“Wait—what happened?” Locke calls, desperate for more information. “To the Projectants?”
“Once Eve was born, the Projectant Program was scrapped. All the focus turned to what was necessary to protect and nurture her.”
“But, Dr. Wells—” Locke says.
“Perhaps we’ll discuss the Projectant Program another time,” my father interrupts, obviously wanting to get back on track. “Holly. Vivian feels it would be beneficial for the remaining Potentials to spend a little quality time with Holly, as a sort of stepping-stone to Eve.” He finishes and looks around the room.
Silence.
“You want us to use Holly to flirt with these guys?” asks Jackson, looking confused.
“The virtual pimp returns,” jokes Kramer.
“I ain’t doing that shit,” Jackson scoffs, ever the alpha male.
“Dude, you’ve made a career out of pretending to be a girl—get over it,” Hartman heckles beside me, then slouches in his chair. I roll my eyes at him to shut up.
“When you’ve all quite finished, you’ll find new briefing notes when you return to your dorms outlining the revised procedure with Potential Number Two. As usual, there will be no questions or debates. Thank you very much. You are all dismissed except Bram and Hartman. You two, remain in your seats, please.” My father finishes the emergency briefing and the members of Squad H rise to their feet and file out of the room.
It’s not unusual for me and Hartman to stay behind, which Jackson can’t stand. I’m sure he’s not the only one. I may not be the team leader, but my long history with Eve makes our connection more natural. I know her and she knows me. Or at least she knows my Holly. This means that occasionally Hartman and I are given different assignments from the rest of the squad.
My father walks toward us and leans against the back of the seat in front of us. I see myself in his face. Behind the deep wrinkles in his pale, drooping skin, under the wisps of gray in his hair, I’m there. It’s almost unheard of in this day and age to know who your true father is, let alone have any sort of relationship with him. I’m lucky. Or at least that’s how I’m supposed to feel.
It’s how I used to feel when I’d wander the walkways of Central a few paces behind him, seeing the fatherless abandoned boys begging for scraps, back when we lived out there.
* * *
—
It’s cloudy through the window of our apartment in the forest of concrete cloudscrapers. I’m young, four or five.
“Where’s your bag?” my father barks. The gray hasn’t appeared in his hair yet, but the wrinkles have begun to crease his face.
“Please! Don’t take him—he’s too young!” my mother screams, tears pooling in the wrinkles around her lower eyelids. “Take one of your others, one from the streets! Take any of them, but not my boy. Not my boy!”
My father pushes past her. Emotionless. “He is my son. He stays with me. You have a direct order from the EPO to hand him over. If you wish to say goodbye you must do it now,” he barks.
My mother runs to me. Drops to her knees. She swallows hard and won’t let the tears fall. “Never forget me, my son,” she whispers, leaning her forehead on mine, letting her dark curly hair close like curtains around our faces as she breathes in, like she’s smelling me. She lifts a silver chain from around her neck, pulls it over her head, and slips it over mine. A small cross swings from the bottom.
“That’s enough!” My father pulls my mother out of the way and edges me out of the front door. Once it slides shut behind us I still hear her cry echoing in my mind.
* * *
—
“Bram, Hartman, how are you feeling?” my father asks.
Hartman shoots me a look.
“Huh? Sorry! I was…thinking. What did you say?” I stutter, forcing the memories out of my head. Lack of sleep must be catching up with me.
“Dr. Wells asked how we’re feeling,” Hartman says with a subtle squint of his eye in my direction. Dad never asks personal questions unless there’s a specific reason. There’s always a motive. For my father, a conversation is a scientific experiment to which he already has a desired result: he just needs to find the right method to achieve it. Right now he’s trying kindness. It doesn’t suit him. “I’m fine, sir,” Hartman says. I nod in agreement.
“So, you’re both fit and rested?” he probes. We look at each other and nod. “Then suit up and make your way to the studio. Eve is awake and expecting Holly.” He drops a file on my lap and leaves the room.
