by John Helfers
She didn’t mention anything about the holo—or subsequent viewings of the Baby Store holos—for the next eight evening meals. And when she brought it up, the reference was oblique: ‘‘Sometimes it’s so quiet here during the day. Bad quiet, I mean, not good quiet.’’
It had rarely been quiet when Kevin Jr. had been alive.
Dr. Carmody said, ‘‘I think a little nudge might be appropriate here, Mr. McKay.’’
‘‘What kind of nudge, Dr. Carmody?’’
‘‘Oh, nothing confrontational. Nothing like that. In fact, something pleasant. I had a patient who was having a difficult time getting her husband to visit us. They’d only recently come into some money and her husband still had some of his old attitudes about designer babies from the days when he’d been not so well off. But she surprised him. Invited him to his favorite restaurant, which just happened to be near here, and after the meal she just happened to steer him in our direction—and four days later, he came in and signed the papers and started creating not one but two children. Twins.’’
‘‘Well, one of Jen’s favorite restaurants is near here, too. We go there for our anniversary every year.’’
‘‘When’s your next anniversary?’’
‘‘Two weeks from tomorrow.’’
Dr. Carmody smiled his Dr. Carmody smile. ‘‘That’s not very far off, is it?’’
She was late getting into the city and for a frantic half hour Kevin was afraid that Jen had known that this would be more than an anniversary dinner. He couldn’t contact her on her comm, either. Maybe she’d decided not to meet him. Maybe she was in the bedroom, weeping as she once had. He stood on the street corner lost in the chill April dusk and the shadow crowds racing to the trains and the freeways.
And then, golden and beaming, tossing off an explanation for her tardiness that was both reasonable and reassuring—then she was in his arms and they were walking like new lovers to the restaurant where their reserved table waited for them.
After her second glass of wine, she said, ‘‘After dinner, let’s go for a walk. I don’t get down here very often. And I still love to window-shop.’’
The center of the city gleamed in the midst of darkness, an entity constantly reinventing itself, taller, faster, more seductive in every respect, the streets patrolled by android security officers. The androids were without mercy.
The store windows Jen stopped at were alive with quickly changing holos of haute couture. He was happy to see her interested in her appearance again. She even talked about making one of her shopping trips.
He made sure that they kept moving in the direction of the Baby Store. As they turned a corner, entering the block the store was on, she said, ‘‘I think I’ve got a surprise coming up.’’
‘‘A surprise?’’
She leaned into him affectionately, tightening her grip on his arm. She laughed. ‘‘You’ve been steering us in a certain direction since we left the restaurant.’’
‘‘I have?’’
‘‘We’re going to the Baby Store, as you’ve always called it.’’
‘‘We are?’’
But of course they were.
A small staff kept the three-story building open during the nighttime hours. As Kevin had arranged, Dr. Carmody had stayed late. He greeted them in the lobby and led them back to his office.
‘‘Happy anniversary to both of you,’’ he said.
‘‘Thank you, Dr. Carmody. I guess I knew somehow we’d end up here tonight. Sometimes I can sort of read my husband’s mind.’’
‘‘I hope you’re not disappointed, Mrs. McKay.’’
She shrugged in that sweet young-girl way she had. ‘‘No, maybe Kevin’s right. Maybe this is what I need.’’
‘‘We’ll certainly do our best,’’ Carmody said.
And so they began.
Coffee cleared their minds and numerous holos of designed girls—that was the only thing Jen knew for sure; a girl this time—sharpened their imaginations. They began to form a picture of the infant Jen would carry. And what this infant would look like at various stages of her life. And what kind of intellectual acumen the child would have. In a world as competitive as this one, superior beauty without superior intelligence was nothing.
Dr. Carmody had left them alone in front of the enormous holo console. They were so infatuated with the prospect of a new child that they became infatuated with each other, friendly kisses giving way to passionate ones; a breast touched, long lovely fingers caught behind Kevin’s neck, pulling him closer. ‘‘Maybe the wine hasn’t worn off after all,’’ Kevin said. And laughed.
But Jen said, ‘‘We really should be looking at the screen now.’’
After forty-five minutes they stopped browsing through holos and began talking seriously about the child they’d come to create. Hair color, eye color, body type, features—classic or more contemporary? What sort of interests it would have. The level of intelligence—some parents went too far. The children had serious emotional problems later on.
Kevin asked Dr. Carmody to join them.
‘‘Did you like any of the holos you saw?’’
‘‘They were all very impressive, Doctor,’’ Kevin said. ‘‘In fact they were all so good it got kind of confusing after awhile. But I think we’ve started to have a pretty good idea of what we’re looking for.’’
‘‘Well, we’re certainly ready to proceed with the process anytime you are,’’ Dr. Carmody said, his perfectly modulated vid-caster voice never more persuasive. ‘‘We just need to look over our standard agreement and get to work.’’
