“Did you find anything on the dig?” Steven asked. “How was it over there?”
Adam looked out over the cemetery. He shrugged. “Maybe. I think so. We found some writing that could turn out to be something.”
“Ancient prophecies?” Steven asked. “Magic incantations? An ancient genetics textbook?”
“I haven’t had a chance to read it yet,” Adam said. He tried to force a smile. “If it turns out to be genetics, I’ll let you know. We can collaborate.”
Adam glanced over at Danny and gestured toward the rows and rows of headstones dotting the ground—all different sizes, colors, and textures as far as he could see, in blocks about a hundred yards square separated by narrow, tree-lined roads. Many of the newer stones were granite or polished marble, tall and engraved in deep letters in Hebrew and English. Some of the older stones were in Yiddish.” So many graves.” Adam said. “Do you ever wonder what’s going to happen to all of them?”
“They’ll be here.” Danny said. “That’s kind of the point, right? Cemeteries are forever. That’s part of why I bought in. It’s permanent.”
“Yeah, but I mean in a really long time: a thousand years, two thousand years. I’ve been on digs where the site was a lot younger than that. A lot changes in that amount of time.” Adam stood up and picked up three small stones from the ground. He placed them in front of the headstones of his mother, father, and grandmother in the traditional mode of marking a visit in a Jewish cemetery.
“In a couple of thousand years I don’t even think much of the DNA would be left in these bodies,” Steven said, his voice low. “Not in this climate. I doubt if there would be enough to identify them.” He looked down at the ground, as if he could see the chemical decomposition taking place at his feet. “Just about all the original molecules would have been degraded. A lot of them would have been built up again into new molecules in worms, or plants, or insects, or bacteria. That would have all happened many thousands of times in two thousand years. Everything that had made up the people while they were alive would be growing in some other body in some other place.”
Adam sat back down and ran his hand along the lush grass in front of him. “Chemical recycling. It’s hard to get any comfort from that.”
Steven shrugged. “I don’t find it disturbing. We’re all a part of something bigger, something oblivious to our concerns. It’s been going on for billions of years and it will continue for billions of years if we don’t screw it up too badly. That’s something. And also, it’s true. I see that as a big advantage over a lot of beliefs people have.”
Danny shot Steven an angry look. “Hank wasn’t just his body,” Danny said. “Science doesn’t know everything.”
Adam caught Steven’s patronizing smile and he intervened before Steven could respond. “We see bones at the digs, sometimes,” he said, “along with jewelry and tools, and a lot of trash.” He tore off a few blades of grass as he spoke. “Everything gets buried one way or another, and some of it gets dug up later, sometimes with some sense of reverence, but not usually. There’s nothing magical about any of it, you know. The bones won’t live again any more than the rest of it will, I don’t think. The people aren’t in their bones, and they aren’t in their stuff. We can sometimes learn about the people or how they lived, but they’re gone.”
He gestured toward the grave they had just filled. “My whole family is here, but nothing that’s really them.” He looked at Steven. “Maybe in a couple of thousand years they could be part of someone’s PhD project.”
Steven smiled. “That’s a kind of immortality I could believe in,” he said. “And if I could help someone get a degree, so much the better.”
Adam looked at his feet. “Sometimes I hope for a little more,” he said. “Not anything physical; not the bones or the chemicals. But I’d like to be able to hear them again, to see them again.” He tried to smile. “Wouldn’t it be great if I could just download my grandfather from the Cloud when I wanted to talk to him?”
Danny looked reprovingly at Adam. “You think Hank was just data? Come on, Adam, don’t even joke about that. Heaven isn’t just some big hard drive.”
Adam shrugged. “I have CDs and MP3s of concerts I’ve been to that sound just like the real thing,” he said. “Somehow, the whole experience is there, stored on my computer. Maybe data really is all we are, or all we are that matters, anyway. Zeroes and ones.”
“You can reduce everything to zeros and ones in principle,” Steven said. “Even the way each neuron functions and the patterns of their connections. With a hundred billion neurons in your brain, each connected in thousands of ways, that’s a lot of zeroes and ones, but it’s still just zeroes and ones.”
Adam took pity on Danny. He didn’t want to gang up on him. Not today. He gestured toward the gravestones in their neat rows. “This is a beautiful place, Danny,” he said. “You should be really proud.”
Danny was quick as usual to accept a peace offering. He looked around with obvious satisfaction. “I do love it here,” he said. “Rose thought it made sense financially, but it doesn’t really. I’m managing it better than it was, but it’s never going to be a real moneymaker. I like that it gives me a chance to work outside part of the time. And it’s not from my parents. It’s something I did on my own.”
Neither Adam nor Steven seemed about to reply, so Danny continued. “What are you doing for the rest of the week, Adam?” Danny asked. “Are you sitting shiva? It’s not the full seven days, you know. Rosh Hashana starts on the fourth, on Wednesday night.”
“I don’t know what I’m going to do. I have classes on Tuesday and Wednesday, and they aren’t prepared yet. And I have a lot to do on the artifact we found.”
“You’ll have to go through the apartment at some point, too,” Danny said. “I don’t know when the lease expires. You’ll need to talk to the super about arranging things. If you can wait until next week, I can help you. It might be hard being back in the apartment and going through his things. You don’t have to do it alone.”
Adam bit his lip. “It hasn’t been easy for me being in that apartment for a long time. Not since Grandma died. This probably won’t be much worse.”
The day of his grandmother’s burial flashed into Adam’s mind. He missed her terribly in that moment. Adam remembered standing in front of the stereo speakers in the living room in their apartment after the funeral. The absence of music felt so wrong to him. He remembered that vividly. She had always had music going before she got sick: Count Basie, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman. And Ellington. Especially Ellington. Adam remembered how gently he had placed the needle in the groove of her favorite record, “Sophisticated Lady,” and how he watched as it moved up and down in the old, warped vinyl. He remembered how he would have given anything to have her there with him. He could still recall the flash of anger he felt then when he couldn’t hear the song over the chatter of all the people there who were treating the day like a party or a reunion.
Danny seemed oblivious to Adam’s reverie. “She seemed to know everything, didn’t she?” Danny asked. He turned to Steven. “She used to talk about history, and politics, and art while she did her crossword puzzles. She had something to say about almost every clue.”
Adam smiled through his tears. “She was a real talker.”
Danny nodded. “Hank loved her so much,” he said. “God, he was a wreck when she died. I was really worried about him.”
“I don’t know if it was conscious or not,” Adam said, “but after a couple of weeks, my grandfather always had the radio on, or a tape going after she died. There