I glance at Hartman. “Open it!” he says, so I peel off the red tape and open the brown folder.
A dozen photos slip onto my lap. Photos of Eve. She’s wearing a white dressing gown, her wild hair is refusing to be tamed by the band holding her braids, and her face is red and blotchy. The room around her is completely trashed and the feathers from inside her pillow hang in the air.
Hartman states the obvious: “This must be after the meeting.”
It’s going to be a long night.
6
BRAM
The locker room is deserted. No one else is working so late. It’s me and Hartman. Just how we like it. I walk past my copilots’ lockers—Jackson, Locke, Kramer, Watts. They’ll all be back in their dorms, reading through their new assignments, but they’ll be wondering what Hartman and I are up to.
It’s nothing new, me and Hartman getting summoned out of hours for unscheduled meetings with Eve. Life isn’t always predictable. Sometimes Eve needs us and we have to be there. Tonight is one of those nights. There’s no agenda for Holly on tonight’s assignment. She’s simply going to be who Eve needs her to be—her friend.
There is no script. No key messaging. Pure improvisation. That’s why I’m here, not Jackson or Kramer. They may outrank me, but they don’t know Eve like I do. If Eve wants to talk about her childhood, I know it. I was there. They have to wait for Locke or Watts to load up a history file and find the information they require to have a successfully convincing conversation. Not me.
We open our lockers and I pull out my thin black kinetic suit. It’s well worn, but still as state-of-the-art as they come. Millions of microscopic sensors line flexible fabric, ready to capture my every movement. I strip naked and slip it on. It forms around my muscles like a second skin. Being a pilot requires a certain level of physical fitness, and the job itself keeps me in shape. It’s demanding. I grab my visor, head-strap, and pressure gloves and turn to face Hartman, who’s been busy programming tonight’s assignment on his laptop on the bench next to me, a strip of red licorice poking out of his thick lips. His job is more mentally demanding than physical.
It takes two people to pilot Holly: the programmer and the pilot. Hartman is my programmer, my copilot. If Holly walks out onto the Drop and Eve grabs a jacket, Hartman programs one for me too, and it appears in Holly’s hands. If Eve wants to gossip over a late-night snack, Hartman makes me a virtual mug of tea. He controls every aspect of Holly’s appearance and everything she digitally interacts with during a session with Eve. Is he the best at it? Maybe not. He’d be the first to admit that. But he makes up for what he lacks by finding ways around the system. Are they always legal? Hell, no. But if it gets the job done the EPO are usually happy to overlook his hacking tendencies. They want results. They don’t care how they get them.
My job? I am Holly. My movements, my mannerisms, my physicality: it’s all captured by the hypersensitive pressure points that are woven into the kinetic suit. My facial expressions are analyzed, adapted, and applied to Holly’s face in real time, as is my voice. When I’m suited up, I am Holly. When I enter the studio, two floors below the Dome, Bram stays at the door. This is my duty, my part in the future. I am Holly.
“I’ve loaded up the night program we used a few months back. It’s not perfect, but it’s the best I’ve got on short notice,” Hartman says, swivel
ing his screen around to show me Holly’s appearance, how Eve will see me.
“That’ll work fine,” I say, my mind already shifting. I’m numbing Bram’s emotions, Bram’s feelings. Switching off from my father, ignoring the ache in my neck from Jackson’s fist. They are not Holly’s issues; they are Bram’s.
I am Holly.
We enter the darkened studio and I hear the electric hum of the scanners warming up, and the static electricity in the air emits small blue sparks on my visor as I slip it over my cropped dirty-blond hair. The room is large. Big enough to run in if I need to. It can simulate any event or environment that Holly might encounter in the Dome with Eve.
I flip the visor down in front of my eyes and prepare for connection. Whatever Holly sees up there, I see down here. Whatever I do down here, Holly does up there. We are connected. We are the same person. I am Holly.
