 
The Book of Adam

Autobiography of the First Human Clone

Book One of The Books of Adam

A Novel by Robert M. Hopper

http://www.robhopper.com

GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES + Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, Pinocchio, George MacDonald & Hans Christian Andersen for 99 Cents

...

BEST OF CLASSIC SCI-FI FOR 99 CENTS - The War of the Worlds, A Princess of Mars, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Atlantis, Edgar Allan Poe, The Island of Dr. Moreau, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Time Machine & More

...

BEST OF CLASSIC ADVENTURE FOR 99 CENTS \- Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Huckleberry Finn, The Odyssey, King Arthur, Sinbad, Beowulf, Gulliver's Travels, Rudyard Kipling & More

...

BEST OF CLASSIC HORROR FOR 99 CENTS – Frankenstein, Dracula, In a Glass Darkly, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Turn of the Screw, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Louisa May Alcott, Edgar Allan Poe, and More

...

BEST OF CLASSIC CHRISTIAN LITERATURE FOR 99 CENTS - Paradise Lost, Dante, Mark Twain, Pilgrim's Progress, Dr. Faustus, Ben-Hur, The Scarlet Letter, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, George MacDonald, A Christmas Carol & More

...

THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST - Classic Christmas Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Saki, O. Henry, and more!

...

HEADLESS ED AND THE GHOSTS OF HALLOWEENS PAST - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Frankenstein, Dracula, and More!

Copyright© 2010 by Doublethumb Press at Smashwords

Smashwords Edition

License Notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

All rights reserved

Cover design by David Lowe and Rob Hopper

Coffin image by Michel Bigras courtesy of BigStockPhoto

Baby image by Beatrice Killam courtesy of BigStockPhoto

Lily photo by Christoph Riddle courtesy of BigStockPhoto

Redwoods image by Rob Hopper

Printed Version:

ISBN 1450560520

EAN-13 9781450560528

* Disclaimer *

* All characters appearing in this work are fictitious.

* Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental or the result of portraying a real person's fictional genetic twin being born at some point in the fictional future.

* All fictional genetic twins of real persons are in no way meant to depict what their real-life genetic twin may do or say, nor has any character in this book been endorsed by any real person.

* No real persons referenced in this book, living or dead, are implied to have endorsed this book, its concept, or support of human cloning or cryonics.

To Grandpa

Table of Contents

Prologue

Part I: The Book of Sarah

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Part II: The Book of Lily

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Part III: The Book of Evelyn

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 44

Chapter 45

Chapter 46

Chapter 47

Chapter 48

Chapter 49

Chapter 50

Chapter 51

Chapter 52

Chapter 53

Chapter 54

Chapter 55

Chapter 56

Chapter 57

Chapter 58

Chapter 59

Chapter 60

Chapter 61

Part IV: The Book of Adam

Chapter 62

Chapter 63

Chapter 64

Chapter 65

Chapter 66

Chapter 67

Chapter 68

Chapter 69

Chapter 70

Chapter 71

Chapter 72

Epilogue

Table of Contents

A baby is an inestimable blessing and bother.

– Mark Twain

PROLOGUE

Nine months after I died, my daughter gave birth to me.

It was more than fifty years after my birth when I first saw the recording of our umbilical cord being severed.

"May I hold him?"

I caught my breath. I hadn't heard my mother's voice in so many years. Her gentle intonations conjured forgotten memories of an old form of happiness, before shadows of loss and sadness began to dampen even the best times.

I walked toward my mom's holographic image, my fingertips trying to touch the laser plasma that comprised her face. She looked so much younger than the images in my mind. Her blond hair untouched by gray, her smooth cheeks and chin unblemished by worry, her blue-gray eyes still looking like those of a child delighting in an unexpected present.

Her name was Sarah. She was the daughter of the man I was cloned from. And she had just become the mother of her father's clone with my birth. Or "Adam's Rebirth," as the home video was labeled. A video discovered in one of my Grandma Lily's storage boxes.

Lily is in the holotape as well, hovering nearby as the nurse begins wiping off my small body. "Is Adam okay?"

I tense when I hear my great-grandfather's voice from behind. Lyle Gardener, the man who recorded the event. The man who made human cloning possible. I turn to see the doctor and Lyle reviewing the medical scans. "Everything's in order," Lyle says. "Fingers, toes, organs, and brain."

"But is it really Adam? I mean, his soul?" Lily asks. "Does he remember me?"

The nurse finishes my initial cleaning. Lily opens her arms to receive me, but frowns as the nurse instead walks to Sarah's side. She eases my newborn body into my mother's arms. My tiny head wobbles so that my face looks up at hers. Naturally, on that night of March 11, 2034, I did not yet realize that my mother within whose womb I'd spent the previous nine months was the newborn daughter I had once cradled in my own arms.

"You have a beautiful soul," my mom says, smiling before kissing me on my forehead and nose. "I love you, Michael," she whispers, calling me by my middle name as she cradles me to her, not bothering to wipe away her tears, breathing in the scent of her newborn who had moments before been a part of her own body.

I notice my own tears as my fingertips again attempt to somehow touch the 52-year-old images around me. Did I have a soul? If so, part of it must have come from my mother. Sarah's hologram closes her eyes as she gently rocks me back and forth, humming a familiar lullaby. She seems to have become oblivious to everything else. Oblivious to her mother and grandfather, to the doctor and nurses. Even to the throngs of people who had gathered outside the hospital in spite of a thunderstorm, the din of which I can just hear in the background.

A couple of the bystanders were awed; awed at me, awed at science, awed at the uncertain future my birth represented. The other thousand-plus were protesting "The Blasphemous Birth," the baby created not by God, but by humans who believed they were gods. They saw the thunderstorm as a sign from an angry deity proclaiming the end of the world. As did Gabrielle Burns, the drenched woman standing quietly to the side, her calm face upturned to the hospital room window – the woman who would eventually murder my mother.

Even if I had known all this, my reaction would have been the same: the newborn image of me began to cry. A sure "sign" that the first human clone was a healthy baby boy, soul or not.

*

A half-century later, and the end of the world has yet to arrive. What did come to an end was my early fame. The widespread furor over my existence occurred while I was still the only clone, too young to realize what was going on, or to comfort my mother who bore the brunt of it. Cloned births became commonplace while I was a young child, removing me from the spotlight and affording me a mostly private life, if still not a peaceful one.

So why call renewed attention to myself by writing an autobiography? In part, I'd like to honor the memories of those who have touched me. I'd also like to set straight, or in many cases confirm, the rumors attached to my life. But it's much more than that. Since my earliest memories, I've been told that I would be seen as the primary example of human cloning, and that humanity's acceptance or rejection of human cloning might depend on how I was perceived. By writing this autobiography I hope to give others some insight as to what it was like to be the first human clone. I hope to help fellow clones deal with similar issues, and help convince non-clones that we are all human beings. Whether we are conceived naturally by a mother and father or, as in my case, manufactured in a laboratory from the cells of dead ancestors, we are neither more nor less perfect than others.

Most importantly, I hope to convince myself of this.

My dead ancestor's name was Adam Silva Elwell, after my birth referred to as Adam Elwell-1, and he was my grandpa. Or, as far as some people are concerned, he was I. Which is why, unlike most autobiographies, the story of my life begins some sixty years before I was born.

Table of Contents

Part I

The Book of Sarah

I used to almost wish I hadn't any ancestors, they were so much trouble to me.

– Mark Twain

1

I was born too early.

That was how it began.

I received my clone-father's journal on my eighteenth birthday. He handwrote his memoir late in life in the hope that his next birth – my birth – would correct the mistake of his initial one. I read it for the first time while sitting next to his grave, the setting of my recurrent nightmares since I was very young.

Adam-1 was born at the University of California, San Francisco Medical Center on the sunny morning of June 12, 1974 to Michael and Sarah Elwell. Born too early. And his childhood stolen from him too early.

He was only seven years old when his father opened the door to his mother's hospital room. Adam walked in alone, forcing his legs forward. His chin was trembling before he reached his mother's bed. He felt like he should say something but didn't know what, as if he'd forgotten how to talk to his mother. As if the person he loved most in the world was a stranger.

She looked like a stranger. Her bald head. Her emaciated body. Sarah made a weak smile, and then lightly petted his head. Neither said a word. There was only her shallow breathing and the sound of nurses passing outside the door.

The silence wasn't broken until his mother began reciting familiar lines from their favorite book, The Hobbit, as Bilbo Baggins joins the quest, leaving his hobbit hole and setting off on his adventure.

Adam hid his eyes against her shoulder. He wanted to be near her, but he didn't want to see her like this.

"I know, sweetie. I know," she whispered. She kissed his head.

"Please don't die," he begged.

Sarah sighed. "I think I have to go, honey. I have to go on this adventure. But we'll meet again in Aslan's Country, okay?"

Adam didn't answer. That was just another story they'd read. Made-up stories like the kind his father wrote. Places like Aslan's Country and the Heaven mentioned in their ancient family Bible could be equally imaginary.

He held her tighter. She kissed him again.

"I love you, sweetie."

"I love you too, Mommy," he cried, but choked at the end.

She made a similar sound, as if mocking him. He felt her shudder and then relax. He pulled away, looking into her blue-gray eyes. They stared blankly through him, her chapped lips only slightly parted.

He prodded her timidly on the shoulder to wake her. The movement made her jaw drop down, her mouth falling silently open.

Adam jumped and must have screamed something. His father opened the door and a nurse rushed in behind him. Michael clutched him to his body and gently held his dead wife's hand.

"We'll get that," the nurse said to Michael, glancing at the floor.

Adam looked down and saw that he stood in a puddle of his own urine.

His Aunt Mary pulled him out into the hallway and wiped his shoes. Michael came out of the room several minutes later, his face pale, eyes red and puffy. He embraced his son for a long time. Then he straightened up and slowly, silently led them out of the hospital.

***

Fifty years after his mother's death, Adam himself was dying on a hospital bed.

"Where's Sarah?" he asked, words he'd repeated for a half hour as the poison paralyzing his extremities moved slowly towards his heart.

"She's on her way," Lily answered again, more wearily by then. But Adam died minutes before his mother's namesake, his daughter Sarah, rushed into the room.

His last journal entry, written the night before his death, appears to be an attempt to reassure himself: "It's with great fear I end my life, but the hope outweighs it. With this cup I'll escape the Gardeners, and have another mother named Sarah. My hemlock is not the cup of death. It is the cup of new life. The life I should have had."

Yet I often wonder what was going through his mind as oblivion approached. Did he second-guess himself, wondering whether his dream of living forever had just slipped through his fingers of his own volition, fearing that he would never exist again?

Regardless, less than an hour after he arrived at the hospital, the man who had once sworn to himself that he'd never die was dead by his own hand.

Sarah reached the hospital shortly afterwards, Lyle Gardener a bit later. While Lyle talked with the doctors in Adam's room, Sarah tried to comfort her mother in a private office. She told Lily how fortunate it was that Adam saved her by knocking the glass of poisoned wine from her hand, but Lily was despondent.

"I wish I'd drunk it too," she mumbled, a shoulder strap of her evening gown dangling around her elbow.

Sarah grabbed her arm. "Mom! How could you say that?"

"I can't imagine life without him. There's nothing for me now."

Sarah was quiet for a while. The last statement stung. She thought of her father's clone with whom she'd soon be implanted, and wondered whether mentioning it would help her mother. On the other hand, she'd long since determined that her father's clone would not be made to feel like he was the original Adam, but instead be raised to believe he was his own individual free to live any life he chose. It wouldn't be right to tell her mother that Adam would soon be alive again.

"Adam would have wanted you to enjoy your life after him," Sarah said as she righted her mom's strap. "That's why he knocked your glass away. If you don't go on, then Dad's saving you was in vain."

Lily shook her head, then leaned slowly into her daughter's arms and cried quietly on Sarah's shoulder.

"Besides," Sarah continued as she found a more comfortable position in which to embrace her mother, "I'm going to need your help raising my son."

Lily stopped her sobbing. After a minute she raised her head from Sarah's shoulder and looked her daughter in the eye, a glimmer of a smile on the widow's lips.

"You're right. We have to be strong for Adam's rebirth. That's what he wanted."

Sarah smiled at her mother's brightening, but worried over the choice of words. Adam's rebirth.

Within a couple weeks of Adam's death, a fetus was growing within the womb of his 33-year-old daughter. In that way my daughter would become my mother and, just like the old vaudeville song, I would become "my own grandpaw."

Table of Contents

2

As he'd been the CEO of the widely known U.S. Cloning Systems, the largest subsidiary of Lyle Gardener's Ingeneuity, Adam's murder received some press. But it was nothing compared to the commotion over Adam's rebirth when it was announced six months later. Sarah's pregnancy was made public January 2, 2034 in a news conference that began with a low buzz (reporters figured USCS had made another boring, minor medical breakthrough) and quickly erupted into a firestorm that blazed among satellites, televisions, cell phones, computer screens, and every radio tower on the planet.

It wasn't the first time such an announcement had been made. In 2004 the Raelians claimed to have cloned dozens of children, and by 2034 several more supposedly successful human cloning attempts had been proclaimed – none of which had been scientifically verified. But the world knew this announcement was different. U.S. Cloning Systems was a giant in its field, the organization most capable of pulling off such an achievement.

Two months of chaos followed. Politicians convened from recess early to argue and spout off sound bites. There were calls for more intensive government oversight of all companies dabbling in the science of cloning. Religious leaders invited the largest protests, some demanding that the company be shut down, the executives jailed, the mother jailed, and the baby taken away so that it would never know it was a clone.

Then came the next big revelation. One of the obstetricians let slip that my mother was a virgin.

Post-Mary virgin births had been documented going back to at least 1994 thanks to artificial insemination, and none of those births had resulted in a devil so far as anyone could prove. But for some, the new development made it clearer than ever that the Antichrist was on his way, mocking the original Virgin Birth. Others assumed my mom was a lesbian, stoking the homophobic fear that this was the beginning of a social revolution in which homosexuals would breed through cloning and propagate an unnatural family structure that would decimate life as we know it.

My mother attracted more attention than the baby she was carrying. Her doctors and USCS were largely successful in keeping the press and public physically away from her, but she did answer what questions she could via USCS spokespeople.

As for whether she was gay, she stated that her virginity was due to a fear of sexual intimacy stemming from a childhood incident, but that she had no problem with people believing she was gay. She simply found their bigotry sad and cruel, and she was grateful that she didn't share it.

In response to the question of her fetus being the Antichrist, she said that it was only a clone created with her father's DNA, which had been fused into her egg, mingling it with traces of her mitochondrial DNA. This made it even less clone-like than an identical twin, and unlikely to carry any genetic material from Satan.

Asked if she felt the endeavor bordered on incest, she answered that in her opinion it would only have been incest if her egg hadn't been artificially inseminated.

And finally, as to why she had broken the law against human cloning, she replied that, although she personally was not interested in being cloned, she was of a mind that if she wasn't hurting someone physically or financially, then no true crime had been committed. Thus she didn't condone the anti-cloning law, which she felt was another example of government over-involvement in the lives of its constituents. More importantly, it was what her father wanted, and if she hadn't been willing to deliver his clone, he would have used an artificial womb. And unlike her critics, she wanted his clone to start with as normal a beginning as possible.

Within weeks, criminal charges were filed against USCS and Sarah Elwell for violating anti-cloning legislation. There were even attempts to file lawsuits against me, claiming that Adam Elwell-1 had broken the law and that, as Adam Elwell's clone, I should be held accountable as the same person.

Cooler heads prevailed. The courts ruled that I was a separate person and therefore not legally responsible for the sins of my clone-father. Although, it turns out, that was merely the tip of the legal iceberg. What rights and assets carried over? Was it now possible to take it with you? Questions over inheritance claims and more would require decades to iron out and, indeed, occasionally new cloning issues continue to crop up and befuddle my colleagues and I on the Genetics and Cloning Board.

Regarding USCS, they made it out of the courts relatively unscathed. As has often been the case, the well-connected corporate executives were never brought to justice. Lyle Gardener, a good friend of the administration and congressional power brokers, escaped all culpability by arguing he knew nothing about the secret experiments until he was told of the pregnancy. The company paid a small fine and was opened up to federal oversight, but the oversight proved to be lax to the point of insignificance.

The only fervor that didn't mostly subside was that of some religious critics. One group tried to get a court to order my termination, claiming that to not do so would violate the anti-cloning laws. But the courts shied away from forced abortion. A couple other self-proclaimed pro-life supporters suggested I be executed immediately after birth, suggesting that I was not a child of God, did not have a soul, and therefore lacked humanity's right to life.

Several people were eager to end my mother's life as well, and USCS hired bodyguards for her. They proved helpful. There were two known attempts on her life before I was born.

The murder attempts and threats were played up by the media, eventually garnering sympathy from the majority of the population who began to see the anti-cloners as the extremists. Thanks to those few fanatics, the paradigm shift that USCS had hoped for was underway ahead of schedule. Which I guess is why a couple of those demonstrators out there on the dark and stormy night of my birth were there to welcome me into the world.

Table of Contents

3

My clone-father had asked that I be named Adam, and my mother followed his wishes. Instead of Adam Silva Elwell, I was christened Adam Michael Elwell-2 – the "Michael" for Adam-1's father and the "-2" to indicate I was the second person to use the DNA. But while everyone else called me Adam or Adam-2, Mom always called me Michael or Mikey.

I don't remember the tempestuous night of my birth captured on the holovideo found in my Grandma Lily's belongings. The night that protestors cursed my existence while the rest of the world watched uneasily as news footage of the first human clone was broadcast, finally giving the monstrosity a face. But a face that looked less like Frankenstein's monster and more like the Gerber baby.

Nor do I remember a time when I didn't know that I was the clone of the man I considered my grandfather. Grandmother Lily and Great-Grandfather Lyle talked about him all the time, often comparing me to him physically or in little habits I had like not wanting to get my hands dirty at the beach. Grandmother Lily visited almost every day, forcing herself between my toys and me, or clutching me to her body. Great-Grandfather Lyle never touched me except to perch me on his knee every now and then. He always seemed to be examining me, and I felt self-conscious whenever he was around. Mom rescued me as often as she could from both of them. I counted on her for that. More than I realized.

Each birthday there were letters and holocards from my late grandfather congratulating me on another year, telling me that he knew I was making him proud and that he hoped I was being a good boy for Sarah. As I grew older the handwritten letters, videos and holovideos would give me far more information about him and glimpses into his life, but during my early childhood they gave me only the feeling that Grandpa Adam was the nice man whose holographic ghost I would sit in the lap of while he wished me a happy birthday, and whose genes (whatever those were) had made my life possible, and that this gave us a connection that was very special in some peculiar way.

I never had any reason to think there was anything special about myself in the eyes of the rest of the world. Mom didn't watch the news much while I was awake. I did go to the doctors for tests and checkups every few days, but I assumed this was normal. The street I grew up on was a small, secluded court in an old section of La Jolla, and the few neighbors we met often stared at me but rarely said anything, and exchanged nothing but pleasantries with my mother. And by the time I was four years old, dozens of more clones were born and the media only cared about me when my birthday rolled around. Thus, when I began to form lasting memories, I was not recognized in public. People recognized my mother first and then realized who I must be.

My mom never did go to jail. A jury sentenced her to one year's probation for her part in the illegal cloning. She left her job in child counseling to spend time with her new baby. Her inheritance from my clone-father assured her a lifetime of financial security, so she began working from home, volunteering for the United Nation's UNICEF program, but mostly just playing with me, teaching me, and saving me from Lily and Lyle.

*

Even as my mother's trial was going on, others had begun challenging the constitutionality of the anti-cloning legislation. A few atheists claimed that a cloning ban deprived them of the only sort of afterlife they could hope to have, and was therefore an infringement on their basic rights of life, liberty, and happiness – not to mention their freedom of religion, as their "religion" required them to be able to clone in order to reach their afterlife. A few new religious sects, including Christian offshoots, followed the same reasoning, arguing that cloning was the resurrection or reincarnation that their religions had been expecting, and they hadn't realized till now that God or the spirit world would use human methods to resurrect or reincarnate the dead.

Those were intriguing cases that were initially defeated in 2034 and 2035. Several requests from death row inmates to be cloned were quickly thrown out as well. But in early 2036 the landmark cloning case began winding its way up through the courts.

Shannon Smith had captured the hearts of Christians, Jews, and Muslims in 2034, during the midst of the terrible Mideast War. More than three million were already dead, including almost 200,000 civilian Americans murdered in a string of terrorist attacks. The escalation to nuclear war seemed as inevitable as it must have felt during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Ten-year-old Shannon wrote to Iran's ayatollah, asking him if he wanted to kill all Christians and Jews, and saying she hoped everybody would stop fighting and live with each other in peace.

She was invited to Tehran for an audience with the ayatollah and then Jerusalem with the Israeli prime minister. The media and the people were fascinated by the sweet, adorable girl, and the video of her playing together with Iranian and Jewish children helped galvanize the public of all warring countries to reject vengeance and come back from the brink, giving political cover to leaders to end the war.

On August 25, 2035, an obsessive fan kidnapped Shannon, drove her up into the mountains east of Salt Lake, and strangled her. The New York Times called her the last casualty of the Mideast War.

Her parents claimed that they had the right to have another child using Shannon's DNA. Not allowing Shannon to be cloned would perpetuate the murderer's deed, and her parents deserved access to full reparation. In extenuating circumstances, the mother's health problems left her body with no viable eggs, and the parents claimed that Shannon had expressed an interest in eventually being cloned when she saw Adam-2 in the news.

In a shocking 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court agreed with the parents. They told Congress that, as it stood, the anti-cloning law was an unconstitutional restriction on reproductive rights, recommending that cloning be allowed in cases where the original person was dead or in the case of couples who couldn't reproduce naturally. A defiant Congress tried to pass an anti-cloning constitutional amendment, but the Senate failed to get the two-thirds majority by three votes. Lyle Gardener had powerful friends.

USCS worked their cloning magic on Shannon Smith and more than twenty others before Shannon-2 was born in November 2037. That year and the next saw a rash of new cloned births, all performed through USCS whose competitors were still behind in the race to commercialize the process. For most people, I was old news.

The Smiths lived in Salt Lake City, but they flew down to La Jolla for the cloning procedure and returned a few months after Shannon-2's birth to meet our family. I had recently turned four, and their visit was one of my strongest memories from that period of my life. They told me that she was only the second cloned child. I still didn't completely understand what being a clone meant or how it made us special from everyone else, but it was the first clue that in some way I was considered a unique person in the world.

The adults holotaped the historic meeting, took a lot of pictures and chatted, and I marveled at this tiny visitor who grasped her tiny fingers around mine as I bent over her carriage. We were destined to meet a couple more times at special functions as we grew up, and eventually became long-distance friends as adults. She also would join me as one of the members of the Genetics and Cloning Board.

"What was grandpa like?" I asked the morning after the Smiths left.

My mother smiled as she continued buttoning up my shirt, getting me ready for church. "Well, like all people, he had his good and his bad. He was really depressed when his mommy died. He was only seven, just three years older than you are now. Then your Great-Grandpa Michael died too, and your grandpa was really sad and lonely."

I put my hand on my mom's shoulder as I stepped into my shoes. "But you still liked him, right?"

"Oh, yes," she answered, smiling as she tied my shoes. "I loved him. Whenever I was sad, he'd always try to make me happy. He loved me a lot." Finished tying my shoes, she playfully held both my feet down so I couldn't move. "He told me I reminded him of how much fun life was when he was your age. And that's one reason why I want you to be whoever you want to be, and not just try to be who your grandpa was. I think he may have wanted you to live the life he started before his mommy and daddy died. So if you grow up to be whatever you want, you'll end up making you both happy. Okay?"

I nodded, though I don't remember fully understanding.

That night I dreamt my first dream about my c-father. I was ensnared in the clutches of an ugly, cackling witch who had chased me through the rooms of Disneyland's Haunted Mansion. Her fingernails grew into long, curling claws and closed around me like a cage.

"I've got you now, Adam! And you'll be with me here forever," she said, and cackled again.

"He isn't yours to keep," my clone-father said from behind her.

She turned on him and hissed like a cat. "He's mine! I've caught him!"

"Take me instead!" he responded, another Disneyland fragment from their staging of Beauty and the Beast.

She grinned hungrily, released me and snatched Adam-1 in her tangled claws.

"Run away," he ordered.

"Daddy!" I called, reaching out to him. "I won't leave you!"

He frowned at me. "This is my home. Not yours."

And so I awoke with mixed feelings, thankful he'd saved me, disappointed he had sent me away. It was the first time I remember wanting a dad.

The next time I opened my birthday letters from my Grandpa or sat in his holographic lap, I did it with new eagerness. I sensed that, even though he'd never met me, he cared for me and wanted to protect me.

Shortly thereafter I had my first brush with death.

Table of Contents

4

There hadn't been an attempt on my mother's life since her pregnancy, and with us out of the limelight there seemed little reason to believe we were still in danger. But no one realized that Gabrielle Burns was still obsessed with us, stalking us, as she had the night of my birth.

She had dreamed of being a mother since she was old enough to play house, but Gabrielle suffered a miscarriage eight months into her first pregnancy. Complications left her barren. A few years later her husband divorced her, promptly married his mistress, and they had a child together.

Gabrielle became involved in a fundamentalist church where she formed the Cassandra Society, a group named after her unborn daughter, that lobbied and railed against the evils of abortion, extra-marital sex, birth control, artificial wombs and any sort of human intervention in the miracle of life.

She claimed that when she heard the first human clone was going to be born, her namesake, the Archangel Gabriel, told her that a great mission had been granted her. Cloning would doom mankind if she didn't stop it. Humans would seek eternal life through their own means, forever trapping their souls in new bodies, never allowing those souls to reach God. Therefore, God was sending her to save humanity from itself.

Her first step was to send several urgent letters to Sarah warning her of the evil the clone would visit upon humanity. As March approached and it became clear that the clone would be born despite her warnings, Gabrielle changed tactics. First was a death threat. When that went unheeded, one of Gabrielle's followers in her Cassandra Society posed as a nurse and tried to get into Sarah's room with a silver knife. Nobody tied the attempt to Gabrielle until later.

That first attempt was foiled on March 5. Six days later, as news footage revealed, Gabrielle stood silently outside the hospital in the pouring rain as the devil baby was delivered. She did not join her colleagues and like-minded protestors who were screaming that doom was being born in the soulless child, for she knew it was a waste of breath. Gabriel had come to her that night in a flash of lightning and peal of thunder, bearing a message that the evil would be unleashed, and it would be protected by demons for four years, four months, and four days.

At the end of the time of his protection, the hand of God would scatter the demons, and Gabrielle was to strike down the Whore of Babylon and her unholy spawn. Her reward would be to become the Bride of Christ, and she would give birth to the child she had long desired – to the triumphant Christ Child himself.

The long-awaited four years, four months, and four days did not come soon enough for Gabrielle. A couple months before the appointed day, my mother and I met her in a park. While sitting on a bench feeding the birds on a Sunday afternoon, we were approached by a lanky, redheaded woman wearing a white dress. Her narrow face was mostly nondescript but for her large, dark eyes. The stranger asked if she could join us. Mom courteously encouraged her, and she sat next to me.

"You two look so familiar," she said after watching the birds peck at our bread for a while.

Mom nodded. "I'm Sarah, and this is Adam."

"Oh yes, of course!" she said with such false surprise that Mom wordlessly asked me to get off the bench and stand in front of her. "My name is Gabrielle. I'm about to be a mother too, you know. Isn't it a wonderful thing, being a mother?"

"Yes it is," Sarah replied, grabbing me from behind and tickling me. "Especially when you've got such a great kid!"

The woman frowned but then managed a faint smile. "Well, you're all dressed up, aren't you? Did you just come from church?"

"Uh-huh," Mom responded. "We go to a Unitarian church. The minister there invited us while most were condemning us."

"How nice for you. The Unitarians are very tolerant, aren't they."

It wasn't a question, and Mom didn't answer. Her eye had caught one of the stranger's hands, which was clasped around something she couldn't make out. But it had her attention.

"So many people are not that tolerant," Gabrielle continued. "You never know what they're going to do. They can take such a small thing as cloning and make it sound like it's the end of the world."

"Yes," Mom said, "it's people like that who'll probably cause the end of the world. But I don't think it's the end yet."

"No, not yet," Gabrielle agreed. "But it will be a glorious day when it arrives and we can all be wed to God."

Mom gave her a polite nod.

"But then you already are wed to God, aren't you? The virgin mother?"

The question was so ridiculous that Mom didn't initially notice the thorn of jealousy embedded in the woman's voice. "Well, Adam can be a little angel at times," she said, "but calling him the Son of God may be a stretch."

"The son of whom, then?" Gabrielle asked, reaching out to awkwardly pet my head. I moved away from her, and Mom guided me to her other side.

"I guess that's a question, isn't it?" Mom admitted. "The son of his clone-father? The son of his clone-father's parents? My son? Nobody's son? But I don't worry too much about his scientific classification – just so long as he lives a good, long, happy life. Probably the same as all mothers want."

"Indeed," the woman said. "That's what all us mothers want." She clenched her fist tighter in her lap, and we both saw a trickle of blood roll down her hand.

Mom stood up. "I'm sorry, but we have to go."

"I'm sure we'll meet again," Gabrielle said, staying put and studying us over her blood-splattered lap.

Her eyes locked with Mom's for a moment, and then Mom pulled me away.

Table of Contents

5

On July 15, 2038, I woke to the soft, clear morning of the fourth year, fourth month, and fourth day after my birth.

My mother took me to the beach at La Jolla Shores, a short walk from our house. Gabrielle followed us there.

We set out our blanket on the sand, stripped down to our swimsuits, sprayed on our Detox Sunblox and walked down to the water. As one of the last local people-safe beaches, and with only a narrow strip of sand to its name, La Jolla Shores was packed towel-to-towel that morning. But it didn't matter to Gabrielle if there were witnesses to the assassination. She didn't pretend to know what God had planned for her after she fulfilled her mission. Perhaps she was to be despised as a child murderer, or perhaps she was to be protected and even revered by people everywhere as God opened their eyes to the prophecy she was fulfilling, saving them all. It didn't matter. The most important thing was that she would have performed God's will, and would be rewarded with her own child by God himself.

As we made our way down to the water, God's brilliant plan sparkled ever clearer. Christ had washed away the sins of the world through baptism. God needed the entire Pacific Ocean to wash away our sin. Gabrielle followed us to the water's edge and waited.

Mom and I stopped when the water reached my waist. Holding hands, we awaited the next wave and jumped as it struck us, laughing as it swept us a little toward the beach, then preparing to do it again. The return water sucked the wet sand from under my feet, tickling, and looping some seaweed around my ankle. I tried to shake it free before the next wave came.

As we waited holding hands for the oncoming wave, my mother inexplicably turned toward the beach. A tall woman slightly older than herself and wearing a long white skirt and blouse was calmly walking through the water, only ten feet away, dark eyes fixed on us with an expression of jubilant peace. Walking into the water fully clothed. Coming directly toward us. Then mom recognized her – the disturbed woman from the park. Shouting something about "the finger of God." The sun reflected off an object in her hand. A silver knife.

All that happened in a couple seconds, but by then Gabrielle was upon us.

The wave hit us, I jumped into it, and suddenly it was pulling me a few feet towards the shore. My mom had let go of my hands. She never let go of my hands! I floundered and spat out some seawater, my hands sunk into the muddy bottom. Then I heard my mother scream for help. I stood up in time to see her struggling with the woman in white.

As they fell over into the water, a couple of men splashed out to our rescue. One of them disarmed the woman and pinned her down while the other helped my mother to the shore. A lifeguard was sprinting over with a first aid kit. There was so much blood. The woman was screaming something about the "Whore of Babylon." I ran clumsily out of the water to my mother's side.

"Don't worry, son. She's gonna be fine," said one of the men who had rescued us.

I was too scared and confused to take it all in, but my mom gave me a comforting smile as they tied a tourniquet on her upper arm. Soon an ambulance was on the scene, and they helped us into it.

"Don't let them get away!" screamed the woman. "Can't you see them?"

As the paramedics gave me a seat next to my mother's gurney, a patrol jeep stopped near the shore and collected Gabrielle Burns. Her eyes found me through the ambulance window. I turned from her and watched as the paramedics worked on my mom.

"I'm okay," she mouthed to me, and smiled.

I tried to nod, but couldn't return the smile. It did reassure me. I believed she'd be okay. But not because of me. I had just stood there in the water as she had fought with the woman. She could have died. And I'd just stood there.

Table of Contents

6

The hearing that followed revealed the details of Gabrielle's life and her obsession with my mother and me, but found her mentally incompetent to stand trial. She was sent to the psychiatric ward at Standley Memorial Hospital in La Jolla.

My mom was far more nervous from then on, especially as the year progressed. Gabrielle Burns wasn't the only fanatic out to rid the world of clones. Possibly emboldened by Gabrielle's attack, seventeen clones would be murdered by the end of 2038 alone. A member of the Cassandra Society sent mail bombs to four families with clone babies, killing eleven people, and then martyred herself when the police came to arrest her. Allen Fisher killed eight clones in widely publicized ritual murders that included torture and cannibalism. We rarely left the house by ourselves for a long time to come.

Reverend Al Lewis, who lived nearby, began picking us up for church, contending that we were less likely to be attacked if we were in the company of a minister. But his wife and their son Jack, who was a few months older than me, began driving to church separately. I realized much later that Reverend Lewis was still afraid we would be attacked, and he didn't want to place his family in harm's way. He knew he was risking his life helping us get to church.

I wish I'd known so that I could have thanked him.

During the weeks that followed the attack, Mom and I would often stay after the sermon and chat with Reverend Lewis in his private office. They were therapy sessions, but that was never mentioned, and I thought we were doing it because he had some office work to do before driving us back to our house. He shuffled papers around as he talked, like he was casually chatting with me as he got some filing done.

"Do you still feel scared about what happened on the beach?" he asked one Sunday.

"Sometimes," I said. I didn't want to talk about it.

"Do you know why Mrs. Burns did it?"

"She said it was because she was a Christian," I answered, focusing on the Bible on his desk.

Reverend Lewis nodded. "That is confusing, isn't it? What's important to understand is, just because a lot of people call themselves 'Christians,' they don't all believe the same things or treat people the same way. No sir."

"Why not?"

"Well, because everyone's different, and we all have different ways of looking at the world and other people, and we've all got different ways of interpreting what we read in the Bible and what we feel in our hearts. One person can read the Bible and believe that God wants you to seek out possible sinners and stone them to death, while another person can read the very same Bible and believe that God doesn't want you to judge others, and that He wants you to love and respect and forgive everyone and treat each other like equals, even your enemies. You can believe in a god of love and charity, or a god of hate, greed, and fear, or something in the middle. In the end, the kind of god you believe in probably reveals much more about your own nature than it reveals about the true nature of God."

I just stared blankly. He tried to clarify.

"You see, some people, like Gabrielle Burns and those who support her or who hate you because of the way you were born, they read the Bible and think that you're evil, and that God hates you for it, and that they should hate you as well. Although some of them might call that hate 'love' so it sounds like they still love their neighbor. You know, just because someone says they're doing something out of love doesn't mean they're not really doing it out of hate."

I didn't know that, but before I could say so, he went on.

"Those Christians look for differences and for sins, and believe it's their duty to root out such things and label them as evil. But other Christians think that's not what God wants. When they read the Bible, they see a loving God who wants people to be good and kind to everyone, and who wants people not to judge one another but to treat everyone like equal neighbors worthy of respect. They think it's a sin to be cruel to another person when that person isn't doing anything cruel to them. Jesus says so again and again. He reached out to all the people that his society scorned – the outcasts like the poor, the sick, the tax collectors, the Samaritans, the Roman soldiers, and the prosti—," he interrupted himself before continuing. "He loved all his neighbors, not just the popular ones. So how would have Jesus treated clones?"

He paused for my answer, but I didn't know it.

"He would have loved you," he answered for me, smiling, and making me feel surprisingly comforted. "And if Jesus was wrong, if God wants us to be hateful and cruel to one another, then why would any truly loving person even want to go to that God's heaven? I surely wouldn't want to go to some heaven ruled by a mean God who wanted me to treat clones like they were bad people. No sir."

He conversed the same way he sermonized, a bit long-winded.

"Do you think being a clone is a sin?" My voice shook as I spoke, fearful of both the nature of his answer and its potential length.

Reverend Lewis stopped his filing. "I can't believe being born is ever a sin. No sir," he said. "It's what you do with your life that matters to God, so long as God is truly good."

A sigh of relief on both counts. Then I pressed my luck. "Do you think cloning is a sin?"

He hesitated with that one, probably not wanting to hurt me but not wanting to lie either. "First of all," he began, and I cringed, "you always have to remember that just because someone says something is a sin doesn't make it so. No sir. That said, I personally believe it's wrong, but from a Christian perspective there's nothing specifically about it in the Bible and, of course, only God really knows for sure. Regardless, I can't believe a loving God would punish us for doing it since he didn't leave any clear instructions on the issue, it promotes life rather than death, it doesn't hurt anyone, and he made it physically possible for it to happen."

I was a little hurt that he thought my being cloned was wrong. But I felt better knowing that God and everyone who called themselves Christians weren't out to kill me. No sir.

Table of Contents

7

Besides limiting our freedom of movement and creating tension whenever we went out, the beach attack had the additional unfortunate effect of prompting Grandma Lily to come over more often. If such a thing was possible, she seemed even more paranoid about my safety than Mom.

"He'll be completely home schooled, of course," Lily said to Mom one day as she hugged me too tightly in her lap. My Clone Ranger coloring book lay on our old oak dining table, mere inches out of reach, but it may as well have been in another galaxy.

I saw my mom roll her eyes as she crushed some garlic cloves in the kitchen. Lily always had a lot of free advice to offer, and I'm sure it got on Mom's nerves. Especially since they had significantly different ideas as to how I should be raised.

"He'll go through virtual classes for the standard subjects," Mom said, "and use the Hill Creek Junior Academy for group activities."

"Group activities? But we can do group activities right here!" Lily responded.

"No we can't, Mom. We can't play baseball here or start a band or form a chorus. At the Junior Academy he'll be able to play sports and get involved in the arts and socialize with other kids at lunch and do group science projects and stuff."

"He doesn't need all that crap!"

I think she was so livid she forgot I was on her lap. Grandma didn't usually talk like that.

"Yes he does, and he's going to get it," Mom said calmly but firmly. She had a lot of patience with Lily, but I don't know where she got it.

Lily pouted. "But we don't know what kind of kids go there. Kids can be very cruel, you know."

"I know," Mom said, nodding heavily. "But there are plenty of cruel adults as well. Unfortunately, Mikey will have to learn to deal with cruelty."

Lily put her face right in front of my nose. The smell of her heavy makeup suffocated me. "You don't want to go to some nasty old school, do you Adam?"

It's the question almost every kid dreams about getting asked, but most kids don't have a Grandma Lily in their face. I didn't really know what the school thing was all about, but I knew it could get me off her lap and in reach of my coloring book.

"I want to go to school," I stated as firmly as had Mom.

Lily looked shocked, but Mom grinned. "Well then, it's settled."

To my relief, the stratagem worked. Lily dumped me from her lap. "We'll see what father says," she said, checking her bejeweled wristwatch while avoiding eye contact with both of us, spoken with a coldness I rarely heard from anyone but Lyle.

Mom stiffened. Like me, she was always uneasy around Lyle. It would be a long time before I knew why. Before I read about the night of her molestation. And how Lyle threatened to kill her and her father if she ever said anything.

Did that memory go through my mom's mind as she considered her response? Did that memory go through her mind every day of her life?

"Grandfather has no say in the matter."

"How dare you?" Lily said. "You're just trying to take Adam away from me like you always did!"

"What do you mean?"

"You know exactly what I mean. You stole Adam from me as a child, and now you're doing it all over again."

"You think I stole Daddy from you?"

"You know you did, but you won't get away with it this time, Sarah."

Mom was silent a long time. I stopped coloring and looked at her. Saw her eyes glistening like they did when she was sad, trying not to let herself cry. It would be another fourteen years before I fully understood the tension between my mother and grandmother. My c-father's journal made his preference clear:

The little bit of home life I afford myself is more tolerable than I expected, as I'm able to spend most of the time doting on Sarah. She's another type of immortality – the type that nature has been providing for hundreds of millions of years. She reminds me of my mother. There's an actress's vibrancy about her, and her face has the soft, rounded, girl-next-door features instead of Lily's chiseled beauty.

In Sarah's eyes I see my mother, and even my own self, before my parents' deaths. She loves out of an inner light that radiates from all people who have a true passion for life and the world around them.

I don't share that passion for the world, but I guess I've always been drawn to those who possess it. I often take her alone to places where I can see that passion at its greatest, to the Zoo and Wild Animal Park – places I wanted to go to as a child. And I'll never forget the trip to Scotland to honor the tenth anniversary of the death of Dolly, the first cloned sheep. Watching Sarah's eyes brighten with discovery as we shared the sights and novelties of Scotland and Edinburgh and Dolly. She'd get so excited by the world that she'd laugh out loud in delight.

That was something I'd still see my mom doing more than twenty years later.

Lily was never close to her daughter. She was understandably jealous of Sarah for the true affection Adam showered upon the girl. The Dolly trip was one that especially rankled Lily, as the tenth anniversary of Dolly's death was also Valentine's Day. Adam not only forgot to give her a gift – he only remembered to wish her a Happy Valentine's Day that night after giving Sarah a card. Fortunately for him, it took little for Adam to re-charm his wife. He made love to her, and all was forgiven. Or so it had seemed to him.

I put my crayon down, slipped off my chair, and walked into the kitchen. Mom saw me, smiled a little, and stopped crushing the garlic to pick me up. I felt her head lean against mine.

"I don't know what you're talking about, Mom," she said, "and I'm sorry if you think I stole Daddy. But Michael is not Daddy, and no matter what you think, he is going to school, and I don't want to hear another word about it from you or Grandfather. Is that understood?"

And apparently it was. As far as I knew, Lily never said another word about it to Mom.

Grandma Lily did, however, have a few more words to say to me. It was just a couple weeks after the school argument. Mom had gone out for something and left me alone with Lily. We were sitting next to each other at the dining table doing some preschool math games. Suddenly she grabbed both my hands in hers and leaned over for greater secrecy, despite the fact that we were alone.

"Tell me, Adam. Do you have any memories from before?"

I had absolutely no idea what she was talking about. I wondered when Mom was coming back, and prayed it would be soon.

"Before what?"

"From before you were born again. When we were together."

I shook my head. When was mom coming back?

"You don't remember the lilies?" she asked, shaking my hands in hers.

I paused, trying to think of something to put her mind at ease and get out of this highly uncomfortable interrogation.

"Did I give you lilies?"

Such a bright and ecstatic smile I'm not sure I'd ever seen. Lily was a young-looking granny anyway. As I would discover years later by looking at photos, she went to surgical lengths to look younger soon after my birth. But at that moment she looked like a schoolgirl. Like the young girl who had first fallen in love with my c-father. I guess I'd said what she wanted to hear. Or, more accurately, she'd heard what she wanted me to say.

"You do remember!"

I shrugged. "Maybe?"

It was, indeed, a question. I didn't think I remembered. I was just trying to guess where she was going with the whole thing. And although I could picture in my head some things from Adam-1's life, I was pretty sure the pictures had been formed by the photos and the stories I'd heard growing up. I knew that Adam-1's parents had sung The Rainbow Connection to him as a lullaby. When Mom sang it for me, I'd imagine my c-father at about my age in a different bed being sung to by my great-grandparents Michael and Sarah Elwell, pictures of whom hung not far from the dining table that had belonged to them. And there was the photo Mom loved of Sarah, Michael, and Adam-1 performing a home skit from The Chronicles of Narnia, and I could imagine myself performing in it with Great-Grandma Sarah dressed in a white terrycloth robe and sunbonnet as the White Witch, Great-Grandpa Michael acting as her minion dwarf (wearing a San Francisco Giants cap for irony), and myself instead of Adam-1 as Edmund clutching our family's own version of Turkish Delight – a package of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups. So were they memories, or mere images I'd pasted together from photos I'd seen and stories I'd heard? Maybe I'll never know for sure.

"How wonderful!" Lily continued. "Well don't worry. Everything's going to be the same again soon."

"The same?" I echoed.

"Yes, the same – just like before. We'll be together again. I'm coming, Adam!"

She's coming where?

When was mom coming back!

*

Late that night the phone rang. Later than it ever rings. Mom began crying and saying things I couldn't make out. There were footsteps, a light went on in the kitchen, and she came into my room, surprised to find me awake.

"What's wrong?" I asked, raising myself up in bed.

"Sweetie," she said, sitting next to me and giving me a hug, "I'm afraid your Grandma Lily has died."

"So what's wrong?" I thought to myself.

There was no mystery in the cause of Lily's death. She holotaped her suicide for posterity. Or more specifically, for her clone. It was a gunshot wound to the temple as the song Delta Dawn played in endless loop.

Her suicide tape made it clear she wanted to be cloned. Great-Grandpa Lyle oversaw that himself, and a little more than nine months after her death, Lily-2 was removed from an artificial womb.

We all went down to the USCS lab to see the newborn. While Mom went to the restroom, Lyle stiffly held Lily away from his body and up close to me. I touched her nose and little fingers. I felt sure this would be an improvement over the last Lily.

Lyle introduced us.

"Lily-2, this is Adam-2." He made her little hand go up and down as if waving. "Adam-2, this is Lily-2."

I waved my hand playfully.

"She's going to be your wife."

I stopped waving.

Table of Contents

8

By 2041, when I advanced to my second grade studies, human cloning was well on its way to the mainstream. More than 200,000 people had been cloned in America alone, with Europe catching up. U.S. Cloning Systems technology had a hand in almost all of it, leasing their technology to partner companies. About one third of the clones were for couples who couldn't reproduce naturally, including those in the gay community and those with other biological barriers. Most of the rest were for people who had died, usually upon request made while they'd been alive, although there were exceptions.

There were also plenty of problems, and even more critics. The infant mortality rate was seven times higher than for non-clones, and significant birth defects that debilitated nearly four percent of the surviving clones were enough for many to cry for a renewed ban. The rates were declining a little each year, but not nearly fast enough.

Then there were the brewing legal battles. State and federal lawmakers struggled to adapt to this new reality, and one of the biggest legal issues revolved around probate. In 2039, a very wealthy man left his entire fortune to his unborn clone, entirely cutting out his children and grandchildren. The children sued. They also refused to make arrangements for their father's cloning, making his selfishness all the more foolish as you could only be cloned if an immediate family member or pre-secured legal guardian agreed to raise your clone. Why would the people you snubbed in life be willing to take on the tremendous time and expense of raising your clone – especially when you didn't even leave them the money to care for you?

He never was cloned, and eventually the children were able to divvy up his estate among themselves. But the case led Congress to pass federal guidelines for cloners. To be cloned after your death, you needed to have someone agree to raise you and leave him or her at least $320,000 to take care of your expenses, a figure tied to cost-of-living increases. If you didn't have the funds, your clone's guardian could agree to waive that requirement. If you had more than the minimum amount, you were allowed to save one-third of the excess for your clone. The rest had to be gifted out.

There was also the issue of discrimination against clones. A few churches initially discouraged clones and their parents from attending, and a handful of private schools rejected clones in 2041 when the first clones beside myself began enrolling. Scattered restaurants gained notoriety by putting up "No Clones" signs, but that kind of mean-spirited bigotry was so reminiscent of the civil rights movement of the 1960s that it tended to work against itself. Polls showed that by 2041 a slim majority of the population supported the current cloning laws, and more than eighty percent considered clones to be as human as non-clones. Most people by then had met a clone child, and their repulsion to the idea was ebbing.

Of course, those were adult polls. My classmates at Hill Creek Junior Academy were another population altogether.

Being a loner as a child was nothing new to my bloodline. A year after his mother's death, and days after his father's suicide, my c-father was driven by his Uncle Charles and Aunt Mary down to San Diego from the home he'd known and loved in San Francisco. His new guardians were aloof. Their children had long since left for college, and Charles and Mary weren't interested in doing all the kid stuff again. They provided Adam with food, clothing, and transportation, but they seemed to dislike him almost as much as he detested them.

Uncle Charles was a biologist whose idea of a good story was the latest cytology textbook and who hadn't been to a play since his parents had to remove their complaining child from a production of Peter Pan. He did not believe in fairies. Except for going to Jack Murphy Stadium to watch the Padres win the 1984 pennant against the Cubs, Adam-1 couldn't remember ever having a good time with his new guardians. His uncle gave him a high-five during the heat of the game. It might have been the first and only time they unnecessarily touched each other.

My clone-father trudged through elementary school and entered junior high mostly friendless. Not because he was a biological oddity like myself, but because his mind had become fixated on one goal, and nothing else was relevant or worth noting. At school he'd spend recess with his Sony Walkman, listening to Kansas tapes over the headphones, endlessly replaying Dust in the Wind and Carry On My Wayward Son. At home he'd shut his bedroom door and read books like Augustine's City of God, Plato's Republic, the Vedas, Kabbalistic texts, and The Tibetan Book of the Dead. The loss of his parents and his subsequent obsession with death, his fear of it, drowned out all else.

When I started school, my fear of death was more abstract. But my fear of strangers was tangible, and was not at all alleviated by my classmates who saw me as a freak. I had a couple friends in kindergarten and first grade who would respond to me if I talked to them, but generally I was avoided once the other kids heard I was the first human clone. Which was always by lunch on the first day of school.

Mom chose the school because it was nearby and, partially, because it was where Reverend Lewis's son was enrolled. Despite the fact that Jack Lewis had never been more than polite to me at church, I'm sure mom hoped he would help me fit in with the other kids. I don't think she realized how uncomfortable Jack felt around me.

Jack knew better than we did what a dangerous position we'd put his family in. Reverend Lewis never mentioned the death threats they'd received, let alone that one of those calls had been answered by Jack when he was four years old. Jack was well aware, from his youngest days, that I was a danger. At the time I didn't understand this, but in retrospect I don't know how he could have felt otherwise.

Meanwhile, closer to home, my former grandma and purportedly future wife Lily-2 had grown into a toddler who seemed especially drawn to playing with me. She was cute, and I liked her in spite of myself, but I always felt a nagging nervousness about becoming too chummy. Lyle had privately made it clear that she would be my bride, but I wasn't quite sure I wanted to settle down just yet. I mean, you never know whom you might meet in second grade.

Her name was Evelyn Green.

Table of Contents

9

We met on the first day of second grade in Mrs. Slater's class where we went after lunch recess – a class geared to English-related subjects like reading, writing, and the dramatic arts. It was my favorite class at Hill Creek. Perhaps a lot of that sentiment was because I ended up sitting at the same group table as Evelyn.

It all started that first day when, after introducing herself and having us say our names out loud, Mrs. Slater allowed us to talk among each other at our round tables, six students to a table. I'd never had a class with Evelyn, though I'd seen her at lunch during first grade and was excited that she was sitting at my table. But I was disappointed to see at our table Jimmy Preston, a bully who had tormented me for two years. And he wasn't wasting any time.

"Hey, we've got the first human clone here!"

Everyone at our table, and most of the kids at the tables nearby, turned to stare at me. I purposely avoided looking at Evelyn. I'd been preparing to say something nice to her, and already I was blown out of the water. I focused my attention on a fly crawling along the edge of the table. I was ashamed at being goggled at like an exhibit and not having the courage or cleverness to shoot Jimmy down.

"Isn't that weird being a clone?" he prodded, as he always did when introducing me to someone new.

I felt tears welling up and prayed that something would prevent them from spilling over. I considered jumping up and running out of the classroom. Better that than let them see me cry like a baby over such a ridiculous question.

And then I heard her voice. The words I least expected to hear.

"But I like weird."

I stole a quick glance up from the fly to see if she was teasing or being sincere. She seemed to be waiting for my sad blue eyes to meet her deep brown ones that curled up when she smiled, which she was now doing. I went back to the fly, but the tears were gone, replaced by tummy-dwelling butterflies.

"Why?" Jimmy asked. That wasn't the response he'd been expecting, and he was at a loss for words. Except that one.

"Being weird takes special people," she said. "Anyone can be normal."

"Then you're weird, too."

"I hope so," she responded, and smiled at me again when I glanced up. I smiled back.

After that she was my hero, and as the weeks went by I could scarcely take my eyes off her. Her maturity and intelligence dwarfed mine, despite me being nine days her senior – an age difference for which she'd find ample opportunities to razz me. And she was beautiful to boot. My heart fluttered whenever stray strands of her long, dark hair ran across her creamy olive complexion, which was dotted with a handful of freckles that seemed randomly but perfectly placed.

I had no experience liking a girl who liked me back, but I began following what I understood to be standard courtship rituals. I teased her incessantly and pestered her at lunch nearly every day, sometimes chasing her around the playground until she would suddenly turn and challenge me. She claimed she had a green belt in karate, and I always backed down, but with a grin. Sometimes she'd grin back.

Her friends thought I was obnoxious. And I guess I sort of was.

"Why do you like him?" her best friend Christie asked once as I was walking away following the most recent karate threat. I slowed down, straining my ear closest to her, but couldn't make out her answer. Still, I was glad her friends thought she liked me.

Our relationship wasn't all about me pestering her. We talked both seriously and kindly in the classroom. I think I annoyed her a bit with the pestering at lunch, but she liked me anyway, especially when others were mean to me. Oddballs like me were like friendship beacons to people like Evelyn, people who know normal is boring.

*

Near the end of October our relationship reached a new level. We had to write a story for Halloween. Drawing on inspiration from my past, I began spewing out words as quickly as I could write them. Stuff about haunted castles, witches with long fingernails, a silver knife, and a phantom father who saves our entire class from a bubbly end in an enormous black cauldron. Only one page was required, but I churned out three pages and found myself frothing at the mouth for more.

Mrs. Slater was impressed. So much so, that she passed around copies of my story to all my classmates – an act that had several of my peers glancing at me in disgust, but also earned me a couple of compliments from people who had never spoken to me.

But my biggest fear was Evelyn's reaction. Never imagining that anyone but Mrs. Slater would read it, I had named some roles after people in the class. Jimmy Preston was the guy who stupidly got us caught by the witch, Jack Lewis slipped away to find help, and Evelyn joined me and my c-father's hologram in laying a trap for the witch.

The next day I overheard Jimmy making fun of me louder than usual, I saw Jack flash me a quick smile as he passed by me after school, and Evelyn walked up to me on the playground, her friends in tow. I held my breath.

She was working on a lollipop, but took it out to say, "I liked your story."

"Really?" I asked. Still not breathing.

She nodded. And after a few moments, when it was clear that I could think of nothing else to say, she smiled, popped her lollipop back in her mouth, gave a little laugh, and led her friends to the tetherball poles.

Someone had just flirted with me. No, not just someone. Evelyn Green.

I didn't have a ready response when it happened, but only a couple days went by before an opportunity arose. The last Friday of every month was movie day, and Mrs. Slater walked the class to a small, dark classroom at the end of the hallway that was used for that purpose. It was the Friday before Halloween, and Mrs. Slater had us watch Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird. My mom had raised me on the movie, but it was Evelyn's first time seeing it. I managed to sit on the floor next to her.

Already familiar with each moment of the film, I spent most of it taking in Evelyn's reactions from the side of my vision. I knew if I paid too much attention to the movie, I'd end up embarrassing myself by tearing up. Which is what Evelyn did when Scout saved her father and Tom Robinson by talking friendly-like with would-be lyncher Mr. Cunningham. I handed her a tissue from my pocket, and she gratefully took it and dabbed her eyes. She used it again when Tom Robinson died.

Despite my best efforts, I still got caught up in Scout and Jem's longest journey together on Halloween night. I had to wipe my eyes when Jem tried but failed to save his sister from the bigoted Mr. Ewell (a name spelled far too similarly to my own, but an opportunity for Mom to explain that there was really nothing in a name). Evelyn handed the tissue back to me. Was she watching my reactions too? I reverently took it from her and touched my own eyes, marveling that our tears were now joined. I returned the increasingly damp Kleenex to her for the final scene.

Before we got up, Mrs. Slater explained our assignment – we were to write our thoughts on what Scout's father Atticus meant when he said that you can't really know a person until you try to see things from their perspective.

She was careful not to focus too long on me while she said it, but several kids did. It was the one time I didn't mind being the center of attention.

"Thank you, Adam," Evelyn said, holding out the tear-filled tissue with a broad smile. I carefully took it from her and put it back in my pocket. She made a face like that was kind of gross, but kept smiling anyway. I was glad Mom made sure I always had a Kleenex on me.

*

"Did ya have fun today?" Mom asked as I climbed into her Honda.

I nodded. "We watched To Kill a Mockingbird."

"I know," she said, and then laughed at my stunned expression.

"How did you know that?"

"Moms know everything," she answered mysteriously.

"Yeah, okay," I said in disbelief, wondering if it was true. "Do you also know where we're going?" I asked as we passed the street we took home.

"To buy some Halloween candy so we don't get egged."

"Reese's?"

Mom didn't answer, and then I saw why. We were passing Standley Memorial where Gabrielle Burns was locked up. Mom was always quiet when we drove by it. I noticed the extra lines that now sprouted from the side of her forty-one-year-old eyes, and the gray hairs intermixed with blond. She looked older and tired, but I still thought she was beautiful. I didn't want her to be scared by the hospital. I wanted to say something that would reassure her, as she always did for me. But I couldn't think of anything.

"Are you going to be in the talent show?" she asked when the hospital was out of sight.

I was impressed by her omniscience and relieved she was talking again. "You know about that, too?"

She nodded wisely. "Of course."

"Well, no way. I'm not getting up on stage."

"You know what else I know?" she asked.

"Yeah, everything."

Mom laughed, ruffled my hair. "That's right. And I also know that Evelyn Green is going to be in the talent show."

My mouth hung open. How did she know I liked Evelyn? Moms were spooky.

"If you did something," she continued, "then maybe you guys could rehearse together."

Moms were spooky, but they were smart too. The following Monday I got up the nerve to ask Evelyn if she would rehearse with me. She said yes.

Table of Contents

10

Evelyn was a musical theatre fan and had selected a song written by Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty who had penned such musicals as Ragtime, Seussical, and Once On This Island. The latter included a vibrant song called "Waiting for Life to Begin" sung by Ti Moune, a young girl who as a baby was miraculously saved during a flood. She believed the island gods saved her for a great reason, and the song is her prayer for that remarkable life to commence. The capricious gods hear her prayer, and decide to answer it by forcing her to choose between her love for a man and her love for life.

For myself, I practiced singing the 1940s comedy tune thought to be based on a Mark Twain anecdote – Dwight Latham and Moe Jaffe's I'm My Own Grandpaw. What else?

Like my c-father, but unlike Evelyn, I couldn't carry a tune to save my life. Any of my lives. Fortunately this song would allow me to basically talk my way through it. All the teachers seemed amused and surprised that I was willing to go up on stage and sing a song that everyone would associate with my oddly branched family tree. Truth was, I just wanted to do it to give me more time with Evelyn, and I hoped she'd like me even more.

I was fine until our final dress rehearsal. Walking out alone onto that stage for the first time, reality dawned that I was actually going to have to do this. I told myself that somehow I'd get through it. But the next night, as all the students, parents, and faculty began filing into the school auditorium, I felt like I was going to throw up. What the hell had I gotten myself into?

Evelyn was slated to go on a couple acts before me. She took the microphone from its stand with a confident smile and began belting out her song with the voice and charm she'd displayed in rehearsals. Her pleading to the gods for an extraordinary life was so real. Most of the kids had never heard the song before, but she landed the biggest ovation of the day. I was completely mesmerized, and somehow even more infatuated than before. She took her bow, and Mrs. Slater motioned for me to get ready.

I panicked. I couldn't think of the lyrics to the song. Heck, I couldn't think of the title to the song. Something about a grandpa...

I shook my head, tears beginning to fill my eyes. Mrs. Slater came over.

"Is everything okay?" she asked.

"I can't remember the song!" I cried, sure that this would be the most embarrassing moment of my life. Not only would I not impress Evelyn, I'd disgrace myself to the entire school.

"Well, that's okay. We'll skip you for now and if you remember later, just come let me know."

With a snap of her fingers, she ended the biggest crisis of my life since the Gabrielle Burns incident. I didn't know what I'd say to Mom, especially since she had even invited Great-Grandpa Lyle to come. But my far greater fear was how embarrassed I'd be when Evelyn found out.

As Mrs. Slater walked away, Evelyn was standing there. She had overheard my admission about forgetting the lyrics. I felt myself blush as she sat down beside me on the backstage steps.

"Hey, don't worry about it," she said. "I really liked it in rehearsals."

I lit up in relief and adoration. "Well, you were amazing!"

She shook her head humbly but smiled and thanked me. I was sure at that moment we were destined to be married. It was no surprise that my future wife won the talent contest for the second grade class.

*

Evelyn's smile was my reprieve. Lyle's scowl was my punishment.

"I'm sorry," I said as I approached them.

"Oh, it's okay, honey," Mom said as she gave me a hug. "I was the one who talked you into the whole thing."

"What happened?" Lyle asked.

"I'm sorry," I repeated. "I forgot the words."

"Forgot the words? I thought you were smart. Maybe you just don't like admitting that you are your own grandpa. Was that it?"

"Huh?" I didn't know where that had come from. But he was angry, and I shrank against Mom's leg.

"Grandpa, you're being—" Mom started as Lyle continued.

"Part of being a proper husband for Lily will mean being a good provider. How are you going to be the next CEO of our company if you can't even stand up on a stage?"

I glanced over at two-year-old Lily-2 who was looking at me sideways as she sucked on the edge of an auditorium chair.

"That's enough," Sarah said. She fixed Lyle with an angry stare as she took me by the hand. "Let's go, Michael. Don't worry about Great-Grandpa Lyle."

"Stop babying him, Sarah. We need to raise a man for Lily, not some sissy."

Mom led me out of the auditorium and to her car, letting me in before getting in herself and slamming the door. She started the car, drove a few feet, then lurched to a stop.

"I'm sorry about your great-grandfather," she said as calmly as possible. "He's a troubled man. The best thing to do with him is ignore his advice."

"Okay," I said, trying to smile for her.

She looked me in the eye and nodded, and managed to smile herself. "Good. Now have you remembered the lyrics yet?"

I thought about it. "I think so."

"Can you sing it for me?" she whispered conspiratorially.

I laughed at her jesting secrecy, and because she was happy again. I sang the song over and over, loudly and badly, until we got home.

Table of Contents

11

A week later, as we milled around the door to Mrs. Slater's room a couple minutes before class started, Evelyn was standing a few feet away talking to Dawn. Which meant I was talking to no one.

"How's it goin', Adam?" Jimmy Preston asked from behind me.

It startled me. "Fine," I said, wondering what was coming next. Despite my hatred of him, I had such a strong desire to be accepted that I hoped he was truly being friendly.

"That's cool," he said. "Did ya finish the book report on Where the Wild Things Are?"

"Uh-huh."

"Me too. Did you flip up any skirts at lunch?"

I laughed nervously. "Whaddya mean?"

"Oh, didn't you know that today is Friday Flip-up Day?"

I shook my head.

"Sure! It means that if a girl wore a dress or skirt to school, we're supposed to flip it up. All the girls know about it."

"Really?"

"Yeah. If you don't, it means you don't like them."

It sounded both logical and official. And I did want Evelyn to know I liked her. I turned around to her, reached out and flipped up the hem of her skirt. I caught a glimpse of the laced edging of yellow panties against her pale legs. She spun around as she forced her skirt down with her fists.

"Why did you do that?" she demanded.

I immediately realized that I'd done something horribly wrong. "It's Friday..." I began clumsily. Jimmy and his friends were howling behind me.

I felt far more humiliated than I had during my lapse at the talent show. Evelyn shot me a look of anger I hoped to never see again. She quickly tracked down Mrs. Slater, who then pulled me aside, explained why it was wrong and had me apologize to Evelyn.

"I'm very sorry," I mumbled, staring down at my shoes. "I didn't realize how bad that was and I'll never do it again."

"It's okay," Evelyn said.

There was an uncomfortable pause. Was I supposed to say something else? I noticed that my shoelaces were loose and in need of retying.

"Adam?" Evelyn called, getting me to look up at her. "It's okay," she said with a sincere nod – a sincerity that made me feel closer to her and, yet, gave me a sense that I had no business getting closer to her. She was way out of my league.

And so for what seemed like forever, I stopped talking to her. We were no longer sitting in the same group during class. I didn't chase her around or try to flirt. I did steal a glance every now and then, but to my dismay I never caught her glancing back. For all I knew, she had forgotten I existed, and I didn't do anything to indicate that I missed her.

