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FOR THE GREATER GOOD
TIERNEY JONES
Golden sunlight slants through the kitchen windows, turning dust motes to glitter.
It’s 7 a.m., and I sit at the kitchen table. Swann’s beside me, silent as is her custom in the mornings. When she’s quiet like this, you wouldn’t know there’s anything wrong with her—except for the expressionless face and the mild atrophy of her unused muscles. She rarely moves these days, except to rise from bed or go to the toilet, so where once her face was lean with an ethereal sculpted beauty, now she’s squashy and slack.
We sit side by side as I tell her about the lab, about Baldwin and Schwitters and Bob, and even Three. If she absorbs my words, she gives no indication. So I just enjoy the time with her. I used to sleep in and then rush to class because I was up all night coding. These leisurely mornings, this extra time with her, are a gift from the increased money from my work in the lab.
So I linger, in this room I love with the only person in the world who matters to me. We’ve lived here our whole lives. The house was built nearly five hundred years ago now. Mostly everything has been replaced over time. But the thick brownstone façade, the diamond panes of glass in the front windows, and the carved oak mantle in the study are all that’s left of the original. Someone did a massive renovation early in the 22nd century, adding a glassed-in extension off the rear. Mom renovated the kitchen herself when we were kids, putting in glossy deep green cabinets, copper countertops, bronze painted tiles. It’s rich and cozy.
It’s everything a kitchen should be. Bright thanks to the rear glass wall and ceiling overhead, and comfortable with the fading amber velvet settee at the table where we sit now. The same table I learned to write at, my dad sounding out the letters as I scrawled them onto my tablet with a stylus, Swann with her nose perennially in a book, mom singing as she watered her plants.
On her good days—the rare ones when she recognizes me—Swann roams along the window wall and touches the leaves of mom’s plants. Tomato, basil, rosemary, lemon and lime trees. Orchids, ferns, sweet peppers, philodendron, and peace lilies. She smiles and hums, plucks dried leaves or mists them with the spritzer. On the really, really good days, she talks to me, and we have special lucid moments that I tuck away into my heart to remember when she leaves me for good.
She sits beside me today, looking past our indoor garden to the tiny backyard beyond where the sun blazes away the cold. I braided her dark hair before we came down. Of the two of us, she’s always been the prettiest, with enormous blue eyes, an elegant nose, lips that actually fit her face, taller, with a dancer’s grace. If she stayed quiet, one might not even guess her mind is so broken. It’s only once she talks, all breathy and nonsensical, there’s no denying the truth. Her mind is nearly gone.
She’s a good listener though, so I babble away while she sips her coffee and stares dreamily into the sunshine, and finish with, “They keep them in cages. Naked, not even a pillow or a blanket.”
Her head swivels, and her blank aquamarine gaze settles on my face. “You’re stressed?”
My eyes prickle. I sometimes convince myself she’s listening, somewhere deep inside.
“No, no. I’m okay.” I force an idle yawn and sip my coffee. “Just tired.”
“Professor Danklish doesn’t know what he’s talking about. I think he had a thing for mom.” She makes a face into her own coffee mug, then tugs distractedly at the frayed hem of her vanilla-colored knit sweater.
I have so few moments where she even seems to know me, that the last thing I want to do is waste it, correcting her.
“Danklish isn’t so bad.”
“Hmph.” She shoves her coffee mug across the table. “I want to make sauce today. Mom’s always late so she won’t have time.” Her lips stretch in a vacant dreamy-eyed grin, and I can’t remember the last time I saw her smile like that. Sometimes I envy her forgetfulness. I’d love to forget for a minute that mom’s dead and dad’s Outlaw and I’m alone responsible for our safety. “Dad brought home tomatoes yesterday.”
We haven’t had tomatoes in more than a month. Our two bushes have only tiny tight green spheres. But I’ll find some for her soon. I have the money now.
“No tomatoes, Swann.”
She looks around, mouth slack, as if she’s surprised to see her surroundings, then back down at her sleeve. She tugs, and a string unravels. She tries to break it, but it just keeps pulling out. We’ll be able to buy her new sweaters now.
“Maybe he took them back to his lab?” I try, not wanting to upset her. “I can stop at the store, maybe get some new plants, too. What would you like?”
“Rosemary. Oh, and I’d love a new fern.” She drifts absently toward the window, and stares out at the winter-bare sun-draped yard, muttering and naming things.
While she’s distracted, I move to the stove, quietly set a pot down, and open a few jars, keeping my body between her and my hands so she won’t see me. I pour in a can of premade sauce, a jar of crushed tomatoes, some spices. She used to hate canned sauces. Now, she never notices.
She’s still busy staring dreamily through the window.
“A rubber tree would be nice. I should start that sauce.”
“You already did. Can’t you smell it?” I point at the stove.
She sniffs the air. “Maybe.”
We used to make pasta sauce every Sunday. Me and mom and Swann, and Grandma too when she was alive, we’d laugh and sing while we chopped and stirred. We last played out this little charade a few months ago, and I take strange comfort in the vague and easy smile she tosses my way.
