by Rysa Walker
When hostilities finally ended, the United Nations urged member states to take immediate steps to curb the worldwide increase in genetic enhancements. The International Genetic Alterations Accords were signed by all member states of the United Nations in 2218. Some member states acceded to the Accords with significant reservations, but the core principle agreed upon by all was that each child would be allowed a single genetic alteration or “chosen gift.”
An optional protocol, signed by most parties to the treaty, insisted that this single enhancement should be seen as a right, and should therefore be guaranteed by the government. While the United States did not sign the optional protocol, the courts held that alteration was indeed a right, along the same lines as guaranteed access to public education. Those who cannot afford the procedure are covered by a mandatory government subsidy, but in these cases the “chosen gift,” and therefore the child’s eventual career, is subject to economic and national security needs as determined by the government.
∞8∞
MADI
BETHESDA, MARYLAND
NOVEMBER 10, 2136
I place a thin leather-bound volume on top of the stack on the right-hand side of my great-grandfather’s massive desk. The short book Flowers for Algernon is one of his best works, in my opinion. I’ve read it before, of course. I cried the first time, back in my second year of upper school, and even sniffled a bit during the virtual-reality version, which I viewed twice—once from Charlie’s perspective and once from Algernon’s.
But I’ve never held a first edition of the book in my hands, one that is actually signed by the author. I’ve touched plenty of things that belonged to James Coleman, of course. Most of the items in this house are his. This feels different, though. More personal.
I’m so glad it’s not one of the books on the “suspect list.” Those works—forty-seven novels in all, along with several dozen short stories—are stacked on the left side of the desk. A few were the subject of lawsuits, but most are works that the handful of literary critics who have deigned to study Coleman’s oeuvre have declared to be plagiarized or ghostwritten, based on extensive computer analysis.
During the half century he was writing, James Coleman published an astounding 624 books, along with countless short stories. That comes out to roughly one book a month, although he didn’t start publishing until he was in his thirties. The few scholars willing to give him the benefit of the doubt have argued that he may well have been writing long before the publication of his first book, Fer-de-Lance, which launched his popular Nero Wolfe series. But several biographers presented evidence against that theory.
Rubbing my eyes, I force myself to quit procrastinating and get back to the actual task at hand. I made peace with the fact that I am a habitual procrastinator years ago, once I realized that nothing motivates me quite as effectively as a looming deadline. If a paper is due on Tuesday afternoon, I will most likely be dictating the last few words as I scarf down lunch and transmitting the file to my professor as I enter the classroom. The last-minute rush doesn’t appear to affect my grades, so I’ve learned not to fight it. I seem to do my best work with a deadline staring me down like an oncoming train.
Laziness isn’t the problem . . . well, not the entire problem. I usually start well in advance, but I tend to get lost in the weeds, and wind up researching tangents that have little to do with my specific topic. An assignment on mystery novels of the 1930s might lead to an article on Dashiell Hammett, where I might encounter an anecdote about the playwright Lillian Hellman that mentions the fact that Hellman was the executor of Dorothy Parker’s will, and then I find myself curled up on the couch with a volume of Parker’s snarky poems. And even though I will have learned many new things by the end of the day, I’ll be no closer to two thousand words on the early-twentieth-century mystery genre than I was when I started out with my first cup of tea.
This library isn’t helping matters. Before, I only had to contend with digital distractions. Now, however, I’m surrounded by an entire room filled from floor to ceiling with actual physical books. James Coleman was an avid collector—not just of his own books, but of all books. Nora said her grandmother Kate Pierce-Keller started the collection when she was a young woman. Her goal had been to at least partially restore the library that was destroyed when a fire in this very room consumed most of the books that her own grandmother Katherine Shaw had accumulated, although many of them were irreplaceable. Today, the bookshelves sit behind protective fire- and dustproof doors. Climate controls inside each compartment maintain the books at a steady sixty-five degrees and a humidity of 40 percent. There must have been a concern about natural light harming the collection as well, because each chamber is lit from within by a faint orange glow.
And there’s so much to explore on those shelves. In the two months I’ve been here, I’ve spent dozens of hours in this library, idly browsing the titles on the spines. There are digital versions of many of these books in the household computer, but sometimes I pull one of the family treasures out of its little nook just to enjoy the feel of it in my hands and to breathe in the scent—that sweet, slightly musky aroma that always reminds me of vanilla and freshly mowed grass.
I’ve tried to convince myself that combing through this collection is research, and I do occasionally find something relevant. But it’s really just another way to procrastinate. In the past, while I was taking regular classes, there were always papers and exams and other due dates to keep me somewhat on task. Now, however, I have only one class and one real deliverable—my thesis. With only a few intermediary deadlines, it’s been harder to stay motivated. My first major assignment—a paragraph outline of the first three chapters—is due in two weeks, and I’ve barely gotten started.
And now my curiosity has been piqued even more by the discovery that A Brief History of CHRONOS, which I would have cataloged as a James Coleman novel based on its title and blurb, appears to be future history instead.
