Saturday, June 30
12:15 P.M.
Ibis Cosmetics headquarters, Manhattan
167 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD
Lyle had mixed twenty-seven batches of ReBirth in the last week. He had followed his recipe; he’d changed his recipe; he’d ignored his recipe completely and freehanded the entire thing. He’d made good lotion every time, but it didn’t copy DNA.
After determining that the retrovirus wasn’t doing the copying, his next best theory was that the functional lotion had become contaminated with something else, perhaps something in his laboratory at NewYew, and so he had mixed a series of batches (numbers three through twelve) without any of his standard clean protocols—he didn’t wash his hands, he didn’t keep the tools or beakers clean, he didn’t protect the ingredients. On Wednesday a message came through from Abraham Decker containing a full list of the other chemicals and substances present in his laboratory, complete with photos of the laboratory layout. Lyle wanted to talk to Decker in person, but the Ibis Lyles assured him it was too dangerous at the moment; Decker was struggling to maintain his cover, and even sending the lists and photos had put him in danger of discovery. On the weekend, maybe. Lyle buckled down, waited for the weekend, and mixed more batches. Numbers thirteen through twenty-seven were various attempts to re-create specific contaminations from Decker’s list of ingredients, trying to see if any of them, or groups of them in combination, could reproduce the accident that had created ReBirth. None of them had.
“What I need to do,” said Lyle, “is analyze the lotion in action.” He talked to himself all the time now, for there was no one else to talk to. The Ibis Lyles had refused his request for an assistant. “If I could watch it under a microscope, and really see what it’s doing and how it’s doing it, I might be able to make it work.” He reached for the phone to call the secretary, but stopped when he heard the lock on the door click open. Someone was coming in. He looked up and watched himself walk through the door, his own face in his own beige suit.
“Hello, Lyle.”
Lyle felt the familiar queasiness that always seemed to hit him when he saw one of his copies. He set down the phone. “Which one are you,” he asked. “Brady? That’s the CEO, right? Ira Brady?”
“We call him Prime now,” said the other Lyle. “Our real names are potentially dangerous these days, and we needed a good way of differentiating who was who.”
Lyle raised his eyebrow. “So Brady is Lyle Prime? As in, the first? The original? Shouldn’t that be me?”
The other Lyle shrugged. “It’s really more of a seniority thing, but … there you go. Sorry.”
Lyle shook his head, sitting at his desk. “Well, great. First I’m not the only me, and now I’m not even the real me.”
“At least you’re still you,” said the other Lyle. “The rest of us who are you are actually somebody else, from our point of view. You have to admit that’s worse.”
“You’d think so, but I don’t know,” said Lyle. “This is still pretty mind-blowingly weird.”
The other Lyle walked toward him, extending his hand. “I’m Abraham Decker, by the way. I’m you at Ibis—and that’s always how I used to explain it, even before this whole … mess. You were the head chemist at NewYew, and one of the best in the business, and I was the head chemist at Ibis—kind of in your shadow, I guess. Now I’m you at NewYew and you’re me at Ibis. In a weird sort of way.”
Lyle looked at the man’s hand and grimaced, feeling another wave of queasiness. “I’m sorry. No offense, Mr. Decker, honestly, but it’s just too strange to shake my own hand.”
Decker/Lyle nodded, dropping his hand and backing up toward another desk chair. “I understand completely.” He grabbed the chair by the chemical counter, pulled it forward a bit, and sat. “And please, there’s no ‘mister’ necessary, everybody just calls me—well, I was going to say that everybody calls me Decker, but these days everybody calls me Lyle. Even Prime and the others, as part of the charade.”
“I’ll just call you Decker,” said Lyle, smiling ruefully. He knew the man was here to talk about the lotion, to answer the questions Lyle had been pestering Ibis with for days, but now that he was here Lyle saw his chance to ask about other news—about NewYew, and ReBirth, and the world outside. The product launch event was only a few days away. What was really happening out there? “You were finally able to get away from NewYew?” he asked. “They don’t have you under surveillance?”
“I’ve managed to gain a level of trust,” said Decker/Lyle, “probably more than you’ve had in several months, actually.”
“They trusted me,” said Lyle, though even as he said it he felt a flicker of doubt.
“They’re holding your intern hostage,” said Decker/Lyle.
“Susan?”
Decker/Lyle nodded. “Everyone knows you had a thing for her, so they’re holding her hostage to keep you from talking. Cynthia explained the whole thing to me in a very uncomfortable meeting. You have information that could bring the entire company down, and they don’t trust you to keep quiet, so they’re using Susan as an … insurance policy.”