I used to dream I’d teach my children how to make sauce that way. With real tomatoes and basil, homegrown in the backyard. Sautéed onions, roasted peppers, a splash of good wine, bubbling away all day, until the whole house smells like home.
Now, I’m not so sure.
I stare down at my now-empty plate.
And what sits on top of it. The last part of my morning ritual. A tiny pill, powder blue and smaller than my pinkie fingernail.
My vitamin.
Swann already ate hers.
I’ve taken a vitamin like this every single day of my life. My doctor prescribes it at a yearly physical, and they’re delivered to my home by drone three times a year. A vitamin supplement, catered toward my unique genetic makeup and to account for the absence of real meat and minimal fresh produce in our diets.
When I was a child, the vitamin was white. When my periods started, it changed to blue. When I stop my period, it will change to pink, at least that’s what they said.
I never questioned it.
These pills, if what Baldwin, Schwitters and Bob are to be believed, are a form of prison. Like the mind-control program they expect me to design.
“Swann?” Before mom died suddenly and dad rebelled, Swann worked in headquarters. In Ring 2. In upper management. Before she went mad and was institutionalized for a whole year—leaving me alone at home to figure out how to manage the house and school. Before she came home like this. “Did you ever learn anything about the vitamins?”
She nods absently, and plucks a wilting magenta blossom from an orchid just past its peak bloom.
“What’s in it?”
She tilts her head to the side and chews on the corner of her lower lip. “A healthy vitamin supplement, a mild narcotic, mood stabilizers.” Her voice is almost dreamy as she reaches out and trails her finger along a waxy scarlet peace lily. “A bit more.”
I stare at her, trying to puzzle out if this is more of her random babbles or a rogue blip of sheer terrifying lucidity. “Like what?”
“Contraceptives. A neurotransmitter output suppressor. Anaphrodisiacs. Dopamine to make us less rebellious. A mild narcotic. A bit of an addictive additive.” She smiles softly. “It keeps us taking them. Otherwise, we’d stop, start asking questions.”
“Dopamine? Narcotics?”
“Hmm.” Her hum is a distracted affirmative, that chills my blood.
I’ve been silently swallowing drugs.
Every.
Single.
Day.
Who would I be without these pills?
In school, I slept with a couple men. We registered as is required. It was mostly awkward. A lot of heavy breathing, bumping, and naked confusion. What if I’d stopped with the vitamins back then?
What would happen if I stopped taking them now?
Swann hasn’t made so much sense in years. Or has she? I haven’t been around to ask questions. I buried myself in school and night coding and if I’m honest, maybe a mild dose of resentment, that everything had to fall on me while she got lost in her delirium. Maybe she’s been more cognizant than I’ve known, and I just haven’t been listening.
“That doesn’t bother you?”
Her eyes settle on me, dreamy and half unfocused. “Of course, it does. But there’s no point being bothered. They won’t change, and anyway, they can’t run the republic if we’re all roaming around demanding impossible things like freedom and rights and choices.”
I’ve seen the footage of the years before the republic and IdentityCorps took over with the chips and the cameras. Endless reels of screaming, crying, bodies. “But ... drugging people?”
Her lower lip shakes. “Nothing good happens by resisting. Ask mom.”
“Mom? You mean dad?”
Her fingers leave the peace lily’s waxy flower and it trembles in the aftermath of her touch. “Yeah. That’s what I meant.”
I swallow thickly, pick up the pill, hold its familiar weight between my thumb and forefinger.
“You’ll feel sick if you don’t.”
“Withdrawal?”
She nods absently, her eyes already drifting beyond the windows. “It’s for the greater good.”
Is it though? If the greater good is all drugged into submission are we really better off?
Swann, hums distractedly, her voice lilting upward into thoughtless empty song. She used to have the most beautiful voice before mom died and dad ... did whatever he did to be turned Outlaw. We were certainly better off before dad rebelled. Safety lies in obedience, and yet ... I’ve never been able to leave a question unanswered.
Who would I be without the pill to dumb me down? Maybe it’s time to find out.
My heart hopscotching in my throat, I tuck the pill into my pocket while she isn’t looking. If I get sick, I can always change my mind and take it.
––––––––
“A word of advice,” Baldwin says an hour later. We’re standing in the hallway outside my new office and in the harsh overhead lighting, her pale face is sunken and almost sad.
We’ve just left the Romeo lab where Three stared at me with his broody, hooded, indecipherable gaze.
Something crackled between us, like a current moving through the air so thick and gritty we can’t be the only people who felt it. It heated my skin. Even when I was facing away, I could have named the exact placement of every part of his body.
Baldwin’s mouth tightens. “Don’t let them get under your skin. Everything they say has a purpose.”
I stare at her, a million questions rising in my mind, about her motives, her reasons for stopping me this way, and terrified she’ll somehow know that I didn’t eat my pill like a good citizen. This is why I never break rules. Once the secrets start, they never stop. They snowball.
She sets her hand on her hip, leaning closer. “That display of Romeo-Three’s yesterday, punching the wall and flirting with you, the way he looked at you just now—it is all an act. They don’t feel things like you and I do. They aren’t human. I made them. They’re soulless on purpose because we designed them to be capable of anything.”