*

It was a cold November in La Jolla that year. Meaning that the mornings dipped down to fifty degrees. Mom had told me to wear long sleeves to school, but I still felt cold. And more alone than before I'd met Evelyn. During lunch recess, while everyone else played basketball, four-square, tag, and other games together, I stood by myself on the grass about ten yards from the basketball courts, focused on my handheld Clone Ranger game, trying to pretend that I'd rather be doing that than playing with the other kids.

"Are you busy?" asked a voice I didn't place at first. Upon looking up, I saw Jack Lewis approaching.

"Sort of," I lied as I paused the game.

"Maybe later?"

"No, what is it?" I asked impatiently. After the last Jimmy Preston conversation, I was suspicious of anyone who spoke to me.

"I'm sorry. I just wanted to say I liked your Halloween story."

"Oh," I said, a little embarrassed I'd used a guy I hardly knew as a hero. "Thank you."

"Yeah. And, um...well, I just wanted to tell you about a Christmas play I've written that we're putting on at church, and I wanted to see if you'd be in it."

I knew his father must have put him up to it, but I was touched anyway. He could have asked me in passing with his friends all around him. Instead he sought me out alone.

"I don't know," I said, my tone softening.

I expected him to shrug and walk away. He had done his duty. But instead he said, "It should be a lot of fun. It's called We Three Kings, and they're all based on old rock stars. They read the stars wrong and think they're going to Bethlehem to find the Song of God instead of the Son of God."

I smiled. "Well, could I have a part with no lines, like one of the animals?" I asked sheepishly, pun intended. My failure in the talent show still made me cringe every time I thought of it, and Jack would want me in a small role anyway. An easy out for both of us, I thought.

"Actually, I want you to be a wise man," he said.

"Jack, I—" A sharp pain on the back of my head stopped me. I fell to my knees and grabbed my head, and Jack spun around in time to see a couple of the older kids jogging back into the recess crowd.

The physical injury was not great – a little bump with no blood. But whether true or not, there was no doubt in my mind that someone had thrown a rock at my head because I was the only clone in school. This was far more personal than the attack by Gabrielle Burns when I was four. This was an attack by my peers at school where everyone knew me. Friends of Jack? Had it all been a setup?

"Come on!" Jack called, trying to pull me to my feet. "Let's go find them!"

I stood up shakily. "No, I think I'm okay. It's no big." I just wanted to go home. And not come back.

"No big?" he responded in disbelief – the most emotional I'd ever seen him. "They could have really hurt you! Let's go!"

I scanned the basketball courts behind us, which were teeming with kids. "I didn't see who did it."

"I saw them a little. Let's try to find them!"

I went along, although at a much slower pace than Jack. What were we going to do if we found them? Jack had an inner confidence that made me think he could handle himself in a fight. I didn't have a great deal of inner or outer confidence, and had never been in a real fight before. I was scared, and I was praying we wouldn't find them at all.

There were all kinds of games in progress on the basketball courts, and of course I had no idea who I was supposed to be looking for. As far as I knew, any one of them could have thrown it. All of them at least wanted to have thrown it. So I simply followed Jack, hanging my head and rubbing it tenderly as we went. Then he stopped.

"I think that's them," he said.

I followed his finger to a group of four teenagers. They were standing around laughing with each other. They looked like jerks to me, but perhaps at that time I'd have thought the same of anyone. They definitely looked like they would kick our asses if we said anything to them.

"What's wrong, Adam?" asked a soft, familiar voice from behind.

My heart jumped. I knew it was Evelyn before I turned around. Both embarrassment and relief flooded into me at the same time – embarrassment that I'd have to tell her that I got picked on, relief that she still knew I was alive, and was even willing to talk to me.

"Somebody threw a rock at me," I said with as little shaking in my voice as I could muster.

She seemed to have already deduced something along those lines, probably from the way I'd been rubbing my bump and how Jack was pointing toward some older kids.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, I'm okay."

"They did it?" She nodded toward the boys.

"I dunno, I didn't see them."

"I think so," Jack answered, "but I only saw their backs."

Evelyn didn't need to hear anything else. Grabbing my hand, she led me to the nearest teacher's aide. I couldn't take my eyes off her hand. Nobody my age had ever held me by the hand before. I didn't want her to let go.

And she didn't. Somehow she managed to tell the aide what happened and point the boys out without letting go of me, perhaps gaining additional sympathy from the woman for her effort. The aide told us to follow her. As we drew near, the boys started walking away, but the aide ordered them to stop. They acted surprised, but were worse actors than even me.

"Did you throw a rock at this boy?"

The leader, a tall blond boy named Victor Marks whose father I later learned worked at U.S. Cloning Systems, looked down at me with disgust. "No, ma'am. We've just been talking," he replied, not meeting her eyes.

"This boy thinks he saw you walking away after the rock was thrown," she continued, motioning to Jack.

Victor shot a sharp look at Jack and shook his head while his friends grew fidgety. "I don't know what to say. We've been standing here all recess."

"That's not true, I saw you do it!" Evelyn lied.

The blond leader sneered at her. "You weren't there."

Probably everybody but Victor realized he had fallen for a ploy even a second grader would have seen through. Evelyn beamed with satisfaction. Jack grinned, nodded to Evelyn, and slapped me on the back. I goggled at her with admiration. This time she did glance back and flashed me a smile that sent my head reeling farther than that little rock could have ever aspired.

Table of Contents

12

I was in a different world the rest of the day, and was taken aback when I got home and my mom seemed so concerned with what happened at school. Oh yeah – that "rock" thing. She sat on our couch, asked me to sit on the floor in front of her, and parted my hair around the bump.

"Does it hurt, sweetie?"

"No, it's fine."

"Really?" She was quiet for a long time. "I'm sorry those bad guys did that. I guess there's always going to be someone like that. They just want to pick on someone else so they can think they're superior, and they'll find any reason they can. You know it's not your fault, right?"

I nodded. I hadn't thought of it that way, but it made sense. Actually, I hadn't thought about it at all, but it seemed important to Mom.

"It's hard being first," she continued, soothingly running her fingers through my hair after satisfying herself that the bump wasn't serious. "You're going to have to be very strong. Some people are going to want to hurt you, and others are going to try to tell you what to do, and there's always going to be a lot of pressure on you. It's not fair, but it's true. And I'm very sorry about that."

"It's worth it!" I said, smiling up at my mom's worried face.

She laughed and hugged me tightly. "You're such a clever boy. You must have gotten that from my mitochondrial DNA."

I sat down next to her. "Will you ever be a clone?"

She hesitated, pondering it as if for the first time. "I don't think so, honey. But not because I think there's anything wrong with it."

"Why not?" I asked, suddenly fearful. Thinking of the day at the beach. "If you don't, I'd never see you again."

She frowned and was silent for a long time. It would be another eleven years before I knew what she was thinking about. The day Adam-1 asked her if she would raise his clone as her son. They both described that day in their writings.

In the spring of 2022, and Sarah had just graduated from UCLA where she'd completed her BA in child psychology. She had accepted a job as a counselor with Children's Hospital in San Diego. Adam took a rare day off work to drive up the coast and help pack her belongings. And see if she'd be his mother.

There wasn't much to pack. Mostly some dishes and a few furnishings, but they were furnishings my c-father knew well from his childhood. Sarah had declined his offer to buy her all new things for her first apartment, instead asking for the belongings that had been sitting in storage since Michael and Sarah's deaths. These included the two novels Michael had written and his rare autographed copy of The Catcher in the Rye, some old records by Donna Summer, Roberta Flack, Lawrence Welk star Anacani and the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever, a 1970s paisley couch (which Sarah had reupholstered) and the oak dining table, upon which they were packing boxes.

"I have something very unusual to ask you," he mentioned as he took his mother's portrait down from the wall. He gazed at her for a moment, then almost dropped the frame when her smiling portrait was overlapped by a vision of his mother's death. "And I want you to know ahead of time that it's perfectly okay to say no."

"Up to no good again, Dad?" she said, only half-jokingly.

He nodded, and then frowned as he began carefully wrapping his mom's portrait.

"Dad, what is it?" Sarah asked.

Adam again hesitated as he took down the portrait of his father. He fought a sudden urge to smash it. "Lyle and I have decided that whichever of us dies first will become our company's first human clone."

She studied him for a while, assessing the seriousness of the claim. She was used to hearing outlandish ideas regarding his work, most of them no more than that.

"You know how I feel about death," he continued. "I mean, except that it means escaping your mother." Sarah rolled her eyes. "And if I die, I at least want my genes to have another chance at life."

Sarah remained silent. Her eyes locked on the old family Bible lying on the table among the rubble, waiting to be boxed. The Bible's brass key hung on her gold necklace that had once belonged to her grandmother of the same name. She rubbed the tiny key between her thumb and forefinger.

"Now, if a woman gives birth to the clone, she'd face all manner of harassment from the public and media, so Lyle and I will have the clones gestated in an artificial womb—"

"Dad," she interrupted, "if you're really serious, then I wouldn't want your clone to be born like that. If I'm still young enough, I'll give birth to the baby and raise him as my own."

"I don't want you to go through all that. Too many people will hate you."

She squeezed the key. A prayer she'd been making for so long finally coming to pass. "They won't hate me as much as I'll love my baby."

He hugged her. "I'd like my clone to have a mother named Sarah."

*

"Mom?" I asked, prodding her to answer my question.

She refocused and smiled at me. "I think I'd rather just live on through the lives I touch and through my children." She kissed me on the head. "Which is one of the reasons I'm so thankful cloning came along when it did. If it weren't for my dad wanting to be cloned, I never would have had a child. Now I have you."

"I'll try to be good," I said, as my c-father always encouraged me to be for Sarah's sake.

"I know you will, and I'm grateful for that. It's nice knowing that what I leave behind will be good for the world."

I hoped I wouldn't disappoint her. I was afraid I would.

Table of Contents

13

The next day at school began a new era for me. For the first time, I had friends. Jack started inviting me to sit with him and his friends at lunch. Those friends were lukewarm at first, but after a few days treated me like I was a normal person. Jack seemed very pleased by this.

As for Evelyn, I began flirting with her again and she spurned me as usual, but with the nice difference that she no longer ran away. She also began to praise the short stories I wrote for class. I enjoyed those more than any other coursework, even writing extra stories for the fun of it, some of which Mrs. Slater asked me to read aloud. I did, proud and nervous, while stealing glances at Evelyn. And she'd smile each time.

I began growing more and more dependent on her company and reassurance, needing to see her smiling at me. I was ready to marry her. But who knew I'd have the opportunity to do it so soon?

The Monday before Thanksgiving, Mrs. Slater and the other teachers brought the second grade classrooms together into an assembly to announce a holiday skit. The second graders would be part of a large production put on by the entire school. We were to act out Felix Bernard and Richard B. Smith's "Winter Wonderland." They would need some couples to stroll through the wintry streets, some kid-sized snowflakes, a bluebird and a new bird, the snowman Parson Brown, and a bride and groom for the good parson to marry.

"I want to be the bride," Evelyn leaned in to tell Dawn.

I was sitting next to her, of course, and didn't miss a beat. "If you're the bride, I want to be the groom."

"If you're the groom, I'm not going to be the bride," she replied coolly, dropping me down a peg, but still smiling.

We all wrote down the roles in which we would be most interested and handed them to the teachers. I can only assume Mrs. Slater overheard our little exchange, because when the roles were announced the next day, Evelyn was cast as the beautiful bride and I as the handsome groom. Jack was chosen to be Parson Brown. Between "Winter Wonderland" and Jack's upcoming Christmas show, my unlikely stage career was off to a strong start.

"Don't worry, Adam," Mrs. Slater whispered to me later on the sly. "There aren't any words to memorize!"

***

Great-Grandfather Lyle and two-and-a-half-year-old Lily-2 came over to our house for Thanksgiving dinner. It was the first time they'd been over since the talent show argument.

"Anything new going on at school?" Lyle asked, breaking a few minutes of uncomfortable silence.

I shrugged. I didn't want to talk to the man who thought I was a stupid sissy. Though fear of talking to him was a larger factor than anger.

"Well," Mom began, putting down her silverware and folding her hands, "I don't think you'll want to go, but you might be proud to hear that Mikey is actually going to be on stage two times next month. He's going to play a Wise Man at church, and at school he's going to be the groom in Winter Wonderland."

I saw Lyle's face change the moment she hit the word "groom." Clearly he wanted me to marry Lily-2. But, looking back, I'm surprised he was jealous over a staged marriage during a school skit. Or did he somehow sense that this was something special – that there was, indeed, a real threat to his plans? I thought there was, sure, but a child has no idea how many things change in life as we grow older.

"Well," he said. "And who's the lucky bride?"

"Evelyn Green," Mom said, giving me a quick wink.

Lyle frowned. "That Jewish girl?"

There was complete silence in the room. I knew Mom didn't like him, but I'm not sure if she had known he was a racist. Actually, according to my clone-father's journal, Lyle used any sort of bigotry as an opportunity to tear down others so that he and his family could stand taller. Racism and bigotry were tools. And anti-Semitism was a popular one at the time.

In second grade, I knew next to nothing about the recent war or the rise in hate crimes against Jewish Americans, and therefore had no idea what was going on in the conversation except that somehow being a "Jewish girl" was a bad thing in Lyle's eyes. Which made me hate Lyle even more. But I didn't say anything.

"Is that a problem for you, Grandfather?" my mother finally asked.

Lyle took his napkin off his lap and laid it on the table. "Well, it's just that it's a Christmas play, right? Why would a good Jew want to be in it?"

Mom clutched the edge of the dining table, but her voice was controlled. "For one thing, it is a play, and people can pretend to be anything they want on stage. Secondly, it is not a 'Christmas play.' It's a song about winter and romance. And finally, I don't like your attitude."

"Of course it's a Christmas play," Lyle said. "They're married by a parson, not a rabbi. Do they step on a glass after the ceremony?"

"You..." Sarah began, then stopped and regained herself. She gave her grandfather a look of embarrassed disgust. "I guess we'll just have to watch the play and find out."

Lyle turned to me. "Do you like this girl, Adam?"

I shrank in my chair. It was clear what he wanted to hear. And perhaps everything that happened afterwards could have been avoided with a simple lie. But at that moment, I felt like denying Evelyn would be like taking the girl who had held my hand and stabbing her in the back.

Not having the courage to speak, I nodded.

Lyle frowned. "Why don't you go to your room," he said. "Your mommy and I have something to discuss."

"No stay, Michael," Mom said. "Remember, sweetie, how I was telling you some people like to bring other people down to make them feel better about themselves? Well, I'm afraid Great-Grandfather Lyle is one of the worst in that regard. He'll find any reason to think everyone is lower than him." She looked at Lyle. "To make things even more ridiculous, he's putting down an entire people for their religion when he doesn't even believe in God. Why are you doing that, Grandfather?"

Lyle twitched and his entire face and neck went beet red. I'd never seen anything like it. It scared me enough to wish I was in my bedroom.

"That's not what I'm doing," he answered.

"Oh, I believe you. This has nothing to do with her being Jewish. You're just trying to find some excuse to make her an unfit bride for Michael so you can make sure he marries Lily."

"And what's wrong with that?" he asked. "You know what your mother did so she could be with him."

"If they fall in love, that's fine. But I'll be damned if you're going to lay that guilt on my son and try to force him to marry someone he doesn't want."

"Your son?" he scoffed, and then grinned. "This is coming from the virgin?"

Mom went pale.

"He's your father, not your son," Lyle continued, "And he will marry my daughter."

My mother stood up and leaned over the table toward her grandfather. "He is my son, and he's going to marry Evelyn Green two weeks from now. Don't you dare try to tell him who he should or shouldn't marry."

Lyle slowly stood up as well. "Very well, Sarah. It's up to you."

"No, it's up to him."

"It's up to you to leave it up to him. And it's up to me to look after my daughter's future. Which I'm afraid puts us at odds."

"Then we're at odds."

"In that case I'll be on my way," he said, beginning to collect Lily-2.

My mom was squeezing the back of her chair over and over. "Grandpa, I've let you continue to be a part of our lives out of respect for Mom, and because I felt sorry for the abuse you went through—"

"What?" Lyle blurted, spittle spraying the table. "Sarah, I don't know what lies your father told you, but my childhood won't be discussed."

My mom nodded. "Do you want to discuss my childhood instead?"

His eyes narrowed. "You need to be careful."

"You're the one who needs to be careful if you want to be any part of Adam's life."

He picked up his pipe and pointed it at her. "Take care, Sarah."

They stared each other down for a moment, then Lyle picked up Lily and turned to go. Mom didn't show him out.

There was a long silence after he left. I was frightened. Mom was both scared and angry. She was trembling. She was the bravest person I've ever met, but no one knew this. Least of all her.

"Don't ever be like your great-grandfather," she said. "Don't ever be mean to people for no reason or because they're not like you."

She started to cry. Out-of-control crying. I'd never seen her do that. I was shocked that Lyle could upset my mom like that. I jumped out of my chair and hugged her, and she hugged me back.

"I won't," I promised.

"And don't feel like you have to marry anyone or do anything you don't want just because your great-grandpa or anyone else tells you to. Okay?"

"Okay," I repeated, but with less conviction. I wasn't sure I could stand up to Lyle like she had.

Mom dried her eyes and grabbed me by both hands, forcing a smile. "You like Evelyn a lot, don't you?"

"I love her!"

She brightened. "Well, it's a good thing, mister! You're marrying her in a couple weeks!"

We both laughed, and for a moment forgot about the ugly scene with Lyle.

Table of Contents

14

The big day arrived two weeks later. Friday the 13th, of course. I was sick with nervousness, my highly uncomfortable little blue suit exacerbating my condition. And then Evelyn came out of the dressing room in her lovely white wedding gown. She looked more beautiful than ever. I gulped, my head swimming. I was really going to marry Evelyn Green. My lonely days were finally over. I imagined taller versions of us sitting at our dining room table with a couple of half-clone children scampering about.

We took our positions backstage, ready to skip out on our cue. The music began as the kids on the stage sang of sleigh bells and snow.

We had a few more stanzas before our entrance. Evelyn and I stood straight ahead, Evelyn watching the performance out on the stage and preparing for our cue, me sprouting gray hairs, sure I'd somehow screw up our entire wedding ceremony. I had to wrestle with both the pressure of getting married and a mounting sense of stage fright. The whole thing would have been so much easier if I'd just been cast as a snowflake. What on earth had Mrs. Slater been thinking?

As the cast sang about walking around their winter wonderland, Evelyn grabbed my hand. One more line and we'd be skipping across the stage. We were standing right at the edge of the curtain. I could see some of the audience sitting in the dark, watching the stage and taking pictures. I didn't know what an understudy was, but I desperately wanted one.

A group of kids started making a snowman in the meadow, and Evelyn tugged me out onto the stage as they pretended Jack was Parson Brown.

I forgot how to skip. I just kind of awkwardly threw my legs out there in front of me. Evelyn stayed focused despite my herky-jerky movements at her side. My face grew hot, and my hand started to sweat in hers. I hoped it wouldn't slip out, as I was pretty sure her grip was the only thing keeping me from crashing to the floor in a mangled, pathetic, but dapperly dressed heap. I hoped beyond reason that no one was watching.

Suddenly we were there in front of the snowman waiting to perform our nuptials. Jack's painted face was examining me with a mixture of laughter and sympathy. Well, mostly laughter. I shrugged. He must have started having second thoughts about asking me to join his Christmas program.

Jack motioned with his arms as if he were posing a question to us, asking whether we were married, and I shook my head no in response, immensely gratified that I'd remembered my "line." Relishing in my achievement, I began to turn away and lead Evelyn off to the side where we would finish the skit. She yanked me back, jolting my memory. I had one more critical line. We weren't married yet!

I dutifully wagged my finger at Parson Brown like I was telling him to do his job while he was around. And just like that we were hitched. The only thing more gratifying was that we were finally done with our time in the spotlight. We all sang the closing lines of the song, and the hard part was over. How difficult could the honeymoon be? I was thinking Disneyland...

We were still holding hands as we took our bows. I used that opportunity to pull her close and whisper, "Thanks for stopping me."

Evelyn laughed. As she would later say, we had merely been reinforcing the universal myth of the reluctant groom and the determined bride. At that moment, she simply said, "Well, I didn't want to be left standing at the altar."

I grinned. "Altar" was a pretty unusual word for my vocabulary at the time, but I was sure I'd never leave her at one.

*

Later that night I was surprised to learn from Mom that Lyle had attended the event, leaving Lily-2 with his younger sister, my eccentric and kind Great-Aunt Louise whom Lyle detested but used when necessary. Mom saw him talking with his employee Jacob Marks and his rock-throwing son, Victor. She hoped he was upbraiding his employee for the earlier attack. Lyle didn't reply when Mom thanked him for coming. In fact, she said, he completely ignored her.

That Sunday, Winter Wonderland became one of the first second grade skits to be reviewed by SDNN.com's theatre critic, the San Diego News Network documenting the first clone's first time on stage and the first clone to "get married." Evelyn received praise, but my reluctance to marry her was noted with some well-deserved humor by the critic. A local conservative columnist had another slant – a tongue-in-cheek argument that my hesitation at the altar was an early indication of my sexual orientation, concluding it was proof that either homosexuality was not genetic or that my c-father had been a closet gay.

When our class returned from lunch that following Monday, we found the room vandalized. Anti-Semitic markings had been spray-painted on tables and the chalkboard in yellow, and "Evelyn the Lesbian" was painted in pink on the table where she sat. Her blue-jean backpack had a pink triangle and a yellow Star of David painted on it.

Mrs. Slater called the principal, and we all went to the assembly room while the police inspected the vandalism. Our teacher asked Evelyn if she wanted to go home, but Evelyn said she wanted to stay. Mrs. Slater then told us that the people who had done that were hateful, small-minded bigots. The next day a counselor entered the cleaned-up room to tell us about the importance of embracing diversity and being kind to others regardless of race, creed, religion and sexual orientation. A lot of the kids looked at Evelyn during the counselor's talk. Evelyn ignored them outwardly, but surely she was aware of the attention she was drawing. She was still carrying the backpack with the Star of David and the pink triangle.

Evelyn's best friend Christie stopped joining Evelyn for lunch that day. Probably the whole "lesbian" thing bothered her more than the Jewish part. Jack and his closest friends were the only ones still brave enough to join the human clone and the Jewish lesbian at lunch. Everyone else kept looking over at us. Maybe it didn't help that Evelyn wore her vandalized backpack while eating. We ate in self-conscious silence.

Then came the taunt from Jimmy Preston a couple seats down.

"Boy, Adam. I can't believe you married a lesbo!"

He said it like he was only kidding. Evelyn frowned and stared at her food.

I smiled like he really was kidding. "Well, we're getting a divorce."

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I regretted them. Evelyn looked up at me for a moment, long enough to know I'd really hurt her, and then left so I wouldn't see her cry. Jack got up and followed her. Most of the other kids around us laughed, and Jimmy stood up to pat me on the back.

"Way to go, Adam!"

I had lost my friends, but I guess I was finally accepted in the group.

Table of Contents

15

"How could you do that to Evelyn?" Jack asked me the next day.

"I know," I said, so mortified I could hardly speak.

"It's wrong," he said.

"Who are you, the police?" I shouted back. "You treated me like a weirdo for two years!"

"I'm sorry," he said. "But Evelyn was always nice to you."

I told Jack I was sorry, and he said I needed to tell that to Evelyn. I went up to her once, but she wouldn't look up at me. Instead of apologizing, I walked silently away, feeling more ashamed than ever. Winter break was coming on Friday, and I was certain I'd spend the entire time miserable. But on Thursday came the fight.

A couple girls and boys, led by Jimmy, were teasing Evelyn who had been standing alone on the playground. She was giving them some words right back. Jimmy Preston didn't like what she said, and he pushed her to the ground. I went running towards them and launched myself at Jimmy. It was the greatest tackle of my life. We must have landed about ten feet from where he'd been standing. What happened after that was a flurry. The other guy began kicking me, and the girls attacked Evelyn.

After what seemed like an extraordinarily long time, but probably was only twenty seconds, the school aides were tearing them away. I had a swollen eye and cuts and bruises. Evelyn made out much better than me. And, green belt or not, she did a lot more damage to her opponents than I had.

We were both sent home early that day. As we waited for our parents to pick us up, I apologized to Evelyn for what I'd said about the divorce.

"It's okay," she said, with perfect sincerity. And I knew everything was all right.

"And I'm sorry for what they did to you today."

She shrugged. "Some people are just mean. You've seen that more than me."

I didn't answer. I had a vision of Gabrielle Burns thrusting her knife into my mom as I stood in the seawater, frozen in confusion. Or fear.

"So what's it really like? You know. Being a clone."

I had to think about that one before slowly spilling it out. "I don't know. Sometimes it's bad...sometimes it's kind of nice. My mom wants me to be whatever I want, but my great-grandpa wants me to be my c-father. That's the bad part. I mean, that and people being mean."

She frowned, then reached out to grab my hand, pumping it up and down a couple times. "So then what's nice about it?"

My eyes lingered on her hand holding mine. I almost forgot what the question was. But eventually I formulated some thoughts. "Well, it's almost like I'm not all alone, and like I'm somehow connected to what happened long ago and what happens later, and like you might have more than one chance to do what you want with your life." I pried my gaze from our hands to her eyes. "You know, like even if we're not the same people really, when we talk about stuff when my c-dad was alive, I really feel like I was there. And when we talk about doing things to help the world a long time from now, I feel like that's still about me because of my clones."

Evelyn's eyes were wide with wonder. "That's really cool!"

I nodded. That part was really cool. My mom and I had talked about that kind of thing a lot.

"Do you know much about your clone-dad?"

"Yeah, they've told me a lot about him, and I've seen some videos that he made for me, and each birthday I get a letter that he wrote for me and get to sit in his hologram's lap. He left me a book about his life, but I don't get to read it till I'm eighteen."

"Are you writing anything for your clones?"

"Yeah, I do a little. My mom tells me to."

Evelyn stared into space for a while. "I wish I were a clone."

I wasn't exactly sure if she meant it or if she was just trying to make me feel good about myself.

"What's it like being a...not a clone?" I asked.

"Well," she said, letting go of my hand as she began to play with the zipper on her backpack, "I guess nobody expects you to be exactly like someone else that lived before, but sometimes they still want you to be a lot like whatever's 'normal' or just like your parents. But my parents are like your mom – they just want me to be whatever I want."

I nodded. "So I guess it's kinda the same."

"I guess," she said. "But I think it'd be nice to know that someone like me had lived before, and that I could talk to someone like me later with letters and stuff. It'd be like a good pen pal that went on forever, but we were all closer than pen pals because we were all related, you know?"

At that moment the windowed door of the principal's office clacked open. Mom walked in wearing her jeans and her old UCLA sweatshirt and looking worried. She saw me and gasped as she knelt beside me. "What happened, Michael?" she asked, examining my eye with trembling fingertips. "You got in a fight?"

"He was protecting me," Evelyn responded.

"Well then good boy!" she exclaimed, making the principal frown. "Are you okay?" she asked Evelyn.

"Yes, Ms. Elwell," she answered. "Thanks to your son."

Mom scratched my head proudly as Evelyn's father walked in. She ran to hug him as he bent down to receive it. He was a tall, strong man with kind brown eyes.

"Are you okay, sweetheart?" he asked as he gently inspected her scrapes.

"I'm fine!" she answered. "Come meet Adam and his mom."

"It's an honor, sir," Sarah said, shaking his hand. I noticed she was still trembling.

"I'm the one who's honored – the man who protected my daughter and the mother who raised him," he said, shaking my hand after my mom's.

"Mr. Green's a war hero," Mom told me with admiration.

He laughed. "Or a war criminal, depending on who you ask."

"You're a hero," Sarah repeated. Evelyn held her father's hand and leaned up against him, smiling. Mom would later tell me how Mr. Green had worked in the State Department where he helped broker an end to the Mideast War with equally brave Muslim negotiators, working despite objections from extremists on both sides who were eager to continue the escalation, helping use the goodwill generated by Shannon Smith-1 to end the war.

I smiled in awe at the towering, square-jawed, yet modest man. Having Mr. Green say that I was the man who protected his daughter filled me with a rare feeling of confidence.

We all stepped out of the office with Evelyn still leaning against him as they walked hand in hand. I imagined myself and my clone-father walking like that, leaving me with a comforting warmth and an aching void.

While Mr. Green told me about his job and asked me about my story writing, Mom ducked back into the principal's office for a couple minutes. She handed him a photo, explaining that she'd just been informed of Gabrielle's release.

Mom returned, hugging me from behind while messing up my hair, as if no longer a care in the world. Though she kept glancing around – something I scarcely thought about at the time. She chatted with Evelyn for a while longer. They had met briefly a couple times, but it was the first time they had really talked. I didn't know it would be their last. If I'd known, I would have soaked it in more. The warm, easy embrace of my mom. Her fondness for good people. Her delighting in me being social with Evelyn and her dad. I would have concentrated on remembering every word, every expression, every touch.

Table of Contents

16

Friday, December 20, 2041 was the last day before winter break and the end of a busy week. We had practices for the Christmas show every night. But I wasn't so fixated on the play that I didn't notice my mom's nervousness. She didn't tell me what had made her tense, but she kept reminding me to always make sure a grownup was around and what I should do if a stranger approached.

"Are you okay?" I asked her Friday morning as she dropped me off at school. She had just glanced all around the car before unlocking my door.

Her reply was a nod and a hug. "Have fun today and be careful." She kissed me on the head.

"See you tonight!" I called as I pulled away and closed the door behind me.

School got out early, after which Reverend Lewis drove Jack, Evelyn and me to the church. Jack and I needed to do a last-minute rehearsal, and Evelyn wanted to watch as her family had plans on Sunday. Jack had me wear large sunglasses that teleprompted the script for me in case I forgot my lines. I sang What Child is This? in my best Ray Charles impersonation, which was really, really bad (and still is). My feet creaked as I was led down the hardwood floor through the middle of the pews on my way to the manger. I tried not to think about those pews being full of about two hundred people.

Jack had the grand finale as King Elvis Presley, singing Blue Christmas as the Three Kings leave Bethlehem. And with that, we finished our last rehearsal a little before sundown as scheduled. Jack reminded the dozen or so kids involved to be at church early on Sunday, then Reverend Lewis led us all out of the church to wait for our parents.

"So it looks like you guys are ready for the play," Evelyn said, sitting down on the concrete steps leading to the church entrance.

Jack smirked at me. "I dunno. Is Adam ever ready to be on stage?"

I couldn't argue. "Just don't make me skip."

Evelyn laughed and shook her head at me, but in a loving rather than a mean way. "And so what are you guys doing for vacation? Sounds like you're going to have a Blue Christmas?" Evelyn asked Jack.

"Only if Adam tries to skip during the pageant."

"What are you going to do during the break?" I asked Evelyn.

"I'm going to have Hanukkah here with my parents."

"What do you guys do?" I asked.

"Well, the celebration lasts eight days, and this year it started a couple days ago and actually ends on December 25. So while you're opening your Christmas presents, we're going to be lighting our menorah and exchanging a gift that we've made."

"What did you make for your parents?"

"I'm making them a calendar with pictures of our family and ancestors above each of the months."

"That's neat," I said, pictures of my own ancestors flashing through my head. Michael and Sarah. And myself.

She smiled at me despite her eyes having to squint in the setting sun. "And what about you?"

"Um, on Christmas Eve day we always drive up to our cabin in the redwoods and have Great-Grandpa Lyle and Lily-2 over, and we string popcorn and cranberries to decorate the tree and then we take turns reading parts of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas."

"You read the parts for Santa Claus, I assume?" she said, teasing me about being nine days older than her.

"And then," I continued, choosing to semi-ignore the comment, "we watch It's a Wonderful Life and a musical version of Scrooge and open our presents Christmas morning."

"What did you get your mom?" Evelyn asked.

"I made her a holodisk of me singing I'm My Own Grandpaw."

"That's perfect!" Evelyn said.

I hoped Mom liked it, and was pleased that Evelyn thought well of it. So pleased that I felt an idiotic grin cemented on my face. But she returned it.

Evelyn's dad pulled up. "Well, I'll miss you guys," she said as she stood up and gave Jack a hug.

As Jack started singing about how he was going to have a Blue Christmas without us, Evelyn went into a big Elvis-fan scream and swoon. I doubled over in laughter.

"Merry Christmas!" she said, recovering from her swoon to give me a tight hug.

"Happy Hanukkah!" I responded, almost breathless from the hug, hyper-sensitively noticing everything about her: Her hair against the side of my face. Her pleasant smell, like jasmine. Her willingness, or even eagerness, to be so close to the human clone. It didn't take long to conclude that a hug could be at least as good as holding hands.

She kissed me on the cheek and went running to the car.

"See ya next year!" she called from the open car door.

I stood there stunned and glowing and thinking I could never be happier than I was right then. Her father gave me a friendly salute and she waved at me from the car as they pulled away. I barely recovered from my delirium in time to wave back.

Jack pushed my shoulder. "She likes you!"

I felt myself blush, but I was grinning.

An ostentatious luxury car slid up to the curb. Recognition began to dawn as the tinted passenger window hissed down. "Hello, Adam!"

"Who's that?" Jack asked.

I didn't move or answer. I was seeing Lyle out of context, like when we ran into Mrs. Slater at the grocery store. He must have been driving by and happened to see me. I waved, expecting him to wave back and then keep going on his way.

"Come on, Adam," he called, gesturing for me to come to the car.

"Is that your great-grandfather?" Reverend Lewis asked, placing his hand on my shoulder.

"Uh-huh."

"Is he picking you up?"

I didn't speak.

"Is everything okay, Adam?" Reverend Lewis asked.

"I guess so," I said, and started walking toward the car.

"See you Sunday!" Jack called behind me.

I turned and nodded. "Right, see you guys Sunday." Then I walked up to the car and opened the door. Lyle was forcing a wide smile that I'd never seen before. I saw Lily-2 in a safety seat behind him.

"Mom's not coming?" I asked.

"No, she asked if I could swing by and pick you up. I guess she had a couple holiday errands to run." He chuckled. "Don't worry, we're not mad at each other anymore. It's all water under a bridge."

I slid into the passenger seat and closed the door as he rolled the passenger window back up.

"Are you looking forward to Christmas?"

I nodded vaguely, my pulse speeding up.

"Cwismiss!" cried out a thrilled Lily-2 from behind.

Lyle put the car in gear, which locked the doors. The entrance to the church began drifting away. I saw Jack shouting something, but Lyle's car was well insulated from the outside world.

"What errands?" I asked. I hated that word. It had always meant my playtime was over, and I had to go on some boring trips to the store when I could be doing fun things instead. But now I wanted to be shopping with Mom more than anything.

"Oh, probably to get some stuff to make Christmas cookies and such, or maybe new decorations. I don't know."

Why was he lying? I realized then that never in my life had my mother left me completely alone with Lyle. There must be an emergency he was hiding from me. We drove the last couple minutes in silence.

When we pulled into the driveway, the front door of the house was ajar. My first thought was that flies would be getting in. Maybe Mom left the door open as she was bringing groceries in and forgot to close it. There were darker fears lurking behind those thoughts, but I kept them pushed down. Surely it was the groceries.

"Better stay here for a minute, Adam," Lyle said. He stared at the open door and turned off the engine. "Let me just make sure everything's okay in there."

My eyes were already wet with unrealized terror. Everything wasn't okay in there.

A few seconds after Lyle disappeared through the doorway, I opened the car door and crept toward the house, over the fresh-mown grass, and up the two tile stairs to the doormat covered with little sheep that Mom had crocheted a couple years before. I paused before putting my foot through the open doorway, and then paused again when I realized I was standing in the entryway, wondering which way to go and whether I was willing to find what I might find – that dark reality I sensed, but kept pushing away.

I found silence in a house that felt unfamiliar. I was seeing the furniture for the first time. Family photos on the wall now reminded me of the portraits of early presidents, staring at me with stoic eyes. The calendar filled with my mom's handwriting had the impersonal feel of a museum artifact. I prayed she was okay.

But the response I heard was not from God. There were voices coming from the kitchen. The first voice was my mom's.

"Grandpa, please," she begged. Such a weak and frightened voice from the strong, all-knowing mom who had always protected me. She wasn't that powerful after all. Lyle was the stronger. The reality I tried not to see was mocking me, grinning, forcing me to yield to it. Fear and flustered resentment overwhelmed me. I started to sob without making a sound. I wanted to turn away. Run away.

"You have to die, Sarah," came Lyle's voice. "You and your spawn."

"No, please."

"What did you expect?" he asked. "You betrayed your God."

"No, Grandpa," Mom said, her voice still shaking but a little louder. "I only betrayed you."

"I'm not your grandpa."

"What?"

Then came the voice of a woman that sounded distantly familiar, conjuring up disturbing memories of trials, nightmares, and witches with long nails.

"Feel it, whore. Feel the weight of the finger of God!"

I ran at the sound of the voice, running as fast as I could, everything around me blurred. A gunshot jolted me to a breathless stop. I blinked, sure that I'd been running toward the kitchen. But in front of me was the welcome mat and Mom's crocheted sheep.

My mom.

I turned around, shaking so hard I nearly fell over. I felt sick, like when you've made a mistake you can't ever take back. Like when I dreamt I cut off my finger. Or when I told my classmates that I had divorced Evelyn.

I knew my mom was dead. And I'd been running away.

My mind numb, my legs began walking me toward the kitchen.

"Now give me the gun," Lyle demanded.

"But I get to kill the boy," said the woman.

"I said give me the gun," repeated Lyle. "It's God's will."

"No!"

I stepped into the kitchen. It was the woman. Her hair had gone from red to gray, but it was her – Gabrielle Burns. She looked like a skeleton in her white dress, the skin around her eyes had shrunk so she looked as crazy as she was. Lyle carefully placed his pipe on the counter, then darted for her gun. They struggled. It went off. And Gabrielle was jolted back against the kitchen cabinets. She gaped at the blood on her white dress. As she slumped to the floor, she withdrew a silver knife from her skirt pocket.

And then she caught sight of me standing in the kitchen entryway. Her already large eyes widened further. I wasn't sure what all raced through her mind as her eyes locked onto mine. A realization that she had failed her God and would never be given a baby. Perhaps second thoughts about what she had just done as a glimmer of sanity returned.

The only thing that raced through her mind for sure was a bullet. Lyle held the gun at her even after she was dead.

My mom was sprawled on the floor next to Gabrielle. There was blood on the cupboards above her, the one from which she had grabbed my cereal box that morning. I pushed past a surprised Lyle and slid to her side.

"Mommy?" I heard a voice cry. "Mommy!"

I lifted her head in my hands, pulling her surprisingly heavy head into my lap, then brushing her hair out of her soft but still face, expecting to see her wake. Her eyes were wide open, dilated so widely that her beautiful blue-gray irises were scarcely visible. Eyes that for the first time ignored me. Or accused me.

I bent over and pressed myself to her tighter, as if the life in my body could return life to hers. But she made no reply.

"I...I'm sorry I was too late," Lyle said from behind, laying his hand on my shoulder.

I shrugged him off. Couldn't bear his touch. Could focus only on my mom, gently running my fingertips over her eyebrows, and the edges of her face. Her soft, rounded chin. I tried not to look at her eyes, but they kept drawing me back.

Lyle took his hand away and remained standing behind me, not making a sound. Yet I saw movement. My mother hadn't moved. The movement had come from the reflection in her dead, staring eyes. The hair pricked up on my scalp as I saw Lyle pointing the gun at my head. He didn't know exactly when I'd arrived or what I might have seen or heard before he began struggling with Gabrielle for the gun. And the way I shrugged him away may have convinced him that I knew he was responsible for my mother's death. He would shoot me now, and explain to the authorities how Gabrielle had killed both mother and son before he could get the gun from her. Then he could start with a new Adam, an Adam-3, whom he could influence without Sarah's interference. My great-grandfather was going to kill me as he had just murdered his granddaughter. Unless maybe I pretended not to know. Pretended to look to him for comfort.

"Oh, Grandpa," I cried, not turning around, burying my face against my mother's still warm cheek.

Would she have wanted me to try to preserve my life, or was I betraying her by not facing down her murderer? Would a human child, a non-clone, have done the same? I felt ashamed. I was no longer scared that she was dead, but that she would awake and see me doing this thing. That she would see her son wasn't human after all. Half of me wanted him to kill me. Kill the freak who would run away as his mother was murdered, and then think of himself as he hugged her dead body.

There was a hesitation that seemed like forever. Would I know if he fired, or would I be dead first? Relief and revulsion flooded my body when his non-gun hand rested back down on my shoulder.

Lyle wasn't going to kill me today.

Instead he picked the silver knife out of Gabrielle's hand, slipped it into a plastic bag and placed that in his pocket, and then called 911 on his cell and used it to beam a hologram of the scene to the paramedics, police, and the physicians at Lyle's Ingeneuity.

They arrived within five minutes, but I had no hope the paramedics or Ingeneuity doctors could resuscitate my mother, and no hope the police would arrest her murderer.

Table of Contents

17

I was in the news again as background on the investigation trickled out. Police found conclusive evidence that Gabrielle had fired the shot that killed my mom. The official story went as follows: Gabrielle Burns began stalking us after her release from the mental hospital. On Friday, as Sarah walked out the front door, Gabrielle was waiting. She forced Sarah back into the house at gunpoint, ordered her to call Lyle and ask him to pick me up from church, and held her in the kitchen until Lyle pulled up. Surely she was waiting for me to arrive so she could kill mother and child together. If she had killed Sarah right away, neighbors might have heard the shots and called the police.

When Gabrielle saw Lyle enter the kitchen, she must have shot Sarah, hoping to shoot Lyle and myself next. But Lyle was able to tear the gun away and kill her.

Though I had no proof, I was convinced of a different story. After the Thanksgiving argument, Lyle met with the recently released Gabrielle (released, as I learned much later, by a psychiatrist with an indirect connection to Lyle). Lyle probably told her that he wanted to repent for his sins, and that God had told him he needed to help her destroy the unholy child and its mother. With some help from Lyle, Gabrielle was able to get into the house and hold Sarah at gunpoint until Lyle brought the child to join them. When Lyle entered the kitchen, he ordered her to kill Sarah, and then demanded Gabrielle's gun.

I now believe that he wanted my mom out of the way so he could raise me directly, a suitable husband for Lily. He set it up so he would look like the hero, saving me from the crazed Gabrielle, though unfortunately unable to save my mother. And if I hadn't distrusted Lyle from as far back as I could remember, perhaps it would have worked.

My mother's funeral was set for Monday. I wanted to go to church on Sunday and even participate in the Christmas pageant, knowing I could hide behind the sunglasses. I mostly wanted to go and be comforted by Jack and Reverend Lewis. But Lyle said there were too many things to do before Monday, and I was kept away.

On Sunday morning, as the sirens wailed down the main cross street near our house and a helicopter hovered in the distance, the noise barely registered. I couldn't take my eyes off a photo of my mom and me at the entrance to Disneyland. Lyle, who had spent the night in my mom's room, walked into the living room and turned on the news.

"I think something's happened," he said.

I ignored him except that my hands gripped the frame of my mom's photo a bit tighter. But the words on the news began to drift into my consciousness. Suicide bomber...Cassandra Society... Unitarian.

I looked up to see the camera panning over the stone steps where Evelyn had kissed me two days ago. Now they were littered with debris. One of the mangled church doors was lying at the bottom of the stairs. There were dark stains I didn't recognize as blood. Lying by itself near one of the stains was a severed arm with nails sticking out of it.

At some point I'd stood up, but my legs grew wobbly and I knelt in front of the screen. Over forty people already confirmed dead. A group now calling themselves the Gabrielites in honor of their martyred leader had claimed responsibility. All those who harbored clones were enemies of God, and His vengeance would be swift and terrible.

I spent hours believing that everyone I'd known at church was dead because of me. They kept promising to announce the dead as soon as loved ones were notified. Unbearable hours crawled by. Finally a link for the list appeared on the screen. Lyle chose it before I could. Fifty-three dead listed in alphabetical order. I scanned down to the L's. Albert Lewis. Melinda Lewis. I closed my eyes. Jack wasn't on the list.

"Isn't that your friend's dad?" Lyle asked.

I nodded, eyes still closed. Reverend Lewis shuffling his papers. I can't believe being born is ever a sin. No sir. A belief that had killed him and his wife.

"I didn't know Evelyn went to your church."

"She doesn't," I said. It was several seconds before I put Lyle's words together. I forced my eyes back to the list. Green. Aaron Green. The war hero. I saw him shaking my hand. Saluting me. Evelyn proudly leaning up against him. They had gone to see the Christmas play after all. Maybe after they heard about my mom. I shook my head. It wasn't true.

"That's terrible," Lyle said.

I didn't take my eyes off the name. It was another Aaron Green. Or a mistake. They would take the name off soon. Apologize for the confusion.

"Terrible," Lyle repeated as he turned off the news.

Table of Contents

18

Sixty years before my mother's funeral, at the funeral of my c-father's mother, the pastor said that God had wanted Sarah early for a special purpose in heaven. But my clone-father had found no comfort in that. All he saw was his mother's lifeless mouth falling open, and no loving God would allow such an ugly thing to happen.

"I felt then," he wrote, "that Death was the only true evil in the world. And since the Bible said that Death had been a curse by God on Adam and all his descendants, it seemed as if the heavens had aimed it specifically at me. I hated God for it. And I grew determined to do what the original Adam was unable or unwilling to do. I will undo God's curse on humanity. No more Sarahs will die."

*

On the morning of Monday, December 23, 2041, I attended my mother's funeral. If God was angry on the stormy night of my birth, did the warm sunshine reflecting off our slowly moving limousine mean that God was smiling over my mother's death? Or gloating?

Authorities tried to keep the hundreds of protestors at a distance, but I saw them as the funeral procession made its way into the cemetery. They were shouting and jeering at us, waving signs that said such things as "God Hates Clones," "The Whore of Babylon Burns in Hell," and "Antichrist's Mother Returned to Sender."

At our now-gutted church, I'd been told that Christ wanted us to love our neighbors like ourselves, even to love our enemies, to do unto others as we would have them do unto us, and to never judge our fellow man. They were beautiful sentiments, and Reverend Lewis managed to convince me that, Gabrielle Burnses of the world notwithstanding, heaven would welcome me, and that it would be a pleasant place to spend eternity. But on the morning of the funeral, I began to wonder if perhaps I truly was the Antichrist. Maybe that was why God didn't grant my prayer to save my mom. Maybe God had my mom killed because I, the Antichrist, had begged him to save her. I looked at my small, thin arms and legs covered in a black suit. I stared at my palms. Were these the limbs and hands of the Antichrist?

I promised myself I would never pray for anything again. If all these protestors represented the views of God, and they would celebrate my sweet mother's murder and taunt her son, then God must have been deeply disappointed with the messages Jesus had preached. And I would be against their God with my limbs and hands and every part of my body.

I didn't hear a word of what the chaplain said. The next thing I noticed was Lyle grabbing a handful of dirt and throwing it on my mother's coffin. I heard it hit with a sickening thud. Was she still glad that cloning had allowed her to have a son? Someone told me to throw some dirt, but I shook my head.

As Lyle's gritty hand took mine and led me from my mom's grave, a few of my mom's friends and several employees of USCS offered their condolences. And then, to my surprise, there was Jack. His downcast face was cut and bruised. Our eyes met briefly, then he fixed his attention on the procession of cars leaving the cemetery.

"I'm sorry," I said.

Jack didn't respond. He was orphaned because of me. I should have been grateful that he had come at all. But at the time, all I knew was that the only Christians who had ever accepted us were now rejecting us. God had punished those who had welcomed us, turned his back on my mother and me, and chosen the side of the protestors and bombers. Lyle pulled me from Jack without another word said.

I never thought I'd feel so alone as I did that morning. But I was wrong. Lyle took me out of all but my virtual school during the holiday break, and by doing so eliminated Lily's competition. I never returned to Hill Creek Junior Academy, and so was unable to say goodbye to Evelyn.

I had a dream about Evelyn on Christmas Eve, waving at her on the street while she rode away in her father's car. I wasn't sure whether she saw me or not, but she didn't wave back.

Table of Contents

19

My clone-father first met Lyle Gardener in 1988. Adam-1 was given a tour of Ingeneuity by his Uncle Charles not long after my clone-father developed his obsession with genetics – the key to life, and therefore Adam-1's key to immortality. His only hope of not meeting the same fate as his parents.

Charles led me into the spacious room. Around the perimeter of Lyle's office stood an array of antiques – mostly scientific or military, ancient guns and microscopes. Behind the desk loomed an eight-foot-tall grandfather clock, a family heirloom. Its loud tick-tock seemed to count down the seconds of our lives, as if the clock knew it would long outlive everyone present, and it wouldn't let a second pass without reminding us.

The only thing in the room more threatening than the clock was the man sitting in front of it.

"Um...Mr. Gardener," Charles began, "this is my nephew Adam. Adam, this is the founder and owner of Ingeneuity, Mr. Lyle Gardener."

Lyle was in his mid-thirties. He was unusually thin and his hair was already silvering, and he had an arrogance about him that made me feel inferior. He scrutinized me for an uncomfortably long time, an elaborately carved pipe protruding from the left side of his mouth. Then he rose, taking his pipe out with his left hand and extending his right hand to me, forming a stiff, alarming smile.

"It's an honor to meet you, Adam," Lyle said.

"Thank you, sir," was all I could muster. My hand was encased in Mr. Gardener's surprisingly solid, enveloping grip. I felt right away the man was dangerous, but I also knew Mr. Gardener may be the one man who could give me what I needed. If I wanted to live forever, I'd have to fly as close to that alarming smile as possible.

***

I would come to know that same smile on a face fifty years older, and the memory of it still makes me feel like a child.

I went to live in Lyle's house on December 25, 2041. It was sterile, not a speck of dust, and elegant in a clinical sort of way. The bedroom in which I now resided was a shrine to Adam-1 filled with his pictures and diplomas on the walls – constant reminders that I was him and that I should live my life as if it was a continuation of his. That might have comforted me, seeing my grandpa as a father figure who loved my mom and would protect me from Lyle. But with my mother's murderer forcing my c-father on me, I began to wonder if Adam-1 had always been in league with Lyle, and if he had only used my mom for his own selfish needs. Needs that had led to her death.

For the first time, I began to resent my clone-father.

I never worked up the courage to ask Lyle to take the stuff down. Once I took a framed picture of Adam-1 and Grandma Lily off the dresser and put it in the drawer, replacing it with the Disneyland photo of my mom and me. The next day the other picture was back out and mine was nowhere to be found.

"Why did you put your picture in the drawer?" he asked at dinner that night.

"I just liked my other picture more," I said. I kept my eyes on my food.

"It's disrespectful, Adam. Remember who you are."

"I don't remember him at all," I whispered.

"Don't ever answer back to me again."

I didn't answer back or move any of Adam-1's relics again. But it made me begin to loathe my c-father every time I walked into my bedroom, and every time I woke in the morning. If Lyle thought he could force me into becoming my c-father, the strategy was backfiring.

So I thought. What Lyle knew, and I didn't, was the power of a ticking clock.

***

In the world beyond my bedroom, change was happening quickly by 2042. Cloning moved further into the mainstream. More than 100,000 clones were born during that year alone. The first private schools exclusively for clones opened their doors, though most people encouraged the integration of clones and non-clones in schools and society, and nearly all early divisions proved to be short-lived. The majority of the new wills were written with a "cloning clause" that indicated whether or not the person wanted to be cloned upon death, and if so, who should be the guardian and what the financial arrangements would be. Most churches strongly discouraged cloning – especially upon death – but nearly all of them allowed and encouraged clones to join their parishes.

More sensationally, a few "clone cults" sprang up on the fringe that believed humans should become their own gods as a form of ancestor-descendant worship. They believed that eventually only the people who cloned themselves would live forever, and that those who put their faith in an external God were doomed to die and pass into oblivion. This, not coincidentally, was exactly what Lyle wanted the people to believe. If people were convinced that cloning was the only possible afterlife and Lyle controlled the cloning establishment, he could theoretically hold the keys to heaven. Lyle was not directly responsible for these religious movements, but some of his associates encouraged it by writing books and quietly bankrolling the new churches.

On the extreme opposite side of the religious fence stood the growing cult spawned by Gabrielle Burns. Her journal, now a holy relic, described how she believed the archangel Gabriel had charged her to save the human race by killing the first human clone. If she failed as savior, all humanity would perish. The "Gabrielites" believed that her two failed assassination attempts demonstrated that God had decided to spare Adam-2 and instead destroy everyone for their acceptance of cloning. They therefore no longer called for my destruction, but prepared themselves for the end times that my presence would visit upon the earth.

There were other monumental social developments underway. While much of conservative America adamantly opposed cloning, many liberals decried what they considered a far more damaging development. What had begun as medicinal gene therapy to cure serious defects in embryos was gradually transforming into wholesale manipulation of the genes. Several years ago, some wealthier parents began picking out their child's gender, eye color, hair color, and height. Now they could start choosing better looks, nice teeth, a genial disposition, strong immune systems and, naturally, greater intelligence for their babies-to-be. Initially only the rich could afford such perks, increasing their advantages over the lower and middle classes. And even now the greatest enhancements can only be had by the wealthy.

Although most conservatives had initially opposed such procedures on moral and religious grounds, much of that opposition was eventually whittled away as powerful and affluent pundits spoke out in favor of genetic manipulation. They argued it was a moral imperative to provide the best possible start for your children, God wanted humanity to constantly improve ourselves and therefore gave us these tools with which to do it, other countries would do it and we needed to follow suit to maintain a competitive edge, it would be un-American to stifle the freedom of parents to develop their children as they saw fit, and the crazy liberals shouldn't be allowed to determine whether or not our children were smart.

By 2040 the first intelligence-enhanced babies were being born. Within a few months new private schools were already being prepared for them. Although safe, effective, and relatively inexpensive memory-boosting "smart pills" were already on the market, the genetically enhanced brain would always be steps above a non-enhanced one and would get a bigger boost from the smart pills. It began to look as if babies like Lily and I had been born a few years too early.

The entertainment industry hopped on the cloning and gene-enhancement bandwagon. The story of the years between my birth and my mom's murder was quickly made into a movie, and another even more popular one came out about the life and death of Gabrielle Burns, infusing the Gabrielites with thousands more converts. Then there were the several cloning-related series bombarding homes including such classics as C-Father Knows Best, sitcoms like The Addams-2 Family and Welcome Back, Adam, the cheesy new soap operas As the Brave New World Turns and Two Lives to Live, a serio-comedic take-off of the old police drama Adam-12, and the action series The Clone Ranger for which I had coloring books, action figures, and a lunchbox.

Pet cloning had been going on for decades, but it was seeing a similar resurgence as the ability to clone mammals became more routine and less expensive. Lyle, as you might have guessed, was not exactly a big "pets" person, although I'd have loved one during that time of my life. Anything to get away from my great-grandfather and Lily-2. By the time she turned four, I was beginning to feel increasingly uncomfortable playing with her. She always wanted to re-create scenes that Lily-1 had told her about in letters, like when they went on their first real date to see Sleepless in Seattle. It was awkward to treat Lily like a kid sister when she was always trying to kiss me on the mouth.

"Like before," she said to me, showing me Grandma Lily's letter about their first romantic kiss when Lily-1 was sixteen and Adam-1 was twenty-two. She knew every detail of Adam and Lily's courtship. It would be many more years before I would read my clone-father's brief summary of his "romance" of Lily. Beginning with Lily's ninth birthday party, he gave the daughter of Ingeneuity's CEO a white lily whenever he visited. Lily was immediately won over, and Lyle encouraged him to keep wooing her.

"She seems only really happy when she knows you're coming over," Lyle told me. "But I hope you're serious." He tapped me on the shoulder a couple times with his pipe. "I'd be extremely upset if you ever hurt her."

I guess it was the kind of thing any lovingly protective father might say, but stated with his usual calm severity that always made me uncomfortable.

"Oh, yes sir," I answered, "I'm very serious." And I was. I was then. When I was eighteen, working for Ingeneuity was all I cared about. I would've dated a garbage disposal.

On Lily's eighteenth birthday they made love for the first time. Six weeks later Adam became the oldest date at her prom, with Lily graduating from high school and Adam completing his doctorate in bioengineering soon after. About that same time it grew clear that the night of their first union had also seen the zygotic union of their two gametes. As Adam had hoped. They were hurriedly married on June 5, 1999, and their daughter was born seven months and one day later. They named her Sarah.

*

Lily-2 started playing Helen Reddy's rendition of Delta Dawn as it indicated in Lily-1's letter, and then she puckered up for her first romantic kiss from me.

"But it says here we have to wait till you're sixteen," I noted scientifically.

"No we don't!" she insisted.

I turned off the music and shrugged. "That's what it says, Lily. I'm sorry." I smiled sympathetically, said the years would go quickly, and made a small excuse to go back to my room.

Which was really Adam-1's. But I slowly learned how to function in that bedroom. I pretended to ignore most of Adam-1's photos and personal items. Unable to block them without assistance, I hid my c-father's things behind holograms. I immersed myself in holo-books, played the new homnivision games, and inserted myself into homnivision movies, interacting inside new and old films. Within those I could perform the heroic acts of Indiana Jones, Luke Skywalker, and Harry Potter, at times changing events through my actions. I saved Old Yeller, the father in The Lion King, and Bambi's mother. Once I played the homnivision version of the film Gabrielle intending to modify the outcome by coming to my mom's rescue. But like my character in the movie, I ran away.

I hid my cowardice inside my e-journal to my future clone, telling him not to worry about being the same as Adam-1 and me, and not to follow orders from Lyle. I guess I was asking him to have the courage we lacked. I didn't include the fact that I believed Lyle killed my mother, figuring I'd add that after Lyle was dead. Although the e-journal was encrypted, there seemed too much risk in including such information. If Lyle ever found out for certain that I knew he'd murdered my mom, I would surely be next.

Sometimes I'd v-chat with other clones, but I always hid behind an avatar. I didn't want them to see that they were talking to the first of their kind. Other times I'd create a hologram from a picture of our old dining room or my old bedroom that would make me feel like I was back in my mom's home. There I daydreamed about Mom and Evelyn and Jack. And about killing Lyle.

I plotted my revenge thousands of times in countless different ways. Could I pull it off as perfectly as Lyle had pulled off my mother's murder? Would I be able to kill him at all? I felt small, intimidated, and inferior every time he was around. Where would I ever find the courage to murder him?

Table of Contents

20

The first nightmare came a couple years later, soon after my tenth birthday. The media had just interviewed me about my life, my health, and how I was doing in school. They wanted to see if I was a normal, healthy boy, or if I was going wrong in some way. No doubt many anxious parents of clones were watching as well, as they knew I could well be the proverbial canary in the mineshaft. Fortunately, I was physically fine.

My mind was another matter. After a couple years, the strain of living in my c-father's shrine while being raised by my mother's murderer and living with the young girl who thought she was my wife had begun to take its toll. My sense of self-worth was zero, my sense of self-loathing overwhelming. I had no friends, not even in the virtual schools.

Then there were all those photos of Adam-1 at practically every age, scattered throughout the house. I could see myself turning into the images in the pictures at nine and ten years old, and I could assume that, as the years continued to flow by, I'd eventually look like all the photos of Adam-1 when he was older. I could see myself in the future, and I was him.

I found myself wondering if I was wrong to fight against becoming my c-father. I had his DNA, and I owed my entire existence to him. In a real sense, I could be him. My imaginings of his life could be authentic memories imparted from a soul we both shared.

And then there was the most compelling argument of all. Trying to have a separate identity was difficult. Maybe it was difficult because I was fighting against my soul's true nature.

I'd still want to kill Lyle for what he did to my mother, but I wouldn't have to fight Adam-1 every day for my identity. Becoming rich and powerful would be a snap – simply a matter of assuming a position of importance at USCS, which the board of directors had already assured. And the photos promised that Lily-2 was destined to grow into a stunningly attractive woman. It wasn't like I'd have to work that hard to woo her. We were already married.

As I let such ideas fester in my head, life grew easier. Only when I thought of my mother did an inner voice tug at me. Begging me to be my own person. Live a life I really wanted to live. The card Adam-1 gave me for my tenth birthday amplified that voice. No longer a sentimental hologram having me sit on his lap. Now it was just letters like this:

Hello Adam,

And congratulations! Ten years old. Double digits. When I was ten I saw the San Diego Padres win the National League pennant. Unfortunately, I was already an orphan. Let's be sure to hug Mom after you read this.

This is a big year, and I know it's going to be a great one for us. I need you to start reading some beginner books on biology and chemistry, and I've taken the liberty of compiling some notes and experiments for you to go over. You'll find it as fascinating as I did, and the earlier you start laying the foundation the better. With any luck, we'll find a way to live forever without cloning before your life is over, and then we won't have to worry about being cloned and losing all those memories from our past lives like we did this time. The power to give us, and the rest of humanity, the remarkable gift of immortality is in our hands. An exciting chapter in that quest begins now!

– A

Adam-1 had never spoken for both of us so much, or given me such specific instructions. It was written with an easy, familial style, but he was telling me what to do with my life in no uncertain terms. For the first time the thought crossed my mind – what would Adam-1 do if I disobeyed him?

Three nights later I had my first encounter with a nightmare that would haunt me for the next forty years of my life.

I found myself standing in an old, snow-dusted cemetery late at night. Stars glittered through the branches of tall, dead trees, and moonlight reflected brightly off the snow. In front of me was an ornate headstone with an epitaph that read "Adam Silva Elwell, Beloved Husband, Father, and Clone-Father (June 12, 1974 – June 5, 2033)." Lyle didn't want to remind me that Adam-1 was dead, but Mom had taken me to his grave once, and the dream grave resembled the real stone except this one was bigger and the whole "Clone-Father" thing wasn't on the original.

Another notable difference was that this grave was open.

I peered over the edge, sure I'd see my grandfather's casket. Instead I saw myself – a ten-year-old boy peering over the edge of a grave pit. It unnerved me, but I couldn't back away. Instead I waved. The image waved back. That shook me up even more. What a stupid way to see if it was a reflection. For my next test, I crouched and quickly stood back up. The image did the same thing. It was definitely me. In fact, I could even see the wooden outline of the mirror. I relaxed a little. Until the image waved again, this time of its own accord.

I froze with fear, but that fear dissipated when the figure welcomingly stretched his hand out to me. I thought of Evelyn's father holding her hand, and of the father who had saved me from the witch in a more distant dream. He wanted to be my loving father after all. One who would also feel the loss of my mom, whom he had loved as much as I did. And a father who would stand by me and protect me from Lyle.

I jumped feet first into the shadowed hole, trying to land on the wooden frame of the mirror, but the edge was narrower than I thought. My feet hit the glass, which cracked. The hands of the mirror image lurched toward the cracks, grabbing my feet. I was being yanked down into the mirror before I could fully comprehend the betrayal.

A frantic struggle ensued between my mirror image and me. He managed to get on top of my chest. I struck him in the nose, and it shattered off like glass, revealing a hole with a bit of skull showing around it. For a moment I thought I had an advantage, assuming the rest of his body could be easily shattered. But before I could act, the image grabbed a shard of mirror and stabbed through my hand, pinning it to the dirt floor. He climbed out of the mirror and out of the pit. I yelled, but I heard nothing. I pounded on the mirror that trapped me, but I couldn't break it. I searched for a way through it like a fly on a windowpane, but the invisible barrier was solid.

Adam-1 stared back down at me from where I'd stood a minute before. He was older now – the same age as he was in pictures taken not long before he died. His stare was passionless and grim. Great-Grandpa Lyle walked up beside him. He had a deep, disapproving frown on his face. Finally Grandma Lily appeared on the other side of Adam-1. She leaned against my c-father and smiled in a way that made my blood run colder than it already was. Both Adam-1 and Lyle began shoveling dirt onto the mirror, each shovelful landing with the same thud I heard when Lyle threw dirt on my mother's coffin. The last thing I could see was my grandpa's stony face. He saw me looking back at him and threw in another pile of dirt. I was in darkness.

That's when I woke. In the darkness, I imagined all those photos of Adam-1 staring down at me in my bed as the Adam in my dream stared down at me in my grave. I pulled the covers over my head and didn't sleep again that night. Scared of myself.

In the years that followed, everything about the dream remained exactly the same except that as I got older, so did my mirror reflection.

***

As the months went by, I found myself fighting less and less to stay separate from Adam-1, while at the same time liking myself as a person less and less. Adam-1 was winning the battle of wills. It became increasingly rare for me to fight for my individuality. Whenever I realized this, it frightened me. Frightening me even more, Lyle appeared to be far more pleased with me.

