Immortal Stories: Eve Read Online Free PDF

woman I’ve ever seen.  And I’m saying that after all of that sex, so it’s not just a line.  But your clothes are all new, you’ve got a bag full of cash, and you talk like someone who’s not just recent to the country.  You sound like someone who climbed out of a space ship, or crawled out of a cocoon in some lab.  Where did the cash even come from?”
    “I knew I was going to need it to start.  Before I found employment.”
    “Yeah, but that isn’t answering the question.  Everyone needs money, people don’t just get it because they need it.”
    “Yes, I suppose this is true.  I found it in one of the banks.”
    “You stole it.”
    “It didn’t belong to me, and I took it, yes.  I could speak at length on the notion of ownership and possession and how artificial I find intra-tribal commerce, but it may suffice for now to say I felt no moral qualms when I did this.”
    “ How did you do it?”
    “Through the veil.  Solid things aren’t as solid there.”
    He sighed grandly.  “You can walk through walls?”
    “Yes.” 
    “Can you show me?”
    “I could.  I’m trying not to.”
    “I think you better explain that.  I mean, I don’t even get why you want a job if you can walk through bank walls and don’t see anything wrong with it.”
    Her expression must have soured at the question, only because thinking about a response brought back unpleasant memories.
    “I’m sorry, did I hit a nerve?” he asked. 
    “It’s all right, I’ll answer.  It was pointed out to me recently that my disgust for so much of this world may come in part from my… detachment.  The problem with traveling on the other side of the veil—which is what you’ve asked me to show you as proof—is when I do it I will leave you here.  I’ll remove myself, even if it’s only a tiny bit and for the briefest of times.  I’ll be detached.  There’s a comfort to being there.  I miss it, but I’m trying to wean myself.”
    “Someone said that to you?  The disgust part.”
    “In so many words.  My disgust was self-evident, and perhaps my detachment as well.  He wasn’t—he isn’t a good man, the one who said this to me.  Not good, but he has some wisdom.  And I’m not a good woman.  I was there to commit a murder.”
    “You know, every time I feel like we’re settling down you bring out some new kind of crazy.”
    She laughed.  “There’s a long explanation.”
    “Did you do it?”
    “No.”
    “That’s good.”
    “I had been meaning to for a long time.  It’s… as I said, there is a long explanation, but I had… it was someone he cared about and I wanted him to suffer, and I thought I had found a way to make him suffer in the same way he made… I wanted him to suffer, and this was a poetically appropriate way.  But I couldn’t do it.  And he knew, in the end, that I couldn’t, so it didn’t even serve that small purpose.  He didn’t know the kind of terror he could have known had there been truth behind my threat.  He wasn’t going to feel that loss of control over the life of a loved one at my hand.  As soon as I realized that, I knew there was going to be no way of getting from him what I wanted.”
    “You wanted vengeance?”
    “Yes, that’s very close to right.  But the enormity of the task… it would have given me none of what I wanted, and turned me into someone I didn’t want to be any more.  So I didn’t do it.  Millennia of waiting for such a moment, and I didn’t do it.”
    She smiled grimly.  “And now I’m here, trying to figure out who I’d like to be instead.”
    Rick smiled back.  “That’s quite an existential crisis you’ve got going on there.”
    “I suppose it is.”
    “I’m pretty sure I don’t believe any of it.  Only thing holding me back here is there’s nothing at all about you that makes any sense, so if we’re going with things that are crazy sounding, what you just said isn’t so bad.  Pretty sure I’d be saying the same