Genesis Alpha

by Rune Michaels

  Rachel’s cigarettes. Of course. It’s a wonder my parents haven’t noticed. “Must have walked through a cloud of smoke somewhere in the hallway.” I wonder if he recognizes the smell as Karen’s cigarettes, if she smelled of them as he killed her, and I can’t help it, I shudder violently.

  Max’s gaze fastens on me, chafes across my face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing. I’m a little cold, that’s all.”

  It’s like he’s two people. My brother, the brother I’ve always known, and a monster, a stranger, together in one person, shimmering together and apart. Good and evil. It isn’t as simple as it is inside Genesis Alpha. It isn’t as simple as I always thought it was.

  “Do you think we share a soul, Josh? Seeing as how you were made from me?”

  My soul is my own, no matter why or how I was created. I have to believe that. I stare straight back into Max’s eyes and shake my head. Max laughs. He looks away. Rubs his forehead with his shackled hands. They are shaking.

  “I’m afraid of dying,” he says suddenly. “That’s why I confessed. Hoping to avoid the death penalty. I’m not afraid of death. Not of hell or anything. I don’t believe in heaven or hell. But the moment of dying. That moment when you realize you’re dying . . . when the final hope vanishes and your vision starts to narrow . . . when you know you’re fading out. It happened to me a few times back then, you know. They brought me back every time. Back to sickness and pain and the eternal wait for the cure. A cure. Mom kept promising me a cure.” He looks at me again. “Are you afraid of dying?”

  I guess I am, but I haven’t thought about it a lot. I’ve thought about Max’s death, Karen’s death. But not my own.

  “If I’m executed, part of you will die with me. The part they injected into me. It will rot in the ground with me. Maybe I should get cremated like I decided when I was little. What do you want for the cells you gave me? Is it better to be burned to ashes, or rot in the ground?”

  I shake my head. I guess it doesn’t matter once you’re dead. It only matters before you die, the way you imagine eternity in your head. “Whatever.”

  “Part of me will live on. In you, Josh. They can’t kill the part of me that’s you. And if I was meant to live, someone else must have been meant to die.” He shrugs. “And they did.”

  Dad shakes his head. “I don’t believe this. What the hell do you believe in? How could you decide to take someone else’s life—”

  “Decide? You believe in free will now?” Max says, without sparing Dad a glance. “The behavioral expert? Why do you assume it’s something I decided to do?”

  “Why, Max?” Dad says. He leans forward. “Help me understand, son. We want to help you, you know that. We’ll get you the best doctors there are. Why did you do it? If it wasn’t a decision, what made you do it? Can you understand it? Can you explain it?”

  Max keeps staring at me even while he talks to Dad. I feel like a mouse caught in a trap. Helpless. Almost dead. “Well, you should find out in a few years if my DNA made me do it.”

  “Don’t buy into your own press,” Dad snaps. “You’re no more alike than identical twins are. Less, since you were born at different times. Josh isn’t you.”

  “I’ve been doing a lot of reading in here. The Bible, for instance. Josh, you know the story of Cain and Abel?”

  “Yes. Yeah.” I have to say it twice. The first time my throat is too dry for the sound to emerge. I don’t know a lot of Bible stories, but I do know that one. “They were brothers. Cain killed Abel.”

  “Why?”

  “He was jealous.”

  “Do you know why he was jealous?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “God liked Abel better. Cain worked just as hard, tried just as hard to please God, but still, God liked Abel better. Not fair, is it?”

  Dad covers his face with his hands. “So now you’re Cain?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe I’m Abel. After all, he was the one who pleased God with his blood sacrifice. What do you think, Josh?”

  What I think is that I hate Max. I hate him so much. Anger burns bright in my chest, then wanes. His eyes are brown, with a bit of green. Just like mine. Maybe he’s thinking the same thing right now.

  “Don’t make a mess of your life, baby boy,” he says softly, looking away. He shimmers back into my brother, and when the monster is no longer there, I feel bad about my hatred.

  “I won’t.”

