The Methuselah Project Read Online Free PDF

find himself alive, his cockpit relatively undamaged. Had that been an answer from the Almighty or just dumb luck? Hard to prove either way. Still, to appease the specter of wispy-haired Miss Hawkins, Roger collected his thoughts. When he’d gathered enough to string into sentences, he began.
    God, I don’t know if You’re up there or not. Some people say You are; some say You aren’t. Even if You are, I don’t know if You have time to listen to an average Joe like me. I don’t know if You even care. But, God, You know all I’ve ever really wanted to do was to fly airplanes, to serve my country, and someday to find a girl good enough to marry. Old Miss Hawkins sure believed in You, so I’m trying what she told us—I’m praying. Only I don’t know exactly what to pray for in a jam like this. So if You want to help me somehow, I’d sure appreciate it.
    Roger needed no theologian to tell him his unorthodox petition never would have won praise for eloquence. That task accomplished, he dismissed it from his mind. He leaned his head back and waited to see where these soldiers—and the gray-haired character with the spectacles—were taking him.

C HAPTER 4

T HURSDAY , A UGUST 7, 2014

FSC C OMPUTER R EPAIRS , P EACHTREE S TREET NE, A TLANTA , G EORGIA
    T he dark-haired technician emerged from the back room of FSC Computer Repairs bearing Katherine’s laptop. “Here you go, miss,” he said with some sort of Middle Eastern accent. He placed it on the counter, then sat to write up an invoice. “These older models are solid computers. You’re lucky not to have one with cheap, imported parts.”
    “I know it’s not the latest and the greatest, but it kept working, so I kept using it. What went wrong?” Katherine unsnapped her purse and extracted a credit card. She hated to add another charge to her bill, but she refused to borrow from Uncle Kurt, especially since he’d warned her against becoming a freelance editor in the first place. She could hear his voice, “There is no security, no future there. You will always be dependent on others for employment.” Well, at least she could prove she wasn’t dependent on her uncle.
    “You had a very bad virus. Your notebook really crashed. When you tried to fix it by restoring to an earlier date and it suddenly went black … Well, it made my job that much harder. I had to wipe it clean and restore to factory condition.”
    Katherine’s heart plummeted. The thought of reediting every page of Dr. Goodell’s essay on robot-assisted post-stroke therapy prodded her to the brink of tears. “Back to factory settings? So you couldn’t save that special document I told you about?”
    “Oh yes, I managed to retrieve it,” he assured. “Don’t worry about that. I salvaged a number of other documents too. Not all of them, I’m afraid, but at least fifteen or twenty. I copied them back into your Documents folder after it was done restoring.”
    Blessed relief washed over Katherine. Those older documents didn’t matter. Those gigs were history. But Dr. Goodell’s paper was the next stepping-stone on her precarious journey to financial survival. “Thank you. You’re a miracle worker. I would’ve screamed or cried—or both—if I had to comb through that whole manuscript from the beginning.”
    He shot her a smile of brilliant white teeth. “Just be sure to keep your antivirus software updated. And don’t forget to back up your work. Those are the two best ways to protect yourself.” He turned the invoice around and slid it across the counter. “That’s $120.”
    She swallowed and handed him the plastic card. That figure represented a sizeable chunk of her monthly car payment. But repairing the laptop was the only way to save herself a week’s worth of work, not to mention her reputation as a go-get-’em copyeditor who delivered completed jobs, not excuses.
    When the technician returned her credit card, he said, “May I ask you a question?”
    Feeling nearly