Lyle shook his head; he’d suspected they might try this, but to have it confirmed, and so coldly, was a shock. He looked at Decker/Lyle harshly. “You have to keep quiet. Don’t let them hurt her.”
“I don’t care for her one way or the other,” said Decker/Lyle, “that’s the irony here. But I do care about their trust, because it’s the only way I can get the information and the access that I need.”
“So you’re playing along.”
“All it took was to stop bickering,” said Decker/Lyle, shrugging. “I don’t attack their ideas the way you did, and every now and then I suggest a few of my own in the same vein. They love me now.”
“This just keeps getting better and better,” said Lyle, throwing up his hands. “I’m not the only me, I’m not the original me, and now I’m not even the best me.” He could just imagine this impostor in the boardroom, laughing at Jeffrey’s jokes and cheering at each new plan to turn his lotion into vast, heaping piles of illegal profits. More effective than me, but far, far worse. “At least I’m not living a lie. Or compromising every principle the real Lyle ever stood for.”
Decker/Lyle raised his eyebrow. “You mean scientific advancement?”
“I mean saving lives.”
“I told you, I won’t let them hurt Susan.”
“I’m not talking about Susan,” said Lyle, “I’m talking about everyone—saving lives in general.”
Decker/Lyle smirked. “When have you ever stood for saving lives?”
Lyle stared at him, his mouth hanging open. “I … what do you mean? I’ve always stood for saving lives.”
“Just ‘lives’ in general?” asked Decker/Lyle. “Is that a charity I’m not familiar with? The Saving Lives Foundation?”
“I mean helping people,” said Lyle angrily.
“Well, okay,” said Decker/Lyle, “but again: which people? I don’t want to be a jerk about this, Dr. Fontanelle, but I’ve spent years trying to emulate you, first in my own job and now in yours. You’ve never been involved in any charity organizations, you didn’t contribute to any relief efforts or nonprofits in anything more than a token capacity, and even then only when it was your own company’s new flavor of the week. Tossing a couple hundred bucks at the Haitian hurricane or the Salvation Army doesn’t make ‘saving lives’ one of your core principles. I’ve been playing your role … accurately.”
“My life is not a role.”
“It is for me.”
Lyle blustered, waving his arms as he searched for the right words. He had always thought of himself as a good man, an honest man, a man who helped his neighbors and did what was right and made the world a better place, but now that he was confronted about it—by himself, no less—he couldn’t think of a single example. “I am not…” He gave up on examples. “I am a good person.”
“I’m not saying you’re not.”
“I have never stood for destroying lives,” Lyle said, punctuating his declaration with a point of his finger, as if this was the clinching piece of evidence. “No one can say that I’m a destructive or a bloodthirsty or even a careless person. I help people.”
“Not hurting people isn’t the same as helping them,” said Decker/Lyle.
“But what NewYew is trying to do will hurt people,” said Lyle. “That’s what I’m saying, and that’s what you’re helping them do, in my name. And in my whole”—he waved his hand over Decker/Lyle—“body.”
“That’s where I disagree with you,” said Decker/Lyle, leaning forward. “They’re not going out of their way to help people, no, but they’re not hurting anyone, either. They’re going to bring an amazing product—your product—to market, and yes, they’re going to make a mind-boggling amount of money doing it, but that doesn’t make them evil. They’re not stealing from anyone, they’re not oppressing anyone, they’re not even deceiving anyone. They’re better than Ibis in a lot of ways, and while I’m only working with them as a ruse, I still feel some pride in what we’re doing. You’re giving the scientific presentation at the launch next week—well, I mean I am, but it’s you. It’s both of us, in a way.”
“They would never let me speak at an event,” said Lyle.
“Not the old you,” said Decker/Lyle, “but you said it yourself: I’m better at being you than you are.”
All of Lyle’s anger and frustration seemed to come together then in a single point, his anger at NewYew for misusing his technology, at Ibis for imprisoning him, at himself for failing twenty-seven times to re-create his own discovery. At this calm-voiced, amoral, fun house–mirror version of himself that twisted his own words and called him a monster. Before he even knew what he was doing he was out of his chair and grasping the evil Lyle by his own lapels, yanking him from his seat, shoving him to the ground, and then he was punching him, smashing his fists into his face—into his own face, except every time he hit the face looked less like his own, mussing its hair, cutting its skin, streaks of blood welling up on its cheek, and suddenly the other Lyle was punching back, his own enemy fist lashing out at his own face, his real face, and felt his brain pulse and thump and rattle as he beat himself senseless. A moment later more hands appeared, bigger and stronger hands, and the Ibis thugs were pulling them apart. Lyle regained his footing, shrugging off the thugs’ meaty hands, and when they saw that he was no longer trying to lunge forward they let him go. He stood panting, wiping the blood from his cheek with the cuff of his shirt. The Decker/Lyle stood across from him, wiping blood with the flat of his hand, flanked by a thug of his own. Another Lyle, untouched by the fight, stood in the doorway.
