The Tomorrow Clone (The Tomorrow Gene Book 3)

by Sean Platt

  Ephraim shook his head slowly. He raised the opener, testing its tip, moving a step closer.

  “I know what you are, Ephraim. The Change has people in influential places throughout the world. I know who you once were. I know who you’ve become. I even know that Neven made you from the blood of Jonathan’s brother. I know how it’s been for you. I have the answers you want, and I’m happy to share.”

  Ephraim closed the distance. Sat on the edge of Papa Friesh’s desk. Raised the letter opener, turning it, watching it shine. Papa was old; Ephraim was young. Even if Papa struggled, Ephraim could kill him before the guards came. He’d done it before.

  “You don’t know me as well as you think you do,” Ephraim said.

  “I’m afraid that’s not true. I can’t predict everything that comes out of your mouth, but I know Neven’s process. I know Wallace’s vision, and what it became. You can’t help who you are deep down. And I’m sorry to tell you that there are flaws. Fail safes. Things that Neven—”

  Ephraim pushed the opener’s tip against Papa’s neck, right atop the large blue artery.

  “All I want to know is what makes you so sure that I won’t kill you just because you’re pissing me off. I’d like to know how you can be so goddamn certain that I won’t shove this thing through your neck just for the hell of it.”

  “Wait,” Papa said, swallowing, finally bothered by the blade at his throat. “I can get you anything you want.”

  “You think you can. But you can’t.”

  “Try me,” Papa said, backing away as the opener’s tip — sharp enough after all — scratched a tiny lip of blood from the old man’s skin.

  Ephraim’s mind surprised him. He knew what he’d meant to say, but a new mission came out of the blue.

  Something he’d lost.

  Something he was sure he’d never have again.

  Something that, like the Tomorrow Gene, had already proven for Ephraim to be the one thing that changed everything.

  “Eden,” Ephraim said. “When I killed Neven Connolly, I was on Eden.”

  “Yes,” Papa croaked. “I know all about it. I know who they sent to get you, what the surveillance records showed, and—”

  He pressed the opener more firmly.

  “Then you must know what happened to Sophie. You say you can get me anything? Good. Because that’s what I want. I want you to find out what happened to Sophie after the people who brought me home took her away.”

  Papa coughed, then again as he tried to recover his breath.

  But then, without warning, he drove his elbow hard into Ephraim’s triceps from below, knocking the opener out of his hand. A half-second later they were apart, and Ephraim was leaping for it, ready to try anew.

  Papa was behind his chair, which he’d wheeled between them to use as a shield. The trickle of blood had run across his collar, leaving a crimson smear.

  And he laughed, indicating the wide surface of his desk. “Look at the card, Ephraim, if you’re so curious.”

  Ephraim’s eyes went to the final index card, then back up at Papa. The man was smiling wide, no longer coughing.

  “Go on.” And then Papa stepped back, to give him room.

  Ephraim reached for the card. When his thumb was under its leading edge but before he flipped it, he paused, not trusting Papa’s quiet smile. He flipped the card anyway, and on the other side was the word Revenge.

  Papa was laughing.

  “What is this?” He flipped the card, then flipped it again. “What the fuck is so funny? What’s the question this little magic trick was supposed to answer?”

  “I asked the last question already. I said, ‘I can get you anything you want. What do you want?’ I was sure — so sure — that you’d say you wanted to destroy Eden — and possibly kill Jonathan Todd — out of revenge.”

  “And?”

  “And it seems that you’re not quite what I — or Neven — thought you’d be after all, Ephraim.”

  He thought, the card still in his hand. What had he said if not revenge? Ephraim had been too preoccupied preparing to slit Papa’s throat.

  Papa wiped at his neck, noted the blood, then licked it off his finger. He tapped something unseen on his desk.

  A woman’s voice replied. “Yes, Papa?”

  “Hannah, if you would, please send in Miss Norris.”

  Chapter 13

  The One Thing ...

