He was a slick, well-fed man in his late forties with the kind of suit that didn’t come off the rack. Ramsey wasn’t sure how much he spent on it, but judging by the way it lay on his body, was tailored. His dollars would have helped pay for suits like that, if the man wasn’t working pro bono. He had no illusions as to why. A case like this could make a man’s reputation.

Or destroy it.

“Your former life was heinous. You made no secret of your thrill in killing. The theory was that you believed you were too smart to get caught, and was surprised when they tracked you down.” Evan waved a hand toward the observers and the one in Ramsey’s peripheral vision began moving paper around on her desk.

“Sorry about them, but it’s better to indulge their curiosity so it wears off. Your notoriety will fade, when we get you off.”

“That wasn’t me. If I were that kind of person, even in a past life, wouldn’t I grow up pulling the wings off flies, setting mice on fire, that sort of thing? I was a good kid, and a decent adult. I never would have taken that test if I’d understood this was going to happen.”

His lawyer set down the pen. “It won’t stand. Don’t worry. The law is shaky here and I will exploit every loophole.”

“I don’t get how they can do this.”

Since the technology to trace reincarnation had been discovered, the world had exploded in ways nobody could have expected. Many who once claimed to be reincarnations of famous celebrities were dismayed to discover that their past lives, like their ancestry, was nothing but run-of-the-mill existences. Those who were descended from the famous started to lord it over the rest, using social media to get attention.

The man who was the reincarnation of Cleopatra had embraced his newfound renown with aplomb, and the person who had been Winston Churchill was pontificating to anyone who would listen. Everyone was after their fifteen minutes of fame.

Evan cleared his throat and tapped the array of paperwork on the desk.

“The laws aren’t clear, but they are moving forward with charging you. I think I can get it thrown out, but we have to be prepared for anything. We are in new territory here.”

Some refused to believe that reincarnation was true, in particular those religions for whom eternal damnation kept their flocks in line. They were crying out in protest of the new science, but that genie couldn’t be put back in the bottle. Even if their adherents didn’t get tested, millions—billions—did.

Ramsey had gone in for testing to please his now ex-girlfriend. When his results were revealed, she left him, saying she couldn’t be associated with someone like that. To be fair, nobody wished to be linked with a lunatic who had made the news half a century earlier. He—the former he—terrorized the nation for over a year until his identity was discovered. He believed he’d been so careful but someone had a drone and it captured him in flagrante delico, or however that was spelled, in the act. From there his capture was only a matter of time. The man he had been, a person named Tre, had turned the gun on himself when he’d been cornered.

“Evan. I’m not that guy. I’ve never been in trouble with the law. Well, okay, some scrapes, but nothing that bad.”

The one thing saving him was that there were many in his shoes. The current iterations may have led exemplary existences, but their previous lives were questionable. Many were now being judged not on who they were in present day, but who they had been a lifetime or more ago.

“The reincarnationists say that you are. Now the courts will get their chance to prove it. If you had been convicted in your former life then I could argue that you had already paid your debt. Double jeopardy and all of that. Killing yourself before is what made this possible since you died without being punished. It’s shaky, but that’s how they are building this case.”

“I didn’t do those things.”

Evan cleared his throat. Ramsey had learned this meant his attorney was about to say something Ramsey didn’t care to hear.

“The problem is that we have a piece of paper that proves you are the reincarnation of Tre Stillings. That’s why you’re in trouble. The government has no statute of limitations for murder.”