The Mirror Man

by Jane Gilmartin

  “Yes, well, except he is a copy. He’s not really me.”

  Scott waved a hand in annoyed dismissal and sat down on the edge of the couch. “Yes, yes, of course. But don’t you find it fascinating that he has no awareness of that? Isn’t it intriguing that he could, essentially, continue living your life for, well, for the rest of your life? And no one would know. Not even the clone.”

  “I don’t know if intriguing is the right word,” Jeremiah said. “Disturbing, maybe. Scary as hell. ‘Breach of contract’ springs to mind.”

  “I’m not suggesting anything quite so nefarious,” Scott scoffed. “I’m not talking about you. But consider the possibilities, Mr. Adams. Think about what this could mean.”

  “Why don’t you illuminate me? What could it mean exactly?”

  “It means an end to needless suffering,” Scott told him. “It means we are no longer chained to the random failings of our imperfect bodies. This can change everything, don’t you see that, Mr. Adams? This is a second chance.” Something in the man’s tone, the way his eyes seemed to focus on something far away as he spoke, made Jeremiah pause.

  “What do you mean, a second chance?” he asked carefully.

  “Exactly what it sounds like. Imagine the implications if every man, woman and child could have a perfect, healthy spare. For God’s sake, man. Use your imagination! Blood transfusions, organ transplants, even stem cell therapy—all of it would be as simple as going to the dentist.”

  “So, what?” Jeremiah asked uneasily, “This is spare parts? That’s the way you see this? And to hell with the moral implications?”

  Scott’s face reclaimed its usual austerity and he looked Jeremiah hard in the eyes.

  “Morality isn’t always the best judge of what is right, Mr. Adams,” he said stiffly. “And the medical implications, that’s just one benefit. There are other interested parties who see even more potential in what we’re doing, and they are providing the bulk of our funding for this entire endeavor. Those deep pockets might suddenly dry up if this experiment were to fail somehow. But so far, it’s been an astounding success. It’s working seamlessly.”

  “If it’s working so perfectly already,” Jeremiah said, “why do we need an entire year for this? Why not three months? Why not just end it now?”

  “Science takes time,” Scott said. “Besides, there are other factors at play here. It’s more than just the behavioral aspects we’re monitoring. We need to ensure that the clone is physically viable, as well. There have been some issues with vital organs in earlier attempts. Nothing for you to be concerned about. Dr. Pike seems confident that these issues have been addressed. But we need to be certain. We need the full year, as your contract clearly stipulates.”

  Scott turned quickly and retreated out the door without another word, leaving Jeremiah with an unnamable feeling in the pit of his stomach and a sudden resolve to prove the man wrong. This clone couldn’t be an exact duplicate of him.

  He began to scrutinize the clone during every viewing, trying to decipher some flaw, some minuscule difference. Something wrong and unexpected. I don’t walk like that... That tie? Really?... I would have used a different word there... I’d take the back roads if I were him—doesn’t he know the traffic will be murder this time of the day?... But every single time, without fail, the clone did everything exactly as Jeremiah would have done himself. He could say he would have made a different choice, done a different thing, but there wasn’t a single time that this was actually true. On one morning, in fact, Jeremiah got up early and made himself waffles for breakfast, something he never ate during the workweek, preferring instead just a quick coffee. Implausibly, on the monitor an hour later, the clone popped a frozen waffle into the toaster. Diana had looked mildly surprised but didn’t question it. Jeremiah was absolutely shocked.

  “Is it startling to you to see all of these similarities?” Natalie Young always began their sessions with a question. They had begun meeting twice weekly in her small office located on the same basement floor as his apartment. Despite the fact that it was only down the hall, she always came to escort him. He wasn’t allowed to go even that short distance on his own.

  “No. Not surprising,” he said. “Just, I don’t know, getting annoying, I suppose. I know everything he’s going to say, exactly what he’ll do. I yell at the monitor for him to call a specific person at work, for a quote or something, and before I finish talking, he’s dialing the number.”

