Extreme Makeover

by Dan Wells

  CARLOS: Yes, Lisa, I’m here at the Osborne home and as you can see, the police are still here, more than an hour after the call; the issue is turning out to be much murkier than anyone expected. We have two men here who’ve offered to talk to us: Officer Schwartz is in charge of the scene and Aaron Greer is a state attorney—they’ve actually brought an attorney to consult with the police, because this entire episode is so bizarre. Can you tell me, Officer Schwartz: this seems like a simple domestic call, so why all the confusion?

  OFFICER: When we initially arrived, the first officers on the scene heard shouts and name-calling, things like that; they knocked on the door and saw the home in disarray. Several objects had been broken but no one seemed to be hurt. Our problem here is that the only crime that seems to have been committed is the original application of the lotion.

  CARLOS: And putting lotion on someone would not normally be considered a crime.

  OFFICER: Not normally, no, but because of the nature of this particular lotion … it feels like something illegal happened, we just don’t know what it is.

  CARLOS: And you, Mr. Greer, what is your take on the situation?

  LAWYER: For one thing, we don’t even know if this works. The ReBirth lotion sounds completely ridiculous, literally almost impossible to believe, and yet NewYew has obviously spent millions, maybe billions of dollars on creating and distributing it, and I can’t think of why they’d do something like that if it were all a hoax.

  CARLOS: So if the lotion doesn’t actually alter Mrs. Osborne’s DNA, this is all moot?

  LAWYER: It’s still a domestic disturbance, and they’ll probably be fined for bothering the neighbors, but you’re right—if the lotion doesn’t actually do anything, the fine is the worst that will happen.

  CARLOS: And if it does work?

  LAWYER: If does work, then.… Then we’ve got an entirely new area of law that no one has ever dealt with before. We simply don’t have the legal infrastructure to deal with this kind of crime: we could charge him with reckless endangerment, maybe, but unlawfully turning one person into another person? It’s simply unheard of. There’s nothing about this in any law book outside of … the starship Enterprise.

  CARLOS: Unbelievable. This has got to be one of the craziest domestic calls you guys have ever had to make. At least for now. [Turns to camera.] Lisa, we’ll keep you updated as the story progresses, but both Officer Schwartz and Mr. Greer wanted me to stress just how dangerous this lotion can be, especially if used incorrectly or without consent. It goes on sale tomorrow, so please, everyone, be careful or you might see these guys knocking on your door.

  * * *

  MEG CARSON: Welcome back to the Morning Show, coming to you live from Times Square. I’m Meg Carson, and outside the window you can see the crowd is super excited about our next guest, one of the most controversial figures in America: the man known as Guru Kuvam. Joining him in our studio are Donna and Melissa Pickett, who claim that Kuvam healed Donna of cancer. Mr. Kuvam—

  KUVAM: Please, call me Guru.

  CARSON: Um, okay. Guru Kuvam. When this story broke just over a month ago everyone could see that Donna looked like the new twin sister of her daughter Melissa, and seeing them together here in our studio I have to say that the similarities are impossible to ignore.

  [Donna and Melissa smile; they are nearly identical.]

  CARSON: When your news first broke, nobody knew what to make of it, but given the events of the last few days, naturally we’re all wondering if your so-called naturopathic treatment was in fact simply a dose of ReBirth.

  KUVAM: That is correct, Megan, but it is incorrect to dismiss ReBirth’s naturopathic origins. Naturopathy as a medical discipline heals the whole body, bringing out the best in that body and allowing it to heal itself. Donna’s previous cancer treatments ignored this and focused on small parts of her body, in an attempt to kill the cancer by brute force, but I have treated her whole body by changing it; by cleansing it. She has used that power to heal herself.

  CARSON: But doesn’t that seem kind of invasive to you? I mean … it’s not really her body anymore, is it? It’s Melissa’s.

  KUVAM: It’s Melissa’s genetic code, but Donna’s body. They’re no more the same person than a pair of identical twins is the same person—let us say instead that they are two different people sharing a common point of origin, as indeed we all do.

