Origin

by Jessica Khoury

  It’s not like they’d lock me up or something.

  Would they? I shiver.

  As long as I don’t go back into the jungle, I can still think that the possibility is always there. Like hiding the map under my carpet. Even if I left it there, never took it out again, I would still know it was there if I really needed it.

  And you are content with that? Content to die of thirst when a glass of water sits within your grasp?

  I don’t know! I don’t know. I turn and bury my face in Alai’s spots. I’ve never been so confused in my life. It was simpler before. Study your biology, Pia. Eat your dinner, Pia. Go to sleep, Pia. Let Uncle Paolo check your pulse and your saliva and your eyes and ears and nose, Pia.

  Run, Pia.

  I don’t understand this urge I have to run away. It doesn’t make sense. Over the past few weeks, it has been getting stronger. Maybe if I hadn’t found that hole in the fence, the feeling would have passed. Maybe it’s just a phase.

  Maybe it’s not.

  A new feeling takes hold of me now: guilt. If I’m so committed to my purpose here in Little Cam, then why did I enjoy my brief freedom so much? You’re not here to run around the rainforest, I tell myself, filling your head with wild jungle boys. Uncle Paolo is right. I’m not ready yet. I’m too undisciplined, too easily distracted. I need to get myself under control.

  I want the freedom of the jungle. I want to create someone who is like me. My dreams are tangled around each other like plants vying for the best spot in the sun. They strangle each other in their attempt to get the better of my reason. I know which one I truly want—I’ve wanted it all my life. But I’m being overtaken by a new desire, a raging, unpredictable dream that could destroy everything I’ve worked for.

  What do I see in that boy, anyway? I remember the deep loneliness I felt last night at my party and the urge to have someone who understands what it’s like to be eternal. Eio isn’t that person. Can’t ever be that person. He’s just like the rest of them: brief, evanescent. A fire that burns brightly, yes, but a fire that will one day go out.

  I remember Clarence talking about his wife, about how she died in a car accident. I remember the pain in his eyes and the tremble in his hands when he spoke of her. I realize I’m terrified—terrified—of losing someone that way. I imagine Uncle Antonio or Mother suddenly gone, taken from me by a force I will never understand. Death.

  I shudder.

  I may as well shackle my wrist to a bolt of lightning as attach myself to a mortal. The muscles in my shoulders tense, and I hunch over, face in my hands, staring but not seeing.

  But oh…the moment I looked into his blue, blue eyes…it wasn’t like shackling lightning.

  It was like eating it. A bolt of electricity to my stomach.

  I thought I left my wild self in the jungle or at least appeased her appetite for a time. But it seems that feeding her only made her hungrier. Makes me hungrier, I remind myself. The last thing I need is to develop some kind of psychological disorder like schizophrenia. There is only me, one Pia. Wild Pia and Timid Pia are the same. But that doesn’t make me feel any less torn. If anything, it confuses me more.

  Uncle Paolo tells me that as complicated as DNA or the ecosystem or even a single cell can be, in the end, science makes everything simple. A formula can make sense of the most complicated numbers. There is no maybe in science, except in a hypothesis. And you don’t treat hypotheses as truth, you treat them as springboards that launch you into careful analysis, experimentation, and documentation. Only then can you find truth, and once that’s done, then everything is simple again.

  Uncle Paolo says that in the end, everything comes down to science. There is nothing that the scientific method cannot solve. We are limited only by the questions we haven’t yet thought to ask. And he has never been wrong before, so there must be truth in what he says. After all, he helped create me. If there’s anyone I can trust, it’s Uncle Paolo.

  If I go back to the jungle, I’ll be encouraging everything in me that’s most unscientific. Instead of moving toward my goal, I’ll be regressing. I know I’m close to the end. I must be. I’ve been training my entire life. Can I really afford to be distracted now?

  I run my fingers over my arms, imagining Eio—no, not Eio—someone else, another boy, a boy with unbreakable skin like mine. An immortal boy. Mr. Perfect.

  My mind is made up. I’ll tell Uncle Paolo everything: about Eio and his Ai’oa, about the hole in the fence, even about Wild Pia. Then he will draw some charts, maybe some equations, pull out a psychology book, and explain it all scientifically. Everything will be simple again.