I jumped when his hand patted me on the shoulder. "Good boy," he said, picking up my e-reader and nodding. "This is a great intro on genetics."

I nodded. Lyle played with the screen for a few seconds, then placed it back down in front of me.

"Keep it up, Adam. You're turning out just fine," he said, patting me again. Almost looking proud.

As he walked away, I turned back to my reader. Although the same book was on the screen, it was now a version with Adam-1's notations.

On December 20, 2044, as I sat in bed looking at a framed photo of my mom on the third anniversary of her murder, I grew determined to end my downward spiral. Killing Lyle would break me away from my c-father and avenge my mother at the same time.

It was time to implement the murder plot I'd daydreamed about for years.

I had to do it before I lost what little fight was still lingering within me.

Table of Contents

21

I couldn't orchestrate the kind of ruse Lyle had used to kill my mother. There was nobody to frame. Nor was I willing to get caught. I was the only one who knew Lyle's evil heart, and I wasn't going to have the entire world condemn me – the first human clone – for killing his own great-grandfather in cold blood. Ever since my mother's funeral, I'd had the desire to prove the anti-cloners wrong by being seen as an upstanding citizen. Murdering my great-grandfather would disgrace my mother, myself, and perhaps all clones. And it could convince even the non-fanatics that I was indeed the Antichrist.

That left me only two options: Lyle had to die either by accident or suicide.

I dreamt up many accidents: falling down the stairs or off the balcony, drowning in the bathtub, electrocution in the bathtub. But they were all either too complicated, too hard to conceal, or not fatal enough. His death had to be absolutely certain.

That left suicide. A gunshot to the head by a large caliber gun would suffice.

I couldn't arrange it at Lyle's house. Lyle had a live-in butler and maid, and I couldn't risk those variables. It would have to be at the cabin in the Sequoias. In the cabin's master bedroom, Lyle kept a 9 mm. semi-automatic pistol that he carefully cleaned in the living room whenever we visited. When not cleaning it, he kept it in a locked drawer of his antique nightstand. I assumed that the key was somewhere nearby in case he needed to get the gun in the middle of the night. I found it in a slit in his mattress near the headboard. The gun wasn't loaded, but the ammunition was hidden under a false floor in the same drawer. The gun's handgrip had built-in fingertip sensors so only he could fire it.

I took a photo of the gun in the drawer and used it to help me find information on the web. There were instructions on how to load the magazine into the handgrip and how to take the safety off. As I suspected, the sensors on the handle detected fingerprints, and there was no override unless he authorized it. Which meant I had to get Lyle to hold the gun while the trigger was pulled. No problem, since this was going to be a suicide.

I considered incapacitating him with chloroform or slipping him a Mickey, but I knew they would leave traces in the body and the district attorney would realize that foul play was afoot. But there was one drug that wouldn't cause suspicion. He already used it.

Lyle Gardener was an insomniac. Not too surprising; any man plotting to be a god would have a lot on his mind at night. Not liking to swallow pills in his old age, he'd taken to a liquid "sleep drink" that he always poured into a glass of wine before retiring.

That made it all too easy for me. I just had to figure out the correct quantity to make him sleep so soundly I could put the gun in his hand and force his finger to pull the trigger without waking him. Too little and he would wake up and kill me. Too much and his heart would go into cardiac arrest, triggering an alarm that would send emergency vehicles to his aid. If they successfully revived him, he might conclude that I was behind the overdose.

In which case he would kill me.

I researched his sleep drink and how large of a dose he was already giving himself, and guestimated an amount that would knock him out more than usual but not kill him. I felt about ninety percent confident that I'd guestimated correctly. If I'd learned anything from murder mysteries, there was no such thing as a perfect murder. Ninety percent would have to be an acceptable risk.

My second concern was to avoid the nights he didn't use his sleep drink. About once a week, even when we stayed at the cabin, he would welcome a female guest late at night, after Lily and I were put to bed. I eventually realized they were high-price call girls. I caught glimpses of some of them from my bedroom window as they approached the front door. Most of them were tall, beautiful blondes whose faces and hairstyles were reminiscent of an adult Lily. Some resembled my mother, but I tried not to think about that.

I had to slip the extra sleeping potion into his wine on a night he wasn't having visitors, and obviously I had to do it when he wouldn't see me.

On December 20, the third anniversary of my mom's death, it all came clear. I would kill Lyle on Christmas Eve.

*

I could hardly contain my excitement. For one thing, I was confident he wouldn't have any guests on Christmas Eve. He wouldn't want a restless Lily to hear someone enter and think Santa Claus had arrived.

Each year we left milk and chocolate chip cookies for Santa Claus. Though I was too old for such a thing, it still made Lily's eyes brighten at bedtime. Lyle would drink the milk and eat the cookies after his daughter was asleep, even though he hated milk. Drinking it was the most unselfish thing I'd ever known Lyle to do, especially considering that he did it without anyone supposedly knowing that he was doing this charitable act. He could just as easily have dumped it down the sink. But it complicated my plan. He would taste the drug in the milk.

My solution was to convince him to do away with this charmingly unselfish "milk" tradition. Instead of leaving milk for Santa like everyone else did, I'd suggest that we leave him a glass of wine.

The only stumbling block I could foresee was Lily. If she found the whole wine idea offensive, Lyle wouldn't do it. But on Christmas Eve, to my delight, Lily clapped her hands and laughed at the plan, apparently thrilled at the idea that our family had a special relationship with Santa, and could give him the drink he really wanted.

"Well, I guess it's settled then," said Lyle to the happy girl on his knee. "I'll break out the best bottle of wine I have, and maybe Santa will be extra generous next year."

Lily's eyes got big for a moment, but then she frowned. "You can't bribe Santa Claus, Daddy!"

Lyle and I burst out laughing – real laughter. I don't think either of us had known that Lily was aware of what a bribe was. It looked like kindergarten was teaching her well.

"You're right, sweet pea. Daddy was just kidding," he responded, and shot me a knowing wink. It made me feel sick to my stomach, but I managed to keep grinning.

We put the glass of wine and the plate of cookies out near the fireplace, and then Lyle took Lily upstairs to get her ready for bed. As soon as they were gone, I put on my gloves and measured out some of his sleeping potion using a small vial from the chemistry set Lyle had given me last year – another blatant encouragement to follow in my c-father's footsteps, but one that now might come back to bite him. I carefully poured the measured amount into the red wine. Rinsing out the vial in the kitchen, I began imagining the courtroom drama that would unfold. The hearing for my mom's attempted murder six years ago gave my imagination plenty to work with. I could picture the attorney asking me about the events of that night, and whether I had any idea that my great-grandfather was distraught.

"No at all," I'd respond. "I thought we all went to bed happy. It was Christmas!"

"Of course," my imagined attorney responded genially. "Can you describe what happened after you went to bed on Christmas Eve?"

"I woke up to a loud bang and ran down the stairs. I called out for my great-grandpa, but no one answered, so I went into his bedroom."

"And what did you see there?"

I would shake my head in mock horror.

"Steady son," the attorney would say, "I know this is hard."

I would gulp. "I saw my Great-Grandpa Lyle. Dead."

"Was there anybody else in the room when you arrived?"

"No. Not that I saw."

"And where was the gun?"

"It had fallen to the floor next to his hand."

"That's all, son," would be the attorney's tender reply as he gently helped me down from the witness stand.

Then the experts would begin to testify.

"Due to the fingerprint sensors, could anyone other than Lyle Gardener have fired that gun?"

"Absolutely not. And, in fact, tests proved that he did indeed fire the weapon himself."

Finally the doctor who performed the autopsy would come to the stand.

"Did your autopsy reveal any hint of foul play?"

"Not at all. The only kind of drug we found in his system was from the medicine he always used for his insomnia. We found traces of that in a wine glass near the fireplace with Lyle Gardener's fingerprints and saliva on it. In my opinion, this could be nothing but suicide."

*

It seemed foolproof. I smiled as I dried off the vial and put it in my pocket.

Lyle was coming down the stairs as I was on my way to my room.

"Good night," I said as innocently as I could.

"Come with me for a second, Adam."

He sounded friendly, but my heart leapt into my throat. Somehow he knew. Did he have secret cameras in the living room and kitchen? I followed him back down to the living room, searching to make some excuse, but with a growing dread that Lyle was about to kill me. I glanced at the front door. Should I make a run for it? But where would I go? It was more than a mile to the nearest neighbor. I'd freeze to death trying to hide in the mountains. I was trapped.

He led me to the fireplace and turned, smiling and holding out a cookie.

"Santa won't miss one cookie," he said.

I forced a smile. "Thank you." Was it poisoned?

"Thank you for the great suggestion. Santa will sleep more happily tonight."

I nodded.

He picked up the wine and cookies and led me into the kitchen. There he added his regular dose to the wine and poured me a glass of milk, and we ate and drank together. Lyle asked me about my studies and talked about Christmases with my c-father at the cabin. I watched every time he took a swig of wine. He didn't seem to notice anything special about the drink, and seemed oblivious to my intense interest in his drinking of it.

"I guess we better get to bed before Santa comes," Lyle said, rubbing his eyes after the wine and the milk and the cookies had disappeared.

I agreed. The cookies didn't seem to be poisoned, and his wine was already taking effect. I'd been worrying for nothing. Lyle wasn't on to me after all.

Table of Contents

22

By my calculations I had to wait two to three hours for Lyle to be in his deepest sleep. I lay in bed, going over the plot again and again until the monotony began to make my eyes feel heavy. I glanced at the clock. Only thirty minutes had gone by. With my adrenaline up, I hadn't imagined staying awake would be a problem. I went over the plan again, but felt myself slipping into sleep. I set the alarm on my cell for midnight just in case.

The next thing I knew my clock read 3:00 A.M., and I was late. Did my alarm ever wake me? I couldn't remember. I felt flustered and stressed, my mind in a fog. I ran down the stairs and entered Lyle's bedroom. He was breathing gently and steadily.

I wasn't. I put my gloves on and pulled the little golden key out of its hiding spot in the mattress. The key fit into the lock. As I turned the key and opened the door, it felt like I was watching myself do it from above rather than doing it myself. I saw myself crouched, staring at the gun in the drawer. Was I having second thoughts? Would I actually be able to fire a gun at a sleeping man's head? Even Lyle's? I began moving again, taking the gun out and slipping out the fake bottom to reveal the magazine. I slipped it into the handgrip, removed the safety, and stood up to face him.

There I hesitated again. I needed to put the gun in Lyle's hand. But what if he woke up? He couldn't – not with all the drugs in his system. But what if he did? They'd been wearing off for two or three hours. He would have the gun in his hand. He would kill me right then. I could be dead five seconds from now.

With that same detachment from before, I saw myself place the gun into the palm of Lyle's hand; carefully wrapping his warm fingers around the grip and making sure his fingertips fell on the sensors. He didn't stir.

I turned the gun towards Lyle's head. I was panting hard, my blood pounding in my temples. There was nothing to stop me now. I would kill the almighty Lyle who had intimidated me since my earliest memories and finally avenge my mother. If I could just bring myself to do it.

But my stomach clenched. Something was wrong. Something about Lyle being so deeply unconscious that he let me put a gun in his hand and point it at his head without stirring. The cross-examination of the autopsy began playing in my head, the prosecutor asking the autopsy doctor about the drugs in Lyle's system.

"Did you notice anything unusual about the sleeping agent in Mr. Gardener's system?"

"Well," began the doctor. "It seemed unusually high. Like maybe he was trying to kill himself with a drug overdose before he decided to shoot himself."

"But your tests revealed that he had consumed the drug approximately five hours before the shooting. Could Lyle Gardener have been awake five hours following the overdose on his sleep drink?"

The doctor was confused for a moment. "Why no," he said, "he couldn't."

"So someone else must have forced him to pull the trigger while he slept."

"Yes, that's the only way."

"And who would have done something like that?" sneered the prosecutor, turning towards the audience and directing everyone's attention at me.

The doctor stood up and pointed in the same direction. "It must have been the clone!"

I had the gun ready to go. All I had to do was force his finger to pull back on the trigger. But would I be killing myself as well? Did I just now realize a gaping hole that would scuttle my scheme and leave me as the obvious murderer? How could I have missed such a conspicuous problem? If only I'd been born a little later and given enhanced intelligence.

Something in the room caught the periphery of my vision, and I looked up to see my image reflected in Lyle's bedroom mirror. Then it wasn't me anymore, but Adam-1 in his grave, exactly like the vision in my nightmares. He began banging furiously on the mirror, trying to stop me. But was he trying to stop me for Lyle's sake or for my sake – or for his own sake?

The gun was wrenched out of my hand and pointed at me. I cried out in shock and fright. Lyle was glowering at me, completely awake, aiming the gun at my forehead.

"Did you really think I'd let you kill me!" he bellowed, standing up and pushing me to the floor. He grabbed my shoulder with his free hand and began shaking me against the floor. "You're dead, Adam, and you'll never wake up!" He repeated the last two words, "Wake up! Adam, wake up."

I woke up with a start. Lyle was looming over me, but not with a gun. He was only gently shaking me awake. The light of dawn was filtering through my bedroom curtain. It was morning, and I'd slept through the opportunity to kill him.

"There you are, sleepy head," Lyle said. "Come on, we're going to open the presents."

"Yeah," I said. "I'll be right there." My head was so hazy I don't know if I actually managed to speak out loud.

"We'll be waiting," he replied merrily enough, as if I hadn't just now tried to kill him in my dream.

After he left the room, I checked my cell's alarm. It had indeed been set for midnight. I must have slept straight through it.

I made my way down to the living room. He was seated in his leather armchair. Lily-2 sat by her mountain of gifts.

"Yea!" she cried. I tried to look equally enthusiastic as Lily bounced up and handed me a present with a card attached. "Daddy said we should open these first," she said, holding up a small box and card for herself.

"You first," I said before she exploded from pent-up excitement.

She didn't argue as she ripped open her Christmas card and scanned it.

"From before?" she asked Lyle, her eyes lighting up even more.

He nodded and smiled. "It was Adam's wedding present to you. You were holding it the night you transitioned," he said, a euphemism for Lily-1's suicide.

She tore away the wrapping paper from a little white box and opened it. With a great deal of ceremony, for a five year old, Lily-2 lifted a gold chain from the box that led to a locket attached at the end. She opened it up and gazed at the tiny, oval photos.

"Look, Adam! It's us!" She showed them to me. Portraits of our clone-parents right before they were married.

"That's great," I said.

"Now open yours!"

I opened the envelope and took out the Christmas card. Inside was a short note in Lyle's handwriting.

Deep sleep last night?

My breath left me. He nodded at me, half-grinning around his pipe.

"Now open the present."

Tears flooded my eyes as I forced my hands to unwrap the heavy present. Inside was a wooden box, and inside the box was some wadded-up paper. Each piece of paper had a picture of my murdered mother printed on it. It was a still shot from the holovideo he had sent on the 911 call as I hugged her limp body. A close-up. Only her lifeless face and eyes were visible over a tuft of my hair.

I took the wads out one at a time, slowly unraveling each one, not stopping until I saw what lay at the bottom.

"Well, what is it?" Lily asked.

My fingers touched the cold steel of a pistol. It was identical to the one in his nightstand, but for one difference. This one didn't have fingerprint sensors.

How stupid I had been. It was clear now. Of course Lyle had the house monitored by hidden cameras. He also tracked my web use. He had pieced it all together, and had seen my wine-for-Santa Claus ploy for exactly what it was. He had turned it around and spiked the milk last night with some drug.

"It's a toy gun," Lyle lied, answering the desperate Lily for me. "And it's loaded."

I met Lyle's confident, challenging eyes.

"Would you like to use it, Adam?"

My focus dropped back down to the gun. Was he bluffing about it being loaded or really giving me a chance to kill him? I pictured myself grabbing the gun and firing again and again into his evil body, Lily-2 screaming in horror as her father's blood splattered over her festively wrapped presents. Feeling the climactic rush and release flow through my body. Release from so much anger, pain, humiliation, and loss. I stared at one of the unraveled pictures of my dead mother.

"Adam?" he persisted.

I'll never know if the gun was loaded or not. I was too frightened to call his bluff. I slammed the box lid down and ran up to my room in shame as Lily cried out for me to come back. I buried my face into my pillow and whispered the same three words again and again:

"I'm sorry Mom, I'm sorry Mom, I'm sorry Mom..."

***

The next few months were a time of steady fear. I knew then I couldn't beat Lyle and lived only at his mercy. I did everything I was told without question, never daring to meet the old man's eyes. And he looked down on me with satisfaction. My uncontested submission might have put him at ease, but my defeated capitulation gave him deep pleasure.

In late April, Lyle had a massive stroke. He regained consciousness on April 29 and the doctors predicted that he'd survive with some impairment. But during the early morning of April 30, 2045, Lyle Gardener was pronounced dead.

Relief filled me at the announcement, followed by despair that I'd wallowed in fear and cowardice instead of avenging my mother's death. The power had been in my grasp, but my Hamlet-esque inaction had allowed my mother's murder to go unpunished, and now the opportunity for vengeance was forever gone.

As Lyle's casket was lowered in the ground, and I held a crying Lily in my arms, I realized that I would never be able to forgive myself for that.

I vowed to never run away again.

Table of Contents

Part II

The Book of Lily

Whoever has lived long enough to find out what life is, knows how deep a debt of gratitude we owe to Adam, the first great benefactor of our race. He brought death into the world.

– Mark Twain

23

It was the winter of 2022 when Lyle invited Adam-1 to "discuss their futures." He had recently purchased the cabin for Adam and Lily, set among giant redwoods in a section of Sequoia National Park being sold off by the government in the form of 99-year leases for expensive, secluded mountain getaways. The lease was expensive, but the cabin was as rustic as it looked – a two-story, old-time pile of logs featuring four small bedrooms, one bath, a kitchen connected to a large living room via an open doorway, and a perennial smell of pine inside. It was not plugged into the grid, and had its own bank of solar cells for heating water, running the refrigerator, and offering electricity if you wanted to connect to the web. The wood-burning stove and kerosene lamps had no need of such modern eccentricities. Nor did the grandfather clock ticking thunderously away in the living room – the one Adam had first seen and heard in Lyle's office. Lyle had made it his wedding present to Lily, a family tradition dating back to Lyle's great-grandfather, a clockmaker.

Lyle was 68 years old, and as he handed Adam-1 a glass of wine, he admitted that he was beginning to sense the specter of death before him, and there was only one solution.

"What is it?" Adam asked, more for himself than out of concern for Lyle's frailty.

Lyle pointed at Adam with his pipe, and smiled, as if about to impart a piece of secret wisdom. "Cloning."

Adam waited for Lyle to go on, then shrugged when it was apparent he wouldn't. "Sure, we can create healthy new cells and organs, but it's not going to help us against most cancers or brain deterioration or pneumonia or a million other things that can kill us."

"I'm not talking about therapeutic cloning."

Adam shook his head, unsure of where Lyle was headed.

"We're both going to die," Lyle continued, and frowned. "I've given up the possibility that we can find any miracle cure before our natural deaths. That miracle is eighty years down the road at best. Immortality won't be reached until we can put these things," he grabbed his own forearm, "into artificial bodies that can be copied and recreated at will. We won't see any of that, and we won't be able to extend our lives long enough to reach the next plateau. In the meantime, there's only one form of immortality available, and that's cloning."

"Well...that's not really a good option," Adam said, feeling anger beginning to swell in his chest. "We'd still have to die, and the clone wouldn't be me. He wouldn't have my memories or personality. Or all my same phenotypes. And there'd be mitochondrial DNA from the mother's egg, so it wouldn't even be my identical twin." He shrugged, barely in control. "What good is that to me?"

This man who was supposed to give him immortality, whose daughter he had married for that sole purpose, was instead sentencing him to death.

"No, your clone wouldn't be you. But he'd be as close as we can come," Lyle responded with surprising calm. Adam was already recalling a divorce lawyer he knew. "And as far as memories are concerned, you leave him those through letters and videos. He feels a connection to you and continues your life and dreams because he's going to want his future clone to do the same for him."

Adam nodded, indifferent. Would he be able to get custody of Sarah?

"I'm disappointed too," Lyle continued, "but I think it's human destiny – what mankind's religions predicted long ago. But now we're creating our own reincarnation. An improved version, because now our next life will have our own DNA and can know exactly what happened in our previous lives. Do you see? We're resurrecting the bodies of the dead just like God claims he'll do in the Book of Revelation."

Adam began to refocus on Lyle's words. Books he'd read years ago stirred in long-dormant folds of his mind. "But we'll do it ourselves."

"Exactly. We'll be fulfilling the religious prophecies that mankind has always yearned for, hoping some non-existent spiritual beings would give us if we worshipped them properly. Only fools who continue to depend on God will die, while those of us who take our afterlives in our own hands will actually have an afterlife."

Adam stared into the flames that danced in the hearth, dimly aware that the wine was affecting him. According to his journal, he sensed "a ring of taunting and twisted truth" to Lyle's vision. Had our ancestors really foretold cloning? Were we destined to die only to rise again under our own scientific powers? He mused to himself that the flames were those in Plato's Cave, and that for a moment he had turned away from the shadows of reality to view their true source.

"But I don't want to die."

Lyle paused. He stared at his pipe. "Nor do I."

"Why?" he asked, cautiously studying his father-in-law, aware that Lyle seemed to be forcing his curiosity.

Lyle pursed his lips, which Adam had come to recognize as an indication that Lyle was about to try to manipulate someone. The aging man took a large swallow of wine and put his glass down. He held out his pipe, regarding it as if under a hypnotic spell.

"My father was a strict Southern Baptist minister," he said. "And whenever I committed a sin, or when he wanted to believe I'd committed a sin, he'd grab a leather strap and give me thirty-nine lashes while mother prayed for God to forgive me."

Adam was silent as Lyle described the night of retribution just before his eighteenth birthday. He slid on a pair of gloves, loaded his father's shotgun, and stood over his sleeping parents for a long time in the darkness, delighting in the god-like power over his long-time tormentors. Finally he leveled the gun at his mother's head and fired.

She never woke, but his father jolted upright to find his son aiming the rifle at him.

"God won't be able to punish me anymore." It was a line Lyle had rehearsed all night.

His father turned and looked at what remained of his wife's face before slowly turning back to his son. Lyle had expected his father to recoil in fear at his impending death, but he sensed only rage.

"Demon. God will punish you."

"But I'm your God," Lyle claimed, wagging the shotgun playfully.

"You're no god!" he said before lunging at his son.

Lyle fired, the force of the blast pushing his father's body back into the bed, the headboard dripping with his father's enraged brain.

*

Adam-1 kept his eyes fixed on his wine. He wasn't a good actor, and he didn't want Lyle to see the doubt on his face. Lyle often told him melodramatic stories to exaggerate his power. It was one of his methods of manipulation for those closest to him. Share a dark secret that would make people nervous to cross him. Adam had long ago researched the murder of Lyle's parents. The evidence was straightforward. A neighbor was arrested and convicted. What Adam didn't know was whether Lyle's story was a lie, or if he truly believed it, fabricating a memory that would have him avenging himself on his abusive parents. He felt it wise not to disturb such delusions.

"Your sister doesn't know?"

A quiet smile crept over Lyle's face. "Well, Louise never was quite right. Though I'm sure walking into the master bedroom at the age of four and seeing me standing over our parents' bloody corpses didn't help." He laughed under his breath. It was the first time Adam could remember seeing him laugh. "I considered shooting her too, but then she asked if I could give her a glass of water and left the room. I figured she wouldn't testify against me. I still don't know if she ever really understood what happened."

"And now you're afraid your father and God will take revenge on you if you die?"

Lyle shook his head. "There is no God. Let's just say that I'll only feel truly victorious if I defy them by never dying." He paused, staring into the fire. "But if I'm wrong, I want to be in control of any soul I might have – not father or God or anyone else."

"So to this end you want us to have ourselves cloned after we die?" Adam confirmed.

He nodded. "If I can't save this current body, I want to make a copy of it. I want my genes to live on even if the current ones can't."

Adam leaned back in his chair, staring at the ceiling as his mind began racing through what all would have to be done. "Well, we're still several years from being able to conduct human cloning without the likelihood of serious defects."

"I know. We'll store samples of our DNA now in case anything happens to us before we've perfected the technology."

"You know, Ingeneuity will be severely penalized, maybe even shut down, if we're found to have cloned humans. We'll have to do it secretly, or the first one of us who dies will be the only one we're able to clone."

"I don't think so," Lyle said, sitting forward to tap Adam's shoulder with his pipe, his forced smile on his lips. He rose to refill his wine glass. "I think when we announce the first clone and people see him as a healthy, happy baby boy, the laws will be relaxed. I have friends who will encourage it in Congress."

Adam realized then that Lyle was primarily concerned with having himself cloned. And Adam wasn't going to take the chance of being second and possibly being denied this new afterlife. At last, an achievable afterlife. If Lyle started going downhill, Adam would make sure he died before his father-in-law. He wrote that he felt eagerness, not dread, at the prospect. He could have a second chance at immortality, escape his marriage with Lily and his shackles to Lyle, and still have Sarah in his life, again as a mom rather than as a daughter. And, after all, he had the perfect name to be the first cloned human being. Just as the religions had predicted reincarnation and resurrection, perhaps they had also predicted the name of the first human to be reborn. But instead of bringing Death upon mankind, he would eliminate it.

"What's your plan?"

Lyle half-grinned as he clenched his pipe in his mouth and refilled Adam's glass as well. He described how he wanted to spin Ingeneuity's therapeutic cloning division into a separate corporation, U.S. Cloning Systems, under the umbrella of Ingeneuity, putting Adam in charge of it. Only Adam and a handful of USCS employees would initially know about the human clone project. "After we're satisfied with our ability to clone a healthy human, the first one to die will be cloned. If it's me, we use a frozen egg from Lily and have my clone gestated in an artificial womb. If it's you, we use Sarah's frozen egg. Assuming everything looks good seven months later, we announce the impending birth to the world. My contacts in the media and government will do the rest.

"Then, over the next few years, cloning will become commonplace. Laws regarding who can be cloned, financial and familial responsibilities, inheritance issues, etcetera will be needed. A small group of wise men will determine how the human afterlife will be administered, and we'll be among them. Or, in one of our cases, our clone will be among them.

"We're needed, people like us. People who know what it's like to be left alone in the world as children, and to have daughters we love and want to protect. We know how precious they are, how precious life is, and that the universe will only keep the good alive if we make it happen."

Adam let that sink in. "You mean, we'll be like gods, writing the rules of immortality."

Lyle handed him another full glass of wine. "There are some people, like my parents, who don't deserve to live once, let alone twice. Would you want someone who hurt you or one of your family members to be rewarded with an immortal life here on earth? Say if someone hurt Lily, or if someone raped your daughter?"

Adam's glass shook, spilling some wine. "Of course not."

"See," Lyle said. "Neither would I."

*

In the year 2045, both those gods were dead. And for the next seven years I grew up in the home of Lyle's younger sister, my Great-Aunt Louise.

Table of Contents

24

I'd met Aunt Louise once. I was three years old when Mom brought me over. I didn't remember her so much as I did her forest of brightly colored glass flowers that took up every spare inch of the house.

When I returned to her house in 2045, I found a seventy-seven-year-old lady who closely resembled a female version of Lyle. But she couldn't have been more different. She was a bright-eyed and kind woman who wasn't the least bit interested in molding me into Adam-1, a man she'd scarcely known. In fact, she didn't care what I did with my life. She simply wanted to polish her glass flowers, talk to her pets, and play old-fashioned games like Chinese Checkers, Parcheesi, and a card game called Old Maid. Lily and I were eager to oblige. Lyle was far too young to play.

That's Lyle-2, of course. He was born from an artificial womb early in 2046, not long before I turned twelve. I tried not to loathe the baby. Besides not wanting to blame Lyle-2 for the sins of his clone-father, I also hoped he might grow into a completely different person if I could guide him.

But who was I to guide? Even as I hoped for a similar separation from my c-parent, I was doing the opposite. With Aunt Louise I could become anything I wanted, but I was becoming my grandfather. I no longer believed I had the courage to make it as a new person in the world. Being the old person was the easy way out, the way to success, and the absence of culpability for past and future failures.

Lily-2 was happy. I started giving her a fresh lily on Adam-1 and Lily-1's anniversary because it gave her a thrill. All I needed to do was marry her, work at U.S. Cloning Systems, and live semi-happily ever after. The nightmares of struggling in the grave with my c-father almost completely disappeared. Adam-1 had won the battle for our soul. I was embarrassed by the loss, especially when I thought of my mother, but I didn't have the self-confidence to fight any longer.

Life was easier and mostly uneventful during my years with Aunt Louise. There was schoolwork and games, plus the first two pets I'd ever been around, a German Shepherd named Pierre and an orange cat named Blue. Both were clones, so in fact their names were Pierre-2 and Blue-3. Pierre-1 had died of natural causes. The first two Blues liked to run in front of moving cars and see how close they could cut it. Both, at one time or another, had cut it too close.

So with the third Blue, Louise tried something new. Many animals had been employed to refine the art of genetically engineered superhuman intelligence. The ability to enhance feline intelligence had been perfected years before the procedure was used in humans. Such procedures were outlawed in California where the legislature considered it cruelty to animals, but you could have the procedure done in Nevada. Louise had purchased some intelligence enhancement for Blue-3, so we had the smartest cat in town.

Smartened obedient animals become more obedient because they're quicker to pick up on what the owners want them to do. But disobedient animals become more adept at getting away with mischief. Louise hoped that Blue-3 would be smart enough to know that dashing in front of onrushing automobiles was unwise. Barring that, she hoped Blue would give her mad dash a slightly earlier start. What she got was a cat who found it entertaining to make as if she was going to run in front of a car and then stop, just to see the car swerve out of the way.

When Louise crashed into her own mailbox to avoid hitting her adorable little faker, Blue became an inside cat.

I liked them both. Pierre had a good-natured attitude no matter what was going on unless he sensed danger, at which point he would turn protective. Blue played amusing tricks on Louise such as picking little things up with her mouth and hiding them, and she always listened intently whenever I talked to her. Louise said that Blue didn't really know what I was saying, but Blue had fooled Louise so often that I wasn't quite convinced.

***

As the years rolled by in Aunt Louise's house, my birthday letters from my c-father became more specific and businesslike. Like this one:

Happy 14th!

Hope you and Mom are doing well. What a world you must be seeing. Maybe cloning has finally become legal and routine. Or at least routine in the lab. But don't worry about studying cloning; it was just a necessary steppingstone to immortality.

The real future of the company (and of us) depends on our ability to prolong life indefinitely. It's a goal I believe can be achieved during your lifetime. Copying the brain will be the ultimate escape from death, but first focus on artificial immune systems using nanotech and on the creation of artificial organs. The former will help keep our current bodies free of diseases, cancers, heart attacks, strokes, etc. The latter will eventually allow us to transfer our brains into completely artificial bodies that will be impervious to nearly all perils our currently frail bodies fall prey to.

Spend this next year reading up on the latest works of Donna Price, Cathy Cullar, and Shane Elliott. Hopefully when you're fifteen you can meet some of them directly when you begin your internship at USCS.

Keep up the great work! Talk to you next year!

– A

There it was. So direct and to the point that it felt like a quick reminder note to himself. Which, of course, was exactly how he may have perceived it. Or at least how he hoped it would be, that I'd simply be following the tracks he'd laid.

It didn't matter that they lacked paternal affection. I'd given up on such a relationship. Yet, I read, "Hope you and Mom are doing well" and "Keep up the great work" over and over.

Although human cloning had become even more mundane than Adam-1 hoped, scientists were still struggling with an unacceptable mortality and defect rate from previously overlooked causes. Such problems will forever be linked with Jason Rendell, the teenager suffering from gigantism and compacted lungs. Weary of breathing artificially and feeling like a freak, he walked into the lobby of USCS, doused himself with a can of lighter fluid, held a trembling lighter under his chin, and immolated himself. Witnesses said his entire body was instantly covered with flame as he dropped to his knees, then writhed screaming on the floor before a security guard could smother the fire. Too late to save Jason.

Another disturbing trend with clones began to manifest itself during my teen years: mental problems even among those who were physically healthy. Apparently I wasn't the only one struggling with identity issues and the stress of living in the ghostly shadow of a c-parent. While polls showed that at least ninety percent of clones were grateful they'd been born, suicide quickly became their greatest childhood killer, which occurred at several times the rate of non-clones.

Many of them wrote in their suicide notes that they didn't want to be cloned again. In 2049, one set of parents defied their clone-child's wishes, and a new religious group sued on behalf of the dead child, asserting that all people had the basic right to stop their DNA from being cloned. The parents argued that the suicidal clone had an untreated chemical imbalance in the brain that made him more inclined to depression. Since his c-father lacked the imbalance, and the c-father had wanted to be cloned, it would be wrong to not allow the c-father to be cloned again. In other words, they argued that you couldn't stop a person's clone line because of one bad apple. In what would set a major legal precedent, the courts ruled that as long as the next child was cloned from the DNA of the original and not the c-child who committed suicide, the parents could have another clone.

In a story that received even more media attention that year, a polygamist cult was uncovered in southern Utah in which a self-proclaimed messiah named Jacob Young was having his clone implanted in all the female members of childbearing age. He claimed that the genetic material was Christ's, left there when Jesus had visited North America, and therefore the cloning was legal since the human form of Jesus had once been dead. In a twist to the classic Boys From Brazil story, they wanted to make hundreds of these "Clones of Christ" who would then go out and prepare the world for the end days.

However, the government proved that the clones' DNA matched Jacob's, and Jacob was still alive, therefore making his cloning of himself illegal. And even if the DNA of Jesus just happened to be the same as Jacob's, it was illegal to have more than one clone of yourself living at any time whether or not the original had died.

The jury rejected the defense's arguments. Mr. Young was jailed, most of his forty-seven clones became wards of the state, and cloning clinics received new, stricter regulations to try to stop such abuses before they occurred.

***

2049 was a big year for me. I had turned fifteen and would be starting my internship at USCS in the fall. Lyle-2 was an affectionate and rambunctious three year old who didn't seem at all like his predecessor. Lily-2 was ten, hanging on me as much as possible, but practically never touching Lyle, revering the young clone of her father with god-like awe. A god that she both respected and feared. But the way she averted her eyes and lowered her voice to a hesitant whisper whenever she talked to him, I sensed mostly fear.

"Give Lyle a hug," Aunt Louise told her when Lyle reached out to her on his third birthday, his eyes wide and full of adoration for what must have seemed like his older sister.

Instead she held both of his hands and shook them a little, managing a quick smile and whispering a "Happy Birthday" before letting go and leaning into me.

Young Lyle frowned, still reaching out for her. I extricated myself from Lily and picked him up.

"Happy Birthday, Lyle!" I said, bouncing him a little.

He draped an arm around my neck and laughed, but soon he was looking back at Lily, his thumb in his mouth, not smiling at all.

"La-La," he called, his attempt at pronouncing Lily, reaching out again.

She didn't look at him. He gave up. I bobbed him up and down a couple times to try to cheer him, but he only looked at the ground until Aunt Louise distracted him with some presents. He opened them, but he didn't smile the rest of the party, and he never went too long without a glance toward La-La who never met his eyes.

Table of Contents

25

That summer Lyle was old enough to be somewhat self-sufficient, and Louise thought it would be nice to go up to my family cabin in the redwoods for a month-long vacation before I started my internship.

It was during that summer in the cabin that I received a v-chat request from an old friend. It had been almost eight years since our last encounter at my mother's funeral. Over half our lives had gone by, but I would have recognized his face even without his identity tag. The last time I'd seen that face, it had turned away from me.

"Jack?" I asked.

"How are you, Adam?" He sounded as if he honestly cared.

I shrugged. "Well, I'm...um...I'm surprised."

He laughed, and we both loosened up a little.

"I'm really sorry about your mom. I should have said so at the funeral."

"No," I said, shaking my head. "I should have apologized for your parents, and for everyone else who died at your church."

"It was your church, too, and you had as much right to attend it as I did. You should never blame yourself for what that suicide bomber did."

I thanked him without conviction. "So what led to this?"

"Well, I'm working on a book about clones and religion, and I wanted to talk with you."

"I thought I was the writer," I said.

"Oh good, you're still writing stories?"

"No." Actually, I hadn't written since my mother died except as required by school. That wasn't one of the priorities my c-father outlined in his birthday letters.

"Oh," Jack said after it became clear I wasn't going to add an explanation. "Well, can we get together sometime?"

I told him I was up in the redwoods and that I'd be there a couple more weeks, and he made arrangements to come up. We shook hands when he arrived, and I took him on a tour of the big trees.

I'd been up there at least three or four times a year since my birth, but seeing them through Jack's eyes filled me with new awe. The towering woods made me feel small and vulnerable, but also somehow comforted. The aroma of the ancient forest was saturated with tranquility and immortality. It was little wonder my c-father spent virtually all his free time here, or that this was the place Lyle had first discussed with him his plan to escape death.

"What led you to write this book?" We sat on a couple of large rocks in the shade of an especially thick pocket of redwoods.

"A search for inner peace," he said. He held up and studied the compact, egg-sized pinecone of a giant sequoia.

"How will this help?"

Jack carefully set the pinecone down. "Christianity and cloning have affected my life more than anything. They took away my parents and challenged my beliefs. I need to reconcile them." He shrugged. "And I think you're the key."

I nodded stiffly, and then let him begin recording us with his cell.

"Why do you think cloning is okay?" he asked.

I was silent for a moment, and a little anxious about being recorded. "I guess, well, for one obvious reason – I wouldn't be here without it. But also because I believe in individual freedom and that people should be able to do just about anything they want unless it hurts someone else." The latter was my mother's sentiment, and I had embraced the concept.

"Even if it goes against what God wants?"

"Yes, if you believe in religious freedom. I don't want people telling me what I can and can't do just because it's against their particular religious beliefs. And anyway, God never says anything about it in the Bible. He tells us to be fruitful and multiply, and cloning is just another way to do that."

"It's not a natural way to do it."

I felt my blood pressure rise a bit. "A C-section isn't natural. Are we sinning when we do that, saving premature babies or the woman's life? And what about artificial insemination, or allowing barren women to have children through artificial wombs, or all the other fertility treatments? Do you think Louise Brown and all the test tube babies that came after her are unnatural freaks?"

Jack shrugged. "Well no, but isn't cloning different? You're replaying a DNA that God only intended to use once."

"But you don't know that! Where does the Bible say that God only wanted our genes to be used once? Maybe God made it medically possible just so that we would do it."

I thought it was a good argument, especially since Jack's father had said something to that effect, but Jack was unimpressed. "I doubt it," he said, as if the reason was so obvious it didn't need clarification.

"But why do you doubt it?" I demanded, wondering if meeting Jack had been a bad idea. It was hard not to be passionate and defensive about the science that had made my life possible. "God already allows our bodies to make DNA copies naturally through identical twins, so he must not mind there being two or more people with the same DNA, and they're even more alike than my c-father and me. I have some mitochondrial DNA from my mom, and I was raised under very different conditions. If it's okay for natural copies of DNA to be made, than why not clones?"

"Well, maybe because clones aren't natural copies. It might be giving people too much power over something that should be entrusted to God."

"But God doesn't set such limits in the Bible." Mom had spent plenty of time explaining why people were wrong to oppose cloning on Biblical grounds, and those Bible studies had stuck. "He initiated life, and then he told us that we are supposed to keep creating new life. And he makes it clear that it's okay to use the benefits of medicine in Ecclesiasticus when he says, 'Honor physicians for their services; for the Lord created them.' In other words, those skills and their benefits are given to us by God himself."

Jack shook his head. "But you're carrying it too far. People shouldn't be manmade. By manipulating ourselves, we're turning our backs on what makes us human. The result could be the end of humanity itself."

"Does that mean doctors shouldn't be genetically correcting sickle-cell anemia or Down syndrome? Are the children spared from such maladies less human because we tinkered with them? Or should we leave them as naturally screwed up as God made them?"

"That's a good point," he said with his frustrating calmness. "But you have to admit that having your DNA born again is not as medically necessary as gene therapy on critically ill fetuses. God already gave your genes a chance at existence."

"But my existence is still dependent on God because God gave the physicians the skills they used to make my life possible."

"That argument would mean anything mankind can create is okay with God."

"If it doesn't contradict any of his other laws, then why not? How would we know?" I challenged him.

"I guess only by searching our hearts."

"So you mean your heart is telling you that God would have preferred that I'd never existed, and both you and God would rather I not be alive?"

Jack was silent. His line of reasoning had brought him there. It would have meant his parents and friends who had perished in the church bombing would still be alive. As he later explained to me, it was the conclusion he had been subconsciously yearning for. But upon finding it, he found he didn't like it, and he changed the subject.

"Do you have a soul?" he asked.

"How can you tell?" I wanted to know as much as he did, and for some reason I thought Jack might know better than I.

"Yeah, I was afraid you might ask that. I guess, do you feel like you have an inner voice inside that is separate from the physical functioning of your body?"

"I think so. I hardly ever think of myself as my physical body. I just think of myself as me."

"You may be sharing the soul of your c-father."

"Do identical twins share a soul because one is a genetic copy of the other?"

"Of course not."

"But you think I have my c-father's soul?"

He looked into my eyes – the windows to the soul – for a long time.

"No sir," he finally answered. "I think you have your very own soul."

But did I really? I was beginning to wonder.

We stopped talking about the moral implications of cloning. We reminisced about old times and people we used to know at church and at school. I had hoped he'd been in contact with Evelyn, but he said he never saw her again after the bombing. According to Mrs. Slater, Evelyn's widowed mother moved in with relatives elsewhere in San Diego County.

In the end, his visit was therapeutic. My mother's funeral left me with bitterness, and I hadn't spoken at length with a religious person on a non-antagonistic basis since we last parted. We had our differences on the issue, but differences based on respectful disagreement rather than hatred. I began to once again accept that religious people could be against cloning but not against me. His book, Clones and Christianity, confirmed this. He argued that clones were no different than non-clones, and that whether or not you considered cloning a sin, the clones should not be judged on how they came to be born. Coming from the son of a Christian minister who died for his acceptance of clones, and a person who was planning to follow in his father's footsteps in the ministry, gave his voice a sentimental audience.

We stayed close friends throughout high school and college, during which he became a theology major and a religious advocate for acceptance of clones while not encouraging cloning itself. I'd later encourage his nomination to the Genetics and Cloning Board. A nomination that would save my life.

Table of Contents

26

My family and I went back to La Jolla at the end of the summer, and I prepared to start my internship at USCS. The night before my first day at work, I dreamt that as I walked down an office hallway, something hit my head. I looked down, expecting a pebble like the one that had hit me in second grade. Instead it was the small vial of sleeping tonic. As I stood looking at it, another vial hit me in the head, then another. I turned my head to see all the people in the office throwing vials at me. I started to run, but someone yanked me back by the hand. It was young Evelyn in her wedding dress from Winter Wonderland.

"You said you weren't going to run anymore," she said.

I nodded, picked up a handful of the vials from the floor, and flung them back at my tormenters. They scattered, leaving a deserted hallway. I turned to thank Evelyn, but she was gone too.

I awoke that morning feeling confident and charged, and that's how I felt when I arrived there Monday after school. Nobody threw anything at me – except for some forms and bound reports that they wanted me to print, scan, or shred. For the first year they had me doing only clerical stuff and basic data entry in the lab.

Many of the older employees had once worked under my c-father. They said my c-father made them believe the war against mortality was possible. Their war had been waged on many fronts – everything from cryonics (freezing the dead, then still an unpopular choice because there was little chance of being brought back to life intact) to nanotechnology (microscopic nanobots working to create an artificial immune system in the body) to battling cellular degeneration by slowing or stopping the destruction of telomeres that protect dividing cells. The latter technique kept proving elusive, and back then the other two were just distant pipe dreams.

Not that Ingeneuity and U.S. Cloning Systems weren't successful. In the early 21st century they became the leaders in gene therapy and were at the forefront of stem cell research, artificial organs, and organ-cloning technology. Donors slowly became a thing of the past as new organs were created or grown from a patient's own cells and enhanced to be more effective than the original.

According to my c-father's journal, despite the few victories and many frustrations of his research, Adam enjoyed his work. Most weeks he put in more than ninety hours at the lab as he rose from supervisor of the Therapeutic Cloning Division at Ingeneuity to the CEO of the newly created USCS. The success of the company during his tenure, topped off by his achievement with the underground human cloning division, and then becoming the first beneficiary of that project, assured him a mythical status among his co-workers – people who now treated me with something near the reverence I'd seen Lily treat Lyle-2, making me feel uncomfortable.

But the newer employees just thought it was pretty cool to have the first human clone, the c-child of the company's former CEO, working as their assistant. They were fun to work with, and one of them gave me my office nickname. The first time I was caught running a print job, a co-worker named Michael Heinz called me "Copy Boy," and everyone thought it was hilarious. People still call me "Copy Boy" to this day.

As high school progressed, USCS gave me more complicated duties ranging from proofing and editing reports to re-testing lab experiments. My senior year was devoted to assisting the medical scientists' work on the artificial immune system that my c-father had encouraged me to pursue. Exciting progress was being made, and by 2052, the old pipedream of manmade nanobots were actually unclogging arteries and dismantling malignant tumors in mice.

I turned eighteen on March 11 of that year. The media came by the house for my big birthday, and we were quite a hit. Aunt Louise was quick to introduce them to her cloned pets and show them around her brightly colored glass forest (which would have been hard to miss even without the tour). Thirteen-year-old Lily-2 was stuck to my side every minute they were there, as if she wanted to make sure the world knew that we were as married as our c-parents. Lyle-2, who had recently turned six, was growing into a moody boy – especially around me. Three years earlier he had hugged me and called me his big brother, but by five he rarely talked to me and never allowed me to touch him. I became convinced that his birthday letters from Lyle-1 were the cause, telling young Lyle to distance himself from me. I hoped it wasn't me subconsciously rejecting him as the clone of Lyle-1, but sometimes, as his face began to more closely resemble the man he'd been cloned from, I did catch myself feeling repulsed by him for no apparent reason.

The crowning event of the birthday party was the presentation of Adam-1's personal, handwritten journal. It had sat in a safe deposit box for his clone's eighteenth birthday, and I'd been eager to read it since early childhood. A reporter asked if she could take a look at it when I was finished, but I told her that I had to see what deep, dark secrets it held.

No reporter ever did see it. Nor did Lyle-2, whom I caught searching my room for it, although he testily claimed that he'd only been looking for one of his toys. I took it out to my clone-father's grave and read it through the afternoon. This book is the first time I've publicly discussed its contents. I was simply too embarrassed by so much of what I read. On top of that, I thought it would be poor public relations for the ongoing cloning phenomena. The first human cloner was so obsessed with living forever that he married a woman he didn't love, gave his tacit approval to Lyle's clandestine plot to control the afterlife, and eventually committed suicide to ensure he was the first clone. This knowledge would only validate the anti-cloners' propaganda that all cloners were selfish, godless megalomaniacs. I felt clones already had enough to deal with.

Then there were Lily's feelings to think about. She would learn that my c-father never loved her c-mother, with whom she considered herself contiguous. I wondered whether I was protecting her with my silence or protecting the possibility of my easy marriage to her. On my first day at UCSD, I said goodbye to Lily-2 by giving her our first real kiss. Feeling her eagerness as she pressed herself to me, seeing her eyes filled with joyful tears, was all in contrast to my own internal feelings. Disgust with myself over my insincere kiss. Would I, like my father, marry a woman I didn't love?

I finished the journal regretting many of the insights I'd learned about my c-father, but I defended him to myself. Yes, the suicide and marrying for power and agreeing to Lyle's nefarious plot were all terrible. But his neurotic fear of death, born out of early tragedy, was a mitigating factor. His writings indicated that he hoped his next life would be different. He hadn't foreseen Lily-1's suicide, and he hoped she would end up with someone who actually loved her. He also liked to think his next marriage would be one of mutual affection. And he looked forward to the day when he'd be in an immortal body, at which point he could end his alliance with Lyle and feel free to live a different life.

And then there was his love for Sarah. As he wrote in his final entry, "I won't miss this life. The truth is, I'm ashamed of it. I've failed as a man. Failed the promise and idealism of my childhood. My only regret is leaving my daughter. She's the one good thing I've given to the world, the one thing my mother would have been proud of. I hope you've been a good son, because she deserves that, both for the love she adds to the world and for the life she's given us. Please always protect and take care of my daughter."

I placed the journal back into the safe deposit box and left instructions that should I die, no one but my clone would be allowed to open it. I wondered whether I'd have the courage to admit to my future clone in my own journal how I had failed to always protect and take care of Adam-1's daughter, my mom. I wondered if, somewhere, my clone-father knew this. And what he would say to me if he knew his daughter's grave was already filled next to his own.

Table of Contents

27

College was the first time I attended non-virtual school since second grade. I got my own apartment near the campus of University of California, San Diego, and found the freedom extremely liberating. Lily could only come over if she got a ride, and Aunt Louise was always courteous enough to call me before she left.

The day I moved in was also the first time since second grade that I'd seen all my mom's old belongings. I got them out of storage. The dining table and couch that had belonged to my great-grandparents Michael and Sarah, their two portraits that had hung on our wall, the dishes Mom and I always ate off of, and the old family Bible.

My clone-father had described the latter in his description of the small apartment he'd grown up in before his parents' death. "A huge tome bound in leather that had already been in our family more than half a century, which rested on a stool in our living room. The book's size and age, and the leather strap that connected the covers with a brass lock, proved to me that its thin, brittle pages contained all the wisdom of the universe."

I fingered its brass lock and remembered that mom had carried the key on a gold necklace she always wore. The key was nowhere to be found now, but a paperclip proved sufficient. Inside the cover I found a family tree that included births, deaths, and weddings beginning with Michael's grandparents. I ran my finger over the ink that my ancestors had penned. The information on Michael, Sarah, and my clone-father was written in a woman's hand I guessed was Great-Grandma Sarah. The rest, including Lily, Mom, and the record of my birth, was filled out in my mom's handwriting.

I flipped through the first few pages of Genesis from the creation of Adam to their expulsion from Eden. As I turned the page to read about Cain and Abel, there lay The Book of Sarah.

That's how she had titled it – a series of anecdotes from her life written on loose-leaf stationery. The first one was about my birth.

Being the mother of the first human clone has been my greatest joy. He's the love of my life. And with every unkind word of every piece of hate mail against my son, I know I'm doing the right thing for him, as well as for my father, for myself, and for all the great people who will one day owe their lives to cloning. It's given me the opportunity to do something truly important with my life that will make a difference in the world at large, and how many people get such opportunities?

Other entries included moments with her dad: her childhood, the day he came to her apartment to request that she raise his clone, the night of his death. She talked about the day at the park when we first met Gabrielle Burns, and she talked about the stabbing at the beach and the many nightmares it gave her. Nightmares about Gabrielle returning in different situations. And a nightmare about Gabrielle stabbing me to death with her silver knife.

And then there was the last anecdote that I read:

I guess my biggest regret is my relationship with my mother. Dad's favoritism of me was always awkward for us, and I never really knew how to talk with her about it.

Then there was our other shared relationship. I suspect she went through the same trauma as a child. Maybe talking about it would have brought us closer together. Or maybe it would have completely estranged us, with me blaming her for knowingly leaving me in such a vulnerable situation. The same situation that led to my other regret, never having had a lover and a child with him. But the idea of intimacy still scares me.

I was five years old when it happened. Grandfather Lyle said it was time for bed, and I told him that Dad said I could stay up till 9 o'clock.

"Did you talk back to me?" he asked, jabbing his pipe towards me.

"But Daddy said—"

"I tell your dad what to do, and I tell you what to do," he said. He grabbed me and threw me on my bed and pulled my pants down like he was going to spank me, but then he started rubbing.

"Do you like that, Sarah?" he asked while I just cried. He took his pipe out of his mouth, and he used that. "Do you like this? You going to do what I say next time?"

When he was done, he said that if I ever said anything, he'd kill my father and me.

I envy people who can put themselves in such a vulnerable position with people. I can't. Anymore than I could ever possibly expose my clone-daughter to that.

My mind went blank with fury, cursing or screaming or crying as I grabbed a handful of pages from God's book and ripped them from the binding, then ripped them into smaller and smaller pieces while memories flashed of Mom telling me why she didn't want to be cloned, of Lyle chiding her for being a virgin mother, and of the gun sitting in the box while he smiled, knowing I'd never use it.

When the rage subsided enough, I closed the Bible and threw it back in the storage box. It would remain buried there for many years.

Table of Contents

28

The following month I registered as a Biotechnology major with a Sociology minor. I hoped sociology would assist me in helping develop social and legal policy regarding clones. But it was in biotech that I was treated as some sort of demigod by my classmates, and not a few professors. Most of the textbooks mentioned my name.

Some of my new best friends wanted an internship at USCS, others were drawn to my peculiar fame, a few wanted to be study partners, but most just found my story intriguing and were curious to meet the first clone. It was the first time I'd ever been popular, and it was all very flattering – even if I was popular for the circumstances of my birth rather than my captivating personality. Instead of taking most of my classes virtually, the usual and less expensive method, I enrolled for the physical rooms.

The fame also helped with the dating scene. I had enjoyed anonymous virtual sex with various avatars over the web. V-sex was already widespread, even for some dating and married couples who enjoyed its safety, guaranteed birth control, and/or its enhancement of stimulation. But I was technically a virgin when I entered college, a status that quickly became a precarious one. All the other clones were still fourteen or younger, so none of my classmates had ever slept with one before. Far be it from me to deprive the curious women of the singular experience.

The mystery of what it was like to sleep with a clone didn't last long thanks to my first, Suzie Kandel, who was quick to share her experience with a tabloid. She received a handsome fee for the interview and used the attention from her talk show appearances to propel her into a modeling career.

I gained from the experience as well. Not only did I get the big first time out of the way, but I was also warned away from being too promiscuous. The attention from women was welcome, but seeing the consequences splashed all over the news was a turnoff. I grew up having very little respect for myself, but my public image had always been important to me. Not to mention that the publicity did not please Lily. As Lily opened Aunt Louise's door, the magazine hit my feet.

"What is this shit?"

I looked down to see Suzie and I on the front cover of the tabloid, though I barely recognized us. Lily had slashed the cover repeatedly.

"Do you love me or not?"

"Yes, of course I do," I said as I forced my eyes up from the hacked-up magazine.

"No you don't," she replied, starting to cry. "You don't want me at all. I should have just stayed dead."

"Lily, I didn't sleep with her," I said, giving her a tentative hug after checking her hands for knives. "That article was just a big lie."

And in actuality, much of it was. Suzie had given me a much better review than I deserved.

*

I tried to make it up to her the following semester. I took a week off school and we flew to Edinburgh, Scotland. February 14, 2053 was the fiftieth anniversary of Dolly's death. Lily-2 and I arrived a couple days early to explore the first European city either of us had visited. We meandered through the city's charming mix of ancient and modern streets, had coffee at the Elephant House café where the recently cloned J.K. Rowling worked on her first Harry Potter book, and walked through the homes of Alexander Graham Bell, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Sean Connery. We spent the last day strolling about Edinburgh Castle, which Lily considered to be richly romantic.

On Valentine's Day, a light snow began to fall. Shannon Smith met us a few miles south of Edinburgh at the Roslin Institute where Dolly was created, and we rode at the head of a funeral procession to Dolly's shrine. That shrine was an exhibit in the Royal Museum at Edinburgh where Dolly's stuffed body stood in a clear, protective case that slowly rotated around – though they temporarily stopped the rotation for the ceremony.

I was nervous. I was expected to give a speech during the ceremony. Granted, my audience was only to be a couple hundred people as opposed to the potentially billions of viewers who would have watched the past interviews I'd turned down. But such details did nothing to allay the fear sensors in my brain. Especially when I saw the camera crews setting up near Dolly's exhibit. It seemed I was going to be seen by billions of people after all.

And so it was that I gave my first major public address. I'd never thought much about Dolly or how her birth had made my own possible. It may seem silly, but when I took my first real look at her, I felt a sense of veneration. I lightly placed my fingertips on the plastic coffin and paused. Lily made fun of me later for hamming it up, but what I felt was genuine.

I tried to capture some of that in my speech, though it was no Gettysburg Address.

Dear friends, scientists, clones, and non-clones,

We gather here today to remember the death half a century ago of Dolly, the first mammal cloned from adult cells.

Some rejoice on this day only because it is the date Dolly died. They believe she ushered in a new and dangerous age wherein humans pretend to be gods. They condemn Sir Ian Wilmut and Dr. Keith Campbell for their blasphemous creations.

I see it differently. I see Wilmut and Campbell using the tools God gave them to bring more life into the world. Dolly lived an abbreviated life, but at least she was able to experience life. Without her, her six children would never have existed at all, nor would their now hundreds of descendants who followed.

Some see Dolly as an evil stain on the earth, but I see her as the vessel through which so many other lives and hopes have poured.

She gave Shannon Smith-2 a chance to live after young Shannon Smith was brutally murdered, and she gave Shannon's parents another chance to experience the joys of raising a child.

She gave my clone-father hope as death engulfed him.

She gave my beloved mother a child she would never have had.

She gave me every moment of happiness and sadness and wonder.

She gave me life, and gave the same magnificent gift to more than two million people over the past eighteen years.

How do you ever thank someone for that?

Thank you, Dolly.

*

My speech was replayed on the networks and the web, and I received thousands of v-mails and even some handwritten cards and letters from clones around the world. I was greatly moved, and reminded that my activities reflected on all clones – a reminder to live a clean life of which I wouldn't be ashamed.

The event would have an additional effect on my life, although I wouldn't realize it for a few years to come. A novelist, one Thomas Wilson, was inspired by the event to write the children's book Farewell Dolly. Like Animal Farm and Watership Down, it was written from the perspective of the animals, beginning with Dolly's c-mother and then exploring Dolly's birth, childhood, relationship with her "husband" David, their daughter Bonnie, and the other five children who would follow, and ending in her death as she battles premature aging. The real Dolly was actually euthanized after contracting lung cancer brought on by a retrovirus, but she also suffered from severe arthritis and surprisingly short telomeres. In the story, her death is followed by her reunion with her c-mother in heaven. Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell figured prominently as well, but they were seen as strange, powerful, god-like creatures to the mystified sheep who could only guess at what the strange sounds they made with their mouths truly meant, usually guessing wrong.

Farewell Dolly was published four years later in 2057, inspiring a young Stephen Sondheim-2 to compose his first original musical based on the novel.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

The museum hosted a big dinner after the ceremony. Shannon Smith and I had maintained communication via v-mail for the past few years, but this was the first time we had met physically in fifteen years, since she was a few months old. We had a lot to talk about and even danced together, which made headlines like "It Takes the First Two Clones to Tango." She was a sweet and intelligent beauty like her c-mother, her thick eyebrows framing sensitive but happy eyes. Lily's eyes weren't so happy, her nostrils flared with jealousy. She didn't want me to be friends with any other women – especially attractive ones with whom I might have a special bond, and especially not on Valentine's Day.

She scowled at Shannon as we said goodbye. It made me think of Lily-1 being hurt when my c-father took Sarah and Lily-1 to Edinburgh for the ten-year anniversary of Dolly's death, and Adam spent all his time fawning over his daughter.

"Do you ever wish we could have cloned Sarah and raised her as our daughter?" I asked as our taxi returned us to the hotel.

She seemed suddenly far away. "Who?"

"Sarah."

"Oh." Lily frowned as she began reading a brochure I'd picked up from the Royal Museum. "She didn't want to be cloned."

"Yeah," I said, trying to control a surge of anger. "Do you know why?"

She shrugged and shook her head, eyes still glued to the brochure.

"It was because of Lyle."

She was rigid. Almost a minute passed in silence. "Daddy?"

"Your father molested her when she was five years old."

"She..." Lily turned a page of the brochure. "She told you that?"

"No. I read it in her diary."

"Well, I don't believe that. Those are usually false memories made up later in life."

I struggled not to lose my temper. I didn't want to yell at her. "Do you know if Lyle ever molested your c-mother?"

Lily gasped, her eyes attacking mine, jaw almost unhinged. "What? How could you even ask that?"

I placed my hand on her forearm to try to calm her. "My mom thought maybe Grandma Lily had been abused as well. She always regretted not being closer to her mom."

Lily-2 moved her arm away, tears flowing freely down her face. "Why?" she turned from me, crumpling the brochure in her hand, looking unfocused out the car window. She brushed some tears away. "Why are you telling me all this?"

I shrugged. "I guess I just thought we should talk about it sometime."

Lily closed her eyes and bowed her head as if in prayer. "Well, Daddy never hurt any of us, and I've always loved Sarah."

I didn't say anything.

"It's Valentine's Day," she said softly.

"You're right," I said. "I'm sorry." I picked up one of her hands and held it. She didn't pull it away, but she didn't look up until we pulled up to the hotel entrance.

It was the first trip we had ever shared a hotel room together, and even though she was just shy of fourteen, I guess she'd been expecting that night to be the night. An idea that must have been reinforced when we got back to the room and she found a white lily lying on her bed next to a Valentine's Day card. As she read the card her eyes filled with more tears. I don't remember what I wrote, but it didn't take much to tug her heartstrings.

I always felt that was one of her best traits. One I'll always miss.

While holding the flower to her nose, she fixed me with a look that turned my knees to mush and walked over to me. In her youth, Lily-1 had been magazine cover material. And at thirteen, Lily-2 was already beginning to look far too much like the woman she would become. She encircled me in her arms and ground her lips against mine. Where did she learn to do that? The next thing I knew I was lying on my back on the bed with her straddling me, and she was reaching back to unzip her dress.

"Wait," I gasped, pulling her hand away from her zipper.

"What's wrong?"

"We can't yet," I answered, gently easing her off my aroused eighteen-year-old body. "Another four years," I assured her.

"No one will ever know," she said, pressing herself against me.

"We can't take that risk," I said, holding her hand to comfort her. And keep her away. "I'd go to jail if anyone found out."

"But we're married!"

My arousal withered. "No one else would see it that way. It's just too risky. I'm sorry." I held her hands. "We have to think about the public relations implications. It's important for clones and for our company."

She turned away and picked her flower back up, again drinking in its aroma. I zipped her back up.

"Four more years?" she asked. She sounded like she wanted the assurance that it would actually happen.

"Four more years." I wondered whether I was setting a date for sex, making a marriage proposal, or giving an unimaginative campaign speech.

Table of Contents

29

Those four years passed all too quickly. By 2057, I'd graduated from UCSD and was halfway through the MBA program at the University of San Diego. The MBA was meant to help me move up quickly through the management of U.S. Cloning Systems where I then worked as a project manager. Meanwhile, my semi-celebrity status, Sociology degree, and unmatched experience at being a clone helped me get on the Genetics and Cloning Board (GC Board) where we debated the various legal, social, and biological ramifications of cloning.

More than one million people worldwide were being cloned each year, in spite of only marginal decreases of infant mortality and mutation rates. The solution wouldn't be easy. Few of the problems were interdependent, where finding a single solution would solve a large percentage of the defects. Nevertheless, the GC Board pressured the acting CEO of U.S. Cloning Systems to begin shifting more company resources toward fixing those problems. Most of all it was a moral issue, but it also made good sense from a long-range business perspective. The fewer risks, the more the public would embrace the concept and the additional confidence they would have in having themselves or loved ones cloned.

We also began developing educational materials for social workers and child psychologists. As I'd experienced firsthand, many families pressured clones to continue the lives of their c-parents. While I had resisted the pressure for a while, I had failed and was often severely depressed over my failure.

The more I talked to younger clones and worked with psychologists and other experts on the subject, the more I began to understand some of what I'd gone through. Pressure and anxiety came from bigotry by anti-cloners. Then there were the parents who didn't want the clones. An "ugly stepchild" syndrome emerged wherein the clones were not loved as much as the parents' biological children, and often were raised purely out of duty to a deceased relative whom the couple might not have liked much to begin with. And often c-parents, through letters and holovideos, created even more strain on the clone than did the surviving family members. Making things even more challenging, many suicidal young people felt that their life was not their own, and that the person they were really killing was the c-parent whom they hated.

What it should have done was re-planted the seed of doubt about my own life path. Although I liked Lily and was flattered by her complete infatuation, I wasn't in love with her. I didn't even crave her company. Our home life would be satisfactory at best. But then, considering my past failures, a satisfactory life was the best I deserved. Not a bad consolation prize for someone who couldn't avenge his mother when handed the chance by the murderer himself.