  CARSON: Perhaps you can answer this, then: Where did you get a sample of ReBirth more than a month early? Did they give it to you? Is this part of a NewYew publicity stunt?

  KUVAM: They did not give it to me, and I did not steal it. Let us say instead that the universe itself brought ReBirth into my hands. The world, the media, the corporations that control these substances—all they care about are the superficial trappings. They want money, or beauty, or power, and they can have them; the vibrant force of human nature doesn’t care about these things. NewYew has given us a commercial product, but the universe, through NewYew, has given us life. They have given us immortality. Do you see the potential, Megan? Do you see the hands of the universe reaching out to embrace you? There should be nothing that troubles us anymore: no worries of disease, because ReBirth has cured all our disease; no worries of hate because ReBirth has removed all our differences. We are one people now, united and eternal, and nothing can take that—

  [Guru Kuvam’s head jerks back with a loud crack, bright red blossoming from his forehead. Behind him the glass window shatters, and the studio is abruptly filled with sounds of cars and people and screaming. The women duck behind couches, cameramen and stagehands scurry for cover, and a second barrage of bullets tears through the studio. A man charges in front of the camera, waving an assault rifle wildly in his hand.]

  GUNMAN: The heretic has fallen, and with him his abominations!

  [A third round of gunfire erupts from off screen, and the gunman falls as police and security guards rush toward him. The gunman gasps his final words.]

  GUNMAN: I give my life gladly. My resurrection will be a true one.

  * * *

  NEWSCASTER: We are coming to you live from the midnight launch event for the ReBirth clinic in Santa Monica, where twenty-four-year-old singer and movie star Cristina Francis has been attacked. Sources close to Francis tell me she was here for the event, just like hundreds of other curious onlookers, when out of the crowd one of the first ReBirth customers emerged from the clinic with a sample of blank lotion and lunged at Francis, smearing her with it in an attempt to imprint it with her DNA. I’m standing here with Ben Thompson, one of many eyewitnesses. Ben, can you tell us in your own words what happened next?

  THOMPSON: We tried to catch him, right? Like, the whole crowd—we were gonna tackle him, but he had the lotion just out there, in his hands and stuff, and there was no way to grab him without getting it on us, you know? And Cristina Francis is great and everything but I don’t want to be her, like, maybe my girlfriend could be her, but not me, especially because then people might be attacking me all the time for my DNA. And I told my girlfriend to grab him, but she was all scared and no one else would touch him, either, so he got away.

  NEWSCASTER: Thank you. Many bloggers and analysts have been predicting exactly this kind of attack ever since ReBirth was announced yesterday: the rise of the so-called gene-arazzi, who will ambush celebrities not to take their pictures, but to take their DNA. Nobody expected it would happen this quickly, however, which seems like an ominous sign for the future. Back to you.

  32

  Wednesday, July 11

  1:23 P.M.

  NewYew headquarters boardroom, Manhattan

  156 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD

  “The noose is tightening,” said Sunny. “My guy in the FDA says they’re working with the FBI and the military, and planning something big—raiding our manufacturing plant, seizing our records, everything. We have until Friday at the latest. I think it’s time to go now.”

  Decker/Lyle looked around the boardroom, a flutter of n
erves in his stomach. This was it: he’d stayed with them, he’d helped make the product launch a huge success, and even when Susan turned up outside he’d ignored her, staying true to his NewYew cronies. They trusted him implicitly now. It was time to see what the next phase was.

  At the same time, he felt a stab of guilt. The NewYew executives had treated him, in a way, even better than the Ibis ones had. He was making more money now than he ever had before, and had forged what he felt was a real friendship with Sunny. His life here, as Lyle Fontanelle, was working great—what was to stop him from just … slipping into it? Saying goodbye to Ibis and Abraham Decker and everything else, and staying as Lyle forever? It was tempting. Decker/Lyle was torn.

  It had become a very familiar feeling.

  “They’re never going to let us out of the country,” said Jeffrey.

