by Sean Platt
“It’s kids like him that I worry about.”
“You don’t have to worry about Neven. I told you, we—”
“I mean all kids,” Timothy interrupted. “The next generation. What will they think of us?”
“That we’re stodgy and stupid like we thought about our parents. They’ll be uppity little shits who think they know better.”
“But what kind of world are we creating for them? People like you, people like me?”
“We both wanted to make our mark, Tim. How often did we say that? And we both did. We both are. I know we thought we’d do it together — you and me against the world — but this is just as good. We had our rough times, but they’re behind us now. I feel good about this, don’t you?”
Timothy looked around the room, but Wallace was referring to their reconciliation, to the room’s mood.
“Yes,” he said.
“We could even work together. You and me against the world, part two.”
“How? You break international laws and The Change—”
“There must be overlap between our businesses.”
“Where? How? The Change is about personal development. My ‘followers’ might be more enthusiastic than I’d like, but as a whole, I’m surprised by how fine I find it. As you said, we’re tax exempt. The Change generates significant income. I’ve funneled it into social initiatives. We’re dinging the universe, just like we always wanted. History will remember us. But I don’t see how the hell my ‘religion’ overlaps with Evermore’s advancing science. Especially given the regulation issues I hear you’re having.”
He thought that might be too close to the bone, but Wallace laughed secretively. “Yes. Well. We’ll see about that. I may be leaving the States. Fleeing oppression, just like The Change loves to preach.”
“Precipitous Rise is outlawed everywhere, my friend.”
“By every nation,” Wallace corrected.
“What’s the difference?”
“Some places are beyond borders.”
“I see. Are you going to build your lab on the moon?”
“No, not on the moon. Some English guy named Clive beat me to it.” He sipped.
“Where, then?”
Wallace smiled enigmatically.
Timothy rolled his eyes. “You’ve got nothing.”
“So says you.”
“How do you know our businesses don’t already overlap? The Change has devotees everywhere. Maybe even inside your secret ranks, smart guy.”
“Like the Illuminati,” Wallace said.
“Yes. Just like the Illuminati.”
They sat in silence until Timothy said, “You’re happy with it?”
“With what?” Wallace’s voice was slightly sharp, as if sensing accusation.
“Evermore. With the mark you’re making on the universe.”
“Is there something specific you’re wondering, Tim?”
Timothy met his old friend’s eyes. He sat forward. He’d had his objections to what Wallace was doing. That’s why they’d fought; it’s why their partnership had broken; it’s why their relationship had evolved to scattered messages and fractured phone calls.
This wasn’t about that. The fight had been fought. Now was a time for healing — and with any luck, Wallace wouldn’t think that Timothy was trying to use Change juju on him, trying to be superior instead of trying to help.
But … Wallace’s ego. Yes, he’d softened. Yes, he drank tea. But about this, his default stance would be raising a wall. Fight proactively instead of waiting to defend.
“Look, Wallace, what’s done is done.”
Wallace’s expression looked like it might go either way, but a trill from his pocket cut into the moment. Before the second ring, Wallace leaned forward, wrapped his friend with one arm in a half-hug, and said, “I’m glad we’re doing this.” His smile said that this part of the discussion was over and no amount of mulling would alter the past.
Ironically, there was no way to argue. Wallace had simply advanced Timothy’s argument. Done was truly done. He’d take his call, and the topic would stay closed.
“Ten minutes tops,” Wallace said, glancing at the screen.
Then he left the room.
Timothy stayed put. But then he sipped, looked toward Neven, and stood to walk over.
Neven glanced up from the corner of his eye, seeing Timothy’s approach. He didn’t look up or stop sketching. He didn’t hide the pad. His manner — the somewhat hunched back, the defensive crouch, the failure to retreat despite clear discomfort — rang Timothy’s alarms. The boy would require an army of Change therapists to regain the pieces of himself that had been lost.
“Mind if I sit?”
Neven gave a whatever nod.
Timothy sat opposite him, on a rigid ottoman. His eyes went to Neven’s pad. It wasn’t precisely neutral — the way most people would hold it. Instead, the pad was tilted toward Timothy as if Neven wanted it on display.
“Are you an artist?”
Neven shrugged.
“Can I see?”
But Timothy could already see; he wanted to observe Neven’s response. The sketch was amateur but plenty discernible. There was a larger-than-life figure in the foreground and smaller ones beyond. The big figure was how Neven saw himself. All the care had gone into that one. By comparison, the others were little more than perfunctory. Tiny. And in the larger one’s shadow.
It was the sketch of a clinical narcissist.
Probably a sociopath.
Neven kept the pad where it was. He didn’t turn it for Timothy.
“We’ve spoken on the phone. Do you remember?”
Neven nodded. Without looking up he said, “You’re my dad’s friend who doesn’t like clones.”
It was a sledgehammer of a thing to say. Wallace had introduced Timothy on the way in, and although Neven had barely grunted, he’d acknowledged the newcomer. There’d been no talk of clones. As far as the public knew, Evermore’s rumored expansion into cloning was just that: rumors. The fact that Neven knew his father’s business and would use it to threaten a newcomer was interesting.
