by Sean Platt
“You act like Wallace wanted a new world order.”
“Eden isn’t The Change, Ephraim,” Neven said with a warm smile. “You want a new world order, talk to Papa Friesh.”
It sounded like Neven wanted a Brave New World to Ephraim.
“When my father died, Jonathan thought he’d be the one to take over Eden. I understand why; Jonathan knew the research inside-out. For a while, before we sorted my father’s affairs, even I deferred to him. When we found out what my father had intended, Jonathan didn’t like it. He didn’t want to work for me; he wanted me to work for him. But it was right, you know. Because Jonathan never understood.”
“Understood what?”
“Organic humanity can only evolve generation to generation, but clones can evolve from one version to the next. You’re better than the first Ephraim, and his next clone might be even better than you. Humans have to wait decades to iterate. Clones, on the other hand, can evolve as quickly as we pull a switch.”
And Neven claimed this wasn’t a cult? Any time now, Ephraim expected him to serve spiked punch.
“If there’s a ‘next Ephraim clone,’ then what about me?”
Neven thought, then nodded. “You had a good run.”
“Are you going to kill me?”
“You have a genetic deficiency. We build it into all clones as a failsafe.”
“So the answer is yes.”
“Try not to think of it in those terms, Ephraim. Think of it more as ‘expiration.’ Or as I suggested, ‘evolution.’”
“Maybe you could let me live, seeing as I did all your dirty work. Evolve more of me, but keep me around, too.”
“You did well, Ephraim. In most ways, you were a success. But you know your mind. You know it’s not stable. It’d be cruel to let you stay on, knowing you’ll almost surely go insane.”
“Maybe that’s my decision to make.”
“But as your creator, the burden of choice is on me.” Neven shrugged. “I’m sorry. Please try to understand.”
“Hard to do when you’re the one about to die.” But even as he argued, Ephraim could hear his dispassion, the lack of emotion about his death. He was arguing on principle, but honestly living was too damn hard.
Or maybe he truly was conditioned.
“It’s less than painless,” Neven said. “I can activate the failsafe through the same channel I have open to your MyLife. In this one specific way, your cellular machinery is as suggestible as your mind. A switch to flip and nothing more.”
Ephraim let the thought settle. Why didn’t this bother him? They were casually discussing his imminent demise. Soon, there’d be no more him. No more Ephraim. Although that wasn’t true, was it? There were other Ephraims. And maybe, in the end, that’s why it didn’t matter.
Better than losing his mind.
Better than life in prison, or whatever Fiona would do to him.
And so Ephraim, weary, said, “Now?”
“Unless you’d rather wait. You’ve done your job. I want to do what’s best for you, whatever makes you most comfortable. You’ve done all I knew you could do — things your donor could never have done. If you want a reward, name it. If you’d like to meet Jonathan, I’ll summon him now.”
“Have I met Jonathan?”
Neven shook his head. “We cordoned you off immediately for conditioning, then sent you to the city as soon as you were ready, so there’d be no worry about you meeting your original or polluting your early suggestible mind with too many memories of Eden. From Jonathan’s perspective, I’m afraid you’ve never even—”
Ephraim raised a hand to stop him. The notion that he’d never met his own brother wasn’t sad; it was too tragic for that. “Never mind.”
“Would you like some time with Sophie? I’ll leave you alone if you wish.”
“No.”
“Maybe she’d like it. Are you sure?”
Ephraim looked at Sophie. She hadn’t looked up; whatever Neven had offered her for entertainment claimed her full attention. Yes, she probably would like it. And that was one relationship — possibly his only real relationship, sad as it was — that had never consummated. But again, too tragic.
“I’m sure. Just take care of her, okay? If you want to offer me something, just promise you’ll look out for Sophie.”
Neven’s face clouded. “She’s imprinted, Ephraim. I thought you understood.”
“What do you mean, ‘imprinted’?”