  Everything will be just as it was.

  TEN

  Leaving Alai to sleep, I pick up the dish with the passionflower floating in it and go outside without once glancing at the hole in the fence. A row of heliconias grows outside the kitchen, and I toss the flower behind them, where it will decay and turn into earth.

  Then, strong with purpose, I walk through Little Cam looking for Uncle Paolo. He’s always very busy, and no one ever knows where he’ll be at any given time, so I have to search for a while. At last I find him in my lab, wearing his long white coat and latex gloves. Mother is with him, and in her hands is Roosevelt, the immortal rat.

  “Pia!” Uncle Paolo seems surprised—and not happy—to see me. “What do you want? Why are you here?”

  His greeting makes me pause a moment and glance from him to Mother to Roosevelt with uncertainty. “I want to ask you something.”

  “Can it wait? We’re in the middle of an experiment.”

  “With Roosevelt?”

  His left eyebrow arches sharply. “Obviously.”

  “Can I help?” After all, pretty much any experiment run on Roosevelt will eventually be run on me. We have a shared destiny, Roosevelt the rat and I.

  “I don’t think that’s a good…” But he stops and seems to reconsider before saying slowly, “On the other hand, maybe you should. After all, it will be you heading up these tests one day. It’s time you got more involved in the actual process. Books and theory can only take you so far. Get a coat and some gloves.”

  My confession momentarily forgotten, I set down the dish and practically skip to the small metal cabinet that stores a row of crisp white lab coats. I slip one on, pleased that the arms aren’t too long, and pull on a pair of squeaky latex gloves.

  “What’s the experiment?” I ask as I join Uncle Paolo and Mother, who hasn’t stopped frowning at me since I entered the room. I ignore it.

  “Care to explain, Sylvia?” Uncle Paolo extends a hand.

  Mother sniffs and says, “We’re going to give Roosevelt a taste of elysia.”

  A chill runs through me, even though the room has to be over 25 degrees Celsius. As usual, my mind automatically runs the calculations: 25 degrees Celsius times 1.8 plus 32 makes it 77 degrees Fahrenheit. I shake my head, brushing aside the numbers. I want to be completely alert for this.

  “Is that…hasn’t it been done before?” Surely someone’s tested it. But when I stop and think, I can’t recall ever reading of such an experiment in any of the notes on Roosevelt’s medical history. Or in the notes on mine, for that matter.

  “It hasn’t,” Uncle Paolo confirms. “And the test is long past due. We’ve tried every kind of disease and dozens of poisons, including curare and the secretion of poison dart frogs. But never elysia.”

  I feel strangely numb as Uncle Paolo picks up a syringe filled with a clear liquid that must be elysia extract. I don’t ask if it’s pure or diluted; I don’t really want to know. I wish I’d never asked to join them. I wish I was back in Uncle Will’s lab, feeding pencils to Babó.

  Uncle Paolo nods to Mother, and she holds up Roosevelt. The plump rodent is so used to human touch by now, he doesn’t even squirm. He looks about as happy as a rat can be; his eyes are bright and alert, his nose is quivering as it picks up the scents in the room.

  Uncle Paolo hesitates only the briefest of moments befo
re he squirts one drop into Roosevelt’s mouth. The rat’s tiny jaws work rapidly as he tastes the elysia, and I watch with fascination. What must it taste like? If Roosevelt has an opinion on the matter, he doesn’t share it.

  Mother sets the rat down on the same exam table I usually sit on. Roosevelt sniffs her fingers, then the table, then starts trundling around like he usually does in his cage. He seems completely unaffected by the elysia.

  Inside me, several knots of tension begin to relax. I almost feel my muscles giving individual sighs of relief. Truly immortal.

  An uncharacteristic grin bursts onto Uncle Paolo’s face. “Would you look at that! The mortal rats, dozens and dozens of them, all died immediately! Not so much as a squeak. They just went, like a breeze through a window. But look at our Roosevelt! So much life. We’ve done it, Pia, my angel, my darling, my exquisitely perfect girl!” He grabs me by the hands and we spin in a circle.

  I can’t help but laugh with him. I’ve never seen him—or anyone—so excited. I didn’t even know Uncle Paolo had it in him to twirl. His joy is catching; my pace quickens with a thrill of heady exhilaration.

