Half Life

by Lillian Clark

  Lucille Harper, Says Fuck It and Clicks the Damn Link.

  The building is nondescript. Think a giant gray Lego plunked down in the middle of nowhere northeast of Denver, designed to make you forget what you’re seeing even while you’re looking straight at it.

  I cross my arms tighter around my chest, blow out a breath while I watch my Lyft car do a rolling stop at the end of the access road, turn west, and drive away, then check my phone: 9:55 a.m. Five minutes until my appointment.

  Plenty of time to turn back.

  But—even staring at the fifteen-foot chain-link fence topped in coils of razor wire, the mechanized gate, surveillance cameras, and accompanying video-com screen—I don’t want to.

  Clicking that link was like solving one mystery only to find another, then another and another. The site was sleek, minimalist like the email banner, with nothing but a portal to a contact page through the Life2 logo. So, I went to Google.

  And found rumors. Conspiracy sites. Reddit threads. A Wikipedia page prefaced by the “needs citations” warning. All signs pointed to a hoax. A fantastically effortful phishing scheme. Or, darker, a trap. Except every single lead shared the same uniting thread: Life2 is a multibillion-dollar company leading the charge on biological advancement. Those “breakthroughs” Dr. Thompson kept mentioning. But in what? Pharmaceuticals? No. Biomechanics? Not exactly. Human-animal hybrids à la The Island of Doctor Moreau? One guy was convinced.

  Evolution, biosynthesis, singularity. Cryogenics, immortality, regeneration, gene editing.

  Do more. Be more.

  Each answer led to five more questions. It was like trying to piece together what something is, based on what it isn’t. Like looking for a picture in an image’s negative space. But instead of feeling bored or warned, I felt invigorated.

  The deeper I went, the more ridiculous the conjectures—aliens, supersoldiers, clones—the more I needed to know.

  So I called. And even at two in the morning, someone answered.

  Three minutes until my appointment, and I take a deep breath and step up to the screen.

  It flicks on. “Hello, Miss Harper.”

  I recognize the voice. Isobel, no last name. The same one who answered my call last night. I clear my throat. “Hi.”

  The woman—brown-skinned with a perfect face, like face-tuned perfect—smiles. “We’re delighted you came.”

  “Uh, yep. Here I am.”

  “Please,” she says, and the gate buzzes, clinks, swings open. “Come in.”

  * * *

  One gate, two doors, and I step into a room with that blinding white aesthetic Apple always has. Sleek. Monochromatic. Seamless.

  The second door closes, and it’s what I imagine having an air-lock seal behind you feels like. My ears even pop. It’s too still. Too silent. I can hear Isobel breathing, the sound of her mouth when she smiles, the shush of her sleeve brushing her side as she gestures to a stark white couch. “Please,” she says. “Sit.”

  I sit.

  “Would you like a refreshment?”

  “No thank you,” I say, though my tongue’s so dry it sticks to the roof of my mouth. Ingesting something here feels final. Eating the “Eat Me” cake. Sipping faerie wine, then falling under some enchantment and dancing till my feet bleed.

  Still smiling, she dips her head once, then hesitates. Like she’s unsure what to do next. Like the only answer she’s prepared to accept is yes. And sure enough, she turns, crosses the slick white floor to a white sideboard against the white wall, and fills a single slim glass with water from a matching pitcher.

  Her footsteps echo faintly as she returns. She sets the glass on the coffee table—also glass—in front of me. Then stands, waiting. I look between her and the glass. “Thanks?”

  She offers another dip of her perfect head, then clasps her hands behind her back. “Dr. Thompson should be here shortly.”

  I eye the glass of water on the table. Stare at it. Because I can feel Isobel staring at me.

  I lick my lips, try to swallow, but my spit’s gone tacky. My palms are slick, and the knot in my chest is yanked so taut it rings. I think, What am I doing here, what am I doing here, what am I doing here, on a loop.

  But I already know the answer.

