CHAPTER 4
A REALTIME CALL
Ephraim put the box containing the Quarry on the small end table by the door to his apartment. It wasn’t remotely hidden to anyone entering his place — certainly not locked inside two safes with a fingerprint ID. One part of Ephraim was struck by the casual, almost careless way he tossed it aside with his wallet and pocket detritus. But another part of him realized that Fiona’s proposal had scared him.
He looked back at it. The long, matte box echoing the black metal (if it was metal) of the device itself.
Good enough.
Somehow, it felt important to treat the Quarry with a bit of disrespect; leaving it out in the open felt like a victory. He wasn’t going to use it. No way. No how.
Except that he already knew he’d cave and do what Fiona told him. He always did. Lately, it seemed like everyone knew exactly what Ephraim was going to do before he did it.
He heard Jonathan’s ghost inside his mind: We can condition them to do anything.
He pushed the voice aside. Best not to think about that. About Eden in general. About Jonathan, or the man who’d been so much like Jonathan that under other circumstances, he might not even have known he was a clone.
Thinking about Eden was enough to make a guy go crazy. The GEM agents already thought Ephraim had lost his mind or was still seeing Lucky Scream visions, so there was no point in giving them more ammunition.
Like wondering what had happened when they’d put him under for his small version of the Tomorrow Gene treatment.
Like the fact that recently, things that had seemed so sure no longer were. There’d been a curious sense that he was living someone else’s life. He wondered what his favorite foods were instead of knowing them; he questioned directions to places he’d driven a thousand times; he passed people on the street that he should recognize but didn’t, or that he recognized for all the wrong reasons.
Yesterday, a group of Change devotees in long robes had come up to Ephraim offering religious enlightenment. “Papa offers you love,” they’d said. And Ephraim had run as if their approach had been personal. Or malicious.
These days, to Ephraim’s eye, half the city’s vendors looked like Elle or Nolon.
It’s not paranoia if they are out to get you.
But it was no good to think that way. This was just nerves. He walked around the room, forcing himself not to think, and drew all the curtains. He checked the locks. These days he always made small pencil marks on his desk when he went out, meant to indicate his keyboard’s exact position. If someone moved the board, he’d know. He checked the marks, found things undisturbed, then turned the computer on and pulled up the keylogger app he’d installed just to be sure.
Nobody had broken in and used his machine. It was either that, or they’d broken in and stolen everything, then covered their tracks exceptionally well.
You’re losing it. You might as well have accepted The Change’s “love.” It’d be better and more certain than this.
But no. He was fine. All was well.
Ephraim forced himself to breathe. In and out, slowly. Until things finally began to still.
The room was too quiet. It felt like someone was sitting in the corner, watching him and waiting. To fill the void with sound, he turned on the TV and returned to his computer.
He thought about what Fiona had said — about how it was possible to hack the MyLife network as an alternative way of using the Quarry.
Maybe someone was hacking Ephraim’s MyLife right now.
It was ridiculous.
Except that his MyLife had been finicky since Eden.
Just like his memory had been finicky. And, come to think of it, his perception and creation of new memories as well. Lately, he’d see something — and then feel unsure whether the thing he’d just seen had happened at all. The notion that it hadn’t happened always felt possible, seeing as he couldn’t trust his MyLife record to verify the truth.
What if the problem was that someone was in his stream, hacking his MyLife and screwing with his memories?
The idea that his own eyes and ears might be spying on him via his implant was like a pillow on his face. He froze until a tremor passed. Then he pushed that thought aside and went back to work.
He opened a web browser. The cursor flashed.
A voice on the TV, blinking blue light in the corner of Ephraim’s eye, yelled, “IT’S TIME TO EPHRAIM YOUR DEBT!”
The shout was so loud and sudden that Ephraim startled in his chair, racking his knee against the desk’s edge. He tottered and nearly fell.
But the verbal assault kept coming because he’d left the TV too loud — and as his heart raced and he stared at the screen, he realized the show’s announcer hadn’t said “Ephraim” at all.
He watched the big screen, overly bright in the dark room. He’d forgotten to turn on the lights again.
He lowered the volume to background levels, then stared transfixed. The program was Eat From Your Debt, where thin and healthy people buried in debt competed to see who could gain the most weight in a year. The winner got their debt erased while the loser just got fat. Ephraim knew from seeing the show before that the best way to supercharge weight gain was to stop drinking water and drink oil instead. Last year, three former contestants had died from obesity-related illnesses. It was the most popular show on the air.
