The Samantha Project

by Stephanie Karpinske

  “So could we isolate the unique base pairs from the other enhanced gene fragments and somehow try filling them in on your computer model, trying different sequence combinations until they fit?”

  “That won’t work. The computer model doesn’t understand how the new base pairs work because I can’t tell it that.”

  “Then what’s the answer?”

  “GlobalLife. They would have the unique base pairs and the corresponding sequencing pattern needed to fill in these missing holes.” Jack looked back at me. “That way, they’re always the ones in control. They lose you, they can terminate the technology. You try to run, but they make it so that you have to come back.”

  “We have to tell Erik this. He has to know.”

  “I know. I’ll go talk to him.” Jack got up.

  “Wait. Let me talk to him.”

  “He’s my son. He should hear this from me.”

  I grabbed Jack’s arm. “No. It’s better if I tell him. This is happening to him and me. No offense, but you can’t understand what this feels like. To know that we’re the only two people that have this—whatever it is GlobalLife put in us. And to know that our life is on a timer.”

  Jack could tell that I wasn’t just doing this for Erik. I needed to do this for myself as well. I had to talk to someone who would understand what I was going through. “Okay, you talk to him. I’ll talk to him later.”

  “Thank you.” I gave Jack a hug and he hugged me back, even tighter. In the short time I had known him, Jack had become my substitute for Uncle Dave. It was clear that he cared not only about his son but me, too, a complete stranger who landed at the town diner just days earlier.

  I went upstairs and found Erik outside sitting on the porch steps. It was dark outside. But the lights from the kitchen gave off enough glow that I could see his face, which was staring out at the fireflies lighting up the fields.

  “Erik, can we talk?” I sat down next to him.

  He didn’t say anything, so I continued. “I missed you at training today. Kind of hard to train by myself.”

  “What’s the point?” he muttered, still staring at the fireflies. “We’ll both be dead soon anyway. And why bother running from here? Might as well stay and enjoy our last few days.”

  “About that. Your dad found a way to slow the timer.” I felt like a moron the minute I said it. Jack had used Brittany’s DNA to do that. Erik didn’t have a twin to get DNA from. It wouldn’t work for him.

  “By how much?”

  “A few months, maybe even a year.” Erik didn’t ask how it worked, so I didn’t tell him. “He also found that we have unique base pairs in our DNA, in addition to what everyone else has. You know, A, T, C, and G.”

  “I don’t know that much about genetics, Sam. Remember? Math is my thing. But yeah, I know about the nucleobases and how those work.” He took his eyes off the fireflies and turned to me. “So we have unique base pairs. What does that mean?”

  “It means that those unique pairs are probably what give us our abilities. They only show up on the enhanced genes.”

  “Yeah, but how does knowing that help us? Can Dad fix the timer? Make it stop?”

  “Not yet. Well, no, he probably can’t.” This was not going as I had planned. I thought knowing this would somehow help Erik. But it didn’t. He was still on a short path to death, with me following right behind. “I’m sorry, Erik. I thought telling you this would make a difference. Maybe make you feel a little better. But that was stupid. I’ll get your dad. He can explain it better.”

  I started to get up, but Erik pulled me back. “No, I want to hear this from you. We’re in this together, right? I mean, whatever happens to me will be happening to you.”

  What he was saying was true but I didn’t want to accept it. “Erik, why do we have to just sit here and let it happen? Why can’t we fight this?”

  “Because we can’t do anything. You just said that my dad can’t fix it.”

  “But GlobalLife can. They have the answer.”

  Erik stood up suddenly. “Sam, are you thinking of going back to them? You can’t. It’s not worth it.”

  “No, of course not. Would you just sit down while I tell you this?” Erik sat down again. “Your dad thinks that by inserting these unique base pairs into our genes, GlobalLife has created a type of supergene that, along with the embedded software, gives us these special abilities. We’re proof that it works, right?” He nodded. I continued. “Well, just imagine what they could do with that technology. They could re-engineer the entire human race—for a price, of course. They could even patent these base pairs and technically own them, meaning they own the people that have those genes.”

