Decoherence

by Liana Brooks

  “Officer Clemens, New Smyrna PD. And this lady is a Jane Doe.” Pride crept into her voice. She was solar at her job, better than good. She’d never been credited, and never allowed to work alone, but she was made with good genes, and she was doing more with her brain than her gene donor had ever considered trying. Although she didn’t like to dwell on that thought. Her gene donor had died before she’d reached adulthood, and it was a little unfair to judge the child based on what Ivy had dug up on her parents.

  Runiker clapped his hands. “Very good. All right—­who knows the procedure for handling an unknown body?” He held up a finger. “Don’t help them, Officer. The students need to learn this.” There was a twist on the way he said students that made it sound like he meant to say humans.

  Ivy buried the thought as another overreaction on her part. Her paperwork was all labeled SHADOW and even the most forward-­thinking ­people wound up having some innate bias against her clone status. Even if he’d meant the insult, there was nothing she could do, not for sixty-­one more days. When the Caye Law went into effect January 1, she’d be legally recognized as a human being. Until then, she was an oddity. A rich man’s insurance against the untimely demise of his daughter. Subhuman.

  A college student wearing a Violent Violets shirt under her knee-­length blue lab coat raised a hand. “We should check the missing person’s database first.”

  “No, but good guess,” said Runiker.

  “Facial recognition for legal ID?” another student asked.

  “No.”

  “Fingerprints?” an exasperated voice asked from the back of the room. It was getting close to lunchtime, and the pampered children were losing their patience.

  They’d never make it in the real world as doctors. Emergencies didn’t care if you were hungry, or tired, or having a bad hair day. When the sirens screamed, you either could do your job hungry and tired, or you let someone get hurt because you failed. Ivy had never needed to learn that the hard way. This was her second chance at life, and her first chance to be more than an organ factory.

  Runiker must have noticed his audience’s impatience because he sighed. “Quick clone test first. If this is a clone, what do we do?”

  “Toss it in with the rest of the trash!” said the boy who’d commented on the corpse’s physical attractiveness.

  Ivy scribbled his name down. That kid was either going to therapy or become a serial killer before the decade was out. And it never hurt to have her suspects lined up early.

  She raised her hand. “As of January, even a clone will warrant a full investigation. Right now, most cities have a policy of checking out who damaged a clone. They can only be charged with littering”—­a fact that made her furious—­ “but someone willing to kill a clone will often escalate to murdering humans. It’s not like you can tell the difference without a gene test.”

  Runiker nodded. “Excellent. Thank you, Officer.” He checked his watch. “We will adjourn for two hours, so everyone can find some food. The cafeteria upstairs is open, and there is a shopping plaza down the street, where several food trucks park. I recommend the tacos. We’ll resume at eleven thirty to watch an autopsy.”

  Ivy stepped aside as the college students hurried away.

  Runiker pulled the sheet over the dead woman’s face and stripped his gloves off. “You support clone rights? That can’t be good for career advancement in a small town. I’d think that, at least publicly, you’d support the Higgins Proposal. The whole ‘sentient but lesser’ idea that clones aren’t fully humans. Only publicly, of course. I’m sure very few clones who support Higgins’s movement actually believe they’re lesser.”

  “I’m a clone,” Ivy said with a shrug. “And a good cop. I can’t support Higgins without underperforming so the rest of my department looks good. If I do that, nothing will get done. One day, the police department will have to decide if they want to promote talent or bigotry.” By the time they got around to that, Ivy hoped to be gone. The Caye Law, and Agent Rose, meant she didn’t need to settle for a second-­rate police department in a small town. There were better things in store for her.

  She nodded to the dead woman. “Who’s handling this case?”

  “No one right now. She’s from Tampa, and the CBI is still debating who has jurisdiction.”

  “She really doesn’t have any ID?” Ivy asked before realizing that’s not what he’d said. “She has a clone marker?”

  “No clone marker,” Runiker said. “But no ID, no matching fingerprints, no gene match on file. She’s a ghost.”

