The Eden Experiment

by Sean Platt

  Blood sprayed on the Doodad’s screen. Points were tallied for the kill.

  Ephraim had played the Murder app a few times, but thought it macabre. It was one thing to play a game where you killed realistic digital enemies, but another for the game to turn the people around you into innocent victims. He’d read Murder’s reviews once, to see if anyone else had problems with fake-killing your neighbors as part of a “fun” simulation. But no dice; the app’s negative reviews only said that the game didn’t have enough weapons, or that the onscreen deaths weren’t realistic enough.

  Don’t replay that memory, Ephraim. Don’t you dare. Even watching that man play Murder is better than thinking about what Wood told you.

  But that annoying voice inside his head never won.

  Ephraim pressed the switch behind his ear to bring up his MyLife dashboard, then navigated to the memory of his walk with Wood. Experienced live, the world had been a mottle of shadows. But now with a filter, the memory crackled with enhanced clarity. He could see and hear everything whether his lizard brain wanted to or not.

  Ephraim started the replay. MyLife video replaced the subway car, and he found himself back in time, his vision co-opted and seventy percent of his hearing (the max the safety margin allowed) consumed by MyLife audio.

  He could hear the car’s creaking and the rattle of wheels on rails, but those sounds were distant. For the most part, he was back in Fiona’s garden. Back with Wood, almost as if for real.

  He rewound. Fast-forwarded. Stopped at the spot he wanted, or more accurately, felt compelled to hear.

  “Fiona used to be in education too; she was an advisor just like Wallace,” Wood said in the memory. “Did you know that? Wallace in one place and Fiona in another. It’s not how they met, but it meant they knew a lot of the same people.”

  Ephraim’s vision bobbed up and down because in the memory he’d been walking, his footsteps now counterpointed by the subway’s rumbling wheels.

  “She was at UCLA,” Wood said, giving Ephraim a severe look. “That, I’m guessing she definitely didn’t tell you.”

  Ephraim shivered, both at the time of the live discussion and now, hearing it again. Jonathan had been at UCLA, and yet Fiona had never given any indication that she’d known — or known of — the infamous Jonathan Todd.

  “Did Jonathan ever tell you who helped him decide on the direction of his experimental trial? The one that killed those people?”

  Ephraim paused the memory and pulled back the video. He needed a minute. This part had proven easy to verify. Jonathan was at UCLA when his work went sour, prompting his flight from prosecution and shame. If Fiona had been there, too — if she and Jonathan had known each other or if she’d advised him — it would be a matter of public record. And it was.

  The paused memory sat in a small window at the upper right of Ephraim’s vision. His heart was beating too hard. Again, he tried to focus on the car’s swaying.

  The twin girls were staring right at him. The man playing Murder had changed seats and was now sitting across from the girls. He was trying to be subtle about his intention to kill them in his video game, but not subtle enough.

  Ephraim stared at the twins until they turned.

  A homeless man walked through the car’s belly, shaking a can. It sounded like there were real coins inside, but who carried change? How long would it be until the bums went modern, and started carrying thumbprint scanners for donated credits?

  Ephraim returned the memory to full screen and let it resume.

  Wood said, “What possible reason would Fiona have for not telling you she knew your brother, and that she was the one who encouraged him to play God with those people’s lives if she knew you were searching for him?”

  An excellent question. Ephraim had gone to Fiona on his hands and knees. He’d cried. He’d begged. He needed a means to find his brother. Fiona had made him sing and dance before she’d very, very reluctantly agreed to send him to Eden. She’d insisted that he tell her the whole story. Why had she done that, if she’d known Jonathan — and his probable whereabouts — all along?

  Ephraim scrubbed the memory forward. He didn’t even need bookmarks to find the best spots.

  “You know,” Wood said, “if there’s anyone who knew Fiona’s true motivations enough to represent a genuine threat to her, it’d be Jonathan Todd.”

  Skip.

  “Your official report to GEM says you believe your brother is deceased. I’m so sorry to hear it.”

  Skip.