  Timothy said, “Flying cars.”

  Wallace groaned.

  “I’m serious.”

  “You’re officially out of ideas. We’ll never see flying cars. This is why I’m the guy with ideas, and you’re the guy who makes things happen.”

  “Why won’t the world ever have flying cars?”

  “Because,” Wallace said, “the world is full of idiots. Nobody can figure out how to drive on the ground without running into each other, so how is it going to work if the traffic system adds a Z axis and lets people go up, too?”

  “I thought the idea of brainstorming is that there are no stupid ideas.”

  “That’s a laugh, coming from you,” Wallace said.

  “What’s that mean?”

  “You say most of my ideas are stupid.”

  “Because it’s my job. If you want a real company, someone has to rein in the ridiculous ideas. Remember when you wanted to manufacture blinds in Manila?”

  “That was a joke.”

  “Uh-huh.” Timothy nodded.

  Just because Wallace sometimes attended his dad’s mastermind of millionaires didn’t mean he was an impetuous youth eager to prove himself that the other members said he was.

  And just because one of the group’s network connections had a factory in Manila that was looking for machine hours to fill its dead times. They were also desperate enough to sell them to a 22-year-old kid if that kid could find something to manufacture using only bamboo and string. That didn’t mean Wallace wanted to do it.

  Except that he might have at least looked into it if Timothy hadn’t insisted that the notion was stupid.

  “We’re not going to try and make flying cars, Tim.”

  “I know we’re not. I’m just answering the question, which I thought was the point of this exercise. What does the world want that doesn’t exist?”

  “You have to be practical. Flying cars are dumb. Why the hell would we ever do that?”

  “We’re supposed to be brainstorming.”

  “Logical brainstorming.”

  “Brainstorming isn’t logical!”

  Wallace resisted the urge to reply. Timothy was super-smart and would, one day, be as great of a company integrator as his father Jason was for Wowzers. But ideas would always be Wallace’s domain because he, like his dad Abraham, was the visionary.

  Visionaries had the ideas. Integrator-types got jealous that none of their ideas ever made it to the fore. Every once in a while, you had to indulge them.

  “Fine,” Timothy said. “How about something in medicine?”

  “Like what?”

  “Dunno. Better CAT scan machines?”

  “I don’t want to make hard goods. Too much overhead. Wowzers is nimble specifically because it doesn’t have shit like locations, stores, and factories.”

  “Software, then,” Timothy said.

  “You squashed my big attempt to get us into software. Remember?”

  “Uh-huh. Because that would have been wise: launching a virus to destroy Aphrodite.”

  “Hey, I didn’t know how big it would get. Or what would happen.”

  “If I remember right,” Timothy said, “the whole reason you wanted to ransomware its ass was specifically because you thought it would become big. Except that your way cost lives and probably would’ve killed our fathers.”

  “It wouldn’t have cost any lives.”

  “Livelihoods, then.”

  The room, one of the smaller ones in the university library, was almost deserted. If it hadn’t been, they probably would have been yelled at by now. Timot
hy was good at being quiet; Wallace, not so much. He always had thoughts. If they didn’t go verbal, they went to waste.

  “I liked your medicine idea,” Wallace said.

  “You said you didn’t want to make hard goods. You know, like blinds in Manila?”

  Wallace ignored him. “Yeah, of course. But something medical. People want stuff, but they need to be healthy.”

  “So now you’re going to invent a cure for cancer or something?”

  “There are all sorts of cures for all sorts of things,” Wallace said. “They already exist, or could. It’s just that nobody has the guts to try them.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Or, you know. Regulations. Like, there are plenty of plants that can fix all sorts of problems in the Amazon rainforest and whatever.”

  “I like this,” Timothy said, his voice thick with sarcasm. “Graduation is six months away, so now you’re willing to consider selling hope and hippie cures.”

  “I’m serious, Tim.”

