The Mirror Man

by Jane Gilmartin

  “Meet me at my house in a half hour,” he’d told her. “Bring Meld and whatever else you need to put back all of those memories into my son. I want him back the way I left him. Intact.”

  Jeremiah peered into the garage door window of the house. There was no car inside. He glanced at his watch. The clone would be at work for at least another hour. Parker, no doubt, was in his bedroom playing video games. He tried the kitchen door. It was locked. Looking around in as casual a manner as he could manage, he saw no neighbors on the street. There was no one to see what he was doing. He balled his good hand up inside the sleeve of his suit jacket and easily shattered the bottom pane of glass, knocking away the remaining shards so he could reach in and turn the doorknob. Once he was inside, he stood stone still, hardly daring to breathe, and listened for any sign that Parker had heard something. After a moment, he let out his breath and eased the door closed behind him as quietly as he could. Thank God for those expensive headphones, he thought.

  He remembered the cameras. ViMed had eyes all over the house. If anyone were monitoring, they were probably looking right at him. And, he considered, they’d have no reason to believe they weren’t seeing his clone. If he played this cool, if he could just get his wits together and act casual, as though he were in his own house doing nothing suspicious, he could probably fool them for long enough. Unless, he thought, they were monitoring the clone at the office at the same time. That would certainly rouse someone’s suspicions. His only option was to destroy the cameras. Or at least turn them off.

  He crossed the room quickly, opened the door to the basement and went to the breaker box. Standing there in the sudden pitch-blackness, he hoped Parker was on his laptop and still engrossed in his game. With a little luck, he probably wouldn’t even notice that the lights were out in the middle of the afternoon. But he worried about some sort of alarms going off at ViMed. He had no idea whether he’d done the right thing. But at least he could be sure no one would see him make the switch.

  Back in the kitchen, he stood for a nervous few minutes until he saw Natalie approach the door, looking over her shoulders in a ludicrously conspicuous way. He let her in quickly and put a finger to his lips.

  “Where’s Parker?” she asked in a whisper.

  “Upstairs, on his computer,” he said.

  “And his clone?” she asked.

  “In the car, down the street.”

  “And you’re sure about this? You’re absolutely certain you have the wrong one?”

  “That kid in the car believes he is Parker,” he told her. “He’s not. You think I wouldn’t know?”

  “All right,” she said, “I believe you.”

  “How are we going to do this?”

  Her eyes widened. “I thought you had a plan!”

  “I didn’t exactly have all day to think of every single detail,” he said. “Did you bring everything you need?”

  She nodded toward the leather bag slung over her shoulder.

  “This is extremely precise work,” she told him. “Implanting memories with Meld is Pike’s job. I’m not even sure I can do this.”

  “Well,” he said, “you’d better figure it out. This is my only chance. You said you wanted to help me. I need your help now.”

  She inhaled deeply, a kind of resolve coming over her face.

  “We’re going to have to bring them together for this transfer,” she said. “It will be easiest if the real Parker is under sedation to receive the memory implant. Luckily for you, I thought of that.” She took a syringe out of her bag. “The clone will need to be conscious during the procedure and then sedated just before the end, so he doesn’t remember seeing his own double.”

  “I’ll get the clone,” Jeremiah said. “What do I tell him?”

  “I don’t know. That’s up to you, Jeremiah. Let’s take care of the real one first. Then at least we can stop whispering.”

  Taking the stairs as carefully as he could, avoiding the few spots where he knew they would squeak, Jeremiah led her to the second floor and down the hallway to where Parker’s bedroom door stood slightly ajar. Parker was inside, his back to them, obliterating video enemy forces with severe concentration, entirely oblivious to the fact that his own father was standing there about to subject him to Meld and essentially kidnap him.

  Natalie wasted no time, but inhaled deeply, readied the syringe and walked up behind him with long, determined strides. She jabbed the needle into Parker’s right shoulder. He jumped violently and turned with a terrified expression, but slumped over onto his desk before he could utter a single word. Natalie settled the boy’s head into a more comfortable position and Jeremiah let out the breath he hadn’t been aware he was holding in.

  “I’ll go get the clone,” he said. “Wait here.”

  Halfway down the stairs he ran headlong into his own clone coming up.

  Chapter 44

  For a moment they stood there, facing each other without a word, neither of them fully comprehending what they were seeing. For his part, Jeremiah was simply surprised to see the clone home so quickly. He hadn’t considered this contingency at all and the shock of it stopped him in midstep. He imagined his clone’s concern was a little more urgent, as he’d literally walked in on a home invasion. He was probably also wondering whether he’d lose another body part.

  It was the clone who spoke first.

  “You!” He stared at Jeremiah while his face raced through a series of expressions from fear to confusion to rage and back again. “Parker?” he called over Jeremiah’s shoulder. “I swear to God if you’ve hurt him... Parker!”

