Luminosity (Book One)

Chapter 7: Souls

My soup was tasty. The pasta was all right, although the cook took the idea of "al dente" more seriously than I preferred. My estimates about my appetite proved basically accurate, and when I'd finished eating and gotten a box for the remaining food, Edward paid the bill and we left the restaurant. "It's a nice place," I said.

"I'm glad you liked it," he said heavily - nervous about having to tell me why he didn't care to have me immortal? - and unlocked his car. I got in; he waited for a gap in traffic, then ducked into the driver's seat and pulled out.

"So," I said.

"Right," he sighed, taking the exit onto the highway and rapidly getting up to speed. "I'm not expecting you to understand this."

"Try me," I said peevishly.

"First," he said, "can you tell me about your religious leanings?"

This didn't make a lot of sense. "Why is that relevant?"

"I'm asking this first because otherwise I'm not sure how to present my position," he said.

"I don't think about religion much," I said. "Renée tries out new churches like some people try on shoes. She never made a habit of bringing me along."

"What do you believe about souls?" asked Edward, and I had an inkling of where this was going.

"Edward, if you're going to tell me that I have a soul because I'm a human and you don't because you're a vampire, that's a ridiculous objection. What is it that you think souls do? What functionality do you think you lost back in 1918? You can clearly think, so if you're right about who's got a soul, then souls don't do that. You can make the decision to not slaughter everybody around you even when they'd be delectable, so if you're right, souls don't handle moral reasoning. You've got memories, so your soul wasn't storing those for you until it left. And it would be remarkably original theology if you said that the soul was responsible for making humans breakable and slow and weak and mortal, but if that's what souls do, I'm not sure why anybody would want one."

"What about an afterlife?" Edward murmured.

"What about it? Suppose there's a God," I humored him. "Suppose there's a God and he likes to stash dead people in afterlives appropriate to them when they die. Why would a soul be called for? If for some reason one were essential, why couldn't you just be issued a new one if something unfortunate happened to your first one? This is God we're talking about. He isn't going to run out of ectoplasm to make souls out of. He's not going to forget who you are because you don't have your soul attached. Or maybe that's not what you mean," I said. "Maybe you mean vampires automatically go to hell, when you play with matches a little too much - but think about that, really. You didn't hold a flamethrower to Carlisle's head and demand to be changed, did you?"

"No," Edward murmured.

"Right, you were delirious with the flu, most of the way to dead. Scarcely in a position to be held responsible for anything you did. But let's say that you're destined for hell for something you didn't do anyway. If that's the sort of thing that can get you damned, I'm probably already in trouble for having divorced parents, or for having eaten non-kosher baby food, or something like that."

"You won't be delirious with the flu," Edward said darkly.

"You're right. I won't. But I thought you were talking about a property of vampires in general, not just willfully turned ones," I said. "Right? No fiddling around with your theory while we're in the middle of a conversation about it, please."

"...Right."

"Now when Carlisle turned - let's not use you as an example. When Carlisle turned Esme, she had just fallen off a cliff and was dying. At that time, she had a soul, right?"