Chapter Text
After his Revelation, John had continued his path to become a lawyer and eventually judge. While still in Law School at Columbia, he’d stared at the statue of Alexander for a long while before turning away. That was another life. He could use his knowledge, his experience to help him, and maybe even register as a Reincarnate, but staring at his friend’s face, immortalized in front of the building bearing his name, was merely an exercise in bittersweet nostalgia.
He wouldn’t see Alexander again. Or any of his other friends. Or his wife Sarah, or his children. Oh, it was possible, but so far from likely that it was better to never get his hopes up to be reunited with anyone he had been close to before. Far better to expect to never meet anyone he had known in his last life and be pleasantly surprised if that happened than to expect it to happen and be bitterly disappointed when it didn’t.
He continued on with his second life, becoming first a lawyer and then a judge, remarkably quickly if it weren’t for the fact that he had experience of being Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Introducing himself in this life, especially to other judges, often got him the reply of “Oh, like the first Chief Justice?”
“Exactly like that,” John would reply, smiling at his own joke. A few people he got close to he either told of his previous identity or they guessed, but mostly people seemed to dismiss the name as an odd coincidence - which, to be fair, it was.
After all, why would they expect to find a Founding Father? Of the main seven - himself, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton - only Benjamin Franklin was publicly registered. Therefore, other than himself, Franklin was likely the only one who remembered.
Franklin was a science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and had, amusingly enough, according to the news articles, gotten his Revelation by accidentally nearly re-creating his famous experiment with a key and kite. The science department had created their own kites and had been competing in numerous categories - most efficient kite, highest flying, fastest kite, etc. - when it had started to storm. Cue a Revelation.
Franklin was definitely back, but the others likely weren’t. Well, Washington might be back. Knowing the other man, even if he was alive again, he wouldn’t go public if you gave him a million dollars. Although John himself wasn’t public; maybe the others weren’t either.
Around a year after he got a place on the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, he’d been reading a letter from Franklin - the two of them kept in touch - when the breaking news of a school shooting in California appeared on the television. A week later, it seemed that Madison was back as well - and one of the survivors of the shooting.
So at least three of them were back. Three of seven - likely all that would return in his lifetime, considering the statistics. Even if the others came back as well, it would likely be in another fifty years. Another hundred. Another hundred and fifty. Or even a thousand, or two thousand - it was all so unpredictable.
Of course, as he would later realize, if he had bothered to pay attention to any political blogs, he would have found a fourth, because honestly, it was like Alexander wasn’t even trying to hide.
Publius, really?
***
“This is a mess,” groaned Robert Newman. “How come nobody bothered to address all these conflicting precedents?” Another member of the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, he was working along with John and Olivia Gonzales on what was one of the more frustrating cases John had come across in either life.
“Becuase until now, nobody broke the law in such a way that both conflicting precedents were relevant,” huffed Olivia. Olivia, like John, was a Reincarnate. Also like John - or how John used to be - she did not have many useful memories from her past life. Unlike John, that was because as far as anyone could tell, she had died as an infant or young child from an illness, far too young to retain anything but fleeting impressions. Such a story wasn’t uncommon among Reincarnates, owing to the high infant mortality in the past.
“Well no wonder it got appealed, precedent could have led to the judge ruling either damn way!” Robert grumbled.
Several hours later, they had three piles of notes and precedents on the table in front of them. The first pile were reasons to overturn the original ruling, the second pile reasons to maintain it, and the third - much smaller - pile reasons that could honestly go either way.
***
Before he went to work, John went to his assigned mailbox in his apartment complex and reached in, pulling out a large stack of mail and the newspapers he was assigned to. He hiked back up the two flights of stairs to his third floor apartment, mostly because other than walking from the subway station to the courthouse the stairs were the only exercise he got on weekdays.
He had woken up early, especially for a Monday, so he could sort through his mail. He tossed the junk mail after a cursory glance. He did not need a new credit card, was not interested in the lottery, and did not need the coupons for stores he never actually went to. He went to his voicemail, knowing that it had been full until recently. He had been so busy with work he had left the messages to pile up, and had gone through them yesterday, finally stopping with the last one at ten at night. He only had two new messages.
He moved to his newspapers, flipping towards the news regarding Hurricane Katrina as he ate his eggs. The death toll seemed to have stabilized at much too high a number: over eighteen hundred. Alexander had never talked about his experience, much, but John had read the letter published in the Royal Danish American Gazette, hardly knowing he’d later write alongside the man - boy, really, at the time - who wrote it. Two hundred years later, hurricanes were still causing havoc. The warning times might be better, compared to practically nonexistent, but that hardly mattered when the evacuation was so poorly conducted.
He moved to the New York Post, wondering if he should just cancel his subscription. The state of the paper was such that if one needed it, the amount of spinning Alexander must be doing in his grave could power something rather large. Of course, John had gone to the library the other day and found a biography of Alexander in between one of Jefferson and one of John Adams, so his newspaper likely wasn’t the only thing powering Alexander’s post-mortem pirouetting.
He looked through the rest of the papers, looking for more information about Chief Justice Rehnquist’s death, who had died the other day. Of the sixteen different Chief Justices, that meant that nine had now died in office. John was now officially in the minority in having simply resigned. He wondered who would be the seventeenth. And it seemed a plane had crashed in Indonesia and killed over a hundred people. Dismal news all around it seemed, like always. Bad news sold, while good news didn’t.
