The Flicker Men by Ted Kosmatka

square-jawed. That certain variety of good-looking that some kind of men grow into, while others are busy growing old and plump. I pictured the phone next to his ear. I wondered if he was alone in an office somewhere, or if he had people around him. A whole team of lawyers, hanging on every word. He waited me out, and when I spoke again, so much time had elapsed that we both understood we were having a different conversation.
    â€œHow did you get the mothers?” I asked.
    â€œThey’re committed volunteers, each one. Special women, to be sure, who felt they were called for this important task.”
    â€œBut where did you find them?”
    â€œWe’re a large, national congregation, and we were able to find several volunteers from each trimester of pregnancy—though I don’t expect we’ll need more than the first one to prove the age at which a baby is ensouled. Our earliest mother is only a few weeks along. We had to turn some volunteers away.”
    Ensouled . The same word that he’d been using in the press releases. A word that put me on edge. “What makes you so sure that’s what you’re testing?”
    â€œMr. Argus, how else might we define the difference between man and animal? If not the soul, then what?”
    While I stumbled for an answer, he went on, “Call it the spirit, if you will, or use another name, but it is unquestionable what your test has found. That thing that marks us out. A thing that the world’s religions have for so long told us was there.”
    I spoke the next words carefully. “And you’re fine with them taking the risk? The mothers, I mean.”
    â€œWe have a whole staff of doctors attending, and medical experts have already determined that the procedure carries no more risk than amniocentesis. The diode inserted into the amniotic fluid will be no larger than a needle.”
    â€œIt sounds like you have everything worked out.”
    â€œEvery precaution is being taken.”
    â€œOne thing I never understood about this, though … a fetus’s eyes are closed.”
    â€œI prefer the word baby ,” he said, voice gone tight.
    I thought about the way my view of Satvik changed when I’d first heard him speak. I heard change now, in the voice on the phone. A slight shift in the temperature of the words. I was becoming something different to this man on the other end of the line.
    â€œA baby’s eyelids are very thin,” he continued. “And the diode is very bright. We have no doubt they’ll be able to sense it. Then we have merely to note wavefunction collapse, and we’ll finally have the proof we need to change the law and put a stop to the plague of abortions that has swept across this land.”
    I put the phone facedown on my desk. Looked at it. Plague of abortions .
    There were men like him in science, too—ones who thought they had all the answers. Dogma, on either side of an issue, has always seemed dangerous to me. I picked up the phone again. It seemed to weigh more than it had just a few moments earlier. “So it is as simple as that?”
    â€œOf course it is. When is a human life a human life? That is always what this particular argument has been about, has it not?”
    I stayed silent.
    He continued, “In a just society, our rights end where the next person’s begin. All would agree. But where is that beginning? When does it start? There’s been no answer. Now we’ll finally be able to prove that abortion is murder, and who could argue?”
    â€œThere’ll be a few, I suspect.”
    â€œAh, but you see, now the science will be on our side. This will change everything. We’re all possessed of the same miracle. A consciousness unique to humanity. I sense that you don’t like me very much.”
    â€œI like you fine. But there’s an old saying, ‘Never trust a man with only one book.’”
    â€œOne book is all a