I nod because I don’t know what else to do, and swallow the rising tide of embarrassment as she marches her way down the hallway.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe Three is just trying to manipulate me. But I’ve seen a lot in the faces of these soldiers in the short time I’ve known of their existence. Does a person without a soul feel loyalty? When he spoke of his brothers, it was written across his face.
If he was trying to get under my skin, he succeeded. But despite the coarse words, I wasn’t afraid of him then, and I’m not afraid of him now. To be honest, it’s everything else down here that scares me.
Inside my new office, I set down my briefcase. The layout is exactly like Caruthers’ during my interview, right down to the fake pony-fur hide on the floor under the chrome desk, and the winking red light of the camera’s eye in the corner, watching me, keeping tabs. Two chrome visitors’ chairs face the desk. As I lower my butt into the desk’s seat, the fake leather squeaks.
We’re underground, so there’s no view of the lake like Caruthers had, but there is a false window. A screen. Right now, it’s set to a view of the iron oxide limestone of the Grand Canyon beneath billowing purple-gray clouds. The sun casts its fiery scarlet across coppery stones. The color, the brightness, is a slap in the face.
My desk is identical to Caruthers’ as well, except for one thing. A single small raised button beneath a red protective cover that, when pressed, would lock down the entire lab. Seal us all inside, with no hope of escape, until IdentityCorps’ guards open it from the outside. Emergency lockdown.
There are two in this lab. One here on my desk. And one on Baldwin’s. Schwitters showed it to me yesterday, and I think maybe he was a touch jealous that I had the dubious honor of this button.
The computer screen lights up and welcomes me, its sensor reading my presence. The list of prompts encourages me to get to work.
I change the false window to a deciduous forest swathed in sullen mist that better suits my mood and rewatch the feed Baldwin had prepared for us. It takes an hour, and even though it’s my second viewing, it still unnerves me.
It tells an interesting story. Thirty-two years ago, Baldwin, only six years older than I am now, spearheaded a program that designed and birthed super soldiers.
She wasn’t kidding about making Romeo-Three and the others. She and my father really did grow them in the lab like amoebae in a petri dish. This whole project was their baby, from conception right up until today. They hand-picked each and every code of DNA that comprises their twenty creations, splicing DNA from humans and animals alike. The olfactory gland of a black bear, the retina of a hawk, the thermal sight of a boa constrictor, the dermis strength of a sperm whale. One after another, they manipulated and fine-tuned every single protein on the double helix.
They had viable bioengineered fertilized embryos and implanted them in artificial uteruses. Nine months later, the Romeos and the Foxtrots were born. Ten male and ten female super soldiers. Perfect humans.
Created by Baldwin and my father.
The scale of their project is beyond anything I’d imagined, and it makes me wonder about my dad, about my mom, even Swann and what other secret knowledge she might harbor. She fell into near catatonia only weeks after our dad was turned Outlaw for whatever rebellion he staged. The things she said on her insane meander through town about monsters and murderers. Maybe the problem isn’t with having secrets, it’s just about who you share them with.
I stare at my computer, as their childish faces of the Sierra soldiers two decades ago move across the screen. My dad, so young, with all his hair and an unlined face. Baldwin, almost identical today as then as if not even time itself can touch her. All of it, telling a story decades in the making that turns my stomach to lead.
Baldwin herself gave them bottles when they were newborns, rocking them, staring into their eyes, even singing sometimes. She changed their diapers right alongside the other lab-techs who raised them, read to them, spoke to them, stroked their backs, smelled their fuzzy heads, all according to a detailed schedule laid out by a group of child psychiatrists.
She was dead serious about Three calling her Mama. They were denied a real mother. They got Baldwin with her cold eyes and thousand-yard stare instead.
And as soon as those soldiers were able, they began their training. Rigorous physical and mental stimuli were applied. By age four, they were wrestling, sparring in hand-to-hand drills, using knives and bows and spears, handling firearms by age six.
All of this, for the greater good. They were to be the weapons of the government of the People’s Republic of the North Americas, used against our enemies. The Russo-Asian Commonwealth, Amazonia, and the Northlands.
Watching the reel, I find my eyes leaking. I’m hesitant to use the word crying, because I’m not even sure that’s what this is.
It’s more like the cup that holds my soul has shrunk, and it’s overflowing the rim.
I can’t help but compare my own childhood with theirs. While Swann and I were making pasta and growing herbs, reading our great-grandmother’s romance novels, playing at being scientists in the labs of Ring 1, they were learning pain-management, knife-throwing, and how to strangle people with their bare hands.
I watch Baldwin bandage Three’s scraped knee in the feed. He can’t be more than four or five. He just had his first kill. A fox. They made him skin and gut it. He’s so skinny and so beautiful at that age, with enormous black eyelashes and pale haunted gray eyes.
They look up at the camera at exactly the same moment, and I finally register what had niggled at me yesterday.
Their eyes are identical. Or at least, their irises are.