by Sean Platt
“Precisely. Any choice, of any sort, makes you free so long as you consciously make it. The default kills us.”
The clone nodded, taking his time to absorb the idea. Deprogrammees were new to critical thought, and Papa always enjoyed the way they sampled it first, rolling the feeling of cognition around as if tasting wine.
“I’d like to change my name, then.”
“To what?”
“How about ‘Ephraim’?”
Papa closed his eyes. He hadn’t seen that coming.
“You don’t like it.”
“It’s that I think I’d have a hard time hearing it. Ephraim Todd was special. And Sophie? She wasn’t even there with him at the end. She was somewhere else. It’s only been six days. It’s tender for her.”
“Then I’ll choose something else. How about Timothy?”
Papa laughed, but the clone was serious. He stopped laughing and made his face respectful. “I’d be honored. Timothy.”
The clone was quiet for a moment. Then he sat up straight. “You want me to work with GEM.”
“I’m asking if the notion pleases you. If so, the job is yours.”
“And more or less, I’d just talk to them when they need me. About …”
“You represent a new class of people, Timothy. There are only around two hundred of you, but now that people know what’s possible, tinkerers are going to tinker.”
Papa had explained everything. It was a lot to take in, but the clone’s mind was good and he, like the other Altruances, had deprogrammed flawlessly.
“How can they tinker if Neven’s technology was never released?”
“It’s not doing that’s hard,” Papa said. “It’s believing.”
“You’re saying that simply because scientists now believe in cloning of our type, they will succeed?”
“It’s something we need to be ready for. And even though Neven’s research was confiscated, it wasn’t destroyed. GEM has it. Encrypted and locked down, but they have it all the same. GEM is a bit of a headless beast right now. With Hershel arrested and the rest of the organization suspect, anything could happen. That’s why we need you to act as a representative for your kind. We can’t stop progress, Timothy. Lord knows I’ve tried. We can only guide it. And at that, I trust you’ll fare better than I did.”
Timothy processed. “You miss him, don’t you?”
He meant Ephraim. Not the original Ephraim Todd, who was at The Change’s Utah compound, away from the public’s suspicious eye.
“I miss what he represented.”
“What did he represent?”
“Potential itself. Ephraim was proof that your genes don’t define you. Proof that a person can change. He’d been through hell, yet held his center. There was much we could have learned from him, and maybe can.”
The clone surprised Papa. “I liked him a lot.”
“You mean through the original Altruance Brown’s memories?”
Timothy nodded. “We all remember him. All of the original batch. It’s fuzzy. A fake memory — not just implanted, but concocted.” Papa nodded, pleased by how easily the clone could parse fact from fiction within himself. “I know you said we don’t have true recall of anything through Altruance, that it’s something cobbled from his one brain scan and what AI gave us from his social profile. But I feel it, Papa. These memories are deep, like they’re part of my DNA. As if, when Neven cloned us, he cloned the idea of Ephraim Todd into us, too.”
“You know that’s not possible, right?”
“Yeah. But you’d have to be in my shoes to know how it feels. It’s part of me, man.”
Papa wanted to tell him that it wasn’t possible, wanted to make a joke about being unable to ‘be in Timothy’s shoes’ because, on Papa’s average feet, those shoes would be the size of boats. Instead, he said something that dusted the top of his thoughts.
“There’s a lot we don’t understand,” Papa said. “Science will tell you what genes do and don’t do, but some things defy those laws. Like friendship, perhaps. Maybe somehow, unseen, you do remember him, just as if you’d been there.”
“You believe that?”
Papa paused a half-second before answering, thinking of Sophie’s message — the one Ephraim had left for her, but she hadn’t received until after his death. Everything Ephraim had said on that message made sense in retrospect. If Neven had been able to examine them both that day, would he have found love as the secret ingredient? Absurd. And yet, in the end, Papa thought it might be true.
Something baked into them both at the elemental level. Something that split them like pods, and allowed the seeds inside to bloom.