Speaking of the devil, Lyle-2 answered Aunt Louise's door. I was picking up Lily-2 to celebrate the weekend of her eighteenth birthday at the cabin in the redwoods. Lyle-2 was eleven. He grew more aloof and made me uneasier every time I saw him. He had begun studying me as I remembered Lyle-1 studying me during my childhood. He didn't invite me in.

"Well, hello sir," I said cheerily.

His eyes searched me up and down, his lips as warm and friendly as a microscope slide.

"I'm here to pick up Lily."

"I know," he said. "You have to."

I forced a laugh. "What do you mean? I want to."

"No, you don't. But you have to."

He still hadn't moved out of the doorway.

"Excuse me," I replied, and pushed my way past the little asshole. It was becoming ever clearer that Lyle-2 would never like or trust me. There was no need to waste my time trying to be polite.

Lily walked down the stairs wearing a head-turning tank top. Her face glowed with anticipation. The wait would be over in a few hours. We kissed while the little asshole studied us from the other side of the room.

"Lyle," Louise called as she wandered into the room, "can you go get my purse out of my room?"

He gave an annoyed shrug and headed upstairs.

"We've got money," I told her.

"Well I hope so, because I wasn't going to give you any."

"What do you need from your purse?" I asked, grinning at her. She was almost ninety, but seemed young for her age – especially for someone who had refused an artificial immune system.

Louise paused, placing a finger on her chin. "Well, I don't know yet. I just sent him away on a pretext, dear. But don't worry, I'll think of something before he gets back."

I laughed and gave her a hug. Pierre-2 lumbered up for a hug as well. He was growing extremely geriatric and would pass away the following year, but he could still jump on you like a puppy when you first arrived. A little pawing at my ankle told me that Blue-3 had come to see us off as well. I scratched her under the chin, and she purred. Somehow, getting purrs out of a mentally enhanced cat seemed an even richer reward than usual.

"Okay, you've met everyone. Now go have a great time, you two!"

Growing up I had always thought Aunt Louise was clueless and lost in her own little world of glass flowers. But as I grew older I was beginning to believe she knew exactly what was going on. She just didn't want anyone else to know she knew.

I grabbed Lily's bags and we got on our way. A few hours later we arrived at the cabin. A white lily lay on the bed. Around the stem of the lily was a ring. Her eyes zeroed in on it, and she slipped the ring off the stem and onto her finger, admiring it and fixing me with an enormous, satisfied grin. She held the flower to her nose as she walked up to me. Her other hand took my wrist and slid it under her tank top, pressing it against her bra-less left breast. I caught my breath, feeling both excited and uneasy.

"Do you need a glass of wine first?" I asked.

She didn't.

As she pulled me toward the bed, my free hand fumbled for the condoms in the overnight bag. The rest would be unpacked later.

***

Later that evening, I dreamt I was in a lush garden late at night. I could hear crickets, and I think there were stars overhead. But I was also vaguely aware that the tropical plants and flowers were all made of glass. A lamb was nuzzling my arm. Its company somehow comforted me.

"Adam, where are you?" came a voice. I recognized it as a line from the Book of Genesis just before God punished Adam and Eve for eating the forbidden fruit. Was it God speaking to me? Was he about to level his curse of Death upon me? I was afraid, but couldn't seem to resist answering.

"We are over here," I replied.

"Why are there so many of you?" demanded the voice.

"I gave myself a second chance because I didn't think you would," I answered.

"You gave yourself a second chance?"

I wasn't sure how to respond. Suddenly an unseen but powerful force plucked me from my hiding place in the garden.

"Don't screw it up this time!" the invisible force shouted, and dropped me back into the garden, shattering some of the glass plants.

"I don't know what to do," I said.

"Save the lamb," it replied, now from far off.

I glanced down to see that the lamb was safe, but there was blood all over its wool.

"I killed it!" a voice proclaimed behind me.

Lily-2 stood there, her hands awash in blood, one of them gripping a shard from a broken glass flower.

"It'll be better this way," she said. "It would have ruined our wedding."

My eyes went back to the dying lamb. It was now wearing a wedding dress. I held it in my arms and began to cry, and that's when I awoke feeling sick to my stomach.

When Lily reached for me in the morning, in my mind I saw her bloody hands. I recoiled. She gave me a look of shock, and I apologized, explaining that I was half asleep. She was still put off by it for a while, and we didn't make love again until that night. Which was all right with me.

We drove back to San Diego four days later, and in the car Lily inquired as nonchalantly as possible whether we would be getting married that summer. I said that I wanted to finish my MBA first. Going to school part time while working full time would put my graduation date in May of 2059, so we could tentatively plan on getting married the following summer. Which would buy me two more years.

"Why do we have to wait until you finish school?" she asked.

"Because I'm so busy right now. I don't want to get married until I can be a proper husband."

It was the only thing I could come up with at the time.

Table of Contents

30

Although we didn't get married that summer of 2057, we did go on a sort of pre-wedding honeymoon. Thomas Wilson's book Farewell Dolly had begun distribution in May, and I was invited to join him on part of his whirlwind book-signing tour to the world's largest metropolitan areas. The media was fascinated, and both clones and non-clones flocked to the signings to get Wilson's book and to meet me.

Well, not so much to meet me. More so to meet the first human clone and to get a look at the new couple. Our engagement had been leaked (Lily told everyone she knew), so by June it was out that the first human clone was going to marry the clone of his c-father's wife. The wedding wasn't for another two years, but it was practically certain to be the first of its kind – a couple reunited by their c-children.

The press asked a million questions about our relationship, marriage plans, etcetera, and I let Lily field most of them. She was eager to talk about it. I tried to mostly avoid the commotion, but wasn't always able to. Like in London when Jennifer Barefield of The Times caught us as we strolled through Hyde Park on the anniversary of Adam-1 and Lily-1's anniversary.

"You two were separated the night of your 34th anniversary, June 5, 2033."

We both nodded.

"In what way has that most affected your relationship?"

It was a question made to order for Lily who saw us as a continuation of our c-parents, and a question that I saw as embarrassing. My clone-father had described the events leading up to that night in his last journal entry – events that began more than two months before his death, on March 21, 2033, when Lyle suffered a mild stroke. He was kept in the hospital a couple days for observation, and Adam spent those days unable to concentrate on anything except the possibility that Lyle might die. The technology had only recently become ready. Everything was in place to attempt the first human cloning. Adam couldn't wait for the government to close down the company following the birth of Lyle's clone. This was his one chance. Everything he had lived for after his father's suicide depended on it.

By the end of April, Adam's preparations were complete. He wrote several letters and made numerous holovideos of himself which were to be shared with me, indicating most of them were to be presented on specific birthdays so that I'd gradually get to know more and more about my clone-father as I grew older. He also made final preparations on his journal for when I became an adult, both to tell me about his life and to give me vital information I would need to eventually take over Ingeneuity. Then he planned his death.

He wanted to die under relatively painless, controlled circumstances. And he wanted it to look like murder. For one thing, Adam was afraid that if Lyle found that he committed suicide so he could be first, Lyle might prevent the cloning. Adam also thought it might be a nice touch for public relations purposes. If he was murdered, the public might feel more compassion toward his clone.

So, on May 1, Adam began receiving anonymous death threats in the mail. The police opened an investigation. Lily begged for them to leave the house for a couple months and go up to the redwoods, but Adam refused to be driven from his home by whatever coward was sending the messages.

When the threats stopped arriving a couple weeks later, their lives and Lily's anxiety level began returning to normal. Then, on June 5, their 34th wedding anniversary, a package arrived from Adam's cousin Marilyn, Charles and Mary's daughter. Adam hardly knew her, with her having moved to Idaho before Adam had been orphaned. The last time he'd seen any of his cousins was five years earlier at Charles's funeral, and they hadn't talked much then. It was quite something to get an anniversary present from her. Lily was surprised.

The package contained a bottle of wine, and Lily suggested they use it to toast their anniversary before going to bed. After a romantic dinner at Anthony's Fish Grotto along the bay, they drove home to continue their celebration. As always, when they came in from their anniversary meal, a single lily stood in a vase on the table with a card attached. This time the bottle of wine stood with it. While Lily put her nose to the flower and read the card, he popped the cork and poured two glasses to toast their marriage.

He took a quick sip as Lily hesitated at the smell. When she parted her lips, he knocked the glass from her hand. She let out a surprised yelp as the glass shattered on the hardwood floor. Adam was shaking his head in mock confusion, inspecting the bottle.

"It's not wine!" he said.

The reality began to dawn on Lily as quickly as Adam had hoped it would. Either the liquid in the wine bottle was poison, or it was all part of an elaborate hoax to strike more fear in the Elwell household.

They weren't going to take any chances. At Lily's frantic suggestion, they decided to go to the hospital and have Adam and the liquid analyzed. I suspect that when Lily went into the bedroom to get her purse, Adam finished off the glass. Enough to make sure they wouldn't be able to save him.

As a nurse led him to an empty room, he began feeling the effects of the poison hemlock solution. It was a particularly poetic way for him to end his life if he didn't say so himself (and he did say so in his private journal). The potion was based partially on what Socrates was thought to have drunk with an added synthetic toxin to ensure that modern medicine could not resuscitate him.

His legs and arms began to slip into paralysis. His eyelids became heavy. The doctors pumped his stomach, but it was too late. He would die minutes before Sarah arrived at the hospital, with only Lily comforting him as he sank into oblivion.

*

"I know we loved each other so much even then," Lily-2 said to Jennifer Barefield as she leaned against my arm. "But that terrible night gave the whole world a chance to see just how strong our love really was. A love that could transcend the death of both of us and continue on in our current lives. The first time in the history of man."

"What about you?" Jennifer asked me. "Do you think the night of your tragic death made your love even greater than it ever was?"

I was relieved at the leading question. "Yes."

*

We were living with each other during the two months we spent on the tour – the first time we had lived together in five years. And this time we were living in the same room. Some people click, getting along no matter how much time they spend together, but Lily began to chafe me. She talked almost exclusively about our relationship and our past relationship, which she knew far more about than I did. My c-father hadn't elaborated much except to note Lily's importance to his schemes for immortality.

I was more interested in the amazing cities we were visiting and about culture and history. She would play along for a while, but then she'd start in about how much fun we were having and whether we should consider this place for our honeymoon and which mementos should we get to reminisce in our old age. It was nice to be so well loved by someone, and taken in moderation her two topics of conversation would have been romantic. Taken in immoderation, it was torture.

Meanwhile, the book publisher was rushing to meet the unexpected demand for printed copies of Thomas Wilson's novel. I felt bad that we seemed to be stealing the publicity that rightfully should have been his. While at a bar after a book signing in Rome, I asked if our upstaging him at the signings bothered him much.

He stopped scanning the karaoke list and grinned at me from under his bangs and smudged, wire-rimmed glasses. "Yeah, it's killing me," he said, tapping his wallet on the bar. "But please don't leave on my account...or my bank account." Then he selected Hues Corporation's Rock the Boat and sang badly as he made his way around to each stool and table. It was a bigger hit than his melodramatic singing of Morris Albert's infamous song Feelings.

The only city in which Thomas got more attention than us was New York. Stephen Sondheim-2 invited us to a private meeting at his apartment. He was, of course, the clone-child of the famous musical composer and lyricist. He was also one of the first celebrity clones to be born, and was a year older than Lily. Sondheim-2 had read the book and loved it. He thought it would be fitting to transform it into his first professional musical.

We talked far into the night about the book and Sondheim-2's vision for its adaptation. He sat down at the piano and played bits of the songs he'd started. The score was rock opera, and it would eventually be filled out with a blend of exhilarating strains of rock music and soaring ballads. It was still in the developmental stage, but we knew then that Sondheim's clone had inherited a gift for music and lyrics and had made it all his own.

We left the apartment excited. Wilson liked Sondheim-2's concept, and he also liked the idea that Sondheim's clone would be writing the musical about the cloned Dolly. It would still have to be good to be successful, but public interest was a given and ticket sales would soar if it received positive reviews.

The following year saw continued fame for Wilson. His book was nominated for the Newbery Medal for children's fiction, Stephen Spielberg-2 expressed an interest in developing the book into a film, and Sondheim-2 started workshopping the story's musical version. In October they set the final date and place of the world premiere for Farewell Dolly – The Musical. It would take place in my hometown theatre, the La Jolla Playhouse. And it would open on March 11, 2059 – my twenty-fifth birthday.

Table of Contents

31

"I love it!" exclaimed Thomas Wilson the moment I opened the front door to let him in. He had just arrived from the dress rehearsal. Previews were set to begin in two days.

"Well come in and tell us about it," I said, ushering him into my home. Lily was there, too. Our wedding date was four months away, in June, and she had flower samples covering the coffee table, dining table, a couple chairs, and much of the floor. Lily cleared enough bouquets away for Thomas to sit down.

"Visually, it's simply wonderful," he began, a gleam in his eyes. "I was afraid the costumes would make the actors look cheesy. I mean, singing sheep, right? But all the animals look human, and the costumes give them a kind of naturalistic feel and enough of a hint to let you know what kind of animals they are. That's all in contrast to the human scientists who are dressed in these white, sterile, vinyl lab coats and look anything but human. Then there are holographic enhancements that look so real you can only tell they're holograms because they're doing things no real prop could do. The sets are so realistic, and during the outdoor scenes you can actually smell the fresh country air."

Lily made a face.

"No, not to worry. Manure-less country air."

"And the music?" I asked.

"It's all really polished now. I wouldn't be surprised if it went to Broadway as is. And probably with a lot of the same cast."

"They're good?" Lily asked, though her eyes strayed to the bouquets.

"They're incredible. I mean, what a coup to have Bernadette Peters-2 as Dolly's daughter. I can't imagine anyone else in the role. And wait till you hear Dolly knock out her solos. She's done a couple old Sondheim revivals and she just finished playing the lead in the tour version of that Captain and Tennille comedy Muskrat Love Will Keep Us Together. No Broadway leads yet, but I think that'll be coming soon enough. She's out of New York, but she was born and raised right here in La Jolla."

"Oh, good for her!" I cheered. "What's her name?"

"Evelyn Green."

I just sat there for a while, slightly dazed. Thomas raised his eyebrows.

"Evelyn Green?" I repeated.

"Do you know her?" Lily asked.

"I...think," I answered. "Well, I mean, I guess I might. At least, I went to elementary school with an Evelyn Green. Any idea about how old she is?"

"Well, I'd guess she was about your age," Thomas answered, now amused. "You want me to ask if she knows you?"

I could feel Lily bristling beside me. "No, of course not," I said. "If I recognize her as the same one, I'll say hi to her at the opening."

While Thomas seemed to delight at the new wrinkle and perhaps some new publicity, I tried to relax Lily with a casual, no-big-deal grin.

Lily was as cold as an icy pond.

***

The big night arrived with a fanfare usually reserved for huge Broadway openings. Besides Stephen Sondheim-2, Thomas Wilson, Lily, and myself, the La Jolla Playhouse's courtyard was packed with other who's-who members of the cloning world including the clone-children of Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Sally Field, Warren Beatty, Liza Minnelli, and a radiant Shirley MacLaine-2 who had recently written a book to continue her c-mother's spiritual journey in print.

I'd only met a couple of them, but Thomas Wilson and Sondheim-2 introduced me to most of the others during the pre-show cocktail party. They all had a captivating vibrancy about them. I wasn't sure if they were always like that or if it was the opening of a big musical about cloning that brought it out, but whatever the cause I found the charisma contagious. Most looked similar to younger versions of the people I'd known from old movies. The only one I didn't recognize until we were introduced was a pre-teen Olivia Newton-John-2, but as a huge Grease fan I greeted her enthusiastically and was flattered that the little girl recognized us and gave us both a hug. That was the only hug I received from a female that didn't seem to bother my fiancé, and Lily actually knelt down and talked to the girl for a while. Lily could be sweet when she didn't feel threatened.

Olivia got the pre-show concert going with some standards including one song just for Lily and me called Twist of Fate from her c-mother's film Two of a Kind. It asked a fitting question as to whether two people deserve a second chance and included a refrain about love blossoming with that second chance. Wrapping up the entertainment was Barbra Streisand-2 who was then attending college in environmental studies. But she still dabbled in her c-mother's music, and she serenaded us all with a handful of Streisand classics. The voice wasn't exactly the same, but it was exquisite. She ended with the apropos The Way We Were, winking playfully at her fellow clones as she asked us, if we were given an opportunity to repeat our lives, whether we would do it.

The wave of celebrity clones led to the creation of the magazine People-2, a title which was supposed to indicate that it was the offspring of the original People magazine, that it dealt with celebrities with the "-2" attached to their names, and that clones were "people too." Their photographers and interviewers were busy all night.

Lily and I ended up sitting in the center of the fourth row next to Thomas Wilson and his husband Ronnie. Thomas and Ronnie were talkative with excitement, and I didn't want to be rude by opening up the playbill. But as soon as the theatre's artistic director came out to thank everyone for coming, I discreetly flipped through the program to the actors' bios.

And there she was. I recognized her photo even before I read her name. It was my Evelyn. The one who had spoken up for me on the first day of second grade, forgiven me for Friday Flip-up Day, led the charge against the rock throwers, gave me my first kiss on the cheek, won a talent show on our school's stage, and the one I later married on that same stage. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed Lily giving me a look. I closed my mouth, closed the program, and shrugged as if nothing had happened.

The artistic director left the stage, the lights dimmed, and the show began.

And there she was. Right in front of me. The story began with Dolly's c-mother, who of course was also played by Evelyn. She sang of a life uninteresting and unfulfilled, dreaming of something beyond. Then she started rising above the ground, looking heavenward as she continued to sing.

Her ascension revealed a second Evelyn, still lying on the ground, surrounded by other animals looking down at her corpse. It was her funeral, and the singing sheep rising to heaven was actually a recorded hologram of Evelyn. Thomas was right. Impressive.

Young Dolly, played by a child actress, was then born to a mother and father who knew she was not theirs. Neither parent paid much attention to her, though the mother dutifully nursed the little lamb. Later, when Evelyn replaced the girl playing Young Dolly, her biological siblings snub her and she grows increasingly distant from her family. Her path to self-discovery includes a trip to Wonderland where she meets the sheep in the curio shop as depicted in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass and later has an encounter with a rude caterpillar, which includes this memorable exchange that is both spoken and puffed into the air in clouds of colorful smoke as the caterpillar shares his hookah pipe with Dolly:

"Who are you?" asks the caterpillar.

"Did you ask, who are ewe?" Dolly responds.

"No. Who are you," he scoffs.

"Why, I am me. But I don't know myself exactly what that might mean. I could be my mother, or she could me, or we could be we. Do you see?"

"Did you ask, do you sea?"

"No, do you see?" Dolly points to the word written above in holographic hookah smoke.

"No. I do not see!" replies the caterpillar.

"Well I'm sure I don't know how we can make it any hazier," Dolly pouts. Meanwhile the form of the caterpillar collapses and a beautiful, holographic butterfly emerges with the actor's head now attached to the butterfly, the hookah still firmly in his grasp.

"Ah, I believe I can see it now," says the butterfly. "I just needed to change my vantage point, you see."

"Well no, I do not see!" Dolly shouts as the butterfly flies away. "Who am I?"

"You are you," he shouts back as he flies offstage to the right, then mumbles to himself, "Odd I didn't see it before. Guess I was a little sluggish."

"Come back!" she calls.

The disgruntled butterfly pops down headfirst from the top of the stage. "Now what?"

Dolly looks around till she finds him far above her. "Oh. Thank you. Um, but do you know why I'm here?"

"Some mad scientists enucleated an egg and put the DNA from a dead sheep into it."

"Oh," she replies, more confused than before. "But why?"

"Why?" he repeats furiously, flying down to look Dolly in the eye. "Did you ask why?"

Dolly stands her ground, and nods. "Why?"

The butterfly smiles. "Answer: That you are here – that life exists, and identity; that the powerful play goes on, and ewe may contribute a verse." He touches her cheek with a wing to look her in the eye. "That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse."

We see Dolly smile for the first time.

The Walt Whitman-quoting butterfly soars away, but pauses briefly at the top to give Dolly one last look. "What will your verse be?"

Ian Wilmut and Keith Campbell raise Dolly in a special indoor enclosure. The scientists talk and sing in English when alone, but whenever they talk to the sheep their lines come out as a series of baa sounds that are translated in subtitles above the stage. The sheep simply shrug.

In the pen, Dolly is introduced to the Welsh mountain ram named David. They discover love, and later Dolly gives birth to Bonnie on Easter Monday. They have five more children, but the rest of the story revolves around Dolly, David, and Bonnie. When Dolly begins hoping to do something grand with her life, she dreams of her c-mother, resulting in a duet between Evelyn as Dolly and Evelyn's hologram as Dolly's c-mother. Dolly realizes that she is doing something special by saving David from a life of boredom and by helping Bonnie deal with the restrictions of being Just a Sheep.

As Dolly starts showing signs of premature aging, young Bonnie begins mothering her mother and forgets worrying about whether she can ever change the world. Taking care of her dying mother and helping her father with the other little ewes is more important and constructive than what most world leaders accomplish.

When Dolly dies on Valentine's Day, she rises to meet the holographic image of her c-mother and they reprise their duet, while Dolly finally sees a vision of a future in which her impact is apparent with the countless contributions cloning technology has made to both animals and humans.

The audience rose in unison as the cast began taking their bows. They went nuts when Bernadette-2 came out, and then again when Evelyn Green made her entrance. While she walked upstage to take her position next to Bernadette, her lifelike hologram descended from above to stand on Evelyn's other side next to David the ram.

As their bows came to an end and the curtain started descending, the real Evelyn waved to the crowd and then seemed to focus her eyes on mine. I was right in front of her, so I suspected she was probably just looking straight ahead into the crowd. But it was a direct enough look to catch Lily's attention, and she made sure I wasn't waving back. I didn't take my eyes off of Evelyn until the curtain cut us off, and then I was queasy with anticipation knowing that in a few minutes we'd finally meet again.

Table of Contents

32

We were the last to file out of the theatre and make our way to the reception area. As we walked, I praised the show to Thomas. Stephen Sondheim-2 joined us, and I praised the show again.

"So was it the same Evelyn?" Thomas whispered, not nearly slyly enough.

Sondheim was surprised, and Lily waited.

"Yeah, it's her," I answered, trying but failing to contain my excitement.

"What's this? You know Evelyn Green?" Sondheim asked.

I nodded. "We went to second grade together."

"And here she is!" Thomas announced.

My stomach tensed and I couldn't breathe. Not only were my old feelings of first love sweeping back and overwhelming me. I really had no idea how she would treat me. She had lost her father in the church bombing because of me. But there was no time to worry or wonder because there she was, more beautiful than ever and dressed to the nines in a simple black dress, with a smile that would melt the heart of any man. And she was smiling right at me.

"My husband!" she exclaimed, and gave me a vice-like hug. "Happy Birthday!"

I felt her hair against my face. Her skin still smelled like jasmine. I breathed in deeply.

"It's good to see you," she said, still holding me tight.

I wasn't going to be the first to let go. "Good to see you, too."

"I guess they do know each other," Sondheim quipped as we finally separated.

"You were..." I began, gesticulating with my hands and arms as I searched for the word, getting more flustered and relieved by the moment.

"Thank you," she mercifully interrupted. "I hope the critics are as kind."

I nodded with what I'm sure was a stupid grin. She meant it, and although I still couldn't find my voice, I was feeling more at ease and more in love.

"So how is my handsome groom?"

I couldn't answer. My head was pounding like it had on that stage in second grade. Lily sensed I was far too infatuated and glared at me. For myself, I was pretty much unable to meet either of their eyes. I knew my eyes would reveal more than I wanted to both women – revealing that I desperately wanted to flag a cab for Lily and share a cup of coffee with Evelyn, trying not to spill any of the coffee on the sheets. Unless she was into that.

This was not a case of mere lust. If it had been lust, I would have been able to meet her eyes. I might have been able to speak. I may have had a nanobule of confidence. This was something else – a feeling I hadn't experienced before.

"He's happily engaged to his fiancé," Lily-2 responded for me.

"I'm sorry – this is Lily Gardener," I managed, immediately wondering if it sounded like I was apologizing for her existence. "Our c-parents were married."

"Of course," Evelyn responded, still smiling warmly. "It's an honor to meet you, Lily. I'm sorry, I hope you don't mind. I was just teasing him because I married your fiancé in a second grade skit."

Thomas and Stephen-2 ate it up, but Lily just nodded. "Yeah, he mentioned it."

Evelyn raised an eyebrow but kept her smile. "Lily Gardener is such a lovely name. Like a garden of my favorite flower."

"And Lily, this is Evelyn Green," I continued.

Lily smiled stiffly as Evelyn shook her unwelcoming hand. "And your name sounds like a lovely golf course."

Lily was always charming when she was jealous. Evelyn didn't seem the least bit phased, perhaps even a tad amused by Lily's childish response. In any event, the "golf course" didn't miss a beat.

"Well if you'd both like to drop by my clubhouse a bit later, Bernadette and I are hosting a little after-show celebration tonight at the house they've put us in."

"Thank you, but it's been a very long day, Miss Green," Lily said before I could accept.

"We'll take a rain check." I realized I was getting myself into serious trouble with Lily, but I wasn't the least concerned. We touched our cells together to transfer our contact information. Then Lily grabbed my arm and led me away without another word.

Table of Contents

33

I cashed my rain check. I called Evelyn a couple days later and we arranged to have lunch the following Tuesday. There was so much pre-date nervousness raging within my body that I threw up before lunch.

This time she had replaced the black dress with jeans and a well-worn sweater. She looked even more stunning, and she gave me another long, strong hug.

"I'm so sorry about your dad," I said.

"I was so sorry to hear about your mom."

The long hug ended and I thanked her, grateful for the condolences and that she didn't blame me, but not wanting to really talk about the circumstances of my mom's death right then. It didn't seem right to discuss how my mom was murdered by my great-grandfather and how I'd plotted but failed to avenge her death and how his clone now acted like he expected to still exert control over my life. You gotta save something for the second date.

When we had hugged, instead of my hands finding the small of her back, they'd found a backpack. I immediately recognized the blue-jean pack. The yellow Star of David and pink triangle were still there, though faded. Patches held the whole thing together.

"You still use the backpack?"

"Of course! I couldn't bring myself to throw it away, and it's a lot cheaper to patch it up than to buy things like purses and make-up bags."

The vandals had meant to embarrass and demean her. But as the American soldiers had done when the British derisively sang Yankee Doodle after the Battle of Concord, she had turned their efforts around and wore their abuse as a badge of honor.

"Doesn't the triangle put a crimp in your romantic life?" I asked.

Evelyn tossed her hair back with an over-the-top super-model flick. "Hasn't been a problem."

I laughed, but then felt a little sorry I asked. Either she was kidding, or plenty of guys had overlooked the triangle, or she was having a lot of fun as a lesbian. I was silent for a moment.

"But I'm not seeing anyone right now," she added. I unsuccessfully tried to stop myself from looking overly pleased.

The hostess seated us and we began looking through the menu. "Looking" was an accurate description for what I did – there was definitely no reading going on. I couldn't concentrate on the words. Fortunately I'd been to that Thai restaurant several times and I knew what I wanted. When Evelyn found what she wanted she closed the menu, grabbed one of my hands in hers, and pumped it up and down.

"So how have you been? I hear about you in the news every once in a while, but I want to hear about you from you."

I told her about having to move into Great-Grandpa Lyle's and not liking it, but I didn't go into the details – only telling her that he was very controlling. Then there was Aunt Louise whom I adored. I mixed in some boring stories from college and my work at USCS, but how I enjoyed the most professional satisfaction by serving on the Genetics and Cloning Board.

"Do you still write your stories?" she asked, her eyes lighting up. I noticed for the first time a small scar over her right eyebrow. The only physical evidence from the day her father died.

"Not since grade school."

"That's too bad!" she cried. "Did you just lose interest?"

"Sort of."

"That's too bad," she repeated more softly, frowning. "And so you're engaged now?"

I shrugged as if the answer might be in a vague area between yes and no.

"To the clone of the woman your c-father was married to?" she continued, either ignoring me or taking my vague shrug as an affirmation.

"Ye—es," I said. "Sort of."

She raised the eyebrow below the scar.

"So, now tell me about yourself," I said. "What brought you from Winter Wonderland to Farewell Dolly?"

She let me get away with it. "My two biggest desires – to be on stage and be a clone like you."

"Come on," I urged. "What happened after the second grade?"

"The minute one."

I groaned and rolled my eyes.

"Okay. I loved Winter Wonderland so much I began to take a real interest in performing, so I began taking classes and performing with theatre groups like San Diego Junior Theatre downtown and J*Company in La Jolla, and then I became obsessed with it all and ended up applying to NYU as a theatre major. When I got my letter of acceptance, I threw my backpack in my little car and drove to New York."

"And became a star," I concluded.

"And became a waitress," she corrected. "I got a few acting jobs and some national tours, and then broke into Broadway a couple years ago when I got in the ensemble of Sweeney Todd, and then last year the same director cast me as Rapunzel in Into the Woods."

"Lots of Sondheims," I noted.

"Yes! And Stephen-2 was involved in both revivals, which I think kind of helped when it came to auditioning for Dolly."

The sweet smell of curry awakened me to our lunch. I wasn't sure when it had been delivered.

"So this could become your first big Broadway lead," I said.

She shrugged modestly, scooping some rice onto her plate. "If they keep me."

"Oh, please. Didn't you read the raves about you in the news?"

Evelyn blushed. "They're probably just being kind to the local girl."

"What did the New York critics have to say about it?" I asked. I already knew the answer; I'd read all the reviews about Evelyn, even digging up the ones from her previous credits in New York, the tours, and some from her San Diego performances in her youth. I hadn't gotten much work done in the office that week.

"They had pretty positive things to say," she admitted.

"They loved you!"

"I don't want to talk about all that," she said, growing more embarrassed.

"What do you want to talk about?"

"About you and what it's been like for you. Your philosophy on life."

"My philosophy on life?"

"Or to put it more poetically, who are ewe?"

I grinned and rolled my eyes again. "Well, I guess I don't know the answer to that much better than you did in the show."

Evelyn seemed surprised. "And whyever not? Don't you think self-awareness is important?"

"I guess I don't know if I think self-awareness is important or not."

She processed the sentence, then laughed. "But seriously!"

But I found myself reluctant to answer seriously. Not because I couldn't think of a response, but because I didn't like the response that I was coming to. Here I was, following the same career path as my c-father and, like him, preparing to marry Lily.

"I guess I've become my own grandpa," I said.

I thought she might laugh because of the song I'd tried to sing at the talent show, but Evelyn frowned. "Well, I hope that's not all you are. Unless that's really what you want."

I mixed my rice more thoroughly into my curry. "To be honest, I haven't given it much thought lately. I've just been kind of going through the path I seemed naturally suited for. Is it really important to be different than my c-father?"

"Not if you don't want to be. Did your clone-father have the life that you want to have?"

"Sort of." I hesitated, tasting how ridiculous that lie was. "Well, not exactly."

"What do you mean?"

This reunion with Evelyn was getting too complicated. Although I'd occasionally debated my relationship with my c-father after my failure with Lyle-1, the debate was infrequent and only with myself. Now here she was forcing me to publicly confront the fact that I was following the easy path and whether or not I was doing so out of happiness, laziness, or cowardliness. And this last question was most troubling of all. For when I thought about what my c-father did with his life, there was little I'd be proud to emulate beyond our mutual love for my mom.

"I think he did some important work at USCS that benefits lots of people," I said.

"Yes, he did," Evelyn agreed. "And you enjoy the work?"

"Sure, it's fine. It's something I can do."

"Like waitressing," she said, nodding. "Have you thought about trying something you like even more?"

"Truthfully," I said, "I haven't even sat down to think about what I might like doing."

Evelyn frowned. I could tell she was growing a little disillusioned, sensing how little I'd cared about my life and happiness. I couldn't bear it. I had far too much admiration for her to be capable of handling her disappointment.

"But I'm going to start thinking about it now."

She smiled – the same one I'd seen the first time I met her. "Good! Now, is there anything about your clone-father that you don't want to repeat?"

"He married a woman he didn't love."

I blurted it out before I even knew what I was saying. Evelyn raised her eyebrows.

"Then I take it you like Lily-2 more than Adam-1 liked Lily-1?"

I shrugged. "He hated Lily-1. I like Lily-2."

"But you don't love her?"

I slowly shook my head. Once again I was getting a failing grade from the person I wanted to impress more than any other. And from myself. I clutched the napkin in my lap and felt sweat trickle down my underarms.

"Adam, what are you doing? I mean, it's not just your life you could be ruining. What about Lily?"

"But I'd be hurting her by breaking it off," I said. "You don't understand. She's lived her entire life believing that we truly are our c-parents, and that we're basically already married. Her clone-mother killed herself so her clone could marry me."

"So you're going to spend your entire life married to a woman you don't love because your clone-father did it and because it would hurt her feelings not to marry her?" She waited a moment for a response, but I didn't have one. She put her hand over mine. "Adam, I seriously doubt if your clone-father would want you to repeat the mistake he made, and I'm also sure that Lily-2 can find another man if she has to. What you're doing will just hurt you both."

I had known that marrying Lily was impossible from the moment I'd heard Evelyn would be Dolly. The only hard parts were admitting to Evelyn my foolishness for being engaged to a woman I didn't love, and then confronting Lily with the news.

One was now out of the way. The other was coming that night.

Table of Contents

34

Lyle-2 opened Aunt Louise's front door as I reached for the handle. Lily-2 was sitting on the living room couch. She'd been crying.

"Sit down, Adam," Lyle commanded. He closed and locked the door. He was thirteen years old, and his face and body were beginning to closely resemble the man I'd feared growing up.

"I'll pass." I stopped in the entryway.

"We know you had lunch with Evelyn Green today," he said. Lily started wiping away fresh tears.

"It wasn't meant to be a secret."

"My c-father mentioned her in his notes. I'm afraid I can't allow you to develop a personal relationship with this woman."

I laughed.

"I'm quite serious," he said.

"That's why I'm laughing. I was going to ask who the hell you think you are, but it's pretty obvious, isn't it. You think you have the power to tell me what to do like your c-father did. And you're wrong."

"No, you're wrong," he said, pushing me into the living room.

I caught myself, grabbed him by the arm, and sent him sprawling onto the living room floor. One of his flailing hands knocked over a red glass tulip, and it shattered.

We were all frozen for a moment – me standing tall with adrenaline pumping and feeling stronger than I'd ever felt, Lyle-2 kneeling on the ground and looking up at me with stunned fury, and Lily-2 gaping as her eyes went from me to Lyle before finally settling on the shards of red tulip. She had stopped crying.

"I'm afraid, Lily, that I've come here tonight to end our engagement."

She went even paler. She tore her gaze from the tulip and, for the first time, looked to Lyle-2 for help.

"This has nothing to do with Lyle," I snapped, getting her attention back. "If you have something to say to me, you'd better do it yourself. Why are you looking to him?"

"Who else can help me?" she asked.

"You don't need him anymore than you need me."

"Yes, I do," she said. "He's my father. And he's the only man who can stop you from leaving me."

"Lyle-2 isn't a man at all," I said. Lyle-2 stood back up. "He's a little boy who thinks too much of himself. If he was your father, I'd kill him for the murder of my mother."

I heard Lily gasp, but by that time I was already locked up with Lyle-2. He seemed to know exactly what I was talking about, and he didn't look pleased that I'd informed Lily-2 about his c-father's sin.

"He's lying," Lyle said. "I risked my life to try to save Sarah and killed her murderer. This new Adam just wants to tear our family apart. I didn't think he'd stoop to claim that I killed your daughter. Set the record straight, Adam."

"I was there. Lyle-1 murdered Sarah."

Lily clasped her hands together and stared at me for a moment in silence. "Am I supposed to believe my father or the man who just broke off our engagement?"

"I'm breaking our engagement because I'm not in love with you. I like you and care about you as a friend, even a sister, but I've never been in love with you."

"You wouldn't have slept with your friend or sister."

I couldn't think of a response.

"No," she continued. "That's not true. That woman turned you against me."

"No, Lily. Don't you remember Suzie Kandel? There were others in college as well. Do you think I'd have been sleeping around if I really loved you?"

"Suzie made all that up. You told me so yourself."

"I'm sorry I lied about that," I responded, softening a little. "It was wrong to string you along all these years. If you want to forgive me, we can continue to be friends. If not, then..." I shrugged, "then I guess that's it."

Her knuckles turned white as she clenched them tighter. "Fuck you."

"Okay," I said. "Goodbye, Lily. I'm sure you'll find someone else. Meanwhile, don't let little Lyle here run your life. You'd be miserable."

I turned to leave. Lyle's voice stopped me.

"You walk out that door, and you're a dead man."

I tried to give him the most condescending expression I could muster. "All that extra intelligence, and you couldn't think of anything more original than that."

He went scarlet with rage while I tried my best to look bemused by his anger. I was a little bemused, but I also knew what his c-father was capable of, and I supposed Lyle-2 was capable of the same thing – or would be. I turned for good, unlocking and opening the door. For a moment I considered slamming it shut behind me, but instead left it wide open. Partly out of the puerile desire to leave him the inconvenience of having to close it himself, and partly to show Lyle that I was unconcerned about his death threat. If he was so eager to kill me, I wasn't going to close the door behind me to try to protect myself. Let him come.

Table of Contents

35

I called Evelyn the next night to tell her that I'd ended my engagement, but that perhaps we should keep a safe distance. Gossip columnists could completely overshadow her reviews and ruin her chance to star on Broadway.

"Do you think I care that much about what people say?" she asked.

"I'm sorry. I guess that's not the real reason I think we shouldn't see each other."

"Which is?"

I paused. "I know it sounds crazy, but I'm truly afraid they may try to hurt you."

There was silence. I thought of her father.

"Then now I definitely have to talk to you," she said.

"It's too big a risk."

"Adam. I don't care about that."

So we got together again. That Thursday was Evelyn's birthday. I took the day off from work and met her at the entrance to the San Diego Wild Animal Park. She called it research for her role. The Wild Animal Park had long used cloning to preserve endangered species by keeping their DNA in what they called their "frozen zoo." They had successfully created a protocol to ensure genetic diversity in severely endangered and extinct gene pools and had brought back several species that had become extinct earlier in the century like the Iberian lynx and the Sumatran rhino. Not to mention, of course, the first birth of a mammoth in more than 4,000 years.

One of the administrators of the cloning department graciously offered a private tour of the facilities. We spent a couple hours learning about the various programs, taking photos with the staff, and playing with a couple of cloned Bengal tiger kittens not three weeks old.

After that we took the tram around the wide savannahs that represented Asia and Africa, and then walked through the park, eventually ending up on a lookout point deep within a savannah. It was connected to the main walkways by a long bridge raised above the grasslands, giving you a 360-degree view of the land where herds of rhinos, giraffes, and elephants roamed. Evelyn said that it had been one of her favorite spots growing up, and I could see why. As the sun began to set and a breeze ruffled our hair and the Eucalyptus trees, I felt a serenity that eased out the clump of tension left over from the confrontation with Lyle and Lily. We leaned on the railing for a long time in silence.

"So, did you want to talk about it?" she asked after a couple other visitors strolled away and left us alone at the lookout.

I had managed to avoid the topic for hours, but soon Evelyn would have to get to the theatre for her next show. I told her everything about that night, realizing as I was doing it that it was the first time I'd ever given anyone so wide a look into the warped relationship I had with Lily-2 and Lyle-2. It was a tremendous relief.

"And why do you think they may actually respond violently?" she asked. "I mean, most people who get angry or spurned by lovers don't respond with violence."

"Lyle threatened me as I left."

"How old is he?" she asked.

I paused. "Well, just thirteen." I shook my head at how silly that seemed. "I know, sounds stupid."

She shrugged.

"I guess I'm just still that scared of his clone-father."

"Do you know of anyone who Lyle-1 physically attacked?"

I didn't know what to say. I thought telling Evelyn could put her in more danger. Or that's what I told myself.

"I strongly suspect him in a death."

"Oh." She paused a moment to see if I was going to elaborate. I didn't. "Okay. Then I guess it wouldn't hurt to be wary, but don't stop seeing me for my sake. I don't want to let anyone take someone I care about out of my life with threats."

Had it been out of concern for her or for myself that I'd suggested we not see each other again? My eyes drifted down to her vandalized, patched-up backpack that sat next to her on the bench.

"What are you doing after the show tonight?" I asked.

She smiled. "Waiting to see you again."

I gazed at her for a long time. "I don't know how to tell you this without it sounding sappy."

She leaned against my arm. "Well, I like sap."

"Do you know what you've saved me from?" It began to dawn on me how close I'd come to living a life I'd have hated. That, like my c-father, I would always be ashamed of. "I was like those kids in Salinger's book playing in the rye near the cliff. You came out of nowhere and caught me just as I was going over the edge."

She shook her head. "That's the sappiest thing I've ever heard."

"I know, I'm sor–" I began, but was interrupted by her kiss. Our first kiss since the last time I saw her in second grade, but this one was on the lips.

Sondheim-2 got me a last-minute ticket, and Evelyn was even more captivating than the opening night. We went out afterwards for hot fudge sundaes, and I laughed more than I had since I was seven years old. Perhaps Evelyn was on a roll. Perhaps it was the relief of having finally at least hinted to someone else of the darkness swirling around my family life. Perhaps I was truly falling in love for the first time in my life, and she was returning that love.

We left the restaurant at two in the morning and walked to her car. We said an awkward good night, and then she came close with a mischievous grin on her face and kissed me. It wasn't one of Lily's over-the-top passionate kisses. It was softly, tenderly sensuous, and I wanted it to never stop. We kissed a couple more times before she pulled back, leaving me wobbly.

"Thank you," I said.

"Thank you," she responded.

"I guess this is good night, then?"

She laughed. "It's not Friday Flip-up Day yet, if that's what you're hinting at."

My face grew warm and I stared at my shoes for a moment, chuckling at my own embarrassment. When I looked up again she greeted me with one last, lingering kiss.

"Good night," she said.

"Good night," I answered, and I watched as she got settled in her car and drove out of sight.

Table of Contents

36

And so began my romantic relationship with Evelyn Green. We dated at least twice a week through the end of March and all of April. I was in the news again: Adam-2 breaks off his engagement with Lily-2 for his second grade sweetheart whom he once married on stage, and who was now starring as a clone on the professional stage. We even rated the cover of People-2 magazine.

Evelyn was still busy with Farewell Dolly, which was originally set to close in early May but was extended through June. I tried to focus on finals – my final finals to complete the MBA program at the University of San Diego. Evelyn came to my graduation ceremonies at the end of May, and Aunt Louise joined us along with Blue-3 and her new puppy Pierre-3, and without Lily-2 and Lyle-2. Louise seemed frazzled, and she admitted that she spent most of the time in her room with her pets or minding her own business in her glass garden.

"They're always so cross!" she said. But she didn't seem to blame Evelyn for their behavior and was actually very kind to her, at one point going so far as to note that we looked like a nice couple. I felt sorry for Louise. And guilt. They were cross because of me.

Meanwhile, career-wise, my new degree was to automatically bump me into a higher management position at U.S. Cloning Systems, but on my first day at work after graduation, I learned that some members of the board were opposed to my promotion.

"Who are they?" I asked Stan Kushman, my friend and supervisor.

"DeLain, Gainbridge, and Fallows." Stan was as angry as I was, and only too eager to point them out.

"All three from Lyle's reign," I said. "And what are the others saying?"

"They're trying to stay neutral."

"I won't let them."

"What are you going to do?"

"My c-father left me plenty of information to ensure my place in the company should the old guard oppose me. It's time to use some of it."

Three days later a file was anonymously sent to all the board members, the CEO, several company presidents and vice presidents, and numerous media outlets. On it were the details of how board member Terry Fallows, whom my c-father had described as Lyle's closest confidant, had forged illegal deals with government officials and members of Congress and had used his position to enrich his friends at the expense of the company and its shareholders. All the information was more than twenty-five years old, so the statute of limitations had long since expired, but it was enough to force his disgraced resignation. An investigation that followed would reveal he had continued such practices, and eventually he would serve ten years for his crimes.

After his resignation, I requested a private meeting with the remaining board members and asked them in a roundabout way if there were others opposed to my promotion. All eight of them voiced their unequivocal support. Loyalties to Lyle went only so far, especially since he was now a thirteen-year-old boy who could do little for them, or to them.

A week later it was announced that I was the new director of development in the Artificial Immune System (AIS) Department. I had defeated Lyle-2's attempt to sabotage my career. It was pleasing, but I knew it was a reason to be more cautious. If he couldn't get his revenge professionally, he could resort to something worse.

I jumped when I heard the doorbell late at night on Thursday, June 5, 2059 – the 60th wedding anniversary of Adam-1 and Lily-1 and the date Lily-2 and I had set for our wedding. But it wasn't a vengeful Lyle. The screen revealed Lily leaning against the porch wall, swaying a little, her face downcast.

"Lily, what do you want?"

She reached out to touch the door without looking up. "Just to talk."

"That's not a good idea."

"Please, Adam?"

"I'm gonna call you a cab."

"No, wait!" she cried as she flopped herself against the door. "Please. I just need to talk for a minute."

I sighed. "Okay, I'm going to open the door."

She righted herself and beamed at the swinging of the door. "Thank you," she said as she stepped through the doorway and then wrapped her arms around me.

"Come on. Stop it," I said softly but firmly while closing the door behind her.

"We were going to marry today."

"Is that what you came to say?"

She took a gold locket from her pocket. "Remember your wedding present to me?"

I remembered. I remembered that Christmas morning. The morning of my greatest failure. "I'm calling you a cab."

"No, you can't!" She grabbed my shirt and looked into my face, her eyes swelled with fear, the stench of tequila on her breath.

"What's wrong?"

"You have to take me," she said.

She grabbed my left hand and tried to pull it under her blouse. I yanked my hand from her grip.

"Lily, get out of here. Now." My voice cracked. The gravity of what I'd done to her, all those years of misleading her, began to hit me. I needed her to go. Take my guilt with her. Never come back. She had to leave before I realized the events of that Christmas morning hadn't been my greatest failure after all. That my greatest failure was all the years since.

"No. Please. I can't live with him anymore. He scares me. He opens the door and looks at me when I'm in the shower—"

"Jesus, Lily."

"And sometimes I'll wake up at night, and he's standing over me."

"Then leave," I said, physically holding her at arms' length, a feeling of revulsion rising like vomit in my chest. I wanted to be as far from Lyle and Lily as I could. Washed clean of my family. And of myself.

"Please, Adam. I think he wants to do what Daddy did to me—"

"Lily—"

"—and Sarah."

My knees buckled, barely remained standing.

"That Christmas. You ran upstairs. And I tried to follow. And he picked me up and said it was okay. He said if you didn't want me, he'd take care of me. And he carried me into his room. And did what he did to us before."

"Lily, no," I said, wiping away her tears. For the first time I began to see my mother's resemblance in Lily. I saw my mom crying after Thanksgiving dinner. I stepped forward and slipped my arms around Lily, holding her close. Her entire body was quaking.

"And I've seen him now, in his room watching holotapes of Daddy with women who look like me. And Sarah."

"Lily, I'm so sorry."

She was quiet.

"Lily," I said, raising her chin to look directly in her eyes. "You need to get out of there. Buy a house or rent an apartment. I'll help you move."

"Here?"

I backed away a little, holding her hands in mine, shaking my head. "I can't."

She frowned. She slipped her hands away and put the locket back in her pocket. "No. I'll just stay with him, then."

"Lily, please."

"At least he wants me," she said. Then she walked out the door.

I rested my head against the door, but I didn't go after her. Instead I called Aunt Louise and told her what happened. Louise called me the next day, upset that she was unable to talk Lily into leaving. She said she had fingerprint locks installed on Lily's bedroom and bathroom doors, but Lily wouldn't use them. "I don't want to make him mad," she told her.

That night I went straight to the home of my free therapist, Reverend Jack Lewis. He had recently completed his graduate degree in divinity and been ordained as a Unitarian minister. But he was better known for his writings, which included numerous articles and now three books about clones and religion, which were widely praised and credited with having had a positive effect on acceptance of clones even among some fairly conservative Christians.

His wife Joy shook her head when she saw me standing at the door with a six-pack of Sam Adams for Jack.

"The Padres are already down three runs."

"How's he holding up?"

"He's doing a lot of praying."

I heard an expletive come from the living room. "Is that orthodox?"

Joy rolled her eyes and grinned. "I better take the kids out for a walk before the Dodgers score any more runs. You guys have a good talk. Take his mind off the game."

As Joy readied their two-year-old twins, Jack greeted me with a hug and put four of the beers in the refrigerator, opening two for us.

"So. What happened?" he asked as he muted the game.

I took a drink. "Lily came over last night. She was drunk."

"Yeah?" he asked. "What did she say?"

I bit my lip. Although Jack was my only confidant, I'd told him very little. "She said that Lyle-1 sexually abused her." Jack set his beer down and ran his fingers through his hair. "And that Lyle-2 is watching holovideos of his c-father with prostitutes who looked like Lily, and he watches her in the bathroom and when she's sleeping." I took another drink. "She wants me to save her from him, but she won't just leave him. I don't know what to do."

Jack was silent for a long time. "Well, you could confront Lyle, but I don't know if that'll scare him or make him bolder. She really needs to leave."

"She won't. She'd rather be with him than no one."

Jack nodded. "Then you need to talk her into getting some counseling. I've got a contact you can give her. And she needs some self-esteem. Tell her that you love her, that you think she's a great person, but that you just don't love her that way."

"I'll try it," I said, and took another drink.

Jack frowned. "I'm sorry, I don't really know what to say. It's bad."

"Yeah." I turned off the mute, and we watched the rest of the game in silence. The Padres lost.

*

I didn't call her. I wanted to help Lily, but not as much as I just wanted to get away from her. I just wanted my past to be gone.

A few days later, when I got home, her car was parked in the driveway. I saw her body lying on the front porch. I called to her, but she didn't respond. I ran, shook her shoulder. "Lily?" My voice sounded too shrill to be mine. What had I done? I held my fingers to her neck to feel for a pulse. I took my cell out, dropped it, picked it up with both hands and dialed 911. The operator answered.

"Please, I need help. 5701 Ridgecrest Lane."

"What's the situation, sir?"

"I don't know. She's unconscious. Please hurry."

"Paramedics are on their way. Is she breathing?"

"Yes."

"Do you know if she's been drinking or taking any medication or drugs?"

I didn't answer. I smoothed the hair back from her face. That face had once glowed at me. Back when it showed me the locket she got for Christmas. And the morning before we made love the first time. I'd dreamt that night of her hands covered in blood. My subconscious was as complete a hypocrite as myself.

"Sir? Are you still there?"

"Yes."

"Do you know what happened?"

"Yes."

Table of Contents

37

After they took her to the hospital, I called Evelyn. She arrived ten minutes later.

"Have you heard anything?" she asked as she held me close.

"She's conscious. They've pumped her stomach. They think she'll be okay."

"Are you going to be okay?"

I nodded. "I have to tell you something," I said as I took her hand and led her to the couch. But when we sat, I couldn't start.

"Adam?" Her hand worked its way over mine, comforting me. "It's okay."

I told her what Lily said about Lyle-1 and her fears about Lyle-2. And then I told her what happened after we parted that last day before winter vacation in second grade: the real story of my mother's murder, how I'd been running away in fear as she was shot, seeing Lyle getting ready to kill me in the reflection of my dead mother's eyes and selfishly saving myself as her unseeing eyes watched me, my foiled effort to avenge her by killing Lyle, and my humiliation Christmas morning as the gun sat in front of me amidst the wadded photos of my mother while Lyle leered above me – and again I ran away.

I couldn't look her in the eye as I told the story, holding my hands in front of my face. When I was done, she held me close. After a while she pulled my hands from my face and kissed me. She led me up to my bedroom and we made love for the first time. As she held me, her soft, jasmine-scented skin moving with mine, all my problems and all my failures temporarily disappeared from my mind. For a while I once again began to believe that there might be a heaven, and that the God in it might be good. And that I could be forgiven.

*

The show closed a couple weeks later, and the producers began making plans for its Broadway run. Evelyn decided not to return home to New York for a while, moving out of the temporary housing the theatre had provided and moving in with her mother.

From the first, Hannah didn't support human cloning. Her resentment deepened when she lost her husband in an explosion perpetrated by anti-cloners. Before Lily's suicide attempt, Hannah had been polite to me, though certainly never excited at my presence. Afterwards, she went from neutral to cold. I didn't know what all Evelyn had shared with her mom, but the suicide attempt alone may have been enough to suggest my family was still a danger to hers.

Evelyn was upstairs getting changed, and it was the first time I'd ever been alone with Hannah. My palms were sweating as Hannah laid out her next game of solitaire on the dining table. I was hoping Evelyn's backstage experience had made her a quick-change artist.

"So things are going well between you two?" she asked.

"Yes ma'am, I'm deeply in love with your daughter."

She nodded as if she expected this, looking over her cards. She rubbed her earlobe hidden behind her gray hair. "You know, I remember the Winter Wonderland skit quite clearly. You almost abandoned my daughter at the altar," she said slyly, jokingly. Humor, that was good! I relaxed a little.

"Just acting," I said.

"Badly," she responded.

"Everyone's a critic," I said, smiling. "I'd never act that badly to your daughter again."

She frowned. Her eyes, which so closely resembled Evelyn's, focused on mine and lost any hint of playfulness. "Don't you think it might be better for her if you did?"

I shrugged. "I completely understand your opinion, Mrs. Green, and I suggested we end the relationship before it even got going, but that's not the way Evelyn wants to live her life."

"And I admire her for that. But you don't have to live your life that way. You can save hers by leaving her."

"Maybe you're right, and maybe I should leave her," I admitted. "But I love her too much to walk away."

"You're that selfish?"

"I guess I am."

Hannah pushed all the cards together into a jagged mess. I figure I'd feel the same way if the situation were reversed.

"If anything happens to her, you'll have her blood on your hands. But it'll be too late."

I stared at my hands. I said nothing.

Hannah broke the silence. "Was your clone-father so cold?"

A pile of embers in my chest started to glow. An old defensiveness. "That's part of it, isn't it? You don't want your daughter to marry a human clone."

"You know very well what concerns me. That and the fact that we have no idea what defects your children may face."

"Children of clones haven't had any more physiological problems than non-clones."

"Well that will be a relief," her voice rising as she stood up, "assuming Evelyn lives long enough to bear children!"

We both stood motionless. Evelyn came down the stairs.

"Is everything okay?"

"Of course, dear," Hannah answered quickly. "We were just talking."

***

My relationship with Hannah had become further strained, and Evelyn noticed. She didn't need to ask why. Her mother had encouraged her to leave me for her safety and had even told her that she thought I was wrong for staying with her and putting her life in jeopardy. Evelyn sympathized with her mother's feelings, but in spite of them the summer of 2059 brought us closer than ever.

After Evelyn's show closed in mid-June, she had a lot of free time. A couple times a week the cast and crew got together and went over some changes Sondheim-2 was considering, but most of the work now was with the producers who were raising money and trying to secure a theatre on Broadway. They were hoping to open that winter.

My schooling was over, so I went to work full time at USCS. While I was engaged to Lily-2, I had imagined that this would mean the start of 80-hour workweeks as I focused on my career. But now I was going to try to have a successful career with a 40-hour week. I wanted to spend all other available time with Evelyn.

To make that possible, we moved her into my place over the long Fourth of July weekend. Our relationship became less about dating and more about simply being around each other and helping each other have as full a life as possible. With that in mind, Evelyn encouraged me to take up writing again. She'd kept a journal since second grade and had recently begun writing birthday letters to her clone. She wouldn't let me read any of it, but she used her new prolificacy, and some pestering, to get me moving. It worked, and I loved it. I kicked myself for wasting so many years forgetting my passion.

The first thing I tried was a one-act play called Romeo and Rosalind. The tragicomedy plot followed the time traveler from H.G. Wells's The Time Machine as he went back in literary time to save the lives of Romeo and Juliet, which he did by revealing to them their tragic fate and encouraging them to separate and marry others. They follow his advice, and Romeo marries Rosalind while Juliet ties the knot with Prince Paris. Fate contrives to bring them to a tragic end anyway and, in this case, a loveless one as well.

It was my first true writing attempt in almost twenty years except as required by school, and it was no work of art. Evelyn, however, was generous. She praised the concept and said that my writing style had a definite, unique flair to it. When I asked her if that meant she'd be willing to play the part of Juliet on the stage, she laughed and started rearranging the spice rack. It seemed her charity only went so far. But she did perform a melodramatic parody of the play with me in the privacy of our own home.

And so it was back to the drawing board. In August I began work on my next big project, a novel. The title was Hamlet Act VI: The Dreams That Come. Sort of a somber version of Lee Blessing's Fortinbras, but focused only on the dead. If Hamlet's murdered father had come back as a ghost, then why not everyone else? And if they did return as ghosts, how would it unfold when Hamlet's father meets his wife and murdering brother? And what would happen among Hamlet, Ophelia, and Polonius – not to mention Rosencrantz and Guildenstern?

I didn't realize until years later, while talking with Jack, that this was an attempt to deal with issues in my own life. I was trying to understand feuds that could continue past death. In my case, the feud continued in an afterlife as clones rather than as ghosts, within a family that was, as Hamlet would have put it, and as Jack did put it, "more than kin and less than kind."

After describing to Evelyn my vision for the storyline, she was even more delighted about the concept and encouraged me to pursue it.

"But don't tell me – instead of everyone dying at the end, in this one all the dead people come back to life, right?"

I shook my head at her bad joke. Then asked if she would consider starring as Ophelia in its stage form.

"Ummm...maybe!" she replied as she turned and began to fluff a throw pillow.

I hadn't gotten very far on the new novel before the news came in mid-September that Evelyn would need to move back to New York. The theatre was all arranged, and the producers wanted the Broadway production to open on March 11 with previews beginning the second week of January. That was in four months, and the company wanted to spend the time preparing in New York. Evelyn would have to leave La Jolla on September 26.

I was looking forward to the move. Every time I drove up to the house, I half expected to see Lily sprawled on the porch. Especially after her last e-mail:

Dear Adam,

Hey, thank you for trying to comfort me and calling for help the other time. You're a good man. Lyle's my problem, not yours. He's probably what I deserve. It was my fault Mommy drowned herself. Maybe I'm supposed to take her place.

Lyle says he'll make sure I'm not alone. He's started touching me when he comes into my room at night. I pretend to be asleep.

Okay, if you want to get together sometime, please let me know.

Love, Lily

I called and begged her to move, but she repeated that if I didn't want her, she would stay with Lyle. Maybe my leaving to New York would be good for both of us. Maybe she would move on.

Table of Contents

38

I'd already arranged to do most of my work by telecommuting. But there was one more thing I wanted to arrange before we left. I hoped to marry Evelyn.

I told her that I wanted to go back to the Wild Animal Park before we left San Diego, and I took Wednesday, September 17 off from work for that purpose. We toured the nursery again, took the tram, and ended at the lookout tower in the middle of the savannah. We sat there for a long time, talking and gazing out at the vista. I chose that location for the proposal because it was the most romantic destination of our first dates and because she had said it was her favorite place in the world. The proposal, coming so early in our relationship (even if we'd technically known each other for eighteen years) was far from a sure thing, and I figured I could use all the help I could muster.

We got permission to stay a while after the park closed. After a peaceful hour or so of watching dusk settle on the giraffes and elephants, I felt my cell vibrate. It was time. But I suddenly felt stupid for doing it. It was too soon. I was putting her in a position that would mortify her. I tried to think of a way out of it, but I heard Jack's footsteps. And so did Evelyn. She turned around.

"Jack?" she exclaimed, jumping up and greeting him with a hug. "What are you doing here?"

She was grinning as if this was truly a remarkable coincidence. Maybe something in Jack's return grin, and a lack of immediate response, suggested to her otherwise. I stood up, and Evelyn looked back and forth between us.

I was supposed to say something, but I was still wrestling with whether this was a wise thing to do.

Evelyn's grin transformed into a huge smile that made her cheekbones bulge out beautifully. She laughed. "Um...what's going on here?"

While Evelyn was watching me, I saw Jack urge me on with a tip of his head. If he didn't think this was too soon, then just maybe...

I decided to jump. "Jack will ask if you're married," I clumsily began my Winter Wonderland-inspired proposal while fumbling in my pocket for the ring while keeping my eyes on Evelyn, ready to stop if her eyes started flashing red stoplights at me. But she didn't. Her eyes fixed on my fumbling hand. Which finally produced the ring. For a moment. I was trying to hold it out in my palm, but it fell to the wooden walkway. I dropped to my hands and knees, trying to stop it from rolling in between the planks to the savannah below.

Surprisingly, my fingers trapped it. I cautiously used the fingers of my sweaty left hand to pick up the ring and place it in the palm of my sweaty right hand.

I met Evelyn's eyes again, fearful of what I'd see. Her mouth was open wide.

"You'll say?" I whispered.

She froze. The long pause soon left me certain of one thing – she was going to turn me down and was trying to think of a tender way of doing it. While I thought about feeding myself to the lions.

But finally she walked to me, her face brightening into a huge, flashy smile, and helped me stand up. She plucked the ring out of my palm and gave me a hug and a long kiss.

"Does that mean yes?" I asked in disbelief.

Evelyn's eyes looked to the side, appearing to mull it over for a moment. "No, Jack."

I stood stock still, trying to sort out the flippant response.

She nodded to Jack and then wagged her finger at him as she said, "But I guess he can tie the knot since he's around."

Jack let out a whoop and hugged us both as I was still trying to believe it all. We took a picture of the three of us, and another of me putting the ring on her finger, still dazed. Evelyn must have noticed. After Jack excused himself to let us be alone, she took my hands and made me meet her eyes.

"Are you sure about this?"

I nodded. "I just can't believe you are."

She kissed me and held me close. "I love you."

We held each other for a long time as the dark of night settled on the park and the sounds of nocturnal Africa embraced us.

*

I already had an idea for the wedding time and place, and Evelyn agreed. We would hold it the day before we left for New York on the night of Thursday, September 25. The location would be the auditorium at Hill Creek Junior Academy – the location of our first marriage.

On Friday we began notifying everyone. Naturally, I asked Jack to reprise his role as our Parson Brown. Their twins, Edmund and Lucy, were our ring boy and flower girl. Aunt Louise took the place of my mother. Lily-2 and Lyle-2 weren't invited. I was afraid of what Lyle would do at the ceremony, and I was afraid an invitation to Lily would be seen as cruel.

On the eve of our wedding, as we performed a dress rehearsal of the ceremony, I remembered thinking how perfectly full circle my life had come. Was it too perfect to be real? Perhaps it was all someone else's dream, and I was like Ti Moune in Once On This Island or my characters in Romeo and Rosalind, moved about by the hands of the gods, predestined to meet some terrible end of which I couldn't hope to control. Or could it all be my own dream? I'd read stories about people who, at their very moment of death, lived entire lives in their minds. When I had seen Lyle putting the gun to my head in my mother's eyes, perhaps he had fired after all, and everything that had happened since that instant had merely been my death vision. Now that the circle was completing, reuniting me with my two friends from second grade – the last people I'd seen before Lyle picked me up from school on that terrible day – my visions were winding down to an end. Would our wedding conclude with me lying dead on the kitchen floor next to my mother?

Long after Evelyn went to sleep that night, I tossed and turned, wondering if I would ever wake again.

***

I did wake, and to Evelyn's loving kiss. The morning of our wedding had arrived. We smiled at each other excessively but didn't talk much as we got ready. And we talked even less after Hannah came over to help Evelyn prepare. Hannah scarcely offered me a glance, but she was pleasant with her daughter.

There wasn't a great deal of glitz or glamour that evening at the Hill Creek auditorium. But the guest list was amazing, including many of the people who had been at the Farewell Dolly opening. We even tracked down our second grade teacher, Mrs. Slater. We were deeply touched by those who dropped everything to attend our wedding on such absurdly short notice. And to top it all off, there weren't any protestors. A clear sign that I'd completely lost my former drawing power.

Fortunately for this wedding, I didn't have to try to skip across the stage. The only thing skipping was my heart. But I did have to walk down the aisle. Evelyn and I had a small pre-wedding argument about that. I wanted to wait for her at the altar as in traditional weddings, feeling it was a sign of respect for the bride by putting all the attention on her approach. Evelyn wanted us to walk down the aisle together as equals, as we had entered in Winter Wonderland.

