It was Dan’s turn to look away. “Debra proposed it. We were talking about the people I’d met when I was doing my missionary work, the stone crazies who I’d have to chase away after they’d rejoined the Bitchun Society. One of them, a girl from Cheyenne Mountain, she followed me down here, kept leaving me messages. I told Debra, and that’s when she got the idea.
“I’d get the girl to shoot you and disappear. Debra would give me Whuffie—piles of it, and her team would follow suit. I’d be months closer to my goal. That was all I could think about back then, you remember.”
“I remember.” The smell of rejuve and desperation in our little cottage, and Dan plotting my death.
“We planned it, then Debra had herself refreshed from a backup—no memory of the event, just the Whuffie for me.”
“Yes,” I said. That would work. Plan a murder, kill yourself, have yourself refreshed from a backup made before the plan. How many times had Debra done terrible things and erased their memories that way?
“Yes,” he agreed. “We did it, I’m ashamed to say. I can prove it, too—I have my backup, and I can get Jeanine to tell it, too.” He drained his beer. “That’s my plan. Tomorrow. I’ll tell Lil and her folks, Kim and her people, the whole ad-hoc. A going-away present from a shitty friend.”
My throat was dry and tight. I drank more beer. “You knew all along,” I said. “You could have proved it at any time.”
He nodded. “That’s right.”
“You let me …” I groped for the words. “You let me turn into …” They wouldn’t come.
“I did,” he said.