“Are we done with our little tantrum?”
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” said Lyle, and suddenly he felt like crying. He panted again, gasping for breath. “I don’t want to do it.”
“Are you Prime?” asked Decker/Lyle. The third Lyle nodded, and Decker/Lyle walked toward him. “I need to get cleaned up. NewYew’s touring the Manhattan Center in three hours, prepping for the product launch. I can’t show up looking like I’ve been in a fistfight.”
“We’ll find some way to cover for you,” said Prime, helping Decker/Lyle to the door. “A fake mugging, maybe, or a fall down the stairs.”
“I don’t want to do this anymore!” said Lyle again. “Doesn’t anyone listen to me? I’m not going to give you ReBirth, I’m not going to live in your little lab, I’m not going to do any of it! The deal’s over.”
“You didn’t come here because of a deal,” said Prime. He let Decker/Lyle out, and closed the door again behind him. He looked back at Lyle. “You came here because we brought you here.”
“But you can’t make me work.”
“We can’t,” said Prime. “But we can offer you incentives not to fail us. As it happens, you’ve written a very threatening letter to the president.”
Lyle felt queasy. “I did?”
Prime nodded. “A very detailed letter, of the kind the FBI loves to follow up on.”
“They’ll know it’s a fake.”
“The envelope contains fragments of your hair and epithelials; the handwriting was harder to copy, but it’s surprising how much of your movements were already right here in our hands.” He held up his hand, turning it slowly from front to back. “Not muscle memory, of course, but simple muscle structure—the size of our fingers, the distance between our knuckles. It changes the way we write, Dr. Fontanelle. It changes us further and further into you. I assume that we also owe you our growing love for brussels sprouts.”
“Food preferences aren’t genetic,” said Lyle.
“Not directly, no,” said Prime, “but having your tongue means we have your specific distribution of taste buds—some are larger, some are smaller, certain areas of the tongue have more or less than before. And there’s just something about a brussels sprout that … really hits that combination just right, doesn’t it? A little butter, a little salt, that delectable bitterness buried deep in the leaves.”
“Just stop already,” said Lyle. “I’m sick of helping every two-faced, money-grubbing, walking conspiracy theory that thinks my hand lotion can rule the world.”
“Give us the lotion,” said Prime.
“Why don’t you just buy some?” asked Lyle. “The launch party’s in three days—the stuff’s already been shipped to the clinics. Stand in the audience and you might even get a free sample.”
“It’s not enough to have ReBirth,” said Prime, “we have to be able to make it. That’s the only way we can control it, instead of being controlled by NewYew. This isn’t just a beauty product, Dr. Fontanelle, it’s the greatest weapon of espionage ever created. Instead of being you I could be a senator, a president; my friends and I could be the presidents of every political superpower on earth. NewYew isn’t even selling blank lotion; they’re keeping it locked up in their clinics, and if we can’t make our own we’ll have to go into those clinics and take it. Do you want to be responsible for any accidental deaths that might arise from that scenario?”
“That’s not how responsibility works,” said Lyle.
“Tell that to your guilty conscience when you see the first bodies on the news,” said Prime, and his voiced turned to steel. “Give us a working formula.”
Lyle stared at him, running through a hundred different scenarios. None of them looked good, but one of them had potential.…
“So,” said Prime. “What is your next step?”
To get out of here, thought Lyle. To get out of here and run away and be done with this forever. He blew out a long breath, and stooped to pick up a chair knocked down in the fight. “I need to analyze the lotion—the real lotion—while it’s working. I need to watch what it does, while it does it, and see if I can figure out why.”
“And what do you need for that?”
“I need a genetics degree, for starters.” Lyle shrugged. “Mostly I need better equipment: better tools, cleaner water. I want to start filtering my own.”
Prime nodded. “That’s the spirit. Give us a list and we’ll get it for you as soon as we can.”
“As soon as you can,” said Lyle. He breathed heavily, still catching his breath. Decker is their only chemist, and he’s too busy to vet my list for them. They won’t see what I’m trying to do. A few days to get the ingredients, and a few more days to get everything ready.…
I just hope I can get out in time.