“She’s yours. She was made for you. She was never meant to be independent. None of them are.” He looked around the room, like a man who’d lost something. “Mercer was supposed to explain this. He sent you a manual. Don’t you know how it works?”
Ephraim sharpened. Straightened up. Neven seemed to be unspooling.
What had gone wrong?
“What are you talking about? What’s the problem?”
“This Sophie was created specifically to bond with you, Ephraim. Like all of her type, we made her dependent on you.”
“What happens to her when I’m gone?”
Neven looked at the door. At Ephraim. At Sophie. Then again at the door.
“A conditioned, dependent clone can’t live without its anchor.”
“And?”
But Ephraim could read Neven’s face.
He knew what came next before the man opened his mouth.
“The only humane thing to do is to shut her down first.”
CHAPTER 55
IT'S OKAY TO BE AFRAID
Get out.
Ephraim sat upright, on full alert. The impulse that came with the voice — the way to get out of this after all — presented itself like a bright flashing beacon.
Leave the room. Take Sophie.
Don’t stop fighting. Don’t surrender.
It’s not just you. It’s her now, too. Don’t lie down.
Stand up. And see what happens.
“I’m so sorry,” Neven said. “I thought you understood. Mercer said he told you.”
Ephraim’s hands became fists. His muscles tensed from shoulder to forearm. Nothing hurt anymore. There was a way to win; it just required thinking outside of his clone’s box.
He didn’t have to play Fiona’s side, or Wood’s, or Eden’s. He didn’t have to accept what Neven said or reject it. He didn’t have to take the Quarry to Fiona; he didn’t have to reveal Fiona’s secrets to Wood, he didn’t have to retrieve Eden’s secrets and bring them back to Riverbed.
He didn’t need to do as he’d been told or obey his conditioning and suggestions.
There was one option left that Ephraim hadn’t considered because he’d been manufactured with a blind spot. He wasn’t supposed to see it at all. But he could see it now.
Which side was any clone never supposed to take?
Why, his own.
“It’s painless,” Neven repeated, now looking around for his tablet. His eyes flicked up; he’d left it at the bar. Then his eyes darted to Ephraim. “I promise, neither of you will feel anything at all.”
Neven was trying to stand, to hide the way his eyes kept going to the tablet across the room. His gaze moved between Ephraim and the device. Sophie looked up, seeing dissent. Neven was pinched between stares, held in place. He looked like he might lunge for the tablet. Ephraim had ideas if he did. Ideas, he suspected, that no clone was supposed to have. Unless that clone’s mind had shattered, and couldn’t properly hold its conditioning.
“You have to understand. You don’t die. Not really.”
“Except that we do.” Ephraim’s hands were on the chair’s arms. Starting to rise.
“You are lines. Both of you are clone lines. We drip memories into databanks to create pools of common experiences. Nobody would want a Sophie who wasn’t a Sophie, so every one of them shares the original’s base memories. Just as the original Ephraim—”
Neven stood. Eyed the bar. Ephraim moved to a near-crouch, trying to seem casual when he was anything but, moving to intercept. His words cut Nev
en off, slicing his protest in half.
“I have nine years of memories since the day you created me. Sophie only has a few days’ worth, but she does have some that are unique only to her. What about those memories? Do you keep them, too?”
“Those memories are inconsequential. They’re—”
“—what makes me me,” Ephraim finished.
They were both sliding sideways, both standing upright.
Neven reached toward the bar and the tablet. Ephraim moved to block.
“And you,” Ephraim continued, “said I was better. An improvement over the original. Wouldn’t that ‘improvement’ be due to what makes me me? Because of those ‘inconsequential’ memories?”
“Yes, but …” Neven trailed off.
There’s a way out. Just don’t do as he says and don’t refuse what he says. Don’t go right or left. Don’t comply with your conditioning or fight it. Don’t regress, but don’t advance. Think in a new direction, something even Eden didn’t expect.
Don’t just be. Evolve.