  “I know you’re serious. That’s the problem.” He turned to look at his friend directly, arm slung over the back of the chair. “Look. I know flying cars is stupid. It has been since we first started playing the ‘predict the future’ game. It was mostly a joke.”

  “Mostly,” Wallace mocked.

  “But what do you think it says that you’re more willing to consider rainforest miracle cures than something that’s at least logically possible? You’re desperate. And impetuous. How long have we been talking about someday owning a company? Since you started trying to sabotage other developers with malware, at least.”

  “I wouldn’t have done it, you know,” Wallace said.

  Timothy fixed his best friend with a stare, and Wallace squirmed. He tried to kid himself when he remembered that day, sometimes even succeeding in believing that it had all been a threat, a boast, or a ruse. But his finger had been on the trigger, and he had been willing to pull it.

  At the time, it had felt like an acceptable risk, with losses within tolerable parameters. He hadn’t known that Aphrodite would end up being the perfect joint venture between Wowzers and Emma and Ralph’s company, and how much it would benefit everyone. He hadn’t known how, after the divorce, with his father so miserable, Emma and Ralph would become like surrogate parents to him.

  He told himself harmless lies: I would never have launched that ransomware. I was a dumb kid and didn’t know better. It all worked out so what did it matter?

  But they weren’t true.

  Timothy’s cool head had saved them.

  “It’s not that I’m desperate. We’ve been talking, but a discussion is never wasted. Maybe we should have looked at nuts and bolts before now, with more than six weeks to go before we’re supposed to get jobs. But what’s done is done. I’m motivated. And you know we can do this fast if we put our heads together.”

  “Our company doesn’t have a product,” Timothy said. “It’s our fantasy corporation and we don’t have a clue about what it does or produces.”

  “We know our structure. We know our ethos and culture. We both want to change the world, to make a ding in the universe.”

  “To prove to the girls who snubbed you that they made a mistake?”

  “I’m serious about doing something medical. Because now that I’m thinking about it,” Wallace tapped his chin. “Some of the guys in my dad’s mastermind group say they know people at UCLA who are working on cancer research.”

  “So what?”

  “They’re working on alternative cures. This is something special.”

  “From the Amazon rainforest?”

  “No. Just try to ‘start with yes’ for a minute, will you?”

  Wallace waited for his friend to settle. He’d kept his voice patient, but Timothy’s constant naysaying sometimes got downright infuriating. It was Wallace’s job to come up with ideas and Timothy’s to filter them. Often that meant saying no, even to ideas Wallace thought were genius. But he didn’t need to be a dick about it. Mockery didn’t sit well. And bringing up Wallace’s shitty dating record was below the belt.

  “This is kind of Fight Club,” Wallace said. “Cone of silence stuff.”

  “And they told you?”

  Wallace gave Timothy another hard glance. “Apparently there’s the research the university has approved, and then there’s hobby research. Sometimes geeks just tinker. I don’t understand it, but the guy said they’re looking for venture capital. To get one particular hobby in their cancer work off the ground.”

  “What makes it a hobby?” Timothy asked.

  “It’s not officially approved. They’re not supposed to be doing it. So, they can only do so much. But supposedly it’s promising.”

  “Promising how?”

  “That’s technical. But rather than trying to fix cancer, they’re, well, the phrase the guy used is ‘cloning around it.’”

  “Cloning? Like that famous sheep?”

  “The 2.0 version of that, I think. Or the 5.0 version. They call it ‘Precipitous Rise.’”

  “And ‘Precipitous Rise’ cures cancer?”

  “They think it will. And a bunch of other diseases. Think of the demand for something like that!”

  “But you said that it isn’t approved. Don’t they have to do trials or something?”