That makes me wonder a bit about the other volumes, maybe two dozen total, that are all subtitled An Alternate History. Like everyone else, I assumed that these were part of a series. Just some odd, quirky idea that popped into Grandpa James’s head. They were never among his bestselling books, and I’d venture a guess that the only people who bought them were avid collectors who wanted to be able to brag that they owned every book written by James L. Coleman. To be honest, they’re all as dry as stale toast. Some seem to be actual alternate history, while others should really be subtitled An Alternate Future History. I skimmed through a few of them, including one called The Genetics Wars. The book describes two Genetics Wars. The first Genetics War detailed in the book is a real regional conflict that occurred in the 2070s reimagined as a full-scale global war, with a biogenetic weapon that killed over half a billion people worldwide. The Second Genetics War hasn’t happened yet, but apparently it will be the result of ongoing tensions over human genetic alterations.
Military and political history have never been my favorite subfields. I find them bloody and boring. But I’ve taken the basic world-history classes. I might forget the names and dates of major battles, but I have a pretty solid grasp of the basic flow of events. There’s no way I’d have forgotten what was, essentially, a third world war, so I’m inclined to stick with my original assessment and file the entire An Alternate History series under F for fiction.
I did get a bit of reading done last night while Jack was here, but my mind kept wandering. Some of the time it wandered to Jack, who was stretched out at the opposite end of the couch, facing me, scanning a book about the second European Union on his reader. A good chunk of the time, however, it wandered to the medallion in my pocket, or to the various jumps I’d made earlier in the day, or to the puzzle of the time-traveling dog from 2015.
Okay, maybe not an actual time-traveling dog, but, at the very least, a dog in possession of a time-travel device. Neither of us had the slightest idea why anyone would attach the device to a dog, so once we fi
nished dinner, we called Alex. His best guess was that the device emits some sort of field and maybe it was for protection. That idea seemed to intrigue him—so much, in fact, that he signed off the call abruptly to get back to his research.
Which brings my wandering mind full circle to my own research. I grudgingly pick up the first book in the stack next to me. It’s a rather insipid biography of James Coleman written in the early 2060s, when my great-grandfather was still the prolific wonder of the literary world. I’ve skimmed through this particular volume once already and taken a few notes. None of the biographies were authorized. Much of the information is contradictory and based on second- or thirdhand accounts. Coleman was a recluse in his later years, refusing interviews, so biographers had to work with limited sources.
The only living person who knew him well has been angry at him since she was thirteen. Nora Coleman Grace is mentioned—and quoted—frequently in some of these biographies. Nothing she had to say about her father was complimentary.
In fact, if I want to provoke my grandmother into a flurry of profanity, all I have to do is say something nice about the man. For years, I would have sworn she hated him. Nora herself would certainly say that’s the case, even today. But now that I’m older, I think it’s less hatred and more a deep, painful disappointment. My grandfather once told me that Nora actually idolized her father when she was a girl and was delighted to be known as the only child of the great James L. Coleman.
And then came the scandal when she was a teenager. Her parents divorced, and Nora moved with her mother to London. That’s where she met and, eventually, married my grandfather. He tried to convince her to patch things up when they were planning their wedding. But Nora steadfastly refused to invite James Coleman, and had, in fact, been furious when she learned that my grandfather had sent him pictures of the ceremony.
The closest thing to a kind word I’ve heard Nora say about her father is that he was a prolific writer with a talent for marketing. Her assessment mirrors that of the vast majority of literary critics. James Lawrence Coleman wrote in virtually every genre, and his nonfiction works span so many categories that it’s almost impossible to list them all. Prolific doesn’t even scratch the surface.
I’ve read most of his fiction. Some of the works are truly horrible, with florid prose, paper-thin plots, and characters so cliché that I resorted to skimming in order to finish. One of his three historical romance series was actually cringeworthy, with appalling gender and racial stereotypes.
Other works are breathtakingly good. A short story called “The Lottery” is among my favorites—not just of Coleman’s writing, but of all the short stories I’ve read. His mystery series with the detective named Philip Marlowe was also worth a second read, and The Exorcist was chilling.
My goal over the next two years is to find some coherent theme in his work. I’m not the first to attempt this, but unlike the previous researchers, I have the advantage of unfettered access to his notes. There are supposedly diaries here, as well, but I’ve yet to find them. So far, my research has largely consisted of organizing the notes—handwritten notes, believe it or not, and only some of them in binders—which I have gradually been sorting into piles for digitization. I just hope Jarvis has better luck than I’ve had deciphering Coleman’s scrawl.
The discovery that surprised me the most, however, in my early attempts at organization wasn’t written by James Coleman. Nora has often mentioned her own paternal grandmother, Kate Pierce-Keller. They remained close, even after Nora’s estrangement from her father. I knew from family history that Kate was a social and political activist, focusing on environmental causes, among other things. The only slightly negative thing I’ve ever heard Nora say about her Grandma Kate is that she believed her grandfather would have preferred to lead a quiet life, but his wife was driven to fix the various wrongs in the world, almost as if she felt personally responsible.