In the end, she won. When the wedding march music started, she smiled at me under the veil, and I felt like I was going to fall on my face whether I was skipping or not. But suddenly there we were, at the canopy-covered altar on the stage as we had been long ago. We held hands (so she could tug me back in case I forgot any lines). Reverend Jack Lewis asked who was giving her away, and with only a slight hesitation, Hannah said she was. She had tears in her eyes, but whether those were tears of sadness, joy, or fear, I couldn't say. Before sitting back down, she nodded to me and made a feeble smile. I was grateful for that.

Before our vows were exchanged, Bernadette Peters-2, Evelyn's bridesmaid, sang the ballad My Mothers from Farewell Dolly. Carly Simon-2 wanted to sing her c-mother's depressing song about marriage called That's the Way I Always Heard It Should Be but instead agreed to do Anticipation. Then the good reverend had us say our vows. Evelyn didn't have to tug me back this time. When he asked if I'd marry her, I said, "I do." Evelyn said the same. We made it official with the breaking of the glass and a kiss.

When our kiss ended, I half expected her and everything else to disappear and for me to collapse on the floor next to Mom with a hole through my head, but happily the visions continued. Those visions included a reception of food, drink, dancing, and more singing beginning with Barbra Streisand-2 initiating our first dance as a wedded couple with the song Evergreen. Olivia Newton-John-2 fulfilled my request by singing Magic, and Evelyn grinned at my sappiness when Olivia got to the line about catching someone who falls.

Those ballads were followed by some holy rocking and rolling by celebrated Elvis-impersonator Reverend Jack Lewis. Bernadette-2 cast amusingly disparaging looks at me while warning Evelyn that You Better Shop Around, just as she'd sung to her co-star in their national tour of The Island of Dr. Moreau-inspired musical comedy Muskrat Love Will Keep Us Together. Evelyn reprised her Waiting for Life to Begin number from second grade, changing it to "Waiting for Night to Begin," and then surprised and embarrassed me by singing the sexy You Never Done It Like That from Muskrat Love, playfully beckoning me with her fingers and expressions as she had done in the tour. Still blushing and rather anxious to embark on our honeymoon, I did my long-awaited I'm My Own Grandpaw routine, and this time I'd written down the words.

Thus began our wedded life.

Table of Contents

39

September 26, 2059 was a perfect time to be in New York. Temperature and humidity were dropping, and the summer tourists had thinned out. More importantly, the World's Fair had returned to New York. Evelyn was attending rehearsals throughout our "honeymoon," but I took a couple weeks off and we spent whatever time Evelyn's schedule allowed exploring the fair.

Much had changed since New York's first World's Fair in 1939, which had given people their initial glimpse of television, the coming interstate highway system, home air conditioning, and, surprisingly, the first robots. At the time, to a nation worn down by the Great Depression and on the cusp of World War II, those innovations were almost universally hailed as boons that would make the world better for all humanity. The World's Fair of 2059 drew much more hostility from a society grappling with the effects of too much technology.

Some exhibits received general praise. That's where Wallutions debuted, allowing homeowners and businesses to change the look of their walls, ceilings, floors, doors, and windows via voice or computer commands. There were thousands of preset images, or you could design your own. You could choose themes that would make it look like you owned an expensive home overlooking the beach or a cabin nestled within a forest, complete with appropriate sounds and smells. Or you could make your walls clear so it looked like you were living out in the open, able to see your yard and your neighbors, while anyone looking at your home from the outside would see an opaque dwelling of your choosing. Your pictures could still hang on the wall, but they would only be holographic reproductions of those pictures. Wallutions built nearly all the stunning buildings at the fair, including the Trylon and Perisphere based on the icons of the 1939 World's Fair. Evelyn and I spent a lot of time in one of their virtual booths designing our future home, which would include a view of the African savannah out the back and Central Park out the front.

Also for the home were the new, inexpensive solar cells that could generate enough electricity to power most homes and were available in a variety of forms like patio furniture, birdbaths, and clear or ornamental panels for your roof. The Transportation Zone featured new nanosensors and nanobots that could detect and repair car problems as well as nearly always keep your car out of an accident and, in the rare collision, help better protect the occupants. In decline for decades, car crashes would soon become freak events.

By far the most popular area was the Futurama, or Science and Technology Zone. Eye, ear, and neural implants had already eliminated nearly all deafness and blindness, and you could experience these artificial systems at the fair. You could also put on a featherweight jumpsuit with which you could control all of your limbs with your thoughts – a boon to paraplegics and those otherwise incapacitated.

But not all medical advances were so widely embraced. Especially those featured at the Ingeneuity/USCS exhibit. Our least controversial product was our artificial immune system that could by then quickly heal small cuts, keep arteries unclogged, automatically release antihistamines for allergy sufferers, dismantle a couple forms of cancerous tumors, and monitor your body to notify you on your homedic of any chemical/vitamin deficiencies, heart irregularities, microscopic tumors, and several other serious conditions that required medical attention. Over the next several years we were predicting the ability to stop most forms of cancer before they took hold, repair/replace major organs, heal broken bones, attack and kill most known viruses, and even pause your hair and fingernail growth. The only people who were strongly opposed to these advances were those who thought it unnatural to have tiny nanobots swimming about in their bodies or who felt our visions of longevity were nothing but hubris.

If they felt we were trying too hard for immortality with AIS, then they were really disturbed by our artificial bodies exhibit. Artificial hearts were old news, though improvements were still being made. And we now made artificial lungs, livers, and kidneys that wouldn't be rejected by your body (assuming you were using our artificial immune system). Our artificial limbs could be surgically connected to your body and controlled by your brain. These artificial limbs and organs were more efficient and dependable than even the enhanced natural ones. We were working on an artificial digestive system that would be far more efficient than the natural one, as was our artificial blood that would soon supplement the blood in humans throughout the world, providing more oxygen when needed, rapidly coagulating injuries, and self-propelling itself for several minutes if the heart stopped. Before the end of the century we hoped to achieve one of my clone-father's stated milestones and be able to maintain a living human brain inside a completely artificial body.

To our critics, we seemed so desperate for immortality that we were willing to turn humans into robots.

The complaints weren't exactly a surprise. Our technology called into question some of the most fundamental aspects of our identity. The notion rooted in Christian tradition was that our bodies were an essential part of who we were, so much so that God would resurrect our bodies at the end of time. If humans were a sum of mind, body, and soul, and we created artificial bodies for ourselves, then we had changed ourselves in an essential way.

As Ingeneuity explained in our brochure and online, we weren't trying to purge our humanity. Rather, we were simply trying to make humanity less susceptible to the inherent weaknesses of the mortal coil. Few people objected to the idea of transforming the human body into an artificial body on a per-part basis. If you needed an artificial arm, this was no sacrilege. If you needed a new liver or heart or eye, few complained about replacing it with an artificial one. So where did you draw the line? How many artificial parts were too many?

In a sort of convergent technology, other companies were coming ever closer to doing the opposite – turning robots into humans. Artificial intelligence had made tremendous strides, and high-end computers could by then process several times more information than the human mind. Some were fully capable of learning from their environment and were forming complex personalities. These companies had their protestors as well, especially at the building featuring the fair's most popular exhibit.

The "People-bots," as they were then called, were a joint venture between Ingeneuity's artificial bodies division and a young, fast-growing AI company called Barebots that featured the most advanced androids ever created. There was a man-bot and a woman-bot called Elektro and Elektra and their pet dog Sparko, names based on the robots presented by Westinghouse in 1939. Unlike the 1939 Elektro, these did not smoke cigarettes. But they did talk. Not using a 78-rpm record, but instead synthetic voice boxes that could perform like our own only with a far greater vocal range.

They interacted casually with visitors in more than seventy different languages. And they were so convincingly human, several people left sure it was a trick. To prove their non-humanness, we left a panel of their cranial circuitry exposed, and the People-bots could remove their own eyes. They could also remember every face they saw and every word that was said, so if you returned even months later they would welcome you back and reminisce about your last conversation and what you were wearing. Including Sparko, who looked and acted like a dog, but then would occasionally start talking in a disconcertingly human manner. The three of them are still used at Barebots and sometimes walk the streets together as a family, stopping people they met more than twenty years ago to reminisce about that day they met at the fair.

Overall the World's Fair was a success for our company, the city, and our honeymoon. Our wedded life was off to an excellent start – theatre, live music, Yankees games, walking arm-in-arm through Central Park as we drank in the smell of autumn leaves. There were times when I'd miss the weather, landscape, and ocean views of La Jolla, but I was pretty sure I could exist quite happily in New York.

Then again, I probably would have been happy in Podunk, North Dakota if I was with Evelyn. I'd never met anyone who embraced life so fully and seemed to appreciate it so dearly. No time was wasted whether it was spent at a show, exploring a museum, kicking back at home with a movie, discussing the nature of the universe, helping me figure out the plot of Hamlet Act VI, enjoying a hot fudge sundae at the diner around the corner, watching the rain outside our townhouse, making love at unexpected times, surprising each other with little tokens, or by saying or doing something off the wall.

The important thing, she would say, was to make every day unprecedented and memorable in some small way. She encouraged it by writing down whatever unprecedented thing we did each day. And we were fairly good at finding things. Or, I should say, she was fairly good at it, and I reaped the benefits.

Surprisingly, and thankfully, Hannah seemed to be warming to our relationship.

When Evelyn's mother moved out to New York in early November, I was worried. But now that the marriage was done, she no longer seemed interested in breaking us up. Instead, she attempted to accept the situation and have a pleasant time with us when she visited, which usually didn't happen more than once a week out of respect for our private time.

She did come over for Thanksgiving dinner. Her cooking was the only shot we had for the traditional turkey meal. Hannah had to bring most of the cooking accessories as well. We had packed light. I put the old family dining room table and chairs in the back of a pickup truck and packed some clothes, toiletries, and a few family pictures. Evelyn took what she could stuff in her backpack. She liked to call our sparse décor Bohemian, but I think she just liked to say that word.

The furnishings were sparse, but the table was full when Hannah was done cooking. We dug in.

"So, when can I expect some grandkids?" Hannah asked as we started on seconds.

Evelyn and I looked at each other and laughed.

"Well," I said, "I'm afraid we've decided not to have any. Mark Twain once said that a baby is an inestimable blessing and bother, and we already feel blessed and really can't be bothered."

Evelyn laughed and I hid my smile in my glass of wine.

Hannah narrowed her eyes at us both. "Did you know that Mark Twain was born the year Halley's Comet flew by, and correctly predicted he'd die the year it returned? He rode in on it, and rode out on it."

"Yes, I'd heard that once," I said as I scooped more sweet potatoes on my plate. "It flies by the earth every seventy-six years, I believe."

"And how many times have you seen it?" Evelyn asked me. That nine-day age difference again.

I stuck my tongue out at her.

"And it's going to be here again in 2061 and 2062," Hannah continued.

Evelyn wiped her mouth and nodded. "And so you want us to have a baby in 2061 so he or she'll have a lifespan of seventy-six years?"

Hannah smiled. "Well, I was thinking they could skip a couple passes. There's no need to get back on the comet the next available time. Mainly, I'm a little worried about Adam. His biological clock is ticking, you know."

"Hey, I've got my performance pills!"

Evelyn looked surprised. "Then why haven't you been taking them?"

We glared at each other, seeing who could last the longest without cracking.

"So when do I get them?" Hannah prodded.

"The pills?" I asked.

"The babies!"

"About three months," Evelyn answered.

Hannah gasped before realizing her daughter was playing with her. "Oh, I see. Then that's why the wedding was so rushed."

Evelyn and I shrugged and smiled guiltily.

"Seriously!" Hannah pressed.

"Well, definitely not till after Farewell Dolly," I answered. We had discussed it a little, but hadn't made firm plans.

Evelyn grabbed my hand under the table and smiled. "Don't worry, Mom. You'll be a grandmom before you know it," she said. "Maybe even in time for them to see Halley's Comet with us."

Hannah gave us a satisfied grin and continued with her turkey.

I raised my eyebrow at Evelyn. There was something kind of cryptic about her return smile that struck me as odd, or maybe I added that to my memory later.

"So why the pressure?" I asked. "You're already bored being a single woman in New York?"

It was the first time I'd seen Hannah blush. When Evelyn saw that her mother wasn't going to explain, she was more than willing to do so.

"Actually, she ain't that bored!"

"Evelyn, please," Hannah said.

I looked from one to the other. "Um...so what's going on here?"

"Mom's trying to follow our lead."

Hannah blushed even deeper. "Well I'm certainly not rushing into it as fast as you two did. But yes, I'm seeing a gentleman."

"So when am I going to get some little half-brothers and half-sisters?" Evelyn teased.

"You knock it off!" Hannah cried in mock indignation.

"I'm sure I can get her a discount on an artificial womb," I said to Evelyn.

"Artificial wombs," Hannah said. "That's even sillier than cloning!"

I held up my hands in surrender. "Just letting you know we can help whenever you two lovebirds are ready."

"What a dear," she said. "But I think by the time we're ready to have babies, you'll already have us all in silly robot bodies, and you can manufacture our baby on an assembly line." She picked up her glass of wine. "Right now we're still getting to know each other, and aren't anywhere close to talkin' babies."

"But that's the beauty of artificial wombs. You don't have to get close at all!" I said like a slick artificial womb salesman.

"Well, we've gotten close," Hannah admitted, immediately embarrassing herself and looking down at the table for solace.

"Mom!" Evelyn cried. "Shame on you!"

I threw my hands in the air. "And they talk about clones!"

Hannah made a small shrug and demurely took a sip of her Merlot, which was the same color as her face.

The rest of that evening's conversation was less tawdry but just as lively. When it was over, we walked Hannah into the frosty air to wait for the cab. She gave me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. It was the first kiss she had given me.

"Thank you, I had a lovely time," she said, holding onto my hand for a moment.

"I'm glad you're here," I said. I meant more than that she had come over for Thanksgiving.

"I just wish your mom could have been here too," she said. "She was such a sweet woman."

She had never before mentioned my mother. I didn't even realize they had met each other. She hugged me again, hugged and kissed her daughter, and left.

It was the first time I'd ever felt like I was part of a real family. The kind of family I'd read about. The kind of family I wanted to be a part of.

Table of Contents

40

December flew by. With the Broadway previews set to begin on January 11, Evelyn's days were full of special appearances, interviews, and a frenetic rehearsal schedule. It was going to be one of the most complicated productions ever staged, and the effort to get the technical aspects down pat was brutal. Evelyn was exhausted, but I knew she was excited about the previews the way her eyes danced every time she talked about it.

Hanukkah on December 7 was a rushed affair – Hannah arrived late at night and Evelyn didn't get home till almost midnight. The three of us only celebrated for about an hour before Evelyn fell asleep. That was the night I got the last e-mail from Lily:

Dear Adam,

Hey, I've missed you. Can we go up to the redwoods again for Christmas? Please write soon. I really need you here.

Love, Lily

I deleted it.

Evelyn finally got a break for a couple days over Christmas. We got the hottest ticket in town – a Christmas Eve showing of The Radio City Christmas Spectacular – and we were determined to make our own big production of it. Since Hannah was coming over on Christmas Day, we decided to celebrate our three-month wedding anniversary with the show, a chocolate dessert at Sardi's, and then a midnight stroll through the snowy "Winter Wonderland" of Central Park reminiscing about second grade.

"I was so jealous you had a clone-parent," she said.

"Yes, I was pretty special," I admitted. "But real parents are better than clone-parents. I've never felt any love for Adam-1 – certainly not like I loved my mom, or even like I'm beginning to love my mother-in-law."

She arched an eyebrow at the last bit, but smiled. "Well, part of it probably depends on your clone-parent. But no, I guess I can't see loving them as closely as the parents who raise you. Of course, it's a different kind of relationship. I do feel a strong kinship when I write letters to my clone. Don't you?"

I nodded. A soft snow had started to fall on us, large flakes floating down lit only by moonlight and an occasional old-fashioned streetlamp.

"Do you think we'll be good parents?" she asked. "I mean, real parents?"

Something in her voice caught me off guard. "You'll be an amazing mother."

"Thank you." She smiled and looked down at the gently winding path that would lead us near the park exit closest to our apartment. We were across from the large boulder I'd been keeping an eye out for.

"Let's head over to the right here," I said, nodding toward the boulder. "I found a great, little romantic spot just over the hill." Another item for the "unprecedented" list. Evelyn leaned against me, and my heart raced.

I began humming the tune to Winter Wonderland, which started Evelyn singing it. As she sang about a snowman in a meadow, I tugged her hand.

Evelyn glanced at me and then looked around. A few feet away stood the lopsided snowman I'd made earlier – our Parson Brown patiently waiting for us.

"It's a little early, but will you marry me again?" I asked.

"Adam," she whispered, and gave me a kiss.

We strolled up to Parson Brown, and Evelyn continued singing the song until the parson asked if we were married.

I shook my head no and started to pull away, and Evelyn laughed and yanked me back. I wagged my finger at him as if I were giving him important instructions. And then I got to do something I didn't in second grade. I kissed the bride.

"I love you," I said.

"I love you, too," she responded.

We kissed again.

"I'm pregnant."

I caught my breath and put my fingers to my lips.

"No," she said, pulling my hand away from my mouth. "It wasn't from your kiss, you goof."

I laughed as I felt my grin stretch wider and wider. "Are you serious?"

She nodded with that second grade smile of hers. I hugged her and kissed her soft lips again, lost in the sweet taste of her lip gloss and the scent of her skin and the feeling of giddy love.

"Stop."

The voice made us both jump. Twenty feet away stood Gabrielle Burns, pointing a silver knife at us.

The hallucination lasted only a second. It was Lily standing there. The knife was a gun. She held it with both hands, her elbows squeezed tight against her sides to steady herself, but the gun was still shaking. The quiet night air was broken by human laughter from far away.

Evelyn squeezed my hand. I didn't squeeze back. I just stood there.

Lily was focused on Evelyn. "You stole him."

"Lily—" I began.

She turned to me. "Do you know what Lyle did to me when Aunt Louise went to your wedding? Do you know?" She shook her head, fought off some tears. "And he was going to do it again this Christmas. In the cabin. Because you left me again."

She began to cry and lowered the gun a bit.

"Lily," Evelyn said, gripping my hand tighter, reaching out with her left.

Lily flinched. The gun fired. Evelyn was on the ground, and my hand was empty.

I collapsed to the ground next to her. It wasn't happening.

Blood soaked her abdomen. Her head was tilted askew, blood flowing from where it had struck a rock.

"I'm sorry," I heard Lily say behind me. "I didn't mean it. Adam."

"Evelyn, no," I whispered, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry." A numb, trance-like state swept over my mind. I touched her face, detached like in my dream as I placed the gun in Lyle's sleeping hand. I saw myself place my hand gently over the blood welling up from her stomach. We should have never met. It was Jimmy Preston. His fault. He was the one that brought us together. But he was still alive somewhere. Somewhere laughing with friends. He had pushed Evelyn down on the playground, and yet he was still happy and alive. And Evelyn was...

My eyes fell to my hand now cradling hers. Her blood was on my hand. My fingers slid together, the slick but sticky liquid shaking my protective trance. I looked to my clean hand, using it to brush her hair out of her eyes.

"I'm sorry," said Lily's voice from behind me.

I didn't turn around. Snowflakes began to land on her beautiful, still face. I didn't know whether I was supposed to brush them off or let them stay.

"But it's okay now. Now we can get married."

I turned away from my wife, freezing Lily. She looked confused for a moment, as if she'd mistaken me for someone else.

"Are you sick?" I spat out.

"Adam, please. Now we can get married like before," she said, holding out the gold locket from another Christmas.

Lyle had ruined her. I had ruined her. But I mustered no pity. I didn't even try.

"I'll never marry you," I said. "I hate you."

She gazed at the locket, then back at me. "You love me."

"I hate you. And Adam-1 hated you. He couldn't wait for a new life without you. It's why he killed himself."

"Liar!" she screamed, shaking the locket. "You always loved me!"

"He hated you."

"Liar," she cried more quietly.

"It's in his journal."

"Stopit!" The words were almost unrecognizable. "Not true!"

"I'll give it to you."

There was a long pause. "No," she finally replied. Her voice was thin and high. "You'll marry me."

I shook my head.

She raised the gun towards me with both hands, her entire body quaking. "Then your clone will."

"Hey, put that gun down!" someone shouted nearby. I hadn't noticed, but we had drawn the attention of passersby.

I turned my attention back to Evelyn. The trance broken. The reality there. In her stillness. In the blood. My God. I'd killed her. I hoped Lily would fire soon so I could no longer dwell on all the pain and death my life had brought. I was ready to face this God who hated me so much, and I'd willingly go to his Hell where I could be punished for my failures and wouldn't be able to do any more harm. What a fool I'd been for thinking he might have let me, the soulless Antichrist, enjoy a lifetime with one of his angels.

The snow had started falling thickly. I softly ran my hand over her silent, beautiful face, clearing any un-melted snowflakes. Would my clone remember her face?

That was the last thought I could remember. The bullet grazed my skull. I crumpled over Evelyn's body. Lily walked up to my unconscious body, dragged me off of Evelyn, knelt to the ground and put the gun to her own head, her other hand clutching the trembling gold locket.

"I'm coming, Adam."

Table of Contents

Part III

The Book of Evelyn

Wheresoever she was, there was Eden.

– Mark Twain

41

My next memories were muddled ones of riding in an ambulance and brief, detached glimpses of being moved by hospital personnel. And visions. My mom's voice.

"You like Evelyn, don't you?"

I looked around for her, but saw only the graveyard of my recurring nightmare.

"I love her!" I shouted. Then I looked down in the pit to see my mom in a casket, cradling a young, dead Evelyn in her arms. My mother didn't take her eyes off me as she reached up with her free hand and slammed down the coffin lid. I jumped into the grave, trying to pry it open, but I couldn't. It was held too tight from the other side.

When I came to, I had no idea how much time had gone by. Hannah's tear-streaked face was gazing down on me.

I began crying too, both for Evelyn and the smothering guilt I felt for causing Hannah to lose her only child. Was I alive, or was this my hell? Forever confronted with the mother of Evelyn, reminding me every moment of what I'd done through my lifetime of cowardice. I covered my face in shame. I hoped it was hell. Not real.

Hannah gently took my hand and held it in hers. "It's okay," she said.

I shook my head. I didn't deserve her forgiveness.

"Adam, she's going to be okay."

It took a moment to process what she said. Then hope, like awaking from a nightmare, swept through my body.

"They're taking her into surgery," Hannah continued, "but they say she'll be fine."

Surgery. I thought of the blood welling up from her abdomen. And of Evelyn pulling my fingers away from my lips. I felt panicked. Holding onto Hannah's hand with my left, I put my right hand on my stomach, not sure I could talk with the swelling I felt throughout my head and face. "reg-net," I managed.

By the way Hannah's face dropped, she understood exactly what I was saying. Perhaps she already sensed that Evelyn might be pregnant. Her mouth fell open, then she nodded.

"I'll take care of it," she said, and left the room.

She did. Three hours later Hannah returned to my room. She told me that the embryo had died, but that they preserved samples of its DNA. Her general opposition to cloning thawed a little more that day. Hannah's grandchild could still be born, even if it was that grandchild's clone.

*

Between the doctors and my AIS, the swelling in my head was nearly completely gone by the following morning. The police interviewed me before I was released. I described everything I remembered, trying to make clear that Lily hadn't fired at Evelyn on purpose.

"Do you know where Lily is?" I asked.

One of the officers nodded. "Mr. Elwell, I'm afraid that, after she shot you, Lily Gardener ended her own life."

I thought of the night Mom came in my room to tell me that Grandma Lily was dead. Her clone-daughter was unable to cope with the same monsters – a Lyle who molested her, an Adam who used her and then ignored her.

"Would you come down with us to confirm her identity?"

I didn't answer. Just dazedly stood up and followed them out of the room and down to the morgue.

Lily was lying still and discolored on the steel table, stitches from the autopsy raggedly holding together her upper chest and shaved head. I nodded for the police.

"Lily," I whispered as I felt myself beginning to shake. "Lily, I'm..."

But I didn't finish. An apology was too late for her, and too late for me. I picked up one of her cold hands and held it gently in mine, but she would never know that. The last thing she would know was me saying I hated her.

"I don't hate you," I said. "Just me."

It was too late, but I apologized anyway.

It didn't help.

*

Hannah was waiting for me in the lobby and led me into Evelyn's hospital room where she was fully conscious. She smiled as I entered the room.

I took both her hands, kissing them, not meeting her eyes. "I almost killed you."

"It's good to see you," she said.

I nodded. "Good to see you, too."

She only had vague memories of the moments just before she was shot. She remembered Winter Wonderland and Parson Brown and telling me she was pregnant. And fragments of Lily holding a gun on us. I told her everything I remembered. Except how I didn't return the squeeze of her hand. A part of me wanted to. But a larger part of me wanted to bury that secret forever.

Table of Contents

42

Evelyn was released two days later. We spent a quiet New Year's at our apartment with Hannah and her boyfriend Martin, watching movies as she stuck to her diet of soup, applesauce, and ice cream. And we made plans for the clone of our embryo.

We would have to use the artificial wombs at Ingeneuity. The damage to her abdominal area was too extensive for her to carry and deliver a child. Evelyn cried when the doctor told her.

And then we talked about Lily.

"Aunt Louise is too frail for another baby," Evelyn said. "And this way we can keep her away from Lyle."

"You're sure you're comfortable with this?" I asked.

She looked at me like I was crazy. "Of course." My reluctance must have been apparent. "Aren't you?"

I nodded. "Sure."

*

The day after New Year's, I was back in La Jolla. Evelyn stayed in New York to continue her recuperation. I helped oversee the cloning of our child and its implantation into the artificial womb, and then did the same for Lily-2 at the official request of Aunt Louise.

She hugged me when I knocked on her door. "I didn't know, honey. I swear I didn't."

"I know," I assured her. "I know that."

"It's my fault," she cried.

"Oh no, not at all," I said, holding her close. "It's mine."

I heard Lyle-2 coming down the steps.

"It is your fault," Lyle agreed.

Aunt Louise stepped away from me and glanced at both of us. "Let's not do this."

But I wasn't ready to stop either. "I know what you did to Lily."

He grew red. "You know nothing."

"I know everything. What you did to Lily, and what your c-father did to her, and to Lily-1, and to my mother."

Lyle clenched his jaw. "I've lost Lily to another suicide because of you. You'll pay just like your c-father did."

"But you won't be able to do anything to Lily-3," I continued. "Evelyn and I are going to raise her."

"What?" Lyle turned on Aunt Louise. "What?"

Aunt Louise nodded at him. Lyle shook his head.

"Yes," I said. "She's over ninety. And as the clone of Lily-1's former husband, I'd be her next immediate family member over the age of eighteen."

Lyle swung at me, but I saw it coming and ducked out of the way while pushing him to the floor.

"No!" Aunt Louise shouted, standing between us, her arms outstretched. She was shaking in fear. It drained all the fight out of me.

Lyle continued to sit on the floor, silent, staring at me with a lack of emotion that shook me up more than his attempt to strike me. "You know nothing."

*

I knew I wanted away from there. I apologized to Aunt Louise and left the house. And then I tried to stop Lyle-2 from ever being in a position to harm my family. So as Lily-3 and my unborn son began to grow in their artificial wombs, daddy went on a little witch-hunt at work. I used some more of the arsenal my c-father had left me to encourage two more Lyle loyalists to resign from the board of directors. Then it was a matter of making sure no one would stand in my way.

At the time we had one CEO for Ingeneuity and another for its subsidiary, U.S. Cloning Systems. The CEO of Ingeneuity was going to be retiring in a few years. My goal was to eventually take over as CEO of Ingeneuity and draw USCS completely back under the parent company, thereby making sure Lyle-2 would never work for any part of his c-father's company. Despite my age, I knew my unique background had made me the public face of the company, and I was determined to use that to my fullest advantage. My coworkers and the board of directors knew it, too. I could use my unique power to support or hinder them, and they far preferred my support. So I tried to strengthen my bonds with those who would be on my side, and encouraged the others to retire as their terms expired.

And then I eagerly flew back to New York in time for the first preview performance of Farewell Dolly. Evelyn was well enough to join me in the audience. And although she was proud of her understudy's performance, it also redoubled her determination to build up her strength and get back to the stage before the show's Broadway opening set for my birthday.

She was rehearsing by the end of January, took the stage in the ensemble in mid-February, and had her Broadway premiere as Dolly two nights before the official opening on March 11, 2060.

That was the morning I woke up to find Evelyn sitting on the closed toilet of our one-bath Bohemian apartment. Her hair was a mess, dark, heavy bags under her eyes. I didn't think she'd gotten more than a couple seconds sleep during the night.

"Happy Birthday," she said.

"How are you feeling?"

She frowned up at me. "Terrified."

I grinned. I thought I was the only one who got stage fright. "Want me to go on for you?"

Her lips slowly wrinkled into a smile. "No."

I feigned a little umbrage, and then opened up my arms. "How 'bout a birthday hug?"

"Wow," she said. "You really need to use the toilet."

Well, I did. But I also wanted to give her a hug before she left for the theatre and her Broadway debut.

As we'd all see, her fears were unwarranted. Opening night was the first of more than 800 shows for Farewell Dolly, and Evelyn Green's career on Broadway roared to life through her portrayal of a sheep. On June 6, 2060 she accepted her Tony Award.

She didn't want to win. She was afraid the vote would be more out of sympathy for the shooting than for her performance, and she believed there were more deserving nominees. Unfortunately, I think that took some of the excitement away from her when they announced her name. But she was still touched and honored, and the audience rose as she accepted her award.

"I want to accept this award on behalf of the other nominees. You don't know how much you've moved me with your work," she started. "And I also want to thank the inspiration for this role, sparked seven years ago when my husband gave a speech thanking Dolly. Adam thanked Dolly for all that her life made possible for him and his family and all clones.

"I, too, want to thank Dolly and the scientists who made her life possible. But I also want to thank Adam, and his courageous mother who I was lucky enough to meet, and all clones who found themselves in a world that didn't always welcome them.

"Life can be a painful struggle even for those born into loving families who never know poverty, or what it's like to be looked down upon for being a certain color, or for believing a minority religion, or for your sexual orientation. Or just to be lonely.

"So I try to imagine being the first and only one." She met my eyes. "Coming into this world hated by so many. Not for anything you've done, but simply because you were born. And then I imagine embracing the world anyway. To be hated and lonely and scared, but to still love. These are my heroes. My father. My husband. So many others who inspire me and challenge me. And these are the inspirations for great stories as told by one of the first clones, Stephen Sondheim-2, and as told by non-clones who see and learn and teach, like my friend Jack Lewis and our brilliant writer, Thomas Wilson."

The exit music began to play.

"I want to thank all those who allowed me to play this role, and all those who gave me the inspiration to play it. This is for all of us who have ever been treated like an outcast, and it's for everyone who offered an outcast love."

Table of Contents

43

Evelyn left the show the day before our first wedding anniversary. We spent September 25 enjoying the day in Central Park and revisiting the haunts we'd seen a year before. And the next day we flew back to La Jolla to await the birth of our son.

We named him Cain. Hannah thought there was no worse omen considering how the first Cain turned out, but Evelyn and I had wanted to prove, as Shakespeare had written, that there wasn't anything in a name, and our son wouldn't have his fate determined by an ancient namesake. If anything, it might encourage him to change the connotation.

Or perhaps I was simply obsessed with people being forced to overcome their ancestry.

Cain was born on September 28, 2060, the same year Isaac Newton had predicted Armageddon would descend on the planet and Christ would return for his reign of a thousand years, prompting one obscure religious sect called the Newtonians to proclaim that Cain was the Christ child reborn who would redeem the world using the name of the first murderer.

One day, as we walked around the zoo, a member of that church stole the baby blanket that we had in Cain's stroller so that they could use it as a sacred relic, which they venerated as his "swaddling clothes." It all made us a bit uneasy. But nothing bad ever came of it, and later Cain was sort of flattered by the whole thing.

Christ reborn or not, Cain's birthday was a day of rebirth for me. On the morning he was born from the artificial womb – a womb created using Evelyn's DNA – I had another chance with the son I'd lost on Christmas Eve. He might not have been the exact person who would have been born had the shot not been fired, but he was still ours. I cradled him close to my face, tracing his cheeks and chin with my fingertip. He had a little of my Gerber baby nose, but mostly resembled his mother with his eyes and wisps of dark brown hair, and with the square jaw of Evelyn's father. Something besides memories had survived the church bombing and the terrible night in Central Park when the embryo of Cain's c-father had been lost, and that something was now squirming and making strange noises in my nervous but loving arms.

Then came Lily. The other soul who was lost that night. The clone of the woman who had killed Cain's never-born c-father. I could have seen Lily-3 as another opportunity to be good to Lily and see what kind of person she could become when not suffering the physical abuse of a Lyle and the psychological abuse of an Adam. But I saw the past.

We decided to move back to La Jolla to raise them. Cain would have both a grandmother and a grandfather nearby. Hannah's boyfriend, Martin Schenk, had comforted her through the frightening holidays and moved out to San Diego with her. They married a few months later in a private ceremony conducted by a rabbi friend of Hannah's. I had my doubts that the relationship, forged in so much trauma, would last, but I underestimated Hannah's judgment. They are still together today.

In April 2062 we made Hannah's wish and Evelyn's prediction come true, all of us journeying up to the cabin in the Sequoias to see Halley's Comet as it headed back out into the nether regions of the solar system. Evelyn swore she could see Mark Twain still riding around. Most of us weren't convinced, but it's hard to say with certainty what Cain and Lily saw. They were eighteen months old and not yet able to describe their observations in any detail. But Cain did look and point up to it when we pointed, and later he would describe it as his earliest memory (while loyally backing up his mom's Twain hallucination).

Growing up as fraternal twins, Cain and Lily were inseparable from the start. Too often, instead of simply enjoying seeing them play and laugh and learn from one another, I would think of Lily-2 and the pool of blood in Evelyn's abdomen, and I could only look on with a plastered grin. It was the same grin I had as Evelyn would spin Lily-3 around or play Peek-a-boo or go through teaching exercises with her, with Lily giggling easily during all of the above. It was also the same grin I forced when Lily turned her attentions to me, which was often. She begged to play with her "Uncle Adam" several times a day, and I played as much as time allowed. There was a gentle healing in seeing Lily happy and carefree. But the dread always lingered in the background. It was an association I knew was wrong but couldn't, or wouldn't, shake.

True to our word, we kept Lyle-2 out of Lily's life. When Evelyn and I attended the centennial of the premiere of To Kill a Mockingbird with Jack and his wife Joy, we left Cain and Lily with their grandparents.

When someone started singing the opening line to "Blue Christmas" from behind us, Evelyn screamed and swooned as she turned to face our old Elvis impersonator, making us quite a spectacle. I shrugged awkwardly to a couple indignant faces.

We hugged Jack and his wife, wishing each other Merry Christmas. It was December 25, 1962 that the film first premiered in Los Angeles, although it didn't really go out to theatres until 1963 after its Valentine's Day premiere at Radio City Music Hall. It was Gregory Peck's most memorable role, and as Mr. Peck was also one of the founders of the La Jolla Playhouse, the Playhouse was holding a special screening for the film's 100th anniversary. The courtyard was nostalgic territory for us, as was the film.

"So you guys remember when we saw this in Mrs. Slater's class?" Jack asked, not giving us any indication that she was standing behind us.

Evelyn and I winked at each other. "We do," I said. "It was our first movie date."

"Oh, really?" Mrs. Slater asked.

We turned and excitedly started another round of hugs as we greeted our teacher who we hadn't seen since our wedding three years before.

"You know," she said to me, "it was your mom who suggested we show the class that movie."

I laughed at the memory of Mom's "I know" responses to what I'd done that day in school. "So you must have also been telling her about my crush on Evelyn."

Mrs. Slater nodded. "We were setting you guys up after the first day of school."

Evelyn gasped. "Of all the devious..."

"An arranged marriage?" I asked my wife.

She fixed me with an expression that would freeze lightning. "You saying you want a divorce?"

I jumped and turned to Jack for aid, but he waved me off.

"No ma'am," I said.

She smiled coyly and gave me a kiss.

"No ma'am," I said again.

She gave me another kiss, interrupted by the others who had had enough, and we began filing into the theatre. Which was when Mrs. Slater first saw Evelyn's old backpack.

"Hey," she said, tugging on the pack and glancing at it when Evelyn turned around.

Evelyn began to go on about it being cheaper than buying purses. Mrs. Slater cut her off with a long hug. They both smiled shakily but thankfully afterwards, though I think I may have been more moved by it than either of them. It was beautiful to see someone being as inspired by Evelyn as I was.

A couple minutes later we were taking our seats. As before, I made sure I was sitting next to Evelyn. And when I saw her first start to cry, I whipped out my ready Kleenex. She smiled and plucked it from my fingers. We passed it back and forth during the movie, and at the end I stuffed it back in my pocket while Evelyn gave me a grinning "that's gross" look.

We had such a great time that we traveled out to the Radio City Music Hall for the centennial celebration of the film's "real" premiere on February 14, 2063. A date that also corresponded to the 60th anniversary of Dolly's death. And would also correspond with the first full night that we'd been alone since the birth of Cain.

Bernadette Peters-2 had a key to our Bohemian apartment, and she was only too happy to help. Red roses guided us from the front door to a circle on the floor. The opening of the door triggered the playing of our wedding hologram beginning with our first dance to Barbra Streisand's Evergreen.

"How did you do this?" Evelyn whispered.

I wordlessly asked for her hand, and she put hers in mind. I led her to the circle of roses where our two holograms had already started to dance. We got inside them as best we could, mimicking our movements from three-and-a-half years ago.

To a point. Before the end of the song, she kissed me, and I kissed her. We collapsed on the floor, making love as our holograms danced through us.

Table of Contents

44

2063 was also the year that Lyle-2 left the house of Aunt Louise. He used his enhanced intelligence to breeze through high school a year early and got accepted on full scholarship to MIT in Cambridge, Massachusetts where he would major in biotechnology and artificial intelligence. He left Aunt Louise's house in August, which was a relief to all of us, and allowed Aunt Louise to see Lily and Cain far more often than before.

The first time I took them to see Aunt Louise's house was for Lily's third birthday. I remember the wide eyes Cain and Lily had as they picked their way through Aunt Louise's glass garden.

"These plants are made of glass," Cain said as he paused to touch some edelweiss.

Lily ducked under the fronds of a fragile tree fern. "They're pretty."

Louise gasped at the close call, and then said, "Thank you, dearie."

But it wasn't long before Aunt Louise and her pets made them feel at ease. Within thirty minutes she had taught them how to play Old Maid. When we left them, Cain was using one hand to hold his cards and one to rub Pierre's belly, and Blue was sitting in Lily's lap purring away.

"Have you heard from Lyle since he left?" Evelyn asked.

Louise shook her head. "No. But he hasn't talked much since Lily died."

I fingered some of the things in Lily's old room. This was going to be the first time that Lily-3 saw her clone-mother's bedroom. Aunt Louise had left it almost untouched during the four years since Lily-2's death. Glass lilies dotted the bookshelves and corners of the room. There were framed photos of Lily and me in Edinburgh and at the cabin the weekend we consummated our relationship, and a picture from Lily-1 and Adam-1's marriage, as well as one of me sitting on Grandma Lily's lap as a baby, and a picture of Lily-2 on Aunt Louise's lap shortly after we moved in with her. There weren't any photos of Lyle or Sarah.

"Do you want to give her the locket?" Aunt Louise asked.

I hadn't noticed it till she asked. Aunt Louise had placed it atop Lily-2's birthday letter to her clone, both of them lying on Lily's white desk.

"Do you think it's a good idea?" I asked.

Evelyn came over to see the locket. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, showing her all this stuff. She's so young. She won't understand that her clone-mother was...you know..." I searched for the words, "with me at one time, and that her c-grandmother was with my c-father. It'll be confusing."

It even sounded confusing. People never had to worry about such things before I was born.

"I think it'll be okay," Evelyn said as she picked up the locket and examined the photos and the antique gold design. "Lily-2 was already writing about it in her first two birthday letters to Lily-3, and I'm sure she'll be reading all about it in all future letters. Talking about it now will help her understand it better. At her age, she'll just see you as old friends from her past, and that's a good thing." She turned to Louise, holding up the locket. "This is really beautiful."

Aunt Louise nodded. "Yes, it was my mother's. My brother gave it to his wife as a wedding present, and then he gave it to Adam-1 so he could give it to Lily as a wedding gift."

Evelyn asked Louise a question I'd often wondered about. "How did she die?"

"Lily-1's mother?"

Evelyn nodded.

"Katie died in a boating accident. They were sailing off of Madagascar, and she fell overboard without a life vest. Lyle couldn't find her." Louise frowned. "She was nice."

I picked up the picture of Lily-2 on Aunt Louise's lap. "Lily once said her mother had drowned herself."

Louise shrugged. "I don't know."

There was silence. Evelyn broke it.

"Did you get along with your brother?"

"No," Louise said. Evelyn let out a burst of laughter for which she was instantly embarrassed. Aunt Louise just smiled. "But he took care of me. I never had to work. He let me make my garden and have my pets and live my life as I wished. I'm grateful for that."

"So when he needed you," Evelyn said, "you took care of him."

Aunt Louise nodded, her eyes staring off unfocused on memories we couldn't see. "Yes. Not very well, I guess."

Evelyn put the locket back down and gave Aunt Louise a hug. "Please don't think that. You were wonderful."

"You could have died," she said, muffled against Evelyn's shoulder. "Your baby died."

"No," Evelyn held her tighter. "No."

Evelyn's teary eyes looked imploringly to me over Aunt Louise's shoulder. Before I could say anything, or before I could think of anything to say, there was a soft knock on the bedroom door. We all turned to see Lily-3 peering into the room.

"Come in, birthday girl," I said as I set the picture down and Evelyn and Louise regained their composure.

Lily had a sparkle in her eye that I'd seen many times before. "Is it time for presents?"

It was. They included a brown, floppy stuffed doggy from Cain, a new glass lily from Aunt Louise, a ceramic unicorn from Aunt Evelyn, and a collection of Disney tunes from an Uncle Adam who decided that the locket would wait.

As was tradition, the presents from the c-parent came last. Lily, clutching the stuffed doggy from Cain, sat on Evelyn's lap for the reading of Lily-2's birthday letter:

Happy Birthday, sweetie. Your c-mommy loves you so much. I wish I could be there to hug you and love you and protect you. Something's happened, and I can't. But I can be there a little. Ask someone to play this disk, and you'll see me soon.

Love

Evelyn helped Lily look back in the envelope, and they saw the disk taped to the side. Lily inhaled excitedly and turned smiling to Evelyn who laughed as she carefully peeled off the holodisk. After easing Lily off her lap, she inserted the disk into Lily-2's old holoplayer. A couple seconds later, Lily-2 was with us again.

She looked happy, wearing a dress I'd bought for her nineteenth birthday, her engagement ring on. I was fairly sure she'd taped it before we saw Farewell Dolly. Lily-2 was sitting down, and her hologram reached out blindly for her three-year-old clone-child. I placed her desk chair where the hologram was sitting, and Evelyn sat Lily-3 in her clone-mother's lap. We found her sitting deep within Lily-2's thighs, so Evelyn lifted her up while I placed a throw pillow on the chair, making the illusion appear more accurate. Lily-3 gazed up at her holographic clone-mother in wide-eyed wonder and giggled when her c-mother's arms hugged her.

"That's better!" Lily-2 said. "This is a special birthday for us. It's the first birthday I remembered in both our previous lives. So I want it to be memorable. Understand?"

Lily-3 nodded. "Uh-huh."

"I want you to remember that I'm always going to be with you in spirit no matter what happens. In the happiest times and the saddest times. Okay?"

Lily-3 nodded and looked at all of us to make sure we were seeing this.

"But often you'll need more than a hologram and a memory. Whether he's an old man or a little boy, the one person you can always turn to is Adam Elwell." Lily-3 turned to me, eyebrows raised, and grinned. I tried to grin back. "He's been our best friend and protector since your clone-grandmother was a little girl. In a couple more years you'll get a special golden locket that Adam gave you the first time we were married. We may have to die and be reborn a thousand times, but our locket will keep our souls forever tied. Adam saved us in the beginning, and he always will. If he's there, tell him how much you love him."

Lily-3 did so. "I love you this much," she calculated with at least a couple feet between her two outstretched palms.

"I love you, too," I said, feeling flushed.

Lily-2 continued. "Now go enjoy your new presents and the rest of your birthday, and I'll see you next year when you're four." The hologram turned slightly to face Lily's window. "And Adam, if you're here, thank you for still being with me. I miss you and love you."

The hologram smiled, frowned, and winked out.

Lily glanced around for the disappeared hologram, and then fixed on me. "So we got married?"

"Sort of," I said as my palm slowly reached out to Lily-3, a golden locket curled up in its center. She caught her breath and touched the tiny pictures that looked like her c-mother and me.

"Those are us?"

"Well," I said, "this is my c-father and your c-grandmother just before they got married."

"Where was Cain?"

"Cain didn't have a clone-father," I lied.

Lily looked at my son with great pity, then hopped down from the chair. "It's okay, Cain." She made her stuffed doggy kiss Cain on the cheek. "I love you."

"I love you, too," he said.

Lily grabbed his hand and ran with him out of the room and downstairs to play. The noise only paused briefly after we heard some glass shatter.

"Sorry!" Cain yelled up to us, quickly followed by the universal music of children playing.

Evelyn and I cringed. Aunt Louise took it as well as possible.

Table of Contents

45

The Christmas of '63 would be the first Christmas that Evelyn and I were able to spend at the cabin, and the first time that Cain and Lily-3 would ever see it. I think I was more excited than any of them. Although my last Christmas with Lyle-1 would always haunt me, the joyful memories were enough to muffle the sad one. Christmases with Mom, and later with Aunt Louise and Lily-2 and a young Lyle-2 when he still loved me. Stringing popcorn and decorating the tree while Christmas movies played and Christmas carols filled the cabin with their own unique warmth.

Hanukkah ended on December 23, which we spent with Hannah and Martin, and then we planned to drive up the morning of Christmas Eve with Aunt Louise in tow. She called us on December 22.

"Lyle has decided to come home for the holidays, and he wanted to know if he could join us at the cabin."

I bristled, then struggled to say no while remaining polite and respectful. "Look, Aunt Louise, I'm sorry, but I don't think that would be a good idea."

"I know," she started. I could hear the stress. "I don't know what to do."

She didn't know what to do, and I didn't know what to say. "I hope you can still make it," I offered, and then shook my head at how clumsy that sounded.

"No," she answered. "No, I think I need to be here for him. No one should be that alone."

Ten minutes later, Evelyn agreed.

"What?" I asked.

"We can keep an eye on Cain and Lily, and they can sleep in our room." She took my hand. "Lyle won't hurt them. And maybe it'll help."

"I can't believe this," I said, almost pulling my hand from hers.

"Aunt Louise shouldn't have to do this by herself."

I shook my head. "He means us harm."

"Yes," she said, bowing her head. "Maybe."

"Then why do it?"

Her eyes rose back up to meet mine. "In case he doesn't."

***

If those conversations were awkward, they were nothing compared to the way I felt about four o'clock Christmas Eve when I opened the cabin door for Aunt Louise and Lyle-2.

"You made it before dark," I noted.

She stood there waiting to see if she was truly welcome, holding back a frantic Pierre who was pawing the wood floors in an effort to tackle me. That's when Evelyn came in and gave Pierre a quick pet and Aunt Louise a welcoming hug. Embarrassed at my lapse, I followed Evelyn in hugging her and welcoming Pierre.

Neither of us hugged Lyle. He stood slightly behind and hidden by Louise, scanning us both, but not making any movement toward us.

"Merry Christmas, Lyle," Evelyn said. "Please come in and make yourself at home."

His feet remained put as he appraised my wife. "My c-father said you were Jewish."

She smiled pleasantly. "Still am," she said. "But we stopped eating Christians centuries ago. Now we just wish 'em Merry Christmas."

I swear there was a wisp of a grin on his lips. "I'm an atheist."

"And Adam is agnostic," she confessed into Lyle's ear. "But Louise and Lily are Christians, so how 'bout we heretics just join in the party and the goodwill and open some presents?"

His nod was barely perceptible, but good enough for Evelyn.

"Cool," she said. "You two know where your rooms are. I'm going to get the popcorn popping and needles threaded, and we'll put you to work when you get unpacked."

And for a while I didn't think there was anything Evelyn couldn't handle.

Unfortunately for me, she was in the kitchen as I warily introduced Lyle to Lily and Cain. We had already told the kids how they were related. Lyle nodded neutrally to Cain's "hello."

Cain seemed to sense a lack of warmth but shrugged it off.

"I've missed you," Lyle told Lily as he bent down to his knees and embraced her. I stiffened, but it was innocent enough, and Lily seemed at ease and told him she hoped she'd get a unicorn for Christmas.

That Christmas Eve proved to be one of my favorites. Evelyn convinced Lyle to thread popcorn, and he surprised me by participating in everything. He intently watched our Christmas movies that he hadn't seen since a young child when I still lived with them, and I even caught him tapping his foot on the ground to the beat of Scrooge's Oscar-nominated song Thank You Very Much. He thanked me gratefully for his present: an illustrated 1831 first edition of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein that had belonged to my c-father. Evelyn made him one of her family calendars. With the help of Aunt Louise, she had come across photos I'd never seen before. Lyle-1 sitting with a smiling, three-year-old Aunt Louise on his lap a year before the murder of their parents. A candid photo of Lyle-1 giving his young daughter Lily-1 a piggyback ride at Balboa Park by the old carousel. It ended in December with a photo of Lyle-2, Lily-2, and me at a Christmas in the cabin when Lyle-2 was a carefree three-year-old excited for the holiday magic to unfold.

After he'd slowly gone through each month, he couldn't look Evelyn in the eyes. "I've never been given anything like this."

Evelyn smiled softly at him, and then glanced at me. A warm, happy, hopeful glint in her eyes that said the impossible was happening, and everything was going to be okay. When I think of my most wondrous Christmas memory, it's that. I loved her so much.

And then there was the present Lyle gave me. I'm as choked up today as when I opened it. A framed picture of Mom and me at Disneyland – the one his c-father had taken from my room twenty years before.

"It's not really a present, I guess," Lyle-2 said. "I just thought you should have it back."

"No," I corrected, my voice cracking a little as Evelyn began rubbing my back. "No, it's a present. It means a lot."

I thought of the picture Lyle-1 had given me that last Christmas Eve. The one of me holding my mother's corpse. Maybe Evelyn had been right in giving this incarnation of Lyle another chance. Maybe his molestation of Lily-2 was a case of youth, ignorance, and puberty influenced by Lyle-1's corrupting holovideos. Now, four years later, as Lyle-2 was growing into the man he would become, maybe he was coming to grips with how his actions really affected Lily-2, and he was trying to make a change. And maybe we could help him.

His present to Lily convinced me even more. A picture of Lyle-1, his wife Katie, and a four-year-old Lily-1.

"It's the only photo I have of you, your mother, and me."

"This was my real mommy?" Lily-3 asked him, her pupils wide as she marveled over the eighty-year-old photo.

"Uh-huh," Lyle said.

"Where is her clone?" she asked.

"Katie died before there was any cloning," he explained. "But she loved you very much, and her love for you will always live on through me."

Lily gave him a hug.

Table of Contents

46

On Christmas Day we invited him to stay longer, but Lyle said he needed to get back to Boston for an internship. He was going to drive Aunt Louise's car down to San Diego, and we would take Aunt Louise home a few days later.

"I'm really glad we did this," I said to him as Louise, Evelyn, and I walked him out to the car. Gray skies and a dusting of snow gave the landscape a picturesque wintry feel.

"Me too, actually," he said, hefting his suitcase into the trunk. "So next Christmas you're all welcome to join Lily and me in Boston."

The crunch of footfalls from Evelyn and Aunt Louise stopped.

"What do you mean?" I asked, my stomach tightening.

"Well," he said as he closed the trunk, "I'm turning eighteen in February. I thought I'd move Lily in with me in Boston."

There were crunches behind me, and Evelyn leaned against my side.

"Lyle," she said calmly but with a little vibration in her voice, "we want you to be a big part of our family, but we're raising Lily as our daughter."

Lyle shook his head. "No, she's my daughter, and I'll raise her."

Evelyn's calm but firm determination almost convinced me. "We're keeping her."

"My lawyer says I can take her," he said, dusting some snow off the rear window. "But you can still visit her."

"Your lawyer was wrong." Evelyn's voice was beginning to rise, and her grip on my hand was becoming painful. "They don't move kids around after three years when there's no reason to."

Lyle still didn't look up as he walked to the other side of the car and began brushing off more snow. "There are lots of reasons, and lots of precedents, for the clone of the biological parent to take over parenting when they become old enough."

"Biological parent?"

Lyle stopped clearing the rear window and turned slowly to face Aunt Louise. "What?"

"Lyle," she started, walking up to him and placing her hand on his wrist. "You know that's not true."

He hesitated, frowning at Louise before pulling away from her. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Didn't Lyle tell you in his letters?"

He shook his head and began walking to the driver's door. "I'm leaving."

"Lyle. Your c-father was a eunuch."

Silence followed, but for the sound of an occasional clump of melting snow flopping from a tree branch. Lyle had stopped in front of the car door.

"Why are you lying?" he croaked.

She shook her head. "You know I wouldn't."

Lyle didn't say anything. He just stared at her.

"How do you know?" I asked her.

She started to move towards Lyle again, but he flinched away.

"From the whippings," she said. "It was so terrible, Lyle, what Mommy and Daddy did to your c-father."

Lyle went pale. "Don't."

"Making him strip, and kneel down to be whipped by Daddy while Mommy prayed for forgiveness."

"Stop it."

"I couldn't do anything till they were done, and then they let me wash his cuts. I tried to do it gently. But that's when I'd hear him cry, after Mommy and Daddy left the room."

"None of this is true," he whispered.

"Maybe they would have started with me someday. I don't know. I was so scared they would. Your c-daddy saved me from all that when–"

Lyle pounded on the top of the car. "Enough!"

"Maybe I should have said something to him," Louise continued, lost in her past, no longer noticeably aware of Lyle-2 or any of us. "But I was always so scared of him."

Lyle studied her. "You think he would have shot you?"

Louise nodded. "I always wondered why he didn't."

Lyle softened a bit. "You don't know?"

She shook her head. "No." She looked up at him wonderingly. "Do you?"

He paused, then shook his head. Aunt Louise probably never did know for sure.

Lyle opened the car door. "I'll see you in February to pick up Lily."

"No," said Evelyn.

"Then I'll see you in court."

"Lyle, please," said Louise. "You can be good."

He kicked the car door shut. "I am good!"

We were quiet.

His eyes bore into each of ours. "It's all of you. Like Lyle told me. You'll always hate me. Always try to take everyone who loves me away. Like Katie, and Sarah, and Adam." He focused on Louise. "And now you." And then his eyes rested on Evelyn. "I was beginning to think you might be different."

"We—" Evelyn started.

"No!" Lyle interrupted. "Lily will love me if she doesn't get corrupted by all of you. Lily and my clone-father are the only two who'll ever love me."

He opened the car door again and got in, firing up the engine and fishtailing as he drove away down the icy dirt road. Aunt Louise put her hands over her face. I put my arm around her shoulders, trying to comfort her, my own mind still reeling. Lyle gelded. Not the biological father of Lily. I held Aunt Louise tighter, vainly trying to comprehend what emotions might be crashing through the woman who had just wanted to live quietly and pleasantly in her glass garden, forever protected from the horrors of her family's past. From the Oedipal horror she still hid from. That Lyle's only biological daughter was the 95-year-old woman crying in the snow.

Table of Contents

47

On his eighteenth birthday, Lyle-2 sued to take custody of Lily. A police officer served us the papers. I called Lyle, but he didn't return my calls. The custody hearing was set for April. We all met him there, but he ignored me when I tried to talk to him before the hearing.

The judge let us each speak. Evelyn testified as to how happy the family was together. I related what Lily-2 had told me about a juvenile Lyle-2 stalking her in the house and making love to her against her wishes. Aunt Louise confirmed my testimony about Lily-2 and stated that test results would prove that Lyle was not the biological father of Lily. Only three-and-a-half years old, Cain said how much he loved Lily, that she was his best friend.

Then the judge asked Lily-3 if she liked living with us.

She turned shy, glancing repeatedly in the direction of Lyle-2.

"Do you like it at home?" the judge asked again.

Lily nodded.

"Do you know who Lyle is?" he asked

She turned to Lyle. He smiled at her. She nodded.

"Do you know his clone-father was your clone-grandmother's daddy?"

She nodded again.

"How would you like to live with him?"

She shrugged and sat back down.

The judge studied the paperwork for a few seconds and made his ruling. "Whether or not Lyle-1 was the biological father of Lily, or whether he was the legal father of a child conceived through artificial insemination, doesn't have any bearing on this case. Lyle was Lily's only father, and now that his clone is of age, he has first priority."

"Your honor," said Evelyn, "you can't be serious."

"Custody of Lily Ann Gardener-3 will be transferred to Lyle Reginald Gardener-2 on or before April 24, 2064."

I saw Lily tug slightly on Evelyn's sweater. "What does he mean?"

Evelyn's attention was divided between her fury at the judge and her tenderness with Lily. "It doesn't mean anything yet, honey. We'll talk about this at home."

But Cain understood. He stared at Lyle. "You can't have her."

Lyle returned Cain's stare with an expressionless stare of his own, then looked to see my response.

I was speechless. No, it was far worse than being speechless. I was relieved. But for a long time I never let myself accept that. For so long I tried to convince myself that I was too shocked to speak rather than face the truth that something deep inside me simply wanted Lyle and Lily completely out of my life.

"Next case," said the judge.

"We'll appeal," Evelyn said to me. "This is completely ridiculous, isn't it?"

I nodded.

"Isn't it?" she asked me again.

"He's ignoring nearly all precedent," our lawyer answered for me.

I felt Evelyn's eyes still on me. "Adam?"

***

Our files for appeal were denied, and on April 24 we were all in Lily's bedroom before Lyle was scheduled to pick her up. Evelyn and I were getting her packed. Cain had helped pack for a while, but now he sat on the floor in the way, ignoring us, and occasionally stealing glances at Lily. She stood in the corner of her bedroom, clutching the stuffed doggy Cain had given her, watching as we put the last of her things in boxes.

"How long do I have to go away?" she asked.

"You don't have to go," Cain answered, his eyes daring us to contradict him.

Evelyn looked to Cain, and then me. I dropped my gaze to the porcelain unicorn I was wrapping.

"Come here, sweetie," Evelyn said, but Lily didn't budge. Evelyn got up and went to her, straightening her dress and then starting to braid her hair, which Lily-3 had always loved. "We don't know for sure," Evelyn continued. "It depends on judges and how well Lyle treats you. If he treats you nicely, maybe you'll like it there and want to stay."

Lily petted her stuffed animal. "But stay for how long?"

Evelyn kissed her on the forehead and hugged her, then resumed her braiding. But she didn't answer. I felt both their eyes on me. Eventually I looked up and tried to smile encouragingly at Lily.

"Uncle Adam?"

"Yes, honey?"

"You don't want me anymore?"

My mind tripped over so many responses, all of them wanting. It left a painful silence in the room that wasn't broken until Cain hit the floor with both hands.

"If Lily goes, I'm going!"

"We don't have any choice," I said.

"Yes you do!" he shouted, jumping up, hitting me with a fist on the leg, and running out of the room.

Evelyn subtly gestured for me to go after him as she continued braiding Lily's hair and trying to soothe her anxiety. I placed the wrapped unicorn in the box and began walking downstairs, walking slowly as my mind raced to think of what to say. The doorbell rang.

"We're not done packing," I said as I opened the door.

"Good morning," Lyle said.

"I guess."

"I'll have someone pick up the rest of her stuff later."

I saw Cain approach out of the corner of my eye. "She doesn't want to go with you," he said.

Lyle frowned at him. "Because you said bad things about me."

"No," I said. "It's because she's happy here."

Lyle stuffed his hands into his pockets. "Listen, Elwell. Either let me in to get my daughter, or I'll call the police and they can oversee your delivery of Lily to me. Is that what you want?"

I stepped aside, and Lyle walked into the house.

"Stay here," I said. "We'll bring her down."

Evelyn had her prepared by the time I got to the room. Lily was sitting on the bed, holding her doggy in her lap. I could see glimpses of the chain from her locket laced between her fingers. Evelyn held her suitcase.

"Are you ready, sweetheart?" Evelyn asked.

Lily sighed and nodded.

I picked up a couple boxes filled with the letters and videos from her c-mother and c-grandmother, including the box in which, many years later, I'd discover the holovideo of my birth. Lily frowned when she recognized the boxes I'd chosen.

"I won't be back here for my birthday?"

"We don't know yet," said Evelyn. "But we thought you might like to have them with you at all times so you know your c-mothers are always there. Okay?"

She nodded, and Evelyn took her hand and led her out the door. I followed as we went down the hall and down the stairs where Lyle and Cain waited. I could see the tears starting to roll down Cain's cheeks.

Lyle crouched down and stretched his arms out to Lily, smiling. "Hi, Lily! You ready to go see your new home?"

She held Evelyn's hand tighter and hid her face behind Evelyn's leg. Lyle frowned.

"Lily," Lyle said, straining to be calm. "Come with me."

Cain stepped in between them. "She doesn't want to."

"It's time to go, Lily," Lyle continued, a little louder.

Cain put his hand out to Lily. "Come on!"

Lily slipped her hand out of Evelyn's and gripped Cain's, and Cain began running with her towards the stairs. I darted after them, but not as fast as Lyle. He grabbed Lily around the waist at the foot of the stairs and wrenched her away from Cain, her doggy falling to the floor. My son bit Lyle's hand, and Lyle backhanded him to the floor.

I grabbed Lyle by the collar, wanting to hit him, but I didn't know what to do. He was holding Lily in his arms. She had to leave with him.

"Don't you ever touch my son again," I said, gripping his collar tighter so that he could feel it but hopefully Lily couldn't see it.

She didn't see it. She was staring down, horrified at seeing Cain knocked to the floor. Evelyn was picking Cain up. He would have been biting Lyle's hand again, but his mom was holding him close as he tried to worm his way out of her arms.

"Keep your damn kid away from me," Lyle said, trying to get his collar out of my clutch while still holding Lily tight.

Lily's attention turned from Cain to me, and I let Lyle go. The fear on her face as she looked at Lyle and then looked to me for help. Her eyes and pupils wider than I'd ever seen them, not struggling to get away, but pushing her torso as far as she could from Lyle.

I should have done something then. But all I did was follow Lyle out the door and to the car. As we approached his car, Lily kept glancing back at me and the front door. I heard Cain screaming from inside the house.

I watched as Lyle opened the back door and placed Lily into the carrier. Her eyes never left me as Lyle adjusted the buckles, closed the door, took the boxes from me and put them in the trunk, got into the driver's seat, and started the engine. Lily held her locket up to the window as they backed down the driveway. She strained her neck as far as possible to see me as they drove down the street. The car turned, and she was gone.

*

Dinner that night was silent except for Evelyn's attempts to get a conversation started. After we had eaten, Cain walked up to me as I sat at the dining table.

"I hate you."

Then he turned and walked away, leaving me with a feeling that will never completely go away.

Evelyn tried to comfort me. "He'll come to understand better in time."

But that only made my shame deepen.

Table of Contents

48

Five years went by before I saw Lily again.

Outwardly they were the most peaceful years of my life. Evelyn was partially right about Cain. The intensity of his hatred the day Lily was taken from us slowly dissipated as the months and years went by, although I always imagined he felt a simmering disappointment in me. We played catch and worked on his homework and played hologames in which he almost invariably beat me. After the first year he only rarely asked about Lily.

Many of my fondest memories were sitting with Cain at Evelyn's shows. She became a regular at the La Jolla Playhouse and only rarely auditioned for New York. She wanted Cain's life in La Jolla to be more stable as far as his family and school life was concerned, but she did do a lot of Shakespeare in the Park during the summers.

Cain adored her in a way that he'd never feel for me, but we could share in that adoration during her shows. When she was Cecily in Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest, Cain would always turn to me whenever she made him laugh, and we'd share the laughter together. When she died at the end of Terms of Endearment, he rested his head on my shoulder while brushing away his tears. She never did get to play Ti Moune in Once On This Island as she'd done at the second grade talent show, but she did perform twice in her favorite musical – Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty's Ragtime. Once as her namesake, vaudeville tart Evelyn Nesbit, and once for her only return to Broadway as Mother. When she sang the song Our Children, I smiled as Cain sat on the edge of his seat watching his mother who always looked out at him during the song, knowing she was singing to both him and Lily.