  “That’s sick and twisted.”

  “I know it is. But that’s not what GlobalLife thinks. Just imagine all the power and money that this technology will bring them. And they’ll come out the hero. Saving mankind by speeding up evolution. Making people smarter and stronger. With all that on the line, they aren’t going to let us ride off into the sunset and live a normal life. That’s why they built this termination code. Jack believes that we need those missing base pairs to turn off the timer. But only GlobalLife has them. The timer is meant to drive us back to them.”

  “If it weren’t for my dad, we wouldn’t even know about the timer. And if we didn’t know about it, we wouldn’t know to go back. So what’s the point of even having it?”

  “If they find us, we live. If they don’t find us, we die and nobody ever finds out about our abilities or how we got them. Us finding out about the timer is a bonus for them. They didn’t plan on it, but if it ever happened, they would assume we would come running back to them to have it shut off.”

  “Well, I’m not running back to them,” Erik said, getting up again.

  “I know we’re not.” I stood up to face him. “But that doesn’t mean we have to just sit here. Maybe your dad can break into the GlobalLife servers, find out where they store those base codes. Jack still knows people in the business, right? Maybe they could help.”

  “Sam, I know you’re trying to be positive, but there’s no good answer here. The only good thing is that we might be able to buy some time by slowing the timer. And how do we do that?”

  Erik looked at me, but I didn’t have the heart to tell him. I stood there in silence.

  “By going to get your twin, Erik.” Jack had been listening from the kitchen and had just stepped outside. He walked over to his son. “We’re going to get your twin brother.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Promises

  “I don’t understand. How do you know if I even have a twin?” Erik asked his dad.

  “I don’t know, Erik. But you and Sam are close in age and both were raised in the United States. You weren’t part of the failed European experiments. So I’m almost certain that they added the control twin starting with you, Erik.”

  “Well, even if I had a twin, what would you need to find him for?” Erik looked confused.

  Jack explained how Brittany’s DNA had slowed my timer, at least on his computer model, and how it would likely work the same way for Erik and his twin.

  “There’s no way we could ever find him, Dad.”

  “We can use the facial recognition program the government uses. They have a giant database of almost every citizen’s face. If he has a driver’s license, he’s in the system. I just need to hack into the system and find a face that matches yours, Erik. It’s a long shot, but it’s all we have.”

  “You can’t hack into a government database! Just forget the whole thing. It’s too risky to go on some search for a twin we’re not even sure exists. I can’t do that to Sam and Brittany. Or you, Dad.”

  “Erik, don’t be ridiculous,” I said. “Finding him could buy you months, maybe a year.”

  Jack sat down next to Erik. “We have to at least try, Erik. I can’t not try. You’re my son.”

  Erik gave up arguing about it. “What about Sam? You only ran a computer model on
her. You don’t have the equipment to put Brittany’s DNA in her. And how are you gonna do that when we’re on the road?”

  “I have an old friend that I used to work with at GlobalLife. We’ve had limited contact since I left, but I can trust him. He works at Stanford now—in the genetics department. He’d let me use the equipment. I know he would. It’s our only option. I don’t know how else I could do it.”

  Erik and I looked at each other, not sure if any of what Jack was describing would work. We told him our ideas about hacking into GlobalLife. He listened. But if he thought there was any way it would work, he would have let us know. Instead, he didn’t say anything, which was all the answer we needed.

  We all went to bed that night, but Brittany was the only one who slept. I stayed up, trying to figure out a way to stop the timer. And I was sure that Erik and Jack had done the same.

  Just as the sun came up, I drifted off to sleep. I started to dream of the surfer boy again. I was in his room with the old man. I stared at the photo, feeling sad that he had nobody there for him other than his employer. The boy in the photo looked so much like Erik. I looked closer at his face. Suddenly I felt my heart beating faster. I bolted up from my sleep, feeling out of breath.