  He pushed past Jeremiah with a sudden show of strength and took the remaining stairs two at a time, almost tripping in the process, and burst into Parker’s bedroom to find Natalie Young standing over the boy. Jeremiah came in at his heels. Natalie looked from one identical face to the other and then settled on Jeremiah.

  “Jesus!” she said. “This is all we need. You didn’t think to lock the door?”

  “He has a key, remember?”

  “What the hell is going on here! What have you done to him? Parker!” The clone rushed past Natalie and grasped the boy by the shoulders, a look of absolute terror creeping over his face when he saw Parker’s head fall awkwardly to one side.

  “Oh, my God! No. No. What have you done?” He began slapping the boy’s cheeks in an attempt to rouse him.

  Jeremiah rushed up next to his double and tried to pry Parker from his grip.

  “He’s okay. He’s just sleeping,” he said. “He’s fine.”

  “We haven’t hurt him,” Natalie said, holding her hands out in defense. “It’s just a mild sedative. That’s all.”

  “Who the hell are you people?” Although he addressed both of them, the clone’s eyes were fixed on Jeremiah’s face. “I’m calling the police.”

  “You won’t do that,” Jeremiah said. “If you didn’t do it before, when I had a knife to your throat, I don’t think you’ll do it now. Think about this. What are you going to tell them when they ask for a description? We’re not here to hurt anyone. Parker’s not in any danger. But you and I need to talk. It’s time I filled you in on everything that’s going on. It’s time you knew the truth.”

  Natalie shot a warning look at Jeremiah, which angered him.

  “What else are we supposed to do, Natalie?” he asked. “We’re sort of backed in a corner here and time is running out. The project doesn’t matter anymore. Fuck that. Besides, he has a right to know.”

  “A right to know what?” the clone asked, looking from one of them to the other. His hands still gripped Parker’s shoulders. He let go, turned to Jeremiah and lowered his voice. “Who the hell are you?”

  “That,” Jeremiah said, “should be as plain as the nose on our identical face. Come with me.”

  Five minutes later, back in the hallway, Jeremiah’s clone
was shaking his head.

  “You’re insane,” he said. “Human cloning?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know. Illegal, immoral, all of that. But scientifically possible, and that’s what this is. Look at me! Look at my face. What do you think this is? What else can this possibly be?”

  Jeremiah locked eyes with his double and watched as some sort of understanding eventually fell over its face. The clone’s eyes began to twitch, and he pulled at the hair on the top of his head, in exactly the same way that Jeremiah had always reacted to bad news.

  “You know it’s the truth,” Jeremiah pushed. “You’ve known it since the minute you saw me. Now you just need to admit it. And time is running out. I’m afraid we can’t have your existential crisis right now.”

  “You expect me to believe this?” the clone said. “How do I know that you’re not the clone? Maybe you’re the clone and you’re trying to steal my life, my son!”

  “I’m not stealing anything. I’m trying to take back my own son, my real son. And believe me, I don’t want your life. You can keep that.”

  “But Parker is my son,” the clone said. “I remember the day he was born. I remember every first day of school, every argument, every time he ever cried. I remember everything. He’s my son.”

  “And Parker’s clone will remember all of it, too. Those memories won’t go away. You lose nothing. In some weird way, that clone is your real son,” Jeremiah said. “I just want to make this right again. For both of us. For all of us. We don’t have time to debate this. We have to do it now.”

  Natalie’s voice pierced the silence between the men.

  “We need to hurry this up, Jeremiah. We need the other clone.”

  “Get him. He’s in my car, down the street.” He tossed her his keys as she brushed past them and started down the stairs. “Be careful,” he added. “Don’t give him any information. Just bring him in.”

  He turned back to his clone, who was leaning heavily now against the wall and still shaking his head.

  “My entire life? Everything I remember? My childhood? My marriage? You want me to believe it’s all been a lie? That I’m not the man I’ve always thought I was?”

  “If there’s one thing I’ve learned from all of this,” Jeremiah said, “it’s that no one, none of us, is ever really who we think we are. We tell ourselves lies to feel better, but they’re just lies. The truth is a lot harder to look at. But the trick is, you can’t let it crush you. You either accept who you are, or you change it. In your case, you just have to accept it. And you have to do that now.”

  “Just accept all of this and hand over my son?”

  “You don’t have a choice,” Jeremiah snapped. “Right this minute there are people on their way here who’d kill all of us in a heartbeat to keep this thing quiet. Including your son. And mine.”

  The clone said nothing.

  “You’re his father,” Jeremiah said. “Every bit as much as I am. Act like it! We’ve got to do this.”

  The anguish still there on his face, the clone closed his eyes and offered a feeble nod of his head in reluctant acceptance.

  Relief washed over Jeremiah just as Natalie started back up the stairs. Parker’s clone came up cautiously behind her and stopped as soon as he saw the scene in the hallway.

  “Dad...? What?”

  “Parker,” he said. “We need to do one more thing. You need to go with Dr. Young. Do exactly as she tells you. You can trust her.”

