Doppelganger Girl

by T. R. Woodman

  She had picked her way through the fruit and the cheese on the plate. She had finished off most of the water, she had eaten the crackers, and even enjoyed—though she hated to admit it given her present whereabouts—the jam-filled butter cookies. But the sausage just seemed like it was going to be too much to handle, and so she pushed the paprika-and-pepper-scented tube of cured meat to the far end of the table and stood.

  She had thought for a while about whether or not she wanted to shower, given what the doctor had said about there being prying eyes in her midst, but in the end, she relented. Someone might get a show out of it, but she wanted to feel the warmth of the water on her skin and face. And so, having left her sleepwear on the bathroom floor, she smashed her body into the corner of the shower, facing the wall, and she breathed the steam and imagined herself back on Orsus, standing next to the lake in the heat of the day with Joseph by her side.

  How much time went by, she had no idea, but the water never got cool, and neither did her thoughts about Joseph. The longer she stood there, the more desperately she wanted to find a way back to him. Reluctantly she turned off the water, and maybe for the first time in her life, as she stepped out of the steamy shower, she felt unconcerned about her appearance. She still didn’t want to give anyone any more to look at than she needed to, so she quickly covered herself with the bath towel and stepped back into her boudoir.

  Twenty minutes later, she looked like she was ready to go horseback riding, and if it hadn’t been for the hundreds of military personnel and shuttles on the grounds, she might have imagined herself going for a ride across a European countryside. She had her hair tied back, was wearing some remarkably well-fitting khaki riding pants, boots, and a short-sleeved black collared shirt. But instead of riding across faraway lands on horseback with Joseph, she was staring at a sausage she was surprised to realize she had no desire to eat.

  She wondered about the food at first, thinking it could be poisoned or drugged, but quickly dismissed it, partly because she was ravenous and partly because she couldn’t figure out why they would bring her all the way there and pamper her with a nice room and a shower—even if she had been outfitted with a lethal collar—only to kill her.

  As the minutes and then hours passed, Evelyn found herself moving around the room—lying on the bed, sitting in all the chairs, stretching out on the floor—and she knew she was right about the food being okay to eat, but her thoughts were still troubled.

  Her mind worked like a machine, and even though she didn’t have to think consciously about the calculations, she knew the results. There was very little chance, given what she knew, that she would survive being there, and there was virtually no chance for escape. Any attempt at escape would make death certain. As much as she didn’t want to think about dying, she was spending less time trying to solve her own imprisonment problem and more time thinking about saving Tate and undermining whatever hideous plot was being developed in the enormous country home she found herself trapped within.

  It wasn’t until hours later, the waning light of the long day cascading through the windows, and after being completely lulled into a fog of isolated thought, that there came a rap at her door.

  Evelyn sat up straighter in her seat at the coffee table, realizing, to her surprise, she was hoping it was going to be the familiar face of the completely-lacking-in-bedside-manner Dr. Pretty. It wasn’t, and the nerves in her stomach grew as an older man entered. He was distinguished looking and trim, wearing a dark tailored suit that accentuated his fit frame. His hair may have been thinning and gray, but it was cropped so cleanly it was hard to tell. He wasn’t wearing a tie, and the only splash of color he had was the breathtaking blue of his shirt, which was perfectly accented by the cool blueness of his eyes.

  Evelyn recognized him immediately from the countless hours of video and news clippings she had stored away in her gray matter. It was obvious—his presence filling the enormous room even as he entered—why he had been elected to office so many decades ago and how he still had so much power. He may as well have been king for all the years he had served in office. In the ominous presence of President Dale Coleson, Evelyn felt like she was shrinking into the velvet of the seat cover as he approached.

  It was hard for her to put her finger on it, in spite of feeling both terrified and awestruck, but something about him didn’t seem quite right. The disconnect between what she thought he should be and what he was made it impossible for her to regroup her thoughts.

  Evelyn tried to stand.

  The president smiled and waved her down. “Oh no, please sit. I’ll come to you.”

  The president sat in the chair opposite her as she returned to her seat. He had a relaxed look about him, and for a few moments, he said nothing. She felt his penetrating eyes as he looked at her, as if he was trying to discern something about her that he didn’t understand either. As uncomfortable as she was, though, she had no idea what to say, if anything, and so she sat and waited for him to speak.

  In the silence, up close, she realized that President Coleson was remarkably handsome and appeared much younger than his years. And then Evelyn realized that was the thing bothering her. It wasn’t the fact that she was sitting across from a man who had hunted down Mr. Philips and called him a traitor. It wasn’t because he had driven the country into a state of economic collapse and depression. It wasn’t that even before the war, he had been responsible for an administration that had executed tens of millions of citizens for failing to comply with state relocation orders. The man was a murderer—and every part of her knew it—but as she sat there, her blood chilling and the skin on her arms pocking into goose flesh, she realized why she was so unnerved. President Coleson clearly wasn’t aging. In fact, as she looked into the blackness of his pupils, which also seemed to be without bottom, he seemed younger—years younger—than the last pictures she had of him before they had left Earth six years before.

