CHAPTER 24

A CRITICAL STAGE

Neven finished his daily drip in the downstairs lab, then pocketed the small red Hopper after checking to make sure it was functioning properly. The drips were becoming ritualistic. Especially given what was coming, they were strangely comforting. 

Upstairs, where Jonathan worked, Neven heard a stirring. It probably meant that Ephraim was up there, making excuses for being where he shouldn’t be. He was a shitty worker, but it’s not like Neven could point that out again. Eden was two against one these days. Even though Eden was Neven’s ship, he thought a lot about mutiny.

The hologram blipped to life. Wallace stood on his projector, looking the same as he always did.

“I didn’t turn you on,” Neven said. 

It always did that, whenever the system had an alert to offer someone nearby. It was meant to provide the feeling that the hologram had a mind of its own, and it did. That was the problem. Sometimes, Neven wondered just how much of his father the thing believed it was. 

“Things have progressed,” Wallace said.

“You mean Mercer on Eden, getting what the Ephraim clone asked for? I know. I’m hiding from that asshole as much as from Ephraim.” 

“It’s about what’s on the Hopper.” 

Neven straightened. This was unexpected. “Already? Is it intact?” 

“It’s not entirely intact as an archive yet, but I can see some emergent properties forming in the data stream. The data you’ve been collecting isn’t just a map anymore. It’s starting to emote.” 

“Emote? But it’s just data.” In a manner of speaking, what was on the Hopper would “emote” all over the place later on. But not yet. Right now, it was just information on flash storage. Still just ones and zeroes.  

“I’m confident in my analysis, Neven.” The hologram’s eyes glanced down toward Neven’s slacks. “Primitive emotion, happening on the drive in your pocket.” 

“You’re sure?” 

“Not sure, no, but nearly convinced. The signs are there, but there’s no precedent. You know the failures better than anyone.” 

“If you had to guess,” Neven said, “what emotion is it feeling?” 

For a moment, as the hologram fell silent, Neven thought he’d sent the computer into a loop. The hologram would start smoking out its ears soon, running in circles and yelling, DOES NOT COMPUTE.

But then it said, “Fear.” 

“How is that possible?”

“It was something Timothy and I talked about many times. Is a brain truly required for thinking? Timothy wasn’t so sure. You see it in his work today if you know where to look. He had faith that thought, when in proximity to enough thoughts of the same kind, creates its own gravity. Timothy would look at the Hopper and say, ‘Of course it’s afraid. It’s a mind in need of a home. It finally has enough sentient mass to self-organize, like a star igniting spontaneously from the pressure at the heart of a hydrogen cloud.”

Neven’s head tipped as he watched his father’s placid image, unsure for a thousand reasons how to respond. The metaphor was wrong; data wasn’t hydrogen and thoughts didn’t spontaneously light like gas in a nebula. But there were more interesting questions to go along with that one, as well. 

Wallace’s childhood friend hadn’t been talking about information archives, for one. He’d been referring to something more mystical: the woo-woo idea of people thinking the same thoughts because they were all drawing from a collective unconscious. But Neven’s bigger question was, why was the hologram talking about Timothy at all? Information about Wallace’s childhood was out there in spades, but Neven had never fed it into the hologram’s AI.

There was a crash from above. Someone shouted. 

Neven eyed the hologram then moved toward the stairs. 

“Neven?” 

He stopped. “Yes?”

 “This is going to work.” 

Then it blipped away, probably so the AI could return to its analysis of the forming archive. And perhaps retrieve more unauthorized memory of Connolly’s old friend Tim.

There was another shout from above. 

Neven raced up the stairs, prepared to find a fight in progress. But when he reached the top he saw that it was only two assholes playing trashcan basketball with the tennis balls Neven kept on his desk, to roll on when his back started throbbing. 

“Two!” Mercer Fox shouted, arms up. He was dressed in a flowered shirt, bright red shorts, and flip flops. His head turned toward Neven, hands raised. Apparently, he was too socially stupid to see Neven’s stern expression because Mercer followed with, “A new party enters the game!” 

Neven pointed to the can. “Put that back. And the balls go on my desk.” 

“Isn’t it supposed to be, ‘I’ll have your balls on my desk if you don’t listen to me’ or something similarly boss-like?” 

Neven ignored him. He walked toward and past Ephraim, who was rocking side to side on Jonathan’s lab stool. He’d been told not to come in here. Again and again and again. 