  The boy looked at him in utter confusion, eyes widening in alarm, and Jeremiah laid a reassuring hand on his shoulder. “We need to do this, Parker. No one’s going to hurt you. We just need to fix this one thing.”

  “And then we can go?”

  “Then we can go,” he said. “Anywhere we want.”

  Jeremiah felt a lump in his throat as he watched the boy follow Natalie into the bedroom as though he were walking toward a firing squad. His own clone made a move to follow, but Jeremiah stopped him with a hand to his shoulder. Natalie closed the door behind them.

  “That’s your son,” he said. “He’s every bit as real as you are.”

  “And he won’t remember anything about this?” the clone asked. “Nothing about the experiment, about seeing two of us? About seeing his own clone in there?”

  “If everything goes right, the only thing he’ll remember is that he came home from school, fell asleep and you woke him up in time for dinner.”

  They listened in silence to a few muffled sounds coming from the bedroom, none of them as worrisome as they thought they ought to be. They exchanged anxious glances, but everything that needed saying between them had already been said.

  It was only a few minutes before Natalie emerged from the room, struggling with the slumping body of Parker against her shoulder. He looked awake, but zombie-like, and was able to walk uneasily under her guidance. She nodded back toward the room.

  “You take care of him,” she said. “I’ll get this one in the car and then I’m leaving.”

  “Did it work?” Jeremiah asked. “Is it all done?”

  She shook her head slightly. “I hope so. I did my best. But you should both be prepared for some overlap in memory. Some gaps. You’ll just have to work with it.”

  She started slowly down the stairs with her burden and turned when Jeremiah spoke again.

  “Natalie. You should know that I have evidence about all of this. I plan to turn it in. If I were you, I’d get far away before this all comes out. You may still have a chance.”

  She nodded.

  “Good luck, Jeremiah,” she said. “Both of you.”

  Jeremiah and his clone went into the bedroom where they found Parker’s clone limp in a chair, his head lolling uncomfortably to one side. Together, they lifted him up and laid him carefully onto the bed, each of them pulling off one shoe and positioning a leg.

  They stood there, sharing a long, silent exchange, and Jeremiah held out his hand to his double. It felt strange to shake his hand, but appropriate somehow.

  “I don’t know if I can leave you out of this when the truth comes out,” he said. “I can try, but you need to be prepared for it. People may come looking for you.”

  “If everything you’ve told me is true, then they’ll have no reason to believe I’m not who I say I am. And you won’t be here to dispute it. Where will you go now?”

  “I don’t know. A fresh start. Somewhere new.”

  Jeremiah started out of the room, leaving his clone to pick up the pieces of the shattered life he was walking away from. He turned back then, a final question occurring to him.

  “Will you ever tell him?” He nodded toward Parker’s clone on the bed.

  The clone hesitated for a moment and then looked back at the boy with a thoughtful expression.

  “No,” he said finally. “I don’t think I will. I really don’t see the point.”

  * * *

  At the car, Parker was in the back seat now, looking slightly dazed. His head leaned heavily against the window and Louie’s head lay contentedly in the boy’s lap. Jeremiah breathed a sigh of real relief at the sight.

  “You all right?” he asked.

  “Let’s just go, Dad. I’m okay.”

  Jeremiah nodded, turned the key and adjusted the rearview mirror. Before he drove away toward a future that held as much hope now as it did uncertainty, he took a moment to peer into his own eyes. It seemed to him that it was the first time he ever really understood what he was looking at; all at once, he saw the man he’d been, the man he had become and, more importantly, the man he was going to be. He actually smiled.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s go.”

  * * *

  Acknowledgments

  Writing a novel is a task done mainly all alone. Bringing it from a wisp of an idea to a solid thing you can hold in your hand, however, takes a small army. Ther
e are many I have to thank:

  My agent at The Gernert Company, Will Roberts, for his meticulous eye, sustained encouragement and enthusiasm, and the ability to gently keep me on the right track. Margot Mallinson, my editor at Mira, for her belief in this story, in me as an author, and her amazing capacity to make a book shine. Libby McGuire, whose expertise I was so fortunate to enjoy during her time as an agent. Michelle Meade, who helped to polish my story in ways that truly mattered. Thomas Hess, Leanna Hamill and Jennifer Harris, collectively known as The N.I.P.s—the best and most demanding writing group ever—and good friends, to boot. Stacie Julian and Linda MacKinnon—you know what you did, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart. My incredible group of girlfriends for all the laughs, good times, and so much encouragement. To my father, Charles Arena, and my whole gigantic family, but especially to Isabelle, Julian and Greg, who supported me, cheered me on, and probably heard 27 different iterations of this book. They never once said “no” when I asked if I could read them just one more scene—even though I’m sure they really wanted to. You should know it made a difference. And thanks, finally, to Louie, who made sure I was never really working all alone. I miss you more than words can say, buddy, so I’ll just leave it at Woof!

  My apologies to anyone I may have omitted. It’s never intentional.

  ISBN-13: 9781488056123

  The Mirror Man

  Copyright © 2020 by Jane Gilmartin

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.