CHAPTER 6

BECAUSE IT ENDS 

Neven sat up. 

The room was dark, just as he liked it. Things felt safer that way.

There was nothing to see and, at least in this room, nothing to hear. His chair was soft and gel-filled, like the glass coffin bottoms in the room that had once been the Enchanted Forest, before everything burned. This room was nothing like that (a basement rather than a sun-filled oasis), but sitting on gel was like floating on a cloud. And that gave Neven little to feel, in addition to the nothing he saw and heard. 

A voice broke the stillness, but there was no one in the room. 

“It’s okay to be afraid,” the voice said.

“I’m not afraid,” Neven answered. 

But it wasn’t true. Sitting in the chair in the dark room wasn’t remotely frightening. Even twenty years ago, when he was a child, the dark hadn’t scared him. But what was coming? What sitting here, in this place, doing this thing was a prelude to? That scared Neven plenty. 

“It’s like waking from anesthesia and remembering nothing,” said the voice. “Or like a jump-cut in the movies we used to watch. First you’re here, then suddenly you’re there.” 

Neven put his feet on the floor but didn’t stand. He always felt dizzy after coming down here. 

Looking into darkness, he said, “We never watched movies together.” 

And the voice said, “You know what I mean.” 

“How could you possibly know what it’s like?” Neven asked.

“It’s what the research predicts.” 

“You didn’t go through it. You don’t know. You can’t possibly say.” 

“It’s what the research predicts,” the voice repeated. 

Neven sighed and stood, fighting a strong urge to argue. But doing so was a bit like shouting at a computer when a message gave you bad news. It was natural to be frustrated, but Neven knew, even in his annoyance, that it didn’t make sense. 

He descended the few short steps in the dark, turned on the light, and saw the stark room for what it was: a concrete-walled basement with a staircase to one side. Beside the chair he’d vacated was the small, flat “Hopper” device he tried not to think too much about. It was about the size of a coaster, octagonal and painted a violent red. 

“Let me see you,” Neven said. 

In the room’s corner, atop a white plastic plinth that rose six inches from the floor and covered by thick optical cables, a six-foot hologram shimmered into existence. For a few seconds, he saw all blue flashes, semi-transparent. Then it became Wallace Connolly. The image appeared as “Wallace” always looked in Eden’s famous commercials; wearing a white tunic, his beard gray, hands clasped serenely at his waist.

“You didn’t go through this, Dad,” Neven repeated. “Not when I was born and not before you died.” 

The irony of speaking to someone — digital or not — as if its own death was in the past wasn’t lost on Neven, but the AI running the hologram didn’t seem to notice or care.

“I chose not to,” Wallace’s doppelgänger said.  

“But all of this … what I’m doing down here. It was your vision.” 

“You were my vision, Neven.” 

Neven sighed again. He could keep talking to the hologram as if it were his father, but doing so wouldn’t grant any real insight. Most of the hologram’s guts were run by commercial scripts sent up by Eden PR. The AI that Neven had added was, in theory, meant to make the hologram more personable. Only in retrospect had Neven seen how much of “real Wallace” his subconscious had stuffed into the hologram, like he was trying to make a puppet father to replace his lost father. He’d left the AI work incomplete, feeling pathetic enough for the hologram’s faux-paternal answers to embarrass him, but not so pathetic that he stopped asking questions. 

“Why did I build you?” Neven muttered.

It was rhetorical, but the hologram heard him. It moved subtly, exhibiting the “thinking” behavior that always showed when someone asked something too far off-script — the 3D equivalent of a progress bar. Finally, unable to cobble a pseudo-intelligent response, it replied as it always did. “I don’t know.” 

“I should have let Public Relations keep you. You’re not Wallace Connolly. Wallace Connolly is dead.”

“Death makes life meaningful,” the hologram said. “Living only has purpose because it eventually ends.” 

And boy, did Neven know that line. It was the first one he’d taught the AI after the real Wallace died. Neven didn’t even know why he’d done it until after he had; he only knew that his father’s health had been poor for months and that Eden needed commercials. They’d created the hologram as a solution. It was never meant to become therapy. But that was something the real Wallace had said right up to the end, sure as anything.

Living only has purpose because it ends. 

A strange thing to say, but exactly what Neven needed to hear. 

Neven looked at the projected image of his father now, irritated for no reason. Or maybe there was a reason. In a way, Neven was dying, too — and not eager to go quietly into that good night.

“Maybe life doesn’t end. Maybe the Church of The Change has it right.” 

Neven didn’t believe it, not for a second. But right now, he felt like fighting. Like seeking pain to know he could still feel.

“Maybe,” said the hologram. 

“My father would never have said that,” Neven replied. “He’d never buy into bullshit like The Change.”  

