“Who wants to share next?” a man asked. “Don’t hold anything back,” he said. “You’re being born anew in Truth, now. We don’t even need to be at the compound to start pruning our souls and helping them grow toward their true purpose.”

I turned around to look.

The man that spoke was one of two that—in poise, if not in height—sat a head taller than the rest. If you told me he’d been grown in a test tube, I’d have believed you. His buttoned up shirt was nearly as white as his skin. His stylish brown hair could have given Jonan Derric’s suave blond locks a run for their money. He wore expensive slacks and stylish red and gold tie, and his teeth were positively divine. He looked like he was about to present a new advertising campaign to a bunch of corporate executives.

Ileene’s memories told me his name: Eyvan.

I didn’t need to feel her love for him—even though I did—to know how she felt. She regarded him with a salvific reverence. Her eyes darted back to his face whenever they could; her posture hung on his every word. Even though I regarded the young man with a good deal of circumspection, Ileene didn’t. She believed in him, and she believed because of what she saw in him: someone who would suffer pains for her sake without a moment’s hesitation.

“I’ll go.”

“Praise the Angel,” said another.

Eyvan nodded, resting his hands on his legs.

“Tell us your story, Sister Tasha.”

Sister Tasha was dowdy and freckled and ever-so-slightly plump, with frizzled red hair done up in a stick-crossed bun. She was as imposing as a sugar beet and had to struggle to make her voice heard over the rollicking wheels, the rumbling engine, and the buffeting winds. Her thighs slapped together as the truck jerked about, jostling Tasha where she sat on the bench.

“For the longest time,” she said, “I was lost—I was drowning. But now,” she clasped her hands together blissfully, “now… I’m free.”

Tasha was the meek who had not inherited the earth.

“What held you back, Sister?” Eyvan asked.

“The world,” she answered. “Myself.” She nodded. “Everyone knows everything about everything except if its anything that they actually need to know. No one is honest anymore.” Tasha shook her head. “I can’t accept that by just pretending that everything is okay, or that things will turn out okay, and that’s because I’m not okay.”

The young woman fidgeted in her seat. Her interwoven fingers wrestled one another as she glanced down at the floor. It looked like she wanted to leap out of her own body.

“I have disordered urges,” Tasha said, barely audible over the coughing engine, “and for every opinion out there about it, there’s someone who will try to sell it to me, and I should know, because they’ve tried.” Tasha bit her lip and shook her head. “I’ve tried getting boyfriends, but I can’t, because they see through me—I know they do. They see that I’m a lie. And… I know my thighs are too chubby. I’ve tried to lose the weight, but the stress…”

Tasha shook her head, blushing with aching embarrassment.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized, “I shouldn’t be talking about measly little complaints like that. I—”

“—No,” Eyvan said. He leaned forward from his seat on the bench opposite Tasha. “You’re right to do so. Get it all off your chest. That’s the first step to healing. Our world is built on lies, and the biggest lie of all is that it knows the Way.”

Nodding, Ileene smiled, first at Eyvan, then at Tasha. “But it doesn’t,” she said, “and it never did. That’s why we’re in this mess in the first place. We see it every day. No matter how pretty or proud they might be, beneath every face hides a hypocrite. They don’t have a firm foundation. They aren’t anchored.”

Others nodded in assent.

“Preach it, Sister Ileene!” someone called.

Other than Eyvan and a couple burly looking men at the back of the truck, nearly everyone present was a woman—and young women, at that.

“That’s right,” Tasha said, sniffling. She dabbed her fingers at the corners of her eyes, fighting a losing battle against her tears. “But we…” she took a deep breath, “we have the Truth.” She smiled through her sadness. “All this time, I was doing it wrong. I was trying to fix myself—to save myself—when what I really needed… what we all need—”

“—Is to let Him save us.” The group spoke in unison.

Oh no. Please, no…

I closed my eyes and shook my head. I turned away from the twisted “story circle” and stuck my head out the back of the vehicle, opening my eyes and facing the wind, hoping to drown myself in the thunderous noise.

It was like Lopé in group form.