  “We did it! We did it! We did it!” we chant in unison, though of course it was really Dr. Heinrich Falk who did it and not us at all, but we don’t care. “We did it!”

  Finally Uncle Paolo lets go of my hands and stops to catch his breath, still with a smile the size of one of the watermelon slices we’d had at my party. “We did it,” he repeats softly. “Life, Pia. Life without death. Immortality. Thousands of years in human history, thousands of theories, attempts, myths, dreams…but we, we have done it. Cheated death. Pia, I have lied to you. I told you there were no gods. But there are, oh yes, there are. We are gods, Pia, you and I and Roosevelt. Yes, ha! Roosevelt, the rat god! We have created life! And so we have become gods in our own right.” He closes his eyes for a long minute, basking. Then he opens them again and smiles at me. “Now, what was your question for me?”

  I draw a deep breath and remember my conviction. Can’t afford to be distracted. The success of this experiment is just further proof that Little Cam is where I need to be, with all my attention focused on the Immortis project. “Last night, after the party, I went to my room to…just be alone.” No point in getting Dr. Klutz in trouble too. “Anyway, I was sitting and staring outside when I saw a—”

  “Paolo?” Mother’s voice is so soft I almost don’t hear it.

  “Yes, Sylvia, what is it?”

  “Roosevelt.”

  We turn as one to the rat.

  Roosevelt is lying on his side, his tiny body heaving as he gasps for air. His tongue hangs out, startlingly pink against his dark brown fur. His eyes are glassy.

  Uncle Paolo turns white. He rushes to the exam table and scoops the rat into his hands. “No. No, no, no, no, no, no, no.…Roosevelt! Roosevelt!”

  It’s useless. Roosevelt keeps gasping, his breaths coming too quickly, too sharply. Uncle Paolo turns him over, holds him upright, lays him down again, but nothing helps.

  “Stop it, Roosevelt! Stop it, you stupid, stupid rat!”

  “Uncle Paolo!” I run to him and grab his arm. “Stop yelling at him! It’s not his fault!”

  “Get off of me, girl!” He shakes me away and turns back to Roosevelt. I stare at him in shock, bewildered and blindsided by his sudden rage.

  “Come on, buddy,” Uncle Paolo coos to the rat. “Come on, old friend! You and I have been through too much together.…Come back to us, little god-rat. Come back now.…”

  Roosevelt’s breaths start to slow again, but they don’t return to their normal, healthy pace. They keep slowing until they become too slow. Soon his sides are barely moving, and his eyes grow even glassier.

  Uncle Paolo, his eyes bright and wild, whirls on Mother. “Do something!”

  Mother gapes at him and steps back. “I…I…” She trails off, her hands spread helplessly. Uncle Paolo slams his fist onto the counter, making the syringes and vials rattle, and curses low beneath his breath. His eyes catch mine, and I’m chilled by what I see in them. I’ve never seen him this angry, this…dangerous. Not even during Wickham tests. Stunned, I drop my eyes and swallow hard.

  “Well,” he says softly. “Now we know.”

  He sets Roosevelt on the exam table, then wipes his hands on his coat. His face has gone cold and distant. My mother hovers behind him, her concerned eyes on Uncle Paolo and not the rat. All three of us stand very still as Roosevelt weakens before our eyes. My gaze flickers to Uncle Paolo uneasily, wondering if he’ll explode again. It’s extremely unnerving, seeing him so undone. The Paolo Alvez I know is always cool, always calm, always self-controlled.

  “Enough,” Uncle Paolo says at last. “Pia, clean up this mess and ice the body. We’ll examine it later. Sylvia, I’ll need your help with the paperwork.”

  I gently pick up Roosevelt. He doesn’t even have the strength to twitch his whiskers as he usually does. Around his nose and on his paws, numerous hairs have turned white. That’s odd. I didn’t know elysia did that to its victims.

  I wrap him in a small towel, but there’s little more I can do. He shudders once in my hands, then falls still.

  Roosevelt, the immortal rat, is dead.

  For some reason, I expect all of Little Cam to go into an uproar. But it doesn’t.