‘‘I’m sure that won’t be any problem,’’ Kevin said. But as he spoke, he noticed that Jen no longer seemed happy. The tension of the past two months had tightened her face and given her eyes a somewhat frantic look.
Dr. Carmody had become aware of her sudden change, too. He glanced at Kevin, inclined his head vaguely toward Jen. He obviously expected Kevin to deal with this situation. It wasn’t the doctor’s place to do so.
But as Kevin started to put his hand on her arm, she stood up with enough force to make herself unsteady. Kevin tried to slide his arm around her waist to support her but she pulled away from him. She was suddenly, violently crying. ‘‘I can’t do this. It’s not fair to our boy. It’s not fair!’’
And then before either man could quite respond effectively, Jen rushed to the door, opened it, and disappeared.
Kevin started to run after her. Dr. Carmody stopped him. ‘‘Just remember. She’s been through a lot, Kevin. Don’t force her into this until she’s really ready. Obviously she’s having some difficulty with the process. There’s no need to rush.’’
Kevin, scarcely listening, rushed out the door after his wife. She was much faster than he’d imagined. She wasn’t in the hall nor, when he reached the lobby, was she there. He hurried outside.
The sidewalk was crowded with people his own age, of his own status. Drink and drugs lent them the kind of happiness you usually saw only on vid commercials.
He didn’t see Jen at first. Luckily, he glimpsed her turning the far corner. He ran. People made wary room for him. Somebody running in a crowd like this instinctively made them nervous. A running man meant danger.
There was no time for apologies, no time for gently mo
ving people aside. When he reached the corner, his clothes were disheveled and his face damp with sweat. He couldn’t find her. He felt sick, scared. She was in such a damned vulnerable state. He didn’t like to think of what going to the Baby Store might have triggered in her.
He quit running, falling against a streetlamp to gather himself. He got the sort of cold, disapproving glances that derelicts invited. While he was getting his breath back, he smelled the nearby river. The cold early spring smell of it. He wasn’t sure why but he felt summoned by the stark aroma of it.
In a half-dazed state, he began moving toward the water, the bridge that ran north-south coming into view as soon as he neared the end of the block.
She stood alone, staring down at the black, choppy water. Though he knew it was probably best to leave her alone for awhile, his need to hold her was so overpowering that he found himself walking toward her without quite realizing it until he was close enough to touch the sleeve of her coat.
She didn’t acknowledge him in any way, simply continued staring into the water. Downriver the lights from two tugboats could be seen, like the eyes of enormous water creatures moving through the night. In the further distance a foghorn sounded.
He leaned against the railing just the way she did. He remained silent. He smelled her perfume, her hair. God, he loved her.
When she spoke, her voice was faint. ‘‘I killed our son.’’
‘‘Honey, we’ve been over this and over this. You were on the phone and he didn’t stay on the porch like you told him. He went into the lake despite everything we’d warned him about.’’
She still didn’t look at him. ‘‘I lied. I ran out the door in time to save him. I could have dived in and brought him back to shore. But I didn’t. I wanted him to drown, Kevin, because I was ashamed of him. All the women I know—they were always bragging about their sons and daughters. But Kevin Jr.—we did something wrong when we created him. He just wasn’t very smart. He would never have amounted to much. And so I let him drown. I stood there and let him drown while you were in the backyard.’’
He’d always felt that her grief was more complicated than the death of their son. And now he knew that his guess had been correct. In addition to loss, she was dealing with a kind of guilt he couldn’t imagine.
‘‘You just thought I was in the backyard.’’
For the first time she turned and looked at him, her face in shadow. ‘‘But you were in the backyard.’’
‘‘True. But only for awhile. I heard him scream, too. I ran around to the side of the house. I was going to save him. That was all I thought about. But then I stopped myself. I started thinking—you know how in just a few seconds you can have so many different thoughts—I started thinking the same things you did. I loved him, but we’d created a child who just couldn’t compete. Who’d never be able to compete.’’
She clutched his arm. ‘‘Are you lying to me, Kevin?’’
‘‘No. I’m telling you the truth. And I’m telling you that we’re both equally guilty—and that we’re not guilty at all. We made a terrible mistake. We didn’t listen to our counselor. We designed our son badly. It wasn’t his fault and it wasn’t ours. I mean, we had the best of intentions.’’
‘‘But we let him die.’’
‘‘Yes, we did. And you know what? We did him a favor. We’d already seen how mediocre his school-workwas. What kind of future would he have had? He wouldn’t have had any kind of enjoyable life.’’ He drew her close to him. ‘‘But now we have another chance, Jen. And this time we’ll listen to our counselor. Dr. Carmody will help us. We’ll create the kind of child we can be proud of. And when Storz and everybody at the office start bragging about their kids, I’ll finally be able to brag about mine.’’