  “When you theorized to Fiona that Jonathan was dead, was she surprised?”

  Ephraim stopped the memory. He clicked to archive it and closed the MyLife dashboard. Only the train was left in his awareness. And the woman dressed as a man. And the twins riding alone. And the bum with his antiquated coins. And the Murderer.

  Ephraim had heard what followed Wood’s question in that memory twice already. He didn’t want to hear it again.

  Ephraim had asked: What are you implying?

  And Wood had said: Just that it’s important to know who we’re all truly working for.

  The woman. The twins. The bum. And the Murderer.

  The world seemed to revolve slowly, his old sense of panic returning. It had been a mistake to attend Fiona’s gathering. A mistake to talk to Hershel Wood outside of a GEM interrogation room. A mistake, with his sanity so fragile, to expose it to further unseating.

  Who was after him? Someone was.

  … and the Murderer.

  The subway car screeched into the station. Light from the car’s outside flooding its interior. Five men entered through the far set of doors. They were very tall — at least six-foot-eight — wearing matching black suits with white shirts and thin black ties, black hats perched atop their heads.

  All five turned toward Ephraim.

  The doors began to close.

  Ephraim shoved his way through, nearly catching an ankle, and ran.

  CHAPTER 10

  MUSTERING COURAGE

  Up the stairs from the underground station, the railing slick from a thousand hands.

  A family at the top, wearing Sunday Best despite it being late Saturday night, blocked Ephraim’s way. The man was in a stodgy brown suit, a dull brown camelhair overcoat, and a formal hat. The woman was wearing a church dress, pearls, her hair high, and low tan heels. The family had a girl and a boy. The boy was maybe twelve, the girl about ten. When Ephraim almost bowled them all down like tenpins, the children smiled.

  “Sorry,” Ephraim said, barely avoiding a collision.

  And the woman said, “I understand. My brother was murdered, too.”

  Only once Ephraim was past did he stop to look back. The woman couldn’t have said that. And that was borne out by the fact that she wasn’t there anymore, nor was the rest of her family. Now there was just an old black man in jeans and a polo, making his way down the stairs with the railing’s help.

  Ephraim watched for a second. A long second. But then he saw hats rising from the stairwell, followed by black blazers, white shirts, and thin black ties — the five men who’d boarded his subway car apparently had disembarked to follow him.

  They looked right at him, their faces strangely lifeless. As they reached the top step, Ephraim was again struck by their height. As tall as Altruance, but not as broad. Their arms seemed too long, like their slender fingers.

  Ephraim backed up, trying to maintain a hiding place he didn’t think he was pulling off as he retreated. His legs struck a stack of paperback bibles. The vendor shouted at him in an unfamiliar language as Ephraim stumbled over the fallen wares.

  He kept his feet, barely, moving backward with his eyes on the advancing men, none in a hurry.

  But none spoke up. None raised an ID or a badge — or a weapon.

  But there was something wrong with their arms. They went nearly to the men’s knees if you counted those sticklike fingers.

  Ephraim turned. Sighted another vendor behind him, lurched sideways an
d avoided a collision. The men vanished from sight and he sprinted, aware he was drawing stares from people who seemed to believe nothing was wrong, that the world wasn’t tearing at the seams.

  Ephraim looked back, elbowing people as he squeezed between them to increase his lead, ignoring the shouts of Excuse you, Hey, and Asshole! behind him. The men were moving slowly, simple to outpace.

  Five minutes later Ephraim stood catching his breath on a well-lit corner in the better part of town, outside a Japanese specialty adult store.

  The crowd had thinned, but his pursuers were nowhere in sight.

  He must have escaped.

  Maybe he’d imagined the whole thing.

  But he couldn’t think that way again. He couldn’t afford to start doubting everything. He ducked out of sight and consulted his MyLife. The memories were there. Five tall, well-dressed strangers were approaching from behind. So, he wasn’t crazy. At least not about that.

  “They were just guys getting off the subway,” Ephraim whispered to himself. “A basketball team, dressed well the night before a big game.” He laughed. “There were even five. The starting lineup.”