I covered my mouth with my hand. I wasn’t nauseous, but I felt like I should have been, and the instant that thought crossed my mind my stomach positively roiled in nausea.

I wretched and heaved and then wished the awful feeling would go away, and, mercifully, it did. I let myself fall onto my stomach, my head sticking out over the edge of the truck, watching the road whisk by.

I groaned. “I hate evolutionary psychology. I hate it so much.”

If evolutionary psychology was a person, it would be a colleague of mine whose personality I absolutely couldn’t stand, and—worse—whose work was downright brilliant. Frighteningly brilliant.

So, basically, Jonan. If evolutionary psychology was a person, it would be Jonan Derric.

I glanced at Andalon. She was staring at me intently. She didn’t even need to ask me. Her intent was quite clear.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

She wanted an explanation.

With another groan, I flipped myself onto my back and sat up, ignoring the fact that my legs had repeatedly phased through several of the fundamentalists-in-training.

I sighed.

“Evolutionary psychology is a fancy way of saying that, because people are living things, and because living things are just really, really complicated organic machines, you can understand most, if not nearly all, of the reasons why people do what they do by investigating how those machines came to be. Form implies function, even at the psychological level.”

Andalon nodded once, and then, after letting my words hang for a moment, shook her head multiple times over.

“I don’t get it.”

I almost wished I could say the same thing.

“Whatever you call it,” I said, “faith, family, tribe… in human beings—well, in the default model, at any rate—people have an innate need to want to belong. It’s part of what makes us human. I can’t—no,” I raised a finger in protest, “I refuse to believe that we’re all just a bunch of instincts and wetware held together by a bow of chauvinism. And yet… ”

I turned back to the group, waving my hand dismissively at them

“Scenes like this make evolutionary psychology hard to deny.” I sighed.

It wasn’t that I doubted the truth or value of EP insights. Rather, I desperately wished they weren’t true.

“I want to… belong,” Andalon said, softly.

I closed my eyes. “So do they,” I said, “and so do I,” I added.

My thoughts drifted back to my own childhood. Without the zest that Dana added to my days, I would have been empty. Music and manga and games could bring plenty of wonder my way, but they were no substitute for other people with whom I could connect.

Even now, my desire to belong was tormenting me. Here, it was powerful enough to make me conspire to hide the truth of my condition from my colleagues.

At first glance, you might have thought the assembled passengers were a bunch of drama students, sitting for a script read-aloud for the semester’s big production. There was no formality—or, rather, there was formality, and all of it had gone to Eyvan. Only when you looked at their faces and truly heard their words did the reality of the moment finally come through. These people were broken and aching. They’d have cut themselves open just to get a better change of ripping the heartache out of the pits of their bellies. They’d have tied their words of fear and guilt end to end into a storied tourniquet to bind themselves together in greater unity. They were lost and, more than anything else, they wanted to be found. And the worst part? They had been found.

Eyvan clapped his hands together. “Who wants to go next?”

As the saying goes: be careful what you wish for.

Ileene raised her hand. “I’d like to, Eyvan—if you don’t mind.”

He nodded lovingly. “Be my guest, sweetheart.”

Andalon tugged at my sleeve. “Mr. Genneth—it’s Ms. Leen!”

I turned to attention as Ileene began to speak.

“For as long as I can remember, I’ve wished I was more confident; more decisive. I was tired of my failings. Tire of being late for school because I couldn’t pick what outfit to wear, spending the time fretting over what my mother would think if I dared to make a choice out of hand; tired of getting grumbles and nettle-eyed stares from the people in line behind me and from the cashier at the register console in front of me at an O’Malleigh’s or a Tempura Tent as I tried to figure out what to order.” She half-closed her eyes. “Tired of feeling like I was the lone, misplaced wrench that jammed up the gears that kept the world going.”

“I can’t stand being indecisive, either,” a man said.

Angel’s Mercy, it was like they were talking about me.

“Neither can I,” I muttered, even though none of them could hear me.

Ileene nodded.