“What do you know about clones?” Timothy asked.
Talking down to Neven would be the worst thing Timothy could do if he expected to reach him. The kid was at least a narcissist, psychologically incapable, at most times, of seeing the world without him in its nucleus. It was one big difference between father and son. Wallace had an ego and wanted his work to change the world, but people like Neven wanted to bend the world to his will instead.
“I know I am one.”
Another sledgehammer.
“And I know they’re better.”
And a third.
Timothy reeled but kept his face straight. This was combat: I win, you lose. Timothy couldn’t blame the boy. Wallace had turned himself around almost entirely over the past decade, and all but the most stubborn of his rough edges were gone. He was worlds different from the man who’d commissioned a split test between children. Today’s Wallace would never do what the old one had done — never in a million years.
But facts remained. Neven and his organic half-brother, for their first three years, had been raised like lab rats. It was the only way to control all of the variables — to be sure that the differences between the children were due to one being a clone and the other not, rather than parental favoritism.
Which, of course, there had been anyway.
“Better than what, Neven?”
“Better than you.”
Timothy kept his voice light. “You don’t know me.”
“As you said, we talked on the phone.” Neven’s tone added a suffix: and you tried to fix me then, too.
“That’s not enough to know me. I might be completely different than you think.”
“Did you have a mother?”
“Yes.”
“Did you have a father?”
“Yes.”
“Then I know all I need to know.”
&nb
sp; “It’s an interesting theory. I had two parents, but you only had one. But that’s an experimental setup, not an actual experiment. Where’s your data?”
“My dad said you guys broke up because you didn’t understand his vision.”
“Hmm. But that’s subjective. Hardly something to base a set of conclusions on.”
Neven’s head finally turned. His gaze was unflinching, intense. “What?”
“From a different perspective, someone might say that we broke up because your father was reckless; having only vision, without any thought of consequences.”
“Maybe you were a coward.”
“Or perhaps just sensible.”
Neven turned back to his pad, his pencil strokes short and hard. Timothy was pushing, letting his need to defend himself interfere with what Neven was capable of hearing — and shutting Neven down in the process.
If Timothy couldn’t reach Neven on his level, the kid would never learn to see the world beyond what he’d already decided. Wallace wouldn’t challenge his worldview. He was too guilty about what had happened with both boys. Grief had made him blind and indulgent.
“Let me put it this way,” Timothy said, trying again. “Your dad tells me that he’s taught you science.”
“He teaches me all sorts of things. Not just science.”
“Right. But science is the important thing for what I’m about to ask you.”
His interest piqued, Neven looked up.
“You understand the scientific method?”
“Of course I do. My dad is the greatest scientist in the world.”
“He sure is, Neven. So, tell me. What do you need to reach a conclusion, using the scientific method?”
At first, Neven looked like he wouldn’t play, but then he said, “Data.”
“Right. And when you say you’ve concluded that clones are better than people created in the natural way, what data are you using to reach that conclusion?”
“The fact that I’m alive, and my brother is dead.”
The force of Neven’s words was hard to weather, like struggling through a hurricane, dodging debris. Timothy found it hard to keep his voice even.
“Your brother wasn’t well, Neven. He got sick.”
“Because he wasn’t a clone. He was flawed, like all natural-born people.”
“And that’s your data?”
“Yes.”
“That’s the experimental data on which you’ve based your conclusions?”
“Yes.” Still looking at his pad, but angrier now.
Timothy laughed. Neven’s pencil stopped, and his gaze leaped to Timothy’s eyes, full of venom.
“Don’t laugh at me,” he said.
Staring the child down, Timothy decided to make a change of tactics. The problem here was large, and he’d done enough pussy-footing. Time to bash heads, turning the narcissism on the narcissist — the sociopathy on the sociopath.
“I’m laughing because you’re making laughable conclusions,” he said.
“You don’t know.”
“I do know,” Timothy insisted, his voice slightly louder. “You don’t know anything.”
“I know more than you think I do. Arrogance makes people blind.”
“I’m not arrogant. I’m right and I know I’m right. There’s a difference. I was your father’s partner for half of his life. We founded Evermore. It was my job to keep us afloat.”
Neven smirked. “He told me it was your job to hold him back.”
“He was a visionary, but reckless. Evermore wouldn’t have survived a year if we’d have gone at the speed your father wanted. We’d have been investigated by GEM, then thrown in jail. Precipitous Rise, as it exists today, would never have been born, because we were working on its seeds before the world knew its name. We shaped it together. Progress requires Yin and Yang, no matter how sure Yang is that it’s always right. You’ll need to learn that if you expect to have a chance in life. Do you understand?”
Neven’s head slowly cocked, as if intrigued by Timothy’s aggravation.
“Look,” Timothy said, slowing his breath. “Wallace has run Evermore for over a decade without me, but I knew the company inside-out once upon a time. He was the scientist, but I always managed the data. I know it every bit as well as he does. If you don’t want to believe me, fine, then believe what your father taught you. I know you’re not stupid enough to think that an experimental set of only two people, with multiple variables, is enough to prove what you’re so determined to believe.”
