by Sean Platt
“So if someone has the Tomorrow Gene treatment, they’ll never die?”
Jonathan shook his head. “We can prolong life, and we can make people look and feel young, but mortality itself is a stubborn thing. It’s possible to make bacteria and yeasts live forever, but anything with consciousness eventually dies no matter what we do.” He sighed. “Maybe Wallace was right. Maybe a soul knows it can’t stick around forever. Maybe it knows when its time is over.”
“You? Talking about souls?” The idea was absurd, not only because this Jonathan was a clone, but because the original Jonathan had never believed in God.
“Maybe.” Jonathan pointed at the cells full of clones. “Look into their eyes and tell me they have souls. They don’t. They’re machinery. Wetware.”
“You said they were willing. ‘Willing slaves.’”
“Cloning, in and of itself, isn’t new. Ever since scientists made Dolly the Sheep, we’ve known this was possible. DNA is a blueprint, so all it took was learning how to follow that blueprint as precisely as possible if we wanted to create a twin from scratch. But twins aren’t exact; clones are. Our clones are. There are environmental factors throughout a person’s life that change how that DNA is expressed — a field of study known as epigenetics — and that’s why twins, raised separately, are often very different people.
“Eden’s process is different because it expresses the idealized blueprint while factoring in those epigenetic changes. It’s what makes me ‘more Jonathan’ than a twin could ever be. Cloning makes the embryo. Precipitous Rise allows us to mature it to adulthood in months. And Wallace’s special sauce makes sure that when that clone is growing, it’s incorporating all the little tweaks that make you YOU.”
Jonathan looked around the lab. He was no longer holding the knife. He’d set it on the counter behind him, next to what looked like a small centrifuge beside a tall, flat vessel filled with liquid, wires attached to its bottom.
“But it’s the same with the mind,” Jonathan continued. “Our customers don’t just want someone who looks exactly like Vanessa Smyth. If that’s what they wanted, plenty of beautiful women would be close enough to count. No. They want Vanessa herself. That means extracting memories from the host. Our memories make us what we are. The minds of twins, like their DNA, start out identical. Experiences make them who they are as individuals. Life is the mind’s epigenesis.
“But we don’t copy memories verbatim, Ephraim. You must understand that. We come close, but we always make one significant change. We tweak their minds so they want to do as our customers wish. Tweak them so they are companions rather than slaves.”
Ephraim was looking around. Watching all those vacant eyes as they watched him. And seeing their naked physical perfection — noting how Eden had cloned only the most attractive specimens, noting Jonathan’s words of “wanting to do” and “companions” — he realized what it was he was truly seeing.
“Jesus, Jonathan. This is sick. You’re not just selling slaves. You’re selling sex slaves.”
“Don’t act so righteous. Our process is incredibly complex. Impossibly time-consuming. Each of these blanks represents countless hours and expense. Evermore is about more than making our spa customers young and pretty. Wallace’s vision was grander than you can imagine. One day the world will look back on him as the man who changed everything. But following his mission requires resources. We need our profit centers to cover our needs. And that means we need merchandise to sell.”
“It’s prostitution! It’s rape!”
“When the files are ready, I’ll load up a Vanessa,” Jonathan said. “We’ll see how she reacts to you. Then we’ll see if you feel she’s been forced or if she truly wants you.”
“You’re brainwashing them.”
“We’re programming them.”
“They’re people, Jonathan!”
Jonathan shook his head slowly. Resolutely. He looked at the vacant-eyed beings in the cells, then at Ephraim. “Not yet, they’re not.”
“You don’t need this, Jonathan. Sophie paid a half-million credits for her Tomorrow Gene therapy and another half-million for mine. Even without continuity, that’s a million credits from two—”
“The Tomorrow Gene operates at a loss.”
Ephraim blinked. “Excuse me?”