  “Yeah. But they can’t. It’s a chicken-and-egg situation. The lab people supposedly think that if they could do trials right now they’d have a hundred percent success rate with no real risk. But they can’t get authorization to do the trials without a lot of paperwork and pre-trial bullshit. And they can’t do that without a ton of time and a lot of specialized equipment. They can’t hobby through it on the side of their official research.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because they already have the solution. It’s ready for trials, like I said. But they didn’t get to it officially, so GEM or the FDA or whoeverthefuck won’t let them try it out. It’s like if you’re a math genius and can solve complex problems in your head, and so you’re just like, ‘the answer is seven.’ It’s the right answer, but nobody will believe you unless you show your work. Only, you didn’t do any work. So now you have to do a bunch of unnecessary shit to prove you know what you’re doing to people who aren’t as smart as you. Know what I mean?”

  “The guy was telling your dad’s group about all of this why?”

  “He wanted private funding. Venture capital.”

  Timothy sat up and leaned back. “Sounds like you fell for a sales pitch on magic beans.”

  “You weren’t there, Tim. You don’t have my science background. This is real.”

  “Forgive my skepticism, Wallace, but your going-through-the-motions, undergraduate-level ‘science background’ doesn’t exactly qualify you to say which miracle breakthroughs are real and which aren’t.”

  Wallace held his tongue. Timothy was so fucking conservative. So fucking timid. Wallace had been in the room; he’d seen how the people who knew better lit up during the story. To Wallace, it had sounded like a diamond mine that needed excavation equipment for the digging. Once the diamonds were out, there’d be plenty to pay for the equipment and more than enough left for every investor to add a mansion or two to their portfolio.

  “You need to trust me, Timothy. I know how to assemble the capital. I can fund it. Then we could back their research and get a share of what comes. But I don’t just want to be VC. We could get into the production line using the same technology. We could hire some of the UCLA guys; postdocs make almost nothing; poaching them would be easy, and make our own …”

  Timothy held up his hand. Shook his head. “Okay, you’re serious. That’s scary.”

  “You’re saying no?”

  “This was a sales pitch? Wallace, you’re just saying random blue-sky shit. There’s nothing to say no to!”

  “You won’t even consider it?”

  “You’re acting like this is your lifelong dream. But five minutes ago, you hadn’t even brought it up.” />
  “I’m just putting it together now.”

  Because that’s how it works, he wanted to add, but Timothy wouldn’t understand. Great ideas came in crackling sparks. You couldn’t sneak up on them; they presented themselves in flashes for the bold to seize. That’s the way it had happened when he’d considered loosing the ransomware on the Aphrodite app. And lest the world forgot, even that plan had been solid. Sure, it would have ruined Ralph and Emma’s lives, and Wowzers wouldn’t be worth what it was today. But Wallace and Timothy would have had their big success, carefully concealed. If not for guilt, the move would have been genius.

  “A company that makes flying cars is absurd, but one that makes clones isn’t?”

  “It wouldn’t make clones if they have the ability to reproduce dead tissue from the host’s DNA.”

  “Science fucking fiction. I thought you were serious when you asked me to brainstorm, but this—”

  “Holy shit, Tim. What if it could be used as a rejuvenation treatment? I mean, DNA is a blueprint, right? Instructions on how to build a body all over? What if — Oh my god. Do you have any idea how big the rejuvenation market is? Everyone wants the fountain of youth!”

  “Wallace—”

  “We could do this. I’m in the group. I could get us the money.”

  “How the hell would you get enough money to buy a world-changing technology?”

  “Let me worry about that.”

  He already had ideas. Many, many ideas, like always. Vision wasn’t hard. Everyone had vision; most people trained themselves to be blind.

  “No. No way.”

  “You’re kidding. You said you wanted us to make our mark. This is our chance to make a huge mark!”

  “I want us to make our mark with reality! With something that exists, not fantasy!”

  “What could make a bigger mark on society than eternal youth?”

  Timothy was shaking his head, about to walk away. But this time, Wallace wouldn’t let him.

  “No, Tim. I’m going to make some calls. Talk to some people. You don’t get to turn this down without at least checking it out.”

  “Fine. Your funeral.”

  “You’re doing this with me. I need your brain.”