The Mirror Man

by Jane Gilmartin

  “And how much will that cost me?” the clone asked.

  “Not much,” Parker said. “I think it’s, like, fifteen dollars a month.”

  “That’s more than half your allowance. If you want to blow it on some game, it’s up to you. But I thought you were saving up for a new monitor.”

  “I was kind of hoping the subscription could be, like, a birthday present or something. My birthday is next week.”

  “He’s a good negotiator.” Brent smiled.

  “That sounds reasonable,” the clone said. “I’ll spring for a one-year subscription. Get me the details.”

  “Awesome! Can I go upstairs now, though? I want to finish my homework, so I get some game time in.”

  “Has Louie had his medicine? If we want that stuff to calm him down, the vet said he has to take it at the same time every day.”

  “I gave it to him,” Parker said. “But if you ask me, it’s just making him sleep too much.”

  Jeremiah rolled his eyes and hoped Brent didn’t notice. His dog was on downers?

  “Okay,” the clone said. “Go ahead, then.”

  As the clone set about clearing the table in silence, Jeremiah felt oddly as though he were invading on someone else’s awkward, private moment. He watched him sigh and wipe the crumbs off the table. The clone stood still for a moment as though he weren’t sure what he should do next, and finally went into the family room, sat down on the couch and switched on the TV. Jeremiah wondered vaguely what was going through his mind. Somewhere along the line he’d come to accept his clone as a person, at least in some sense of the word. There were moments, like this one, when he almost felt sorry for him.

  He wanted to turn the monitor off. But he knew the viewing would keep going for the complete four hours, so he and Brent played crazy eights and gin rummy while the clone rotated through TV channels and finally fell asleep on the couch, snoring again, much to Jeremiah’s dismay. He was still there when Diana came home and shook him awake three hours later. At that point, the monitor switched off abruptly, the designated viewing time completed.

  Brent and Jeremiah exchanged glances as the monitor went dark.

  “That’s it?” Jeremiah asked. “Can’t we turn it back on? I want to see what happens.”

  “No,” Brent told him. “There’s no way to do that. We’re just going to have to wait, I guess. What do you think was going to happen?”

  “Well, I’d like to think she was about to explain where she was all this time. After all that and we don’t even get to see where she was?”

  “Yeah, kind of a bummer,” Brent said through a yawn. “I’m exhausted. Let’s get these questions answered so we can have something to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry,” Jeremiah told him.

  “Oh, come on,” Brent said. “Watching them eat that pizza was torture. I’m starving. I’ll make that macaroni and cheese you said you liked.”

  “I am too old to keep eating like this,” Jeremiah said. “But, yeah. I could go for that.”

  * * *

  “Displaced control issues” is the way Natalie Young described it during the next day’s session. Jeremiah disagreed.

  “What control issues?” he asked. “I don’t have any control issues.”

  “Not when you were actually in control, no, but right now, Jeremiah, you’re not really in control, are you?”

  “Well, obviously,” he snapped.

  “Are you feeling angry?”

  “Yeah, you know what? I am feeling angry. I’m pissed off, but I think that’s pretty normal under the circumstances. I don’t think that amounts to ‘control issues’ or anything quite so dramatic as that. I get that this is in your job description and all, but everything doesn’t have to fit so neatly into your little psychobabble boxes.”

  “Who are you angry with, Jeremiah? Are you angry at your wife for missing the dinner? Are you angry at the clone for not doing something about it?”

  “Well, I’d just like to know what was so goddamn important she would miss the one thing she never allows anyone to skip! And she doesn’t get home until almost eleven? Where the hell was she all that time? She’s an aide in a lawyer’s office, for God’s sake. It’s a part-time job. She doesn’t do anything that crucial. And she never worked nights before. I feel like I’m out of the loop here!”

  “And this frustrates you.”

  “Yes, Natalie, it frustrates me!”

  “Perhaps your clone discussed it with her after the monitoring was finished?”