  I’m here because I need to know what “here” is. I’m here because even thinking about more, being more, makes the knot calm.

  I’m here because they need me.

  It’s what Dr. Thompson said when we spoke on the phone after Isobel—chipper and bright—asked me to hold and the line went quiet for less than a minute. “We need you.” She said a load of other stuff too, but that’s the line that echoed in my head. Intoxicating—don’t call me pathetic—validating. They need me. They want me. I am their first pick.

  And I know, I know, how that sounds. I hear it even clearer sitting on this rigid white couch under the gaze of a woman standing so stiffly, I swear her joints creak. I sound deluded. Delusional. Ridiculous and reckless and like I might as well lie down on the floor, dig into my own gut, and hand them my organs to sell on the black market myself. I mean, if my being here—secret building, secret company, secret plans, I probably should’ve left my mom a note—says anything, it’s that self-preservation isn’t my strong suit.

  But.

  I lean forward, grab the glass of water off the table, and take a long drink.

  A door opens—I’ll use “door” in the technical sense because, legit, a section of the wall shinks open, the sound like a sword being pulled from its scabbard—and a white woman, exquisitely dressed in a slate-gray wrap dress under a white doctor’s coat, enters the room followed by a man in a white coat, crisp slacks, and a tie, with an oversized tablet in his hands.

  “Lucille, welcome,” the woman says, extending her hand. I stand to shake it. “I’m Dr. Thompson, and this is Dr. Kim. We apologize for the wait.”

  I take my hand from her and fight an urge to hug my arms around my chest. “At least the accommodations are cozy.”

  “Would you believe me,” Dr. Kim says, his voice deep and loose with the slightest Southern drawl, “if I said we’re still decorating?”

  “I’d believe you if you said that door leads to an alternate dimension.”

  He breathes a laugh. Dr. Thompson smiles superficially and says, “Thank you for taking the leap of faith to join us today. I’m sure you have a lot of questions.”

  Understatement. “Yeah, I—”

  “First”—she waves Dr. Kim forward—“the formalities I mentioned last night.” He offers the tablet to me, a nondisclosure agreement already open on the screen.

  There’s an awkward moment where I pause, unsure. I prepared for this. She told me, asked me specifically, to bring an ID verifying that I’m over eighteen so I can legally sign the “necessary paperwork.” And when I tried to tell her I can’t, I’m not, she interrupted, saying, “Bring what you can, and I’ll make it work.” So I thought of the fake ID hidden in a box in my closet, procured last summer for a concert at an eighteen-and-up venue that Cass just had to go to, a card that was flimsy then and will no doubt be worse now, under this bright, unforgiving light. But, Thompson knows. She has to. She found me. And if she doesn’t care that I’m only sixteen, should I?

  I meet her eye and she dips her head, slightly, conspiratorially, and says, “You can give Dr. Kim your ID after you sign.”

  “Right.” I stand there and read the NDA.

  The print’s small. The prose convoluted. And their attention makes my hands shake. I scan it—catching phrases like “all information, written or otherwise conveyed, owned by or pertaining to Life2, its assets or investors, whether having existed, is now existing, or will ever exist, whether tangible or intangible” and so on for another two thousand words—then sign with my finger and pull out my wallet and fake ID.

  Holdin
g my breath, I hand it to Dr. Kim. He takes a photo of the ID with the tablet, then hands it back.

  “Fabulous,” Thompson says. “Shall we?”

  I take a moment, tucking the ID back into my wallet and my wallet into my purse. If I follow them through that creepy sci-fi door, there’s no going back.

  I think of my dream. The SUV. It’s always so heavy. On my shoulders, against my back. In my stomach. Fighting against me as I press my foot to the brake. And the thing I never do, the thing I always wonder: What if, instead, I push the gas?

  * * *

  I follow Drs. Thompson and Kim through the portal and down a hall. The walls emanate the same bright glow as the lobby. It’s giving me vertigo. And I think, Ninety percent chance I never see the sun again. Then Dr. Thompson turns a corner into a bright, sunlit room.

