From Here to Eternity

By Paige Cuccaro

Love never dies…but apparently Rachel has.

Waking up to her obituary in the news and no recollection of the past few weeks, Rachel turns to her husband, Nate. He is the inventor of CYANAs--vessels that look exactly like humans and can store a person's memories…and maybe even the soul. But the answers Nate has are not the answers Rachel wants to hear.

When he arrives home, Rachel doesn't recognize the man who claims to be her husband. But there's something about him that tugs at her heartstrings, even as her distrust grows. Can Nate convince Rachel to fall in love with him all over again? Especially once she realizes what he's done…and what it means for their future?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Macmillan Publishers
• Release date: Feb 28, 2013
• ISBN: 9781622660629

Book preview

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Love never dies…

Waking up one day to her obituary in the news and no recollection of the past few weeks, Rachel calls her husband, Nate, in a panic, at the research facility where he works. Nate is the inventor of CYANAs, Cybernetic Anthropoid Automatons, vessels that look exactly like humans and can store a person’s memories…and maybe even his or her soul.

When Nate arrives home, Rachel doesn’t recognize the man who claims to be her husband. Can Nate convince Rachel to fall in love with him all over again? Especially once she realizes what he’s done…and what it means for their future?

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Table of Contents

Part I

Part II

About the Author

Also by Paige Cuccaro...

Commencement

Hellsbane

Heaven and Hellsbane

Hellsbane Hereafter

Discover more Entangled Select Otherworld titles…

Escape Velocity

Riding the Odds

Mind Tamer

Temporal Shift

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

Copyright © 2013 by Paige Cuccaro. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.

Entangled Publishing, LLC

2614 South Timberline Road

Suite 109

Fort Collins, CO 80525

Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.

Select Otherworld is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.

Edited by Stacy Abrams

Cover design by Heather Howland and Paige Cuccaro

ISBN 978-1-62266-062-9

Manufactured in the United States of America

First Edition February 2013

Part I

I’m dead, I said to my husband’s voice mail. I knew he wouldn’t answer. He never picked up at the lab—too lost in his research. But this was too bizarre to wait until he came home.

Funny. I expected Heaven to be whiter…and cleaner, I said, scanning the mountain of dishes filling our kitchen sink. Gawd, Nate must’ve used every dish in the house. It took real skill to get the pile that high without any slipping off onto the floor. He hadn’t even bothered to scrape the leftover food off half of them. Geez, Nate, you could wash a dish now and then.

An uncomfortable twinge squirmed through my stomach, like a worm munching a rotted apple. There was something wrong with this picture. What is it?

Anyway, I said pointedly, shifting my thoughts away from the strange stirring of intuition and back to the reason I’d called. I refocused my gaze on the Global Web screen, reflected on the inside lens of my Connect Wear glasses. The multifunctional eyewear showed our local newspaper’s web-port. My name’s in today’s obituary section. Right there after Scarlet Baker and before Frank Cockren.

The port’s background music chimed through my head, the glasses transmitting notes directly to the electric synapses of my brain. A simple thought stopped the sound. I leaned my butt against the kitchen counter, folding my arms across my belly. Probably someone with a similar name or something. They just got the info mixed with mine. It’s kind of creepy, though. And you know it’s going to screw with my credit—

An incoming call vibrated my glasses, interrupting my message. The caller ID flashed the name, Lord of Geeks, over the top of the newspaper’s page on my right lens. Oh. You’re calling me. End outgoing call, I said to Nate’s voice mail. The words call ended flashed for a moment under the caller ID then vanished. My eyes focused on the ID of the incoming call.

Answer, Lord of Geeks, I said, and the ID changed to open call. Hey. I was just calling you.

Rach? a man asked, his voice strained—worried.

Who is this? It wasn’t Nate. For security reasons they weren’t allowed to use the video option from the lab, so I couldn’t see who it was.

It’s me, hon, the man said. It’s Nate. What happened? How did you— Never mind…are you okay?

A sense of wrongness snaked through my veins like cold poison, freezing me to the bone. I was calling my husband. Dr. Nathaniel Burns.

I know, he said. I couldn’t pick up before it went to voice mail. It’s me, Rachel.