  He grins at me when I meet his eyes again. “Don’t get caught.”

  The chair falls over and bangs on the floor as I storm toward the door. I have to wait forever while the guard unlocks it and lets me out, and all the while, I can feel Max looking at me.

  I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.

  Our street is chaos. Cars and the television trucks and throngs of people. Dad veers away, taking another route through the neighborhood. He sighs.

  “Maybe we should just check into a hotel or something,” Mom whispers. “Or our offices . . . or Diane’s house . . .”

  “No,” Dad barks. “We’re not letting these vultures drive us out of our own home. Josh, get down on the floor.”

  “What?”

  “Down,” he insists. “We don’t need to give them the satisfaction of getting your picture. They already have enough of those, thanks to your . . . thanks to Lione.”

  “Please, Jack. I didn’t know,” Mom says. “How could I have known? I thought he’d use those pictures to help Max.”

  “Never mind,” Dad says. “Nothing we can do about it. Josh, down. Now!”

  I undo my seat belt and slide down on the floor, lie face up, blinking at the beige ceiling. Mom throws a blanket on top of me, but through the coarse brown material, I still see the bright flashes of the cameras when we approach our house, hear the yelling of the reporters as we drive through the throng, hear Dad curse under his breath and Mom’s labored breathing. I don’t move at all until the garage door has closed behind us.

  Mom puts her hand on my shoulder after I’ve thrown the blanket aside and gotten out of the car. “We need to talk, honey,” Mom says. “We really need to talk about everything that’s happened. . . .”

  “I just want to be alone,” I say, bite it out from my clenched jaw, shrug her hand off my shoulder. “I’m sick and tired of talking. I want to go to my room and I just want to be left alone.”

  “Josh, please . . .”

  “Let him go,” Dad says. “Give him space. We’ll be here, Josh. When you’re ready.”

  I go to my room and shut the door. My phone is ringing, all the phones are ringing. Reluctantly I check who it is. Frankie.

  It rings for a long time, and in the end I answer.

  “Is it true?” Frankie asks. “Are you okay?”

  “Fine,” I say stiltedly.

  “Does it . . . do you . . . do they . . .” he stutters, and I can hear he doesn’t know what to say. I don’t help him out. I hold the phone to my ear with one hand, switch on my computer with the other, and just wait for him to finish his sentence. “Maybe I could come over?” he says at last. “We could . . . just hang out . . . you know?”

  I roll my eyes, imagining Frankie strutting through the crowd of hungry tyrannosaurs out there. But still, he’s my friend. I think. I’m not sure I have a lot of friends left. “I don’t think so. Maybe later. Not now.”

  “Why not? I mean, I won’t talk about Max or anything. I won’t go into his room. We could just, you know, hang out and—”

  “Frank!” I hear Frankie’s mom hissing at him. Then an inaudible mumble.

  “Okay, see you later, got to go,” Frankie says quickly, and hangs up.

  I throw my phone hard against the wall. It bounces off and lands on my beanbag. I turn my back on it, go online, and log on to Genesis Alpha with my secondary character to avoid my friends. I’m trying not to think about me and Max, the reporters outside, the laboratory where they created me, but it’s all so big it fills my entire brain. After a few minutes I q
uit and log on to some news sites. I’m everywhere. My picture and Max’s side by side. Debates, profiles, interviews. One of the news stations even has a poll: “Will Max Seville’s clone grow up to be a psychopath?”

  There are 73 percent who say yes.

  I keep searching the Internet for my name. It’s everywhere. News, blogs, message boards. Still I don’t realize just how big this is until I hear the noise outside. I go into Max’s room and carefully peek past the curtains. More people. Even more cameras. And above, the noise I heard but couldn’t place. A helicopter, hovering over our house.

  I rush downstairs. Mom and Dad are in Dad’s office. Dr. Ashe is there too. They sit there together, all three of them, just like they did back when they plotted to create me.

  I glare at her. “Dr. Frankenstein, I presume?”

  “Hello, Josh,” she says quietly.

  “Here for visiting rights with your monster?”