Relax. The announcer didn’t say your name. He said “eat from.” Why is your heart pounding?
And then Jonathan’s clone’s voice spoke up inside his head: Here’s a quizzer. What’s your birthday?
He knew his damn birthday, but pinpointing the information took fifteen long and fumbling seconds. Jonathan’s voice had been doing this in his head lately, pinging him with questions. Sometimes he knew the answers and sometimes he didn’t. He’d recently realized he had no idea if he could ride a bike, roller skate, or swim.
Wasn’t that the kind of thing a person usually knew about himself?
What’s wrong with your brain, Ephraim?
Has too much TV made you stupid?
He turned away from the TV. On the computer, he started the RealTime app, listening to the contestants on Eat From Your Debt in the background as he waited.
One man had already gained nearly three hundred pounds. He cheered and said he was doing this for his family.
His opponent wasn’t doing as well, at around 250 pounds gained. “I guess I’ll have to dig deep and Ephraim my gut rather than listening to my wife with her vegetables,” he said, pronouncing the word “vegetables” like he’d pronounce “poison.” “I just have to Elessphraim the salad bar and Emorephraim the snacks aisle.”
The announcer laughed. “Ha ha, yes. And do you know who else is deluding himself right now? That asshole sitting across the room who thinks Sophie Norris will answer his RealTime call when she’s always ignored him before!”
Ephraim spun toward the TV, but it had gone to a commercial for strangulation porn.
The RealTime call rang.
And rang.
And rang.
They’d talked three times since his return from Eden, twice via video on RealTime and once in person. He’d hit her mailbox with messages that had gone unanswered ever since. The time they’d met in person, she’d told him to see a psychiatrist. He was worrying her. Or maybe the word had been frightening.
“Sophie isn’t here,” said a voice from the computer monitor.
Ephraim looked up. The screen showed Sophie’s profile pic, so whoever had answered — definitely not Sophie — hadn’t turned on video. The vocal intrusion was startling. He hadn’t heard the call connect.
“Who is this?” Ephraim asked.
“It’s Jennifer.”
“Hi, Jennifer.”
Ephraim had met Jennifer. She was Sophie’s personal assistant, but she doubled as a mother hen. Ephraim kept telling Jennifer he wanted (hell, needed) to speak with Sophie, but he didn’t think she was passing his messages forward.
Nope, she was acting as gatekeeper. Because if Sophie was getting his messages, why wouldn’t she call him back? They’d been through a war together. They’d shared trauma and victory and life and death. Sophie should want to talk to him.
They should be each other’s support system. Fuck Jennifer and her cockblocking ways.
“It’s Ephraim,” he said when Jennifer took too long to respond.
“I know who it is. Even if your ID hadn’t come up, I can see you.”
That startled Ephraim too, but then he remembered his camera was on even while hers wasn’t. He killed it.
“I need to talk to Sophie.”
“I told you, Sophie’s not here.”
“Where is she?”
“That’s not any of your business, Ephraim.”
“When will she be back?”
“I don’t know.”
“You’re her assistant. Check her schedule.”
“I don’t have it handy. Try later.” The way she said it, Ephraim obviously wasn’t supposed to try later at all. He was supposed to take a hint, and stop bothering them.
“Maybe in a few hours?”
“Days. She’s gone for days.”
“How many days?”
“What do you need, Ephraim?”
“Is Sophie on a job? Is she filming something?”
Jennifer sighed.
“Just tell me that much,” Ephraim said, hearing the begging in his voice. “Is she working?”
“Of course she’s working. She’s a productive member of society.”
Ephraim frowned, resentment bubbling. Since they’d returned and made headlines together, Sophie seemed determined to forget it all. She’d immediately begun acting more normal than normal, probably to distance herself from the madman Ephraim Todd was turning out to be.
“Okay. Then please send me to her inbox so I can record a message for her.”
“Just tell me the message.”
“I want to record it myself.”
“I’ll tell her you called,” Jennifer said, then she killed the connection.
Ephraim tried to call again, but Sophie’s account was suddenly set to Do Not Disturb.
Well.
That was that.
With nothing else to do, Ephraim opened a new browser window and typed the words that were sure to get him arrested.