  “Well, if he did, I think I have the right to know what she said.”

  “Do you feel your rights are being compromised, Jeremiah?”

  “I feel like I don’t know where my wife was for half the night,” he said. “I mean, first she starts working more and never even bothers to tell me, and then she misses Thursday night and I don’t even get the satisfaction of knowing why? I want to know what’s going on.”

  “Jeremiah,” she said as calmly as always, “I am not saying you’re wrong to feel this way. I am simply trying to help you to understand your feelings. That way I can help you to deal with them.”

  “I am dealing just fine on my own.”

  Even as he said the words, he knew it wasn’t true. He hadn’t slept at all the night before, and lately, there were more nights like that. Twice, in fact, Brent had had to come right into his bedroom and pull him out of bed for scheduled monitor time—and on one of those occasions, it was early afternoon. It seemed he was bothered by something else after every viewing. When he wasn’t obsessing about whether the clone would remember to renew his car registration on time, he was questioning his apparent lack of preparation for an important meeting at work. He went to bed at night with his mind reeling over stupid, trivial things that never would have kept him awake before. Had the clone remembered to double-check the photo credits for the newsletter? Did he give Louie his flea medicine? Did he lock the garage door? Was it his turn or Diana’s to get Parker to his guitar lesson on Monday night? Was he keeping up with the maintenance schedule on the new car? If he missed a single oil change, the warranty might lapse. And Jesus, he thought, was he taking it to the dealer? They’d rob him blind. He didn’t trust his double to take care of things. This, coupled with the fact that Diana now seemed even more obvious about her transgressions—even at the expense of the family—had him stressed. It was starting to make a dark appearance on his face. He could see it every time he looked in the mirror.

  “I don’t know,” he told Natalie Young. “Maybe I’m not coping as well as I should be. But it isn’t easy. I feel trapped. Maybe you’re right, I feel like I don’t have any control. It’s possible they chose the wrong person for this.”

  “I don’t think Dr. Scott makes mistakes like that,” she said. “He must have seen something in you that made you the right person for this.”

  “I don’t know,” he said honestly.

  It was a question he still grappled with. Why the hell was he here? The entire affair had been so rushed after the first contact, everything happening so quickly, that he’d never had a chance to stop and question why he’d been chosen. Scott had said only that they knew Jeremiah would be loyal to the company, and therefore, presumably, to the experiment. But, in fact, Jeremiah held no great love for ViMed. If he had his way, he’d go back to newspapers in a heartbeat—get back to writing something that actually mattered, something that could make a difference. There was no denying, his heart was still back there. And as he considered this, he remembered what Scott had said to him at their very first meeting: “You did what was expected of you. You toed the line, Mr. Adams.” In that moment, Jeremiah felt suddenly very small.

  “Maybe they just like me or something,” he told Natalie Young.

  “You are a likable person,” she said with a tight, unconvincing smile.

  Jeremiah said nothing and shifte
d his weight in the chair and looked away from her. This was getting him nowhere. He was through talking. In typical fashion, though, she decided differently and pushed on.

  “Jeremiah,” she said quietly, “I’d like to try an exercise with you. I’d like you to tell me one thing—one decision, one choice you made, anything—that you’ve done here that you might not have done before. It can be anything. It doesn’t matter how small.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well, for example, did you set an alarm clock this morning to get up?”

  “No, I didn’t need to be up early today. The viewing didn’t start until after eleven.”

  “Really?” she asked in mock surprise. “No alarm clock on a weekday morning? Do you think your clone set his alarm this morning?”

  “Okay, yeah, I see what you mean,” he said. “But those things don’t matter. Of course I’m doing things differently here. This is a different place, a totally separate situation. I’m not going to get up early every day and dress in a suit and tie just to hang out with Brent and basically watch TV.”

  “Hang out with Brent?” she asked, again with a look of exaggerated awe. “But he’s your coworker, isn’t he? And half your age. He doesn’t seem like someone you’d even want to hang out with.”

