The God Patent by Ransom Stephens Page A

her father and I can’t.”
    “It’s cool,” Ryan said. “I like hanging with her. I have a son about her age back in Texas.”
    “Is your wife dead?”
    “What?” Ryan stepped to the side. “No, she lives in Texas with my son.”
    Her eyes tracked him but she didn’t move. Her words flowed in a monotone, and she told him about her husband’s fight with brain cancer. “That was our sad-glad time. As we watched our world dry up and blow away, our pain blew away too. I wanted to go with him, but he wouldn’t let me. He told me to stay here with Kat. As soon as I’m finished with Kat, I’m going to him.”
    When Ryan’s father died, he learned that hugging his mother helped; not that he had enough hugs to fill her loss, but they helped. Ryan stepped toward her.
    Jane’s face jerked toward him. “Don’t comfort me. Only he could comfort me. I held onto him, you know. Even when he was cold and rigid, I didn’t let go. It was Katarina. Katarina made me let go of him. She pulled my arms away. She made me let go. I wouldn’t have let go, but she made me. Someday, when she’s ready, then I’ll go. Dodge is going to help me.”
    Any sympathy he felt for this woman was washed away in anger and jealousy. “My son is two thousand miles away. I’m not allowed near him.” She didn’t seem to be listening, so he grabbed her shoulders. “Listen to me, Jane. You’re wasting time. He’s dead and you’re alive. Katarina needs—”
    “No, I’m not.”
    “What?”
    “I’m not alive.” Her eyes were blank, empty, even empty of tears. “I died with him. I’m just here until Kat is ready.”
    He let her shrink out of his grasp. Her response struck him as the opposite of what a parent should say. He said, “Katarina needs you,” but it was like speaking to a closed window.
    She shuffled out the door, drawing in on herself with each step. Ryan held the door for her and watched her work her way down the hall in uncomfortable silence. She opened the door to the apartment she shared with Katarina and stepped inside.
    Katarina leaned out the door and made a face at Ryan. With raised eyebrows she whispered, “Be afraid. Be very afraid.”
    He smiled at Katarina and waved off the drama, but once he closed his door, Katarina’s mother’s words echoed in his head: “I died with him. I’m just here until Kat is ready.” He believed it.

R yan was rebuilding his career and his life according to plan. His rent was on time nine months straight. Plus, he paid all of Dodge’s fees and sent Linda over $5,000. When his contract with FiberSpec Communications expired, the manager offered him an electrical engineering staff position. Technician to staff engineer was three rungs up the career ladder. He had business cards, health insurance, a 401(k), and a new blue cubicle. With the steady success, Ryan’s confidence filled him up, crowding out the ever-present but now diminishing appetite for meth and its destruction.
    Maybe he should have done more research into the legal aspects of his predicament; maybe he should have listened to Dodge, but he didn’t.
    Six months ago, when FiberSpec first hired him, human resources had filed all the standard forms, including one with the Directory of New Hires. The Office of Child Support Enforcement eventually matched Ryan’s name to a list submitted by the DNH. The OCSE filed a standard form with FiberSpec human resources, and they generated a memo saying that child support would be garnished from Ryan’s pay. Since the child support had been set at 20 percent of his pay when he was software director at GoldCon, he would take home less than half his rent.
    When he saw the first check with all the deductions, he thought it was a mistake. He kept his cool as the HR administrator explained all the policies. He didn’t say a word, except to thank her for her time. He went back to his cube and his job.
    That night, Ryan digested the news and decided that it was just another part of