  Evelyn knew the man sitting across from her was about seventy years old, but he didn’t even look fifty. He had just the hint of crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes, but the square lines of his jaw, the flush of his skin, the sparkle in his terrifyingly intelligent eyes, the sturdiness of his walk and his posture … everything about him struck her as youthful, and Evelyn could find no explanation for it other than perhaps she was looking into the eyes of the Devil himself.

  She desperately locked her spine to resist the shudder trying to race up her back, and then he leaned into his seat, crossing his legs casually.

  “You know,” he began in a dreamy, smooth baritone, “you are quite lovely.”

  Evelyn knew the surprise of his compliment registered on her face, and the president half laughed.

  “Amazing,” he said. “Really, Evelyn, just seeing you here … I’m not often at a loss for words, but you are simply breathtaking.”

  Evelyn felt the knot tighten in her chest. She couldn’t help but feel like things had just grown considerably worse for her, not just because he knew who she was, but also because she clearly had an admirer in this sociopathic world leader more than fifty years her senior.

  “I don’t know what to say,” she managed, squirreling up some courage to open her mouth, despite her desire to disappear.

  “Oh, well, please, ask me anything. I really want to see that mind of yours at work.”

  Evelyn felt her stomach churn. She wondered if he was giving her some sort of test. She felt her pulse rising, and then she remembered Tate. She needed to figure out what was going on, so she slowed her breathing, calmed her nerves, and figured she’d try to learn all she could.

  “Okay,” she said, clearing her throat. “How do you know who I am?”

  “Ah, yes. That is a good place to start our conversation, and I must say, your identity is a more recent revelation for us. It’s probably obvious to you, but when we first noticed you, we thought you were Jane Philips. The facial recognition programs identified you as her. Even the DNA samples the rangers took on sit
e showed you were her. The fact that you appeared to be so much younger had the rangers who found you a little confused … but you and I both know how that works, now, don’t we?” he added, nodding his head slightly to her.

  Evelyn didn’t know what he was talking about, but she sat still and listened, hoping the pieces would fall into place.

  “It wasn’t until we saw the flight report, though, that we figured something wasn’t quite right. The pilots said they had lost control of the shuttle for a time, which is unusual given the technology aboard those shuttles—I suppose I ought to thank Mr. Philips for that contribution to our nation’s defenses when I see him—but then our doctors discovered your nanobots during their routine scans when you arrived at Falcon’s Nest, and that’s when we knew we had something very, very special.”

  Evelyn wanted to scream. The thought of being examined by researchers while she was unconscious was enough to make her skin crawl, but not wanting to let on, she locked her back and bit down on her jaw with enough force that she felt her teeth might break.

  “Once we accessed the logs on your shuttle,” he continued, “we started to put two and two together. You were nearly comatose, but apparently aware enough to connect with the shuttle’s onboard computers. You were trying to get the autopilot to take the shuttle to outer space … and it almost worked. From there, it didn’t take us long to uncover the truth … that you were Evelyn, not Jane.”

  The president uncrossed his legs and leaned forward, his grin giving him the look of a friend confiding a secret.

  “Incidentally, that collar you’re wearing blocks your nanobots from transmitting signals. Our scientists needed something to subdue the rangers who didn’t take to the training program all that well, but the technology works just as well on you … You won’t be connecting with any of our systems during your brief stay with us.”

  Evelyn felt like she had just been punched in the spine. She didn’t enjoy being around the rangers and the toxic signal they emitted, but she had assumed that they weren’t around at all because she couldn’t feel them. Now she knew they were around, and what was worse, she had no way to know who in her presence may be a potentially psychotic trained killer.

  As disturbed and disheartened as she was, though, Evelyn felt a heat building in her chest at feeling trapped—even outsmarted—by a man she had evaded for so long. She didn’t know where to direct her frustrations—at him for outsmarting her or at herself for being foolish, and naïve, and stupid. She didn’t really want to hear any more. She just wanted to leave, somehow, and she knew that wasn’t possible. It was all she could do to keep from squirming in her seat, and just as she felt her insides were about to snap, she remembered her brother.

  “I assume you know who I was traveling with, then, too,” she asked, trying to keep her tone steady, though she felt her guts lurching inside her.

  “Of course we do. Tate Philips … Carson’s son.”

  “Can I see him?”

  “No,” the president said casually. “Not yet, anyway, but soon enough.”

  “Can I ask why?”

  “Can I ask how they got you in there?” the president replied, pointing lightly to her head.

  Evelyn knew he wanted to know how the researchers had given her a body, and it was clear he didn’t understand that in a biological sense, she was completely human. Even now, in the presence of this man, she hated herself for the fleeting thought that she wanted validation from him too about her humanity. Why she wanted an inhuman monster to regard her as a person, she couldn’t explain, but it was another painful reminder that she was not seen the way she wanted. Evelyn felt like she had been violated enough for one day. She wasn’t about to do it again to herself.