“The Tomorrow Gene is a process of painstakingly rebuilding the body. We’re putting the brain on digital life support, like a surgeon bypasses the heart to operate on it. We offshore the majority of required computing power and have licensed most of the involved technologies. Eden is close to self-sufficient — but not quite, and our outgoing expenses are substantial. Existing where we do, we have pirates to bribe. We’ve had to hire mercenaries to protect the island. Governments had to be bought. It takes might to keep Eden invisible and her secrets intact, and all that might requires mountains of money to accomplish. And let’s not forget that the Tomorrow Gene process itself takes weeks — sometimes months — to complete.”
Months? Weeks?
Ephraim couldn’t possible have been asleep that long. What was he missing here?
“So why do you do the Tomorrow Gene, if it’s a losing proposition?”
“Our early memory extractions were done manually. Wallace was the first. Jonathan Todd was the second. The process required such extensive proofing and so many redundancies to insure a faithful copy that it was impractical. We needed to find a better way. In time, we did.”
Ephraim felt lightheaded. He leaned onto a tall stool for support.
And he understood.
“The Tomorrow Gene is that ‘better way,’ isn’t it? It’s not a treatment. You sell it to your clients so you can copy their minds. The world’s prettiest and most powerful people, who the highest bidders most want to …”
He couldn’t say it.
… to fuck.
“The body is relatively simple to duplicate.” Jonathan nodded then gestured at the cell full of Alma Couches, watching him with dumb fascination. “We grabbed Alma’s sequences the first time she came in, way back during Eden’s Grand Opening. All we had to do was to arrest the clones’ development in their twenties and we had one of the most sought-after bodies the modern world has ever known. But what good were those bodies until we could load their minds with what made Alma … Alma? She was one of our first Tomorrow Gene patients, and our first truly profitable product line.”
“Wait. You said the process takes weeks or months. But I’m …”
Jonathan waved a hand. “You specifically said you only wanted a few years taken off. That’s not Tomorrow Gene territory. They gave you a glorified facelift.”
“Well, what about Altruance and Sophie? How did you finish them so fast?”
Jonathan’s head cocked. “I’m sorry, little brother,” he said, his face filled with surprised apology. “I thought you’d already put that part together. You were saying how strange they were when you met them after their Tomorrow Gene treatment — how different they seemed to you.”
“Wait,” Ephraim said.
The air started to thin. The walls spun.
“Mr. Brown and Ms. Norris’s Tomorrow Gene therapies are underway just down the hall,” Jonathan told him. “The two you met on Retreat were their replacements.”
CHAPTER 59
CHANGING EVERYTHING
He’s insane.
And he’s not your brother.
Ephraim fought the thoughts, both repeating them inside his head and taking pains to bar them from his face. This man wasn’t Jonathan, no matter how much he looked, acted, and even reasoned like him.
He wasn’t Jonathan.
Jonathan wouldn’t be a part of this. He wouldn’t speak in such cavalier terms about so many heinous facts, said like a remark upon the weather.
Yes, we make and sell celebrity sex slaves. We have to. To keep Eden’s lights on.
Yes, your friends are now clone replacements. You didn’t know? A pity. No big deal.
Yes, we create
our labor force. They’re mouthless mutants, who can’t complain.
And yes, we have grand plans to dominate the world using the money we earn. Cool by you?
We?
I’m sorry. I mean I.
Ephraim watched Jonathan’s double, trying to figure out his next move. He’d run once, realized the futility of trying to flee an island, and somehow ended up exactly where the Jonathan Thing had known he’d go all along.
And with that, Ephraim had a realization:
They were herding you. Earlier tonight. The officers who were too incompetent to be officers and the army of Denizen ghosts. They weren’t chasing you at all. They were herding you to the hangar. To the tunnel. To Islet 09. Nudging you to end up here. But why?
It didn’t matter. Just like running didn’t matter. Fiona had told him that Eden had severed her attempts to reach the island. She couldn’t contact Reception or send a plane to take him home. Ephraim was alone, and if there was a way to escape, he was on his own to find it.
