by Sue Burke
She biked home, stopping to buy something for dinner, crappy food, and there wasn’t much else on the shelves anyway because the people who had put out the flags also panicked and bought all the food and toilet paper that they could. Some cricket protein chips were left—those were sort of healthy, and the sriracha flavor wasn’t bad.
The apartment was empty. Good. She wanted to learn more about her potential … sisters. Triplets. Much nicer words than dupes. University education spoke of privilege, but no child could pick their parents. For a while, though, parents could pick their children.
Avril’s family lived in a rich suburb of Chicago. Beauty was only skin deep, but privilege seeped down to the bone. Avril had a negligible public footprint because she had only recently turned eighteen years old, but her high school math and computer team had won some big awards.
Irene hadn’t been doing anything online since she’d arrived in Wausau. Berenike watched the video of her ride three times. If Berenike got to Wausau, would Irene let her ride Nimkii? Or pet him? Or at least treat Berenike as an equal?
Swoboda had found Irene. Would he find Avril? And if Avril was studying at Irene’s old campus, how long before she got found out by other people there?
Berenike had their contact information. She ought to do something. But was she the one to tell them they were dupes?
The apartment door opened. Another roommate had come home, Deedee. She gave Berenike a hard, steady look and closed the door.
“We need to talk.” She put a finger to her lips, gestured to the door, and took the phone off her wrist. Berenike took hers off, too. By law, everyone was required to have their phone with them at all times. But now and then a person could leave it someplace where they might logically remain for a while and sneak away.
They left the studio apartment and walked down the musty hallway and stairs. As familiar as it was to Berenike, she felt as if she had no idea where the walk would lead. No, she knew exactly where: she was about to be kicked out. She followed Deedee outside to the old parking lot behind the building. No one living there could afford a private car, so the cracked pavement now hosted an abandoned, decaying picnic table and a scattering of trash and broken toys.
“Let’s sit down,” Deedee said. She didn’t seem angry. Was that good?
Berenike sat across from her, picking out a spot on the bench without splinters. Take some deep breaths. Be calm, centered—not angry, which she would be if she thought about the situation for a moment.
Deedee owed her, and she was about to kick her out. Deedee’s employer had placed limits on her paycard—every employer had the right to limit their employees’ purchases based on the deeply held religious and personal values of the owners/corporation and other sorts of other I-own-my-workers-night-and-day bullshit. Berenike couldn’t use hers to buy alcohol, among other things, but she could buy over-the-counter birth control, and Deedee couldn’t. So she bought it for Deedee, who ought to be, well, maybe not grateful but at least have some sense of solidarity—although everyone had stopped trusting everyone else a long time ago. Denouncing paycard cheats was a common trope in crappy movies.
Finally, Deedee spoke. “I saw a video with someone who looked just like you in it.”
Berenike tried to match her matter-of-fact tone. “I saw it, too.”
“You know what that means.” Her tone said that she knew exactly what.
“Yeah.”
“Do you? Because really, it doesn’t mean much. Not to me. I know, there’s laws and stuff, and what people say, but that’s not true. You know that, right? You know that you’re okay?” Deedee actually seemed worried about her. Solidarity? Maybe.
I’m okay? In what way? “The laws and stuff matter.”
“For now. Maybe not for much longer.”
What? Does she know?
“I mean,” Deedee said, “there’s a lot wrong, too much, and…” She shrugged. “It can change to … the way it used to be.”
To old-fashioned freedom. Yes, she knows. And she was one of the least political people Berenike knew. She’d once said in complete seriousness that a fast-food chain called Food Fed must be run by the federal government because it had the word fed in its name. Apparently, someone had recruited her. Berenike hadn’t. That was one of the rules. Try to keep a low profile so that the size and scope of the mutiny will come as a shock to the system, especially if your role will be crucial.
“I hope things can change,” Berenike said, “because I’ll be in a lot of trouble otherwise.”
“You’re not in trouble with me. And I think, not with the rest of us, the other roommates. There’s facts, Berenike, I know that, even if I don’t always know what they are. I don’t know a lot of things, and I think I ought to be able to find them out.”
“Yeah. It’s hard to know what’s true.”
“Did you hear about the cold?” Deedee said. “The Prez says there’s a cold going around, a common cold? Not the Sino cold. Don’t worry, he said. Do you believe that?”
Berenike felt safe enough to let sarcasm drip into her voice. “I thought he said the flags would stop the cold.”
“Exactly. That’s bilge. Hey, do you know what’s his real name, the Prez?”
Interesting question, and not one he likes people to ask. “The Prez is his real name. You mean what did his name used to be? I heard—well, I heard a couple of things, but what I think is true is that he used to be…” She thought for a moment. “Nicholas Tyre, yeah, that’s it, and then when he was twelve years old his parents said they knew he was destined to become president, and they changed his name.”
“He was twelve,” Deedee repeated. She counted something on her fingers, maybe how many years had passed between the time he got the name and got the job. Maybe she had heard the details of the path he had taken to power, and how it all started when he had made himself seem smart. In his teens, he’d had a show where he answered people’s life questions, such as career choices or even whether to get a pet. The questions were screened or invented, the advice produced by a team of professionals rather than him, but he had seemed wise beyond his years if no one listened closely. He had shown that he could help people lead better lives, which turned into proof—supposedly—that he could lead the country to better times.