  I ran upstairs to find Jack and Erik sitting at the kitchen table. “Erik! You do have a twin!” I tried to catch my breath. “I know who your twin is. I mean, I saw him. He was a surfer. Lived right on the beach. The sign said Salt Creek, I think.”

  “Wait, slow down.” Jack grabbed my arm and pushed me into the seat next to him. “Now what are you saying?”

  “I had this dream the other night. I saw this boy. He looked kind of like Erik, but I didn’t think anything of it. And then I had the dream again, just now. And I looked at his face closer this time. In a photo. And it was Erik. Well, not Erik. But a guy that looked just like him. Like his twin.”

  “It’s just a dream, Sam,” Erik said. “You were dreaming of a twin because you know we’re looking for him. That’s all.”

  “No, Erik. You don’t understand. I have these types of dreams all the time. Remember how I told you about them? How I could see future events? Past events? Like I dreamed that my parents’ deaths weren’t an accident before I even knew that.”

  “Why didn’t you tell us about this dream before?” Jack asked.

  “I wasn’t sure if it was true. Like Erik said, I thought that maybe I was just wanting Erik to have a twin so I was dreaming about it.”

  Jack didn’t look convinced. “Sam, I believe it’s possible for you to have dreams about past or future events, but I don’t know how you can have them about people you’ve never met. Like I told you, the research has only shown this to be possible with people you know.”

  “But I dreamed about the guy at GlobalLife before I’d even met him. I had never seen a photo of him. And I dreamed about people in the lab where they held me. I had never met them before either.”

  I continued on, telling them all the dreams I’d had—some with people I knew and some with people I had never met. They all seemed to show real events that had happened in the past or occurred soon after I had the dream.

  Jack finally seemed to believe me. “Well, it’s something to go on at least. So this dream with Erik’s twin. He’s a surfer? Anything else? You said something about Salt Creek? That’s a beach in California. A surfer hangout in Dana Point.”

  “Well, he was a surfer. He worked at a place on the beach that sells equipment. Beach chairs, boogie boards, that type of stuff. He lived with the guy that owned the shop.”

  “Why are you using past tense?” Erik asked, and I suddenly realized that I hadn’t even mentioned what had happened to his twin. “Do you think your dream took place in the past? Like maybe he’s moved and isn’t in California anymore?”

  “I’m such an idiot. I should have said this before. Erik, your twin had an accident. A surfing accident. I’m sorry. He didn’t survive.”

  “What? When?” Erik seemed to be losing hope again.

  “Just recently. Like a few days ago. I don’t know. That’s the feeling I got from the dream. Like it had just happened.”

  “If her timing is right, then we need to get out there fast.” Jack got up from the table. “The only way we’ll get a DNA sample is by going through his room. Taking an article of clothing. That guy he’s been living with. He’ll dump all that. Maybe he already has.”

  “We’re still leaving tomorrow morning though, right?” Erik asked. “We can’t leave today, Dad. We’re not ready.”

  “We’ll still leave tomorrow but we’ll have to drive straight there. I’ll try calling that place, that business that sells the beach supplies. I’ll talk to the owner. Tell him I’m a relative coming to pick up the boy’s stuff.”

  The rest of the day we all raced to pack whatever we might need. Jack and Erik went to San Antonio to pick up the van and any last-minute supplies. Brittany helped me clean the house to get rid of any evidence that we were ever there.

  By evening, we were all exhausted, but we listened as Jack went over the trip details. He had strict rules about who we could talk to and what to say. Brittany didn’t seem to be listening but I figured I could give her a recap later.

  The van was packed and ready to go. The truck would stay with the house, parked outside so any neighbors that drove by would assume that we were still there. We did a final checklist of our supplies before going to bed.

  I slept a few hours, if that. I was eager to get out of town and on the road. The sooner we left, the sooner Erik and I would be to getting our timers slowed. Now that I knew it was there, it was almost like I could hear it ticking away in my head.