No. Nate and I had known each other since his family moved in next door to mine when we were kids. I had been in fourth grade; him in ninth. We’d gotten married when I was still in college, eight years ago now. I’d heard his voice almost every day for sixteen years, and yet I suddenly realized…I couldn’t remember what it sounded like. I couldn’t be sure it wasn’t him I was talking to. Why? A stab of panic lanced through me. End call.

Less than twenty seconds later the soft vibration of an incoming call shook my glasses and the Lord of Geeks ID glowed in the upper right corner of my vision. Answer Lord of Geeks. Hello?

Listen to me, Rachel. Please don’t end call. I still didn’t recognize the voice but this time he kept his tone soft, like he knew exactly how to quiet the frantic pounding of my heart. "Something must’ve gone wrong. But I can fix it, I promise. You have to trust me. I’m on my way— I mean…Nate is on his way home. He wants you to stay in the house. Rest. Don’t call anyone and don’t answer the phone. And Rach…I love—"

End call, I said. That couldn’t have been my husband. I’d know his voice if I heard it, even if I couldn’t bring the sound of it to my mind at the moment. There was nothing familiar in the one I’d heard. Nothing.

What was going on? Why would someone pretend to be Nate? Instinct sank like lead in my stomach, making my skin clammy, telling me nothing was as it should be.

I stood there, concentrating on the in and out of my breaths, for so long that the lenses of my glasses had gone clear, my Global Web session timing out. I pulled the glasses off and set them on the counter. My gaze flicked to the sink.

Dishes piled nearly a foot high from the countertop, both stainless steel basins full. How had he used so many dishes in one morning? I stepped closer, picking through the pile. I wasn’t sure why, but there was something else bothering me about those dishes—I just couldn’t put my finger on it.

The stink of rotted food wafted up from the pile each time I moved a plate, digging my way to the bottom. Gnats buzzed off a mold-crusted mac and cheese plate, and a small puddle of curdled milk spilled from a used cereal bowl. I swallowed down a surge of bile at the back of my throat.

There were balled-up paper napkins and box ends from Hungry-Man dinners mixed in with the pile, plus at least six Chinese take-out containers tossed on the counter beside the sink.

This wasn’t one day’s worth of dishes.

The fact settled into my brain like a backward puzzle piece—right and wrong at the same time. But it wasn’t until I spotted Nate’s coffee mug that the true wrongness needling me from the inside out finally pierced the surface of my mind.

"Where’s my mug?" If this pile had been days in the making—setting aside the impossibility of that for the moment—where was my contribution? Coffee was my go-juice, like gas to a car. I drank enough of the stuff that my coffee mug was the first thing I picked up in the morning and the last thing I set in the sink at night. It was always there waiting for a quick rinse and reuse the next

Reviews for From Here to Eternity

[avoraciousreader · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

*Book source ~ Many thanks to Entangled for providing a review copy in exchange for an honest review.Rachel Burns sees her obituary in the paper and immediately calls her husband, Nate. Getting his voicemail, she starts to leave a message only to get an incoming call from her husband’s phone. However, when she answers she doesn’t recognize his voice. This day is getting weirder and scarier as things don’t add up for Rachel. The man on the phone promises everything will be ok and he’ll be right home, but when he shows up Rachel doesn’t know who he is. She has gaps in her memory, the date is wrong, the home security doesn’t acknowledge her voice, she can’t open the front door to leave, the house is a mess and the man who says he is Dr. Nathaniel Burns is not familiar to her. Is Rachel losing her mind? Or has something else happened?Wow. This is an excellent sci-fi short. Even though it is a short story it feels a lot longer. It’s very well-written, the characters of Rachel and Nate are well-fleshed out, the moral situation they are in is a slippery slope and extremely tricky, not to mention dangerous. I could feel Rachel’s confusion and fear as she tried to logically work through what Nate tells her. Then there’s Nate. Oh, boy. Nate’s dilemma is one that makes you think really hard, what would you do if you were in his shoes? And the twist? Didn’t see that coming and though it’s a bit far-fetched and quite the stretch, I let it go. If you like sci-fi I recommend picking this one up.