  It was a good argument. But he wasn’t convincing anyone, talking to himself in the middle of a city park. On a bench. Nowhere near his apartment.

  A cab, then.

  Mustering courage that felt already like it shouldn’t need to be summoned (and feeling plenty stupid), Ephraim slipped his Doodad from his pocket and used the cab app to summon a ride. He was given a map showing the approaching car’s current location. Seeing it, he decided maybe he’d made a mistake. The app knew who he was, and that meant that anyone able to hack the app could find him.

  Maybe he should get over it. Stop being a paranoid asshole.

  Into the cab.

  Turns. Bridges. Even a tunnel.

  Slowly, Ephraim regained his bearings. Then he pulled up his map app and lost most of them again. He saw he was far from both Fiona’s place and his home. How had he gotten out here? Or ended up on the subway? Fiona lived in the country. There was no subway from the country. He’d have needed a cab to reach the subway line after leaving Fiona’s, but he didn’t remember riding in one earlier. And there was another question. If he’d had a car at one point, why hadn’t he stayed in it until he was home? Why get on the subway at all?

  He tried to call up MyLife memories to explain what he’d done after his walk with Wood, but it was glitching again.

  The cab passed a corner where a tall man was standing in a black suit, black tie, white shirt, and black hat. There and gone.

  Then another, five minutes later.

  “Excuse me, how much farther is it?” Ephraim asked.

  “I keep telling you, pay me and get out,” the driver said.

  Ephraim looked at the touchscreen mounted between the seats. According to the travel clock, his ride had been over for three minutes. They were parked in front of his building. The touchscreen was asking if Ephraim would like to give the driver a tip. He pressed one of the options and got out. The driver pulled away without even waiting for a closed door. Momentum did the work as wheels squealed on the pavement.

  Then Ephraim stood on his curb alone, not quite sure which path he’d taken to get here.

  He needed cigarettes.

  He bought a pack. The man selling them looked a lot like Nolon from Eden, but when Ephraim looked again, the man was a woman with dirty blonde hair.

  Upstairs, Ephraim tossed the cigarettes. He didn’t smoke. Never had. It was a filthy habit. He locked all of his doors, then double-checked the latches on the windows. The blinds were down and the light was mostly dark.

  Ephraim sat in front of his computer. The light leaking through the blinds was enough to let him see his reflection in the glass. And before Ephraim turned it on, he said to himself, “You’re losing your goddamn mind.”

  Sophie.

  His port in the storm. Sophie had helped him and would help him again now that he truly, truly needed her. Even if she claimed to be through with him, ostensibly for Ephraim’s own good.

  But Sophie’s RealTime account showed her as unavailable.

  Fortunately, if Ephraim was right, there were other Sophies to go around.

  And if she couldn’t be his anchor, maybe the truth could be.

  Find the clones. Find the proof. Find Fiona again.

  And find the MyLife.

  It wasn’t much of a plan, but right now Ephraim felt sure of nothing — except for a deep need to do something.

  He opened Google.

  He typed, Meet Sophie Norris.

  He clicked Submit.

  CHAPTER 11

  A TERRIBLE LIAR

  “‘Meet Sophie Norris’?” someone read from his screen.

  Neven jumped, his neck hairs prickling. He turned to see Jonathan standing behind him. The lab was too damn quiet, and one of its three primary inhabitants (four, if you counted holograms) looked like a twin of the guy on the mainland — also named Ephraim. The whole atmosphere was a recipe for creep-outs. They needed to start playing music in here or something.

  “Sorry,” Jonathan said. “Did I scare you?”

  “I thought you were your brother.”

  “Does my brother scare you?”

  “Never mind,” Neven muttered. Jonathan was second in command at Eden. Neven didn’t need to explain himself — about what he kept doing with the Hopper downstairs or his thin nerves.

  “What does it mean?” Jonathan asked, coming up beside Neven, apparently missing the none-of-your-business memo. He touched the screen. “‘Meet Sophie Norris’? Why is Ephraim’s clone searching for that? He already knows her.”