Neven didn’t just find Ephraim irritating; he also found him to be a hazard, like a rat who threatened to spread the plague. The asshole brought food into the lab despite their radioisotope work, unplugged machines because he’d needed an outlet to charge his Doodad. And why? Doodads were mostly useless on Eden. Since the fire had destroyed most of their communications, only sat phones tended to work. 

“Go out to the foyer. I don’t want you in my lab.” 

“The foyer smells like burned hair,” Mercer said.

“Ask Ephraim about that. Getting rid of the odor is just one of the jobs he hasn’t managed to do before the reopening.”

Ephraim looked at Mercer, answering before Neven could explain. “I’ve done everything I can to get rid of it. Burned clone stink is persistent. I don’t know what else to do. Half the building’s been remade. We raked the landscaping down to the soil and replanted.”

“Maybe Rockefeller here could spring for an air freshener,” Mercer said. “How about it, Chuckles?” 

Neven stared him down. Eventually, Mercer raised his hands in surrender and left. Ephraim followed. Only then did Neven see Jonathan in the corner, silently working as if none of the last few minutes had happened.

“Control your brother,” Neven said, “or I will.” 

“Relax. I know he’s obnoxious, but you need him just like I do.” 

“I don’t need Ephraim any more than a pregnant woman needs her sperm donor.” 

Jonathan gave Neven a look that was almost condescending. “How much attention have you been paying to the Ephraim clone, Neven?”

Neven bit his lip. The truth was, not at all in the last few days. After enough back-seat driving by Jonathan over the Ephraim clone situation, he’d finally abdicated the project to Jonathan, who had the scientific background to understand it better. 

“Not as much as I used to,” Neven admitted. 

“The clone is at a critical stage. There wasn’t much we could do to observe, let alone steer, him while he was with Mercer, given all the MyLife jammers at Chez Luis and down in his dungeon. But Mercer told us what they discussed. He said the clone’s reaction to the slave trade was intense.”

“Did he freak out?” 

“He did a good job of containing himself, from what Mercer says. And he did order a Sophie, so our predictions were more or less spot on. But later that night and today, he came back into our observable range, and I could see the effects. It’s obvious that this whole thing got to him. You wanna know what I think?” 

“What?” 

“Either he’s more attached to Sophie than we thought, and this reaction — destabilizing his conditioning and resisting a lot of my attempts at subliminal control — is because he’s imagining the real Sophie in Mercer’s shithole conditions.” 

“Or?” Neven prompted.

“Or Ephraim’s clone is beginning to know, deep down, what he is. Maybe he’s affected by the plight of these slave clones because deep inside he knows. All the talk about clones is setting off something inside him. Something we can’t influence or control.” 

“Could he just be feeling empathy?”

“That’s why I keep saying we need the real Ephraim. Who knows Ephraim better than Ephraim? We just have to look at the real Ephraim for clues as to what’s affecting this one. And I’ve gotta tell you, Neven, my brother’s mind isn’t empathetic enough for the destabilizing reaction we’re seeing. It feels to me like this must be something else.” 

“As you’re so fond of pointing out,” Neven said, “the clone isn’t your brother.” 

“For this, he’s close enough.” 

“What do you suggest?” 

“That we keep going. Watch for signs that the clone could go rogue. So far, it’s all in line. Hershel Wood and Fiona are both telling him different things, so he’s torn between them, and I don’t think he trusts either all that much. Despite the uncertainty, he’s more or less on the right path. Hopefully, he’ll stay there. I do know he’s plenty agitated, just as we want him to be.” 

“But is he agitated at the right people? This all falls apart if he takes out his anger on Mercer or someone else.” 

“I think it’ll be okay,” Jonathan said. “I don’t agree with everything Wallace taught me, but there’s one thing I’ll never argue with: Clones are more predictable than people.”

Neven straightened. “I believe Wallace said, ‘Clones are more perfect than natural-born humans.’” 

Jonathan met his eyes. Neven waited for another jab, expecting Jonathan to contradict him again, to say that “perfect” was “predictable” or to reinforce the dichotomy he and Ephraim both saw between clones and organic humans. 

Instead, he smiled. “Right. I stand corrected.” There was another victorious shout from the foyer, followed by a clanging. Jonathan turned toward the noise. “Want me to deal with them?” 

Neven shook his head. “No. I’ll handle Mercer. Just keep doing your job, and make sure the clone hates who we need him to hate.”