Neven would never know, and that was all that mattered. Even if Ephraim weren’t gone, Neven would never see another lab for as long as he lived. Only bars, inmates, and an army of psychiatrists.
“So, do you want the job? Would you like to be the clone ambassador to GEM?”
“I think so. Thank you, Papa.” Timothy extended a hand as large as a frying pan. Papa tried to shake it, finding his small hand consumed. “What’s first?”
“I’ll call Felix Martinez. He’s a good man. He’ll be your contact until they elect a new director. They’ll base-tag you, so try not to be offended. In the interest of public safety, it’s important that everyone be able to tell you from the other former Altruance Browns.”
“I’m not offended. I understand the necessity. And I understand that it’s my job to put such testing and tagging in its place.”
“If identity tagging is good enough for Jonathan Todd, it’s good enough for you, right?”
Timothy snickered. He’d also inherited a dislike of Evermore’s CEO. These days, with Ephraim Todd officially vanished, Neven alive and incarcerated, and Wallace Connolly dead without a public funeral, nobody knew how to view Eden. It didn’t matter that Jonathan was allowed to run the island. Its public image was terminal.
Someday an agency might manage to nail Evermore with conspiracy and murder, but until then it would suffer a worse fate. In Jonathan’s hands, the world’s most beloved place would be a standing joke that everyone laughed at.
“What about Fiona Roberson?”
“To my knowledge, GEM hasn’t had any luck trying to tag her. Riverbed’s lawyers are slippery fish.”
“I meant, will I be working with her, too? Or Mercer Fox?”
“Not Mercer. Nobody knows where he is. If you ask me, he earned the right to be left alone. As to Fiona? It looks as if Riverbed is moving more into therapy and healthcare.”
“Curing diseases, you mean.”
Papa nodded. “Everything Wallace was never interested in. First up, in his honor, is arthritis.”
“And spinal muscular atrophy? Or ALS?”
“As far as I know, Riverbed isn’t investigating motor neuron diseases at all.”
“Seems they’d be all over it, what with Fiona suddenly up and walking, apparently cured.”
“You would think that, wouldn’t you?” But Papa left it there, both of them understanding, and said no more.
Everyone was curious about Fiona’s transformation, but nobody could force her to discuss it. And if there was one thing true of Fiona Roberson, she’d never cared much what people thought of her.
“Riverbed has divested all of its cloning interests. Sold them off. I think Fiona feels it’s inevitable that the Quarry design will eventually leak to the public. No point in charging for a service once it’s open source.”
“You think that will happen? After all you did to stop it?”
“Information is like the mind. It wants to be free.”
Timothy nodded. He stood, dwarfing Papa. He’d be an excellent ambassador. He could speak softly, but his stature carried a big stick.
He was at the door before he turned. “Papa?”
“Yes?”
“What about GEM?”
“What about them?”
“They knew about Hershel Wood. They found that other guy, Kilik. They�
�re supposed to be the keepers of the public’s secrets, and with the organization purged, they’re slowly on their way back.”
“But?” Papa said, sensing a big caveat.
“But they have all of Neven’s information. They’ll find the Domain, even if you and Sophie keep the secret and Neven doesn’t blab in prison. The police and FBI and the others have stopped looking, but GEM hasn’t.”
“It’s okay. Sophie’s cleaning it out tomorrow. Nobody will find it.”
“She’s going back to the Domain?”
Papa nodded. “When Ephraim and I were there, we realized the Quarry was rigged to a jamming system, and that if the bubble was turned off, the Quarry started broadcasting a homing signal. At the time, I think we got lucky; nobody was looking for the signal. But now, with Neven locked up and the info bomb decrypted, people like GEM will be. Sophie was afraid to take the Quarry while it was emitting its signal, but she wasn’t confident that she could destroy it. I fabricated something to do the job — not just on the Quarry, but on the Domain itself.”
