by Sean Platt
Ephraim wasn’t sure how to reply.
“Her, I’ll bet,” the man said, pointing. The motion shifted his blazer and showed Ephraim plainly that on his T-shirt beneath, there was a drawing of someone pooping. “That woman with the pearl necklace.” He looked right at Ephraim, his arm fully extended with his finger out. “You see the one there that I’m talking about?”
Several of the diners seemed to notice movement from the booth, then looked up to see Ephraim’s companion pointing.
“Put your arm down, for Christ’s sake,” Ephraim whispered.
“You see her?”
“Yes!”
He lowered his hand. The people who’d looked up continued to stare, then slowly returned to their meals with warning glances.
“I’ll bet she can’t get off without ass play. Probably has dildos the size of fists. Maybe shaped like them, too. You ever seen one of those things?”
“What are you talking about?”
The man shrugged. “Just a game I play to pass the time, looking out at these fancy-asses and guessing what they might be into. I’m right, though. Bet you anything, that rich bitch has a Fisting Mitten or two.”
“Okay. Great.” Ephraim shifted, glancing around for help. “I’m sorry, but I’m going to need you to leave my table.”
“But we’re just hanging out. Making small talk.”
“Who the hell are you?”
The man was in the middle of wiping his nose with the back of his hand when Ephraim asked, so he wiped the offending hand on his coat before extending it.
“Sorry. Mercer Fox.”
Ephraim looked at the hand. He didn’t extend his own, and eventually Mercer retracted his with a shrug.
“You like it here?” Mercer asked.
“Seriously, you need to—”
“I didn’t think I’d like it, not after having something so different in mind. But some smart people — who at the time I thought were a bunch of killjoy assholes — told me the restaurant needed to be classier than what I was thinking. ‘A better cover through luxury,’ and all that. You can get away with more shit if you hide it by dropping some exclusivity on top. Know what I’m saying? Anyway, it worked out. I’m glad they were killjoy assholes. Because who’d’ve thought? Turns out I like fancy food.”
Ephraim squinted. “Wait. Are you saying you’re—?”
“This was my first restaurant,” Mercer said. “But with all the money I threw into Chez Luis itself — what you see in this room, I mean — shit just got better and better. Without even meaning to, I was suddenly running one of Zagat’s top picks. I start hearing about all these fancy-pants chefs wanting to work here. For, like, prestige reasons. And so, I got an idea to open another place. The whole shebang, all over again.”
“That’s—”
“I found one place, a bombed-out shit-shack in an otherwise great part of London. Enormous basement and sub-basement already there, like I guess it was used in World War II as an underground bunker, so they had to hide things? Or people. And I figured, what the hell? I opened another restaurant there, using my waiting list of great chefs, and that time the rest of the operation was a breeze. The restaurant itself is almost enough for me now. Me. Who’da thought?”
Mercer picked Ephraim’s wine glass up again, tipping it toward him in a mock toast. “Look at me. I’m an accidental restaurateur and I’m into it. But don’t blame me for the pasta. This pasta? It’s for dicks. Chef’s choice. They don’t let me play all the time.”
Ephraim didn’t know what to say. The man was either lying or insane. He couldn’t be the owner. Chez Luis was supposed to a fat Frenchman with immaculate tastes and a detestable disposition. Mercer Fox had the detestable disposition, but he looked and acted like a slob.
“Anyway. Dinner’s on me tonight so long as you order the steak. Enjoy.” Mercer started to stand.
“Wait! Are you behind the message I got on my—?”
“When you’re done, you can call to thank me.”
“I need to talk to you now. Not later.”
“I’m busy.”
“It’ll just take a second.”
“Call. I’m not bullshitting you, okay? Just CALL me.”
Ephraim’s jaw dropped. What the hell was happening here? He had a thousand questions, but when he saw Mercer’s arrogant, obnoxious smirk he said the first thing he could think of.
“I don’t have your number.”