“This is about the greater good, Ephraim. Wallace believed that—”
Ephraim lunged. Neven ducked.
Ephraim went high and rolled to the side, missing the mark.
Momentum dragged him past Neven, to the couch, staggering, battered from one side. And Neven, meanwhile, corrected and went for the bar.
In a second his hand found the tablet. In one and a half, he’d unlocked its screen.
The clock was ticking. How fast could this happen? How quickly could Neven shut them down? Ephraim had no intention of finding out. Not for himself. But especially for Sophie.
Neven’s hands were on the tablet, typing like lightning.
He stutter-stepping backward as Ephraim regained his footing, coming hard.
Neven dodging around one of the chairs, nudging a lamp, breaking it.
Ephraim’s hands on Neven’s wrist. On the tablet. Wrenching it away. And then Ephraim was on him, knocking Neven to the ground, bloody, adrenaline returning. Standing over him, tablet now in Ephraim’s hands. Chest rising and falling. And Neven below, on his back, hands up, warding him away.
Ephraim felt the tablet’s cool surface, the smooth metal edges.
Now break it, said the voice in his head.
Ephraim looked at the tablet. It was unlocked, courtesy of Neven. And that meant he could do this. He could stop it. He could save Sophie and himself.
Original Ephraim didn’t have to know anything until Clone Ephraim was gone, and if Jonathan had a problem with any of it, it would be too late. Neven had cleared the room. They could take him as a hostage, then get their MyLifes removed in the states. Then nobody could whisper in their minds. Or kill them by flipping a switch.
There was a way. There was a chance. This could end.
Neven, still on his back, beckoning for the tablet, palms up.
“Don’t do it, Ephraim,” he begged. “That tablet hasn’t synced. It requires a fingerprint. The data on there, it’s priceless. You matter a great deal to us; the fact that you need to be shut down hasn’t changed that. This is for the greater good; do you hear me? Let me sync it. Otherwise, none of this was worth anything if it’s all just destroyed. Please.” Neven’s hands, beckoning. “Let me make your life matter.”
Ephraim looked at the tablet. Was there a chance that Neven was telling the truth? Was this tablet that valuable to him? It had probably been recording all that happened through his MyLife — and maybe Sophie’s — since they’d entered. If that was true, it would have data records of an Eden clone rebelling, evolving, besting its original in battle, and realizing its true nature.
He looked at the tablet again, seeing it with fresh respect. If there was proof that an echo could surpass its voice, it was on this tablet.
Unsynchronized. Existing on the one device and nowhere else.
Ephraim’s life, in a very literal sense, was in his hands.
“At least let me unlock the wireless with my fingerprint so it can sync. Put your foot on my neck to make sure I don’t do anything else if you have to. Then run off if you want. Take the damn thing with you; I don’t care. But please. The tablet. What it’s recorded from you over the past half hour is all I’ve been working for my entire life. Your experiment is all that’s ever mattered, through everything. To me. To my father. To Eden. Hell, Ephraim — to the future of Precipitous Rise. To the world!”
Neven seemed near panic. Seeing it, Ephraim wanted to scoff.
Fuck Connolly’s vision.
Fuck Neven’s life’s work.
He brought the tablet down hard on Neven’s face, putting his whole body’s force behind it. As it struck home, the tablet didn’t just blink out; the technology was made to last. But it did break Neven’s nose, turning them into twins — triplets, if he counted the other Ephraim.
Then he tossed the tablet aside and used his fists instead.
The tablet didn’t matter.
The only way out was to shut Neven down.
He rained down with blows from his fists.
His already aching hands crackled like bags of glass. His shoulder jarred. His knuckles split and bled. And when his hands were spent, Ephraim knelt above Neven’s battered face and used his knees to beat him. Then he stood and used his shoes.
Ephraim continued until long, long after Neven had stopped breathing. And only when it was over did he realize that Sophie was standing beside him, looking at the body, not nearly as aghast as she should have been.
