The People in My Head: Daniel Wallace
Daniel Wallace was a man of great will and determination. Nothing could stop him. For a man of less than comely appearance he exuded a confidence that distorted the perception of all around him. Supremely confident of his own ability he could enter a room and get exactly what he wanted. The most beautiful girl at school, also the smartest, was no match for the sharp focus of his desire. They married the year after they graduated. She became a successful bio-ethicist and he went on to build a business empire of modest but manageable means. He knew he could have grown bigger, but while confident he was never filled with any hubris. He had modest ambitions, but nothing would ever stop him from achieving them. Time passed as their lives were filled with the bliss that comes from success and contentment, until finally they felt ready for the next step. And then the wheels fell off...
Unable to conceive a child, Daniel Wallace's confidence was shaken. Doctors could not find anything wrong, there was no explanation. The sperm was healthy, so were the eggs. Chromosome tests could not give any indication to why nothing seemed to work. All known medical science was brought to bear upon the problem, but still they remained childless.
Daniel began to seek other explanations. He would have a child, and it would be one had of himself and his wife. Adoption was automatically rejected as an option, it was an admission of defeat. So he kept on looking, searching for any reason why such a thing could happen to him. Finally he came upon an idea that gave him a solution. He and his wife were simply the victim of a lack of reincarnated souls. Medical science was preserving life, trapping souls who were crying out for death in bodies that were trying to rot away, only to be pumped full of drugs to keep them going beyond the point of reasonable expectation. The less developed nations of the world had high birth rates matched with high mortality rates. But here and now, there was a low mortality rate and a low birth rate. And with that knowledge, he set forth to do what had to be done.
Hospitals were hard to invade, and harder to murder in. He knew he could do it though, and his persistence paid off as he learned the routines of the hospitals nearby under the guise of being a chaplain. He brought care and compassion to the terminally ill, and when nobody was looking he neatly assisted in their end. Each night after he had ensured a few extra souls were free to be reborn, he would return home and engage his wife in a loving yet mechanical act to attempt to fulfil their dreams.
As they continued to fail to conceive despair began to set in. The stress on the marriage began to take its toll, and several months into Daniel's program of murder and maternity his wife left him. She could see a change in him as he became obsessed, and it scared her away.
The next night two plainclothes detectives came by to arrest him. And slowly it dawned on him that reincarnation was bound up with karma, and that he had never had a chance. At that moment he let go, and as his soul released itself into the next life he prayed that his sacrifice might give his ex-wife the child he could never provide.
Unable to conceive a child, Daniel Wallace's confidence was shaken. Doctors could not find anything wrong, there was no explanation. The sperm was healthy, so were the eggs. Chromosome tests could not give any indication to why nothing seemed to work. All known medical science was brought to bear upon the problem, but still they remained childless.
Daniel began to seek other explanations. He would have a child, and it would be one had of himself and his wife. Adoption was automatically rejected as an option, it was an admission of defeat. So he kept on looking, searching for any reason why such a thing could happen to him. Finally he came upon an idea that gave him a solution. He and his wife were simply the victim of a lack of reincarnated souls. Medical science was preserving life, trapping souls who were crying out for death in bodies that were trying to rot away, only to be pumped full of drugs to keep them going beyond the point of reasonable expectation. The less developed nations of the world had high birth rates matched with high mortality rates. But here and now, there was a low mortality rate and a low birth rate. And with that knowledge, he set forth to do what had to be done.
Hospitals were hard to invade, and harder to murder in. He knew he could do it though, and his persistence paid off as he learned the routines of the hospitals nearby under the guise of being a chaplain. He brought care and compassion to the terminally ill, and when nobody was looking he neatly assisted in their end. Each night after he had ensured a few extra souls were free to be reborn, he would return home and engage his wife in a loving yet mechanical act to attempt to fulfil their dreams.
As they continued to fail to conceive despair began to set in. The stress on the marriage began to take its toll, and several months into Daniel's program of murder and maternity his wife left him. She could see a change in him as he became obsessed, and it scared her away.
The next night two plainclothes detectives came by to arrest him. And slowly it dawned on him that reincarnation was bound up with karma, and that he had never had a chance. At that moment he let go, and as his soul released itself into the next life he prayed that his sacrifice might give his ex-wife the child he could never provide.
posted by Andrew Lee at 8:34 AM
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