  Around 5:30 a.m., I heard footsteps upstairs. I went up to find Erik on the porch swing—the same swing we had shared on my first night there. The early morning was quiet and still. I could see a flicker of fireflies in the dark fields. The screen door squeaked as I opened it and Erik looked up.

  “Hey, you’re up early,” I whispered. “Let me get a light.” I picked up a lantern on the side table and switched it on.

  “I couldn’t sleep.” Erik motioned me to sit down next to him.

  “Yeah, me, too.” I sat down on the swing, this time glad it was too small. I wanted to be close to Erik.

  A few minutes went by, neither of us saying anything. I could have read his thoughts, but I didn’t. In our training, Erik had said that thought reading was only to be done when necessary. Otherwise it was an intrusion of privacy. Let people tell you what they think, he said. Let them show you. You can’t always get the whole picture by just hearing their thoughts.

  He was right. I knew what Erik was thinking without needing to read his thoughts. I could feel it. He was worried. Worried that we might get caught, that one—or all—of us might get hurt, or even killed. And I could feel his sadness over losing the brother he never knew.

  I reached over and grabbed his hand. “Erik, I’m sorry about your brother.”

  Erik didn’t say anything. It was enough of a shock to find out he even had a brother. Finding out his brother was dead was too much to deal with, given everything else that was going on.

  After a few minutes, I looked over at Erik. “I don’t feel good about this. About today.”

  “It’ll be fine, Sam.” Erik said it with conviction, even though I knew he didn’t believe it.

  “Don’t you feel it? Like something isn’t right? Maybe we shouldn’t leave today. Maybe we should wait.”

  “I can’t trust my intuition on this. If I did, we would never leave. This is a risky move. Your intuition will always tell you to avoid that risk. You’ve got to stop with the doubts, Sam. Nothing is 100%. There is no perfect time. We have to leave and not look back.”

  We sat quietly again, alone in our thoughts. I wouldn’t let go of Erik’s hand and he wouldn’t let go of mine.

  Eventually, I broke the silence. “I can hear it ticking, Erik. It’s so loud, especially when everything else is so quiet.”
r />   “I hear it, too,” he said, knowing exactly what I meant. I felt his hand tighter around mine.

  “There’s something I want to tell you, Sam.” Erik seemed nervous. He wouldn’t look at me, but kept looking straight ahead, into the dark fields.

  “Yeah, you’re worried, I know. I am, too.”

  “No, it’s not about that.” Erik hesitated. “Before we go, I wanted to say that, well, I really care about you, Sam. I know I just met you but—it’s hard to explain. When I saw you at the diner that day, it was like I knew you. I had a really strong,” he paused, “attraction to you. I felt a connection to you that I’ve never felt with anyone. And when you left that day, I didn’t want you to go.”

  There was awkward silence and then Erik continued. “You think I’m nuts, right? You didn’t feel the same way.”

  I paused, not sure I was ready to have this conversation. But Erik’s face looked desperate for my response. “I felt exactly the same way, Erik. When I got off the bus in San Antonio, I had this strong urge to come here. I didn’t know why. But I think it was because you were here. I think I was drawn here because of you. And then when I saw you, just like you said, I felt like we had this instant connection.”

  “Yes, exactly,” Erik said, sounding relieved. “I may not know everything about you, Sam, but I feel like we’ve been friends all our lives. I can talk to you like I can’t talk to anyone else.”

  “I know. It’s crazy because it’s not like me at all. I normally take forever to get to know someone.”

  “And, well, maybe I shouldn’t say it but . . . I feel like we could be more than friends. I think you feel it, too.”

  He waited for my response, but I remained silent. Of course I felt that way, but I couldn’t admit it. Not yet. It wouldn’t be fair to Colin, even though I knew I’d never see him again.

  The uncomfortable silence seemed to last for minutes. Erik finally spoke again. “So back to what you said before. Yes, I’m worried, but not for myself. I’m worried about you. I can’t let anything happen to you, Sam. I won’t let anything happen to you. I promise.”