Mercer wormed his hand into an overly tight pocket. He came out with something and slapped his hand onto the tablecloth. It made a metallic sound as if Mercer were wearing a ring.
“Call me, and maybe you’ll find what you’re looking for.”
Mercer slapped Ephraim on the shoulder and walked away, then disappeared through the swinging kitchen doors. No one seemed to be looking. Maybe the regulars were used to the odd, poorly dressed man. Maybe this was his place, strange as it seemed.
Ephraim’s eyes went to the tablecloth. Mercer had placed an old-fashioned US quarter, heads-up, on it.
CHAPTER 18
ALLOWED TO EXIST
“I heard from Mercer.”
Neven looked up. Ephraim was across the lab, at the door, apparently awaiting his pat on the head for this trivial news.
Neven mastered his annoyance. The intrusion was irritating, but it was Ephraim’s mere presence that bugged him most. Neven got along fine with clones, but Ephraim Todd was the one “original human” he’d never gotten used to. His clone back in New York was preferable in just about every way to this asshole. And far more important to Evermore’s plans.
“You’re supposed to be overseeing our relaunch.” Then, to make it clear that he wasn’t okay with that either, Neven added, “Jonathan insisted.”
Ephraim nodded. “I am. It’s all good. Most of the key areas — especially the Reception and Retreat islands, where new guests will be most of the time — are ahead of schedule. I also borrowed Wallace’s hologram so Maya could shoot some new commercials when everything’s ready. ‘Phoenix rising from the ashes’ types of spots. Oh! And I meant to tell you earlier that thanks to my suggestion, we’re almost entirely set on staffing for when Eden reopens. Consider that sticky issue solved.”
It was true; ‘the worker issue’ probably was solved, and the solution had been Ephraim’s idea. The whole thing rankled Neven. Ephraim’s solution had been to maximize fault tolerance on the drome assembly line, making it possible to produce more staff in less time. The problem was, with the quality filter set to ignore all but the largest faults, Eden’s Precipitous Rise chambers were spitting out as many defective workers as they were good ones. Quality dromes were uploaded with staff mind maps, conditioned, trained, and taught how to do their jobs for the resort’s reopening. Effective dromes (those the fault filter usually aborted) were matured, lobotomized, then turned into ghost workers.
Ephraim said that his “fast and loose” way of making new employees doubled efficiency. But it struck Neven as a case of seeing trees while missing the whole damn forest.
“Anyway, Mercer told me he talked to the clone at his restaurant. Chez Luis. You know — the Den’s cover business?”
Neven pushed down another wave of irritation.
“I know where the Den is, and what Mercer built above it.” Neven gave Ephraim a look that added, because my father built this business, whereas you’re just in the way.
“Does Mercer know what we want to happen, or is he playing his usual hand, thinking that Ephraim’s just another VIP? Does he even know he’s a clone?”
“I don’t want you worrying about Mercer. Or any of this.”
“But what’s the answer? I can call him back if you’re busy.”
“Don’t. You shouldn’t be involved. Mercer is my cross to bear, not yours.”
“He called on the satellite line. I was right there, so I answered.”
“You should have let me know instead,” Neven said.
“You were busy programming the new Sophie
.”
Neven’s jaw rocked as he kept his calm facade. Ephraim’s presence on Eden had always been necessary, the original human had to be hidden from the world while his clone was in play.
“Mercer said he showed up at Chez Luis,” Ephraim continued. “And that you sent him in through the alley so they’d know he wasn’t a regular customer, but someone we sent.”
“I didn’t know that Mercer would stick his face into this in the first place. I don’t like or trust him. I was hoping he’d stay in London like he said, and the Luis staff would treat him like anyone else who stumbled upon the 114 address. A VIP, like you said. Let the clone’s programming and subliminals handle the rest.”
“I guess it wasn’t necessary, seeing as Mercer recognized him. He could’ve walked in through the front door.”
Neven didn’t answer. His head was down, looking over production metrics for a few of the celebrity lines. Orders for the known brands were popping up again, now that the Dark Web had figured out that Eden wasn’t truly off-market.