  “An illegal immigrant?” In Florida? “How?” She understood ­people crossing from Brazil into Panama on the Commonwealth’s southern border, but Florida? The nearest foreign nation was across an ocean.

  Runiker shrugged. “Could be an illegal immigrant, could be a black-­market clone, could be a kid raised off the grid by antigovernment types. Not everyone wanted to join the Commonwealth. Especially not down here in the South.”

  “Yeah.” She’d heard all about that in August, when her personal hero was put through a public trial. CBI Agent Rose was the only clone working for the Commonwealth Bureau of Investigation, and she was everything Ivy aspired to be. When Agent Rose’s district had been charged with corruption, the local news stations had accused her of everything from being in an incestuous relationship with her estranged father to plotting the murder of her senior agent. They’d buried the part of the story where the senior agent had plotted to undo the Commonwealth because he didn’t want women of color taking his job.

  They were good at burying things like that.

  With a gloved hand, she lifted the sheet and peeked at the woman again. “She looks like she was going to a party. Look at the clothes.” The girl had done her makeup, dressed up like she owned the world, and now here she was, unnamed, in the morgue.

  “I noticed,” Runiker said. “I’m not completely unsympathetic, you understand, but I can’t do anything until the CBI releases her into the morgue’s custody.”

  “Would you mind sending me a copy of the autopsy if you get to do it?”

  “Why?”

  Ivy shrugged. “To read, I guess. I’m going to be a full officer in January. I might catch a case like this, help the CBI or something.” Like apply to the CBI and handle the case all on her own. “I figure I’ll do better if I have something to study.”

  “You read autopsies?”

  She nodded.

  “That’s morbid. Even for me. And I’m a medical examiner!” Runiker shook his head. “But . . . whatever I guess. Sure, if I do the autopsy, I’ll slip you a copy. As long as it’s not classified. But don’t expect anything. This lab is probably not going to be handling the case. They have their own ­people. I get the ones from obvious accidents and the hospital.”

  “That’s fine,” Ivy said. She replaced the sheet. “It’s not a big deal.”

  Runiker smiled. “Lunchtime?”

  “Right. Thank you for your patience.”

  “No problem.” He grinned sheepishly. “It’s just that the line at the taco truck is long, and if you don’t get there early, they run out of jicama.” He held the door to the locker room for her.

  Ivy stashed her coat and lab shoes and switched to sensible sneakers before grabbing the tiny purse that had her walking-­around money and her city-­issued ID.

  A noise in the morgue made her turn around. “Dr. Runiker?”

  She pushed the door open. The lights were off, and no one said anything. Frowning, she let the heavy door swing closed until only a sliver of vision remained. She held still until the lights in the locker room shut off from lack of movement.

  It was pitch-­black in the morgue, but it took her eyes a minute to adjust to the gloom. Someone was there. Tall, built like a club bouncer, and digging through the boxes of the victim’s personal belongings.

  She watch
ed in silence as he pawed through several drawers before grabbing what he wanted and running off down the long hall to the loading docks.

  Ivy pushed the door open, turned the lights on, and pulled on a latex glove before checking the drawer. It belonged to Jane Doe.

  Someone had stolen her clothes.

  Fuming at her own stupidity, Ivy wondered how she would explain to Dr. Runiker that someone knew who Jane Doe was. After all, who but someone who knew her would come and steal her clothes?

  CHAPTER 8

  “With age comes the choice: betray yourself, or betray your ­people. A person cannot serve their interests and the interest of the state at the same time.”

  ~ excerpt from Broken and Betrayed: The True Story of the Last Soldier by B. E. Contrite I1—­2070

  Date Unknown

  Magdelia Corporation Housing

  Sequence 6—­Unit 27

  Main Continent

  Iteration 11—­Fan 1

  Hot blood flowed over Donovan’s hand as he sliced his other self’s throat with clinical dispatch. The body fell to the floor with a thud, the arterial spray caught on Donovan’s clothes and hand instead of ruining the room. It was a selfish action. He wanted to look at this iteration’s life one more time. Soak in the essence of another reality. Capture the memories of this Donovan for himself.