Meanwhile, I began to believe my past might entirely fade away. I was made the CEO of Ingeneuity in 2068, and as such was able to bring U.S. Cloning Systems completely back under control of the parent company, thereby blocking Lyle from getting a job with us. We had soon assembled a team of doctors and scientists who were driven to solve the medical problems of cloning, improve our artificial immune system, and overcome the technical hurdles that still barred us from creating artificial bodies. I knew eventually Lyle-2 would try to challenge me in the industry, and I wanted to be so far ahead that he'd never catch up.

Supposedly I'd taken control and pushed Lyle out to punish him for taking Lily, but I suspect my primary motivation was to keep him as far away from me as possible.

Even my clone-father was out of my life. I rarely dreamed about him back then, my subconscious apparently content that I had won the battle for our soul. Or that he had won, and I just didn't realize it.

*

The summer of 2069 was the centennial of Apollo 11's landing on the moon. As we sat in Sardi's celebrating the closing of Evelyn's performance as Miranda in The Tempest, I tossed an envelope into Cain's lap.

"Hey, what's..." he began as he pulled the three tickets out of the envelope. His eyes bulged. "Dad, you're kidding! How'd you get these?"

"Barebots has a lot of connections with NASA," I said. "Nikki Menae got four tickets and asked if we wanted to join her."

"We're going to the moon!" Evelyn exclaimed, messing up Cain's hair.

I laughed. "Yup! In one week. And on July 20th we'll be at the Sea of Tranquility to see the reenactment of Neil Armstrong's first walk on the moon."

Needless to say, I was a hero. And I was just as excited as Cain. We had three of the 6,000 tickets to the biggest event on the moon since the opening of AstroDisney two years before. Lunar tourism had only become somewhat practical around that same time, and despite the $110,000 roundtrip flights and $20,000 hotel rooms, there was a two-year waiting list of would-be lunar tourists. Fortunately, the tickets to the Apollo 11 Centennial included the hard-to-get reservations on a lunar shuttle.

It's difficult to describe a trip to the moon, as it's so distinct from our shared earthly experiences. Floating in zero gravity on the flight, moving around in the low gravity on the moon, striding and hopping over the powdery surface near our hotel on the moon's south pole, looking up at the earth surrounded by the stunningly starlit blackness of space. It was a "full earth" on July 18 when we arrived, none of it in shadow, making it all the more wondrous. Cain said being on the moon was sort of like visiting an illuminated Carlsbad Caverns under water. Buzz Aldrin had described it as "magnificent desolation." Neil Armstrong had said, "It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn't feel like a giant. I felt very, very small."

AstroDisney was still in its infancy with less than twenty rides and attractions split between the park on the lunar surface and the orbiting park above. Surface rides included roller coasters in the moon's lower gravity, which could make loops and corkscrews at slower speeds so it feels like you're floating through them and in constant danger of falling. Or you could take a ride on The Pirates of Tranquillitatis where space pirates attacked your shuttle and imprisoned you deep within a crater. On the orbiting section of AstroDisney we played a number of zero-gravity sports including an amazing game of handball. We learned how to fly with butterfly-like wings. And nothing was more fun than the swimming pool. Diving included many seconds of contorting your body as you floated down toward the water. The splash in the pool rose to terrific heights that others could ride, with the hole you made in the water taking several moments to fill back in. Instead of sand castles, we made orbs of floating water and played with those. You can swim like a flying fish, soaring a couple feet above the water before plunging back in for your next stroke. And, with a little practice, even normal human beings could walk on water.

The grand finale was the centennial celebration up at the Sea of Tranquility. An enclosed temporary structure in the shape of a horseshoe was placed around the historic landing site and filled with bleachers and breathable air.

As Nikki led us to our seats, someone called out my name. I turned to see Lyle-2 sitting about thirty feet from us, waving to me.

"I'll be right back," I said to Evelyn.

"Sure—" she started, then she saw him too.

"Lily!"

My head snapped back around at the sound of Cain's shout. I hadn't noticed at first. A nine-year-old Lily-3 peering out from behind Lyle-2, her mouth slightly ajar upon seeing Cain, and then me.

"Stay here," I said as I walked toward them.

Another man stood up on the other side of him. At first I thought he might be some sort of bodyguard. None of us extended a hand in greeting.

"Adam, do you know Senator Barum?" Lyle asked.

"No. Good evening, Senator," I said, nodding slightly at the man who had just stood. I knew him only by reputation. He wasn't a friend of the GC Board.

"Evening? Who can tell out here?" Senator Barum asked, forcing his lips to curl up in a grin he used at campaign rallies.

"John's the newest member of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation," Lyle continued.

I gave a smile almost as genuine as the senator's. "Then I'm sure we'll meet the next time the GC reports to Congress," I said.

"If his party takes the Senate next year, he may become the next chairman."

"Hmm." I said, looking down to see Lily leaning against the back of her seat so I could see her. "Lily, are you okay?"

Lyle grabbed my forearm. "Don't ever talk to my daughter, Elwell. There's a reason I've ignored all Evelyn's requests to see her."

I moved my face within a couple inches of his. "What are you doing to her?"

He clutched my forearm tighter, then relaxed his grip. "Things are good for you right now," he said, completely letting go of my arm and looking over my suit. "You've got a nice family. You've got my company. But involve yourself in my personal life, and I'll take it all. Just like you've tried to take everything from me."

I moved in even closer. "Your problem, Lyle, is that you think you're as powerful as your c-father. Deep down you know you're not even his pale shadow."

Senator Barum put his hand on Lyle's rigid shoulder. "Don't you think we should let Adam take his seat?"

Lyle nodded without looking at the senator. "Sure. Bye, Adam."

I returned his nod. "Kiss my ass, Lyle." I nodded to his guest. "Senator Barum."

The senator frowned, possibly uncertain if the "ass" comment was meant for him as well. As I turned to head back to the others, there was Evelyn.

"Hi, Lily!"

Lily started to run past Lyle, but his arm flew down in time to block her way. Lily looked up to both of us for help. From Evelyn's glare, I knew I'd better do something. I grabbed Lyle's blocking arm with both hands and pulled it aside, giving Lily a clear shot past me to receive embraces from Evelyn and Cain.

"Has he hurt you?" Evelyn asked her, holding Lily's hands in hers.

I watched in horror as Lily answered. Not verbally. Just with a trembling nod.

"You've gone too far," said Lyle, his voice empty, shocked.

"We're going to go a lot further," said Evelyn. "Let us take her, or we'll tell Child Protective Services."

His blush deepened. "Get your hands off my daughter."

Evelyn turned her attention to the senator. "Do you know you're in the company of a child molester?"

"Well ma'am, I know slander when I hear it. I think you better go."

"You'll never take Lily from me," Lyle said, starting to shove past me. We were about to get into more than a shoving match.

"Give her to us," Evelyn said to Lyle, "and we'll help get you counseling. You know what you're doing is wrong."

The senator took out his cell. "Security, we have a problem down here."

Evelyn focused her frustration on him. "You rape kids, too?"

The senator went pale. "Maybe you'd both like to go to jail and let Lyle raise your son."

Before he had finished the sentence, I turned to Evelyn and tried to keep myself wedged between her and the others, attempting to calm a fury I'd never seen in her eyes. The security was already on its way, and having Evelyn arrested for using her green belt against the senator would help nothing. Although it may have brought some momentary satisfaction.

"Is there a problem here, Senator?" asked one of the security guards.

The senator looked to Lyle, who shook his head.

"Can I show you to your seats?" the guard asked me.

"Thank you, I think we know where they are."

Lyle used the interruption to take Lily's hand and pull her away from Cain. I led Evelyn and Cain away. Cain couldn't look away from Lily and Lyle. Evelyn kept her eyes on the floor as her anger melted into resolve.

"Mingling?" Nikki Menae asked as we sat next to her.

"Yeah." I said. "It's a small world."

"Sure is," said a vaguely familiar voice from behind.

I turned around to find ourselves sitting in front of a handful of Barebots employees and one famous Barebot couple. Elektro and Elektra were sitting right behind us. Evelyn and I hadn't seen them since the World's Fair ten years before.

Nikki started the introductions. "Adam and Evelyn, I'm sure you remember Elektro and Elektra. They, of course, remember you."

Evelyn shouted, "Oh my gosh!" and turned around to hug them both.

I nodded stiffly, still tense, and shook their hands. "Great to see you guys again. Where's Sparko?"

"Apparently no dogs are allowed. Even Barebot dogs," Elektro answered. "He wrote an angry letter to NASA."

"Another first for robotic dogs," Nikki noted. "Now have you two ever met Cain?"

"No, we haven't," Elektra said as her fingers ruffled Cain's hair. "But we've heard a lot about you."

Cain turned around. "Really?"

She nodded. "We heard you have your mother's spirit."

Cain looked proudly at his mom, then back at the Barebot praising her. "So you were some of the first Barebots?" Cain asked.

"The first ones to meet the public," Elektro said. "Yet we're actually not much more than a year older than you. We were only a few months old when we met Adam and Evelyn at the World's Fair."

Elektra smiled broadly. "Your mother was wearing a sweater with all sorts of thin, brightly colored horizontal stripes, and a brown skirt with tall boots, and she had an orange scrunchie in her hair to make a ponytail. No makeup except a little lip gloss. I liked her immediately."

Evelyn grinned. "I thought it was an amber scrunchie."

"It was orange," Elektra corrected, making a ponytail out of Evelyn's hair. "These newlyweds walked right past some people who were jeering at us and protesting our existence, and she gave me a big hug. And while she was hugging me she said, 'Elektra, you and your family are going to make the world such a better place. And I love you for it.'"

I saw Cain gaze at his blushing mom with admiration.

Elektra continued. "But you know what I never got to tell Evelyn?"

"What?"

"I never got to tell her that I loved her for saying that."

I watched Evelyn stand up and give Elektra another hug, whispering in each other's ears. When she sat back down, I rubbed her back and laughed at her embarrassment.

Minutes later the Eagle landed, exactly one hundred years after the first landing. As the astronauts planted the American flag, I wondered at the bravery of those first men on the moon, and I wondered at the bravery of my family at my side. And I wondered why I didn't have it.

Table of Contents

49

By 2070, thirty-six years after my birth, almost a third of all Americans who died were having themselves cloned. The shrinking band of anti-cloners pointed to the troubling statistic that although the overall birthrate had risen during that period, the birthrate of non-clones had dropped almost every year. As a population, we were indeed giving ourselves new lives at the expense of other possible lives with original genetic sequences.

The Genetics and Cloning Board rarely had to make contentious decisions anymore, as all major and most minor legal issues regarding clones had been dealt with, and the majority seemed satisfied with the results, although Congress and state governments would at times overrule us on issues depending on the political winds.

Thorniest of all was the idea of publicly financing cloning among the poor. Only a couple states were providing this by 2070, though several charity groups had grown up around it. Those charities were mostly religious organizations that believed cloning was the afterlife. The largest of these, The Resurrectionists, was a quickly growing Christian denomination whose central tenant held that Christ had envisioned cloning as the path by which human beings would be restored to their bodies. They believed that the soul of the original was attached to its future clones. Their efforts to recruit me failed, but I did contribute to their efforts for the poor since church membership was not required for people to receive money from their foundation.

Then there were those problems that couldn't be legislated away. On the medical side, Ingeneuity had made enormous gains in reducing the mortality rate and reining in genetic abnormalities, but there was still so much we didn't understand and were unable to completely cure.

The suicide rate remained far too high – more than five times the rate of non-clones. Society had mostly become numb to the suicides over the past two decades, and in the end it took a personality everyone had heard of to shake up the debate anew.

Cooper Jones had been one of the most popular basketball players of his generation – the "five-foot-twelve" surprise star nicknamed "Too-Small Jones" who barely made the draft and went on to set multiple scoring records. His underdog story and charming personality made him a celebrity whether or not you wanted the Bulls to win. His death in 2054 from a rock-climbing accident shook us all.

On November 14, 2070, young Cooper Jones-2 killed himself after not making the first string of his freshman high school basketball team. He begged in his suicide holovideo for his DNA not to be cloned again.

The entire world grieved and searched for an answer to the tragedy. More than fifty thousand turned out for his funeral in Chicago – clones and non-clones. I was one of the speakers, officially sent as the GC Board representative, and in choking words I apologized for our failure to all clones who had ended their lives prematurely. We should have tried harder to let them know they were loved as individuals and had no reason to hold themselves up to the accomplishments or failures of their clone-parents. And if the GC Board had delivered better materials and classes to the counselors, parents, and the clones themselves, then we could have saved thousands of lives.

The day after the funeral, the tragedy was compounded. The coach who had made the decision to put Cooper Jones-2 into the second string was barraged by verbal attacks, phone calls, v-mails, and letters blaming him for the death. The vicious onslaught and outpouring of grief in the media led to yet another senseless suicide. In his note, the coach apologized to Cooper Jones-2, Cooper's family, and all who grieved for them, and explained that at the time he thought it would have been unfair to cut a deserving student from the lineup to put Jones in, but in retrospect he wished he had done so.

The apology was scoffed at by some for dismissing Cooper Jones-2 as undeserving. That was, of course, the reason Cooper had been put in the second string, but even those who recognized the fact thought it tasteless to say so after Cooper's suicide.

I simply thought he was trying to explain himself at a moment of supreme depression, and I was disgusted by those who suggested that some justice had been done through the coach's suicide.

We stayed in Chicago a few more days and attended Coach Bill Ballard's funeral. I was afraid I'd say something in anger that I'd regret, and asked the more diplomatic and levelheaded Jack to speak in my place.

He did speak. Jack talked about Bill's life and accomplishments, and said he was devastated at the tragedy of Coach Ballard's death. But that he was also deeply saddened at the cruelty of those who unfairly attacked him with such viciousness – "especially those who, rather than feel guilt after his suicide, instead amplified their vitriol and rejoiced in the tragedy they provoked. This is the ugliness that will undo us."

*

The funerals had a strong effect on Cain. He changed his Little League uniform number to Cooper-2's and wore a black armband.

It all had a powerful effect on me as well. One week after my return to San Diego, I resigned as chairman of the GC Board and took a smaller, less visible position. With my encouragement, Jack Lewis took over the chairmanship. I was sure someone with his background in psychology and counseling of clones would be better able to spearhead a program to rescue clones from the suffocating tensions that lead them to suicide.

It was a lot to put on him, but Jack was determined to try, promptly beginning the ambitious I'm Okay, We're Okay program that overhauled our literature and pushed the government into writing a bill that would require all c-parents and clone guardians to attend a class based on that literature. There was much opposition to compulsory education, but Jack struck while the iron was hot, and the legislation squeaked through. The significant drop in clone suicides following the implementation of his program proved he knew what he was doing.

Unfortunately, another funeral was soon to follow.

*

On November 22, 2070, at the age of 102, Aunt Louise was taken to a hospital, and then to a hospice. The illness was one we could have easily remedied. Advanced heart disease. Even at her age, and even without AIS, an artificial heart transplant would have been no more risky than an appendectomy was a hundred years before.

I sat at the side of her bed, holding her right hand in both of mine. "Let me save you."

"No thank you," she said.

"Please."

"I'm tired, Adam."

I fingered one of her favorite glass flowers that she had taken with her to the hospice. Her room was full of them. "I thought you enjoyed your life."

A silent frown spread down her face.

"No?" I asked.

"I love you and Evelyn and Lily and Cain." She pointed weakly to a bouquet of daisies that Lyle had sent. "And Lyle. Blue and Pierre, and my gardens. But this world's a shadow. A shadow with pain. I want to see what's next."

"What if there's nothing?"

She smiled gently. "Then I'll welcome the quiet."

I wasn't ready to give up. "I could have you cloned. I'd raise her."

"You're a sweet boy, Adam," she said, patting my hand like I was a young child. "I was happy to help raise you."

"But you won't let me clone you?"

She shook her head. "No. I don't want to do it again."

Aunt Louise reached out to a glass lily.

"We did what we could," I said. "Lily's not your fault."

"It's all my fault," she said as she turned and buried the side of her face in the pillow.

"No it's not. You tried to keep both Lilys away from him."

"That's not what I mean," she said, closing her eyes.

"Lyle-2's to blame," I said, looking at the lilies. "You tried your best—"

"I'm not talking about Lyle-2." Her damp, century-old eyes fixed me with an emotion I'd never seen in Aunt Louise. That I never thought I'd see. Anger. "I'm talking about the first one."

I saw Lyle's grinning face as the gun lay in front of me that Christmas morning. "What about him?"

"I should have said something when he shot Mom and Dad." Her weak breath rattled in her throat. "But all I did was ask for a drink of water."

I bowed my head and ground my teeth. Aunt Louise had asked him for water, pretending not to know he had murdered their parents. I had begged him for comfort, pretending not to know he'd killed my mother.

"You were four years old," I told her. "You were scared. It's not your fault." I thought about telling her that I, too, had cowered to the murderer to save myself. But I never did. "Let me save you."

She placed her hand on top of mine and closed her eyes peacefully. "No," she said. "No more."

"No more what?"

"Glasses of water."

***

Aunt Louise died later that night.

Lyle was in charge of the funeral arrangements. We weren't invited.

She remembered me in her will. It seemed she didn't want her beloved pets being raised by Lyle, and she hoped I'd take them into my home along with a few of her "oldest, most favorite glass flowers." I readily agreed, somewhat grateful I didn't have to take her whole garden. But I would have done it.

Evelyn and Cain joined me in a small private memorial service, placing a photo of Aunt Louise sitting happily amongst her glass forest, the silver-framed portrait surrounded by several of her oldest, most favorite glass flowers.

Table of Contents

50

I was at work when the call came from Lyle. It was a couple months after Aunt Louise's death – a loss that had grown deeper with time. Not just the emptiness of losing a loved one, but her last words about Lyle-1 haunted me

Lyle-2's voice was the same as his.

"Yes?" I said.

His reply was unemotional. "Child Protective Services came to my house last night."

I shifted in my seat. "Hmm. Good."

"They inspected Lily for child abuse."

I waited several seconds for him to continue, until it became apparent he was waiting for me. "Did they find any?"

"I told you to stay out of my life."

I didn't respond. After a while, Lyle ended the call.

*

When I got home, I told Evelyn about it.

"Good," she said. The same word I'd used, but with sincerity. "Do you know what happened?"

"No, I haven't been able to find out."

"Well, it's a start," she said. "Even if we can't get her away from him, if we can make him afraid to hurt her, maybe he won't."

"Evelyn, please."

She paused, trying to read my thoughts. "Please what?"

I couldn't think of any way to ask. But she didn't need me to.

"You want me to stop trying to help Lily?"

I pressed my fingers against my forehead, shielding my face.

"Adam, answer me."

I let my hands drop to my side. "You almost died. Cain already died. My mother died. Your father died." I shook my head. "Don't you see?"

Evelyn nodded very slowly. "I understand," she said. "But Jack was your friend even after he knew you and your family were a threat to him and his family. Your mother gave birth to you even when—"

"And you married me even when you knew," I interrupted. "But I'm not Jack. Or Mom. Or you. I'm..." a clone. I sat down.

Evelyn sat next to me and placed her hand on my knee. "You're ashamed because you're afraid of death. You think only a clone would hesitate to risk his life for others."

I could say nothing. No one had ever verbalized my fear and cowardice. Her words made my shame more concrete than ever.

"Adam." She paused again, staring at her hands in her lap. "What do you think I was thinking when the church bomber said he would send us all to hell? What do you think I was thinking when my father threw himself over me?"

I still said nothing, wanting her to stop, terrified that after all this time she would finally blame me for her father's death.

She fixed her eyes on mine. They were getting glassy with tears. "Do you think I was praying for my daddy's life? Or do you think I was praying that he'd save me?" Her chin began trembling. I brushed some of her hair back with my fingertips and held her hand. The tip of her nose was getting red. "And when the blast ripped my eardrums, and when my dad's body dropped on top of me, and when I felt that nail from the bomb scratch me above my eye," she touched her scar without looking up, "what do you think was my first thought? Whether my dad was still alive, or whether he'd let something cut me?"

I cradled her hand in mine. "Evelyn."

She swallowed hard, then forced out the words. "And who stayed safe under her father's body, too scared to see if there was anything I could do to help him, or even whisper that I loved him? Pretending he was fine when I knew he was dead with twenty nails in his back and legs and skull?"

I put my arm around her and pulled her close, kissing her forehead, resting my chin against her hair. She clutched my shirt in her first. She couldn't say anything for a long time.

"He's dead," she said at last. "And now what's the first thing that goes through my mind each time I notice my scar? How grateful and proud I am of my father, or how ashamed I am of myself?"

"No," I whispered, kissing her again.

When she was done crying she raised her reddened eyes to meet mine. "We've all done things we regret, and I'll do more before I die. We can be discouraged, or we can be inspired to be better next time we have a chance."

I nodded. I wanted to be better.

She took my hands in hers. "Lily is one of our chances."

Table of Contents

51

A few months later, we learned that Evelyn was dying.

The initial warning came when Evelyn noticed several new gray hairs, but we didn't think anything of it until she began to get hot flashes. She had only just turned thirty-seven.

The first standard tests found a moderate deviation in cell aging than would be expected at her age. It was about twenty percent the normal rate. In other words, it could be said that, at thirty-seven, Evelyn's body was in her mid-forties. A scan for known genetic diseases turned up nothing, and such a slow acceleration in aging was rather unusual if it was the cause of some disease and not simply a natural propensity to age more quickly than others. Our top doctors suggested there was probably nothing to worry about. At that rate, and with our current average life expectancies thanks to our artificial immune system, Evelyn-2 could expect to still live to be ninety, and by then we would have long since begun putting people into completely artificial bodies and found an aging "cure" for those who didn't want artificial bodies.

Six months later we realized the urgency of the affliction. Her hair had gone completely gray, her skin was losing its elasticity, and she was beginning to develop aches, pains, and stiffness associated with old age.

We sat together in Dr. Lisa Lopez's office.

"I'm sorry, Evelyn," she said slowly. "It's not good."

"What is it?" she asked calmly, gripping my hand.

"It looks to be some sort of genetic poisoning. A manufactured disease. The most closely related naturally occurring disease is Progeria, but both the cause and expression of this engineered malady are significantly different. And in this case, the age progression is increasing rapidly."

"How long?"

Dr. Lopez looked over her papers as if the answer was there. She shrugged. "Your artificial immune system could keep you relatively healthy through most of the rapid aging, and it might even slow down the acceleration as the AIS is improved over the years, especially if we're able to pinpoint how it's working. But whoever developed this seems to have known how we would try to decipher it, and the artificial genes mutate constantly, so far preventing us from understanding their architecture or exactly how they work."

Evelyn nodded patiently. "How long?"

"Probably five to ten years."

She nodded, looking down at our intertwined hands. "Like Farewell Dolly," she said quietly, more to herself than to us.

She didn't want to tell Cain at first, not until we had a more complete grasp of what we were dealing with. But our son had already been asking about her gray hair, and I could tell he was nervous. I thought about my clone-father as he wrote about his mother's cancer.

I remember the first glimmer that something was wrong. We were packing up to leave Baker Beach near the Golden Gate. A gust of wind blew some of my dad's papers out of the beach bag and sent Mom's sunbonnet tumbling to the sand. She reached up quickly to adjust her blond hair, further skewing her wig.

The wig surprised me. I'd seen her wear many wigs during her performances, but never one that so closely resembled her normal hair. And she hadn't performed in months.

As Dad fixed her wig, Mom began to cry. He held her close.

"Adam, can you get Mommy's hat?" he asked, his face concealed behind his wife's, his voice shaky.

I caught up to my mom's hat and a few of the scattered pieces of paper. When I turned back around, Dad was comforting Mom as they walked along the dirt path back to the car. I grabbed the forgotten beach bag and caught up with them in the parking lot. Nobody talked as we drove back home.

A few nights later we were watching a rerun of The Incredible Hulk. It was an episode entitled Married starring Bill Bixby as David Banner and Mariette Hartley as the terminally ill doctor he weds. Near the end, David Banner dreams that his new wife boards a bus driven by the Grim Reaper, with David vainly running to stop her.

Mom got up and ran into their bedroom. Dad followed.

I turned the TV off and knocked on the bedroom door.

"Is everything okay, Mommy?"

"Everything's fine," Dad answered.

But I could hear Mom sobbing.

I leaned against the closed door, not wanting to let go of something I vaguely felt that I was losing, before turning away with a knot in my stomach. That was my first memory of feeling helpless.

"I think we should tell him," I said, describing what had happened to my c-father, and his reaction when his mother died. Evelyn agreed.

We sat him down that night at the dining room table. And we told him.

Evelyn took him by the hand and held his eyes with hers. "We went to the doctors today to find out what's wrong with me."

He fidgeted nervously. "What did they..." he started, but couldn't finish.

"I don't want you to worry too much yet, because there's a lot they don't really know." She waited for him to nod before she went on. "But right now they think it's some sort of unknown aging sickness, so I'm going to grow older faster than normal."

"Until they find a cure?" he asked, glancing at me.

I nodded. But didn't convince him.

"How long will you live if they don't?"

"Maybe ten years," she said.

He got up and gave his mom a hug. "Can I do anything to help?"

"What you just did," I said.

That wasn't the kind of answer he wanted. He wanted something concrete he could do to make his mom live longer. But that challenge, that obligation, was mine.

When his hug was over, he turned to me. "What are you going to do?"

"Kill Lyle," was the first thing that popped into my head, but that wouldn't help Evelyn. "I'm going to pull our company's top two doctors into private practice to work solely on trying to figure out the cause of the disease, and I'm also going to devote a much larger percentage of our resources to artificial bodies. We'll have either a cure or a new body before..."

I trailed off, not convincing either of them. Or myself.

The positive news about the disease was that, like Progeria, the aging didn't appear to affect her central nervous system. I assumed this was either because the genetic manipulation was based on Progeria or because Lyle had wanted to ensure she would be fully lucid as the rest of her body decayed around her. But regardless, it did give us a glimmer of hope. Our project managers working with Barebots hadn't planned on being able to successfully keep a human brain alive and functioning inside an artificial body for another fifteen to twenty years. But I knew it was possible to beat those projections. It had to be.

Table of Contents

52

The first step was to hire Drs. Lisa Lopez and Thomas Greenhall from Ingeneuity to work specifically on battling Evelyn's disease and keeping her alive. They had been friends of mine since my Copy Boy days, and they were motivated to help my wife.

The next step was to infuse the drive towards full artificial bodies with more capital and talent. To do that we took more profits from our cloning division, pushed for investors, and gave ourselves a five-year goal to put a human brain into a completely artificial body to be completed by late 2076, replacing the long-held goal of January 1, 2090. Everyone knew the inspiration for that goal, but there was little dissent. It had long been known that this was our key to future success, and it was a wise goal regardless of the motivation.

Nor was it nearly as crazy as most thought at the time. With advanced AI taking over both the research and the surgical aspects, we were proceeding toward our goal at speeds constrained largely by advancements in computing power, which had already far surpassed the processing power of the human brain and was expected to be three times more powerful still by 2076. Machines would soon make things and do things of which humans hadn't dreamed.

A second impetus for our new corporate goals arose four months later when Lyle Gardener-2 and several of his loyalists publicly announced the formation of a new rival corporation – Rejuve, Inc. The good news was that they weren't going to compete with us on artificial bodies. We were far ahead of the curve, and the expense to get in the game was overwhelming, thereby making the choice for them clear. They would instead compete with us on artificial immune systems while tangling with others in the field of cryonic freezing and rejuvenation.

I was a little surprised by the latter choice. There was a potential future in it, and Lyle-2 had studied the science as part of his Ph.D. work, but it was not an industry in which he had many contacts. Still, as he stated in the prospectus, there was a good case to be made that cryonics would be bigger than cloning if it could be performed successfully. If you gave people a choice between having a clone or being temporarily frozen until they could be brought back, most would have themselves frozen where, theoretically, their memories and all that makes them who they are would still be intact. If the technical hurdles could be overcome, cryonics would be the afterlife of choice. And if you were going to start a company meant to lead the way in cryonic regeneration, it made sense to also specialize in nano-based artificial immune systems, as that would certainly be necessary if anyone was ever going to be brought back from cryonic freeze.

In my opinion, his business plan had two problems. First, I believed it would take at least a couple decades before his company could freeze and rejuvenate people without harming their minds. Second, it could be a very short-term solution that would never recoup the investment. If we were able to put human brains into artificial bodies in five to ten years, then most of Lyle's clients would be those with serious brain diseases or impairments that couldn't be fixed with modern technology, as well as those who were philosophically opposed to the idea of having their brains transplanted into something artificial. In both the long run and the short run, his market was a niche far smaller than ours. Add to that the fact that demand for AIS would also decline with the advent of artificial bodies, and I wouldn't have invested in his company even if he weren't my nemesis.

But I wasn't going to let that stop me from doing everything in my power to limit his opportunities for success and manipulate the future of his company. And that meant several things.

At the forefront was our direct competition with his artificial immune system. He was quick to take several of our staff members from our own AIS department, and I was determined to tie them up in court to make sure they didn't use any of our patented work. Regarding his cryonics, I began campaigning for an expansion of the GC Board to consider all implications of immortality – from the longer lives already beginning to influence our social and economic dynamics, to the future impact of cryonics. I suspected Lyle's ultimate goal would be to control the technology and be as godlike as possible in doling it out, and I wanted to make sure there were heavy regulations and safeguards built in long before the first people were unfrozen.

The first success was with the Genetics and Cloning Board. Congress was impressed with our efforts, and they agreed that our scope should be expanded to consider the emerging immortality-related technologies including the extensions of life from AIS, artificial bodies, and cryonics. Lyle-2 testified against that expansion, unsuccessfully arguing that "genetics and cloning" had little to do with the issues related to the extension of life. Admittedly a compelling argument, but a slim majority, led by Senator Hillary Rodham-2, gave us till 2074 to draw up some suggested guidelines at which point a more permanent extension would be considered. In a way it was typical of government bureaucracy, keeping investigative committees around after their initial usefulness had expired by altering their mission objectives. I guess we could have studied bureaucratic immortality as well. But in this particular case, bureaucracy pleased me.

Lyle-2 and his new public relations director, our former board member Terry Fallows, organized a massive letter-writing campaign to Congress, news organizations, bloggers, and related websites. However, even if most people agreed with the logic of their arguments, there was no outpouring of emotion from the general public regarding the issue. The GC Board had developed a fairly positive reputation, and we received the benefit of the doubt when we claimed we could help ease America through a social revolution that nearly all believed would dwarf the upheaval surrounding cloning and genetic enhancements.

I had faith that we would at least do a better job of it than an unregulated Lyle-2, especially with Jack Lewis as the chairman. His fairness, integrity, and effectiveness had garnered him one of the highest approval ratings of anyone in the public eye. He was eager to get going on our latest mission, and I was eager to see him impress everyone yet again.

He kicked off our new agenda with a list of key areas requiring guidelines: Social Security, Medicare, private health insurance, requirements for brain transfers to artificial bodies (an issue that I wouldn't vote on due to my financial stake in the decision), probate issues regarding cryonics, and "lifetime" issues such as life sentences for crimes, lifetime appointments for judges, copyright/public domain laws, etc.

As mentioned, I excused myself from the discussions regarding requirements for having your brain put into artificial bodies. The regulations they came up with were straightforward. You couldn't do it until you were at least eighteen years old unless your physical body was failing, debilitated, or causing chronically intense, untreatable suffering. After eighteen, if you were healthy, you could pay to have the transfer done or get a government-subsidized loan, but these wouldn't be available until at least five years after the first transfer in order to evaluate potential risks and side effects. If you needed the transfer for immediate physical reasons, health insurance companies would be required to pay for the transfer after the fifth anniversary of "patient zero."

Estimates as to how long a person could expect to live following the transplant varied among our doctors. Barring a disastrous accident, it was expected that current AIS could keep most brains functioning fully for a minimum of 120 years, and realistically 160 years or more with our continuing advances. We split the difference and estimated that the average lifespan of those willing to transfer their brains into artificial bodies would be 140.

In 2073, only twenty percent of the population thought they would be willing to go through brain transfers to continue living, but there were many misconceptions surrounding their reluctance. Most people thought we would be putting their brains inside robotic shells. The bodies were actually designed to look, feel, and in some cases work similar to the original body, but without its associated weaknesses. The blood, muscles, tissue, and bones were synthetic, but functioned much the same way to the point where, theoretically, your conscious mind would only notice minor differences. You could increase your muscle mass by working out or cheat and have the muscle mass added when creating your body or injected artificially later on. You could still taste and eat food (and, yes, dispose of it in the same old-fashioned manner if you so chose, though there were other disposal options). But you wouldn't necessarily need much food as the skin converted light to energy and the body was far more efficient, able to exist and keep your brain functioning on far less power and fewer nutrients.

All your five senses would work the same, although your eyes would be sharper and you could enhance your sense of smell, touch, and even modify your taste buds so that you craved Brussels sprouts. Your teeth had self-cleaners and would last centuries. You would never gain weight unless you wanted to. There would be no baldness, but your hair could continue to grow as it used to (but only in places you wanted it to grow). You could have a pumping heart for nostalgic purposes, but it wasn't necessary as the synthetic blood was self-propelled. The same was true for lungs and breathing; an unnecessary function as oxygen was inhaled throughout your body, but one that could still be performed for the experience.

And yes, you could still have sex. Men would still create sperm in natural testes transferred from their original body, and women could still get pregnant using eggs transferred from their original body. But the birth process would be completely painless. Naturally, men could be made to have a womb and mammary glands as well – not just transsexuals who would truly be able to have a female body, but straight males as well. They would simply have to undergo a remarkably simple cesarean delivery. Finally, the body wouldn't appear to age unless you requested it.

When details such as those were explained, more than forty percent of the population indicated they would go through a brain transfer before choosing cryonic freezing or death. The number was likely to increase as such transfers became commonplace in society. That meant more than half the current population could expect to live 140 years, double the life expectancy when my clone-father was born.

There was, clearly, much to contemplate and debate as we prepared for the impending social revolution. In the fall of 2073, Jack and his family came up to our cabin in the redwoods to go over these and some of the other big issues before we tackled them in committee.

Table of Contents

53

It wasn't all debate and contemplation. Jack wanted to show his family the redwoods that he hadn't seen since we first reunited as teenagers. He also wanted to discuss his latest book that would eventually be called Me, Myself, and My Clone.

"Welcome back," I said, giving him a hug on the porch, and then moving on to greet his wife Joy and their twins, our former ring boy and flower girl, now sixteen-year-olds Edmund and Lucy.

"How are you doing?" Jack asked Evelyn as they embraced.

"I feel fantastic," she said. And she looked fantastic. We had programmed her AIS to keep her hair healthy and black and maintain her youthful skin. At first Evelyn had chosen to let the aging process show, keeping her motivated to appreciate the heightened value of each day. But she soon backtracked, saying that Cain might find it upsetting to see his mother age so quickly. And maybe she did it for me as well. She didn't want me to feel guilty about what was happening, or to be constantly reminded of the fading window of time we had to develop the technology needed to save her. Biologically speaking, Evelyn was already a seventy-year-old woman.

"Can I take Ed and Lucy to see the trees?" Cain asked.

"After everything's in the house," Evelyn said, leading to a three-way dash to unload the car. "And remember to grab some water!"

"Yes, Mom!"

Evelyn and I took Jack and Joy out for a hike not too long after the kids left. Jack grew excited, reminiscing about his last time up there and clearly enjoying sharing the redwoods with Joy who had never seen them.

"Isn't it the most beautiful place in the world?"

"They're unbelievable," Joy said as she felt the soft bark of one.

"You guys can use the cabin up here anytime," Evelyn offered.

"Absolutely!" I agreed. "I bet it'd make for a nice atmosphere as you finish up your book."

Evelyn stopped at a large rock and sat down. She got winded easier than she used to. "So what's this one about?"

"An assignment from second grade. My attempt to walk in the shoes of a clone." Jack said, sitting down next to her. "Or several clones. Including many in your family."

I laughed. "Great. A tell-all book. I think we're in trouble."

Jack shook his head. "Nothing too private. And don't worry, there won't be anything in there you don't want. I'll have you both proof it before I send it to anyone."

"What is in it?" I asked.

He leaned back against the rock. "It's a mixture of a lot of things. But I think the most important ones are the case studies, looking at how various clones and clone-parents have dealt with their relationships. What's worked well and what hasn't. Trying to let current cloners and future cloners know what issues they may have to deal with, and hopefully some effective suggestions for dealing with them."

"Who's all in there?" asked Evelyn.

"Well, there's Cooper Jones-2, giving a sad example of what can happen when someone is overburdened by the life of a successful c-parent, and with some thoughts on how to help the c-child. And there's a chapter on Jason Rendell, the boy suffering from gigantism who killed himself."

I nodded and studied my beer bottle. Even in 2073 there were still occasional serious medical problems with clone births. Only about one in six hundred, but more than natural births. I thought about the tradeoffs I'd made at Ingeneuity, shifting much of the funds from such efforts to focus more on our efforts to merge humans with artificial bodies. There were many good arguments for the move. We would be able to help far more people than were currently suffering from new birth defects. But I wondered how I would make that argument to Jason.

"But most of the case studies revolve around you guys. You," he said to me, "your c-father, and of course your mom. But also Lyle, Lily, and Cain."

Cain was on the other end of the spectrum from Cooper Jones-2. We never called him Cain-2, but he is listed as so on his birth certificate despite the fact that Cain-1 was never actually born. As Jack would discuss from his interviews with our son, Cain-2 had no model to live up to or distinguish himself from, yet he was still born with the knowledge that he was a copy of an original – an original who'd been killed in his mother's womb. The circumstances left him wondering if he was as good a person as his c-father would have been.

"So what's your conclusion about my husband?" my wife asked, grinning at me.

Jack rolled his eyes. "Well, that'd be tough to sum up."

"Come on, out with it," I said, daring him with my eyes.

He studied me for moment. "Let's just say you've got a lot of c-issues," he started, and I nodded in agreement. "At times, fighting your genetic past has consumed your future. But being the first, and with all the terrible things you've had to deal with, I think your mom would be really proud."

I wondered if she would. I think she would expect much more. "How will it end?" I asked. "Will my future be consumed?"

Jack shook his head. "Don't let it."

"You won't," Evelyn said to me.

Jack smiled at her. "Evelyn's in it too."

She sat up. "What? How's that?"

"Well," Jack started, "I wondered how the best friend of the first clone, who became his wife, would see her relationship with her clone-child."

Evelyn gave Jack the evil eye. "That's why you read my letters."

"What's this?" I asked. "You gave Jack the letters you wrote to your c-child?"

She looked guilty and smiled.

"You don't even let me read those!"

Evelyn shrugged. "Hey, when the head of the GC Board asks for your c-child letters, you hand 'em over."

Jack would end up using Evelyn's letters as an ideal example, helping foster a symmetry and bond between clone and clone-parent, revealing her loves and dreams and inner thoughts, while urging her clone not to feel any need to share those herself – just to share them as a part of their combined heritage. She wanted the clone line of Evelyn Green to be something that all Evelyn Greens could cherish and feel good about – that together they had all lived as individuals, but as a group could forgive the others' imperfections, atone for past mistakes, and share in their accomplishments.

Me, Myself, and My Clone: A Guide to Living With Yourselves would be published in mid-2074. In addition to the case studies, it included sample letters, scrapbooks, and holovideos. and was sprinkled with proverbs or "clonisms" in a Poor Richards Almanac style. Some of the more popular ones:

To thine old self be true, but to thine new self be even truer.

A clone is never alone.

Sometimes, through absolutely no fault of your own, you will find yourself to be your own worst enemy.

Live like you only live once, even if you live a lot more than that.

It's okay to talk to yourselves, even if non-clones look at you funny.

What your clone doesn't know may hurt you.

Be yourselves.

He sought to promote the idea that although we should feel connected to our past and future clones, foremost we should be individuals who live unique lives, preferably not in direct competition with those of our c-parents. And that if we were embarrassed by the lives of our c-parents, we should not take those sins upon ourselves, but should strive to do good ourselves, and thereby in a sense heal the souls of our c-parents who wanted to live on through us.

The book was dedicated to Jason Rendell and Cooper Jones-2. It was not included in the proposals we were preparing for Congress, but in the years that followed, his book would end up having a huge impact on the lives and the happiness of clones and clone-parents, credited with helping to dramatically reduce suicide rates.

Jack thought my mom would be proud of me. I think now how proud Jack's father would have been of him. As proud as I am.

Table of Contents

54

During our week in Sequoia, we also hashed out a lot of GC stuff with some input from the families. With life expectancies expected to jump dramatically, there were many issues to consider.

For some of the drier issues, like copyrights, we would recommend setting copyrights to 99 years after the work was published, regardless of the life of the creator. For lifetime appointments like judgeships, we decided those should be limited to twenty years. It would take a Constitutional amendment for the Supreme Court to be affected by that, and as of this writing that has been approved by the U.S. Senate and is currently winding its way through the various state legislatures.

Social Security was already in jeopardy, as AIS was accelerating life spans faster than earlier models had predicted. The earliest age to begin receiving benefits had already been raised to 77, and we sought to tie that age to life expectancy. Under our formula, you would get your first check when you had reached ninety percent of expectancy, and that expectancy changed based on whether you were using AIS or had refused artificial immunity. In the future, Social Security would help subsidize your purchase of an artificial body, at which point, assuming your mind was in good condition, you would cease getting Social Security until your 126th birthday.

Medicare and health insurance were fraught with issues. The government was eager for Medicare to pay for people to move to AIS, as their medical bills dropped so precipitously in the long term, and the same would be true for artificial bodies. Private health insurance companies were less enthusiastic. There wasn't much profit in financing someone's purchase of AIS or artificial body, as the client was likely to discontinue their insurance right afterwards. Over the strenuous objections of HMOs and other private health insurers, we recommended that the government help subsidize AIS and artificial bodies for those with financial hardship, noting that in the long run it would save the government far more money than it would cost. Health insurers would have to settle for a dwindling clientele consisting primarily of people who refused the artificial treatments. I clearly had a conflict of interest with those regulations as I'd profit enormously from them, and so excused myself from those votes. Lyle-2 would benefit as well, but he was quick to turn his attack dogs on me, accusing me of using my position on the GC Board for my personal enrichment. Society will have to judge whether we acted in the best interest of the American people.

Then there was the question as to whether insurance should help cover cryonics. Despite Lyle's new company, cryonics was still considered crackpot science by the vast majority of the public, and although it was a possibility in light of improved nano-freezing and anti-freezing techniques combined with AIS, I'd believe it when I saw it. We took a similar approach on the Board, determining that insurance companies should only have to supplement cryonic freezing if it became a reality by virtue of someone being frozen and brought back unharmed. If that achievement was made, then we supported the idea of having private and government insurance paying for cryonic freezing when a patient's condition was hopeless.

Lyle-2 was not keen on having to wait for the first successful unfreezing before insurance companies and government subsidies supported his initiative. Or as he put it, "Cryonics will work in the next few years, and to limit its use to only those rich enough to pay for it out of their own pockets is nothing short of murder and a declaration of war by the GC Board on the most needy in society." I suspected, possibly unfairly, that he only wanted government supplements for his commercial success. After all, he still demanded the power to deny anyone use of the cryonic techniques his company would create and rejected mandatory price breaks for people with lower incomes. As he put it, the idea sounded nice, but it would be debilitative to the growth of the new industry and misguided to sacrifice the free market principles of our land. A strange hypocrisy.

In the end, there was a compromise of sorts. He was promised some sort of subsidizing if he reached the stage where a chimpanzee who knew sign language could be frozen and revived while being able to demonstrate the same signing skills it had before the freezing, and the government demanded his company send an explanation regarding any refusal to cryonically freeze an individual. As it would be too late to freeze someone after the review was complete – the freezing process had to be done almost immediately after death – we demanded that all people who were in the process of applying for storage be frozen upon death. Only after their application rejection and confirmation by the independent review board could anyone be unfrozen and allowed to decay.

We also debated what should happen to murderers in this new age of longevity. Should prisoners have access to life-extending procedures? Would we lock up a twenty-year-old murderer for 120 years or more?

AIS had recently been opened to all incarcerated people not on death row, but these new technologies were going to raise the stakes dramatically. By the time most Americans living today reached 140, technology may allow them to live indefinitely longer – centuries if not countless millennia. Were we willing to incarcerate a person for eternity, or deny them immortality because of a murder they committed in their youth? On the other hand, was the principle really any different than the one behind our millennia-old death penalty? Was there a fundamental difference between taking away an eighty-year life and taking away a virtually immortal life, especially since that's exactly what the murderer had taken from someone else?

As far as Jack was concerned, we were putting ourselves into a position far too close to God's, choosing between eternal life and destruction. Would we, as a society, be a merciful God or a vindictive one? And as fallible humans, what if we made yet another mistake, sentencing yet another innocent person to death? To further complicate the issue, was a murder victim truly murdered if we could cryonically freeze them and possibly bring them back at some future date?

There were few issues that left the GC Board truly torn, but this was one of them. Most members felt strongly one way or the other, and some, like me, were deeply troubled by both alternatives. In the end we agreed that if a murder victim was in cryonic freeze and was later successfully rejuvenated, the murder conviction would be turned into a felony battery conviction with the revised sentence to be served after the victim's rejuvenation. Regarding all future death sentences, they would need to be confirmed by two separate teams of investigators who must establish guilt not only beyond a reasonable doubt, but also beyond any logical doubt, before the person could be put to death. And a death sentence would preclude life-saving AIS and artificial bodies until further review. Those facing life sentences would have access to both technologies, and each life sentence would be equal to 99 years of incarceration.

It was a divided issue at the cabin as well.

"Lyle killed my mother," I said. "If we're successful, she could have ended up having a life of at least 140 years, if not centuries or longer. If Lyle was still alive, he shouldn't be able to take that away from her and keep his life for centuries or longer."

Jack bowed his head, staring into the flames of the cabin's hearth. "My parents and fifty others lost their lives when the church was bombed. But it was done by a troubled, hateful, and confused man who, if he hadn't died in the blast, may have been rehabilitated with education, counseling, and medical advances. He could have repented his crime and added good to society. Killing him eliminates that possibility. And the fifty he killed are still dead, either way."

"And what about Lyle-2?" asked Cain, standing up at the side of his mother. "If Mom dies."

"Cain," I whispered, trying to reprimand, shocked he would say such a thing, searching Evelyn's face for her reaction.

Cain froze, then turned to his mom. "I..."

Evelyn smiled gently and shook her head. "It's okay. It's a fair question."

"We won't let that happen," I said.

Cain turned on me. "You're behind on everything."

"I don't want to talk about that," said Evelyn.

Cain knelt down beside his mother. "But what about Lyle?"

She leaned in closer to him. "Listen to me. I don't want you going after anyone out of revenge."

"But the government," he said. "Shouldn't they kill him?"

"We don't even know for sure that Lyle did this," Jack said.

Cain grew frustrated. "But if he did!"

Evelyn shook her head. "No," she said. "If they have to put him to death to save others, but not just to avenge me." She turned to me, knowing I didn't agree with her. "He's a hurt and lonely man who trusted his c-father too much. But there's some good in him. As long as he lives, there's a chance he'll change."

***

She didn't tell us that she'd confronted him just weeks before at his office.

"Did you do this to me?"

Lyle glanced quickly at Evelyn, then turned his eyes back to the screen on his desk. "Do what?"

"You know."

He hesitated, then pulled open a desk drawer and removed something flat covered in Christmas wrapping paper. He carefully folded back the paper so she could see the calendar she'd made for him.

"So you didn't do it?"

He paused, then shook his head.

"If I die," she asked, "will you bring me back?"

Lyle didn't answer, keeping his eyes on his screen.

"Lyle?"

He finally met her gaze. "I'm sorry."

Table of Contents

55

In March of 2074, a couple weeks before the GC Board was scheduled to submit our findings and recommendations to Congress, we prepared to meet at the Hay-Adams Hotel in Washington, D.C. to iron out the written material and decide who would do the speaking on each subject.

A few floors above the meeting room, a man named Larry Pritchett finished putting on a security uniform. He sat down in a hotel chair next to an end table where he had placed framed photos of Gabrielle Burns and Derrick Vaughn, the man who bombed our Unitarian church. In front of him was his holo-cam. He began recording.

"Dear Susan," he began, reading from a piece of paper, only seldom looking up from it as he read on. "We never know where God's work is going to lead us. As the New Testament shows, sometimes we have to go to prison. Sometimes we have to die. I don't know when I'll see you and little Lori again. It could be through the bars of prison, or at the gates of heaven. But I need to do this. For you and Lori and myself, and for everyone. A great ally in the fight against cloning has given me the sword of God. I must be prepared to wield it, as all true Christians and true followers of Gabrielle know God demands of us." He raised up a hand-sized computer with a red button on it. "With this sword, I will right this wrong, or die trying. Which is what I think you'd want me to do. Please tell Lori I love her. And I love you, too."

His jittery finger stopped the recorder about the same time we were beginning to arrive at the conference room. We weren't going to be springing any surprises on Congress, as we'd already privately and publicly disclosed most of our findings and suggestions. The only things left were the formalities.

At a little after ten o'clock in the morning, as the twelve of us worked sorting out the details over bagels and coffee, a man wearing a hotel security uniform walked into the room with a gun in one hand and a navy blue duffle bag in the other.

"Nobody move! Someone stand in front of the door," he ordered. We were so startled and confused, we just sat there looking at him. "You!" he said to Shannon Smith who was already standing, passing out some papers. "You stand in front of the door, but don't leave or I'll kill everyone. I'm prepared to die."

Shannon looked at Jack, he nodded, and she went to the door. The rest of us stayed as still as possible. The guy was sweating profusely and somehow seemed far more nervous than we were. We were still in shock. He set the duffel bag on the conference table next to the pink box of bagels and unzipped it, using his non-gun hand to remove a palm-sized electronic device.

"You see this?" he asked, holding it up. The power button was blinking red. "It's a detonator. I press this button, and you all die."

Jack sat at the head of the table. I sat to his right, opposite the intruder, looking at Jack in wonder. His face was unbelievably calm. The only tell to his nervousness was his thumb lightly but rapidly tapping the table.

"What do you want us to do, Mister..." he asked levelly, trying to ease the bomber down and collect some vital information.

"I want you to change that thing you're doing – that report," he said, pointing the detonator at the stacks of paper we had in front of us.

"We can do that," Jack said. "What part, exactly?"

"All the parts! All that stuff about immortality. Don't you see what that'll do? You'll keep us from joining God forever!"

Jack nodded. "It's okay, sir. I'm on your side. My name's Reverend Jack Lewis. I'm a minister, and I'm certainly not going to do anything that will keep me from being with God."

"Good, then you do it."

"What do you want me to say, exactly?"

"Just make it illegal!" he shouted.

Two possibilities occurred to me. One was that this guy happened to have the coolness and expertise to acquire a security uniform and make his own bomb, but lacked the mettle to hold himself together and sound halfway intelligent while making his demands. The other was that he was simply a Gabrielle Burns-like fanatic given a bomb and uniform by someone using him as a pawn. As Lyle had arranged the bombing of our church and murdered my mother. Would Lyle-2 use a similar ruse to kill the entire GC Board? If that were the case, then he wouldn't leave control of the bomb in this man's hands. Lyle-2 would detonate it himself, and we would all die – including his witless pawn.

Jack explained that he wanted to be sure there were no mistakes, and asked the bomber to make his desired changes with a pen. I scribbled a note on the back of a receipt under the table and slipped it to Jack, who discreetly read it then folded it away in his hand.

"Who gave you the bomb?" Jack asked.

The man kept flipping through the sheaf of papers. "God."

"A man gave you that bomb, a false witness, and he's going to detonate it remotely any second now, whether we do what you want or not," Jack bluffed. I wasn't as sure it was a bluff.

The revelation worried both the other board members and Larry Pritchett. He studied his detonator.

"That's a lie," he concluded.

"Put the bomb down now, and we'll all leave the room together. You'll still have your gun, and we'll proceed with the good changes you're making."

The man seemed torn for a moment, and then gathered himself. "No way, they'll shoot me if I do that."

"No one's going to..." Jack started, and then looked quickly to his left like something had happened. The board member standing on the far left dropped below the table. Larry hesitated at the sudden, confusing changes, finally aiming and firing a couple times into the wall near the movement. The whole distraction allowed enough time for board member George Gomez to dive at the bomber's gun hand.

While they struggled, Jack ordered everyone else to run out the door. Three shots were fired, but they were all into the ceiling. By the time the third shot had gone off, most everyone else was out or nearing the exit. Jack and I went to George's aid. Jack tore the gun away, but the bomber was able to hold the detonator out of reach.

"I'll kill..." he began, but stopped. The detonator made some playful tones and the red light stopped blinking. Larry stared at it with a puzzled expression. Had he pressed the button accidentally, or had my theory been correct?

As I wondered about that, Jack was already pushing me under the conference table.

Table of Contents

56

"Hey there," called a voice.

The light hurt my eyes. I squinted as my pupils adjusted. Above me was a face I recognized, but not whom I expected to see. It was Dr. Nikki Menae from Barebots. Her presence unnerved me.

"Nikki. Where..." but I stopped. I saw some familiar furnishings. We were in an operating room at Ingeneuity. Inner alarms rose louder. I gripped the edges of my hospital bed.

"We just transferred you to Ingeneuity. The hospital's kept you in a coma for a couple weeks. You had some pretty serious head trauma, but you're better now. The danger's past."

"Then what am I doing here? What are you doing here?"

She pulled one of my hands from the bed and held it in hers, staring at it for a while. "Adam, you've suffered a lot of injuries. The swelling on your brain is gone, and your kidneys and liver have been re-grown. We've repaired a lot of damage to your spinal column. But your legs were directly exposed to the explosion."

My heart lurched and I looked down my prone body. I was covered in a sheet, but there was no outline of my legs. My head swam. I knew then it was a dream – another nightmare.

"I'm sorry," she said. "The AIS and artificial blood are the only things that stopped you from bleeding to death."

There was only one way to wake myself. I grabbed the sheet with my free hand and pulled it away. And there were my stumps. Both my legs cut off at the upper thigh. I reached down to prove it was a dream, but I could feel the smooth, hairless skin that was wrapped around the end of my severed limbs.

I shut my eyes and craned my neck back against the pillow, trying to get as far from my legs as possible. "Oh, God."

"I know, Adam. We're giving you new legs today," Nikki said.

I didn't respond.

"You know Bobby," she said. "He's going to head the operation."

He had been the head robotic surgeon at Barebots for two years, affectionately known as Bobby the Barebot. An artificial person created specifically for delicate surgery.

"Hello, Adam," I heard him say. They had constructed his voice box to sound like the killer computer HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey. It wasn't comforting.

"Hello, Bobby," I answered, my eyes still shut tight. "How are you doing?"

"A hell of a lot better than you."

I laughed. In my mind I could see Alan Alda standing next to Nikki. They had made Bobby look like the famous surgeon Hawkeye Pierce from the old television show M*A*S*H. Bobby had downloaded all the shows and tried to be as much a comedian as Hawkeye. "I see your bedside manner is improving."

"You'll be improving, too," he said. "I'm going to give you a couple legs just like mine."

I put my hand over my closed eyes, trying to remember what my real legs had looked like. I couldn't remember.

"I'm kidding, Adam." He must have thought I was upset about getting his legs. "We've finished molding some legs that resembled your previous ones. Though we've taken the liberty of adding a little more muscle tone."

I just wanted the horror to go away. "Okay. Hurry. Do it."

***

They did look the same. They even felt similar to the touch. The artificial nerves were connected to my central nervous system, and I was able to bend my knees and move my feet with no noticeable difference. But the artificial nerves had their deficiencies. I could only sense the exact position of my legs by touch and sight. It almost felt like they were asleep, but without the tingling.

I was wobbly at first. Much of that was mental. In my mind, I was walking on stilts. But my mind soon became used to the new nerve impulses. Within three weeks I'd left the rehab at Ingeneuity and had graduated to using Evelyn or Cain as an occasional crutch.

"How do they feel?" Evelyn asked my first day home, placing her hand on one of my new legs.

"They're starting to feel very natural," I said.

She nodded, but frowned.

I rubbed her back. "And they never get sore or tired."

She smiled. "You know, that's some pick-up line."

"So if you ever want to give 'em a ride..." I said hopefully.

She squeezed one of my new knees. "Let's see what they're made of."

As she got up to close the door, I again examined my legs and where they met my upper thighs. You couldn't see the border, but I knew where it was. My fingers traced the skin and hair on both my real and artificial body. If a clone is less than human, was I now even more inhuman? I felt so, until Evelyn returned.

She pushed me down so I was lying on the bed, plucked off my shoes and socks, and began to slide her tongue around my big toe.

"Feeling anything?"

I was indeed. I was feeling happy to be alive, and grateful to be with a woman who could so easily turn artificial legs and feet and toes into something to get excited about.

The next morning I began going through the e-mails and the few handwritten cards that had been sent. One of them didn't have a return address on it, but the writing looked familiar. I opened it to find a card from Lily-3.

Dear Adam,

I'm glad you're okay. I was worried when I heard the news. Don't write me back. Lyle would see it. I wish you could help me.

Yours, Lily

A pang of old guilt and familiar emotions made me ashamed. Wanting to help, and wanting it to go away. Emotions I'd felt when Lily-2 first told me of Lyle's abuse, and long ago as I stood still in the waves as Gabrielle attacked, and as I'd run away while my mom was murdered. Or perhaps as far back as my c-father pausing at the hospital door before walking to the side of his bald, dying mother.

I read the short note over and over. I could see young Lily-3's pleading eyes as Lyle-2 had driven her away.

A way to help Lily-3 may have been clear, yet ignorance or fear prevented me from seeing it. But I knew Jack would have some insight, and a visit was long overdue. So I took my artificial legs on their first big test. It was a two-mile hike to Jack's house. The day was gorgeous with spring in the air and in my steps. And the Padres were off to a great start, having just swept the Dodgers. On the way I stopped at a convenience store and got a six-pack of Sam Adams. Within an hour I rang his doorbell.

Joy opened the door. She looked at the beer in my hand.

"Jack around?" I asked.

She shook her head with a half-angry, half-pitying frown. "Adam, you know already. You can't find him here."

I shrugged impatiently. "He's at the church?"

"Adam," she said, closing her eyes and pressing her fingers to her forehead like she had a headache. "You know."

I felt dizzy as flashes of memories flooded my mind. I turned around and started walking again, my legs carrying me to where I'd long ago been told Jack had been laid. I spent the rest of the afternoon at the cemetery thinking about years past, drinking the Sam Adams for both of us, thanking him for his friendship, apologizing for all that his love had cost him, my back resting against the side of his hard, warm headstone.

I've spent so many days there in the years since. Confessing that I don't always know how to be a husband to Evelyn or a father to Cain. Asking about Lyle and Lily. I try to imagine Jack's easy companionship and sound advice. Or I reminisce about our days at Hill Creek Academy when Jack, Evelyn, and I all met and still could have done anything with our lives.

Table of Contents

57

As the year 2076 rolled around, I felt the pressure building each day. Especially when Evelyn let herself visually age for her role as Miss Daisy in Driving Miss Daisy at the La Jolla Playhouse. It was only for six weeks in the spring, but it was terrifying to see her hair whiten and skin wrinkle and become marred with age spots, her rheumy eyes dancing with glee when they still should have been the sharp, dark eyes of her early forties, the feeling on closing night that those could be her last moments on a stage.

Not that we weren't making some progress, especially with Bobby the Barebot taking charge. He and his host of Barebots worked round the clock in their attempts to crunch the data, create virtual experiments, and save Evelyn's life.

Dr. Lisa Lopez assured me that, barring something unexpected, Evelyn should have a few more years. But I lost confidence in that assurance each time I looked at my wife. I felt impotent to save her. Still I tried to keep things hopeful around her. For a while I gave her weekly updates on progress we were making or snags we were hitting. We had replaced skulls, eyes, ears, noses, and every piece of the body besides the brain and some glands. But getting a brain to control all the nuanced features of a fully artificial body, and making sure the brain remained in perfect equilibrium there, was a Gordian knot of biological, chemical, and anatomical processes. Our AI simulations were getting closer and closer to success, but they also kept finding more unforeseen variables. Despite great AI advances, the human body didn't always work like its simulated counterpart.

In early 2076, when I told her about our plans to put a chimpanzee brain into a modified artificial body, Evelyn asked me to stop giving her updates. She wanted to focus on living, and if it turned out we were able to prolong her life, so much the better.

But in June of 2076, just prior to the close of Driving Miss Daisy, we did convince her to go see the prototype of the new body we had created for her. The staff had removed it from its sealed environment and laid it on an operating table for Evelyn's viewing.

She inhaled as she reached out to touch the face. The same face she'd seen in the mirror over the past twenty years. The same face I'd looked into when I made my wedding vows, but so different than the aged one she'd seen during the past six weeks.

She traced the curves of the chin and cheeks with her spotted and gnarled fingertips.

"It feels just like me," she said, taking my hand in hers and moving my fingers along her artificial neck and face. "Don't you think?"

The curves of her face were the same. The skin had the soft, smooth feel of young human skin. But it felt different. Nothing that I could articulate, and nothing that I would even try to describe at that moment. Nothing that Evelyn would want to hear.

"Yes, it's amazing," I confirmed. "Feels maybe even a little better than you."

She hit me in the kidney area with her free hand, but smiled. Until she moved my hand to her new body's forehead. There she stopped.

"You'll be able to add the scar?"

I moved my other arm around her waist, pulling her closer to me, and kissed her near her scar. "Of course."

Evelyn nodded. Then she looked at the sheet covering the rest of the body. She asked Cain to leave the room so she could continue her examination.

"God, you're hot," I said.

She smiled. "You think so?"

I nodded as I tried to move our hands down to touch the more intimate areas of her new body.

"Just who do you think you are?" she asked, laughing, which she hadn't done much of lately.

Later that night we took Cain over to visit Grandma Hannah, and we went home where I made love to her ninety-year-old body. If we had met a hundred years before and grown old together as nature had once demanded, I would have grown old feeling young with her. She was still hot.
As she slept in my arms later that night, I wondered whether making love to Evelyn in her artificial body would have the same passion and intimacy. I imagined that I'd always miss her real body as I still missed my real legs. But I think I'd still be crazy for Evelyn if she looked like the cyclopean Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still.

***

Speaking of classic sci-fi, a few days later the three of us began a cross-country train trip, stopping for a few days in several cities along the way, until arriving in New York in late June. Just in time for the Broadway premiere of Philip K. Dick's Blade Runner.

We had several connections to the show, including Ingeneuity being its co-producer. The other producer was Barebots. It was an important show for them, as it dealt with whether manmade humans were truly human, or simply sub-human "skin-jobs" as some called them in the movie.

It was also the first Broadway play that featured a skin-job playwright. It was penned by a Barebot named Sophocleats, which translated into "wise cleats." He'd been originally named Albot Einstein and designed to be a cosmological research android, but Albot discovered a love of books. After he downloaded Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and the film Blade Runner based on that book, he sensed a new destiny. Within seconds he had downloaded all of Dick's novels and as much biographical information as he could find. Then he changed his name and began writing the script for a stage version that would combine elements of the book and film, and that he hoped would reflect both Philip's vision and his own.

The date of the premiere was set for July 4, 2076, our nation's tricentennial. Both clones and Barebots descended en masse, seeing this as the flashpoint of a movement to give artificial people the same freedoms given to humans in America three hundred years before.

The cast was filled with clones. Harrison Ford-2 reprised his clone-father's role of skin-job hunter Rick Deckard, while Carrie Fisher-2 joined him in the role of Deckard's love interest Rachael. Leonard Nimoy-2 took the role of Eldon Tyrell, the powerful creator of the skin-jobs/replicants. Jeff Goldblum-2 earned a Tony nomination for his performance as Roy Batty, the leader of the renegade replicants. Michael J. Fox-2, whose clone-father had starred in the Back to the Future films plus Mars Attacks and Clone High, took the role of replicant Leon Kowalski, and Dina Meyer-2, whose clone-mother had starred in Starship Troopers and Johnny Mnemonic, took the role of the opera-singing replicant Luba Luft from the book, having Barebots replace her vocal cords with synthetic ones just for the role. A teenage Parker Posey-2 played an added android character that was created to look like a young girl, while young Christina Ricci-2 debuted as Willow Mercer, a religious figure inspiring empathy, based on the character Wilbur Mercer from the book. Deckard's pet artificial sheep, named Groucho in the book, was played by a hologram nicknamed Dolly.

It was also the debut of Broadway's first skin-job actress. Barebots had created Cathode Hepburn specifically for the arts, and three years later she had already developed a cult following. One that skyrocketed with her performance as the sexy replicant Pris, girlfriend to leader Roy Batty, at the same time becoming the real-life girlfriend to Jeff Goldblum-2.