Berenike watched her and felt a tiny ember of hope glow in her chest. If Deedee was a mutineer, then anything was possible, even a successful mutiny.
“I hope things change soon,” Berenike said. “Or else we’re all in trouble.”
Deedee smiled, and she had a beautiful smile. “Be ready. It’s going to be big. So now we better get back before our phones miss us.”
* * *
Avril came back to her room after morning classes and an off-campus lunch, having learned that Hetta was in Minnesota with a crew doing some sort of bird-migration study. But she’d be back tomorrow. That wouldn’t be too late, Avril hoped. She didn’t want the protest to start without her.
Shinta was sitting on her bunk bed and looked up when Avril entered.
“We need to talk.” She didn’t look happy.
“What about?” She’d kept the room clean and been a model roommate. As she set down her backpack and sat at her desk to face her, she tried to steel herself for whatever accusation was coming. Maybe she’d somehow heard about Avril’s mutiny ambitions.
“You’re a clone, aren’t you?”
What? That—that didn’t even make sense. “I am not.”
“Then what about that video?”
“What video?”
“I’ll show you.” Shinta held up her wrist and turned on the phone’s display. Avril leaned forward. A woman was riding a woolly mammoth, and when she turned to wave at whoever was recording the video, her face looked exactly like Avril’s.
Exactly.
“It happened today,” Shinta said, “up in Wausau. A hundred miles north of here. My classmates told me she used to attend college here, and they used to see her.” She lowered the phone. “Two people can�
�t look that much alike by accident.”
I’m not a clone. How could I be? Avril said, “I don’t know anything about that. Maybe it’s a fake. It’s easy to fake a video.”
“Maybe, but people knew her.” She sat down at her own desk, closer to Avril. “If it’s not a fake, if you’re really a clone, I want you to know that it doesn’t matter. I know better. I’m in bioscience. I know what cloning really is, DNA engineering, and it’s nothing. You’re as human as anyone. All the rest is just lies and horror movies.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, really.”
“But I’m not a clone. I’d know if I was.”
“Yeah.” She looked down at her phone. “Look, I didn’t do this to hurt you. I’m sorry. I thought you should see this before … Hey, maybe you should talk to your parents. I can leave you alone, if you want. Will you be okay? Or I can stay with you if you’d rather. I mean, clones, there’s lots of kinds of things that are clones. Like bananas. People don’t understand that. They don’t understand biology.”
Avril’s thoughts were swarming like bees. “I’ll be okay,” she said automatically. “Yeah, I should call my parents.” And say what? Is this true? They would know. And if it was true … “Where did you find that video?”
“Here, I’ll send it to your phone. I can go now for as long as you want. But if you need anything, call me. If anyone tries to hurt you, I’ll hurt them.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to. I know what kind of person I want to be.”
“It isn’t your problem.”
“That you’re a clone, no. That you’re safe, yes.” She flexed her arm. She was on the swim team and had enough muscle to hurt someone permanently. “And if you want to keep this a secret, I’m good with that, too. It’s like in a writing class yesterday, we were supposed to write about our biggest secret.”
“Oh. One of those assignments.”
“Yeah, you know. I mean, I went through all this before in high school. It’s like if you tell a story, then everyone expects you to keep living that story. You’re always that thing. Like, and this is for example, it’s not true, if you told how your father raped you as a child, you’d always be the raped little incest girl.”
Avril nodded. Maybe Shinta’s secret had to do with the death camps China had set up in Indonesia. Maybe that was why she hated China so much. Or maybe something else. It didn’t matter. Maybe it could be even worse than being a dupe.
“Some secrets I want to keep,” Shinta said. “You understand. Like this with you, if there wasn’t a way that anyone could find out.”
“Yeah. If I got that assignment, I’d make up something.” She would pretend that she’d never seen that video.
“Telling the truth is overrated. Truth needs to be optional. You can give people it like a gift. You choose to give it if it makes you happy.”
“Yeah.”
They sat for a while thinking. Avril had once heard an idea sort of like that debated: confession equaled authenticity. That worked only if your authentic self was your public self, fully transparent, no secrets. But instead, you might actually want to keep your different selves separate. Because if you confessed, you’d always be that thing, and you couldn’t grow and change. Everyone who really wanted to could figure out what Avril was now, if that video went viral, and people on campus had already seen it—and maybe she really was a dupe. Somehow. And maybe that was different than her real self, whatever that was now.
“So do what you have to do,” Shinta said, “and tell me what you want me to do and I’ll do it. Stay safe. I’ll be back when you tell me it’s okay. Or when it’s necessary.” She stood up, patted Avril on the shoulder, picked up her backpack, and left.
Stay safe? As soon as the administration found out, she’d be thrown off campus, and Shinta couldn’t do a thing about it. Unless the video was a sham, or maybe it was real and Shinta was going to turn her in, because everyone knew dupes weren’t fully human and now they weren’t first-class citizens. Her father had been furious in June when the law changed, and he never got furious …
Because he knew.