  “Cut it out, Josh.” Dad doesn’t even raise his voice at me. “I know everything seems overwhelming right now. And you have every right to feel betrayed. But this isn’t the big issue you think it is.”

  “If this is no big deal, why is a helicopter circling our house?” I yell.

  “Because the media has become a carnival,” Dad shouts back. “Because the world has gone crazy. Because people are just as superstitious and ignorant now as they were back in the Dark Ages. You are not your brother. Of course you’re not. Why not just burn us all at the stake?”

  Dad is an idealist. He probably would have made a good hippie, but he was a generation late.

  He’s right, though. I saw that much on the Internet. Some people even think Max and I must share a soul. I guess they think God just makes one soul for each combination of DNA. If I had been the killer instead of Max, that would have made it even easier for them. They could claim I’d become a killer because I lacked a soul, that they’d created a body and a mind without a soul. Some will probably say it’s the other way around, that I stole Max’s soul and that’s why he’s evil.

  “I’m sorry, Josh,” Dr. Ashe says. Her voice is low. It always is. She sounds old and tired.

  “People think I’ll turn into Max,” I say.

  “They’re wrong. They’re ignorant.” Dr. Ashe looks at my parents. “Could I talk to Josh alone for a minute?”

  My parents hesitate but leave the room. I get that claustrophobic feeling I always get when I’m alone with Dr. Ashe. I try to face her but realize I’m shuffling my feet. “Why do you need to talk to me alone?”

  “I thought you might have some questions. That you’d feel freer to ask them if your parents weren’t here.”

  I should have questions. Just minutes ago I was filled with questions. But somehow I can think of only one that matters. My throat tightens as I force the words through. “Will I be like Max?”

  Dr. Ashe pushes the glasses up her nose. “Do you remember the file cabinet under the window in my office?”

  I picture her office in my mind. I’ve been there often enough. A huge desk, crammed with towering piles of papers and two computer screens. A photograph of her daughter, forever three years old, bald and laughing, between the two screens. A table and two chairs by a window. That’s where I’d sit during tests. File cabinets. There is a tall file cabinet by the door, and a low one under the window. “Yeah. Is my file in there?”

  “That cabinet is your file. Yours and Max’s. Your intelligence tests, personality tests, neurological tests, your brain scans—it’s all in there.” She removes her glasses, rubs her eyes. “I tested Max until he was fourteen. After that, he wouldn’t do it anymore.”

  “And?”

  “You’re very much alike,” she says. “Your IQ profiles, your personality profiles, developmental stages, even your interest fields—very similar. That’s normal for monozygotic twins, which is, essentially, what you are. But similar, Josh, is not identical.”

  “Could you tell? About Max? When he was my age?”

  Dr. Ashe shakes her head. “I found nothing abnormal about Max at fourteen. Not that my tests could detect, that is.”

  “Are there tests that can detect things like that?”

  “There are all sorts of tests. Questionnaires, even brain scans. They may tell you, statistically, whether you have what they call psychopathy or sociopathy or antisocial personality, but none of that matters, Josh. What matters is what you do. What you choose to do. Even if your tests results were identical to Max’s, that wouldn’t mean you’d ever do anything like what Max did. No test will tell you if you’re likely to become a murderer.”

  “You said brain scans. What kind of a brain scan?”

  “Psychopaths may have different brain responses from the rest of us. For example, most of us show a distinct reaction to disturbing photographs or words. You know, violent pictures, or words like ‘blood’ or ‘rape’ or ‘death.’ Psychopaths don’t. For them, these words are like any other words.”

  “So you mean it isn’t their fault? It’s their brain? They can’t help being wired like that?”

  “Not all psychopaths choose to kill. Very few of them do, in fact. Some become very successful in competitive fields where a certain amount of ruthlessness pays off. And to approach it in reverse—many murderers are not psychopathic. It’s not black and white, Josh. Not even close.”

  “Why do you say ‘choose’? How can that be a choice? How can you not know the difference between right and wrong? And how can you know what’s right and what’s wrong, and not care?”