  “And that bothers you, Jeremiah?”

  “Wouldn’t it bother you?”

  “Not if that were the very central idea of what we’re doing here. I’d consider it a success. Don’t you think these similarities point to success?”

  “Well, yeah. It does. But sometimes I almost wish it wasn’t so successful, you know?”

  “Can you elaborate?” she pushed.

  “I keep wishing he’d slip up or something. I wish I’d see him do one thing—just one thing—that’s not exactly the same thing I think he’s going to do. I wish someone would realize that it’s not me out there.”

  “You told me before that you were glad your family wouldn’t miss you. You said that’s what made this easier for you. Has that changed?”

  “No,” he said, “that’s not what I meant. I’m glad they don’t know. I guess I just keep waiting for someone to notice something. I mean, you’d think at least Diana would notice something! We’ve been married a long time. You’d think she’d realize it isn’t her husband sleeping next to her in the bed. But she doesn’t even notice it.”

  “Is there something that you think your wife ought to notice? Be honest, Jeremiah. Be objective. This is very important to the experiment. This is crucial. Are there any noticeable differences between you and your clone? Is there something you think Diana should pick up on?” Something in her face alarmed him instantly. There was a certain intensity in her eyes that felt almost like a warning to him. What would Charles Scott actually do if someone started to catch on, if he thought his funding was at stake?

  “No,” he said finally. “I don’t think there are any differences between me and the clone. I think the whole thing is a raging triumph. Someone ought to break out the champagne.”

  She looked at him for a long moment and pursed her lips in that way she did whenever he attempted sarcasm.

  “I might think you’d be relieved that your clone is doing such a good job of things for you. He’s carrying out everything in your life just as you, yourself, would do.”

  “Yeah. It’s all good.” Inside, Jeremiah was silently celebrating the fact that at least Louie wasn’t fooled. It made him feel marginally better to know that someone out there knew he’d been replaced. But he said nothing of this to Dr. Young.

  Sensing he was done talking for the day, she reluctantly closed her laptop. She escorted him back to his apartment, where Brent was already sitting on the couch engrossed in some war zone computer game. He maneuvered the controller wildly with both hands and wore a headset that partially covered his eyes and ears. On the wall monitor was an eight-foot-tall, high-definition image of an animated soldier, deftly sidestepping grenades and gunfire and blasting enemy squadrons. Jeremiah could hear a muted racket coming through Brent’s headset and he felt the vibrations through his shoes.

  “Working hard, I see.” Jeremiah grabbed a bag of potato chips from the kitchen and then took a seat next to him on the couch. “What’s this, then?”

  “Infinite Frontiers,” Brent told him with a quick glance. “It’s awesome.”

  His momentary lapse in total concentration was evidently enough for a misstep and his avatar exploded in a serious blast of blazing debris on the wall.

  “Shit!” Brent slammed back into the couch as though he’d suffered the same blow as his soldier and removed his headgear.

  “You want a game?”

  “Nah,” Jeremiah laughed. “I’m
not much for these things. I doubt I’d be a worthy opponent.”

  “C’mon,” Brent persisted. “We’ll team up.”

  “I’d probably make an even worse ally,” he said. “I’ve been wondering why they supplied me with all this gaming gear. Now I know.”

  “It’s all top of the line, too,” Brent told him. “Some of this stuff isn’t even on the market yet. But there’s no outgoing signal on this setup, so I have to play against this moronic AI soldier. I need a real adversary. Maybe I can figure out a way to tap into the beta platform when it launches, find someone to play.” He switched off the game and the wall went blank again.

  “The only thing I know about these games is the ridiculous amount of money I’ve spent outfitting my son,” Jeremiah told him. “Besides, don’t we have to get to work?”

  “Still an hour almost until the next viewing. I thought I’d come in early just to hang out.”

