CHAPTER 54

THE HUMANE THING TO DO

Ephraim pulled himself back into a chair while Neven busied himself making two new drinks; one for himself and another for Sophie. Hers was an Old Fashioned, the drink Ephraim knew the real Sophie favored. Proof of concept, as it were; evidence that a clone could be the real thing. Or that the real thing could turn out to be a clone.

Neven settled Sophie in a chair across the room, his body language gentle. Ephraim couldn’t tell what Neven was saying to her, but whatever it was seemed to pacify and calm her. 

She took the drink and sipped. He handed her a tablet, possibly to read or otherwise entertain herself while the others talked. Then he took the other tablet — the one he’d been using earlier — and circled Sophie without raising an eyebrow. He looked like a man checking stats, maybe running a diagnostic on a machine. Checking her vitals remotely. Or sending calming thoughts through her MyLife, the way he’d sent so many disturbing ones through Ephraim’s. 

Watching Neven and Sophie, Ephraim had a rare peaceful thought. This was the end of the line, and it was fine. He was a clone; he could understand and believe it even if he might never truly be able to accept it. And just as Ephraim decided that whatever was happening might mean his death, that was fine, too. Good, actually. He couldn’t live life as an echo. Couldn’t go on with his mind fracturing like crystal crashing to the floor, his reality bent, all he’d ever known revealed to be an abject lie. 

“It’s okay, you know,” Neven said.

Ephraim’s mind had been wandering; he hadn’t seen Neven approach. But the other man was above him now, looking down like a father to a child.

“How is it okay?” He felt bruised and beaten. He was a mess. The elbow blow (or whatever it had been) had broken something. The Ephraims’ faces were both busted and bleeding. Twins to the end. 

“It’s okay because you proved my point.” Neven nodded and sat within a few feet of Ephraim, conversational as if this were all perfectly normal. “You proved that a clone could surpass the original.” 

Ephraim coughed. It was half laugh.

“That’s what my father wanted. That was his vision. Clones are only redundant if you consider the donor to be superior by default — if you decide in advance that their ‘originality’ matters somehow. But it doesn’t. ‘Original’ just means something came first. It doesn’t mean better.” 

“Better,” Ephraim said. 

Neven jerked a thumb over his shoulder. “The original Ephraim Todd? He’s intolerable. He’s what you could have become if you’d lived his life. But you aren’t him, so you turned out better.” 

“Doesn’t exactly feel that way.” 

“It’s true, though. We gave you some of the original Ephraim’s most important memories, but we intentionally left plenty of blanks in his record and filled some of those with what we needed you to believe.”

“Only some of them? What about the other blanks?” 

“Those were for you to fill. Chances for you to become yourself, rather than him.” Neven sighed, head slowly bobbing. “You were my experiment, Ephraim. And Jonathan always—” 

“Jonathan? He’s alive?” He should be more excited, but he was too tired. And besides, he’d found out Jonathan was alive once before, and look how that had turned out.

“You knew he was. Everything that drove you came from a belief that he was here. At least, that’s how things worked at first. By the end, your pursuit of justice was just a habit.” 

Neven stood. 

“The mind is a funny thing. It doesn’t accept what it sees. It believes what it needs to, regardless of what’s objectively there. You may think you remember far-off bits of your life, but only your recent memories happened. But in the end, does it make a difference?” 

Ephraim closed his eyes. The old memories were there like concrete. 

“But I remember it. I remember it all.” 

“It may take you time to come to grips with, but in time you’ll see that you don’t remember. In a way, your past is the greatest gift we could have given you. Most people are forced to live their lives. But you?” He pointed at Ephraim. “You created yours.” 

“How long has it been? How long have I …?” 

It was a sentence he couldn’t bring himself to finish.

“We began dripping Ephraim’s memories soon after he and Jonathan came here. Less than a year later, we’d made you.” 

“Nine years.” 

Ephraim could feel somewhere inside that Neven wasn’t lying, but the knowledge felt strange. Up until fifteen minutes ago, he’d believed he was forty years old. Strictly speaking, he’d been on the planet for a child’s lifetime. Both ages were accurate, in different ways.

Neven nodded. 

“Why did you create me? Why not just send the real Ephraim to do your dirty work?” 

“Officially speaking, Eden’s answer is that the original would have given himself away. He’s not a good enough actor to convince Fiona, and GEM if necessary, that he wasn’t our spy. We needed someone inside Riverbed who believed what we needed him to believe. We had the technology. The solution, if unconventional, seemed obvious.” 

“Is there an unofficial answer?” 

“Yes. He’d never have done it,” Neven answered. “The original Ephraim Todd doesn’t have your fiber. He’s too selfish. He isn’t a strong enough person to have a ‘mission’ or a ‘purpose.’”

That felt like a compliment to Ephraim, but what good did it do? 

Neven sipped his drink. “My father believed that clones were upgrades, not copies. They didn’t recapitulate what God had done; they improved it. My father died with conflicting beliefs that he would have actualized if a friend of his hadn’t knocked him from his path. I was able to bring his beliefs to life once Eden was mine. And that was my goal with you, Ephraim. To create something better. Something that was more than the sum of its original parts; something — someone — who self-actualized beyond his genetics and conditioning. And you nearly succeeded, through methods we didn’t always see coming.”

Nearly succeeded? According to the other Ephraim, it was more than near. 

“Will GEM come and occupy Eden?” he asked. “Are Hershel Wood and Fiona working together to—?”

“Let me worry about that,” Neven said.  