“Did you hear me?”
“I heard you,” Neven said, not looking up.
“What do you want me to tell him?”
“I told you. Nothing. I don’t want you talking to Mercer Fox. Or anyone on that side of things.”
“My brother is ‘on that side of things,’” Ephraim countered.
“I can’t stop you from talking to your brother. Just stay the hell out of where you know you’re not supposed to be.”
Ephraim circled the console and came up beside Neven. “Is there something going on here? Something I should know?”
“Just stick to what I’ve told you to do.”
“Because you’re my boss?”
Neven didn’t answer, his head down.
Ephraim leaned closer. “If you have something to say to me, Neven, then say it.”
“I’ve said it. Stay out of what’s happening with the clone.”
“It’s Jonathan’s plan. My brother’s plan. Not yours. And I’m a vital part.”
Neven laughed.
Ephraim’s eyebrows narrowed. “I’m not vital?” Then he scoffed. “I beg to differ. I don’t see any clones of you out there.”
“Thinking that you have anything to do with your clone’s actions on the mainland proves just how little you understand.”
“He’s me,” Ephraim said.
“He’s no more ‘you’ than Jonathan is. No more you than I’m my father.”
“If you hadn’t taken my blood to make that clone—”
Neven finally looked up. Turned. Met Ephraim’s eye.
“Then we’d have taken someone else’s blood,” Neven said, his words sharp enough to cut. “Made a clone from their DNA. There’s nothing special about you, Ephraim. No reason it had to be you that we used to make our spy.”
“That’s not true.” Ephraim shook his head. “If you wanted to get inside Riverbed, it had to be Jonathan’s brother who went to her. If some random person had approached Fiona …”
Neven was shaking his head.
“What?” Ephraim asked.
“You’re unbelievable.”
“Why?”
“Fiona Roberson needs Eden as much as the island needs her. Just because she made your clone jump through hoops to prove his worth doesn’t mean she didn’t need a lackey to send our way. She would have sent anyone. Not just someone she thought was Jonathan Todd’s brother. Anyone she felt she could control. Do you understand?”
“Even if that’s true, sending ‘anyone’ wouldn’t have worked for Eden. You couldn’t have trusted anyone other than me as someone to model that clone after.”
Neven laughed. “We didn’t trust you! Not me, not even Jonathan. You understand that the spy didn’t need to be a clone, right? If we could have, we’d have sent you, not your clone. We only sent a clone of you because we knew that sending you would have been a disaster for us. What don’t you understand? Sending your clone wasn’t some weird way of giving you a compliment. The fact that we had to send a clone at all is proof of how unsuitable you were for the job. It was better to create a new Ephraim and spend forever programming and conditioning it than to buy the original Ephraim a plane ticket. Do you get that? Is it getting through your goddamn skull?”
Ephraim glared at Neven. They’d clashed before, but these close quarters after the burn-down had made things so much worse.
“If there’s no me,” Ephraim said, “then there’s no clone of me.”
Neven belched derisive laughter. “Your logic is absurd. Just because the clone we sent to Fiona has the same genes, do you somehow think you own him? Are you this possessive about your jizz every time you beat off? I created him. I programmed him. My father’s technology made all of this possible. Wallace Connolly contributed to the clone more than you did.”
Ephraim’s face was furious. “Watch yourself, Neven. Jonathan is—”
“My employee. No matter what the Todd family seems to think, this is my island and has been since my father died. This is my place, not yours.”
“Lawyers might argue with you. From what Jonathan says—”
“Then go get a lawyer. Get the fuck onto a boat and go find one.” Neven reached into a drawer, emerged with keys to the skiff docked outside, and shook them for Ephraim. “Here. Be my guest. You can borrow my ride. Take all the time you need.”
Ephraim’s jaw hardened. He stared through Neven, all the way to the back of his soul.
“Watch yourself, Neven,” he finally said.