He looked down at Neven’s corpse. It looked like the Jonathan clone’s. Like the body of Fiona’s man. Another sack of meat now that the spark of life had left it.
Three deaths dealt by these still-living hands.
Sophie took his arm. Ephraim said quietly, “It’s okay to be afraid.”
The door burst open. The original Ephraim stood on the threshold, his yapping mouth finally at a loss for words. There were two men and two women at his sides, all seeming more near him than at his command. Maybe even afraid.
Eden guards? Ephraim wondered as his attention shifted from Neven to the newcomers. Though if they were, their uniforms had changed in the resort’s makeover.
Ephraim was above the body, his front painted in blood and gore, heart pounding. It felt good. The fear told him he was alive.
Guns raised. Sighted on Ephraim.
He raised his hands, nudging Sophie to do the same.
“Where is Neven Connolly?” one of them shouted.
The shout had come from one of the officers — a woman who either couldn’t see the body in the room’s sunken area from the door or wasn’t good at assembling two and two. But at least one of the others had seen the dead man: a portly officer, maybe five-five, shaped like a fireplug. He’d crept forward and was now staring at the pulp-faced thing that used to be Neven.
He staggered two steps to the left and vomited onto a fine woven rug.
The officers approached. The one who’d yelled, coming forward and now seeing the evidence, met Ephraim’s gaze. She watched the rising of his gore-soaked hands. She came the rest of the way toward them but didn’t bark an order. Instead, she hit Ephraim with her weapon.
Ephraim crumpled. The other two officers were on him in seconds, shouting commands, cuffing his hands behind his back.
Ephraim was on his stomach, cheek to the rug, fighting to see.
Where was the other Ephraim?
Then he saw him, picking up the tablet Ephraim had used to land his first blow.
Two of the officers were moving closer to him, perhaps to see what he’d discovered in the pile of gore.
Watching, Ephraim felt his stomach drop as his double inspected the tablet. The fucking thing was indestructible, not damaged at all. Its screen was lit. Unlocked. And as Clone Ephraim watched, Original Ephraim tapped its surface. And then he moved closer, his face twisted into something like admiration and disgust.
Low enough so the approaching officers couldn’t hear, he hissed, “You’
ll burn for this.”
But Ephraim only had eyes for the tablet. He struggled, trying to rise. The cuffs and officers reasserted themselves; Clone Ephraim was going precisely nowhere.
Pride and dignity fled in a blip. He was suddenly servile. His fight all gone.
Ephraim wanted one last chance — not for himself, but for Sophie.
“Don’t do it,” he said, looking at the man with the tablet. “Please don’t do it.”
Original Ephraim’s eyebrows bunched. Behind him, the encroaching officers paused with their hands at their belts as if about to retrieve something.
Original Ephraim locked eyes with his clone. “What are you talking about?”
“The tablet. Whatever you’re thinking of doing on it, please don’t. Please. I’m begging you.”
The female officer yanked Ephraim to his feet. The metal bit his wrists. His hands were useless. If the other Ephraim didn’t kill them both now, he’d be wearing a cast for months.
“Let’s go,” the officer said.
“Wait!”
She hit him again, this time with her elbow in his stomach. Ephraim gasped. But he watched the tablet and the strange expression on Original Ephraim’s face.
Again, he croaked, “Please.”
Sophie was being cuffed now too, the officers shifting positions as they readjusted to the scene. She was pulled ahead as Ephraim lagged, using his weight to stay put. He hooked his body against a chair, a couch, a table.
The female officer and the fireplug were now flanking Original Ephraim.
“Don’t do it!” Ephraim shouted.
“Do what?”
“Don’t …” But he didn’t want to sharpen any ideas. “Don’t do what’s on the tablet! Please!”
The female officer was hovering near Original Ephraim, giving him a semi-polite look that seemed to say: Sorry, but now that we’ve apprehended them, it’s your turn now, sir.