  “Donovan?” a woman’s voice called cheerfully as he heard a door open. Quick footsteps, then a beautiful woman with red hair stepped into the archway between the living space and the front door. Sunlight made her glow like an angel.

  For a moment, she glowed. Her eyes alight with love. Her smile inviting, and sincere. She stretched out her arms . . . and stopped.

  Too late, she noticed his blood-­soaked uniform, the knife in his hand, her beloved lying dead at his feet. Love turned to fear. She screamed.

  She was still screaming when Donovan walked into the backyard and crossed through the portal, leaving the iteration to shatter around the broken woman.

  He knew that there would be a sleeping pill next to his bed when he returned to Prime. And he knew with the same certainty that he wouldn’t be taking it. He wanted to savor this Donovan’s death. The man had looked at the pictures on the wall as he died. His last thoughts had been of the beautiful woman.

  And now Donovan would have them for himself.

  CHAPTER 9

  “There is no shame quite like the one you feel when you look on what you could have been and realize only your own pride caused you to fail. I could have had so much more, but I thought I was invincible. I thought I was above it all. Now, look how I have fallen.”

  ~ excerpt from Memoir of the Fallen Man by A. N. Otra I3—­2064

  Day 186/365

  Year 5 of Progress

  (July 5, 2069)

  Central Command

  Third Continent

  Prime Reality

  Donovan tossed his Kevlar vest across the room so it clattered against the metal chair. It was an efficient alarm clock.

  In his hospital bed, Senturi stirred, opened an eye, then winced. “What do you want?”

  “To fragging talk. What else?” He rubbed a his thumbnail where a bit of his other self’s blood remained.

  “Do you know what time it is?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” Donovan leaned against the window overlooking a dark plaza and darker apartment windows. The government was cutting back on electric wastage with another set of rolling blackouts. “Time isn’t real.”

  “Not this again.” Senturi swore and pushed himself up into a sitting position. “Why do you do this to me? I don’t need to be your Father Confessor or whatever those ­people were in that backwater iteration you were stuck in.”

  “They were priests,” Donovan said. “They talked about death. I liked them.”

  “You would.”

  A shadow of a nurse passing by cut through the weak yellow light spilling through the frosted glass of the hospital room’s door. Donovan waited patiently. Always patiently. He checked the window again, scanning the opposing rooftops for the telltale glint of a sniper’s rifle. “I did another run.”

  “I know,” Senturi said. “I still get the briefings.” He sighed. “Is this about Wagner?”

  “No, she was grist for the mill. Emir sent me back. Alone. To a little sprig of an iteration. They had trees. The one where Wagner dies had an arboretum.” Donovan’s leg bounced involuntarily. A dangerous tic. It was getting worse. He was losing control with every jump. Splintering. He locked himself down and turned to Senturi. “Trees. Gardens. Plants I’d never even heard of.”

  Senturi shook his head and shrugged. “So?”

  “There are ­people going hungry here. We can’t produce enough food. We’re growing algae to maintain oxygen levels because we strip-­mined the Amazon rain forest.”

  “Again—­so?”

  “So how is this the better iteration? How is this the better path for us?” He remembered the red-­haired woman, with wide green eyes and a sprinkling of cinnamon freckles across her nose.

  Senturi shook his head. “I told you not to think like that. You can’t question. That’s how agents lose their minds. You stare at yourself from behind a gun too many times, and you start wondering if the right person came through the portal.”

  “So what’s the answer?” Donovan’s voice cracked, breaking with a need he couldn’t verbalize. Begging for reassurance. He could feel himself tearing between duty and desire.

  “The answer is: That arboretum was going to lead to failure. They had trees. That doesn’t mean they had stable leaders. That doesn’t mean they were safe. We are months away from the decoherence event, and it is our job to make sure that the time collapse doesn’t knock humanity back to the Stone Age. We’ve dodged so many missteps, narrowly escaped extinction, and you want to question that?”