  Dr. Ashe tries to smile. “You’re moving into philosophy now. Not quite my field.”

  “If I take all the tests, the brain scan and everything, won’t it tell me something? Won’t it tell me something about what I am?”

  She hesitates, then slowly shakes her head. “As a scientist, I would love to test you, because you’re unique. But as a friend of your parents . . . as your friend, I hope—”

  “You are not my friend!”

  She continues like I haven’t said anything. “What would be the point? Tests wouldn’t tell you anything you need to know. Only you can tell yourself that.”

  My room is a mirror image of Max’s room. It’s across the hall from his, and my bed, my desk, my closets, everything’s organized the same as his room. It’s the way my parents arranged it when we were little, and although we both have different furniture now, everything is in the same place it always was.

  It’s time for a change.

  I pull my desk across the room and push at my bed until it’s on the other side of the window. My dresser goes into a corner, and I start to yank the drapes down but change my mind when I remember what’s outside. There are identical drapes in Max’s room, only a slightly different color. I’ll get rid of them later.

  It’s stupid, really. Trying to change the small things, the insignificant things, when the real issue is inside me and will never change.

  They can’t look at me and say they know I’ll never become that, do that. They can’t know. Not when they watched Max grow up and become a monster behind their backs. That’s the worst thing, perhaps. It’s impossible to trust anything anymore. Although I look in the mirror and feel the same, I can’t be sure what they see, and I can’t trust what I see either.

  I open the window, breathe in the cold air. This side of the house seems safe from reporters, at least for now. Rachel is still out there. She has no television, no radio, no Internet. Right now she’s practically the only person in the world who doesn’t know I’m a clone of Max.

  I stare at the shed, trying to see a flicker of movement through the tiny windows, but they’re narrow and small. She could probably turn cartwheels in there and I wouldn’t see a thing.

  The helicopter is gone now, but she must have noticed all the commotion. Must be wondering what’s going on.

  I see movement outside. I stare, worrying that it’s a reporter. But it’s only Dad, shuffling from the back door toward the shed.

  I yank th
e window open. “Dad!” I call, and he stops, looks around.

  “Josh?” he asks, finally looking up to my window.

  “What are you doing?” I ask, breathless at the thought of Dad opening that door, of Rachel looking up, expecting me, and black upon black when my brain tries to imagine what comes next. “I’ll clean the litter boxes. I always do, don’t I? I’ll do it tonight.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Dad calls back to me. “I need something to do anyway.” His hand is on the doorknob, and I’m practically hyperventilating. I do want Rachel to be found. I want her to go home. But not like this.

  Dad disappears into the shed. My hands are clenched around the windowsill as I stand still, frozen, waiting for what comes next. But for long minutes there’s nothing. Frantic, I bolt downstairs and rush out into the shed.

  Dad is there. But Rachel isn’t gone. He just hasn’t noticed her. He’s bent over the litter boxes and she’s in the darkened corner, huddled up behind the paper box where the kittens lie. But one tiny squeak from a kitten and he’ll look over there, and he’ll see her.

  “I told you I’d take care of this,” Dad says, straightening up.

  “I’ll do it,” I insist. “It’s my chore.”

  Dad nods. He puts down the shovel and closes the cupboard, and I use the opportunity when his back is turned and push one of the blankets toward Rachel with my foot. She grabs it, drags it over herself. Even if he glances over there now, he probably won’t notice anything out of the ordinary.

  A kitten makes a tiny sound. Dad starts turning around, and I grab the box and push it toward him, making sure he keeps his back to Rachel. “Look. They were born yesterday,” I say. Was it really only yesterday? It feels much longer. “Five of them.”

  “Yesterday?” Dad squats down for a look at the kittens. “You haven’t mentioned them. Does your mom know?”

  “No. She’s got other things on her mind.”

  Dad grabs one of the huge boxes of cat litter, pulls it over, and sits down on it. He takes one of the kittens, holds it in his palms. “Josh . . . I know you said you wanted to be left alone . . . but is there anything you want to talk about now? Anything you want to ask?”