by Schow, Ryan
“My father is one of your employers. Not only did he start the corporation you work for, he paid twenty-five million dollars for your services! And not so half my face and one boob can start sagging!”
Another snicker, this one more drawn out than the last. “Your father no longer works with the Virginia Corporation, as I’m sure he’s told you.” I open my mouth to retort, but nothing comes out. “I warned you about this in the beginning. But for you specifically, my employers insisted unique safety measures be put in place to protect their technology, as well as their identity. Had you kept that lovely mouth of yours shut, had you not killed my super soldier prototype, you would be whole and happy today. But alas, you are a pestilence and, by your own actions, you have ordered up your own death sentence.”
“Are you doing this to me?”
“I am not the one triggering your mutations if that’s what you’re asking.”
Triggering? This is being done by remote control? “How do they—whoever they are—how do they even know I’ve spoken about them anyway?”
“You’re smarter than that, Savannah. If you knew the Virginia Corporation the way I know them, then your cell phone and home phones are likely tapped. Your house, too. And if the repulsive Warwick Bundy is involved, then your car isn’t safe either. Not that it makes a difference. Once the radiation is triggered, you can’t stop it.”
A silent, tart burp puffs out of my mouth, the bloating in my belly easing only slightly. The gurgling of stomach acid bends my spine a bit, but I won’t hang up. Not now. This has to get fixed. “I’m coming to see you right away.”
My stomach is now at a rolling boil.
“A serum containing proprietary radioactive material was injected into you during one of your treatments. It was after you shot me. Rather it was because you shot me. What did you expect them to do? I couldn’t just kill you on the spot, not with the things your father has done for me. For science.”
“So how do I get it out?”
“You cannot stop what you have put in motion. This is a war you brought to your own doorstep, young lady.”
“First of all, what in Jesus’ name are you talking about? I never started any gosh damned war!”
He tisk, tisk, tisks me. “Such foul language is unbecoming of a woman of your breeding.”
“Breeding? I’m not a dog.”
“So says the mutt,” he hisses, his German accent Americanized enough for me to detect fourteen pounds of sarcasm.
And then he hangs up.
“Son of a bitch!” I scream into the phone. My stomach turns once, then twice, and then it curls inside out and races like a burning mudslide up the length of my throat. I drop the phone on the bed and sprint for the bathroom. I almost make it to the toilet.
Almost.
6
The sight of my falling face startles my father. I study his expression, and even though I don’t have any experience in reading these new looks of his, it’s obvious he’s concerned. Before he can freak me out any more, I confess everything: my bloody vomit, the loss of my hair in clumps, my underlying desire to stop the Virginia Corporation’s use of clones, my conversation with Gerhard—how I shot him and how he hates me—and how I stole Nurse Arabelle’s originality by blackmailing Gerhard for her eyes.
I am steeped in shame, but I tell him these things because that’s how scared I am. He looks at me like I’m from another planet. Like he’s thinking of aborting me.
Or murdering me.
“Give me your phone right now,” he snaps.
I hand it over. He removes the battery and the SIM card and sets it on the counter. He does the same with his phone. He looks at our phones for what feels like forever, then he takes both calmly and carefully into his hands, sets them on the tile floor and smashes them under his heel in what quickly becomes an enraged frenzy.
With our phones reduced to crumbs, he smoothes his hair back, takes two calming breaths and looks at me with less crazy eyes.
“The technology on these things is beyond your understanding. Whether it’s turned on or off, as long as the battery is in the phone, anything you say in its range can be heard by someone with your phone number and GPS coordinates. Even when it’s off, think of it as a one way conversation on a walkie-talkie where others can listen. And the Facetime feature is a two-way camera to the right person. Certain people can activate your camera, and—like the microphone—it doesn’t matter whether the thing’s turned on or off, it works.”
I can’t hardly breathe. “People are listening? Watching?”
“Who have you talked to about the program?”