“Okay, Holly is loaded and ready for connection.” I hear Hartman in my earpiece. “Ready, Bram?”
I don’t reply.
“Sorry…ready, Holly?” he corrects himself. Four years together and he still can’t get the basics right.
“Ready. Idiot,” I reply, and shoot him a look through my visor as he sits behind his control station illuminated by a subtle red light in the corner of the studio.
“Good luck. Rendering Holly now. Connection in three…two…one,” he says in my ear as the Dome appears in front of me.
I look around at the dark greenery. I’m standing in the upper garden zone, a little walk from Eve’s sleeping quarters, and I remember the night program Hartman has loaded from a few weeks back.
His voice crackles in my ear: “Sorry I forgot to change the location.”
A few weeks ago Eve and I took a late-night stroll through the garden. She was anxious about the Potentials and wasn’t sleeping well. Holly’s assignment was to help her relax.
I walk past the trees and flowers as they glow in the blue light cast by the incredibly large full moon looming over my head on the other side of the hexagonal canopy. It’s nothing like the real moon, more like the one you see in your dreams, the perfect kind that floats effortlessly, magically, over the world. This is Eve’s moon.
I see the light from her room at the top of a small spiral staircase and walk up it. The studio floor beneath my feet reacts to what I’m doing and moves silently to simulate the experience of walking upstairs.
I reach the top and stand in front of a full-length glass door. I stop for a moment and take in my reflection. Pastel-pink pajamas. Natural blond hair with a subtle wave. Piercing green eyes. Thin lips and a pointy jaw make Holly elfishly pretty. Then my focus adjusts from my programmed pretty features to the naturally beautiful Eve.
I can see her sad eyes staring out at me. She hides her face in what remains of her pillow.
I press my thumb to my little finger, which holds Holly’s position momentarily and mutes my voice from the Dome, allowing me to speak to Hartman without Eve hearing.
“Don’t open the door,” I tell him, pre-empting what he was about to do. “She’ll let me in.”
I release my fingers and raise a hand to tap on the glass. My kinetic gloves vibrate as I knock. It feels real.
I hear the sound of my simulated knock echo around the inside of Eve’s small bedroom.
“Not tonight, Hols.” Eve’s voice is muffled by the pillow.
I don’t reply. I give her a moment.
She turns her head and looks at me again. “I just want to—to be alone.” She sniffs as more tears run sideways down her face.
“Come on, Eve. Let me in?” I ask.
She doesn’t move. “I don’t want to…”
“We don’t have to talk. Let’s just…sit,” I suggest.
She looks at me. She’s thinking. She knows I could just come in if they wanted me to. The doors can be unlocked with the click of a button. Everything can be controlled remotely in the Dome. But I like giving her the control. This is her place, not mine, not the EPO’s.
“Eve, you can trust me. It’s me,” I say.
Through the translucent visor I see Hartman’s head give me a look. Perhaps I emphasized me a little too much.
Eve looks more closely this time. She stares through the glass door into Holly’s eyes. It’s like she’s looking through my visor and into my own.
She knows.
She immediately climbs down from her bed, steps over the mess she’s created, and swings the glass door open. She raises her arms, places them around my neck, and sobs.
She can’t feel me. Not really. Touching Holly is like touching a ball of static. They made us do it repeatedly at the academy. It’s warm, fizzy, but not real. We’re not supposed to touch Eve physically. Vivian thinks it breaks the illusion of reality, but tonight’s an exception. Tonight Eve needs it. She holds the weight of her own arms, places her cheek on my shoulder and accepts the sensation on her face. My suit reacts and lets me feel the weight of her and the soft tremor of her chest as she cries. My stomach jumps at this simulated embrace. Holding her: this isn’t something many people get to do.
I say nothing and wait for her to run out of tears as we stand in the light of her moon.