  “Well, I don’t have much choice there, do I? Look, I see what you’re trying to do, but none of this really matters, Natalie. These are things I have no control over. It’s not really up to me.”

  “I think you have more control than you realize, Jeremiah,” she said. “You make your own decisions on a daily basis. And I’d wager a lot of those are very different from the decisions you’d make at home. Different from the decisions your clone is making.”

  “What, like I can take a shower whenever I want to?”

  “Or not, if you decide. What else is up to you?”

  “I suppose the coffee’s better here. I don’t have to drink that light roast stuff Diana likes.”

  “And do you suppose the clone is drinking light roast coffee?”

  “Oh, I’m absolutely certain of it. Diana is very picky about her coffee.”

  “So, you see, you do have some control over your own life. You make your own choices, your own decisions here,” she told him. “I’d like you to make a list, keep track of these sort of things for the next few days. I think it might help.”

  Jeremiah nodded and Natalie stood up, her usual indication that it was time to escort him back down the hall to his apartment.

  Once he was alone, he brewed a half pot of French roast and took a long shower. Afterward he stood in front of the bathroom mirror, razor in hand, but he didn’t shave. He stared at his own reflection for a moment and then he dropped the razor into the trash with a satisfying thud.

  “Screw it,” he said to his own face. “I’m growing a beard.”

  Chapter 8

  Day 56

  When Charles Scott came to the lab apartment periodically to “chat,” it never felt like anything quite so casual and spontaneous to Jeremiah. More often, in fact, he was left thinking he’d somehow managed to do something wrong. Scott had a way of making everyone around him feel like they weren’t quite living up to his lofty expectations.

  On a Tuesday morning, however, when Scott came in through the front door without knocking, Jeremiah was glad for the chance to talk to him. He had a growing list of questions of his own.

  He poured them each a coffee, and they settled in on the leather couches where Jeremiah answered Scott’s standard interrogation without discussion: Yes, he was still convinced that the clone was a perfect replica of himself; No, he hadn’t been surprised by any of the clone’s actions in recent viewings; He was, indeed, getting enough exercise; Sure, he and Brent were getting along fine, no problems there.

  Before Scott could make a hasty exit, as he typically did once he was satisfied with these meetings, Jeremiah turned the conversation to his own concerns.

  “You know, Dr. Scott, it’s occurred to me that we never really discussed what happens at the end of this, once our contract expires.”

  “At the conclusion of the experiment you will be returned to your own life, Mr. Adams, just as we’ve agreed. There’s nothing to discuss.”

  “I mean the details,” Jeremiah said. “We never talked about how that is going to happen. When this year is over, what do you do with the clone?”

  “Do with him?”

  “What happens to him? Do you just get rid of him?”

  “If you’re asking, Mr. Adams, do we kill him, the answer is no. I assume you’d agree that wouldn’t be the right thing to do.”

  Jeremiah was glad to hear it. Despite everything, the notion had bothered him. The clone, after all, was blameless in all of this, and in the clone’s own mind, he was fully human. True or not, that belief had to mean something. He was Jeremiah, for all intents and purposes. It seemed unnecessarily callous to just discard him.

  “But there can’t be two of us. How is it done, then?”

  Scott took a measured sip of his coffee before he answered. “They say everyone has a doppelganger somewhere in the world, Mr. Adams. This will be yours. We will input a new memory file into the clone, an entirely new identity, and send him on his way. It’s easily arranged.”

  The idea of his clone walking around freely somewhere in the world was troubling.

  “You just give him a new life?”

  “Essentially, yes.”

  “Don’t you think that’s risky? What if he comes back? What if we run into each other at the gas pump or something?”

  “We have ways around that with the Meld. Stop worrying.”

  “I just want to be certain you’ve thought this through,” Jeremiah told him. “He has my DNA, you know. He’ll be walking around with my DNA. That’s a problem.”

  “Why?”

  “What if he decides to rob a bank? What if he kills someone?”

