Story #4 By Young at Heart

Nicky Jefferson wasn’t into researching his genealogy at all; his passion was learning to fly airplanes. But since he had tied the knot with the beautiful Shelly DuBois, he found himself reluctantly drawn back into the religion of his youth. Although he had hardly ever subscribed to their practices as a young man (and at this stage he wasn’t about to give up caffeine or cigarettes), he decided that this was a compromise worth making for the love of his wife, who was a devout Mormon. And in addition to being beautiful, she was a good woman who had already provided him with 2 healthy children and another baby on the way. That alone would guarantee them a place in their heaven, but Shelly wasn’t satisfied with a lesser level in paradise. Therefore, she had assigned Nicky the task of tracking down their ancestors so that they could be baptized posthumously, assuring him and his family an even higher station in Zion. As creepy and unethical as this sounded to him, he agreed to do it because the church computer was equipped with the latest in internet technology, and he loved machines that responded to human interaction. Wow, they didn’t call these folks the Latter-day saints for nothing! This computer had voice recognition software that could actually replicate your forefathers’ speech and simulate actual communication with them. Since he had always been told that he had descended from Thomas Jefferson, Nicky decided to start his search in the early 1800’s. But here was something unexpected – apparently Jefferson's slave Sally Hemings had borne him some children and they were here in cyberspace, ready to communicate. Nicky however, was on a mission, so he quickly dismissed them on the basis of their skin color. "I need some ancestors who are descended from pure European blood, therefore you are not acceptable”, he told them. A melodious female voice came on line. “Be very careful when you come round here looking for your roots”, was all she said. The irony of that statement would soon be obvious to him.

There is another story on this picture by Viruswitch.