Sophocleats was playing to an audience that had a profound interest in the message, but his play would speak to others as well. It earned enormous profits for its producers. As of this writing, the show is still going. So if you haven't seen it...

We all went to Sardi's for the after party. The banner hung above the entrance read, "Replicants, Andys, and Skin-Jobs Welcome!" Sardi's had a caricature of Sophocleats framed and ready to be hung on the wall.

Nikki Menae and Director James Cameron-2 introduced us to most of the stars as well as the clone-children of other sci-fi stars including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Angelina Jolie, and Daryl Hannah who was too young to reprise her clone-mother's role in the film. Musical entertainment was provided by Sting-2 whose clone-father was in Dune and rapper Will Smith-2 (Men in Black and I, Robot). Jack Black-2 (Mars Attacks, Clone High) followed them up with some Tenacious D.

We were eventually seated next to Jeff Goldblum-2 and Cathode Hepburn, by Cathode's request as it turned out.

"I saw you as Miss Daisy," Cathy said as she shook Evelyn's hand, "and I wanted to tell you how much I loved it."

"You were wonderful," Evelyn reciprocated. "I cried when Harrison Ford killed you."

"Thank you. But I have it a lot easier than you," Cathode confided. "I can cheat."

Evelyn laughed. "Oh, really? Care to share your secret?"

Cathy leaned in close. "I put myself into a virtual reality where I truly believe I am the character, and the things happening on the stage are real. After the scene, another part of my brain lets me know that my virtual world was not the real one, and I leave the stage."

Evelyn paused, trying to imagine what that would be like. "So when you're killed onstage, you truly believe he's killed you?"

Cathy nodded. "In my mind, I die every night. In this world, there is a constant backup of my mind secured at Barebots, so I don't fear death. In that world, death is final."

"What's it like when you think you're dying?"

Cathode's eyes became unfocused. She rubbed a few strands of her red hair between her fingers. "Horrible."

Evelyn paled. The conversation ended for a while.

Cathy had to restart it. "So," she said, nudging Evelyn's elbow as she took a bite of a fancy chicken concoction, "I hear you'll be a fellow skin-job soon."

Evelyn nodded as she finished chewing. "I saw my new body just a couple weeks ago."

"Do you think you'll still be who you are?" Cathy asked.

She smiled at Cathy's bluntness, which was typical of Barebots. She answered with equal bluntness. "No."

Cathode laughed, leaning against Jeff Goldblum as she did.

"She finds honesty among humans to be bizarrely funny," Jeff-2 explained.

"And refreshing," she added, using her other elbow to poke her boyfriend in the ribs.

"She also thinks we're equally resistant to physical pain," Jeff said, catching his breath.

She patted her boyfriend on the shoulder a couple times, then inspected Evelyn. "So are you looking forward to the operation, or are you scared?"

"And she also thinks we love to have our deepest feelings probed by total strangers," Goldblum piped in.

Evelyn smiled at Jeff, and then used her fork to move her food around on her plate. "I don't know."

Cathode studied her. She was capable of calculating voice, body temperature, and facial muscle fluctuations to determine human emotions. Some tears welled in her eyes, and she put her arm around Evelyn.

"It's all going to go fine. You'll see. And then there'll be no pain. No physical worries. And you'll feel an energy and strength you've never felt before." She kissed Evelyn's cheek. "And we'll be like half-sisters!"

Evelyn grinned at Cathy's optimism. "Thanks, Sis."

Cathode looked to me. "Is the testing going well?"

I paused. "Mostly."

"How are things going with the artificial rights movement?" Evelyn asked. She had begun to shift conversations away from our progress, or lack of progress, more and more quickly.

"Oh, it's not really going anywhere right now," Cathy said, slouching over a little and gazing at her drink.

Jeff held her hand. "Unlike Barebots, it takes humans time to figure out the simplest things. Barebots are far more worthy of self-determination than we are."

She smiled and leaned into him. "You're worthy, honey. Show them that trick you can do that no Barebot can."

Like his c-father, Jeff Goldblum-2 had strong voluntary control of his ear muscles. He wiggled his right ear and then his left to flaunt their existence.

Cathy lovingly ran her fingers through his hair. "Such a talented human."

Evelyn turned to me. "You think I'll be able to wiggle my artificial ears like that?"

I shrugged. "It's a pretty expensive upgrade."

As Cathy and Evelyn began discussing a number of other possible upgrades, I was grateful to watch my wife chatting about her illness with ease. And I was determined to make sure she would be able to enjoy any upgrade she could dream up.

Table of Contents

58

If we were struggling to make our miracles come to pass, Lyle-2 and Rejuve were making disturbingly fast progress on both prongs of their attack.

Despite my best efforts to subvert his rival artificial immune system product, by 2076 his AIS was already number two in the industry, second only to ours, and they were promising to be number one soon with some impressive innovations that, in comparison, would make using our AIS akin to using leeches.

I found that analogy offensive, but trusted colleague Stan Kushman assured me it might be true. By using our work as a stepping stool, a move that led to several lawsuits, he was preparing to leapfrog us.

"Why won't we be able to keep up with them?" I asked Stan. I was willing to make a deal with the devil to do it.

"Their scientists have been making some amazing breakthroughs, and that's likely to continue," he answered calmly but sympathetically.

"But why aren't we making those breakthroughs?"

"Well, he's been far more aggressive and successful in recruiting the intelligence-enhanced doctors from the medical schools and from other research facilities around the world. You prefer to work mostly with non-enhanced brains."

That was true, but I didn't want to accept that we couldn't compete because we weren't using upgraded humans. I desperately wanted to believe that non-enhanced brains could be as successful as their enhanced counterparts. Kind of like John Henry and the steam hammer, though I was hoping for a happier ending. Nor did I want to be reminded of my own prejudice. Deep down I knew it was wrong to blame people for their enhancements. I of all people should be sensitive to such prejudices. I had let my experience with intelligence-enhanced Lyle-2 poison me against a group of people, and he had used my bigotry to overtake me.

"What else?" I snapped.

"He's also invested very heavily in artificial intelligence. He has more high-end AI 'employees' than all but five privately owned companies in America, and he seems to be moving more and more in their direction. They can crunch the data, dream up experiments, and draw conclusions better every year, and they can go 24/7. Our research shows he's paying Advanced AI extra for them to look and talk like normal humans, but without emotions, egos, and ambitions."

I nodded. "And, unlike people, he can know he has complete control over them. Helps him feel more like a god."

"So what do you want to do?" Stan asked.

Throw something across the room. Kill Lyle. "Let him have the top spot," I relented, not bothering to ask the devil if he might be interested in a new soul. Or whatever I might have that was comparable. "It's too late for us to compete. Even if we started going after the enhanced, they'd still be able to recruit the top students because they're the company with momentum. We'll invest in some more AI and keep our hand in AIS so people still have alternatives, but our leadership is over. We'll focus even more on artificial bodies. That's our future anyway. And if we need to begin hiring more enhanced engineers to make sure we never get swept away in that field, let's look into it.

"No – let's just do it now."

"Got it, Copy Boy," he said, nodding. "Feel like a total failure?"

I grimaced and laughed. It was good to have friends who made you smile no matter the humiliation.

And so we chalked one up to Lyle. I saw him about three or four times a year at industry conventions, but we never talked. If we made eye contact, he would only frown and go on with his business.

In fact, all the news coming out of his business was worthy of admiration. In 2075 they prepared a new freezing-unfreezing technique on mice that brought them back to life while still being able to navigate mazes they had learned before they were frozen. By the summer of 2076 they performed a similar experiment on a chimpanzee nicknamed Lazarus who could sign more than two hundred words. Following his death and rejuvenation, he could still repeat the signs, and trainers said his personality appeared unchanged. These, of course, were the experiments they made public. There were thousands of failures behind those successes.

Rejuve began gathering government funding, and hundreds of thousands of people started filling out contracts intending that their bodies be cryonically frozen if viable (i.e., if they died in a way that allowed their brain to be preserved promptly after death).

In September 2076, the first human was frozen using Rejuve's patented technique, and after that they were freezing dying people every day. The demand was so high that they asked the government to fund some new storehouses for the bodies, and the government didn't dare say no. Unlike the advent of cloning, cryonics did not have a clear majority opposed to the concept. There were many evangelicals who found the idea repugnant, who felt that bringing humans back from the dead was the province of God, not mortals. But the primary reason it had been derided was because it was considered too farfetched to be real. Now that it was only near-fetched, people were lining up for a chance to play hide-and-seek from the Reaper.

And, of course, everyone was going nuts to see what would happen when the first human was brought back from the dead. Myself included. I had looked into the eyes of my dead mother. Were her eyes seeing something mine couldn't?

What followed were months of breathless waiting. Gossip was rampant that they were going to thaw out legendary baseball great Ted Williams and his son Roy, but Rejuve tried to make clear that they could currently only bring back people who had been frozen using their new methods, and the likelihood that people frozen using the cruder methods could be resuscitated with their brains still perfectly intact was doubtful. As for those frozen since 2076, there was no reason to rejuvenate any of the "hibernating" humans until there was a cure for what killed them, so Rejuve waited until a new cure was found for someone who had recently died, or until their brain could be transplanted into an artificial body that our company was rushing to perfect. Ironically, much of the unfreezing side of their business would, in the near future, depend on our success.

The wait wasn't long. The chance came that winter. The date for attempted rejuvenation was set for Christmas Eve of 2076, and if that was successful the patient would be brought back to full consciousness on New Year's Day.

Despite our family's history with Lyle, we were as captivated as everyone else. Perhaps more so. In December, Cain was a junior in high school while concurrently wrapping up his first semester of college courses at UCSD towards a degree in astrophysics.

As his mother's struggle against death grew more desperate, he began to study both religion and science. He often accompanied Evelyn, Hannah, and Martin to temple, read all manner of religious texts, and dove into his study of cosmology with the same consuming fascination that my c-father had for genetics in his youth. Cain was determined to know as much as possible about the nature of our universe and of the multiverse in which countless universes existed together – something whose presence had recently been proven by experiments in string theory and gravitational waves. The math was challenging, especially for someone who hadn't taken a strong interest in academics until his sophomore year in high school, but he finished his first college semester with a respectable 3.2 GPA.

"This is reality!" Cain exclaimed during dinner in mid-December as he studied for one of his finals. "If we want to know whether there's a God, and if we have a soul and what's our place in the universe and in the whole of reality extending to the multiverse and beyond, it has to come from physics because God is being so silent on so many details."

Evelyn and I were his eager students. If God existed and he wasn't going to tell us explicitly why we were created, then we had to use our brains and tools to find out for ourselves. Maybe that's what he had in mind all along, pushing our curiosity to come find him using science, like a father who throws his kid into the deep end to make him learn how to swim. On the other hand, if God didn't exist, then in a sense we were the minds and eyes of the universe, studying itself to find its own identity. Perhaps discovering that, as a universe we were not alone, but a part of the even larger reality of the multiverse, was our first purpose. Our second purpose might be using that knowledge to create an ever-greater reality. A new earth, as the Book of Revelation put it, better than the one before. Some believed we should wait for God to create it. I believed, while we were waiting, we should strive to create as perfect a world as possible.

"So what's the answer, Mr. Astrophysicist?" Evelyn pressed. "Does God exist?"

"Well, there are two main schools of thought on the subject," Cain said, assuming an exaggerated air of scholarly speech as he pointed with a forkful of broccoli.

"Yeah, the schools of 'Yes' and 'No,'" Evelyn finished for him.

"Exactly," he said, leaning over the table to muss up her hair. "But seriously, it's clear that our universe is uniquely adapted for life. Out of all the possible physical laws a universe can have, the chance of one existing that would allow for the likelihood of life is very small. So one possibility is that there's an almost infinite number of universes, and with so many universes it's only natural that a few of them would be specially adapted like ours and allow us to exist. The other possibility is that an intelligence created this universe specifically so that it would eventually develop intelligent life. It could be a human-like intelligence that is millions of years ahead of us technologically and figured out how to manufacture new universes, which is a theoretical possibility for us too in the far future. Or it could be a more spiritual intelligence. The sort we normally associate with God."

"And which theory are you leaning to?" Evelyn asked, only half playing with him.

"I lean toward the idea that the very existence of the multiverse is too amazing to not have been designed by some intelligence. I think there's a reality beyond the multiverse, and that an intelligence there, probably a society, views and contemplates the entire multiverse it's created."

"And the next question," I asked, "is why did they create it?" Did our son know the purpose of our existence? I was more anxious than I realized.

He gave me a confident nod. "Simple. The answer to that is 'forty-two.'"

"Seriously!" Evelyn slapped his shoulder with the back of her hand, evidently doubtful of the speculative Douglas Adams theory.

Cain smiled. "I think we cover that next semester," he answered. "But I'd guess it's partly out of curiosity, and partly to give other things the opportunity to experience life and see what they do with it."

"Will they give us an afterlife?" she asked.

Cain briefly hugged his mom from around the edge of the table. "If it was your multiverse, would you give them an afterlife?"

"Of course," she said.

"Then hopefully God cares as much as you."

She smiled. It was then that I first supposed, rightly or wrongly, that his entire reason for studying cosmology was to give his mom logical hope for an afterlife.

"So any theories as to what's going to happen when Rejuve wakes up Daryl Scott?" I asked.

Cain nodded. "Something unexpected."

And he was right.

Table of Contents

59

Daryl Scott was a nineteen-year-old giant of a man who worked part time on a California chicken farm. He was patient zero of the 2076 "American Hendemic" – the severe flu passed from American chickens to humans after an unnatural viral mutation widely believed to be terrorist-related. Not everyone bought into the story. Oliver Stone-2 and other conspiracy theorists, not to mention a few not-so-paranoid scientists, believed our own government orchestrated it, possibly to assure a rally-around-the-leaders sentiment for the troubled majority party right before elections. Still others thought it might have been developed by Rejuve, Ingeneuity, or one of the other AIS companies as a way to scare the bejesus out of everyone not protected by artificial immune systems.

Daryl hadn't used any form of AIS, but it might not have saved him anyway. More than 246,000 Americans died, including over ten thousand AIS users, as the mutant flu bug proved at times too ferocious and slippery for the artificial immune system to fight until we could study it and update everyone's AIS. Hospitals were overwhelmed. Both Ingeneuity and Rejuve doctors worked together with flu experts to contain, stabilize, and eventually win the battle against the Hendemic.

But the battle took more than a month to win, too late for Daryl. He was autopsied virtually and cryonically frozen even though he had no cryonic contract. The doctors, confused by the resistance and fierceness of the virus, wanted to keep him intact in case they needed more information than the virtual autopsy could reveal.

Both because he was the first victim and because he hadn't specifically requested to be brought back, it was decided that he would be a good candidate for the first attempted rejuvenation. If it didn't work? Well, he hadn't expressed an interest in being brought back to life anyway.

Rejuve showed some guts, allowing a media crew to broadcast live footage of the attempted rejuvenation at six o'clock the night of Christmas Eve. Lyle-2 must have been extremely sure of success. If it worked, it would be one of the greatest marketing schemes ever drawn up. If it failed, it could severely blunt the interest and credibility of cryonics for years.

No dramatic buildup here. As most of you must know, it worked. When the lungs were cleared and the heart was prompted back into beating, the little "beep" on the heart monitor lit up, and people around the world cheered (except for those crossing themselves in horror). The doctors cheered as well, and one of them turned on Elton John's Someone Saved My Life Tonight.

Within an hour, their updated AIS had destroyed the Hendemic virus, and all body functions were at or quickly approaching normal. Thirty minutes later, everything checking out well, they closed their program with Karen Carpenter singing Hugh Martin and Ralph Blane's Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas about reuniting with dear friends. Not to mention it being a nice Christmas carol to let the world know that Rejuve wasn't a bunch of crazed atheists pretending to be God by raising the dead.

They kept Daryl sedated for a week as his brain cells went through an extensive healing process, and they watched to make sure no surprises occurred. On the morning of January 1, 2077, the world tuned in again to see the first man wake after verifiably being dead. And dead for nearly four months, at that. The world was tuning in for a miracle.

This time one of the hipper doctors put on Gloria Gaynor's disco classic I Will Survive for the big moment. That big moment began with Daryl's eyes fluttering. Then he opened them. The world collectively gasped. Was he okay? Had he seen the other side? What did he see? What would he do? What would he say?

What he did was look around the room, clearly puzzled, before fixing his eyes on the stereo speakers. What he said was, "What is that crap?"

So Daryl Scott wasn't exactly Neil Armstrong. In retrospect, maybe Rejuve got a little carried away with their musical programming, and should have simply let the miracle speak for itself.

After the embarrassed head doctor ordered a laughing nurse to turn the music off, the situation sobered up considerably. The doctor explained to Daryl about the flu, how he had died, been cryonically frozen in case they needed more information from his body, and just become the first human to have ever been restored to life from cryonic freeze.

"Fuck," Daryl said, rubbing his face with his right hand. "Well then that explains the reporters."

"Yes," the doctor replied, hoping the video feed was on time delay so the censors could clean it up a bit. They did, and at the time nobody except the people in his room and at the media studios heard the expletive.

"So it's New Year's already?" Daryl asked, still groggy and confused.

"Yes," the doctor answered. "And see here," he stood rigidly and pointed his index finger at a tray of cards surrounded by several bouquets, "we have thousands of holiday cards sent to you from all over the world."

Daryl glanced at the huge pile of cards. "Okay."

The doctor paused several seconds to see if Daryl wanted to say anything else. Nothing else was forthcoming.

"Good," said the doctor. "Now, let's talk about your experience. How did you feel when you woke up just now?"

"Hung over," he responded, shaking his head wearily.

"Interesting," replied the doctor. "And what's the last thing you remember before you woke up?"

Daryl paused for a while, trying to remember. "I got real sick," he said slowly. "Docs said it was probably from the chickens."

"Yes."

"And then I remember all these chickens pecking at me. They were real big and I was small, and they were really hurting me, and I was beg—telling them to stop, you know? But they didn't stop until Jesus came, and He said, 'Stop, chickens. Peck on someone your own size.' Isn't that weird, Doc?"

"Yes," said the doctor. "And what happened then?"

"Well, they stopped. Then Jesus led me out of the big chicken coop, and I was out near the farmhouse where I work. And He said, 'Just hang here for a while, Daryl. I'll be back later.' Then He left, and I waited in the boss's farmhouse, and then I heard that stupid music playing and woke up here. Wild, huh?"

"Wild," echoed the doctor, moving his lips around the word. "Would you care to say anything else to the world before we let the reporters go?" The offer was a few degrees short of enthusiastic.

"Yeah," he answered. He turned to the cameras and smiled, as if something really good to say had just occurred to him. "One more thing I forgot Jesus said. He said everyone should eat a lot more eggs!"

"Thank you, Mr. Scott," the doctor added swiftly, and nodded to the reporters indicating that was a wrap.

There was little consensus as to what to make of the event, except that Daryl clearly wanted to impress his boss. But had Daryl's real visions occurred before his physical death, when he was waking, or during his freeze when his brain was truly dead? Would other people have similar visions? Could he have had a glimpse of some sort of fowl purgatory? Or had God, or Daryl's own subconscious, simply used images in Daryl's mind to protect him from the trauma of rejuvenation before sending him back to the world? Or, as one comic suggested, had Jesus allowed this man-made type of resurrection so he could proclaim to the world the one thing he'd forgotten to say in the gospels – that everyone needed to eat more eggs?

The incident sparked excited theorizing and ended up benefiting everyone involved. Rejuve instantly became a household word. Not only did they begin receiving a flurry of orders for cryonic freezing, they were swamped by calls to bring back the other victims of the Hendemic and by requests from the media to broadcast each one in a reality show format. Countless writers begged to be the company's official scribe who would relate the tales of all the dead brought back to life. One college opened a new program in its Philosophy department dedicated to the study of cryonic visions and what they may tell us about the soul and the afterlife. Saturday Night Live had prep nurse Tina Fey-2 thawing out the patient with a blow dryer while Doctor Billy Crystal-2 borrowed a line from his clone-father's movie The Princess Bride, explaining that Daryl was only "mostly dead." Daryl Scott was indeed offered a full-time position with the chicken farm, and he was also hit with requests to publish his story and make a movie out of it. And yes, as I'm sure you've guessed, the egg industry had a rebirth.

Table of Contents

60

In early February, I came home to find Evelyn sitting at our dining table. Her old backpack sat beside her. There was a partially written letter to her clone-daughter in front of her.

"I recognize that," I said, picking up the pack and running my fingers over the faded and rough denim, the variety of patches she'd added to it, and the remnants of paint.

She smiled up at me and nodded. "It was like a dream," she said. "Walking into the classroom. Seeing all the spray paint on the wall. And then at my table and on my backpack."

I kissed her on the cheek and sat down next to her. "Were you scared?"

"I'd never felt so alone," she said, taking the pack from me and tracing the faded pink triangle and yellow star, "but it also made me feel closer to you." She nudged me. "And just the Monday after one of my favorite memories."

I reflected on the repercussions of our first marriage. The vandalism. My mother's death. Her father's death.

And then I allowed myself to think of the possible repercussions of our second marriage. Watching her slowly die. Seeing her writing a letter to her clone-daughter who would have to take her place.

"It's one of my favorite memories, too."

She sighed. "And then you said we were getting a divorce."

"I know," I said, feeling myself flush. "I was such an idiot."

To my relief, she laughed. "Yes," she agreed, nodding. "But you know, that led to you defending me on the playground, and me talking to your mom and you meeting my dad. So I'm glad you did."

"Me too," I said, grateful for that day, and for the woman who married me.

She nudged me again. "Good. Now get lost so I can—" She winced.

"Are you okay?"

"Just some pains today," she said, a little wearily. "They come and go."

I held her shaking hand. "Do you want to go to the hospital?"

Evelyn gripped her backpack till her knuckles were white, then drew in a sharp breath from the pain.

"Let's go to the hospital."

She nodded, closing her eyes.

I held her close, my forehead against hers. "I'm sorry. This is my fault."

She cringed and sucked in some more air. "No." She gripped my forearm as her head sank to the table.

I helped her up. "You shouldn't have married me," I whispered.

I don't know if she heard me or not. But she didn't say anything.

*

The doctors saw nothing out of the ordinary, but they wanted to observe Evelyn overnight. I offered to stay, but Evelyn said she was fine and asked me to go home and take care of Cain.

He was waiting for me when I came in the door.

"How's Mom doing?"

"She's in some pain, but the doctors don't think it's serious."

"Well, I think it's serious."

I nodded slowly, feeling defeated.

"Don't you think it's serious?" He was so angry he was beginning to tremble.

"Of course I do."

"You made her fight for Lily without you. Now Lyle's killing her."

I met his glare. "I'm not going to let your mother die."

"Right," he said. "I hope not."

And with that my son turned and walked up the stairs.

I've heard that even the most loving families can lash out at each other during times of tremendous stress. But as I watched him go upstairs, all I could think was that I'd lost my son, and was losing my wife. And if I lost them both, I realized there'd be only one thing left to lose.

The next morning, on my way to the hospital, I stopped by the headquarters of Rejuve. His receptionist told me to go on in. As I entered, I thought of my clone-father walking into Lyle-1's office nearly a century before. The meeting that had made my life possible.

Lyle-2 didn't get up. "Have a seat."

I sat down, still trying to think of what to say.

"What can I do for you?"

"I need your help."

Lyle let that linger for a while, tapping on his writing pad with his pen. "Yes?"

"Evelyn's dying."

"Yes, I know," he said. "I'm sorry."

"I can't save her."

There was a long pause before he shook his head. "Adam, what do you want from me?"

I lowered my eyes. "I'll do anything."

I heard his pen again tapping on the pad. It went on for several seconds as I waited, staring at my own hands.

"You'll cease all attempts to take Lily from me?"

I put my head in my hands and nodded.

The pen stopped tapping. "What's wrong with you, Adam? You think I'm molesting my daughter, and you'd let me continue just to save your wife?"

I waited.

"You took Ingeneuity from me, caused my Lily to kill herself, and tried to take Lily-3 away."

I grabbed Lyle's hand. He examined me with some surprise in his eyes. "Cure Evelyn," I said, "and you can have Ingeneuity. And everything else."

Lyle moved his hand out from under mine. "I'll have it anyway."

"Please."

He appeared to be about to say something, then shook his head. "We're done."

I stood up, turned around, and left Lyle's office.

Table of Contents

61

Valentine's Day was on a Sunday that year, and Evelyn asked Cain if he wanted to stay with Grandma Hannah and Grandpa Martin that night. He was driving by then, but she drove him over to return her mother's jacket that she'd borrowed one unexpectedly cold night.

When Evelyn returned and opened our front door, I turned on the theme music from To Kill a Mockingbird. She followed the music to our bedroom. Her eyes surveyed the walls where I'd used Wallutions to hang virtual images of framed posters from our relationship: Her singing at the talent show. Winter Wonderland. Farewell Dolly. The photo taken of our engagement at the Wild Animal Park. Our favorite wedding portrait. And one with us holding a newborn Cain. The background of the Wallutions wall was a 360-degree view from her favorite spot at the Wild Animal Park, with the rhinos, elephants, and giraffes casually roaming the savannah except for where our fireplace crackled and glowed.

She nodded and smiled, her eyes glistening beautifully in the firelight. "So, did you forget what day it was?"

"I love you."

"Then prove it, boy," she said, about to outdo my preparations. She held up a grownup version of her Winter Wonderland wedding dress and tossed me a grownup version of my little blue suit. "Why don't you get into something less comfortable."

When we were properly attired, she started the holovideo taken of our Winter Wonderland skit, and we tried our best to stay in our respective holographic images as we "skipped" across the stage, and as I shook my head to a smiling Jack/Parson Brown that we weren't married yet, and as Evelyn tugged me back so I could tell the parson that he could indeed marry us. The moment we were married, Evelyn swung me around so I could kiss the bride.

I tried to be a proper groom, proving my love to the best of my abilities. But, again, she outdid me.

*

"Do you think Cain's right?" she asked as we lay in each other's arms, the fireplace near the bed dying down to its most soothing red glow.

"About what?"

"Do you think existence is too remarkable a thing to just be a freak accident? Do you think the multiverse is watched over? That someone cares about us?"

I thought of so many things. The frantic and painful way nearly all animals live and die in the harsh world of nature. The lack of justice on earth. What Mother Theresa called "the silence of God." How much fighting and hopelessness could be done away with if God walked with us as it was written he did in Eden, speaking plainly to all of us in person and in one voice, leaving no doubt as to his existence and what he hoped to get from us and what he had in store for us.

On a more personal level, I thought of my prayer for my mother and her violent and lonely death, and I thought of those gloating Christians who celebrated it. But I also thought of Jack and his father, and their belief that God loved the outcasts and wept for suffering and hate. And I thought of all the good experiences I'd had, and the beautiful experiences that humans throughout time had enjoyed. I thought of Evelyn.

Maybe our souls learn something from existing in a universe with so much pain and so much unknown – things that we could never learn from a universe in which God resided in The White House and answered each of our questions in 24/7 broadcast news conferences.

"I really hope so."

She laughed a little and settled against my chest more comfortably. "You know, you're very cautious."

"I know. I'm sor—"

Her face turned up and stopped me with a kiss.

"What was that for?"

She yawned and snuggled down to go to sleep. "I like weird."

I kissed her hair and fell asleep quickly, blissfully.

*

That night I fell into disturbing dreams. I saw myself as Adam-1 at the hospital before being shown into his mother's hospital room – a doctor whispering something into Great-Grandpa Michael's ear, something that made his knees buckle. Then Michael guided Adam-1 to the hospital room's door behind which his mother Sarah was dying. The vision from The Incredible Hulk as the bus drove his mother away, with Adam vainly chasing after. Sarah standing on Baker Beach, her wig almost blowing off in the wind. Then Sarah turned into Evelyn, with Hannah comforting her and turning to me, saying something about blood on my hands. Evelyn fearfully squeezing my hand in Central Park. I didn't squeeze back. I couldn't. I was looking down at the doormat my mom had made, the crocheted sheep, running away again. And again. And again. Then it wasn't the welcome mat, but my clone-father's open grave. I saw him down there, banging on the mirror, shouting words I couldn't hear but which still filled me with chills and dread. Then I saw him in the mirror as a little boy in his mother's hospital room, crying by his dead mother with her eyes staring through him as if he wasn't there. I saw Adam reach out to touch her shoulder. I saw Sarah's dead body shifting and her limp mouth falling open and me screaming—

—I woke up. I could feel Evelyn's hand on top of mine. I squeezed it. She didn't squeeze back. Usually I'd assume she was asleep, but my dream had disturbed me too much. I squeezed again, then turned over to wake her. As my mind recognized something wrong with the limpness of her fingers, my eyes met hers. Wide open. Staring through me.

"Evelyn?" I pleaded, my hands cupping her face. She was still warm. "No." I stroked her cheeks, hoping she'd respond, knowing she wouldn't. "No."

I called out for 911.

"What is the nature of your emergency?"

"My wife just died."

"Are you at home?"

"Yes." I felt my heart racing, panic taking hold and obliterating rational thought. The kind of thoughts she needed from me. I was going to fail her again.

"Sir, paramedics are on their way. Do you have a defibrillator?"

"She has an internal one."

"You can try CPR."

"Thank you," I said, and hung up. Her body's AIS should have already tried repeatedly to spark her heart and draw oxygen into her lungs. The self-propelled blood should still be drawing in some oxygen from the environment and keeping her brain oxygenated. Something else had happened. Something Lyle's disease had done to her that our AIS couldn't undo. I tapped on the homedic to get her readings from the AIS. Artificial blood was still propelling itself through her body, but it was slowing. Her EEG was flat, no electrical activity.

She was dead.

I tried CPR anyway, both compressing her chest and blowing into her mouth. And I kept gazing into Evelyn's eyes. Seeing reflections. Lyle-1 holding a gun to my head, shouting at me. "You like that girl, Adam? That Jewish girl?"

I held her nose and put my lips against her warm but flaccid lips, blowing into her mouth again. More reflections. Mr. Green shaking my hand, thanking me for protecting his daughter. Evelyn kissing me on the cheek before running off to get in her dad's car. Evelyn riding off in the car with her dad. Not waving back.

I touched the scar above her right eyebrow. I hadn't protected her. I had allowed my Scout to be killed, my catcher in the rye to fall. Was her father comforting her now?

I fumbled for my cell and called Lyle. His phone rang six times, then silence as he answered it.

There was no hello. There was nothing.

"Evelyn's dead."

He made no reply.

"Lyle? Please. Can you please send Rejuve?"

Several more seconds ticked by, followed by a soft click. Then silence.

I felt my cell slip through my fingers and clatter on the hardwood floor. I hugged my knees to my chest, leaning against the bed next to my wife's body.

Table of Contents

Part IV

The Book of Adam

In the middle of the journey of our life,

I came to myself within a dark wood,

where the straight way was lost.

– Dante, Inferno

Because I could not stop for Death

He kindly stopped for me –

The Carriage held but just Ourselves

And Immortality

– Emily Dickinson

Each person is born to one possession which outlives all his others – his last breath.

– Mark Twain

62

The doorbell rang. My artificial legs pushed my body up to a standing position. I placed my left hand on Evelyn's shoulder. She would wake, and I would sheepishly explain to the paramedics that it had all been a mistake, that I must have been sleepwalking or something.

She didn't stir. She was no longer warm.

My legs carried me down the hall to the door for the paramedics. But when I opened the door I saw three people wearing the blue and silver coats of Rejuve.

"Is this the Elwell residence?"

I nodded numbly, waves of disbelief and relief flooding my body. I pointed shakily to the bedroom as I fell to the floor, tears blurring everything else. Gratitude to Lyle. Even to God.

When I'd regained some composure, I went into the room to watch Rejuve injecting Evelyn with chemicals and packing her into their portable freezing unit. I stepped around them and picked up my phone.

"Hannah."

She could tell something was wrong. "Adam?" She paused. "Is it Evelyn?"

"I'm so sorry."

I heard her cry out, then Martin picked up the phone. I told him that I had woken up to find her "unresponsive," but that Rejuve had arrived to try to preserve her, and that the paramedics were just arriving.

"Hang in there, Adam. I'll bring Hannah and Cain over in a few minutes."

I was glad the paramedics had arrived. They observed the work of the Rejuve doctors, which made me more comfortable. I was beginning to feel increasingly confident. This wasn't the end. Eventually Evelyn would be back. She'd be alive. I hadn't killed her. We could continue our life together. And that was something to live for.

By the time Hannah, Martin, and Cain walked into the room, Evelyn was sealed inside the portable freezer.

Hannah abruptly stopped and covered her mouth upon seeing the closed freezer. Martin squeezed her shoulders, then gestured for me to come over. She saw me and gave me a hug, crying against my shoulder. From over her shoulder, I saw Cain standing still, attention fixed on the freezer.

"Lyle came?" he asked, still not looking at me.

"I'm sorry," I said. "I promised she wouldn't..."

He turned to me. "You got Lyle to save her?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. I begged him. But maybe Evelyn was right. Maybe when it came down to it, he didn't have it in him."

I was shocked, I was overwhelmed, when Cain strode over to me and gave me a hug. Moments ago I was sure I'd lost my wife and my son. But I still had both.

*

Later that afternoon, on Monday, February 15, I drove an hour north of La Jolla to the Rejuve storage site in the city of Fallbrook to sign some documents and watch them place Evelyn in her permanent cryonic chamber. I wondered if there was any sort of ceremony, whatever might substitute for a funeral in an age where the dead are put in cryonic freeze in the hopes of eventual rejuvenation, but all they did was show me the chamber being sealed and give me a handshake, assuring me that the next time I was there, it would be for her awakening.

As I turned to leave, Lyle was walking up to me.

I offered my hand. "Lyle, thank you. You don't know what it means."

He stopped in front of me. He didn't shake my hand. "Resign."

"What?"

"Resign from Ingeneuity and sell me your shares."

He walked away.

I drove to the office, typed up a letter of resignation, and handed it to the president of the board. Then I called my broker and sold all my shares to Lyle Gardener. One week later Rejuve offered to buy out Ingeneuity at a generous sum, and a majority of the shareholders approved the sale.

I spent the rest of that day wondering what I was going to do with my life – something to take my mind off the fact that I'd just sold out the future of humanity's opportunity for earthly immortality to Lyle Gardener.

Evelyn had often encouraged me to take up writing again, but I hadn't written since that night in Central Park. Whenever I started, I thought of Lily trying to force my hand under her blouse, and I thought of Lily on the morgue's steel table, and I realized something inside me had died with her. And now Evelyn in cryonic freeze. Dead.

I had no interest in whatever fairy tales I might be able to dream up.

I could, of course, look for work in a related field. But a part of me, a part I tried not to acknowledge, was relieved to be out of it all, to have so many responsibilities lifted from me, and to be out of the fight for humanity's fate. To have nothing to do but care for Cain and prepare for Evelyn's return.

Table of Contents

63

On March 11th, my forty-third birthday began nicely. I awoke to the aroma of blueberry-chocolate chip pancakes frying on the griddle. Cain greeted me with a candle planted in a stack of my favorite pancakes. Evelyn had introduced me to them when we first moved in with each other. She'd taught Cain well.

Nine days later would be Evelyn's forty-third birthday. I wondered how we would celebrate that. I suggested to Cain that we go to Rejuve and the Wild Animal Park, and he agreed.

But the night of my birthday he had a college class. When he left, I started a movie that Evelyn and I had watched countless times and that always cheered me, a movie that even Adam-1 and his parents had enjoyed a century ago – the original Foul Play starring Chevy Chase-1 and Goldie Hawn-1. As Detective Chevy Chase played witness protection program with Goldie Hawn on his houseboat, my doorbell rang.

It was Lyle.

"Hello." A nameless fear was growing inside me, like when Lyle-1 had stopped his car to pick me up from church. "May I have a seat?"

"Sure," I said, motioning to the dining table.

Lyle sat down and waited for me to do the same. Then he stared at his hands clasped together on the table. He didn't take his eyes off his hands as he told me the news.

"About two hours ago a bomb was detonated at our Fallbrook cryonic storage facility, and more than 300 bodies were lost. Based on where it went off and the note that was sent, it looks like it was the Gabrielites, and it looks like they were targeting you." He paused. "Well, your wife."

He couldn't be telling me this. I waited.

"We'll need to know where to send your wife's remains."

I still couldn't speak.

"Of course, we'll refund your money."

I stood up and walked into my bedroom, returning a few seconds later with a gun. Lyle didn't show the slightest hint of fear or anger, scarcely even glancing at the weapon. Even as I sat back down and leveled it at his head. I didn't sense any of his c-father's certainty that I wouldn't use it. It was more as if he simply didn't care.

"I know what it's like to have only one person you love, and lose her."

"No," I said. "I loved my mom and Jack. My son and Aunt Louise. Many people."

Lyle studied the barrel of the gun I held a foot from his head. "Then I guess you don't know what it's like. To really have no one. To find yourself in a universe created to hate and punish you for reasons you don't understand." He looked me in the eye. "My c-father and I are the only ones who know. I thought you might have understood, the way you grew up. But you don't."

My gun hand wavered. I saw the little boy in his face. I should have kept hugging him, telling him he was loved even as he pushed me away. But I hadn't. And now it was too late.

"You could have had love, too," I said. "You could have had it with Lily and Aunt Louise and me and Evelyn. If you'd just let us live our lives the way we wanted. If you hadn't tried to control us and force your love on Lily."

I expected that to set him off. Then maybe I could bring myself to shoot him. But he was as calm as when he'd walked in.

"Lyle said that all of you would only hurt me. He was right."

"Self-fulfilling prophecy."

Lyle paused. "Some days I think you're right." My gun wavered again. I almost felt pity. "But nevertheless it's true, isn't it? Everyone hates me, but Lily."

"Lily hates you, too."

Lyle paused again. "Maybe."

He stood up. My gun followed his head as he walked out of my house.

Maybe, that night, we were both alone.

*

Cain had forgiven me when Evelyn died, seeing his mother safely preserved for when she could be cured and brought back to him.

I sent Cain a text message. "Please come home."

Table of Contents

64

Jack's son Edmund performed the memorial service. People said it was a moving one, but it barely registered. Many of her friends spoke of their remembrances. I didn't. I found it difficult to face anyone that day, much less stand in front of them and talk about my love and shame.

In the middle of one of the speeches, I stood up and walked away. The speaker stopped, several heads turned to look, but I kept my eyes on my feet. I didn't have any conscious plan. I just knew I had to leave.

Hours later, when I noticed I was traveling north on State Route 99 through Bakersfield, I realized I was going to the cabin in the redwoods.

I stepped into the cabin's living room and waited for something to happen. To find solace. To find it had all been a nightmare. To discover Evelyn waiting for me. But I found none of that. Only disquieting silence, except for the ticking of the grandfather clock.

I shuffled around the cabin in a daze for a while, then went outside and began hiking along my favorite trail. The beauty, grace, and power of the immortal redwoods would comfort me as they always had. But now, as I walked among the towering gods of the forest, they seemed only to shun me. These were austere deities devoid of feeling or concern for the countless humans they had seen pass through short and meaningless lives. I was but a mayfly, unworthy of their attention or comfort.

As I returned to the cabin, I saw Evelyn's face through the window. I ran to the door and flung it open.

"Evelyn?"

And there she was. I began to run across the living room to her. But with horror I realized it wasn't the cabin's living room. I was standing in our Bohemian apartment in New York.

"Come on, turn that off," Evelyn said, shaking a finger at me.

I saw myself sitting at the dining table where I had started recording a holographic video of Evelyn rehearsing for Dolly – the hologram now filling the cabin's room. I didn't remember doing it, but I must have turned the holovideo on before I left. I pulled a chair up to where my hologram was sitting and sat down so it would appear that the holographic Evelyn was looking at the real me.

"Come over here and make me," my hologram said to her.

She sauntered over and sat in my lap. I could almost feel her. The memory was still so fresh. She kissed my hologram, and I imagined her lips against mine. Both my hologram and I moved the recording cell phone away from her as Evelyn made a grab for it.

"Nice try," we said.

"Damn you," she responded, punching my chest. She smiled as she got off my lap. "You're supposed to be more overcome by my kiss than that!"

I laughed, but warm tears were sliding down my cheeks. She walked back to the other side of the room and began running through her lines again.

"Evelyn?"

She kept rehearsing.

"Evelyn, please. I'm sorry."

She listened to my hologram say the butterfly's lines.

"Did you know you were going to die because of me?" I asked. "That while you were facing Lily's gun, and while you were fighting for Lily-3, that I'd just stand there. That I'd abandon you?"

"Who am I?" Evelyn asked an imaginary butterfly.

"Someone who cared about my life more than yours."

Evelyn looked up to see the butterfly flying away.

"And now I care about your life more than mine." I stood and headed toward the door.

"Come back!" she cried.

I turned, but she was looking up for the butterfly that would have flown off stage.

I went out to my car and drove into the nearest town. There I purchased some wrapping paper, a small wooden box, a box of ammunition, and a 9 mm. semi-automatic pistol similar to the one Lyle-1 had given me many Christmases ago.

The holovideo was replaying itself when I got back. I left it on. I wanted Evelyn to see justice played out.

I printed several copies of Evelyn's wedding portrait. I crumpled them up into balls and placed them in the wooden box with the gun at the bottom. I wrapped the box in wrapping paper. My gift to the world. To Evelyn. To my mom. To all those who loved me and would have died for that love. No more would have to.

I tore open the wrapping paper, opened the box, and began taking out the crumpled balls of paper one by one. I smoothed out each page, touching the picture of Evelyn. Finally my fingers touched the cold steel of the gun. I slid my fingers back and forth along its barrel. I imagined Lyle-1 standing in front of me, smiling confidently.

"And it's loaded," I heard him say.

This time I knew it was true.

I put the barrel to my temple, watching Evelyn's blurry hologram through my tears. "I love you."

"Who are ewe?" she asked the caterpillar.

"A mistake." Gabrielle Burns had been right. I should have never been born.

I closed my eyes. My fingertip slid up and down the smooth trigger. Lily had done it twice. Both my clone-father and his father had killed themselves. For some reason I had thought suicide was easy. Now I began to feel the dark fear that must have choked their minds as the paralysis crept up my c-father's body, as his father saw the rocky shore rushing towards him, as both Lilys felt the barrel of the gun against their skin. But they had done it. They had done it because their lives were unbearable. Because, even though it was terrifying, it was the easy way out. I could get out too. Escape this life. Maybe be with Evelyn and my mom again. Join them in the coffin.

My finger stopped sliding along the trigger, and cradled it.

"Don't."

I opened my eyes to look at Evelyn.

"Dad?"

Cain's voice had come from behind me.

"Go away."

I heard him close the door and walk up to me. "No."

"It's my fault she's dead."

Cain turned off the holovideo, then eased the gun away from my head.

"Dad, you can't do this."

"But it's true."

He unloaded the gun and placed it on the fireplace mantle. "Jack was right," he said. "You let your past consume your future."

I eyed the empty gun.

"Lily-3 still needs our help," he continued. "Mom's clone is going to be born in December. Stop thinking about yourself and be there for them. That's what you owe to Mom. Not your life."

"It's not my life," I said, still focused on the gun. "I'm going to kill him."

"You mean Adam-1?" He sat down in a chair opposite me. "Dad, don't you get it?"

I didn't answer.

"You're not just your genes. You know that. You are your genes after having been loved and influenced by Mom, and your mom, and Jack. And me." He sat down next to me. "There's more of us in you than your c-father. You want to lose all that?"

My eyes dropped from the gun to the photos of Evelyn scattered around me. I shook my head.

"Neither do I."

I admired my son. "You don't hate me?"

He took my arm to pull me up, and he hugged me. And then he said something I hadn't heard since he was three years old. "I love you."

Cain stayed at the cabin overnight, and the next morning I followed him back to La Jolla. On the way, I vowed to myself to try to be a good father to both Cain and Evelyn-2. The kind of father I'd never known.

Table of Contents

65

Evelyn-2 was conceived in the artificial womb on what would have been Evelyn's forty-third birthday. She was born on December 13, 2077.

Her resemblance was unnerving – a resemblance that would undoubtedly continue to grow. I had mixed emotions as I held Evelyn-2 the first time. My joy that Evelyn's DNA would have another chance at creating a remarkable life, and my despair that she wasn't my Evelyn. My hope that Evelyn-2 would have her own individual life unencumbered by the achievements of her c-mother, and my even deeper desire that she would be exactly like the Evelyn I'd known. The hypocrisy was not lost on me. We don't always have the feelings that we want to have.

My exact relationship with Evelyn-2 was a bit confusing. We decided that Evelyn-2 would know me as Uncle Adam, which was technically incorrect. As Hannah's second daughter, Evelyn-2 was my sister-in-law. If we considered her to be Evelyn's daughter, then she was Hannah's granddaughter and either my daughter or stepdaughter. The law would have allowed any of those designations. But the "uncle" label sounded best. It also made for an amusing moment when we tried to explain to a young Evelyn-2 how I was her Uncle Adam via being married to her c-mother. She made the connection that if I was her uncle then her c-mother was her aunt, and if she were her aunt's clone, then she would be her own aunt.

So you can see we really screwed her up by the earliest possible age.

Actually, she was quite sane. For a clone. And although her personality was considerably more introverted than my wife's, she seemed to share a connection with her clone-mother from the earliest age that I deeply appreciated.

I took Cain and Evelyn to the San Diego Wild Animal Park when she was two. She loved the nursery with its rooms and rooms of rare baby animals, half of them clones. Evelyn adored cats especially, and she had trouble keeping her head, hands, arms, and feet inside the tram as we rode past the lions. I introduced her at a distance to the now geriatric twenty-one-year-old Bengal tigers her c-mother and I had once cuddled. Then we lingered at the cheetah enclosure. The cheetahs were captivated by the young morsel at my side. Evelyn was fascinated with the way the cheetahs paced back and forth, looking hungrily at our little family. We eventually dragged Evelyn onward, to our relief and her dismay. And no doubt the disappointment of the hungry kitties.

That afternoon, I took her and Cain to our spot overlooking the savannah. Evelyn-2 gazed in total silence for several minutes.

"I love it here," she said.

"You know what?" I knelt in front of her. "This was your c-mom's favorite place."

Evelyn lowered her head a tad to shyly look at me from the tops of her eyes, and grinned.

***

Cain was seventeen when Evelyn-2 was born, a loving and protective big brother who spoiled her any chance he had. She took to his doting from her first days on earth. He called her "Evie," and sometimes playfully called her "Mom." She'd often marvel at the latter, happy about her special relationship with Cain that she shared with her clone-mother. Cain adored her, and whenever he saw me playing with her, he would grin at us both.

But there was another little girl he had once loved, and he wouldn't let her go as easily as I had. On October 14, 2078, Lily-3 turned eighteen. Legally an adult, and able to choose to stay with Lyle or leave him.

"Will you go with me?" Cain asked as he got ready to go to Lyle's house.

It was a Friday, and Cain hoped Lyle wouldn't be home. At least, that's what he said. He may have been hoping for a confrontation.

"I'll drive," I said, thinking I might at least keep the situation under control.

Lyle was home. In fact, based on the number of cars parked outside the house, there must have been dozens there. We could hear piano music coming from the inside, and there were a few decorations in view. An artificial attendant answered the door.

"May I help you?" he asked.

"We're here for Lily's birthday," I said.

The attendant examined us both. "I'm sorry. Adam and Cain Elwell are not allowed on the premises."

"May we speak to Lyle?"

"I will ask," he said. He made no visible movement or audible noise, but must have still alerted Lyle to our presence. Lyle walked up from behind him.

"You weren't invited to the party," Lyle said, gesturing for his attendant to stand behind him. "I'll have to ask you to leave."

"We'd like to see Lily," I said.

Cain stepped forward. "We're not leaving without seeing her."

Lyle remained calm. "My attendant and security guards are recording this. If either of you forcibly trespass on my property, I'll see you prosecuted to the full extent of the law."

"You can't do this!" Cain shouted.

"I can't decide who enters my house?"

"You can't keep her here against her will," Cain said. "She's eighteen."

Lyle's jaw was beginning to work back and forth. "I'd never keep her against her will. Nor am I going to let you take her against her will. So get off my property or I'll send for the police."

Cain's face twisted, not knowing what to do. "Lily!" he shouted, peering over Lyle's shoulder into the house. "Lily! It's Cain!"

"The police are on their way," said the attendant. "You will both be arrested."

Cain backpedaled so he could see into the windows on the first and second floor. "Lily!" he yelled again, waving his arms.

Lyle's calm exterior was quickly breaking down as he watched Cain run about on his front yard. Then he turned to me.

"It's done," he said.

"What's done?"

His eyes strayed to Cain, and then back to mine. "If I see your son again, I'll kill him."

I sprang towards him, but the artificial attendant was quicker. He held me tightly in check on the porch until I began to ease my struggles. By then Lyle had closed the door and Cain was grabbing the attendant from around the neck. I heard police sirens in the background.

"Are you prepared to leave?" asked the attendant.

"Let him go!" Cain demanded, releasing the attendant's neck.

The attendant released me. Cain pushed him once more in the back, although the artificial attendant didn't appear to notice.

"We'll be back!" he shouted as we slowly walked away, Cain's eyes searching all the windows one last time.

I knew he wouldn't see her. She was playing the piano. Right after Cain had started yelling for her, I'd heard the song change to Delta Dawn. Lily knew we were there, and she was trying to let me know she was there, too.

I told Cain that she would have come out if she'd wanted, and that there was nothing we could have done if she hadn't wanted to come out. Of course, deep down I knew that wasn't true. We could have waited for the police, lied to them, and got them to question Lily with us all there, and she would have truly had a chance to escape Lyle's grip. But I never mentioned that possibility.

When we were served the restraining order, I begged Cain not to get arrested. That it would be futile with Lyle's security. I promised that I'd find some other way to get to Lily.

Then I told Hannah about the events of the day. Mostly because I knew she'd be on my side, not wanting us to push Lyle any further, and I hoped she would work on Cain to stop him from doing anything more provoking.

She didn't say what I'd hoped she'd say.

"By trying to save Cain, you might end up losing him."

"What are you saying?" I asked. "You want me to fight Lyle and get us all killed?"

She covered my hand in hers. "No. I don't want anyone to get killed."

"I thought you'd be on my side."

Hannah frowned. "Because I didn't want you to marry my daughter?"

I didn't respond. That was so far behind us, I didn't want to drag it back out.

"Adam, I was wrong. I'm glad Evelyn married you."

I shook my head. "How could you be?"

"Because she was happy for forty-two years. Do you think she would have been happy living for centuries as a person she hated? She would have just been unhappy for centuries."

"I can't," I said. "I can't risk losing more."

She nodded. "Adam. Millions died risking their lives against the tyrants of the world. But many more millions would have died if they hadn't. Sometimes more harm is done by doing nothing."

I stared at our hands. "But I'll lose."

"Your mother lost." She squeezed my hand. "But how proud are you of how hard she fought?"

***

On Monday, I went to the corporate office of Barebots and met with Nikki Menae. I told her why I had resigned from Ingeneuity and about what was happening between Lyle, Lily, and my family. She hired me as the liaison with the far smaller AIS competitor Aisenter, a company that specialized in protecting the central nervous system. And she put an end to the joint project with Ingeneuity. We would develop the ability to sustain a human brain inside a Barebot shell without them. She promised me that. And she would prove to be right.

"How is this going to help Lily?" Cain asked as I got ready for work the first morning.

"It won't," I admitted. "But it'll help others. The fewer people depending on Lyle to save their lives, the better."

He agreed. "But you're still going to find a way to help Lily?"

I lied to my son. For five years.

Table of Contents

66

During those five years, Evelyn-2 grew more and more like the young girl I'd fallen in love with. And she seemed to fall in love with her c-mother as well.

For Evelyn-2's sixth birthday, I gave her a framed picture that I took of Evelyn-1 at the Wild Animal Park with the sun setting on the savannah behind her. I saw Evelyn looking at it often, even moving it around the house – from her bedroom to the bathroom and the living room's fireplace mantle.

A few nights later, after dinner, Hannah, Martin, and Cain started a hologame in the dining room, and Evelyn came into the living room where I was reading. She was carrying the picture.

"What are you reading?"

I smiled and put my tablet down. "Just something for work."

"You used to work where your c-father worked?"

"That's right."

"Have you ever dreamt about him?"

I nodded silently. Except for Evelyn-1, I'd never told anyone about my recurring nightmares.

"How did they make you feel?"

"My dreams are bad ones."

She frowned. "I'm sorry."

"Me too," I said. Fleeting memories of Adam-1 protecting me from a witch. Sitting in his hologram's lap. Being a father. I pushed them out. "But now what about your dreams?"

She smiled, put the picture down, and hugged one of the couch cushions to her chest. "Oh, I've had lots of dreams. One time a couple tigers were chasing Cain and me, and finally we ran into Evelyn. She protected us and tamed the tigers so we could pet them. In another one, I was attacked in a park late at night, but when they shot at me, my c-mom jumped down from out of nowhere and was shot instead."

"I'm sure she would do that," I said. I tasted metal in the back of my mouth. "Do you know, she told me way back in second grade that she wanted to have a clone someday. She loved the thought of you even then."

Evelyn-2 beamed at the idea. "You know, my favorite dream is one I've had several times. I'm standing on a theatre stage with millions of people watching me, and I don't know what to do, and I'm crying, and she comes out of the audience and gives me a hug. Like she does in her birthday holograms, but in the dream it feels so real. I can even smell her. And I always wake up feeling so comforted."

I set my book on the coffee table. Any excuse to catch my breath. "Maybe she's hugging you from wherever she is," I said.

Evelyn-2 looked suspicious. "I didn't think you really believed in heaven."

"I don't not believe in it," I explained. I didn't tell her about how I believed that, if God did exist, he likely hated my mother and me, and that I'd have no interest in whatever that sort of God would create as an afterlife. "I certainly hope there is a good heaven where we all eventually go. That's the only way I'd ever be able to talk to your c-mom again. And my mom."

Evelyn smiled. "I hope you get to, but not for a very long time. Unless it's in your dreams."

"Me too," I agreed.

Shortly after that, Evelyn-2 joined her c-mother in becoming infatuated with the arts. Hannah gave her a set of oil paints for Hanukkah, and the next day she painted her first original print. I thought it was an abstract painting, but Evelyn assured me it was a portrait of the cheetahs. We framed the painting and hung it up in her bedroom.

In the coming months she became a prolific and much improved painter. We got her a tutor, and her paintings began to take on some very strong themes, revealing herself ever more vividly through her art as she depicted scenes from her life and the life of her c-mother. She used dark colors and rough strokes in depicting the shooting in Central Park and bright hues and smooth edges for paintings set at the Wild Animal Park or in Farewell Dolly (with full permission of Sondheim-2 and Thomas Wilson, who each bought a couple of those paintings themselves). Evelyn-2 always depicted herself as a young child, but Evelyn-1's age varied from a young girl to an old woman. Some included Cain, Hannah, and/or myself in the background. My favorite, which she gave me for my birthday, featured our wedding. Adam-1 sat above me and to the side, and Evelyn-2 sat below and to the side of Evelyn-1.

She never painted facial features, which was probably wise at her age and skill level. But identity and emotion were hinted at subtly through hair, position, hue, and background. Those backgrounds were painted like sketches, providing critical settings and colors, but leaving the emphasis on the faceless people. The themes ran the gamut from tender to tragic.

It impressed Edmund Lewis. His father's Me, Myself, and My Clone had become by far Jack's biggest success over the ten years since its posthumous publication. When the publisher began making plans to roll out an anniversary edition with a forward by Jack's recently ordained son, Edmund suggested they include more examples from the past that would touch on many of the most famous clones, and he wanted it to include original artwork by Evelyn-2 that depicted some of the major figures and events in cloning history.

Evelyn-2 went wild. She was commissioned to do the paintings – forty-eight original prints in all. The images began with the birth of Dolly and included the night of my birth, the birth of Shannon Smith-1, my Winter Wonderland marriage to Evelyn-1 in second grade, the assassination of my mother by Gabrielle Burns, the self-immolation of Jason Rendell, the premiere of Farewell Dolly, the suicide of Lily-2 in Central Park, the birth of Cain, Lily-3 and Evelyn-2, the suicide of Cooper Jones-2, and the bombings of my childhood church and the Genetics and Cloning Board. It presented a mixture of triumph and tragedy, along with the portraits of some famous clones with their c-parents.

The demand for the book exceeded even the publisher's rosy expectations. As of last year, eleven years after Jack's first edition and a year after the anniversary book, surveys showed that more than forty percent of all clones over the age of twelve owned either a hard or virtual copy, and sales were brisk among non-clones thinking of becoming c-parents and those already raising clones. Preliminary studies seemed to show the book was having a positive and lasting effect on clones in general. Since its publication, the clone suicide rate has dropped steadily, the drop being even more pronounced among those who own or have read the book. In 2084, the clone suicide rate of Me, Myself, and My Clone readers had thankfully declined to scarcely more than the rate among non-clones, and was continuing its downward trend. Where I'd failed to improve that figure much from my seat on the GC Board, Jack and Edmund had succeeded – a fact Edmund was extremely grateful for, feeling that he was helping to continue his father's legacy.

Edmund came over to present me with one of the books from the first printing.

"I can't tell you what you and Jack and your grandpa have meant to me," I told him. "God takes the good and leaves people like me."

He shook his head. "No, Mr. Elwell. God's left a person that my father and grandfather loved very much. They wouldn't want it any other way," he said. "No sir."

I was affected by the book as well. Over the years I'd gotten into the habit of imagining my clone-father to be little more than a ghoul, and a burden whose failures as a human being had locked me in a lifelong battle with Lyle. Were there more valuable ways for me to look at him? As the loving father of my mother? As the man whose efforts made my life possible? Could I forgive his sins on account of his orphanhood, his desperate fear of death, as I would hope to be forgiven for my own fears and inactions and deceits? He couldn't have foreseen how his actions would lead to the murder of his daughter and my wife. Would he really hate me and want to exchange my life with his, or would he be supportive of my changes?

Maybe there would be a day when instead of dreaming about him killing me and taking over my life, I would envision him being the father I'd once imagined. At times I came close to recapturing these more ideal visions, but then I'd think of Evelyn or my mom, their dead eyes, and I lost any interest in my clone-father. Whether it meant I was soulless or not, I was glad he was dead.

Table of Contents

67

On January 31, 2084, we held a big gala at Barebots to finally announce our goal of performing the first transplant into a Barebot body. A goal in which we had tremendous confidence.

Bobby the Barebot was running 6,000 operation simulations a day. More than eighty percent of those were successes, and he was learning from the failures. Meanwhile, real-world tests included the transplanting of four chimpanzee brains into modified, artificial chimpanzee bodies. The first two chimps died of shock shortly after their brains were placed in the new environment. But Bobby reprogrammed the artificial body to react immediately to the shock by sending new proteins to the brain, mollifying the trauma, and the next two chimps survived. Afterwards, Bobby said that brain death would soon be a near impossibility. Once we knew better how to fool the brain into thinking the old body was there and functioning normally, the artificial body would keep the brain alive better than a natural body. And as for the brain controlling the body, he expressed even more confidence. After all, our brains had been controlling artificial eyes for decades, paraplegics had been controlling their bodies with artificial suits for almost as long, and I could personally attest to the legs.

Our optimism was further enhanced by watching the last two chimpanzees that not only survived the transfer, but also seemed unchanged. Even the other chimps accepted them as they had before, although sometimes the patients would look at one of their hands for a couple minutes at a time, or the others would stare long and hard into the artificial eyes in a way they hadn't before, as if they sensed something was different, but couldn't put their finger on it. Or at least, that was our impression. For all I knew, they knew exactly what we had done to them and were either marveling at our handiwork or critiquing it.

In any event, the lessons we learned from the chimps were in the process of being applied to the human prototypes, and Bobby and his staff were busy processing the new information into their simulations. We felt confident enough to publicly set a goal date. On January 31, 2085, we were scheduled to make the first transfer.

Most still preferred to be frozen until a cure could be found for their condition, but some patients had already expressed a preference to be our beta testers. Many of our willing guinea pigs were driven by a fear of dying, despite good prospects for eventually being brought back at Rejuve. Perhaps some of them feared worse tortures than being hen-pecked in purgatory – of being sent straight to hell. Assuming all went well, we'd soon start working our way down the waiting list of terminally ill children, as well as the dying adults who feared the hellfire on the other side of cryonic freeze.

The debate, of course, is still raging as to whether rejuvenated people experience any sort of afterlife while their bodies are dead. Out of more than 20,000 bodies resurrected by the start of 2084, eighty percent of those having died from the Hendemic, approximately two in three had what they described as visions of an afterlife. The majority of those were self-described religious people, but several non-religious people had experiences as well. On the other hand, one-fourth of those who considered themselves religious could remember nothing. The evidence was circumstantial, and everyone concluded whatever he or she wished to believe. So far, Daryl Scott was the only one who had been told by Christ to promote egg eating.

During our Barebots party, a group of protestors assembled around the perimeter of the park. I was familiar with such people. In this case, the protestors were against "turning men into machines" and the movement among Barebots pressing for their individual rights. They held up signs against the Barebots, which they referred to as "Calcs" – a reference to them being less like humans and more like calculators. They referred to their human friends as "Bot-Lovers," pronounced "Butt-Lovers" to make us sound more like one of their other favorite targets, the "Sodomites." Chants against Calcs and Butt-Lovers were heard throughout the evening.

The hatred had the positive effect of igniting a passion in Edmund Lewis who was attending the party with us. He found a cause that he could make his own, arguing to the media that whether or not machines deserved rights should be dependent on their level of sentience, individuality, and independence of judgment – not on how they came into the world. "If you think robots are capable of human emotions, then love them," he said. "If you think they're calculators, then there's no need to hate a calculator."

But the protests cast a pall over the party, especially among the Barebots.

Cathode Hepburn and Jeff Goldblum-2 walked over to greet us. I hadn't seen her since the funeral.

"How are you?" she said as she hugged me close.

"I'm okay," I said softly.

She greeted Cain, and then caught sight of Evelyn-2, giving the girl such a huge and welcoming grin that Evelyn grinned back in spite of her shyness around strangers.

Cathy knelt down to be on the same level of Evelyn's clone. "You know, I see Evelyn's beauty in you."

"Thank you," Evelyn-2 whispered.

"This is Cathode Hepburn," I said. "She's a friend of your c-mom."

"Evelyn once played a c-mom and a c-daughter in Farewell Dolly," said Cathy.

Evelyn-2 nodded.

"I asked her how she did that, and she said it was easy. She said she'd already met her clone-daughter in her dreams."

I saw Evelyn-2's mouth fall open and eyes light up in wonder. I felt a tingling myself, a feeling that Evelyn's soul was still with us. But I also thought of my c-father, and my own nightmares.

I picked Evelyn-2 up and she wrapped her small arms around my neck and gave me a kiss.

"What's that for?" I asked, pinching her cheek that, like Evelyn's, smelled of jasmine.

"That's from my c-mom."

She rested her head against my shoulder and fell asleep. After we got home and I put Evelyn to bed, I went downstairs to the living room and put in the holotape of our marriage. As Barbra Streisand-2 sang Evergreen for our first dance as a married couple, I stood within my hologram's image to dance with Evelyn. She looked so real, right to the tiny scar over her right eye and the lightly applied pink gloss on her smiling lips. But my fingers kept slipping through hers. I was just dancing with laser plasma. It was all I had.

Half way through the song I crumpled to the floor. The image of Evelyn's feet kept dancing about me, oblivious to my despair.

For the first time I felt genuine sympathy for Grandma Lily and regret that I didn't treat her with more kindness when I was four years old. Now that I'd walked in her skin, I knew what it could be like seeing the clone of the spouse you loved grow up as a different person.

I'm sorry, Grandma. I didn't know.

Table of Contents

68

March 11, 2084 marked fifty years since the birth of the first human clone. We started the morning with a small, private party at my place. Evelyn presented me with a painting of my mom cradling me in her arms on my original birthday along with a little poem marveling at how my controversial birth "so very, very, very, very long ago" helped pave the way for so many millions of new lives "who are all a lot younger than you." Cain provided me with a famous image of the universe about 300,000 years after the Big Bang accompanied by a mathematical proof purporting to prove that the universe couldn't possibly be older than me.

Aren't kids clever.