  I stop in the doorway and exhale. Long and slow.

  A wall of windows looks out onto a courtyard, maybe half an acre square and empty except for a single pathway running through plush summer grass. A conference table—white, of course—dominates the center of the room. A video screen is built into the wall at my left.

  Dr. Thompson chooses the first chair on the window side of the table and gestures for me to take the seat across from her as Dr. Kim sits at her left. I pull the chair out and sit, purse still over my shoulder and phone in my hand. I wore one of my nicest semicasual outfits this morning—skinny black dress pants with a flowy blouse—with my hair curled and makeup done, but every sterile surface in this place makes me feel like a stain.

  I press the home button on my phone. For comfort? Force of habit? And see the tiny “no service” notice up in the corner.

  A matchstick of panic lights between my shoulder blades, flaring up my neck and across my scalp. I raise my eyes to them again and find them watching. Expectant.

  It’s not funny. It’s fucking sad.

  I take a deep breath, set my phone facedown on the table, loop the strap of my purse over the back of the chair, and square my shoulders, hands linked atop the glossy white table. “You called me the ideal candidate.”

  Dr. Thompson nods. She mimics my posture. Or maybe I’m unconsciously mimicking hers. “You are.”

  “For what?”

  * * *

  “Welcome to Life Squared,” says the man in the video. White, with salt-and-pepper hair and wearing an expensive-looking dark-gray suit, he stands on a path winding through a park. Sunlight falls on the vividly green grass around him, shimmers on the blue surface of the lake at his right. The foliage—scattered bushes and trees lining the path—glows in autumn hues. “Do more,” he says. “Be more. You know our slogan.” There’s a gentle backing track, ignorable instrumental music alongside the quiet shush of the lake and occasional trill of a bird. It’s soothing. Hypnotic. “And I’m sure you know what those words mean to you as they echo, right now, in your mind. Maybe what you need more of is energy. Space, time. Freedom.”

  Hands in his pockets, the man starts walking. The camera follows. “Maybe, with your responsibilities, the weight of your life’s expectations, what you really need…” He pauses, staring into the lens, and takes a wide step to the side, revealing…

  A second him.

  Together, they finish, “…is to be in two places at the same time.”

  I glance at Drs. Thompson and Kim across the table. Both watch the screen. The corner of Dr. Thompson’s mouth curves up.

  “With RapidReplicate,” the first man continues, “the product of Life Squared’s countless revolutionary scientific and technological advancements, you can do that—”

  “And more,” the second man finishes.

  The setting changes, leaving the park for a stark white lab filled with technicians in biohazard suits working at long tables populated by an array of intricate equipment. Alone now, the man tours the space in his fine suit, weaving casually between the scientists. An ignored observer. The room’s only color. Narrating as he goes: “Using groundbreaking methods, Life Squared can duplicate you. In entirety. In adult form.”

  He pauses beside a seemingly unaware scientist bent over a microscope, and the camera switches perspectives, following the scientist’s line of sight down the microscope to the magnified contents of its slide.

  “Your DNA, collected in a procedure that’s as painless and minimally invasive as possible, will be inserted into new cells”—the tip of a needle appears among the cells on the screen, piercing the wall of one—“then, through a process of directed growth and formation, your Facsimile, your second self, will be…”

  The scene changes again, this time to a lab populated only by the man and a person-sized capsule. Hands still in his pockets, the picture of nonchalance, he saunters over to it, and frees a hand to press a button on its side.

  The lid lifts. The camera angle shifts, hovering above a second man—utterly identical to the first—lying prone and seemingly unconscious in the capsule. The background music intensifies. Crescendos. Then, at its fullest moment, goes silent.

  The second man opens his eyes, and says, “Brought to life.”

  The screen goes black.

  I blink.

  Across the table, Drs. Thompson and Kim watch me. Waiting.

  Clones.