  “I’m nudging him to try some different search terms through his hacked MyLife stream. It’s not like he can keep searching for ‘clones.’ The FBI is probably already watching his searches. Besides, if we want him to find anything, he has to believe he’s searching terms that everybody else wouldn’t have already tried.”

  “Won’t the FBI just assume he’s obsessed?”

  “He is obsessed. And we have to keep an eye on that, because I think he’s close to flipping from ‘just obsessed’ to ‘batshit crazy.’ That’s why I want him to make some progress, so he can see that it’s not all in his head. Whatever he searches for, we can start planting results to show him some breadcrumbs. A tiny victory, just to keep his sanity intact.”

  “But why did you have him search for ‘meet’? How is it logical that he’d search for ‘meet’ and find anything?”

  “I didn’t come up with it. He did after I sent him some subliminal suggestions through the MyLife. You know how this works, Jonathan. It’s imprecise at best. Like trying to blow a toy sailboat across a lake without leaving the opposite shore.”

  But Jonathan didn’t know how it worked, that was the problem. His expertise was biological. They’d instilled human conditioning in the Ephraim clone, no different from thinking about Grandma when he smelled apple pie. The way they were now whispering new conditions through Ephraim’s MyLife was more like subliminal advertising.

  “But still—”

  “You don’t need to worry about this, Jonathan. I need you and Ephraim working on Eden’s relaunch.”

  “Ephraim and the dromes are handling it.”

  “Eden has to rise from the ashes like a phoenix. I don’t want him on it. I don’t like or trust Ephraim. I want you on it.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jonathan said, staring at the computer screen. “I’ll check in with them eventually.”

  Neven watched Jonathan, wondering if this was worth an argument. Probably not. Jonathan had known forever that Neven was the heir apparent after Wallace died, but he’d never stopped viewing it as nepotism. Neven would always seem like a dumb kid to Jonathan, unfit to earn command on his own merit.

  But Eden was down to a skeleton crew. The guests and higher staff had left on lifeboats and the less consequential personnel had been liquidated by the fire. That left Neven, Jonathan, Ori
ginal Ephraim, some ghosts, and a few dozen dromes — mostly Elles and Nolons. If they wanted to argue among themselves, they should try to hold off until after cabin fever was half the cause.

  Neven sighed, determined to be the bigger man, and gave Jonathan his full attention. “Even beyond keeping his sanity, I want him to have a small win, so he continues to believe what he saw on Eden.”

  “Why?”

  “He had a rough day today. A manipulation session with Fiona, a brush-off from Sophie Norris. Then he had a fun evening to top it all off. Hershel Wood, at Fiona’s GEM fundraiser at her mansion, told Ephraim how you and Fiona used to work together. Wood implied that Fiona had you killed.”

  “That was the idea,” Jonathan said. “We want the clone to believe Fiona’s the bad guy.”

  “Yes, but we didn’t anticipate the strain it would put on his mind. He left Eden fragile, and this homecoming has been a long string of too much, too fast. Wood told him some other stuff, too, and Ephraim — this Ephraim—” Neven tapped the screen. “—is stressed to his limit. We knew that might happen, but I want to tread carefully. Yes, he needs to blame Fiona for what he thinks happened. But it’s no good if he breaks down first.”

  Jonathan shrugged. “If the clone freaks out, we’ll send my brother to take his place on the mainland. It’ll be simpler. The real Ephraim won’t have to guess at what he’s supposed to do or where he’s supposed to go. You won’t have to ‘whisper subliminally’ if we can tell him what to do.”

  “Your brother is a terrible liar,” Neven said. “Remember, we created the clone to turn his weakness into a strength. The real Ephraim could never have convinced Fiona to send him to Eden because Fiona can smell bullshit a mile away. And right now, if it were the real Ephraim being interviewed by GEM, he’d crack like a walnut. The clone at least believes the lie. And he needs to believe the lie so it becomes his truth. Enforcing his version of reality is one thing that any Ephraim Todd can get behind.”