  “He won’t. We can see to that with Meld, as well. He won’t have the inclination to do anything like that, or the capacity. We’ll take care of it.”

  “What if he starts a family?” Jeremiah asked. “What if he has kids?” The idea, which had only just entered his mind, was positively frightening to him. Those would be his children, he realized. His own flesh and blood, essentially. Children who shouldn’t be born.

  Charles Scott dismissed the issue with a shake of his head.

  “Sterilization,” he said, “is a straightforward procedure.”

  “And what about me?” Jeremiah asked after a moment. “I’m just supposed to slip back into my old life with $10 million in my pocket? How do I explain that to my family?”

  “You do like to dwell on the mundane, don’t you? The winning lottery ticket has already been printed. Calm down, Mr. Adams.”

  Before Jeremiah could protest that he’d never purchased a lottery ticket in his life, Brent came in through the front door and Scott stood up to face him.

  “Oh, I’m sorry, Dr. Scott,” Brent said. “I wasn’t aware you’d be here. I can come back.”

  “No need, Mr. Higgins,” Scott told him. “We’re done here. You have work to do.”

  As he moved toward the door to leave, though, Charles Scott’s half-filled coffee cup dropped from his hand as though the man had simply let it go without a second thought. Coffee saturated the carpet, a dark spot expanding rapidly, and all three of them went momentarily still in sudden surprise.

  It was Brent who moved first, rushing over and picking up the toppled cup, while Jeremiah went to the kitchen to grab a roll of paper towels. Charles Scott, after a noticeable hesitation, bent down and began mopping at the spill with his own handkerchief.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Adams,” he said. The sincerity of the words sounded foreign coming from him. Scott wasn’t prone to apologies. Jeremiah thought he seemed unnecessarily r
attled over the accident.

  “Don’t worry,” Jeremiah told him, pressing a thick wad of towels into the rug. “It’s not my carpet.”

  Scott stood up and folded his soiled handkerchief into his fist. “I’m sure I don’t know how that happened,” he said. “I’ll send someone to clean it right away.”

  His composure somewhat restored, Scott turned on his heels and left the room in a hurry, the front door closing behind him.

  Brent looked down at Jeremiah and smiled. “That was strange,” he said. “You think I make him nervous?”

  “You aren’t nearly as threatening as you think you are,” Jeremiah said.

  A half hour later, they were settled in front of the monitor watching the clone’s uneventful morning at ViMed. Later, when Jeremiah returned from a late-afternoon session with Natalie Young, all evidence of the mishap had been erased from the carpet.

  Chapter 9

  Day 80

  Whether it was because of Natalie’s advice, the simmering worry inside him or just out of sheer boredom, Jeremiah didn’t know, but late on a Friday afternoon a few weeks later, he found himself gleefully blasting virtual enemy soldiers into fiery bits in a game of Infinite Frontiers with Brent. He had to admit, there was a certain appeal to it. Teeth gritted behind his headset, he became slowly more comfortable with the intricate gestures and eye movements Brent had shown him to get his aim right. If Parker could see him now, he thought, he’d never believe it. And he was having fun.

  They fought on the same side against a squadron of AI snipers and took turns ducking behind tanks and blown-out bunkers, shooting into the field so Jeremiah could get the hang of the most important aspects of the controls. Every now and then, Brent would send his avatar creeping out into the arena so Jeremiah could practice covering him against enemy fire. He wasn’t very good at it and, more than once, Brent’s player died an unceremonious death while Jeremiah failed to realize his weapon needed reloading. Every blast of machine gun spray and each explosion rocked through his headset and set his teeth on edge. But his adrenaline was pumping like he hadn’t felt it in months, and he sat on the edge of his seat as he practiced his aim. They could type to converse during game play, and Brent made him practice that, too. The letter selection was operated by the hand controller, which took some getting used to, so Jeremiah made his fair share of typos in his attempts at communicating, insisting several times that he needed more powerful gums.