“She’ll burn it down?”
“A specific fire. One that erases all evidence.”
“Why are you sending Sophie?”
“Other than you, me, and Neven, nobody knows the Domain exists. None of the Altruances appear to have it in their memory. You need a clean record, and everyone’s watching me, so that leaves Sophie. It’s a fairly simple mission. Who knows; it might even be good for her. Bring her closure.”
“But GEM already has the info bomb. Seeing the actual Domain or the Quarry might be redundant.”
“But it also might not be. Like you said, they have what they have, and we can’t change that. They also have their Gene Crypt back. But we can at least prevent any more hints from leaking into the world.”
“Doesn’t the idea that GEM probably already has all they’d need to make 2.0 clones worry you?”
“Yes. But as Neven was so fond of pointing out, everything worries me.”
“I’m serious.”
“So am I.”
They matched gazes. In the moment between them, Papa hoped Timothy would understand so he wouldn’t have to spell it out: whether GEM concerned him or not, nothing could be done. Papa and The Change could merely observe, keep an ear to the ground, keep people in all the right places, and stay prepared.
But how did that make tomorrow different from his yesterdays?
The clone turned to leave. This time, Papa called out. “Timothy?”
Timothy turned.
“How literal were you being when you said that you ‘feel’ Ephraim’s friendship in you? Is that a real thing — something you can put your finger on?”
Timothy nodded.
“You don’t think it’s just conditioning or memory?”
He shook his head. “It’s something else.”
“Good. Then remember it. Remember the feeling. And when you have a chance, talk to Sophie.”
“About what?”
“About anything she wants. About the past. About him. Remind her of what matters, Timothy. She needs you right now. She needs all of us. She’s only human, and she needs to reach through the pain however she can. Sophie needs to remember that what Ephraim did was noble and necessary. He did the only thing he could do, to save her and the rest of us. In a very real way, he was a hero. But most of all, Sophie needs to remember that very special thing that changed them both. The thing that was strong enough to evolve Ephraim from one type of person into a better person. The only thing — especially if what you say about Ephraim’s friendship living on within you is true — that lasts forever.”
“What’s that, Papa?”
“Love,” Papa said. “Turns out, it’s the one thing that changes everything.”
Chapter 71
Like Lennon Promised
By the time Sophie set foot in Papa’s old boat, her dour mood had dropped. There was work to be done, and she had to feel confident. And that’s what she wanted to see as she stared at herself in the mirror, jammed into the skiff’s tiny head.
Sophie was different. Older somehow. Unique from the older Sophie Norris. This one wasn’t just the original’s younger doppelgänger. She was a different person entirely.
“No set of instructions is complete enough to tell you who you are,” she told her reflection — something Fiona had told her before they’d left the Domain, and something Sophie now chanted like a mantra whenever she felt unsure.
With her self-help errand finished, Sophie climbed back above deck, ran the electric pump to drain the bilge, and started the motor. As it coughed, she unfastened the colorful braided lines threaded through the dock’s cleats at bow and stern. Then she used her foot to push off, moved the travel lever forward, and pulled away.
The breeze was light and the sun still low enough to be cool.
She thought of Ephraim.
The last week had been hard. She didn’t know how to be without him. That was shocking in itself, considering that she’d never been with him until their cohabitation at The Vineyard leading up to Jubilee.
Sophie was wholly independent, and had been since her deprogramming. Or so she’d thought, until something changed. She’d been crippled by the return of an old psychic injury. Odd, considering that before Ephraim had come to The Vineyard, the old injury hadn’t existed.
So much could go wrong now.
And Fiona? Sophie didn’t trust her a bit.
I want a fresh start to go with my fresh self, Fiona had told her that day. God knows I had dumpsters full of bad karma to go with the last one.
But Fiona talking about karma was laughable. Her coins all had heads on both sides, and every deck was filled with aces. If Fiona said she was going right, it was the surest way to know she’d go left. A trick compass, rigged with magnets to declare North as South.