  The woman’s smile was all he could think about. “I saw pictures of my other self. He had a home. A lover. Maybe a wife. He was happy.” An idea tickled the edge of his brain. The first whisperings of a plan. A way to escape.

  There would be . . . consequences. Fatalities.

  “Well,” Senturi said, “if you left the capital more often, you’d see ­people smiling around here, too. Not near Rose or Emir, but there are happy ­people. I’ve seen them.”

  Donovan paced to the corner of the room, eyeing the dark night outside as he weighed how many lives he could justify as acceptable losses in this silent war. “That’s the other thing. Rose . . . her head’s all wrong.” She supported Emir with a pathological madness.

  “Her head’s wrong in every iteration,” Senturi said. “Ignore Rose. I have her under control.”

  Donovan turned his attention to the pale man sitting in the bed, sizing him up and weighing his worth. “You’ve got nothing under control, including your own body. You’re broken. Emir is ready to use you for parts.”

  Senturi’s lips pressed into a thin, grim line. “Emir knows what I’m doing. I keep the peace in the old corporation families. He doesn’t have the head for politics, and Rose doesn’t have the cojones. The Council listens to me. The Chief Minister of Defense is my cousin. Rose’s father has debts owing to my family that he couldn’t pay in three lifetimes. The only thing Emir fears more than death is a loss of control. He thinks he’s manipulating the Council, but he’s not. The Council is in control.”

  Which meant that Senturi was a fool, too.

  Donovan turned away, recalculating. “Manipulation, lies, and mind games. It’s how the whole damn world works.”

  The other man stretched, putting his hands behind his head. “As long as it keeps working.”

  Donovan drew in a long breath. “How much longer?” He needed time. To win Emir’s trust, to find the perfect place, to find his red-­haired woman . . .

  “Decoherence should occur before March o
f next year. The iterations will flatline. Violence might spike for a week or two, then it gets better. We can let the probability fan run out, and when it hits the right point—­”

  “We move,” Donovan said. Senturi’s plan would push the Council into power, remove the iron grip of Central Command choking humanity, and replace Emir with someone more acceptable. Senturi thought he had a chance of taking over. Donovan thought Senturi had an excellent chance of being found dead with a knife in his back.

  “Emir and Rose are out. You and I are in. The Council will accept me as a full member, and you’ll be my right-­hand man.”

  Donovan nodded. That wasn’t going to happen, but Senturi’s quest for power fitted nicely into his own plans. He waved to Senturi and grabbed his vest. “I need to take a walk.”

  “Do that,” Senturi said. “And get some sleep, too. You look like hell.”

  Donovan didn’t bother saying that was because they lived in hell. They both knew the truth. Prime was stable because it was the lowest common denominator, the worst of all possible worlds.

  Somewhere, there was an iteration where he was a good man. Or at least pretended to be. Either way, in this iteration, he wasn’t, and he knew he didn’t deserve a good man’s life. But he’d take it anyway. Like a knife flashing in the dark, he’d carve himself into a better world and have everything the other iterations promised that he could only dream about now. Because one thing was clear:

  He’d rather die with having had even a taste of happiness than survive only to remain in this misery.

  Rose waited until the third shift before she left the relative safety of her room for the medical labs three floors below. While she technically was Emir’s second-­in-­command and had the right to go anywhere, she was wary of what lurked in the shadows. Central Command had once been a large, multibranched quasi-­military establishment with research, and training, and layers of protective red tape. Over the past two years, Emir had streamlined it.

  The first cut, she hadn’t noticed. Her team was ordered by Central Command to go to a new iteration that had spawned its own fan. The world had been virtually identical to Prime. It wasn’t until months later that her habit of browsing data from old files had shown the single difference: a life. In the iteration she’d destroyed, Councillor Ibrahim Mesar survived what was considered an accidental encounter with a nut he was allergic to.