  “Hang out? I have never met anyone who would voluntarily come early to work to hang out. Don’t you have a life outside of ViMed?”

  “Yes,” Brent said. “In fact, I do.”

  In the span of forty-five minutes, Jeremiah learned more about Brent Higgins than he knew about people he’d worked next to for almost ten years. Brent was raised in a suburb of Chicago, an only, adopted child to parents who were deeply religious, and he was engaged to a girl named Melanie, whom he affectionately referred to as “Mel.” Mel, as it happened, was firmly agnostic and, further, had once been employed as an “exotic dancer.” Jeremiah resisted the urge to point out the obvious passive aggressive tendencies at play against his parents here, deciding it wouldn’t be wise to so quickly alienate the only person he could count on for any kind of company and diversion. But really, he thought, an agnostic stripper? Had the kid no sense of subtlety?

  “How did you get involved with this project?” Jeremiah asked.

  “Sheer luck,” Brent said. “I was one in a pool of twelve applicants for this position. We were recruited in-house, from all over the company. I think I had five interviews in total. It was brutal.”

  “For a data analyst? The competition was that tough?”

  “This is kind of a big deal,” Brent said, a shadow of injured pride pulling at his features. “They weren’t going to hire just anybody.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way, Brent,” Jeremiah said. “I just can’t believe they had that many people after the job. I suppose I just figured they’d handpicked everyone involved, the way they did me.”

  “Well, we were all asked to interview,” he said. “So, I suppose, in a way, I was handpicked.”

  “Did you know what you were applying for, though? The details, I mean. If everything is so hush-hush, how could they afford to have that many applicants involved?”

  “We had no idea what we were applying for. I had zero clue about the project until after I was actually hired. A few weeks afterward actually. All I knew was it was a special one-year assignment and that it was being run by the top brass. There weren’t any details at all.”

  “And that was enough for you?”

  “Hell, yeah, it was. I can write my own ticket after this. It’s a pretty good feather in my cap, you know, being pulled out of a grunt job in the IT department into something like this. I have a graduate degree, you know.”

  “If any of this gets out you might be writing your own ticket to federal prison,” Jeremiah said. “We’re breaking a lot of pretty big laws here. Human cloning is illegal. Weren’t you worried when you found out what it was you signed on to?”

  “Maybe a little, at first,” Brent said. “But there are a lot of very important people behind the scenes here. Powerful people. There are serious safeguards, believe me. And this is cutting edge, you know? This is the future, and what we’re doing is helping to shape it. It’s exciting. It’s important work.”

  “You sound like you swallowed Charles Scott.”

  “Well, he isn’t wrong, Jeremiah,” Brent said. “Human cloning is coming, whether we like it or not. And you, of all people, must believe that. I mean, you’re in this deeper than any of us.”

  “It was an offer I couldn’t refuse.”

  “Tell me about it. You’re making a tidy little sum off this, as I hear.”

  “Yeah,” Jeremiah said. “That, too. But doesn’t it worry you, Brent? I mean, human cloning. Don’t you wonder what all of this is for? What it means?”

  “It means a better world. This technology can solve a lot of problems.”

  “I suppose, sure. But don’t you think it’s dangerous? Especially if it ends up in the wrong hands. I mean, what if someone decided to clone the president? Or create a whole army of mindless, disposable people? You know what I mean.”

  “I don’t think Scott is focused on anything like that,” Brent said. “When he shook my hand, he told me I was helping to make a difference, helping put an end to human suffering. He seemed passionate about it. He sees this as a good thing. I believe him. I trust him. You should, too.”