  “That’s why we’re going in my private yacht,” said Cynthia. “Assuming you don’t mind a few weeks at sea, we can be in São Tomé without ever having to cross a border, reveal a face, or show a passport.”

  Decker/Lyle smiled. “You guys really did think of everything.” Screw Ibis, he thought. This is what I want—good friends and no worries on a tropical island, with more money than I could possibly know what to do with. Ibis would kill for this information, but … what do I care? He laughed. Live it up.

  The executives stood, rolling their chairs in toward the conference table for the last time. Sunny held the door as they walked to the elevator, and Kerry punched the down button.

  “I’m kind of jealous,” he said. Kerry was staying behind—the company needed somebody stateside, and Kerry had changed his face so many times he was unrecognizable. He could run things in secret, and the feds would be none the wiser.

  Decker/Lyle smiled. “We’ll try not to have too much fun.”

  “Oh, I’m going to have fun,” Kerry laughed. “I’m a newly minted billionaire in the greatest city in the world—don’t worry about me. But I won’t have a beach like you guys.”

  “You can’t have everything,” said Sunny.

  “I’m sure as hell going to try,” said Jeffrey.

  The elevator dinged, opened, and they stepped in. Jeffrey pushed the button for the parking garage, and a moment later Kerry punched the button for the thirty-fourth floor. “I almost forgot the cash,” he said. “We made a lump withdrawal for you to take on the boat; three briefcases.”

  “You need a hand?” asked Sunny.

  “Like, a third one?” asked Jeffrey. “Can ReBirth do that?”

  “Shut up, Jeffrey,” said Cynthia. “And no, Sunny, I need you to sign some papers on the way out.” The doors opened on the thirty-fourth floor. “Lyle can help him.”

  “Sure thing,” said Lyle. On the thirty-fourth floor he and Kerry stepped out, collected the briefcases, and waited for the next elevator. When they reached the parking garage the others were already in the limo idling softly by the doors. Kerry passed his two cases in, and held the door as Decker/Lyle climbed in after.

  “Have fun,” said Kerry, and closed the door.

  The limo pulled away, and Jeffrey started tearing the foil from a bottle of champagne. “It’s finally here!” he shouted. “Let’s celebrate!” He popped the cork, and the other executives cheered as they shifted and squirmed out of the way of the spurting foam. Jeffrey poured glasses, nearly spilling one as the limo tipped up, driving out of the garage and into the street.

  Cynthia looked at Decker/Lyle. “So where’s this boat?”

  Decker/Lyle smiled, confused. “Isn’t it yours?”

  “I—yes. Of course. I just wondered if you’d moved it.” She smiled back, a strange mixture of embarrassment and … Is that guilt? Lyle looked at the others, catching the tail end of a disapproving glance from … Jeffrey? Since when does Jeffrey dare to look at Cynthia that way?

  “Why would I move your boat?” he asked.

  “It was just a slipup,” said Sunny. “Give her a break, it won’t happen again.”

  Decker/Lyle looked up sharply. “Wait, what?” Why were they acting so weird?

  “I’m just saying,” said Sunny, “we’re all new to this. I mean, sure, we’ve been practicing these characters for weeks, but—”

  Lyle’s head seemed to fill with alarms: They’re not acting like themselves because they’re not themselves. “You’re duplicates.”

  The other executives looked at each other with confused half smiles, as if he’d just accused the sky of being blue. “Well … yeah,” said Cynthia. “Aren’t you?”

  Decker/Lyle didn’t answer, his mind racing with the implications. These were all duplicates. What did that mean?

  The fake Jeffrey’s eyes went wide: “He’s real. They stuck us in a car with the real Lyle.”

  “Why would they give us the real Lyle?” asked the fake Sunny, stammering. “They … we’re … supposed to go to the Bahamas now, right?”

  The fake Cynthia went pale. “They told me Buenos Aires.”

  The fake Sunny lunged for the door, but the handle wouldn’t open.

  Decker/Lyle looked over his shoulder, scanning the crowded Manhattan street behind them. Is that another limo going the other way? He couldn’t tell. He turned back around, frantic. What’s going on?