But Neven was undaunted. He’d won this fight, and Ephraim damn well knew it.
“Don’t come to me about anything that doesn’t concern you,” Neven said. “You’re nothing here. You’re spunk; do you understand? You’re the remainder of what we needed, allowed to exist after we used your DNA only because you aren’t in the way.” A cold smirk. “For now.”
“Allowed to exist? What, because you didn’t kill the original Ephraim like you do your other originals?”
“Only twice. Only two times was it necessary to take the originals out of circulation. For safety reasons, because our hand was forced.”
But Ephraim wasn’t buying it.
“Don’t act high and mighty, Neven. You can’t have it both ways. Your spa is funded by sex trafficking. You’re thieving from people at the deepest level, practically stealing their souls. I know Jonathan bought Wallace’s vision hook, line, and sinker, but do you know what I think? That the whole fucking empire is sick, pretending to be enlightened, but conveniently ignoring human decency when it conflicts with the company’s goals.”
“You can leave if you don’t like it here.”
“Leave where? Home to New York? Your slave is in the middle of conducting your latest morally questionable act — and as things turn out, I look just like him. I can’t go anywhere. You’re a goddamn humanitarian, aren’t you, Neven? The human race has lost its way, right? And this is how you solve it.” A smirk. “You’re just another egomaniacal asshole. Exactly like Wallace.”
Too far. Too far by a mile.
“My father was—”
“He wasn’t your father!”
They stared at each other for a long minute, until Ephraim finally scoffed and turned to go, looking back once he reached the door.
“Oh. And you should call your stooge Mercer if you don’t want him talking to me. Because the faster the clone snaps and does what he’s supposed to in that fucking dungeon, the faster I can go home.”
Neven looked down once Ephraim was gone. He’d been holding a pencil, and sometime during the last few minutes he’d reduced it to shards.
Yes. The faster the clone snaps.
But it wouldn’t be tragic if the other Ephraim could be made to snap, too.
CHAPTER 19
A FRIVOLOUS QUARTER
Call me?
In his booth at Chez Luis, Ephraim looked down at Mercer’s quarter. There were a few shops that would take the depreciated currency, but most people
hoarded them for their collections. There was an underground trade in dollars, but it was all assumed value — built on faith and guesswork, feeling today the way Bitcoin had when it was new. Entire subcultures still paid each other that way, but their micro-economy was built on air. The day a few key people decided to stop accepting cash, the whole thing would fall apart and leave others poor. Or poorer.
So why had the restaurant’s strange owner given Ephraim a quarter? It wasn’t even a decent amount of money. To the right person, it might be worth exactly what it sounded like: about a quarter of a standard credit. But what would that buy him? And what did it have to do with calling? Ephraim had a Doodad. Everyone had a mobile.
What ran on coins?
Ephraim thought. The restaurant buzzed. His waiter hadn’t returned.
There were laundromats with machines that ran on quarters, but those were in the ghetto.
Now and then, you’d find a gumball machine where you inserted a quarter and turned a knob. But those were novelties. You weren’t paying twenty-five old US cents for the gumball so much as you were getting a gumball for free and giving a quarter back for the hell of it.
Call me, and maybe you’ll actually find what you’re looking for.
Why the evasion? If Mercer knew what had brought Ephraim here, why wasn’t he saying so?
Look around the restaurant, Ephraim thought.
He stood. The waiter, Montreal, was serving another table but paused to watch him. Something on Ephraim’s face must have betrayed him because Montreal didn’t look away. He kept right on staring.
Ephraim found the men’s restroom. There was crushed ice in the sinks and an attendant handing out towels and mints. Nothing in the room was coin-operated, not even a condom machine. He checked the stalls to be sure, while the attendant watched.
On his way out, the attendant gave him a somewhat confused “Sir?” but Ephraim ignored it.
He decided not to enter the ladies’ room. Although Mercer might want Ephraim to buy himself a tampon. That sounded like a Mercer Fox kind of thing to do.