  Jeremiah wanted to say something about the way Charles Scott had seemed almost too passionate about it, as though it was more than just the science driving him. But before he could say anything, the monitor switched on. Brent’s posture straightened almost imperceptibly, morphing seamlessly from casual urban hipster to scientist. On the wall, they watched Jeremiah’s double slog through another uneventful afternoon at ViMed and then sit silently in traffic, listening to news radio on the drive home. Before he even pulled into the garage, the monitor switched off again. Though he did nothing even remotely interesting—hardly uttered a word out loud, in fact—Jeremiah watched with his usual intensity, trying to find something—anything—that made him feel like he wasn’t watching himself up there. Some tiny mistake. Some flaw. He didn’t find it. He never found it. He might as well have been looking in a mirror.

  Chapter 7

  Days 50-51

  By the time Jeremiah had entered high school, he had lived in six houses in four different towns. His mother liked to wander. Sometimes they’d move because she’d found a better job somewhere, other times it might have been because she was just bored of the neighborhood. He’d never been in one place long enough to make a best friend, and honestly never understood the feeling of being settled. Until he spent four consecutive years at Boston University, in fact, he’d never fully understood the notion of feeling “at home.” It was no wonder that he’d decided to stay in the area after graduating. He felt comfortable there, connected, and it seemed an obvious choice when he and Diana suddenly had to put down some roots. But even then, complacency never came easy to him. He could never escape the nagging feeling that things could change in an instant. Uprooting never seemed entirely out of the question to him. So, several weeks into the experiment, when he began to feel at ease and familiar with his routine and even a little bit comfortable with Brent, he should have been ready for the monkey wrench. But it caught him off guard, the way monkey wrenches will.

  It was a Thursday, early evening, and he and Brent were scheduled to watch the clone at home. Jeremiah had already secured the last of a half-gallon container of coffee chip ice cream and had settled in on the couch.

  “This is Family Dinner Night,” he said with a roll of his eyes. “Probably going to seem pretty lame to you.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know, it’s just a silly weekly routine. Diana makes a dinner, and we all have to clear our evening to make sure we’re there. It’s our scheduled family time, you know, to catch up and talk about things. You might find it sort of mundane, is all.”

  “I think it’s kind of cool. My family never did that. What do you talk about?”

  “Normal stuff, I don’t know. We’re just supposed to talk, reconnect and all that. Diana is a real stickler about it.” He didn’t mention, of course, that it was really all a charade—that he and Diana talked about pointle
ss, useless things, avoiding discussion of any real issues. Secretly, though, Jeremiah had been looking forward to watching a Thursday dinner, eager, perhaps, for even the false sense of family they’d become so practiced at.

  And that’s why he was so surprised when Diana wasn’t even there. The screen turned on to the clone and Parker sitting alone at the kitchen table, eating slices right out of a pizza box.

  “That’s not like her,” Jeremiah told Brent, “to miss Thursday night. Where could she be?”

  He knew exactly where she was.

  “Maybe she had to work late?”

  “That isn’t usually an option,” he said. “She’d never let me get away with it. Where the hell is she?”

  Some romantic rendezvous with her secret lover.

  “This is kind of a treat,” the clone said to Parker, “just the guys, having a manly dinner.”

  Parker grunted and rolled his eyes. “It’s pizza, Dad,” he said. “We didn’t kill a wild boar.”

  “So how is school going?”

  “It’s going.”

  “Any plans for the weekend?”

  “Nope.”

  “Maybe we should save a slice or two for your mother.”

  “I doubt she’d want cold pizza. I have homework. Can I take this upstairs?”

  “Isn’t that against the rules? Aren’t we supposed to talk or something?”

  “I don’t know, Dad. I’d say this Family Dinner Night is pretty much a bust.”

  “Hey, just because Mom’s not here doesn’t mean you and I can’t have a chat.”

  “A chat? About what?”

  “I don’t know,” the clone said. “What’s the latest in the gaming world?”

  “There’s a new one coming out, but not for, like, a year. It’s called Infinite Frontiers. I was going to ask if I could get the beta next month. But I need to subscribe to this group.”

  In the lab, Brent shot a grin at Jeremiah. “The kid is plugged in,” he said.