She fell against him. This time joy laced her sobbing. He could almost psychically share the exuberance she felt knowing that he was as much to blame for Kevin, Jr.’s death as she was. There was such a thing as the saving lie, and he was happy to relieve her of at least some of her guilt. And in fact he’d sometimes wondered if he shouldn’t have killed the boy himself.
A numbing wind swept up from the river. She shuddered against him.
‘‘We need some coffee,’’ he said. He slid his arm around her shoulders and together they started walking back toward the center of the city.
‘‘We never did decide if we want our daughter to be blonde or brunette,’’ he said.
‘‘Or a redhead,’’ she said. ‘‘I’ve got an aunt with beautiful red hair.’’
An image of an ethereal red-haired girl came into his mind. One who inspired lust and myth in equal parts. That was the kind of daughter they’d create. He couldn’t wait to see the envy on Storz’s face when the daughter was fifteen or so. It would be something to exult about for weeks.
JESUS RUNS
by George Zebrowski
George Zebrowski’s many novels include his classic Macro-life (recently reissued), and the John W. Campbell Award Best Novel Brute Orbits. His more than one hundred short stories have been collected in hardcovers, among them Swift Thoughts and Black Pockets, both Publishers Weekly starred books. He writes in search of reasons to live and to think better of his own kind.
‘‘This race of men . . . I am sorry that I ever made them.’’
—God, Genesis 6:7-8
THE BONES GAVE up their DNA—a dozen times or more, so it was claimed—helped, many also claimed, by a generous history that could only have been God’s gift to secular science. But who knew the provenance of the bones, and could identify whatever greasy stuff it was that they scraped up from the old tombs? Where were the long-lived police who had preserved the unbroken chain of evidence? Where were the affidavits along the via dolorosa of history’s abysmal record-keeping to confirm the unimpeachabilityof the evidence? The Romans had long ago lost the transcript of their trial and execution order for the man from Nazareth, if they had ever made or kept such a record. In fact, no usual records of the existence of Jesus had ever existed, except for the Gospels. The only provenance for the DNA came from fragments in a tomb, with the same name attached, and this much was unquestioned: the tomb had belonged to someone human, no more, no less.
Two thousand years after he had died and failed to save humankind from itself, Jesus ran for the presidency of the land that still called itself the United States of America. By the 2080s, our much divided land could hardly be called united, but the divinely inspired purpose of the religious states was to bind the country together again through moral revival and reform, by putting forth a candidate, in the best tradition of personality worship, behind which had always stood the well-known American ability to discern character.
Americans had always voted for a man’s character above all other considerations, and though it went unsaid, the DNA would surely have transmitted divine character along with the claimed historical fact. His qualifications to be president and to bring virtue to governance were self-evident, given his origin as a clone of Jesus; and so his character, if not his divinity, at least suggested trust, bolstered by his DNA, however he had been resurrected.
Divine contact had to be present because God the Father would not have permitted the blasphemy of a false clone; a worship-worthy divinity would not have allowed it. The clone of Jesus Christ had to be another resurrection of God’s Son, a new incarnation of the original missionary from beyond, who had come to us and then returned to his vengeful Father in Heaven, whose heart he had softened toward humankind by suffering and dying for its sins. The D
NA match could not be anything but a form of divine contact, a messagefrom the past, rebuttal enough against the horrid objection that the biology of cloning confirmed only that some long dead Middle Easterner had been cloned.
Nevertheless, endless claims were made by various groups, until at last, quite rightly as it turned out, the case confronted the Supreme Court; but in the three decades before the identity of Jesus became a legal problem, eleven other resurrections of the so-called Jesus pattern had also grown to manhood, in relative obscurity, until they were discovered and united in this case.
The ways of the Bush era had long ago run their course, but the hopes of the Republican Right again filled the party like black bile swelling a devil’s leathery cocoon toward a hideous explosion, as one longmemoried columnist wrote. Dark candidates began to seek the presidency of a Britainnically shrunken United States, surrounded now by an enlarged world struggling to adapt to climate change, disease, and cosmic dangers. The same mean-spirited columnist imagined the Earth as a giant convertible filled with screaming souls careening around the Sun.
Interestingly, these twelve resurrectees of Jesus each felt the call to justice against the Caesars of America. Sociobiologists speculated on an ‘‘ethics’’ gene that seemed to be identical in all twelve expressions of the DNA, while self-serving educators chalked it up to education’s early light of upbringing. Believers, of course, claimed that divine grace and the continued concern of a merciful God had preserved the DNA into these perilous and needful times, when the attentions of the all-powerful were once again necessary to save his human creation. Cynics pointed out that at one time He had declared Himself finished with humanity, and had drowned the creatures in a watery genocide, but had been kindly enough to save one family and a very incomplete list of animals, and had then provided a sentimental rainbow, a cheap ‘‘get well’’ card to mark the occasion. And then His Son had to come by to suffer and die, to placate the abusive Father so he would not try again to clear the slate.