  “No,” she said with more than a hint of disdain in her voice.

  “I see,” the president replied, at first seemingly indifferent, but as the moments passed, Evelyn could see something manifesting within him. He may have hit a nerve in treating her as less than human, but she knew she had hit more than that in treating him with contempt. He paused, staring into her eyes, seeming to size her up, and Evelyn could see the anger smoldering deep within him. As a moment passed, he seemed to stiffen, as if she was the new kid and he was the playground bully looking to defend his territory.

  “You know, Evelyn,” he began with a tension to his tone that set off every alarm within her, “I thought we might sit and have a cordial conversation together. It appears that may not be possible given our history. So, why don’t you take ten seconds to decide what you want to do about your mouth, and I’ll take ten seconds to decide what I want to do about you.”

  Evelyn realized her mouth was hanging open slightly, and with as much dignity as she could muster, she closed it and sat back in her seat.

  The president let ten, then twenty, then thirty seconds pass in eerie silence and stillness, as if he was daring Evelyn to say something. “Good,” he said finally, and then he stood and walked toward the window, gazing at the courtyard below.

  “Since you seem to be at a loss for words, let me ask your next question for you. ‘Mr. President, what can I do to help you?’ Well, Evelyn, that is also a very good question, and it’s one deserving of a little more explanation.

  “You no doubt remember the public address Carson Philips made just before he left,” he said, glancing at Evelyn.

  Evelyn sat as still as she could, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of a response.

  “Yes, I thought you would—seeing as you helped him access the global communications network to do it,” he said, clasping his hands behind his back.

  “Well, in the speech he gave, he said a lot of things. He said the leadership of the country had let the people down. He said families had been torn apart. He said people had suffered. And you know, he was right.”

  He turned to gaze out the window. “It was a very bleak time for our people … very dark, but as you probably know, our countrymen are strong. We have come through difficult times as a nation, and I believe we would have emerged from that period, stronger for our experiences, had it not been for one thing.”

  Without turning his body, the president looked over his shoulder at Evelyn, his steely gaze firm. “Do you remember what Carson Philips said he was going to do?”

  Evelyn said nothing again.

  “Oh, come now, Evelyn, play along,” he said, turning and grinning at her. “You do want to know why you are here, don’t you?”

  Evelyn didn’t enjoy being patronized, but she did want to know. “He said we were going to find a new planet to colonize, and we would return to bring others there if they wanted to go.”

  “Yes, exactly,” he agreed. “And that was all it took for the once-proud people of this great nation—the same people who had built the greatest civilization in the history of mankind … to give up.

  “Carson Philips hadn’t given people hope. He had taken away their hope that they could rebuild our nation. He had undermined the very structure of our civilization. People no longer wanted to make our nation great. They wanted to leave.

  “After that,” the president continued, pacing his way across the floor, “the country fell into chaos. There were uprisings and riots. Order and law had been pushed aside in favor of vigilante justice. And it was during this time—a time of great vulnerability, mind you—when our country was attacked.

  “Separatists worked with the Mexican government to organize attacks on the southern states. Amazingly, the thought that our country could lose territory to Mexico was enough to bring out the patriot in most of our citizens. War is a terrible thing, mind you, but it was beautiful to see the way it brought people together to fight for the common cause—our common cause. It was unifying, but unfortunately, our country no longer had the resources and the manpower to hold off the attacks of the revolutionaries. We lost. Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, Nevada, and most of California were claimed by Mexico. The country broke apart, and with it whatever spirit the people had left.

&nbs
p; “It was in the depths of war when I realized that our people really were resilient in a way I couldn’t have imagined before. They were resolute. Determined. They were tough, and they were bold. They just needed a reason to be that way. They needed a rallying cry … very literally, they needed something to fight for.

  “You vanished. When you left, we were bearing down on the space station, and it vanished before our very eyes, with everyone on board. I didn’t expect that any of what Carson Philips had said was true … that you had found a way to travel to new worlds. I thought it was just the rantings of a man who had completely lost his mind. But then you were gone. I didn’t know if you had been successful. I just knew there was no trace of you left here. I also knew that if you had been successful, it would just be a matter of time before you returned.

  “So, for six years we followed Tate Philips around in his trek across the country. It was easy enough to do with the surveillance we maintain in every major city and with our network of drones. We figured when Carson Philips returned, he would seek out his only son. Frankly, I had just about given up hope that he had, in fact, been successful. But then we saw you, peeking at us from behind the moon, and we followed your shuttle down to the surface, and we tracked you to your landing site in Texas. It took a little time to get our rangers close, but they found you, and here you are.

  “We have been preparing for years for your return,” he said, gesturing to the shuttles in the fields beyond. “And now that you’re here, I intend to restore the spirit of this great people. I intend to give them exactly what they want. Something to fight for … a new world to conquer.”

  “You can’t,” Evelyn said, her chest tightening as she realized what the president was saying.

  “Oh, I assure you, we can, and we will, and you’re going to help us, Evelyn.”