I stare at my destroyed cell phone, wondering how the hell I’m supposed to live without it. It seems amazing, such a ridiculous thought. Terrifying really. But not as terrifying as my current situation. Or my father’s outburst. I’ve never seen him like this.
“No one outside the program,” I admit. “At least, no one who doesn’t already know about it.”
He gestures to the drooping side of my face. “So Gerhard said radiation is mutating your cells?”
I nod. He becomes silent. Finally something in his expression clears and he speaks. “They must have some remote trigger they can activate when there’s a problem. Like some kind of RFID chip.”
Ever since Gerhard said I triggered this by talking, I’ve been thinking about what’s inside me. I feel invaded. Then again, I was so unprepared for any of this, I never asked what was in the serum. It’s the same way mothers and children never ask what’s in those vaccines we’re all pressured to take. Now my social conditioning to take what I’m told without question seems to have bitten me in the butt.
“Apparently, whoever did this feels like you’ve become a problem, so what have you really done? And don’t lie because this is serious.”
“I told you everything. Oh, and I killed Gerhard’s war model. This disgusting blood sucking monster of a man who broke into my room and attacked me.”
“What?” he says, the insane look returning.
I tell him the story about the giant, about me biting off his pinkie finger, and about me shooting him dead, and whatever anxiety he felt before, I watch it double, then triple. He goes to the fridge, grabs a couple of beers, pops the top on one, drains it all in one shot. He belches like Guinness Book of World Records is listening, then throws the empty bottle away and pops the top on the other. He leaves it on the counter to breathe.
“For the love of Christ, child, what have you done?”
My empty stomach is a bundle of squirming snakes.
“Daddy, what they’re doing to the clones is inhumane! Not to mention they faked Kaitlyn Whittaker’s death to cover it up.”
“Forget about that stupid argument for a minute!” he barks. “I need to know exactly who you told about your procedure. Specifically people outside the program.”
“Brayden and Damien.” And Netty.
“Over the phone?”
“I talked to them about it over the phone, yes.”
When he doesn’t say anything, it’s the silence that kills me. I wish he’d scream. Or break something. I haven’t catalogued his new expressions, but I recognize his frustration. He will eventually get pissed off again, I know it, but how will this new version of him process these emotions? For me, apparently I use especially bad language, blackmail and violence, which isn’t inherent to me. I really do believe I inherited this type of crass behavior from one of my clones, and truth be told, it’s especially concerning to me how easy the f-bombs want to come out.
“We need to get rid of your Range Rover,” he says. “Chances are it’s bugged.”
“But I love Rover. Can’t we get it swept for bugs or something?”
“And kill the GPS and change the VIN number and the license plates, and sell it to our new identities? No, we have to get rid of it. I know a wholesaler who can turn it quickly. Maybe make a trade.”
“In that case,” I say, being playfully ostentatious, “I think the new Aud
i S5 is just what this mutant body of mine is craving right now.” I force a smile, but my face won’t hold it up. I start to cry.
“That’s actually a good idea,” he says, pulling me into his arms. Then, more softly, he says, “I’ll make a few calls.”
“Your car is probably bugged, too,” I say, my wet eyes leaving dark spots on his blue shirt.
“I know.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
I pull away, drying my eyes with my hands. “So what will you do?”
His hard gaze softens and clears, and the frown that’s been sitting on his handsome face like a flat slash curves into something of an unpracticed smile. “We’re going car shopping.”
“What are you going to get?”
“Whatever it is, it’s gonna be straight up pimp.”
I start to roll my eyes, but stop. I have this epiphany, like suddenly I know what this is. “You miss her, don’t you? That’s why you’re acting so strange. You miss Margaret.”
His wobbly smile falters, and then his entire body seems to sigh under the weight of my observation, the truth pulled from hiding, now on full display.
“That was a dangerously fast change of topic.”
“The mother of all sidetracks, I know. But at least admit I’m right. I know I am.”
