Hello, World

Chapter 2

"I'm pregnant."

"Marry me," Jackson said without a moment's hesitation.

"You won't run off?" Sara said.

"Run off? You're carrying our baby. I'm not going anywhere. Marry me."

"Okay," she said, laughing and crying as Jackson pulled her and their developing angel into a smothering embrace.

*****

The wedding was five months later. They married in a grand cathedral, at Sara's father's insistence, and Jackson ignored her relatives' sideways glances at the now-noticeable bulge protruding from her otherwise petit body. The choir sent chills from Jackson's neck to his legs as Sara's father led her down the aisle. Jackson's face flushed with all the eyes on him as he said his vows, but all his nerves evaporated as soon as Sara's lips met his, the lips he knew so well yet met anew as the lips of his wife.

The reception was held at a hotel overlooking the rocky shores of Seattle's coast. If it weren't for the din of conversation and laughter coming through the half open door behind him, all in celebration of his love, he would have heard the waves slapping the rocks below the terrace he stood on as he shared a cigar with his father.

"You've done it," Aldous said through a mouthful of smoke. "You've made it, my son."

"This is only the beginning," Jackson said. He had more news to share, news that only Sara knew. "We got approval for funding this week."

Aldous smiled. "I knew you would."

Jackson wasn't so sure. The day after Jackson's presentation, the board decided they needed regulatory approval before they would release the funding. Jackson was confident, although not certain, of approval. He felt a weight come off his shoulders the prior week when he got a call from the regulatory agency giving him the rubber stamp to move forward. It then only took three days for Forward Capital to draft up all the paperwork.

"We're going to change the world, Dad."

"You've already changed my world," Aldous said. "And hers." He pointed a thumb over his shoulder at Sara dancing with the maid of honor. "And I know you aren't done changing worlds yet. You're bigger than this world, Jackson, you always have been. You're outgrowing me and your mother. Soon the whole of Seattle may not be big enough for you."

Aldous took another puff of cigar then continued. "There's no telling where your limit is. My only advice, son, is to never forget the love that brought you into this world. Put that love back into the world, in all the things you do, and the world will be yours, with everything that's in it."

Jackson looked at his father's face, his hazel eyes glowing in the light of the setting sun. The wrinkles on his forehead were deeper than the year before, the fringes of his combover a lighter shade of gray. How long did he have left? The thought that his father didn't have eternity left threatened to send the champagne out of Jackson's stomach and over the balcony.

What if he could give his father eternity? And his mother, and Sara, and their unborn baby? Sara's father, and probably Aldous too, believed they already had eternal life, just as the words of the priest at the cathedral suggested. Maybe they did. Jackson wasn't so sure, though, and he wasn't going to sit idly by when TML could guarantee eternity in this life, on this world.

The board wanted to be rich. Jackson wanted to be God.

"You boys gonna come dance?" Sara shouted out the opened glass door.

Jackson put a hand on his father's shoulder and nodded at his misty eyes. Love you, Pops, Jackson thought to himself.

Aldous heard him, loud and clear.

Jackson took one more puff of the cigar before jogging over to his champagne-flushed wife, leaving his aging father to gaze contentedly over the vast, eternal seas.