  The money, he thought, they wouldn’t give us money if they were— He pulled the nearest briefcase onto his lap and snapped it open. It was full of newspaper.

  “Oh, shi—”

  The limousine exploded.

  33

  Thursday, July 12

  1:13 A.M.

  The home of Delia Tyson, Flushing, Queens

  155 DAYS TO THE END OF THE WORLD

  Lyle was dead, which the real Lyle took as a welcome relief. He’d spent the last week and a half terrified that someone would find him—Ibis or NewYew or the press or the cops. It seemed like everyone was hunting him. But then the entire executive staff of NewYew had died in a car bomb, and suddenly Lyle was free.

  Until a few hours later, when another Lyle was found floating in the East River. And if there were two Lyles, the press said, why not more? Surely the father of human cloning had more than one copy of himself. And so he was a fugitive again.

  Dead or not, Lyle was too afraid to go outside, and so he hid in his grandmother’s house, watching the TV or the computer or his phone, or more often, all three at once. He watched the news scroll by with story after story about ReBirth: it was the best-selling product in its market. It was the primary topic of every talk show, late night and daytime. Police were cautioning against its use. Religious groups were decrying it as a sin, or a salvation, depending on which group you were talking to. People were using it wrong, or too much, or in ways Lyle had never dreamed: there was a thriving black market for celebrity DNA, and everyone from movie stars to political leaders was afraid to go outside.

  I guess I can’t blame them, thought Lyle. I haven’t left the house in more than a week.

  Lyle’s grandmother was a rugged old woman now nearly a hundred years old, who slept almost twenty hours a day and spent the other four nearly oblivious to Lyle’s presence. She never talked to anyone but the maid and the neighbor boy who delivered her groceries, and when either of them came Lyle hid in the backyard, crouched in a small wooden toolshed, praying his grandmother wouldn’t choose that moment to remember he existed and say something to her visitors.

  Now it was night, and he didn’t dare to turn on the TV, worried that anyone who might be watching the house would see the light and know he was there. Assuming anyone was watching the house at all. He’d never seen anyone, but if the government was smart enough to be checking his relatives’ homes he had to assume they were also smart enough to be discreet about it. He padded into the kitchen, opened the cupboard, and closed it again; there was nothing there. It was time to leave another note asking the neighbor boy to make a run to the store.

  There was a noise by the back door, and Lyle froze. It’s a burglar. Or it’s one of the Ibis Lyles. Or maybe it’s ju
st the wind tapping the tree against my window. He heard it again, a loud click or a knock, not like a friendly knock on the door but a determined, mechanical thunk; someone was definitely there. He scrounged on the counter for a weapon, finding a knife handle in the darkness and holding it determinedly in front of him. It’s a killer, he thought. It’s an assassin, from Ibis or the government or even from NewYew—I wouldn’t put it past them. Maybe that Christian group linked me to Kuvam and decided to take me down, too. Too many people want me dead.

  He took a cautious step toward the back door, holding his knife in front of him, watching the doorknob slowly turn of its own accord. He raised the knife, hands trembling, and the lock opened with a click. The door swung open slowly, and Cynthia stepped in. She was dressed in loose black pants and a black turtleneck, a pair of small metal lock picks glinting faintly in the starlight.

  Lyle stared at her, confused. Cynthia knows how to pick locks?

  Cynthia scanned the room and recoiled with a start when she saw him, staggering backward. “Geez, there’s a dude with a … spoon?” She paused, regaining her composure, and a large man, also dressed in black, swung into the doorway with a pistol aimed straight at Lyle’s chest. Lyle yelped and dropped his knife, which clattered away from him on the tiled floor. He peered at it in the light from the doorway. It was a spoon.

  “This the guy?” asked the big man, and Cynthia nodded, whispering, “Yeah, I’ve seen that face a hundred times. I took better care of it, though—geez, man, the least you could do is take a shower every now and then.”

  “Cynthia?” asked Lyle.

  The large man stepped in carefully, pushing past Lyle and sighting down each hall and doorway with his gun. “Is there anyone else in here?”