As night descended, it was time to get dressed for the big opening at the La Jolla Playhouse. Stephen Sondheim-2 was giving Farewell Dolly a revival, and he'd chosen that day for the opening, twenty-five years after its first party. A friend of my wife's, Nicole Kidman-2, was reprising her role of Dolly. Evelyn had met her when Nicole-2 first starred as Dolly with the Riverdale Rising Stars in New York. She told Evelyn that she felt fate was involved in the casting, as her c-mother's first-ever stage role had been in a Christmas pageant where she played a bleating lamb.

The only hitch with casting Nicole-2 was that they had to re-stage some of the Alice in Wonderland scene, the one in which the Caterpillar undergoes his transformation. Nicole-2 had inherited Nicole-1's phobia – she was afraid of butterflies.

As Evelyn wrote back, "Seriously Nicole, who isn't?"

The twenty-fifth anniversary gala was a star-studded event filled with famous fellow clones from parties past and a slew of younger generation c-celebrities including a six-year-old Winona Ryder-2 who was the spitting image of Evelyn-2, and the two of them were inseparable the rest of the night.

About an hour before show time, Thomas Wilson brought out my birthday cake. Cast leads Nicole Kidman-2, Mary-Louise Parker-2, and Denzel Washington-2 came out briefly for the birthday festivities. Those festivities started with Stephen Colbert-2 coming out of a black monolith to portray the Star-Child baby at the end of 2001: A Space Odyssey and ended with Bernadette Peters-2 doing a Marilyn Monroe imitation for the singing of Happy Birthday. The cake had "Fifty" spelled out with little sheep candles that reminded me too much of my mother's welcome mat.

I made a wish and blew, but a couple of them didn't go out. I frantically blew out the last stubborn candles, hoping to fool the gods or fates or whoever it was that kept track of such things.

At this Farewell Dolly, Evelyn sat next to me. I saw her eyes tear up as the aged Dolly began her final duet with her motherly hologram and they ascended to heaven. I bit my lip as Cain held her hand. I hoped my wife was still able to see her son and her clone-daughter.

***

Nine days later we went out to Evelyn's grave for what would have been her fiftieth birthday. Hannah didn't join us. Visiting her daughter's grave bothered her too much.

We stood there for a long time, seldom talking. The only sound was the rustling of the leaves. The wind played with Evelyn's hair as she squinted into the wind and the setting sun, staring at the gravestone as her fingers brushed back and forth through the petals of flowers we'd brought.

"Do you think she knows we're here?"

"I don't know," I answered. The truth was, I sort of thought she did know, but my logical brain and agnostic leanings kept me from vocalizing such mystical musings.

"Sure she does, Evie," Cain reassured her, lightly rubbing her back.

Her fingertips left the flowers and rested on the headstone. "Is it sad to be dead?"

Neither Cain nor I answered that one. If Evelyn-1 answered, only her clone-child heard the response.

"Ever since the play, I've been dreaming of her," Evelyn said, her voice shaking. "She's flying above me like in the show, but instead of lifting me up to heaven, she pushes me away."

I started to put my arms around her, but was hesitant to intrude.

"Do you think she doesn't want me?"

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding and sat down beside her. "Of course she wants to be with you. But not yet." I put my arms around her, remembering my father sending me away in my childhood dream. "Not for a long time."

"But she knows."

I kissed her hair. "She knows what?"

"She knows..." I felt her grip tighten on my arms, "...that I'm glad I got to live."

I thought her relationship with my wife was one of easy harmony. It had never occurred to me that Evelyn-2 might be haunted by suppressed guilt. Shannon Smith-2 had described the same feeling once. I suspect a child whose mother dies giving birth may experience similar emotions. A guilt no one should have, but shadows them throughout their lives. My eyes glanced at Cain. He was staring at his mother's headstone.

"Evelyn," I began slowly, "she would have wanted you to be grateful you're alive. She'd only be upset if you didn't enjoy your chance at life."

She leaned her head against my chest.

"There's something I have to tell you," I said.

She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "What's wrong?"

I couldn't take my eyes off Evelyn's headstone. "I abandoned her."

Evelyn-2's head moved away from my chest and she looked at me. "What?"

I swallowed nervously. "In Central Park. When Lily fired. I didn't move. I just stood there." I covered my face. "I didn't even squeeze her hand."

"What do you mean?"

"When she saw Lily with the gun, she squeezed my hand." I felt my body start to retch as I dredged up the shameful secret of that night. A secret that Evelyn either never remembered or never mentioned, and one that I never brought up. "And I did nothing."

Evelyn-2 was silent.

"And when she died in our bed, her hand was on top of mine. She'd squeezed my hand again, and again I did nothing."

Still Evelyn was silent. As was Cain.

"I married her. I put her in danger. And whenever she needed me..." I shut my eyes, feeling those moments. Feeling her warm palm against mine, fingers interlaced. And then the pressure of her fingers tightening, palm pushing against mine, hoping for some response. Some reassurance. Waking to feel her limp fingers covering mine, her frightened, dilated eyes permanently open from the moment death took her, facing her death alone as I slept. "I wasn't there."

Cain was staring at me with an expression I couldn't read. If I hadn't given him enough reasons to hate me, maybe this had done it.

Evelyn put her arms around me and sighed. "She didn't care about that," Evelyn said. "But if you want, she forgives you."

Could Evelyn forgive me through her clone? To what extent could we act as the proxy for our dead clone-parents? Evelyn-2 saw her life as an opportunity to add to her c-mother's existence in a positive way. And despite some guilt, she seemed at peace with that relationship.

It occurred to me that I might be able to find a similar peace. I had fought my clone-father's legacy since childhood. Instead of fighting, I could accept our relationship and focus on how to make the best of his legacy. My mom had told me to live as I would want to, and by so doing I'd make my clone-father happy too. It might be true, and believing it to be true would be a tremendous relief. But I wasn't sure if that was doing right by him or being presumptuous. Would I want my clone-son to assume he knew what I had really wanted, or atone for sins when I desired no atonement, or forgive people I wanted to continue hating?

As Evelyn-2 comforted me, I decided that was exactly what I would want. If Evelyn could forgive me from the grave, I could forgive my c-father for his faults and tackle the future as if we were on the same side, father and son. And the moment that I thought that, I felt the lightness of relief begin to ripple through every inch of my body.

But, as much as I wanted to, I didn't accept Evelyn's forgiveness through her clone-daughter. I wanted to hold on to that guilt. We all do things we regret. I wanted to draw inspiration. To try to be better.

The sun set on the cemetery, and we got up to leave. I walked up to the stone and gently rubbed it, hoping she somehow really was around. Something white caught my eye. Lying on the green cemetery lawn behind her headstone was a single lily. Had she come up here on Evelyn's fiftieth birthday? Or had the lily been left on a nearby grave and blown across the grass? I glanced around, but Lily wasn't there. I wondered if she had ever left Lyle and escaped the hell I'd done so little to pull her from. She would be twenty-three years old, five years after I'd accompanied my son to Lyle's to ask Lily to come with us. Five years in which I'd done nothing. She was a grown woman now, I told myself. There were laws and restraining orders. There were a million reasons for being unable to help Lily.

I followed Cain and Evelyn toward the car. Cain slowed his pace to walk beside me. He put his arm around my shoulders. I almost cried at that. "You okay, Dad?"

"Yeah," I said, nodding, and then surprising us both by embracing him.

But I wasn't truly okay. I was shaken up, as my nightmares soon made clear.

Most of the imagery was the same. It was nighttime in a graveyard, and I was standing over my clone-father's grave as usual. When I looked down into the pit, the framed mirror was there, and I saw myself lying down there. The image mimicked my movements, and then beckoned me down to it. Impelled, I lowered myself into the grave and accidentally cracked the mirror. The image grabbed me through the cracks and pulled me down.

But in the past we had always fought silently, me knocking his nose away before he pinned my hand with a shard of glass and climbed out to bury me alive. Now, Adam-1 began talking to me.

"What have you done with my life?" he demanded, his fingers wrapped around my neck, choking me.

I struggled to free my neck from his grasp, eventually gripping his wrists to pull his hands away. "I've saved us."

"You've ended us. You were supposed to live forever. Instead you turned your back on the one man who had that power."

I pushed him off me. "He killed your daughter!"

We stopped fighting.

"He wouldn't do that," Adam-1 said. "She was his granddaughter."

I dropped my hands to my sides, done with the physical fight. "Lyle killed her."

Adam-1's face contorted in anger and anguish, then he grabbed a shard of the mirror and pinned my hand, climbed out and left me flailing in the grave. All three of them stood above me as before. Lily frowned as Lyle and Adam began tossing dirt into the pit, slowly covering the mirror and burying me alive.

I reached out to Lily as far as the glass allowed. My eyes pleading as Lily-3 had once pleaded while Lyle drove her down the street. She walked away.

I looked to my side and saw Cain and Evelyn-2 lying next to me in the grave, their eyes open wide in that awful blank stare. I pulled out the shard that pinned my other hand and started slamming my fists into the mirror.

"He killed your daughter! He killed your daughter! He killed your daughter!" I shouted over and over until I woke up in a cold sweat.

Even after waking I could still hear the dirt being dumped on the lid of my mirrored coffin. I called the light on, expecting to see them all standing in my bedroom. There was no one there. I pulled my blankets from the bed, fearful of finding the bodies of Cain and Evelyn-2 lying next to me, but I was alone.

I left the light on for the remainder of the night.

Table of Contents

69

Nine months later, the holiday season rolled around. It was a time of great optimism. We were on track, or even slightly ahead of schedule, to conduct the first brain transfer into a completely artificial body on January 31. Confidence by the medical team was high.

Evelyn had started second grade, and that December 13 she turned seven. Cain came over early to help me get the place ready for Evelyn's birthday party. I blew the balloons up, and he twisted them into indiscernible balloon animals. By the time Hannah and Martin arrived with Evelyn, the floor was littered with blue, pink, and yellow pastel knots of balloons.

We all shouted, "Surprise!" Evelyn blushed but smiled. She hit Cain in the shoulder with such a wallop that he almost lost his balance. He acknowledged her unexpected brutality with bemused pride, calling his "mother" out for child abuse.

Soon Evelyn was carefully peeling open the wrapping on her presents in an effort not to tear it. The baubles inside included a couple ceramic tigers, a homnivision game that would immerse her in a land where she could interact with roaming lions, cheetahs, and other wildlife, and a book by her favorite poet, Shel Silverstein.

"Uncle Adam?" she asked when she had unwrapped the last present.

"Niece Evelyn?"

"Can we watch Winter Wonderland? I want to see you and my c-mom when you guys were in second grade."

It struck me so hard I had to catch myself. Friday the 13th. The night of Winter Wonderland, exactly forty-three years before. Evelyn's clone had been born on the anniversary of our first marriage. And now her clone was a second grader as we'd been. Again it seemed to me that my life was coming full circle. That it was all a death vision, and that soon I would be lying dead by my mother on the kitchen floor.

"Can I say no to the birthday girl?" I asked, trying to erase the image from my mind.

She cocked her head. "Well...you shouldn't." She smiled.

I forced a laugh. "I'll go get it."

The truth was, I wish I could have said no. I loved the fond memories of Evelyn holding my hand as I skipped/lurched beside her, and of how beautiful she looked in her little wedding dress. But it also reminded me of the night in Central Park, and the night she died.

I watched the video while leaning against the back wall, hoping to avoid attention. But of course people looked at me when I "skipped" out on stage. Then Evelyn-2 paused the hologram and grabbed me by the hand, leading me out to stand in the positions of my younger self and her young c-mother. She hit the play button and we pantomimed the holographic images, including Evelyn yanking me back to the altar. Evelyn-2 laughed out loud as I stumbled back to her side and indicated that Parson Brown could marry us. I smiled, trying to enjoy the moment with her. But I was lost in a Valentine's Day, the night I lost my other Evelyn.

After all the guests left, Hannah and Martin gave Evelyn-2 her last gifts. Evelyn cried when she opened the box with Evelyn-1's backpack.

"Thank you, Mommy," she whispered, and brushed away some tears as Hannah hugged her.

The last present was a birthday letter from Evelyn-1. Letters to our clones were private, but Evelyn started sharing hers with Cain. She felt her c-mother would have wanted it that way after she learned that Cain's clone-father had died in Evelyn's womb.

I don't know what it said. But that year's letter might have mentioned me. For one thing, Evelyn-1 was seven when we met. For another, Evelyn-2 was troubled the rest of the evening, and I suspected her mood was due to the letter.

"Do you want to read your new Silverstein book with me?" I asked her after we had all finished our dinner.

She frowned and didn't look at me. "You don't have to."

I was taken aback. "Hey, Evelyn. I never do it because I have to," I said, trying to keep my voice cheery. "I do it because I like to do it. But if you're not in the mood tonight, then we don't have to."

She looked at me as if it was difficult to do, and shrugged. "Well, I guess we can."

We read A Light in the Attic, me reading a page and her reading one and then back again. During one of her turns she paused and looked deep in thought, using her fingers to brush her hair back behind her ears. It brought my attention to her freckles, all perfectly placed the same as her clone-mother's. Her physical likeness was uncanny, even for clones.

"Uncle Adam?"

"Niece Evelyn?"

"Do you just like me because you were married to my c-mom?"

So that's what was bothering her. Reading about how her c-mother remembered me in the letter, coupled with seeing the video of our marriage in Winter Wonderland, must have made her wonder whether my affection for her was the same as her affection for me, or if I was simply being nice to the clone of my wife. In my head I scoffed at the idea, but then I forced myself to wonder if it might partly be true. I looked down into Evelyn-2's expectant and vulnerable eyes. I wasn't very good at coming up with speeches on the spot, but I knew my answer had better be good or I could crush the heart of a beautiful little girl.

"You never have to worry about that," I began carefully. "I did love your clone-mother so much more than I'd ever dreamed it was possible to love anyone, and I'd love you just because you were so important to her, but that's not why I love you." I rested my forehead against hers. "I love you because you're sweet, and kind, and intelligent, and creative, and you share my love for reading and writing, and because you are who you are. You're not the same as your clone-mother, but you have some of her traits that I loved the best, and you're different in ways that I really and truly adore."

She examined my face. Then she smiled, dropped the book to her lap, and wrapped her arms around me. Without another word she picked the book back up and began reading the next poem.

Table of Contents

70

"So you'll be there New Year's Eve?" Evelyn-2 confirmed with Hannah as we gathered our coats to leave.

We were going up to the cabin a couple days before the Christmas holiday, and would spend the week there. Hannah and Martin were going to his son's apartment in New York for Hanukkah, which was beginning on December 23 and ending on the 30th.

"Of course we will, sweetie," Hannah answered, cupping Evelyn's face in her hands and looking deep into her eyes. "And we'll call you every day from New York."

As we said goodbye, she whispered in my ear. "Keep them safe."

This Christmas would be twenty-five years after Evelyn was shot and Cain's clone-father killed, and when Lily-2 had killed herself. I know Hannah would have rather spent that anniversary with us, but they hadn't seen Martin's family in over a year.

I nodded rigidly, not out of defensiveness but from the memories.

But on Christmas Eve, I tried to blot such dark memories from my mind. We spent the day putting up a fresh Christmas tree that filled the room with an even stronger aroma of pine than usual, decorating it with ornaments old and new, stringing popcorn and cranberries while our favorite carols played throughout the cabin's interior and the fire crackled in the hearth. We sang along with the music and laughed about old times. Blue-4, spread out in front of the fire, stared into the flames. Now benefiting from canine AIS, old Pierre-3 was still with us. And despite the lack of enhanced intelligence, he had an uncanny ability to scent out his gifts and kept trying to open his Christmas presents early.

After our traditional viewing of It's a Wonderful Life and Scrooge, we had our first major argument of the evening. We could open one gift each or go outside and make a snowman. It had been three years since we'd enjoyed a white Christmas, so in the end I lost the argument.

We bundled up and grabbed flashlights and essential snowman accoutrements like a carrot, gloves, and coal substitutes (a pair of sunglasses had to suffice – this was California after all).

"You stay away from your presents," I warned Pierre as we headed towards the front door.

Pierre growled, his ears flattening, body stiff, and began barking. It should have been amusing, but I knew it was something else.

"You okay, Pierre?" I asked, scratching him around the neck while looking towards the window overlooking the porch. I couldn't have seen anything even if there was someone out there. Cain and Evelyn were looking at Pierre and then me, waiting for instructions.

Keep them safe.

"Cain, go get the gun to be on the safe side." I let go of Pierre and headed over to lock the door.

But neither of us took more than three steps before we heard footsteps at the front door. It opened. Lyle-2 walked through the door, followed by Lily-3.

We all stopped. Except Blue. She left her warm bed by the fire and slinked behind a chair. Pierre growled, barked twice.

Cain's voice didn't sound nervous at all. He sounded happy. "Lily?"

"What is this?" I asked Lyle. It didn't seem real. Couldn't really be happening. Another dream. "Get out of here."

Lyle-2 pulled a gun from his coat and held it down at his side. He nodded to Lily. She hardly resembled her c-mothers at all. Her body was too thin, her eyes hollow. They were bloodshot, as if she'd been crying. She looked at Lyle, then Cain, then me. She opened her mouth like she was about to say something.

"Lily," Lyle said.

She flinched, then reached into her coat pocket and withdrew a gun. She wrapped both her small hands around the handle and held it dangling to the floor in front of her, as if even with two hands she couldn't lift the weight.

Lyle looked us over. "Good, you guys are ready. We're going to go for a walk outside."

"We're not going," I answered. I felt my body begin to tingle, tinnitus buzzing my head. Out of the corner of an eye I saw Cain take Evelyn's hand.

"Your choice. If we have to kill you here, you die in pain. What'll it be?"

I hesitated.

Lyle shrugged. "Make your decision," he said as he pointed the gun at Cain. Pierre leaped at Lyle-2 and locked his jaws around Lyle's gun hand, pushing him up against the wall. Lily backed away as Lyle struck Pierre's head with his free hand.

"Lily!" he shouted, spit flying from his mouth.

The gun I'd once bought to kill myself was in the back of a kitchen cabinet. I turned to get it, but I stopped cold at the doorway. For I was already standing there. The wood-framed kitchen doorway seemed to have become a mirror. In my mind, it transformed into a mirrored coffin.

No. He wasn't my mirror image exactly. He was wearing different clothes, his hair was grayer, and his face looked older, wearier than mine. An android, perhaps. But if they had managed to create such a realistic-looking android, they would have made a better replica than this. Of course I knew who it was, though for a moment I didn't want to acknowledge it. My nightmares were coming true. I wasn't staring at a mirrored coffin at all. I was staring at my grandfather.

He had a gun, too.

Table of Contents

71

A shot was fired behind me. That was the only thing that could have torn my gaze away from the man in front of me. I jerked around and reached out to Cain and Evelyn, but they were unhurt. I turned the rest of the way to see that Lyle had managed to fire his weapon. Pierre lay dead on the floor, two of Lyle's fingers imprisoned in his jaws. Blood from Lyle's mangled hand dripped on our dog. Blue streaked out the open front door.

And Adam-1 stepped into the living room. Cain and Evelyn seemed to take it in fairly quickly. The three of us stood still, for the moment in stunned surrender. Over time I had grown accustomed to the ticking of Lyle's old grandfather clock, and I hadn't noticed it since the day I nearly took my own life. Now I did again. Perhaps it was the ticking of the clock that brought it to my head, but while looking from Adam to Lily to Lyle, I heard Jacob Marley say, "You will be haunted by three spirits." It seemed so real that I glanced at the screen to make sure our Scrooge movie wasn't replaying.

I may have been losing my mind. There was no movie. And my three ghosts, all from Christmas Past, were three flesh-and-blood bodies.

Lily found a towel and wrapped it around Lyle's maimed hand. He cringed as she treated him. I realized, regrettably, that his artificial blood and AIS would stop the bleeding and the pain within a minute or so.

My attention returned to the figure standing in front of me. Long ago emotions began to seep in through the wall of shock. The man my mother had loved as her father. The father who saved me from the witch, whose holographic lap I had once sat in as he wished me Happy Birthday, who told me he was proud of me. "You're alive."

He surveyed me, his eyes pausing over my face. "Hmm." Then he turned from me to see how Lyle was doing.

I shouldn't have been that surprised. Although his letters and journal had said nothing about putting his body into cryonic freeze, such a development should have been obvious. A man so obsessed with immortality would have grasped at all available options. The possibility of ever being awoken from cryonic freeze in 2033 would have been considered extremely remote, but there was still a semblance of a chance. Surely that was part of the reason he chose a form of suicide that would allow him to be taken to the hospital, where he would die under controlled circumstances. What shook me was that he had kept it from me.

"Why didn't you tell me in your journal?" I asked.

My grandpa ignored me, focused only on Lyle. "Are you okay?"

Cain put a hand on my shoulder to steady me. My c-father was closer to Lyle after all, not feeling that he could trust his clone to unfreeze him if the opportunity arose. He cared as little about me as I'd convinced myself that I cared about him for so many years. He was not the father who would save me from witches with curled fingernails, or who would join me in creating a life we could both be proud of, or reminisce about Sarah and comfort one another in her loss. He simply saw me as a tool to his immortality. A tool that was no longer needed.

"Cain, I'd like to introduce you to your great-grandfather, Adam-1," I said.

Adam-1 looked back at Cain. "He's not related to me."

"That's your loss," I told my c-father. "With my life you finally got to marry and have children out of love, not just to push your career and hide from death."

I heard Lily-3 gasp. She, of course, knew nothing of the revelations I'd leveled at Lily-2 on that Christmas Eve a quarter century ago, and I immediately regretted my words.

Adam-1 glanced at Lily-3. "Don't worry. He's lying." He patted her arm. "We've been in love for a century."

Her eyes met his and the corners of her lips perked up a little. I saw Lyle watching them. He frowned.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked Adam. But he ignored me again.

"Why do you think?" Lyle-2 said, responding for him, turning back to me. He now held his gun in his left hand and pressed his injured hand against his leg. "You broke Lily's heart, stole my business, and turned your back on your clone-father. It's time to end this, and let Adam have his life back." He glanced at Cain and Evelyn. "And get rid of the ones who made Lily end her life."

"You're the one who made her kill herself," I said. "She couldn't stand to be molested by you."

My clone-father looked at Lily. She shrunk from Adam's questioning expression and Lyle's rage. Lyle's head had turned red like I'd seen his c-father's turn at a Thanksgiving dinner long ago.

"Lily," Cain said, reaching out. "Come with us."

At first she seemed frozen. But slowly her gun began to lower, her wide eyes fixed on Cain. He took a step toward her.

"Don't," said Lyle.

I almost told him to stop. To abandon Lily. To be the kind of man I'd always been. But I didn't.

Cain took another step, and Lyle fired. My son dropped to the floor.

"Idiot!" Adam-1 hissed at Lyle. "Do you want to create more evidence?"

Evelyn fell to the floor by Cain's head, and I followed. He was dazed, his eyes rolling around. Evelyn propped his head up and held him to her.

"You're okay," she told him. "You're gonna be okay."

I thought she might be right. There was just a small spot of blood between his heart and stomach. But then I saw the exit wound, and the red-black stain that saturated Evelyn's pants and sweater.

I didn't say anything to my son. I didn't tell him I loved him, how proud I was of him, that he was a better man than I had been. I wanted to, but nothing came out. I enveloped Cain with my body, holding him fast between us.

Cain's eyes focused on Evelyn's. They were hauntingly calm. "I'll be your son again."

She nodded. "Yes," she whispered. She put her forehead against his. "Yes."

He closed his eyes and the side of his head fell against Evelyn's chest. My son was still.

She shook him. "Cain?" she said shakily.

I held them both tighter.

"Cain," she sobbed. She buried her face into his hair, and then began to graze her fingernails through the hair around his temples, as if she was trying to soothe him to sleep.

I stood up. Fear, helplessness, and rage engulfed my mind. Keep them safe. My son was dead. But I heard his voice. What are you going to do? I took a step. Kill Lyle.

I stopped. In my youth I'd been too timid. After Lyle's death I became too rash. Now I had to find the balance like Jack, keeping my head clear and acting less impulsively in the hopes of finding an opportunity to save Evelyn. And at that point, she was the last remaining reason to live.

"We need to get going," Lyle said. "Adam," he pointed his gun at me, "you're going to have to carry..." His eyes went back to the man he'd just killed. He was rattled, but I didn't know if it was his injured hand or the killing of my son.

"Where are we going?" I asked.

His eyes were locked on my son's body. "Just pick him up."

"Don't do this," I said softly to my clone-father. "You've already wasted one life as the puppet of the man who killed your daughter."

"What?" Adam-1 blinked. He looked at me as if for the first time, searching my face for signs of deception. "What?"

"It's true," I said. "Lyle knows."

Adam faced Lyle, his gun raised a few inches.

"He's just trying to turn us against each other," Lyle-2 said. "Let's get going. We've got a long night."

"A woman named Gabrielle Burns murdered Sarah," Adam-1 said finally. "I had a dream you made up that lie."

My jaw went slack. I grabbed the sleeve of his jacket. "In a cemetery?"

He raised his gun toward me, but stopped and met my eyes. He was silent. I'd heard that identical twins sometimes appeared to share thoughts, having some sort of subconscious connection, even when separated. Did we have a similar connection? Had we already met? Was that why he began talking to me in the nightmare last March – because he had been awakened from cryonic freeze? Or were we sharing dreams because we shared the same soul after all?

"Come on," Lyle pressed.

I kept my focus on my clone-father. "Were we in a cemetery?"

"Let's go," he answered after a pause.

"And if we refuse?"

Lyle touched his ear as if he was listening to something. "I'll shoot Evelyn in her knees and stomach, wait until her AIS saves her squirming and screaming body from its agony, and then shoot her in the head. Then we'll make two trips during which you can drag each of them through the forest. But it'll be a lot easier on all of us if you pick up your son and drag him with us while she walks."

I looked at Evelyn. She was still cradling the lifeless body of Cain. Her tears had ceased, and she was staring off into space. Eventually she sensed I was watching her and turned to face me.

"I'm sorry."

"It's okay," she said.

"Enough talk." Lyle-2 demanded.

Evelyn let me take my son from her, and she stood up to go. But instead of walking toward the door, she walked toward the wall where her backpack sat.

"Stop," said Lyle.

Evelyn stopped in mid-stride just a foot from her backpack while Lyle again put his hand to his ear, then nodded to Lily.

"Let the Jew have her Star of David."

Lily walked over to the backpack and carefully pulled out the sketches and art supplies. She handed the empty bag to Evelyn without looking up. Evelyn's eyes flashed a spark of gratitude as she clutched the heirloom closely to her chest.

Table of Contents

72

And so we began our journey into the woods.

Except for occasional orders from Lyle-2 to move faster and some grunting as Evelyn or I slipped or scratched ourselves through the steeper and more overgrown areas, the journey was a silent one. And it was dark – not the lustrous full moon so often seen in my nightmare. The moon was but a tiny sliver as it neared its new moon stage. The stars, so vivid and alive in the dark, clear skies of Sequoia National Park, provided most of the feeble natural light, while our captors led the way with flashlights. Still, I knew the mountains well, and I could see enough to know where we were. They were taking us to an area far from where typical backpackers were likely to go. Only the native wildlife would ever discover us.

My load was a weight on my arms and my soul. Most of the time I walked backwards, holding Cain up under his armpits while his feet dragged shallow grooves through the snow. Sometimes on the flatter stretches I would put him over my shoulder or cradle him in my arms like I had when he was born. It was during the latter when the pain was most acute. Then I could see his quiet face dimly lit by the starlight. I wondered if he now knew the answers to the questions that dogged the astrophysicists. Did he now know the true nature of reality and of the multiverse, and humanity's purpose in it all? Or was there nothing – either because there was nothing there, or because clones truly had no soul with which to see what lies beyond?

"What did you see?" I asked Adam, who was walking ahead of me.

"What do you mean?"

"When you were dead." I slipped on some snow and fell to my knees.

He backtracked to help me, holding Cain as I got to my feet.

"Tell me," I said as he eased my son back into my arms.

"It's cold. It's dark. Suffocating," he said, walking beside me, his eyes focused straight ahead and at nothing, as if reliving his death. "You're naked and vulnerable and feel like a million creatures are watching you, but you're all alone. You can't talk or even scream, but you wish you could scream because of the pain, pressure that feels like it'll crush your skull. The loneliness. Visions that flash insanely in your mind, driving you mad.

"That's what the afterlife is – a pained and confused insanity that lasts forever, existing only for the amusement of a merciless God."

"What visions?" I asked.

"Nightmares you never wake from. Some that haunted you in life, some new. The Grim Reaper grabbing me and forcing me into a bus filled with stinking, rotting corpses – one of them my mother. Being buried alive again and again. Holding my daughter as she died frightened and alone, but she couldn't see me holding her and looking into her eyes."

I searched my clone-father's face. Had he seen visions of my dreams and my life?

"I'm never going back to that," Adam-1 said, but with a slight tremor in his voice. "You're taking my place."

I stopped, and he kept going. Cain's face looked so serene. Those weren't the visions my son was seeing. Or that my mom and Evelyn were experiencing. Or that I would soon experience.

I set Cain down, turned around, and began walking backwards, dragging Cain by the armpits. I wanted to see how Evelyn was doing. Near the beginning of our march she kept her eyes downcast. She stumbled more and more as time wore on, taking longer to get up each time, but she also began looking more intense and determined, sometimes focusing on Cain's body with a quiet resolve. Or perhaps I was imagining it. In any case, it gave me hope. There was nothing we could do at the moment. If we ran, they would shoot us. But I kept alive a hope that something would present itself when we reached our destination. Whatever that was.

At least an hour passed. My legs didn't hurt, but the cold and the ache of my natural muscles consumed my mind, which drifted in and out of awareness as we marched. Evelyn was walking just behind Cain's feet. She lifted her eyes from Cain to focus on something behind my back in the direction we were heading. I didn't turn around, but could see the shadows of the trees and the people walking ahead of us begin to sharpen as we went along. There was a light ahead.

A few minutes later we reached the site. A lantern burned. Lyle-2 had either left it burning, or someone not yet seen had lit it. Someone, like my clone-father, who had once been dead.

I carefully laid Cain's body down on the ground and gave my muscles a rest. My legs stood me back up, and I rubbed my arms. Evelyn's pallid face was fixed at a spot behind me.

"Mommy!" she cried and ran toward the grave.

I turned looking for Hannah. One of the taller giant redwoods towering up far beyond the reach of the lantern would be our headstone. The dark pit below it had coarse edges and roots jutting from its walls. To the side of the pit, the light of the lantern glinted off four large cans of kerosene and several containers of concentrated hydrofluoric acid. In case our bodies were later found, they wanted to destroy as much of our DNA as possible. They didn't want us coming back.

Hannah wasn't there. Instead I watched Evelyn-2 get the hug of which she'd dreamed. I saw Evelyn-2 hand the backpack to the person. And then her c-mother was looking at me. As Evelyn-1 embraced her c-daughter and eased her down into the pit, I staggered forward, stopping a couple feet away.

Evelyn was the one to break our long silence. She looked at me, smiled, and said, "It's good to see you."

I couldn't respond verbally. I felt my head wobbling as an irrepressible grin grew on my lips that must have looked completely out of place.

"Get in," Lyle said, motioning to the grave.

I found a voice. "You're alive."

She raised both her hands out of the grave to me, and I knelt down to grasp them and kiss them, and then her lips and face and hair, breathing her in. Our situation suddenly seemed trivial. A nuisance.

"Get in the grave," Lyle repeated.

I held Evelyn as best I could from the edge of the grave. "You didn't kill her."

Lyle hesitated. "Just get in."

I turned to see the barrel of his gun aimed at my forehead, forcing some fear and doubt to begin crawling back into my mind. "You can't kill us," I said. "We'd just come back."

"No, you won't," he responded. "It ends tonight." He waved his gun at Evelyn, Evelyn-2, and Cain. "All their medical records and DNA backups in La Jolla and Atlanta have been replaced with the DNA of others. They'll be gone forever."

"And me?" I asked.

"Adam-1 will take over everything you had in life. He'll marry Lily, join the GC Board, help us undermine Barebots, and together our family will hold the immortality of the human race."

It sounded too extraordinary and perverse and grandiose to be real. It must all be a death vision from the day my mother died. Perhaps it was more than a vision. Perhaps I was in my own purgatory, a special one that God invented for the first human clone. Make him lose his mother, and then send him to a private hell where he can lose everyone else, eventually to perish himself at the hands of the one true Adam – the one God had created, not humans.

I met my clone-father's stare. He was as grim as in my dreams.

"Did you see Lyle in her eyes?" I asked him.

"What?"

"When you held your dead daughter in your arms and looked in her eyes. Did you see Lyle holding a gun to your head?"

His eyes told me as much as my mother's eyes had shown me so long ago. At first they widened, asking me how I knew. Then they understood.

"Put Cain in the grave," Lyle-2 said.

I heard a cry and turned to see my wife covering her mouth and tears sliding down her cheeks as she saw her son was dead.

"I'm sorry," I said.

She looked up at me, sharing our grief, and then turned to Lyle. "You did this?"

Lyle avoided her gaze, looking instead at the man he'd killed.

I tried to read my clone-father. Would he really shoot me, or was he only bluffing for the sake of Lyle, believing he would die if he crossed his old master? I looked down at Evelyn. She was now watching me, as if expecting I might do something, pulling her old backpack's zipper back and forth while protectively standing in front of her c-daughter. I could grab the gun from Lily and try to shoot the distracted and newly left-handed Lyle before he shot me. It was a chance, if a slim one. But it was possibly the only chance I'd have.

As I steeled myself to reach for Lily's gun, my clone-father waved his gun at me to put my son in the pit.

I frowned at him. "Sarah lost her life fulfilling your dream of immortality, and now you're siding with her murderer. You never loved her at all. She was just a tool to you. A disposable vessel for your new body."

Adam-1 shook his head. "You're lying about how she died."

"You think I could have lied in the dream?"

Lyle aimed his gun at my head. "Put Cain in the grave now."

I inspected the hole next to me. The bottom was a shadow about five feet down – certainly not a shallow grave. I was giddily surprised not to see myself staring up from a mirrored surface at the bottom.

Evelyn put the backpack down briefly to help me down next to her, with me half expecting my foot to crack the surface below and for hands to ensnare my ankles. But there was nothing down there but dirt. My clone-father who dragged me down in the dream was already out of the grave. I wondered if he had told Lyle of the dream, and Lyle had planned my death based on it.

"You know it's true," I said, turning to face Adam from inside the grave as I reached out to drag my son's body towards me, then slowly backed up, easing him down into the pit. "You're so scared of death that you'd forsake Sarah to save yourself. She was stronger than you. Mom knew she was risking her life by standing up to Lyle, but she did it anyway. She did it for your life and mine."

"Unlike you, I'll bring Sarah back."

"She didn't want to be cloned. She was afraid Lyle would molest her again."

Adam-1 studied me, then stared off into the darkness. Toward Lyle-1? Lily-3 glanced back as well.

"You're lying. She would have..." he trailed off, wagging his gun back and forth, but no longer pointed at me. "She would have told me."

"She wrote it in her diary," I whispered. "Lyle said he'd kill you if she ever told you about it."

Adam dropped the gun to his side and tapped his thigh with it several times, then he motioned for me to finish pulling Cain into the grave. I felt the giddiness build to an almost shaking in my chest and throat.

"He killed your daughter!"

My clone-father looked deep in thought. Like Evelyn had looked when I proposed.

"It doesn't matter if he did or didn't," he said. "I'm not willing to die."

"You don't have to die," I said as Evelyn leaned up against me, keeping hold of one of my hands. Then she squeezed it, just as she had on a Christmas Eve twenty-five years before.

I stared at our hands as it dawned on me. She hadn't squeezed my hand out of fear. She squeezed my hand to liberate me. Because somehow she'd known how much it had tormented me.

That was the moment I finally understood. An understanding about life that Mom, Evelyn, and Jack had known all along. The beauty of love that made death less frightening. Though, in some way, even more tragic.

I squeezed her hand back, and smiled at her in spite of everything. She smiled back, and I again saw her as Evelyn in second grade, returning my smile as Jimmy Preston tried his best to destroy us. Something that Evelyn would never let happen. What a beautiful person. Once again I'd be unable to protect her.

Our foreheads touched each other lightly, and I kissed her, tenderly drinking in the feel of her lips and of her love, wishing I could teach my c-father what had taken so much to teach me. What his mom had surely known as she tried to console him in her hospital room while the cancer took her, and what my mom knew as she cradled my newborn body in her arms while her killer stood outside the window in the rain.

Squeezing her hand once more, I turned back up to face my grandfather. But I was out of options. Prayers to God would fall on deaf ears, as they had when I ran into the house praying for my mother's life. But I found myself praying anyway. To Jack's God, Evelyn's God, and the God that my mother had believed in and that Cain had yearned for. I prayed to God, to anyone or anything that had the power. I prayed for the same thing that I'd wished for at my last birthday, and the same thing that my clone-father had wished for at his mother's funeral.

A wish that I didn't have the power to grant. But he did.

"You don't owe anything more to Sarah's killer. You can reclaim your life and avenge your daughter. You can do what you promised at your mom's funeral."

His eyes met mine.

"You promised," I said. "No more Sarahs will die."

The sound of my voice was muted and dead in the dirt walls. But he heard me.

Lily and Lyle had their guns trained on Evelyn and me, Lily holding her gun with both hands and Lyle with his left hand. He was glancing at Adam-1 with some caution.

"I was wrong," my clone-father replied.

"Lily," Lyle said, again listening to the speaker in his ear. "Kill Evelyn."

Lily's chin shook. Her hands raised and lowered her gun a couple times.

"Adam abandoned you for her," Lyle said. "You have to do it."

Instead she pointed the gun at me. "Why didn't you help me?"

My mouth hung open for a moment, about to defend myself. But then I nodded, thinking of all I had done by doing nothing. "I'm sorry, Lily. Go ahead."

Her neck and face tensed as she shook her head at me, and then at Cain's body lying at my feet. She turned to face Lyle.

"What?" he asked, his face reddening.

She placed the gun to her temple. She fired.

None of us moved as her body appeared to waver before it collapsed to the ground. I saw a young Lily watching me as I closed her in behind Lyle's car door. Lily desperately forcing my hand to her breast. Lily holding a gold locket up to me on Christmas morning, eyes shining with expectation.

Lily splayed dead on the ground in front of me.

Evelyn broke the spell by reaching up for the gun that had fallen from Lily's hand. Lyle-2 stepped on it before she got there. She looked up at him as he pointed his gun at her head, his lips contorted into a warped grin. I pushed her to the floor of the grave against a huddling Evelyn-2 and my son's body, trying to shield them.

The sound of the shot hammered my ears. Feeling nothing, I was sure Evelyn had been hit. But she was staring intensely behind my shoulder. I looked back to see Lyle-2 staggering, his right shoulder wounded. Adam-1's gun was aimed at him.

Before I'd taken it all in, a second shot was fired. This one from the darkness of the surrounding woods. My clone-father collapsed onto his back a couple feet from the pit, still alive but panting hard. He raised his gun to fire again.

"Put it down," Lyle-2 said breathlessly. He had recovered enough to rest his awkward gun hand on his right forearm for a steadier aim. "Drop it, and we'll clone you after we kill you. Don't do it, and we'll kill you now and throw you in there with them."

Evelyn and I stood up in our grave. From the corner of my eye I saw her taking it all in – my c-father, Lyle, Lily, the darkness from which the last shot had come. I fixed on my grandpa. He looked terrified and defeated. Not the self-assured man in the holovideos, or the brave man who rescued me in my early dreams. But he had tried. And that was enough. Enough for me to see him as my mom had. Enough not to hate him. Enough to love him.

He dropped the gun and raised his other hand in submission.

Lyle-2 nodded. He bent down to caress Lily's cheek with the back of his injured hand. "Lily," he whispered. Then he straightened himself up, listening again to his earpiece as he stepped over Lily so that he could tower over my clone-father. His eyes seemed glazed with fury. He looked down at Adam's pants. "Adam, did you just wet yourself again? Your uncle said you did that when your mother died. That's how we knew you so well. After all these years, and you're still nothing but a scared little boy in your mother's hospital room." Lyle-2 glanced over at me. "Must run in the family. Sarah peed when we told her she was about to die. And that her son would be next."

I was dimly aware of rocks cutting into my hands as I forced them harder against the edge of the grave. My grandpa's face went from pale to flush.

"You remember Sarah," Lyle-2 said to my grandfather. "The daughter you let us rape so you could live forever."

"No," Adam whimpered.

"You knew it, Adam. You could tell. The way she suddenly got nervous whenever her Grandpa Lyle was around. You just didn't want to admit it. Better to live in ignorance than die, right?"

Adam began slowly shaking his head. "Sarah."

Lyle-2 looked back again at Lily. The last glimmer of sanity seemed to have left him. "I must admit," he said, "your family line did improve somewhat with Adam-2. He was both braver and smarter than you. At least I never saw him piss his pants. And at least he was never stupid enough to kill himself in an attempt to live forever."

Adam-1 held his breath. Although his face was like mine, I couldn't read my clone-father's expression.

Lyle wagged the gun at my c-father's head. "How could you be that stupid? I faked the stroke knowing you'd think you had to die right away if you ever wanted to be cloned. I wanted you dead because I knew you treated my daughter like shit. And mull that over, Adam," Lyle continued. "Think about it. You would have surely still been alive to benefit from your company's AIS, and there's a good chance that would have kept you alive till today at 110 years old, all ready for your brain to be put into a new, young body. You see? Neither you, nor your daughter, ever had to die at all. But now, because of you, you'll both be gone." He took a step back. "And no, I'm not cloning you. Adam Elwell is dead."

Lyle clenched his teeth and aimed at Adam-1's head as Adam rolled towards me, grabbing his gun. Lyle fired, but Adam's sudden movement caused Lyle to miss his aim, and he hit Adam in the side of the chest. Instantaneously, Lyle-2 cursed and ducked – a rain of small rocks pelting him. It appeared that Evelyn-2 had been busy during all of her stumbles, grabbing stones and slipping them into her backpack, which Evelyn-1 was now flinging at Lyle-2.

My clone-father was dazed but lucid enough to push the gun towards the edge of the pit where I could grab it. Lyle-2 finally got off another shot that whizzed by my head and hit the ground nearby. Thank you Evelyn and Pierre. I slunk down into the cover of the grave as I swung my arm around to fire. The movement seemed to take forever during which Lyle-2 had his gun aimed at my head. I was sure he'd fire long before I could aim in his direction. It was only after I felt myself squeezing the trigger that I saw his eyes were not locked on me, but on Lily. The more I replay that moment, a moment I relive often, the more I believe he was waiting for me.

My bullet struck his forehead. Bits of skull and brain sprayed out the back of his head. Like both Lyles, I too knew what it was to kill a person.

"Are you okay?" Evelyn asked.

Before I could answer, I was slammed backwards against the wall of the grave as a shot rang out, knocking the wind out of me. My right shoulder felt like it was on fire. Evelyn's hand grabbed my other shoulder and forced me to crouch deeper into the pit. She put down her backpack and pressed her other hand to my right shoulder.

"You're hit," she whispered, choking back a cry.

"I'm fine," I said. Although I couldn't raise my arm, it felt like the AIS was already deadening the pain and staunching the blood loss. "Really," I insisted over Evelyn's doubtful stare.

My eyes pointed above us, and she nodded, turning in the direction of the shot. We could see nothing outside the circle of light emanating from the lantern. I tried to raise my arm enough to aim at the lantern, but my shoulder injury prevented me. Evelyn took my gun and fired. On her second shot, the light went out with a loud pop and shattering of glass. In darkness, the odds were more even.

It was Lyle-1 out there. I knew it was. And I was hungry to kill him. In the cover of darkness, I began to clumsily scramble out of the pit to reach Lyle-2's gun with my left hand. And it's loaded. That's the way this was destined to end. But Evelyn tugged me back and flashed me a look that said, "What in the hell do you think you're doing?"

For a moment I was livid, primal instincts driving me in single-minded intensity. Someone was standing between me and avenging my mother by murdering the man I'd long since given up all hope of killing, and Lyle's description of my mother's death had stoked my rage beyond imagining.

"It's Lyle," I forced out in a strained whisper.

Evelyn's stern nod and glare slowly calmed my blind, animalistic fury. I managed to stay put and stay quiet as she felt along the rim of the pit and handed me the gun that Lily had dropped. Actually, she sort of shoved it into my chest.

I took it, and we waited in the darkness. There was a rustling sound a little ways off, and I fired towards it three times. But the rustling continued, growing fainter and further away. He knew we had the advantage from the pit he had dug for us, and he wasn't taking any chances. It was his turn to run.

*

When the sounds had completely faded into the distance, I helped Evelyn and Evelyn-2 out of the grave and then they helped me climb up beside my grandfather. I rested his head to my chest, comforting him as I once hoped he would comfort me. Evelyn crawled over next to us while holding her clone-daughter to her side.

"Not again," he mumbled, shaking. "Not the dark..."

"No, you're alive," I assured him. "It's just the darkness of night. Look, you can see my face. And there are the stars," I said, pointing skywards without looking up myself.

His eyes looked unfocused into mine, and then beyond me to the stars.

"I don't want to go back," he pleaded. "Don't let me go back."

"This time it'll be a different place," I insisted.

He gripped me tighter like he was clinging to life. Then he examined my face with an anguished, childlike expression. The expression his mother might have seen on her deathbed.

"Please don't die."

I imagined Great-Grandma Sarah trying to comfort her son as she felt Death stealing her away from him, and nothing she could do. I lightly touched my grandpa's face. Or was it mine.

I knew, one day, I would die. But I nodded anyway.

Evelyn touched his hand. He turned to see her. I could see his eyes glistening in the starlight. He shook his head, apologizing, knowing words were useless with Cain lying there in the grave.

"Your son," he managed.

"It's okay," she responded, gripping his hand.

Adam-1 held her hand to his cheek, shaking his head at her kindness. Then he looked off into the woods as if something had caught his eye.

"Sarah?" he whispered. "Sarah."

I glanced up as well, a fleeting hope that my mother would be standing there. I strained to see anything. Anything. But my eyes could see nothing. His body stiffened in my embrace, and I cried out in vain as his life slipped away from his body.

My grandpa, my father, and a part of myself were dead.

Evelyn put her arm around me, and we sat silently in the forest for a long time.

Table of Contents

Biographies are but clothes and buttons of the man – the biography of the man himself cannot be written.

– Mark Twain

EPILOGUE

Eventually we stood and covered the bodies of Cain, Adam, and Lily with snow in the hopes of discouraging scavengers until their bodies could be recovered. We then trudged back to the cabin as wordlessly as we'd come. When we arrived, we called the police. And then Evelyn called Hannah.

People awoke all over America to the breaking news as early reports filtered down and the detectives made progress in their investigation. Within a couple days the details of the story were mostly known. Rejuve had secretly brought back six people from cryonic freeze who had been frozen using pre-2034 techniques. The first four were merely test subjects – one of them dying in the process, the other three surviving and being re-frozen. The last two were, of course, Adam Elwell-1 and Lyle Gardener-1. The dates for the rejuvenation of Adam and Lyle appeared to be in the second week of March 2084, and Lyle-1 corroborated that approximate time period.

Tracking down Lyle-1 didn't require intelligence-enhanced detective work. He had been living at the home of Lyle-2 and Lily-3 along with Adam-1. We implicated him in our police statement at the cabin, and they sent a squad car out to Lyle-2's place. He wasn't there, but an attendant said they had gone to Lyle-2's cabin near Yosemite for the holidays. The local police found him there and questioned him.

Lyle initially denied that he had just returned from Sequoia, saying that he didn't know where the other three were. But that weak alibi didn't stand up for long. For one thing, his car engine was still warm. For another thing, traces of cat urine were found on his tire, and it was soon determined that said urine was courtesy of none other than our cat Blue. The jury's still out on whether Blue had simply taken cover near the warmest car after she ran out of the cabin, or if her enhanced intelligence had somehow driven her instincts to mark the stranger's territory. Or maybe she was just using her rare moment outside the house to get back at the things that had killed two of her c-mothers – automobile tires.

Upon finding his initial alibi trashed, Lyle-1 explained that he knew of their conspiracy but had not taken part in it. Lyle-2's complete plan was to have my clone-father kill me, along with Cain, Evelyn-2, and Evelyn-1 who'd been rejuvenated three days before. Adam-1 would die "accidentally" a few months later, after Lyle-2 had forged Adam's name on documents declining the option to be cloned.

On Christmas Eve, Lyle-1's conscience got the best of him, and he drove out there to prevent the crime. Finding no one in our cabin, he supposedly left the scene and drove back home. According to him, the person who shot at us after Lyle-2 and Lily-3 were dead was someone he had seen but not known, and he believed the mysterious stranger was still at large. The weapon that person fired was never found, leaving an opening for the jury to find that explanation possible.

But they didn't. Lyle-1 was found guilty of murder, attempted murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and kidnapping. He is now serving six consecutive 99-year sentences.

"Adam, I swear I tried to stop them," he called across the courtroom railing as they began leading him toward the door. "Just like I tried to stop Gabrielle."

I paused, not looking at him, trying to control my trembling bottom lip.

"If only your mother were still alive," he continued.

My mom had once said she wanted to live on through me, and that sudden memory warmed me somehow. I turned to face my great-grandfather just as they led him by me, his grin taunting me. I thought of my mom staring Lyle down that Thanksgiving Day, and tried my best to replicate her strength. I grabbed his collar and pulled him to a stop. The bailiff began to remove my grip but changed his mind, standing ready in case it got out of hand.

"But Lyle," I said, feeling my mom's strength coursing through me. The warmth of her comfort. The sting of her loss. "She is."

Lyle studied my eyes. His grin, that had always terrified me so much, faded to a frown.

We remained locked in that silent battle until the bailiff pulled my hand away and pushed Lyle forward. He dropped his gaze to his shackled feet as he carefully made his way to a side exit. I almost pitied him as my once invincible terror shuffled away as an old, defeated man. I watched him till the door shut him from view. I haven't seen him since that moment. I hope I never do. But if I do, I hope my mother is still here inside me.

***

As for me, the aftermath of the so-called Christmas Clone Killings has been a time of both anguish and healing. We mourned for Cain, Lily, and my clone-father. And for Lyle-2. We were able to hold funeral services for Cain, Lily, Adam, and Pierre at the new Elwell family plot located on a section of our property in the redwoods. Eventually we'd also get permission to have my mom's remains and those of Aunt Louise, Lily-1, and Lily-2 moved from the San Diego cemetery to our family cemetery.

After the funerals we opened the Christmas presents that we never had the opportunity to unwrap during the holidays, including those for Cain. Evelyn-2 had painted a portrait of Cain sitting on a star and gazing down at the earth. We ended up inscribing it with the epitaph Mark Twain had written for his daughter:

Warm summer sun, shine kindly here;

Warm southern wind, blow softly here;

Green sod above, lie light, lie light –

Good-night, dear heart, good-night, good-night.

Love,

Adam and Evelyns

We had it chiseled on his headstone.

On my grandfather's headstone we used a poem written by a distant relative more than one hundred years ago.

These Redwoods from the hand of the Creator made,

Growing through aeons of time content to stand,

Performing their stolid, steadfast, sentinel duty –

They keep their timely vigil for a seeming eternity.

– Rev. Elwell Mason Drew, The Redwoods

The next few weeks were busy as Barebots prepared for the momentous operation. An operation that was now set to happen on Evelyn-1. Lyle had brought her back, but had only cured her immediate cause of death, believed to be an artificially created clot that traveled to her brain. The cause of her disease, the mutating genetic sequence we'd never been able to solve, was still destroying and aging her body, which was well over 120 years genetically speaking. Not knowing what the genetic poisoning would do next, we all agreed her operation should happen as quickly as possible, and Evelyn offered to be the first guinea pig rather than risking a terminally ill child.

There was some concern that Evelyn's testimony would be questioned at the trial following her brain transplant, or that she might die during the operation and be unable to give any testimony whatsoever. They therefore holotaped Evelyn's depositions, which could be used in case of death and compared with her actual testimony in case of life.

As scheduled, we were set to perform the operation on January 31, 2085. Hannah had to get a prescription for sedatives. We had just lost Cain. We had just been given Evelyn back. She couldn't lose her again.

Evelyn was surprisingly calm. She'd spent the past month, when not giving sworn depositions, visiting friends including Cathy Hepburn, Bernadette-2, and Nicole Kidman-2 in New York. Evelyn even took a minute to talk to Hugh Hefner-2, listening to his offer for her to pose in before-and-after spreads, which Evelyn demurely declined.

She also spent time at our special place at the Wild Animal Park, taking long walks along the La Jolla beach, and talking to our family at our graveyard in Sequoia.

Too quickly, the day for the operation arrived.

"I don't want you to feel bad if this doesn't work out," she told me after Hannah and Martin had left the operating room.

Being in those sterile rooms of white and chrome and monitors had always made me uneasy. Flashes of stumps where my legs once were. And waking up to find Hannah crying over me, certain my wife was dead. I gave Evelyn a look that might have captured the impossibility of the task she asked.

"I mean it," she said, reaching out to run her fingers through Evelyn-2's hair. "Because I don't want you to be moody around my c-daughter."

I helped Evelyn-2 up to the bed, and she kissed her c-mother on the cheek. Evelyn held her close and whispered something into her ear, and Evelyn-2 nodded. I eased her back down and took my wife's hands.

"I need you," was all I could think to say.

She smiled. "You're sappy."

"I know. I'm sor—"

She kissed me, then held my head close to her. "You know I always come back to you."

We hugged each other for about a minute or so. Not long enough. I breathed in the fragrance of Evelyn's skin for the last time. Her artificial body would never replicate that.

The surgeons from Barebots entered led by Bobby the Barebot. He had simulated this exact operation on Evelyn more than twenty thousand times and hadn't lost his simulated Evelyn even once during the past two weeks.

He put his hand on my shoulder. "She'll be better than new in 6.3 hours."

I nodded.

"You ready, Evelyn?" Bobby asked.

She nodded, and then used her real hand to squeeze mine one last time. I squeezed back. We smiled. I let go, and stepped back.

"I love you!" she called out, now looking nervous.

"I love you, too," I said, fear sinking in deeper.

A doctor attached the anesthesia, and we smiled bravely until she lost consciousness.

*

The physical brain transfer took exactly 6.3 hours. When I looked at in on paper, it didn't seem nearly as overwhelming as some of the other things humans and AI were doing by then. Slowly letting the artificial blood supply from the new body replace the brain's natural blood supply. Physically removing it from the natural body and placing it in the artificial body's skull. Connecting its base to the artificial spine so that it could communicate with the new nervous system. Checking to see if the nanocomputers were sending the correct balance of proteins to the brain to make it believe it was in its natural environment. Child's play, Bobby assured me.

Finally, Bobby "turned it on," so to speak.

We didn't invite the media as Rejuve had for its first rejuvenation. The waking of Evelyn was a private affair attended only by Bobby, Hannah, Martin, Evelyn-2, and myself. We all stood next to her bed, terrified and hopeful. Every feature of the body looked exactly as Evelyn had looked – virtually a replica of the Evelyn I'd married. She had to come back to me one more time.

And, as you know, she did. Her eyelids flickered a bit, and then she opened them. We all gasped and cried and held her hands to see if she was not only awake, but still the same Evelyn we had known and loved.

A hint of a grin wiggled on her lips, then a look of worry covered her face. Through closed lips she slowly said, "Oilcan."

We were all so strung out, the meaningless word and the way she said it left us horrified.

Evelyn's brain was the only brain properly functioning at the time. She laughed and smiled – a glowing smile – and looked at me.

"The Wizard of Oz!" I cried out stupidly.

Evelyn's brain was clearly able to work her new facial muscles as she had her real ones. She rolled her eyes and nodded, and then laughed again as we all began hugging her.

"It's alive! Alive!" Bobby the Barebot exclaimed. That an artificial person declared this only added to the surreal moment.

In the giddiness that followed, we had Evelyn demonstrate the rest of her physical abilities through a little Young Frankenstein action – having her and Bobby perform Puttin' on the Ritz. It's a good thing we didn't televise it. Everyone would have believed we'd cracked.

The levity ended about an hour later when Evelyn asked to see her old body. I led her into an adjacent room where her former self was still laid out on a refrigerated operating table underneath a sheet.

Evelyn was trembling.

"Are you sure?" I asked.

She nodded, and I reluctantly folded the linen down. Evelyn caught her breath, throwing her hands to her face, then steadied herself against the table. She carefully, lightly ran her fingers along the cold, dead face, pausing at the real scar above her eye.

I don't think I can quite imagine what feelings wracked her mind as she examined her own corpse – the body that had always been such an integral part of her. Eventually she knelt beside her dead body, alternately touching and hugging it, examining it with sadness and awe. I gently petted her hair a couple times before leaving the room so she could be alone. She remained there for several hours.

*

A battery of physiological and psychological tests followed throughout the month of February and on into March. Small adjustments were made here and there, but no life threatening emergencies occurred, and her mind appeared to be unchanged except for a heightened sense of optimism and happiness. But how much of that is due to being in an artificial body, and how much can be attributed to a new life? There's no denying that we are all both mind and body, and any change in our body has to change who we are to some degree. We all felt the changes in Evelyn were good.

A large segment of the population was not so joyful at her first public appearances. Some suggest that I had it rough growing up as the first clone, but my mother was the one who really faced that. By the time I was old enough to realize what was going on, most of the uproar had subsided. This was not the case with Evelyn, and the reaction would be strong. People had met humans with artificial legs, arms, eyes, hearts, and even faces. But they had never met a human fully encased in an artificial body. It was the dawn of a new era.

I feel it will be a golden era when people can finally live their lives unencumbered by the pain and suffering caused by our natural bodies – when disease and hunger will become an aspect of our distant past only experienced at our whim. It is a dream so often yearned for as a key feature of heaven, yet so many of the most fundamentalist believers have ridiculed the idea of humanity giving themselves these things while we're still here on earth.

As I took the nearly 200-year-old family Bible out of the storage box and placed it back on a stool in the living room, I reflected on Reverend Al Lewis telling me that what sort of God we believe in likely reveals more about us than it does about God. I hope God is merciful enough to allow us to give these things to ourselves. Evelyn has now given me some hope that he is indeed that merciful. Perhaps I needed to thank God for making a universe where cloning and artificial bodies were possible, giving me these new chances. And I need to admit that I was wrong blaming God for the hatred and murders committed by humans, just as surely as I'd been foolish for linking the random meteorological phenomena on the night of my birth and the day of my mother's funeral with the mood of God.

Maybe Evelyn's new life has made me feel a little Pollyannaish, but right now I'm grateful for the change. I like to think Jack would be pleased by my new outlook, whether or not he agreed that God wanted us to use all our technological victories.

By no means do I intend to trivialize the concerns of others. Human beings tend to be inherently afraid of change, and certainly Evelyn represents the most shocking metamorphosis so far.

How will we be affected by it as a species? What will happen as humanity begins placing our minds into new bodies, ones of our own creation, altering ourselves beyond the dreams of the plastic surgeons of old, into designs that, like avatars, are limited only by our imaginations, edging ourselves ever further from the carbon-based life forms we arose from, and ever nearer to immortality?

The challenges will be tremendous, making laughable the now seemingly mundane issues surrounding cloning. The aftermath is impossible to predict. I'm sometimes frightened myself by the alarming and unknowable future that awaits us down the road as we change ourselves from caterpillars into butterflies. Perhaps the transition will draw us closer to finally answering the question, "Who are ewe?"

Or perhaps it's pushing us further away.

But that will be another tale, and I will let Evelyn, humanity's first butterfly, tell that story.

***

Now, as I write these final words, more than a year has passed since that historic operation, and more than a thousand people whose bodies were destroyed or giving out, who would have died, have joined Evelyn as the first humans to experience life in artificial bodies. Evelyn has been there for the reawakening of almost every one, as has Evelyn-2 with a painting in hand and a welcoming smile for each child. Miracles of which I'm grateful to be a part.

Just a few days ago, on September 25, 2086, Evelyn and I went together to the redwoods to celebrate our 27th wedding anniversary. We had something we wanted to reveal to the graves of our loved ones. We wanted to show them the new clone embryo that had been artificially inseminated into Evelyn's artificial body, and she was beginning to show.

As we stood there in the afternoon shade, our puppy Pierre-4 scampered about the humongous trees chasing after Evelyn-2, I cradled our nine-month-old Cain-3 in my left arm while he gripped my right index finger, and Evelyn happily explained to Sarah that her artificial body's birth canal easily and painlessly dilated to whatever size the head of the baby needed.

Evelyn suddenly caught her breath. I was worried at first, but then she grabbed my hand and placed my palm on her belly where Lily-4 was letting her presence be known.

I wished my clone-father was there to experience it with us, but I felt in some sense he was. The nightmares have stopped since that Christmas Eve, but sometimes I have good dreams about him – dreams of him as a loving father and grandfather, Mom often joining us for suppers, days at the beach, and holidays. Dreams of him hugging me. For the first time, I feel honored to be his grandson. If I'm not exactly my own grandpa, I feel fortunate that he will forever be a part of me and whatever family we create. Alternatively, if upon death I discover that I am indeed my own grandpa, I will consider myself to be one of the lucky ones – someone who has many regrets, but can still be grateful for his second chances. Someone blessed to have been a part of his soul's journey.

I love you, Grandpa. This book's for us.

Visit www.robhopper.com for the free complete multimedia edition, update on The Book of Evelyn, and/or questions for the author.

Also by Doublethumb Press:

GRIMM'S FAIRY TALES + Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, The Wizard of Oz, Pinocchio, George MacDonald & Hans Christian Andersen for 99 Cents

...

BEST OF CLASSIC SCI-FI FOR 99 CENTS - The War of the Worlds, A Princess of Mars, Journey to the Center of the Earth, Atlantis, Edgar Allan Poe, The Island of Dr. Moreau, 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, The Time Machine & More

...

BEST OF CLASSIC ADVENTURE FOR 99 CENTS \- Treasure Island, Robinson Crusoe, Huckleberry Finn, The Odyssey, King Arthur, Sinbad, Beowulf, Gulliver's Travels, Rudyard Kipling & More

...

BEST OF CLASSIC HORROR FOR 99 CENTS – Frankenstein, Dracula, In a Glass Darkly, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Turn of the Screw, The Picture of Dorian Gray, Louisa May Alcott, Edgar Allan Poe, and More

...

BEST OF CLASSIC CHRISTIAN LITERATURE FOR 99 CENTS - Paradise Lost, Dante, Mark Twain, Pilgrim's Progress, Dr. Faustus, Ben-Hur, The Scarlet Letter, Washington Irving, Edgar Allan Poe, George MacDonald, A Christmas Carol & More

...

THE GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST - Classic Christmas Ghost Stories by Charles Dickens, Louisa May Alcott, Saki, O. Henry, and more!

...

HEADLESS ED AND THE GHOSTS OF HALLOWEENS PAST - The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain, Oscar Wilde, Frankenstein, Dracula, and More!

~ Acknowledgements ~

It's with great affection that I thank the following for all their encouragement, advice, and inspiration without which this work could not have been done:

My loving and supportive family, including my grandparents Rick and Marie Drew, my mom Sharon Aulis and stepfather Phil, my sister Roshelle Hall and her family Ken, KL, and Joshua, my dad Bob Hopper and stepmother Birsen, and the Millers and the Drews.

My friends for their inspiration, advice, and assistance including Tom Chung, Abel Gomez, Jonathan Knox, Sara Konrad, Shirley Langley, Nicole Moné, Erica Ryberg, and Aaron Watson.

My literary manager Ken Atchity and his staff at AEI.

My brilliant editor Sarah Cypher.

My teachers along the way who educated and encouraged, including Miss Cullar from Lemoore Elementary, Mrs. Leeanne Price from Charles H. Castle Elementary, and Mrs. Jan Slater from Hill Creek School.

And many thanks to the authors, artists, adventurers, muses, and philosophers who have influenced my life and allowed me to see things in the world that I would not otherwise have seen, including Douglas Adams, Neil Armstrong, Ray Bradbury, Joseph Campbell, Dr. Keith Campbell, Frank Capra, Michael Crichton, Philip K. Dick, Charles Dickens, Walt Disney, Dolly, Aldous Huxley, Stephen King, Harper Lee, Madeleine L'Engle, C.S. Lewis, George Lucas, NASA, Plato, Rob Reiner, Carl Sagan, Shannon from Hill Creek School, Mary Shelley, Stephen Spielberg, Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, Sir Ian Wilmut and his team at the Roslin Institute, San Diego County, the cities of New York, Prescott, Edinburgh, and Vancouver, the redwoods, the San Diego Wild Animal Park, and the theatre community.

You're all a part of who I am, and I'm grateful for it.