“Let’s walk,” she says as she takes my hand and leads me down the staircase. I know where she’s going, and as we reach the bottom step, I speed up to walk alongside her. We silently move through the greenery toward the opening in the canopy. I see the wind blow through the strands of her curly brown hair that have broken free of the braids and glance at my wrist. In a matter of seconds Hartman has understood my gesture, and the next time I look at my wrist a hairband is waiting there. I let go of Eve’s hand for a moment, pull it off, and tie my blond hair away from my face to match hers as we step through the opening on to the Drop.
“So…” She sighs.
“Good day, then?” I say sarcastically.
“Fab.” She smirks, giving me a thumbs-up. “All went according to plan. I can already hear those wedding bells.”
I chuckle and she looks out over the sea of clouds below us. “It won’t be like that again, Eve,” I say.
“Won’t it?” she asks. “You should have been there, Hols. He could barely look me in the eye. It was like my face was…” She stops and shakes her head.
“It wasn’t anything to do with your face. It wasn’t anything you did. It wasn’t your fault in any way at all.”
She looks at me in disbelief.
“This was a complete and utter screw-up by them.” I nod toward the nearest camera invading our conversation. “And believe me, they know it! I mean, of course these guys are gonna be dumbstruck when they see you—you’re the only girl on the planet! It’s pretty obvious, if you ask me, and they should have taken that into consideration before marching you into a room with a Potential.”
Eve smiles.
I know I shouldn’t have referenced the camera or insulted the EPO’s actions, but I have the authority here to do what needs to be done to gain Eve’s cooperation.
“I don’t think they’re going to be happy with you saying things like that,” Eve teases.
“Yeah, well, sometimes you’ve got to peel the stickers off the cube,” I joke, and stick my middle finger up at the camera.
Eve cracks up and covers my hand with her own. “That’s what you’ve always said.”
“It’s true.”
She’s back.
We sit on the Drop for hours as Eve’s moon creeps overhead. We talk about life, about the world, the future, men, love, everything. She’s interested, inquisitive, smart.
“So who’s next?” she asks.
“I’m sorry?” I reply, wondering what she’s talking about.
“Potential Number Two, who is he?”
“Oh. Erm, he’s nice,” I tell her, raising my eyebrows knowingly.
“Hmm.”
“No, really. I think you’ll like this one,” I say as convincingly as I can, knowing that the next Potential is about as dull as cardboard.
“Why can’t they just be like you?” She’s taking in the view.
“Well, not everyone’s perfect,” I joke. “Besides, I think we’d find the whole repopulating-the-planet thing a little tricky, if you know what I mean!”
“No, I mean you,” she says, turning to look straight through Holly’s eyes, down two stories, past my visor, and into my own.
My heart stops. The hairs on my skin stand on end and I freeze. Is she talking to me?
I’m speechless. Completely blindsided. My mind slips from Holly and I’m myself, face to face with Eve.
She’s never done this before.
“Bram!” I hear Hartman calling into my earpiece, snapping me back to reality, Eve’s reality.
“Is it morning already?” Eve asks as we shield our eyes from the intense sunrise creeping over the distant horizon.
The answer is no. This is Vivian ending our meeting.
“I think you should get some sleep, Eve. Go back, shut the blinds, and rest. Forget about today. It won’t happen again.”
She looks into my eyes once more and I nervously tuck my hair behind my ears, forgetting that I’ve already tied it back. Shit, I’m shaking.
“Okay, night, Hols. Thanks,” she says as she walks toward the doorway. She waves over her head as she yawns and disappears inside, leaving me alone on the Drop.
I turn and gaze at the sunrise, which hasn’t moved since it first appeared. It’s paused. I chuckle to myself as the display in my visor begins to fade and Hartman’s voice irritates my eardrum.
“Disconnection in three…two…one. You’re clear.”
I sit on the floor, pull off the headset, and unzip my kinetic suit. I’m sweating.
“That girl’s going to get us into trouble,” I say as Hartman closes his laptop and walks over to where I’m slumped.
Eve of Man Page 5