“You are.”
“You know what we should do?” I say. “You know what would make you feel better?”
“What?”
“We have that butthole writer friend of hers killed. Or castrated at the very least.”
He laughs out loud, which makes me happy. No one wants their parents depressed, especially over each other. Not even me.
“We could use a hammer,” he says. “No, a sledgehammer.”
Oh, how I love this new version of my father. “Daddy, I have to say, I really like your thinking.”
“First the cars,” he says, grinning, “then, about the writer, we’ll improvise.”
7
When you’re not who your government issued identification says you are, you might as well start thinking like a criminal. At least, that’s what it felt like trying to unload our most likely surveilled cars. In the end, my father “got jiggy” with his “inner gangsta” and done was done. I made a face when he flashed what he called his Palo Alto gang sign, and I was like, “Okay, you can be all hood rat if you want, but do that shit in public and I’m going to move in with the monster.”
He doesn’t like me calling Margaret “the monster” and I almost don’t like him acting so freaking strange, but fathers and daughters sometimes go together like gasoline and fire, so whatevs.
After swapping pinks (pink slips) on both our cars to a friend of a friend wholesaler on the WDL (way down low), my father buys a twenty-thousand mile Audi S6 (on consignment) in return and he’s like a kid on Christmas morning. So giddy. Inside the car, my big white sun hat won’t fit on my head and so I’m like, “Well this is very inconvenient.” When he looks at me, however, I’m wearing a grin big enough to match his. I never thought my father would get excited over a car.
On the way to Carlsen Audi, we meet a guy who looks like a pot dealer who gives us six pre-paid phones for what my father said was a ‘stack of Jacksons.’ He’s talking the gangsta talk, which is sometimes funny and sometimes annoying, depending on my mood. Right now I’m watching him walk the walk and I have to say, I’m sort of impressed. Not that I’ll admit it.
Twenty minutes later, at the Audi dealership, these gorgeous Amethyst eyes of mine fall on the new S5 coupe and all the sudden my lady boner’s pushing a hard north.
“Hey daddy,” I say, sugary sweet, “your daughter’s in love with that one over there.”
I’m pointing at a pearl white S5 that’s lowered on custom twenty-one inch deep dish rims. It’s dripping with sex appeal, yet it still manages to look tough as hell.
Naturally, I have to have it.
My father peeks under the big white hat I’m wearing (to mostly hide my sagging face), and the second he sees my crooked smile, he says, “Done is done.”
Our salesman is older and not handsome, but he has personality for days, and he keeps cracking jokes, but then from time to time I catch him sneaking looks at the dipping side of my face and when he does I get anxious and scared, and even a bit embarrassed. Anymore, I wonder if there’s a way out of this mess, or if I’ll be forced to live my life looking like a motherfreaking stroke victim. More than ever, I’m desperate to see Gerhard.
That’s when my father sees the R8 sports coupe and he’s like, “Holy shit, I have to have that.”
The sales guy is like, “Um, that’s a V10. And it’s one eighty,” and my father’s like, “I’ve got an S6 to trade in. Give me a decent number on that and this will be a two car deal.”
Naturally, it becomes a two car deal. The thing about a good car salesman is, there’s always a way.
While we’re waiting to go into finance, my father says, “Are you going to miss Rover?” and I’m like, “Did Brad Pitt miss Juliet Lewis when he started doing the humpty dump with Gweneth Paltrow?” and he was like, “Yeah, but I liked Rover.”
That’s sweet of him, a total turn around from acting like a fangster (fake gangster), and the truth is, I will miss Rover, too. Unfortunately my beloved SUV was standing in the way of me not becoming a surveilled, radiated vegetable, so Rover had to go the same way Juliet Lewis had to go.
“Brad Pitt said Juliet Lewis was the coolest, most down to earth person he’s ever been with, but in the end, Juliet got replaced by someone better looking, as did Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Aniston because in this super shallow existence, the Angelina Jolie’s of the world always win out. I hate it, dad, but it’s true.”