  No shouting or wailing haunts the compound. No one tears at their hair or clothes in hysterics. After all, he was only a rat.

  I sit in one of the rockers by the goldfish pond, just rocking, my knees pulled up to my chin. Of everyone in Little Cam, I am the quietest right now. But inside, I want to tear my clothes and run screaming through the compound. I want everyone to hear the turmoil raging in my thoughts.

  Roosevelt is dead. Elysia, the very substance that immortalized him, killed him.

  It could kill me.

  Uncle Paolo is locked in his private office. He won’t talk to anyone. At first no one could understand what was going on, and they kept asking what was wrong, what happened, why was Dr. Alvez so upset? But Mother must have talked—it certainly wasn’t me—because now, instead of asking me questions I won’t answer, everyone tiptoes past and tries not to disturb me. I can’t blame them. I wonder if they suspect the hurricane of emotions roaring in my head and if that’s why they’re so careful to avoid me, not wanting to set it loose. They must think I’m completely terrified that what happened to Roosevelt will happen to me. Even I think I ought to be terrified. After all, my whole life I’ve been under the impression that I couldn’t die. And here I am, finding out that I can after all.

  But when I shut my eyes, it’s not Roosevelt dying on the exam table that I see. It’s not the syringe filled with the deadly poison that could take my life far more quickly than it gave it to me. I don’t even see myself writhing and gasping to death, which would make sense after what I witnessed.

  What I see instead is Uncle Paolo and the look in his eyes when he realized that Roosevelt was dying. I hear his triumphant shouts just before it happened. We are gods, Pia. We cheated death.

  But we didn’t. He didn’t. Does he think his entire life’s work is a waste now? Surely there is still much to be proud of. After all, I am still immortal. So long as I never do something as stupid as drink elysia, I’ll still live forever. I’ll create a race of immortals, my own race, and Dr. Falk’s and Uncle Paolo’s and my dream will come true. Once the immortal race is self-sufficient, we can destroy all the elysia, and we will truly be completely invulnerable to death. We’ll live on and on, reproducing and growing our eternal numbers, until the world is full, and then we’ll stop. And live. And live. And live.

  I try to focus on that thought, on the image of my immortal race with me at its head. An immortal boy to love. Immortal friends my own age. But my mind keeps blurring back to Uncle Paolo’s face and the wild desperation in his eyes as he fought to bring Roosevelt back from death’s door.

  Uncle Paolo was supposed to make things clearer, not muddle them up even worse. My e
arlier convictions crumble in light of this new fear, a fear I’ve never felt before. Fear of the man who created me, named me, raised me.…

  I decide I will go back into the jungle.

  And I’ll go again. And again. And again.

  I’ll go into the rainforest until the memory of Uncle Paolo’s eyes in that moment of Roosevelt’s death is gone, washed away by the cleansing rain of the jungle.

  An hour after night falls, I am on the other side of the fence.

  ELEVEN

  Eio steps out from behind a kapok, startling me. I’ve never met anyone who could sneak up on me like that, and it makes me nervous.

  “You came,” he says, looking me up and down and giving Alai a long stare, which the jaguar returns coolly. “And no dress this time.”

  I’m wearing a black tank and camouflage cargo pants. Over my arm is a dark raincoat, just in case. There are only a few clouds in the sky, but it takes only minutes for that to change.

  “Of course I did. I made a promise.” I don’t mention that only a few hours ago I fully intended to break that promise.

  “I thought you were afraid.”

  “I’m not.”

  He sizes me up dubiously, and I do the same to him. He’s wearing exactly what he wore last night. Maybe those are the only clothes he has. The only difference is that today he wears face paint: three red lines on his forehead, two white dots on each cheek, and a blue line down his chin.

  “What does your face paint mean?”

  He touches a finger to the three red lines. “The mark of the Jaguar claw.” His finger moves to the white dots. “The spots of the Jaguar.” Finally he points at his chin. “The Sighting.”

  “Sighting?”

  His fingers brush the streaks on his face, and he nods at Alai. “It is good luck to see a jaguar.”

  I stare at Alai and wonder what everyone in Little Cam would say if I painted my face too. Going native, Pia?

  “I will show you Ai’oa,” Eio announces, “if you are not too afraid, little scientist.”