Play along.
It was a temporary solution at best, but it might be all he could do for now. He wasn’t about to embark on a new career doing a tenth of what his brother’s copy had done, but he could lie a bit more to buy time. And to do that, he had to hold this stupid, neutral expression.
He could do that, pretend that he wasn’t appalled. Pretend he didn’t know Jonathan’s clone had gone ape shit — a child who was perhaps alone at the helm of a death machine, now that the moderating influence of Wallace Connolly was no longer alive to guide him.
“Are you okay?” Jonathan asked.
Ephraim paused, then nodded slowly. “I’m … I’m fine.”
“You knew, right? You’d already figured out that they were clones after you had realized I was a clone back at the house?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“You seem uneasy. How are you doing with all of this, Ephraim? You understand, don’t you? You’re with me? Still on board?”
Still?
When had he ever been on board? But then again, the clone was crazy.
It didn’t take a genius to see what must have happened. Wallace Connelly had died, his personality transferred to an AI that ran a public relations hologram. Sometime later, Jonathan had passed — probably killed by his clone. Now Jonathan Number Two and his lackeys were all that remained, in charge by default. Maybe everyone else on Eden thought Jonathan Two was the real Jonathan; Ephraim didn’t know or care. All that mattered was that this crazy man was holding a very big weapon — and he’d pointed it at the entire world while its back was turned.
Eden’s fame was only growing. The rich and famous wouldn’t stop coming here. And that right there was the problem. The most desired people in the world showed up for treatment; they were made into product lines; those products were sold to the highest bidders.
Maybe the originals were kept on the Denizen, or maybe they returned home thirty years younger once they finished on Eden. It didn’t matter. Their identities had been stolen — sold as slaves. And the subjects — let alone the wider world — didn’t have a clue.
“Yes. I’m good. It’s just a lot to absorb.” He thought for a moment. “If I'm unsure, it’s just because I have so many questions.”
Jonathan moved beside Ephraim, perching half on a tall stool. “Ask away.”
“Are they like machines?” He couldn’t look at the vacant-eyed, naked clones when gesturing toward them. The sight was too pathetic. “You said you programmed them.”
“Any human is like a machine,” Jonathan answered.
“But they are ‘programmed.’”
Jonathan turned to face Ephraim and fixed him with a glance. “Okay. Try this.” He put his finger on the top of his head. “Touch your head.”
Ephraim touched his head.
Jonathan moved the finger to his opposite wrist. “Now touch your wrist.”
Ephraim copied the movement, touching his wrist.
“Touch your ear.”
Ephraim did.
“Touch your nose. Touch your hand. Touch your elbow.”
Ephraim followed each instruction and wondered where they were going.
Finally, Jonathan said, “Except that’s not your elbow. That’s your shoulder.”
Ephraim looked. His finger was on his opposite shoulder, same as Jonathan’s was on his.
“Programming. Even though I said clear as day to ‘touch your elbow,’ you touched your shoulder because I touched mine. This right here, on a much more complex level, is what happens accidentally every day. Or deliberately, if someone knows what they’re doing. There’s a guy I saw online once. He got a dog track to pay out on losing tickets, not just once, but over and over by using tricks of body language and social conditioning.”
“How the hell could—?”
“It’s easier than you’d believe. Know the mind’s triggers, and you can get anyone to do anything. It’s how a lot of psychics do that they do. The man who guesses you’re thinking ‘617’ when he tells you to pick any number between one and a thousand? It’s not that he can see inside your mind. It’s that he subliminally planted 617 inside your head to begin with. Talented con artists don’t predict the future. They make their futures, then convince their subjects to believe them.”
Ephraim’s eyes flicked to the clones. “You make them guess numbers?”
“It’s not a simple process to explain. We duplicate their bodies using classic genetic engineering, enhancing what needs it. For instance.” Jonathan swung fully around on his stool, pointing directly at the men in the glass cage as if they weren’t human and wouldn’t care. “Mel’s dick over there? We made it about an inch longer than the original.”