His face is kind of sad. “Do you really believe that?”
“The monster’s shacking up with a writer ten years younger than you who was probably better looking than the old you but not successful by any measure. Dad, you have substance, and I’m sure he’s just some existential dick-with-ears who happened to be better looking at the time. Don’t you see? You are Margaret’s Juliet Lewis and the writer is the monster’s Gwyneth, or Jennifer, or Angelina. How can I not be jaded?”
“Your first mistake is thinking your mother’s behavior is the norm. You can’t hate her forever.”
“Yeah,” I say, sincere and showing him my good eye, “but I can try.”
Instead of arguing, he scoots closer, puts his arm around me and says, “Well you are my Juliet, my Gwyneth, my Jennifer and my Angelina all wrapped in one. I love you, sweetheart.” Just hearing him say this feels so good it almost makes me cry.
8
The first call I make on my new, unbugged burner phone is to Gerhard. He picks up, real polite because he doesn’t recognize the number, and I’m like, “It’s me again,” and he’s like, “This is becoming annoying.”
“I took your advice and got rid of my phones, and my car.”
“First of all, I never gave you any advice but to shut that mouth of yours. And second, that doesn’t mean your house isn’t bugged, too. These people are thorough.”
“I’m not at home,” I say, “and unless your phone is tapped, we can have a candid conversation.”
He breathes an aggravated sigh directly into the mouthpiece and, in a not-so-kind tenor, he says, “I’m not seeing you today, and that’s final. And if you don’t make this conversation quick, I won’t be seeing you tomorrow either. I have things to do.”
Putting on my negotiating panties, I take a stabilizing breath and say, “You will fix this problem inside me, or I will go to the paparazzi with everything: my new face, witnesses, and of course, video evidence. You know I’m telling the truth. You know I mean it.”
If my threat moved him in any way, he gives me no clear sign. I only hope it works because I’m not about to go to the cockroach paparazzi, even if it would save my life and be the story of the decade. Those people ruined my life before Gerhard’s people ruined my
life.
“Let us dispense with the childish antics I feel coming on and stick to the point at hand. You have a problem. And regrettably, I believe I have the solution. As arranged, you will need to come to my lab here in the city. I trust Arabelle gave you directions to my San Francisco office earlier?”
“She only gave me a hard time.”
“She is still offended that you forced my hand in altering your eyes to mimic hers.”
“They weren’t hers to keep. They weren’t even hers to start with.”
“Never-the-less, you have offended her.”
“Is there something we can do over the phone, something I can take to offset the reaction to whatever you put in me? Iodine pills or something?”
He belts out a laugh, one laced with disgust. “Iodine pills? How cute.”
My body is aching again, the muscles so fatigued I feel like sleeping away all of winter break. “All I’m saying is, must we see each other?”
“I take it you no longer care for my company?”
“I’d rather eat a bucket of assholes.”
“Then please, do me a favor and don’t come see me. Because what I want most right now, what would tickle me pink, is to see you worse off than before. And if you end up dead, I would feel nothing. Absolutely nothing. In fact, you dropping dead would make my year.”
If I didn’t hate him so much, that would’ve hurt. “I’m coming in to see you. Today.”
“I cannot see you until tomorrow morning, unless you want your friend Georgia to have the same kinds of problems you are having. Is that what you want?”
Bastard.
“Fine,” I relent. “I need an address and a time.”
He gives me both, then hangs up on me. I drop the phone feeling sick about everything: my body, seeing Gerhard again, the difficult turn our conversation seemed to take. Worst of all, I feel out of control, again. Scared.
And what’s wrong with Georgia? If he’s not bluffing, I hope she’s okay.
After a moment, I realize I’m in a war, and no matter the magnitude of the pity-party going on inside me, there are two specific questions in dire need of answers: Who are these people radiating me, and how do I keep from dying?
