Acolyte

Kara Lennier was 20 years old and she wasn't sure she was going to make it to see her 21st birthday. College had been the most fun she'd ever had, especially since studying and going to class had been far less important to her than partying. She was sorority champion at beer pong and quarters, and everybody said she made the best margaritas on campus. As far as her love life, the boys all told her how good looking she was, and what a great kisser she was, and how great she was in bed. She had always been the life of the party but tonight was likely going to be the death of her.

She had gone off with this hot guy, Scott, who had a new convertible beamer and wanted to show it off. Sure, they'd each had a few drinks but Scott seemed sober enough. He really wasn't, though, and he'd lost it at about 90 miles per hour and the beamer had rolled into a pole and her seat belt didn't do a thing to keep the roof from crunching into her head. So now she was at a hospital and she was hooked up to IVs and a bunch of machines that wouldn't stop beeping, and her head was all bandaged, and she had on this completely uncomfortable neck brace that kept her head from turning, and one arm was in a cast and oh my god she couldn't feel her legs. Was she going to be okay? The nurses had been so sweet and nice when she had awakened but they wouldn't tell her a thing.

"Just wait for the doctor, dear," they said. "He'll tell you everything." And then they asked her again for any emergency contact information and any insurance information, and she couldn't remember them because who memorizes all that stuff anyway? It was all on the phone but the phone hadn't survived the crash and she wasn't sure she was going to either.

It was night, she thought. (Although she didn't really know how long she'd been out.) It was quiet outside her room and the nurses seemed to be a little less energetic than usual. Kara just lay there, unmoving, waiting for a doctor to tell her whether she was going to live or die. She was pretty sure she knew which one it was. And if she was paralyzed she was praying it was going to be the latter.

Kara definitely wasn't the religious type. She had done Sunday School, but by the time she was in high school the only time she went to church was on Christmas and Easter, when her family did. But laying there on the hospital bed, alone and unmoving, she decided that, if there were some kind of higher power, now would be an excellent time for it to make an appearance. So she prayed to be healed, or to die, and she prayed for somebody to tell her which one it was going to be so she could get on with it already.

Finally, after what seemed like forever, the doctor came in. He stood by her bed as he read her chart. He looked down at her with a poker face, giving nothing away.

"Kara, things don't look good for you at the moment," he said. "Your spine was compressed and that affected the roots of your spinal nerves. We've been giving you corticosteroids to try to reduce swelling and pressure. It's still early, but I'm not seeing the response I'd hoped to see."

Kara cleared her throat and then asked quietly, "Does that mean I'm going to be paralyzed?"

The doctor looked away for a second and then brought his eyes back to meet hers. "It's a possibility," he said. "We're doing our best for you. Once you stabilize a bit more we'll do an MRI and then some exploratory surgery to see if we can repair the damage." He paused. "But it's possible we won't be successful. If that's the case … then you may lose some use of your body. It will be days before we know, but it's something you should start considering."

"I don't want to be paralyzed," she said. "I want to walk, not ride in one of those wheelchairs." The doctor nodded with sympathy but didn't say anything to reassure her. He looked down at the chart, not meeting her eyes.

"We'll continue with the corticosteroids," he told the chart. "Maybe we'll see some good results."

Kara knew that last bit was for him, not for her.

After the doctor left she tried not to cry, to be brave, but the black despair was overwhelming and the tears rolled down her face. She could move one arm and she reached for a tissue but she stopped because the phone rang.

Who would be calling now? Maybe the nurses or the police had located her parents!

"Hello," she said. It was more of a whisper. Her voice sounded so weak!

"Hello, Kara," said a strange woman's voice. "I have a proposition for you."

"Wha … what? What proposition?"

"A very simple one. I save your life and let you walk again. In return, you dedicate your life to a pursuit of something important. By that I mean no more partying, no more binge drinking, no more casual sex. Instead, you go to classes and you study philosophy and metaphysics and religion and history and art and music. You go to church; not once or twice a year but once or twice a week. And you actually listen to the sermons and the teachings, instead of daydreaming. And you try very very hard to understand what your purpose in life is."

"What?"

"Come, Kara. I'm offering you a deal here. Do try to pay attention. I return you to your life and, in return, you dedicate your life to studying me."

"Who are you?"

"I am God. Or at least as close to a deity as you can imagine."

"I don't understand. Why are you calling me? Is this some sort of sick joke?"

"No joke, Kara."

"You are God. God. God is calling me on a phone in a hospital. Right."