Still, Sophie knew what Papa had told her about how things worked.
And she knew what she’d experienced with her own eyes.
Not even Eden could remake a broken body, Fiona had told her, and the disease I had isn’t curable.
She knew that, of course. And she knew that if Fiona had solved the ‘rebuilding’ problem (different from “curing,” which left behind the damage), she’d never have tangled with Eden in the first place. If Fiona could have remade her SMA-damaged body while Eden couldn’t, she wouldn’t have concocted her elaborate plot. She’d have stayed home, fixed herself, then sold the technology to clients while demolishing her competition.
That meant that Fiona couldn’t fix herself. And Neven’s technology, she knew, also couldn’t fix someone like Fiona.
Water passed beneath the small boat’s bow. There was barely a ripple, as if life itself had greased Sophie’s passage to the Domain, urging her speed.
Even with her eyes open and the island nearing, Sophie saw Fiona as a living contradiction.
Standing.
Walking.
Not healed, but replaced.
Why would you tell me this? What’s in it for you? Sophie had asked.
Nothing. I’m telling you to help you, not me.
And Sophie thought to herself: Lies. Fiona Roberson did nothing for anyone but herself. If Riverbed was moving into health and wellness as their press event claimed, it was for profit or to avoid being tarred with the scandals. And if Fiona had seemed helpful or compassionate toward Sophie, it was only because on that day, she’d been supremely vulnerable.
There was nothing in it for her?
Bullshit.
But here Sophie was anyway, heading back to the Domain six days later — same as Fiona. What was the angle? Had she laid a trap? Had Fiona found a way to divest herself of blame once and for all, by grooming a final scapegoat?
Would her people be waiting to finish Sophie off? Would the press — perhaps even Ava Bloom herself — be waiting to catch Papa Friesh’s associate doing ill affairs at a hidden stronghold that “hero” Fiona Roberson had helpfully tipped them off about?
If
so, that’s what the gun was for. If Fiona crossed her, then God help Fiona. And authorities showed up to arrest her, Sophie had another home in mind for her bullet. The gun hung in her waistband, safety off. Slide racked and hammer back. It was an incredibly unsafe way to transport a firearm, but Sophie had practiced and wanted to be ready. If a SWAT team came at her, she was sure she could shoot herself before they stopped her — but only if everything was primed and she allowed no hesitation.
She could be that brave if she had to. Ephraim had killed himself, why couldn’t she?
As Sophie docked the boat, the weapon’s weight pressed into her back. It felt like a blue steel omen. What if Fiona was telling the truth?
She grabbed the small backpack Papa had given her, holding a half-dozen small incendiary devices she’d use to burn the Domain if she was still alive at the end of this errand. She didn’t thread her arms through the pack, afraid that if she put it on her back, it might jostle against the gun and go off. Instead, she carried it in her left hand, leaving her dominant right to grab firepower if needed.
She marched up the beach, trying to push the worst thoughts from her mind.
She walked through the trees, then the clearing, before circling the compound. No grass had been flattened — no arrivals before her on foot. Sophie spied the roof from farther back, including the angle that would’ve shown her Fiona’s helicopter on her last visit.
Nothing. The Domain appeared to be empty.
Sophie didn’t want to let herself believe. Hope, someone had once told her, was only a weapon the world used to crush you.
She went up the first ladder, then the second.
In her mind, she saw the Quarry.
Break it if you want, but I can give you an excellent reason not to.
Fiona, with her hands suddenly working. Her legs strong enough to walk.
Five minutes. It’s all I ask.
But Fiona’s explanation had taken seven minutes. Sophie knew; she’d kept her eyes on the clock. But even after five minutes, Sophie knew she wasn’t going to stop her. And by the time the full seven minutes were gone, Sophie was barely aware of the time.
The Tomorrow Gene treatment couldn’t make bodies younger, Sophie. It made you, to replace the older Sophie Norris.