Jonathan laughed and turned forward again. Ephraim tried to laugh with him, but he was distracted. Conflicted. Guilty. And getting sick. His palms were sweaty.
“Same with the mind. We duplicate the host’s brain with the rest of the body. It’s complex and requires powerful computers you couldn’t possibly imagine. But there are some things, in their thoughts, that we can manipulate as well. Only we don’t do it in silico, as it were, the way we make in vitro enhancements to a subject’s genome. We implant the memories after the clones are otherwise finished, then do our conditioning.”
“Like leading them to touch their elbow. Or guess 617.”
“It’s a more complex version of the same process, but yes. You’d be surprised what a clone can be conditioned to do. We can make them obey. Love. Hate. We can make them feel fear or lust or obsession. It’s even possible we could make them kill if we wanted.” At that, Jonathan gave a little smirk. “That last one is something I have a bet with a friend about.”
That gave Ephraim a chill. It didn’t sound like a plan to sell pleasure. It sounded like a plan to build an army.
He’s not your brother.
And he’s insane.
But on the surface, Ephraim kept his face neutral. He had to find a way out of here. He couldn’t run.
An idea hit him. His eyes ticked away, then back before Jonathan could see them.
“Jonathan,” he said, using the name carefully, knowing that even his false brother couldn’t be beyond influence and programming, “it’s amazing work you’re doing here.”
“Thank you. I agree.”
“And I’m blown away by it.”
“Tip of the iceberg.” A small nod, not looking precisely at anything. “Just you wait.”
“But the world isn’t ready. You understand how people would react if they knew what you were doing.”
Ephraim was talking to himself, hoping to calm his nerves. His eyes were everywhere, sweat percolating. He had to move fast. Once Jonathan understood, this would all be over.
He’s not your brother, Ephraim!
“That’s why we can’t tell the world yet,” Jonathan said.
“But if something leaked. It would change everything. All you’ve built here would fall apart.”
Jonathan took a breat
h. His face hardened. “I know what you’re thinking, Ephraim.”
“I just want you to understand, is all. What you’ve done, Jonathan? What you’ve seen here? That alone would be enough to end it. All of it.”
“You can’t tell anyone what I’ve told you. You know I can’t let that happen. So if you’re—”
“You don’t have to worry. I just want you to understand. It’s what’s in your head — not mine — that threatens you.”
“I do understand. But—”
Ephraim moved lightning fast. He had to act before losing his nerve. Before he had time to think about what he meant to do — what he had to do as his only option.
He thrust the knife that Jonathan had set aside — and which Ephraim had recovered while Jonathan had been eyeing Mel Samovar’s penis — deep into the clone’s gut.
His pulse raced, his heart threatening to explode. His mind spun with the notion of what he’d just done, now beyond undoing. His fist was hot with spilled blood, fighting to keep the blade buried.
Jonathan’s muscles were fighting, retreating, beginning to go lax. His hands groped and slapped. He slipped from the stool, dragging Ephraim with him.
Eye met eye, full of betrayal.
MURDERER, screamed a voice inside Ephraim’s head.
He isn’t your brother. He isn’t your brother. HE ISN’T YOUR BROTHER!
The look in his eyes said differently. The man dying on the laboratory floor right now had Jonathan’s memories. All of those good times spent allegedly together, falsely as brothers.
“I need you to understand,” Ephraim said, his eyes watering, fighting to keep his knees from buckling. “I have to do this. There’s no other way.”
The clone couldn’t speak. Maybe it was Ephraim’s imagination, but he seemed to nod, his eyes glassy.
With Jonathan now gurgling, Ephraim dragged him to the door, held the dying man’s fingertip to the door sensor, then waited for it to click open.
Rather than running from the room, he reached down and shoved a stopper in the door to prop it open. He wasn’t finished yet.