He knew. Her parents had lied. And that meant they weren’t really her parents, not her biological parents.
She sent the video to them. No words. They could do the talking.
There was a family rule: no lying and no secrets, which were a form of lying. Even if the truth hurt, it had to be told. Lies were what got Avril in trouble. But that worked both ways. If she asked a question, her parents answered honestly, no matter what. If she had a problem, they listened. She’d tell the truth, and her parents would keep their part of the bargain.
They’d have to tell her the truth now, not as a gift but as a duty.
And that woman in the video? Shinta said she used to attend Madison. Avril could ask around and get her name—if she left her room, which she wasn’t going to do, not anytime soon.
What if Avril really was a dupe? Everyone said that dupes were unnatural, so they had no innate moral compass. Nothing stopped them from turning evil. The spark of divine burned inside people because God made them in His image, and if people were made in an unnatural way that God hadn’t intended, the spark wasn’t there. Dupes were cold inside. None of her building blocks of DNA was labeled “soul.”
But not for a moment had she ever believed it, not at all—and for that matter, neither had her parents. It was just superstitious mumbo jumbo: natural law doctrine. Her father hated that doctrine.
Of course he did. He’d bought a clone for a daughter.
Worse—and this was for real—sometimes the DNA engineering left dupes crippled or superpowered. Like extra smart, and they went insane. Extra ambitious, and they became serial killers. Did she have a superpower?
Her parents had never let her make dupe jokes, but she knew them: If you cloned Henry IV, would he be Henry V, Henry IV, Jr., or Henry IV, Part II? Is it true that if you clone yourself four times, one will be Chinese? What do you call a pessimistic clone? A double negative. What do you call a female clone? A clunt.
In high school some kids began to say a boy named Hassan had a twin brother who was sent to live with an uncle so no one would think he was a dupe. Others said he really was a dupe. Then they found out he used a hearing aid, so he must have been a failed design. People started mocking him—and Avril had been one of them. He went home early that day and never came back.
She looked at the video again, pausing it to study the woman’s face. It could be a fake. Her father made enemies in his job, and criminals would try to hurt him by hurting his family.
Her mother called. “Your father and I are coming to see you.”
“So I’m a dupe.”
“We’ll talk.” She was using a video call, obviously at work, judging from her surroundings. “We care about you more than anything else.” Avril hadn’t turned on her video, so Mom was staring at a blank screen. “Some things have to be said in person. We’ll be there in an hour, two at most.”
“Okay.” Mom would have denied it over the phone. Having to talk in person meant that it was true. Arriving that soon meant they’d pay extra to have their car travel in the express lane.
“We love you, Avy.” When Avril didn’t answer, her mother ended the call.
Avril considered the equation of love. DNA plus technicians plus womb equals family. Would the equation survive peer review? Her peers. The whole world.
An hour. She tried to do some homework to distract herself, differential equations. She planned—had planned, it wasn’t going to happen now—to specialize in bioinformatics. To fight back against the mumbo jumbo, to fight for freedom.
Studying made no sense anymore. She slammed the button to power off her screen. She turned on some music. That didn’t make her feel better, either.
Eventually, a knock sounded at her door—and there were her parents, looking as somber as if someone had died. Well, yes, their daughter was as good as dead.
&nbs
p; Her mom reached out to hug her. Avril stood stiffly.
Her father took a few steps in. “We should leave our electronics here and go talk outside.”
Avril shrugged. It didn’t matter anymore.
Silently, they rode the elevator to the first floor. Her father sniffled a few times. He seemed to have that cold that was going around. She led them to a couple of benches facing each other along the lake, shadowed by trees. The afternoon sun was shining a little too warm even through the leaves. She sat facing them. For a long moment, the only sounds were the distant voices of students on their way to and from classes.
“You deserve the whole truth,” Dad said, as if under courtroom oath and looking as uncomfortable as a witness facing hostile examination. “We really wanted a child.”
“We did,” Mom said, “more than anything else. We were going to get in vitro fertilization, but we both carry recessive genes, we found out, for cystic fibrosis, and some cancer genes, and it would have been complex to edit out. So we decided to get a third-party embryo.”
“So I’ve seen. I’m a dupe.”
“You’re completely ordinary,” Dad said quickly.
“But I have engineered DNA.”
“It was legal then,” he said. “Or not illegal, at least. All we wanted was a healthy child. And that’s what we got. The natural law doctrine came later, and it’s based on irrational fear.”
“I’m healthy and ordinary.” Her tone of voice said she didn’t believe it.
He said, “You’ve lived long enough to know that’s true.”
“So you just, what, went to a lab and told them what you wanted?”
“Actually,” her mother said, “they had a catalog. We took one pretty much at random because we … as he said, all we wanted was a healthy child. We thought of some letters, SD because I grew up in South Dakota, and took one that included SD in the serial number.”
“I was a serial number. You bought me and that was that.” She looked at them, both sitting still with their musty tattoos and piercings, as if the slightest movement would unleash a torrent of emotion. “Why lie about it? You always say, don’t lie.”