  A hysterical laugh bubbles in my chest, but I swallow it.

  Do more. Be more. With a literal second self. It’s…“Not possible.”

  Thompson tips her head. “It is.”

  “No. Some cartilage. An ear. Part of a clavicle. Sure. But a heart? A whole body? A brain? Not possible.” I’m shaking my head. Shaking, shaking. “No way that guy’s real.”

  “You’re right,” she says. “He’s an actor. Which is why we need you.”

  I purse my lips, take two slow breaths in and out my nose, then say, “Tell me more.”

  * * *

  Enucleated oocytes. Somatic-cell nuclear transfers. Induced pluripotent stem cells. Dedifferentiation and reprogramming. 3-D bioprinting. Vascularized cellular constructs. Cell-laden hydrogels. Biodegradable polymers. “But while they pioneered the use of microchannels to deliver nutrients to the tissue,” Dr. Kim continues, referring to the group of scientists he’s been telling me about as we walk—a group that, a few years ago, managed to fabricate human parts using an integrated tissue-organ printer, or ITOP, “their processes limited the size and stability of their fabrications. Think about the complexity of the human cardiovascular system. Or the nervous system! Forty-six miles of nerves in the human body. Miles. And approximately one hundred billion neurons in the brain. Think about replicating not only your adult skeletal structure but also your marrow, each of your blood vessels, your skin.” He pauses before a massive observation window built into the hallway’s wall.

  I stand between him and Dr. Thompson and watch as the technicians within—dressed as they had been in the video—go about their business.

  Business like growing a human arm.

  An arm. Complete from just above the bicep to the hand.

  I step closer, my nose a half inch from the glass, and watch a scientist reach into a tub of translucent blue goop and carefully, oh so carefully, detach a set of tubes connecting the arm to a machine, then pull it out and set it on an exam table. I expect it to be wet with the goop, like Jell-O, but from the window, it looks dry. The scientist peels a semi-opaque covering, like plastic wrap, from the raw section above the arm’s bicep where it would meet a shoulder. They touch the area with a small tool.

  And the arm’s fingers flinch.

  Its fingers flinch.

  “Dr. Adebayo is testing the appendage’s nerve functions,” Dr. Thompson says.

  My stomach rolls. “What is it?”

  “The final stages of testing for complete appendage transplant. Science has made impressive leaps in transplantation: female reproductive organs, hands, faces, male genitals. Bu
t the difference here, of course, is that Life Squared’s appendages will be true replacements, not donations. Here, we can grow you a new, genetically identical arm.”

  “No risk of rejection,” adds Dr. Kim.

  “And a complete return of all motor functions.” Dr. Thompson starts down the hallway again. Dr. Kim and I follow. “Nerve damage, hearing and sight loss, compromised internal organs from injury or disease. Not merely repairable, but replaceable. All of which brings us to…” She gestures to the observation window of the next laboratory.

  I step up to the glass and peer inside. It looks like the lab from the last scene in the video. With one major addition. “What am I looking at?”

  Dr. Thompson grins. Proud. “That,” she says, pointing past the capsule at a massive machine with more than a dozen articulating arms, “is the full-sized ITOP.”

  She shifts her finger down, pointing at the capsule from the video. A high-tech glass coffin. Or, the exact opposite. “And that, is the incubator.”

  “One of them,” Kim says.

  “Why do you need more than one?”

  Dr. Thompson crosses her arms. “We have yet to master the contiguous fabrication of a Facsimile.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “The Facsimile’s organs require individuated replication. With bodily integration after the fact.”

  “That sounds like a fancy way of saying cloning, but with some assembly required.”

  Kim smirks. “It is.”

  Dr. Thompson tips her head. “For now.”

  I think about my heart, my lungs. My brain. “So you…grow me. Print me. Then what? She’s an…infant? A neurological blank slate?”

  Dr. Thompson turns her attention from the room beyond the window to me, looking almost amused. “Our tour isn’t over, Lucille. There’s still more to see.”