“My mother’s a self-centered control freak. She might have mellowed out, I guess, but I don’t know if that really counts for anything. You can’t even begin to know what it’s like growing up while getting criticized to pieces over every little thing you do.”

“I do,” someone said.

“I do, too.”

Many did.

Tasha looked Ileene in the eyes. “How did you deal with it?” she asked.

“I rebelled,” Ileene said. “Short hair, black lipstick, unsavory acquaintances.” With longing, she looked off into the distance. “Surfing, swimming the ocean… and all of it before I’d even finished puberty. I’d have made myself radioactive, if I could. Eventually, Mom grew tired of her own rage. We’d been… quite close before all that; after it, an empty space moved in between us—cold, but quiet. It makes me feel so small, knowing that I only started to figure out who I wanted to be because my mother’s crusade gave me something to react against.” She shuddered, sniffled, and wept. “I couldn’t make up my mind and figure myself out for myself. Even for that, I had to have someone else to do it against.”

I couldn’t help but play the role of therapist. I was too familiar with it not to do so.

“I think it comes from fear,” I said. “Our indecisiveness, that is” I said. “Fear of failing others; fear of falling short of our dreams.”

Then, Ileene looked through me. For a moment, I thought she really had heard me, but no, she was only staring off into the distance.

“When I became an Innocent,” Ileene continued, “everything finally made sense. We’re up to our necks, drowning in the sins of the world; ‘down in the valley’, as they say. But divine purpose—transcendent, eternal purpose—is a rope of life to lift us above the tide. The Church is corrupt, broken by schisms across the ages. Our purpose was to rebuild the faith anew. They told me, as a woman, I was blessed. Can you imagine that? Blessed? Blessed with the Gift of Life; the power to call forth the next generation of Innocents. It was so simple, so beautifully, beautifully simple.”

She smiled, but, slowly, it waned.

“All my life, I’ve only heard people talk about what was wrong with the world. Everything was wrong, loneliness was everywhere, and no one had anything good to say about anyone else. What kind of hope is there in that kind of life?” Ileene shook her head. “There’s none. There’s nothing you can do. You’re alone, with no one to shoulder your burdens.” She trembled, overcome with emotion. “But then I met Eyvan and learned about the Innocents and…” Ileene pressed her hand to her chest. “I always wanted to be a mother.” Looking at Eyvan, Ileene smiled through her tears. “I just never really thought about how much it meant to me. To have someone to share your life with, and to work with them to bring joy into the world.”

Smiling, Eyvan nodded deeply. “Joy and new life.” He made the Bondsign.

Ileene made the Bondsign in return. “Joy and new life.” She looked at the rest of the neophytes. “I, more than anyone, know the importance of motherhood. I know what it means not to have it in your life.” She raised her head toward the sunlight percolating through the tarp overhead. She held her head high, proud of what she was doing. It was a feeling she couldn’t remember having ever had before. “The Angel’s Love was always there for me, and through the divine promise of Motherhood, I will share it with my children, and,” her voice died to a whisper, “I’ll give them the love they deserve.”

Hearing words like that, what could a person do but shake their head and sigh? That’s certainly what I did. I remembered being Ileene’s age. How could I forget? Fresh out of college, applying to medical schools, gripping my future with my teeth, waking up every morning arguing with myself over which button life more direly needed: pause, fast-forward, or rewind. Say what you will about whether or not higher education is worth it in the long run, but if there’s one thing four years of medical school can do for a person, it’s to give them purpose and certitude—if they’re only given on lease. Tunnel vision does wonders for one’s sense of groundedness. It can make you feel anchored even when you’re ten-thousand feet in the air.

It seemed Ileene had found her anchor with the Innocents, and their doctrine of divine motherhood.

Fudge me up the axe.

This was going to be a challenge.

Then, as if to make matters worse, after Ileene finished “testifying”, Eyvan started leading the cultists in singing spirituals, butchering the song and any sanctity it might have had. It was horribly off-putting.

O, who will drive the chariot when she comes?

O, who will drive the chariot when she comes?

O, who will drive the chariot, O, who will drive the chariot,

O, who will drive the chariot when she comes?