But it was true; Ephraim could see it on his face. He had won. Somehow, he’d beaten Neven at his own game.

“What was it like?” Neven asked. “The first Ephraim never would have done what you did. But you? You hijacked a plane. You killed two men.” 

“It was the only way.” 

Neven raised a hand, wordlessly dismissing his experiment’s sins. “Death is the way of evolution. Progress often has bloody hands. Kingdoms rise and fall through revolt and upheaval, and as the saying goes, ‘Only the strong survive.’ My father always said that life needed to end for it to matter. That’s why he died, why he never tried to fix what nature had broken inside him. His death, in his mind, at least, wasn’t a tragedy. For him, it was an honor. His next step. That’s why he believed so deeply in his work; he said that clones were a way to take those last steps without truly dying. Individuals passed, but the line endured. And each time through the process, the genetic starting point could advance, become better.”

“You act like Wallace wanted a new world order.”

“Eden isn’t The Change, Ephraim,” Neven said with a warm smile. “You want a new world order, talk to Papa Friesh.” 

It sounded like Neven wanted a Brave New World to Ephraim. 

“When my father died, Jonathan thought he’d be the one to take over Eden. I understand why; Jonathan knew the research inside-out. For a while, before we sorted my father’s affairs, even I deferred to him. When we found out what my father had intended, Jonathan didn’t like it. He didn’t want to work for me; he wanted me to work for him. But it was right, you know. Because Jonathan never understood.” 

“Understood what?” 

“Organic humanity can only evolve generation to generation, but clones can evolve from one version to the next. You’re better than the first Ephraim, and his next clone might be even better than you. Humans have to wait decades to iterate. Clones, on the other hand, can evolve as quickly as we pull a switch.”

And Neven claimed this wasn’t a cult? Any time now, Ephraim expected him to serve spiked punch.

“If there’s a ‘next Ephraim clone,’ then what about me?”

Neven thought, then nodded. “You had a good run.” 

“Are you going to kill me?” 

“You have a genetic deficiency. We build it into all clones as a failsafe.” 

“So the answer is yes.”

“Try not to think of it in those terms, Ephraim. Think of it more as ‘expiration.’ Or as I suggested, ‘evolution.’”

“Maybe you could let me live, seeing as I did all your dirty work. Evolve more of me, but keep me around, too.”

“You did well, Ephraim. In most ways, you were a success. But you know your mind. You know it’s not stable. It’d be cruel to let you stay on, knowing you’ll almost surely go insane.” 

“Maybe that’s my decision to make.” 

“But as your creator, the burden of choice is on me.” Neven shrugged. “I’m sorry. Please try to understand.”

“Hard to do when you’re the one about to die.” But even as he argued, Ephraim could hear his dispassion, the lack of emotion about his death. He was arguing on principle, but honestly living was too damn hard. 

Or maybe he truly was conditioned.

“It’s less than painless,” Neven said. “I can activate the failsafe through the same channel I have open to your MyLife. In this one specific way, your cellular machinery is as suggestible as your mind. A switch to flip and nothing more.” 

Ephraim let the thought settle. Why didn’t this bother him? They were casually discussing his imminent demise. Soon, there’d be no more him. No more Ephraim. Although that wasn’t true, was it? There were other Ephraims. And maybe, in the end, that’s why it didn’t matter. 

Better than losing his mind.

Better than life in prison, or whatever Fiona would do to him.

And so Ephraim, weary, said, “Now?” 

“Unless you’d rather wait. You’ve done your job. I want to do what’s best for you, whatever makes you most comfortable. You’ve done all I knew you could do — things your donor could never have done. If you want a reward, name it. If you’d like to meet Jonathan, I’ll summon him now.” 

“Have I met Jonathan?”  

Neven shook his head. “We cordoned you off immediately for conditioning, then sent you to the city as soon as you were ready, so there’d be no worry about you meeting your original or polluting your early suggestible mind with too many memories of Eden. From Jonathan’s perspective, I’m afraid you’ve never even—”

Ephraim raised a hand to stop him. The notion that he’d never met his own brother wasn’t sad; it was too tragic for that. “Never mind.”

“Would you like some time with Sophie? I’ll leave you alone if you wish.” 

“No.” 

“Maybe she’d like it. Are you sure?” 

Ephraim looked at Sophie. She hadn’t looked up; whatever Neven had offered her for entertainment claimed her full attention. Yes, she probably would like it. And that was one relationship — possibly his only real relationship, sad as it was — that had never consummated. But again, too tragic. 

“I’m sure. Just take care of her, okay? If you want to offer me something, just promise you’ll look out for Sophie.” 

Neven’s face clouded. “She’s imprinted, Ephraim. I thought you understood.” 

“What do you mean, ‘imprinted’?” 

“She’s yours. She was made for you. She was never meant to be independent. None of them are.” He looked around the room, like a man who’d lost something. “Mercer was supposed to explain this. He sent you a manual. Don’t you know how it works?” 

Ephraim sharpened. Straightened up. Neven seemed to be unspooling. 

What had gone wrong? 

“What are you talking about? What’s the problem?” 

“This Sophie was created specifically to bond with you, Ephraim. Like all of her type, we made her dependent on you.” 

“What happens to her when I’m gone?” 

Neven looked at the door. At Ephraim. At Sophie. Then again at the door. 

“A conditioned, dependent clone can’t live without its anchor.”

“And?” 

But Ephraim could read Neven’s face. 

He knew what came next before the man opened his mouth.

“The only humane thing to do is to shut her down first.”