Maybe clones are the way out of all of this. If Reg is against them, that means they're probably a good idea. And as a clone, you pop off the assembly line with an owner's manual written by the previous you - a manual as helpful as the one that accompanies a 1999 VW Jetta. Imagine all the crap this would save you - the wasted time, the hopeless dreams. I'm going to really think about this: an owner's manual for me.

It's midnight. I cut short my evening with my barfly construction buddies. We shot a few buckets of balls at the Park Royal driving range, then had a few beers, but I just couldn't bring myself to continue. Writing this document has taken a firm grip of me.

Here's an overview of what happened after the Delbrook Massacre.

The fact that I'd never met the three gun wielders didn't seem to matter. In published transcripts of interviews with the police, on the morning of the event I was "agitated." I walked "cavalierly" out of chem class without so much as a nod to the teacher. I was seen having an "emotional confrontation" with Cheryl. I "assaulted, drew blood from, and gave a concussion to" Matt Gursky from Youth Alive! I also assaulted Mr. Kroger "with seeming forethought," and I "seemingly knew to enter the cafeteria just after Cheryl Anway had been shot."

I think the public was desperate for cause and effect. At first glance, I suppose I'd probably be suspicious of me, too, and I'm pretty sure it was my father's bizarre reaction to the news that got police to thinking about me - from a hero to a suspect. Whatever the cause, the morning after the shootings I saw my yearbook photo on the front of the paper with the headline MASTERMIND?

The only thing missing was motive. The three nutcases with guns were screwed-up geeks lost in a stew of paranoia, role-playing games, military dreams and sexual rejection. They were a slam-dunk. With me, the case seemed to revolve around my relationship with Cheryl, about the fight we had that morning and reasons why I might want her dead. The best police minds couldn't engineer a reason no matter how soap-operatic their thinking.

On my side, I refused to make my life with Cheryl anybody's business but my own. I didn't mention our marriage because it was sacred; I wasn't going to let the massacre make it profane. I refused to let it be used as some kind of plot twist in the final five minutes of an episode of Perry Mason. So I said nothing, only that Cheryl wanted to talk about feelings, and I didn't. As simple as that. Which is basically what it was.

Okay, I'm not lying here, but I'm not disclosing everything. Truth is, Cheryl had just found out she was pregnant. That was what we'd been discussing at her locker. I was so taken aback by the news that I said something stupid, I forget what, and then I told her I had to prepare equipment for a Junior A team. Me - a father - and all I can say is "I have to get stuff ready for the Junior A team."

Even the idea of the baby got lost in the ordeal of the first two weeks. It wasn't until a month later, while I was waiting for a bus in New Brunswick, the temperature well below zero, that the baby caught up to me. I had to go behind a cedar hedge to cry. My nose began to bleed from the dry air, and the blood brought even more . . . Well, you get the picture.

As a result of the baby, I began doing what I used to do, wondering which woman was going to be my wife - except that now I looked at every child I saw and wondered if he or she was supposed to be mine. And then for a while I couldn't be near kids at all, and I got jobs up the coast in logging camps, construction and surveying.

And now? And now I guess I'll continue writing about the aftermath of the massacre. My many friends from Youth Alive! set the tone, gleefully providing police with a McCarthy-era dossier on Cheryl and me - a diary of the time we spent together after we returned from Las Vegas. The entries describe everything but the sex: where the cars were parked; what rooms were used and which lights went on and off at what time; the state of our clothing and hair before and after; the expressions on our faces - most often variations on the theme of "satisfied."

News that the police had taken me away from the parking lot caused rumors to quickly spread. By evening our house had been egged and paint-bombed. The police had cordoned it off, and advised us that it would probably be easier and safer if I spent the night at the station and Mom found a hotel or motel room.

Kent flew in from Edmonton. He was in his second year at the University of Alberta, working toward a CPA degree. Having Dad in the hospital was a blessing, as I at least didn't have to worry about him selling me further down the river. He and Mom, in their last act of married unity, synchronized their stories about the fractured knee, and then called it quits. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall for that little chat.

My main memories of those two weeks when I was under suspicion are of moving from one spartanly furnished room to another - a cell, a motel room or an interrogation room. I was what you'd now call a person of interest, living in a legal netherworld, neither free nor in custody. I remember eating mostly takeout Chinese or pizza, and having to hide in the bathroom when it was delivered. I remember always having to dial 9 before phone calls to my lawyer, and there was this chestnut-colored kiss-curl wig given to me by a woman from the RCMP. I was to wear it when we drove from place to place, but no matter how many times we rinsed it, it smelled like a thrift store. Potential angry mobs or not, it was stupid and I chucked it in the trash. There was this one interrogation room that smelled like cherry cola, and everywhere, the same yearbook photos being endlessly recycled on TV and in the papers.

I remember coming back from a questioning session one morning to find my mother opening the motel door with a large vodka stain shaped like Argentina on her blouse. And I wondered if I'd need to take a death certificate to Nevada to become officially unmarried. Is there even a name for this -"widowered" sounds wrong.

I ate chocolate bars from the Texaco for breakfast. Kent and I drove once to the cemetery where Cheryl had been buried, but there were TV vans, so we didn't go in. All over the embankment beside the police station I saw magic mushrooms sprouting, which seemed funny to me. And I remember Kent returning from the house where he'd gone to clean up the eggs and paint, and how he refused to discuss it.

One thing Kent did during this time was, as ever, not take sides. He never said it in so many words, but he spent hours on the phone with Alive!ers and could only have been placating them.

"They think I organized it, don't they?"

"They're curious and angry like everybody else."

"But they do."

"They're just confused. Let it go. You'll be cleared soon enough."

"Do you think I was involved?"

Kent waited half a second too long to answer this. "No."

"You do."

"Jason, let it ride."

The thought of my brother not really being on my side frightened me so much that I did let it ride.

In any event, I remember the days becoming shorter, and Halloween approaching, and chipping my tooth on the police station drinking fountain.

One further thing I remember was Mom going on a Nostradamus kick. She was trying to find the massacre foretold in his prophecies somewhere. As if.

Hey Nostradamus! Did you predict that once we found the Promised Land we'd all start offing each other? And did you predict that once we found the Promised Land, it would be the final Promised Land, and there'd never be another one again? And if you were such a good clairvoyant, why didn't you just write things straight out? What's with all the stupid rhyming quatrains? Thanks for nothing.