“I’m not stupid,” Neven said in wounded rote.
“I know you’re not. That’s why it’s so surprising that you let yourself believe stupid things.”
It felt dangerous to say, but Timothy let it sit. Watched Neven take it in. Allowed it to percolate.
“My father told me that clones are superior. He said I was strong but that my organic brother was weak. He told me he’d taken the best of himself, tweaked it to make it better, and used it to make me. He didn’t tweak my brother. He said it was okay to give me an advantage because that’s part of what he was testing. He said you couldn’t tweak nature. It’s a cheat. If you tweak it like you tweak a clone, it’s no longer natural.”
“That’s true. And it’s true that you, as your father’s clone, are sort of like Wallace Connolly 2.0. It’s good to feel proud. But there are a thousand reasons why your brother might have died. A malignancy could have happened in either of you, someone sneezing the wrong germs closer to his enclosure than yours back when they kept you that way, a recessive trait in your father’s genes that only materialized when paired with the same trait in his mother’s.
“It’s irresponsible — as a scientist, you understand — to conclude that you survived and he died because he was natural and you were a clone. You can’t make such a sweeping conclusion based on a single set of data points. You’d have to test a hypothesis that complicated over and over and over, controlling for every possible contingency. If you wanted to decide clones are better or organics are better — if there even is a truth there, which I doubt — you’d have to account for every single thing that might cloud your data. And to do that? You’d have to split test the whole damn world. It isn’t possible, Neven. It’s just not something anyone can ever conclude, and that means it’s ridiculous for you to decide it. It can’t be tested. Ever.”
After a long pause, Timothy added, “Do you understand me, Neven?”
The boy seemed to be considering. To be entertaining a perspective he’d never imagined — and one that threatened to upend his worldview.
But the moment broke when Wallace came back through the door, his manner buoyant compared to the detente between Timothy and Neven. But seeing his friend’s pow-wow with his son seemed to surprise him. His eyebrows bunched. Wallace stopped walking, then advanced more slowly.
And he said, “What dastardly plans are you two hatching without me?”
Chapter 21
The First Experiment
Papa finished his story. They were in the west garden and the sun, after a long day, was finally setting. The temperature had dropped. Ephraim, in his plain Change clothing, was chilly.
“It was my idea,” Papa sighed. “What I said to him that day? It’s the reason he started doing his clone versus organic experiments. It’s why what happened to Hannah and people like her was even possible.”
Papa’s head didn’t hang. He didn’t start to cry. His strong, comforting visage didn’t change in any way. Nonetheless, Ephraim could see the guilt, just like what Wallace must have carried over his organic child’s death — over his experimentation, apparently, even on Neven.
But what struck Ephraim most at the moment wasn’t Papa’s face or the regret he now realized had always been there. It was a simple word he noticed, so casually used: people. Referring to Hannah. Referring to clones, like Ephraim.
“You can’t know that,” Ephraim said.
Papa laughed. It wasn’t rueful or bitter. It was almost joyous
.
“Oh, I know it, all right. Don’t tell me that it’s not my fault. Honestly, don’t.” Papa laughed, then shifted topics. “You know, I make fun of The Change more than just about anyone. I only wanted people to be more mindful — it became a religion without me. But once it had, I figured that I might as well lean in. But sometimes The Change surprises me. Delights me. I wanted to improve lives, and I have, but it’s moments like this that convince me how special The Change is. Because I do know that my argument on that day set Neven in motion, and steered Eden toward what it became after Wallace died. But I can laugh about it because I have enough guilt. My own church has taught me that only free minds matter and that I’ll never stop Neven by beating myself up.”
“Do you think he’s alive?”
Papa calmed himself, his smile fading into something more serious.
“I’m sure of it. Neven is brilliant. Far more intelligent than his father, even though he’s a clone. Like Neven said when he was a kid: tweak nature, and it turns into nurture. He’s had a head-start baked right in.”
Papa ran his finger across the table between them, topped with a tile mosaic. “He’s brilliant. For years, I’ve been keeping tabs on him. At first, The Change was a collection of people with similar beliefs. It formalized, then ritualized with things like the robes and the tattoos. That strengthens belief. And allegiance. You know the expression about using power for good instead of evil? You wouldn’t believe the power that fell into my hands. I’d made something that could be weaponized. I couldn’t control The Change. But if I could focus it, then I would fix my sights on infiltration.”
Papa’s eyes were warm but lost in memory.
“I reached out to believers who were already close to those who mattered. Neven, obviously; Jonathan and the first Ephraim Todd; Mercer Fox; Fiona Roberson. I quickly had an excellent network of spies. It was easy to see what everyone was up to. I have plenty of time. An ungodly sum of money. More helpers than I could ever count, all across the planet. So yes, I know that Neven isn’t dead. I saw his ‘fake death’ coming. I even knew that you would be the one to do it if Neven’s first experiment paid off.”