He moved to the rest of his mail after reading the papers. A medical bill from his last check-up, a thank you note from his mom regarding the massage deal he’d bought her for her birthday, and - oh - a letter from Ben Franklin. He looked forward to reading it; the man’s wit always made his letters entertaining.
Franklin preferred sending physical letters, claiming he hadn’t established the post office just for emails to make it obsolete. John had replied that the “e” in emails stood for electronic, and wasn’t electricity kind of Franklin’s whole thing?
Dear Sir, the letter began.
...you are, perhaps, aware that my job as a professor also entails writing and publishing scientific work. I have no problems with that, in and of itself, indeed, adding to the body of scientific knowledge will always be something I take pride in. An ironically named piece of mine from my previous life, however, is filling me with rather more annoyance than pride at the moment.
Let me explain. The recent update to ORCID means all publicly registered Reincarnates have works from both of their lives linked to their ORCID. (ORCID, in case you are not aware, provides a persistent consistent alphanumeric code to identify authors or contributors to scientific communication.) This means, of course, that all of my scientific writings as Benjamin Franklin are linked to my current identity as Benjamin Dalton. While this means all my work on electricity from both lives is now in one place, it also means that my 1781 “A Letter to a Royal Academy” is also linked to my ORCID.
The letter to which I am referring was a satirical piece I wrote in response to a call for scientific papers from the Royal Academy of Brussels. It is also more commonly referred to as “Fart Proudly.”
Perhaps you can see my dilemma, especially considering the finer points of satire seem to be lost on some of my colleagues…
… In other news, the new Professor, Julia Hastings, from the biology department, is a transfer from Tulane, and has a wealth of experience both in the sciences and in - how shall I put this? - other areas. I remain convinced that older women are much more desirable as a partner than younger women …
I remain, yr. obt. svt.,
Benjamin Dalton (Franklin)
His good mood from Franklin’s letter, however, was quickly soured when he saw the next missive, which raised enough red flags just from the envelope that he pulled out a pair of latex gloves merely to open it, vividly remembering the anthrax scare that happened so soon after the September 11th attacks.
(He had the gloves due to the fact the toilet off the hall kept breaking, and John had gotten tired of calling the plumber repeatedly and was by now proficient in the patch job that would keep it working for another several weeks, the only downside being the mess fixing the toilet caused - hence the gloves. It was still better than outhouses and chamberpots.)
Red Flag Number One: There was no return address.
Red Flag Number Two: There was no stamp, either.
Red Flag Number Three: His name was formed from letters cut out of a newspaper headline that were glued to the back of the envelope. By the slight tearing of the paper, they had unstuck the letters around his last name before gluing new ones on.
That alone was such a cliche that he wondered if someone was playing a sick prank on him. Taking a deep breath, he opened the envelope, inside of which was a typed letter on a regular sized piece of printer paper.
Dear John,
When I think about what you have done to me, my anger burns hot. I made one mistake - one mistake - and you ruined my life for it. I deserved to be punished, yes, but my sentence was far too harsh. I have more than paid for what my hands have done, and you helped contribute to the excess in my punishment. You now owe me the difference.
I will take out of your hide the difference between what I deserved and what happened to me, which is most certainly vast. It was your fault, and by no means the first of your sins.
There was a poet in jail with me. He has perhaps infected my speech. No matter, for it merely makes my threat - no, promise - more impactful. If it were not for you I would not have been in jail. You are the reason for years of torment. You need to be taught a lesson. I’ll teach you a lesson.
Watch out, the reaper’s about. Tick tock goes the clock.
Enjoy your life while you can. I’ll destroy you like you destroyed me.
Sincerely,
Someone angered by your disrespect
John felt a chill go down his spine.
It wasn’t like he wasn’t used to being hated. Or death threats. The Jay Treaty had been so unpopular they had burned effigies of him in the streets. In this life, however, he couldn’t think of anyone he had angered enough to want to kill him.
Or rather, he could think of quite a few people that could blame him for being in jail, from his time as an attorney to his time as a judge. There were too many suspects, rather than too few. Considering the sender seemed to have a few screws loose, John was quite frankly concerned that they might actually go through on their threat.
They knew where he lived. Staying home would probably be more dangerous than going to work. He placed the letter in a ziploc bag and placed it in his briefcase. He was jumpy and tense until he got to the courthouse, where he called the police. Since he was a federal employee, the case went to the FBI. Their Behavioral Analysis Unit would be coming to see what they could find out about the sender of the note.
He looked at the picture of himself, his mom, and Becca on his desk. Becca had already been killed, her life cut far too short. His mom didn’t deserve to lose another child to murder. He picked up his phone again.
If he never saw his mom again, at least he would talk to her one last time. He wouldn’t tell her about the note, though. She’d just want to come to him, which would put her in danger too.
“John?” His mom answered.
“Hi mom,” he said. “I got your note. I’m glad you enjoyed the massage package I got you. How have you been?”
“I’ve been busy,” she answered. “My book club and knitting club are keeping me busy, as is my garden. Are you planning on coming home to Syracuse soon?”
“If I’m able to,” he agreed.
“And aren’t you supposed to be at work?” she said.
“I am at the courthouse currently, yes,” he agreed. “I always have time for you, though. I love you, mom.”
“Love you too, John,” she said, hanging up, none the wiser as to what was wrong.
He stared at the photo again. “I miss you Becca,” he sighed. “But I’m sure you want me to live a long life. The life you couldn’t.”