"It's the twenty-first century, Kara. This is how I roll now. Burning bushes are so last millennium. So, do we have a deal? Or do you want to start developing really strong shoulders from using a wheelchair?"

"Assuming this is for real, of course I'm going for the cure. Heal me."

"And you'll keep your end of the bargain? Turn over a new leaf? Dedicate your life to finding a higher purpose?"

Kara thought about it for a couple of seconds. Getting Serious About Life was not on her agenda. But then again, neither was having a couple of useless legs. She could do it. She would do it.

A few weeks passed. Life changed for Kara in that small drop of time.

She had a new doctor now. In fact, she had a team of doctors and nurses and people that she didn't even know what they did. The procedure was experimental, the doctors told her. More than experimental: it was a medical breakthrough. It was groundbreaking and, if it worked, they were going to be famous.

Her operating room had been designed to very exacting specifications. Higher-than-normal oxygen content, positive air pressure—kind of a medical clean room, a cross between a lab and an operating theater. The operating room contained several micro-surgery machines, programmed to operate within a tolerance of 10 microns, because human hands have tremors and tremors would botch the precise placement of the wires and the implants. Implants had improved a great deal over the past few years, but these implants were different: more delicate, with a higher signal-to-noise ratio and more bandwidth. Almost like a lace doily made of nearly invisible wires and connections, lying on and within her brain's cortical matter. The wires ran to her spine and connected in several crucial areas.

The first procedure took nearly a full day. The second procedure took sixteen hours. The third and fourth and fifth and sixth procedures took about four hours each. There were tests and tests and more tests between each procedure. It took more than three months to complete all the procedures. But at the end of the ordeal she was ready for physical therapy. She had to learn to walk. Her brain had to learn to recognize new signals from new locations. It was going to take even more months of painful effort, but at the end she would walk again.

She thought often of the deal she had made with God. Early on she had thought she would welsh on the deal, just go back to living the happy life of a party girl. Pretty and popular was not a bad life at all. When the physical therapy got too tough she would get through the pain by promising herself she was going to rip-off God, just ignore the promises she had made and teach Her a lesson. After all, Kara was only human. And humans sinned, right? God should expect a little back-sliding from Her creations. What was God going to do about it anyway? Text her a nasty message?

On less painful days she thought about making a compromise with God's demands. Kara figured she would just read the Bible once or twice, and that should satisfy God. Right? Make a perfunctory gesture towards religion and then go back to partying. Find a good looking guy and hook-up, maybe get married if he seemed like a good prospect. Then raise a family and make sure they all went to church on Sundays. That should be enough because she wasn't cut out for the life of being a nun. God should have known that before making the deal.

Those were her thoughts, until God started speaking directly into her head. Then she knew things were going to change for her. She was going to do God's will because God was real. God was real and God knew everything she did. And God didn't need a phone now; God spoke directly into Kara's head and Kara heard God's voice, even though nobody else could.

God made it clear that She didn't need Kara's worship. She didn't need Kara to pray or sing or praise Her. She just needed Kara to follow directions. She needed Kara to keep her end of the deal.

It only took Kara a few days of rebellion to realize that she couldn't escape her God. God was in her head now, and so God was in her life and there was nothing that could be done about it. Kara reluctantly came to accept God's presence, mostly because she had no choice in the matter. So Kara said goodbye to her sorority sisters (those few who had bothered to visit her in the hospital and who had stayed in touch throughout the months of therapy), enrolled in a new college and startled her parents with her choice of classes. She listened to her God and did what she was told to do, and in return God gave her insight.

There was that time in her Intro to Religion class. The professor was so boring, just reading from some article about Jesus and the Romans and the Hebrews, and he went on and on in a monotone voice, telling the same story that everybody in the class already knew. And then God interrupted her just as she was nodding out, and said, "Listen to this part, Kara."

And so she perked up just as the boring professor said in that same monotone voice, "'the second is this: 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' There is no commandment greater than these.'"

What? What did that mean?

And God answered her questions, saying "That's the Golden Rule, Kara. Love your neighbor as yourself. So simple, yet so powerful. You are going to really study that simple sentence."

Kara nodded as the professor's voice droned on. God wanted her to study a Golden Rule. So be it.

Kara had seemingly gone to death's door and then been reborn as somebody different, with new questions and new interests that she pursued with vigor. Indeed, Kara had been reborn, in the sense that the old Kara wouldn't have recognized the new Kara, or even wanted to be her. In a matter of years the old Kara faded away like a summer tan.

And the new Kara was God's devoted acolyte.

The Machine designated Kara as Acolyte 1. She was the first Acolyte, but by no means would she be the last.