“She continually butted heads with politicians on the environment, foreign policy, human rights,” Nora told me. “Pretty much everything.”
What Nora hadn’t told me, and apparently hadn’t known, was that her Grandma Kate was also an aspiring writer. There are several unpublished works in the computer files with her name listed as the author. A few even had covers, including one book—Odds Against Tomorrow—with tall buildings rising from a red sea.
The books bearing my great-great-grandmother’s name puzzle me on more than one level. It’s not just that the works were never published. I’ve read Odds Against Tomorrow, and it’s actually very good. But I’m sure that there are many, many manuscripts that never see the light of day, for a variety of reasons. My key issue with those books is that they question the narrative—which continues to prevail despite the not guilty verdict—that Coleman was a plagiarist.
In late 2069, three people came forward claiming that James Coleman had stolen several of the many works published under his name. Two were relatives of deceased writers, and the third was an elderly man named Cale Madewell. He presented a print copy of a manuscript entitled The Bleak Season, which he’d written as a young man. Newspaper accounts of the trial said that the paper was yellowed with age. All three claimed that Coleman had somehow gotten hold of, and taken credit for, unpublished works.
Coleman was judged innocent, although there were rumors that he paid settlements behind the scenes that convinced two of the three plaintiffs not to make their cases as forcefully as they might otherwise have done. The public believed him innocent, but this was clearly due in part to the fact that they wanted him to be. Most readers had at least one book by Coleman among their favorites, and he was legendary for his work ethic. On sunny days, residents would record him walking through the neighborhood, often stopping for a break at Timberlawn Park. A stranger might have simply thought him a middle-aged man on the park bench holding a tablet and talking to himself, but the locals (and those who viewed the recordings they posted) knew that it was Coleman dictating another book.
Literary critics, on the other hand, seized on the plagiarism charges as a credible explanation for all of the things about his work that had never made sense to them—the speed at which he released books, the odd variations in writing style, and his penchant for genre hopping. Nora definitely thought her father was guilty. She referred to him more than once as that fat fraud.
Kate Pierce-Keller, on the other hand, defended her son until the day she died. What struck me as most unusual when I was first going through accounts of the trial, however, was that when she testified, and in the handful of interviews she gave before and after, she deftly evaded any direct questions about Coleman’s guilt or innocence. Instead, she focused on the intrinsic value of the books. It would have been a tragedy, she’d said, if a play like The Memory of Water—one of the challenged works, and one for which Coleman won a literary award—had never found an audience.
I went into this project without a firm opinion on the plagiarism issue, although if I’m honest, I was leaning toward a guilty verdict. The unpublished books with Kate Pierce-Keller on the cover pull me in the other direction, however. If Coleman was swiping other writers’ work, wouldn’t unpublished books by his mother have been prime candidates? She’d probably have given him permission. And if not, if he really was a serial plagiarist, would he have been able to resist adding those four books to the dozens he published after she died?
Maybe. But it bothers me. It feels off, somehow.
What’s bothering me even more, however, is the CHRONOS key in my pocket. Seeing its twin on the collar of that dog back in 2015 means I can’t rule out the possibility that one or more members of my family were time travelers. One of the issues the jury seized upon was the fact that none of the manuscripts in the lawsuit were ever published, even partially, in any format, either in print or online. Two of them even predated easy access to computers. The manuscripts were by otherwise-unknown writers and had sat untouched in desk drawers or safety-deposit boxes. It was much easier for the jury to ac
cept the defense’s argument that these were skillful forgeries than to believe that Coleman had somehow uncovered them.
But what if he was a time traveler?
That possibility puts a very different spin on things. Yesterday’s trip to the beach at Estero taught me that it’s quite possible to change events. Going back to grab my Fleets not only spun off my temporary clone, but also screwed with the memories of everyone there to witness it.
If James Coleman was a time traveler, that could have opened a lot of doors for pilfering ideas or even entire manuscripts from other writers. Find a book that hit a bestseller list or won an award. Go back in time and steal the manuscript. If you get back to your own time and discover the book was never published, you release it yourself.
Possible? Yes. But it’s complicated enough that I still don’t find the explanation plausible.
A soft beep in my ear indicates that I have a call coming in. I asked Jarvis to hold all calls, with one exception, so I know it’s Jack even before his face pops up on my lens.
His smile fades when he sees me. “What’s wrong?”
I laugh, shaking my head. “Nothing. You just caught me in the middle of thinking about my research. I hope you’ve gotten more accomplished than I have today.”
“Not really,” he says. “Lorena keeps buzzing me. She tried contacting you directly but didn’t get an answer. I told her you probably had your virtual assistant screening calls.”
“I did.”
He grins. “And I got through anyway. I’m flattered.”
“You should be. I made one exception. Do you know what she wants?”
“Nope. She was curt and snippy—so, basically, just being Lorena. But she also said something about privacy issues. I think it’s a fairly safe bet that it has to do with the lab sample.”