“And maybe,” the hologram replied, “you don’t know everything about your father after all.” 

Neven bit his lip. Whatever this was, it wasn’t worth it.

“Tell me about the Riverbed project.” 

With his hands shaking, he went to the bank of light switches to turn on the rest of the room’s lights. With the last of the dim, the room’s dark mood vanished. A man couldn’t dwell in shadows when his space was awash with light. 

“You should consult with Jonathan. He’s been monitoring the Riverbed situation. Jonathan has all the required access to—” 

“Jonathan doesn’t have as much access as me, does he?” Neven shot back. “If he did, he’d be in charge. But he’s not. I am. And I asked you a fucking question.” 

Jesus Christ, he thought, hearing himself. Do you want a punching doll until you’re through this little tantrum?

He breathed. Slowly. 

“Just tell me what the system knows,” Neven said more calmly. 

“The virus that Jonathan installed as a trojan in his own clone’s MyLife has been transferred to the Riverbed servers,” said the hologram. “Just as Jonathan anticipated, Ephraim Todd’s clone took it to Fiona Roberson, who’s already taken some information off the device and is trying to extract more. And with it, she’s taken our virus.” 

“So, Ephraim’s clone thinks it stole that MyLife from us. He thinks that I didn’t want him to take it and that I tried sincerely to get it back.”

“Correct. From what we can tell, he does not realize you let him leave Eden on purpose. His conditioning is more or less intact.” 

“Go on.”

“According to Jonathan’s journal entries in the upstairs lab, the virus is pinging back from Riverbed. However, it’s been unable to spread beyond a firewall on Fiona’s terminal. Until it does, it cannot access what Evermore requires.”

“Jonathan said that might be an issue. Fiona is smarter than to put all her eggs in one basket. But wasn’t there supposed to be a way around the firewall? Didn’t Jonathan build that ability into the virus, anticipating this hurdle?”

“Yes. But there is an inherent problem when trying to program a virus to face an unknown firewall.”

“The fact that it’s unknown,” Neven said. 

Wallace’s visage nodded. “Correct.”  

Neven watched the hologram. He couldn’t help himself. He hadn’t yet shaken off the dreamy threads of their earlier conversation. For long seconds, it was possible to believe that the real Wallace Connolly was standing before him. The thing on the white plinth looked almost solid. Its only tells were its subtle lack of human scent and the way his voice came from its feet — speakers in the projector rather than the apparition’s mouth and lungs. 

“Then the virus isn’t working. It isn’t doing what Jonathan hoped it would.” 

“Also correct.” 

“It’s okay. The virus was always Plan B. Ephraim’s clone is Plan A, and he’s in play.” 

“Are you sure, Neven?” the hologram asked.

“We have his frequency. The virus did at least that much while Jonathan’s MyLife was in his possession.”

“Correct. We have direct access to the clone Ephraim’s MyLife. Jonathan has been tampering with his memories and experience already.”

“He needs to be careful,” Neven said. “We need him to bend, but we can’t break him.”

“Noted. For your part of the record, the Riverbed project is on track.” 

Neven consulted his internal compass to guide his next decision. The team had returned to Eden from the ocean platform, finding the essential underground labs untouched by the fire just as expected. Ephraim’s clone was on the mainland, also as expected, connecting not just with Fiona Roberson, but Sophie Norris and Hershel Wood as well. The phoenix was indeed rising, even if you had to look closely at the ashes to see it.

“More or less,” he answered. 

Neven went to the small table beside the gel-filled chair, noted the lack of flashing lights on the Hopper’s ports, and pulled the cable from the rear of the device. He turned it over in his hands, feeling its eight corners, a bit too fascinated by its blood-red casing. Then he slipped it into his pocket. 

Neven headed for the stairs. In the aboveground lab, Jonathan would be hard at work, checking the clone Ephraim’s reports and what little data the virus had sent back from Fiona’s computers. There would be things up there for Neven to do, and petty squabbles to be had between them. 

And he’d have to face Ephraim — the real Ephraim Todd in blood and body. But wasn’t Ephraim’s clone also “true in blood and body” — perhaps even more so than the original? Hadn’t Wallace always insisted that cloning was the more faithful process — that a cloned brother was closer, on an organic level, than a biological one? 

None of it mattered. It only mattered that there was work to be done. 

And with the Ephraim clone’s conditioning hitting all of the embedded triggers (and with Jonathan now hacking access to the clone’s MyLife signal as well), there would be plenty of work.

Neven ascended the stairs and killed the lights behind him. 

In the new darkness, Wallace’s hologram continued to glow.

“Neven,” it said. 

Neven turned back. He waited. 

“It’s okay to be afraid.”