The Eden Experiment

by Sean Platt

  “Why were you running from us earlier?”

  “I was confused. I was nervous.”

  “We had a deal. But you hung up on me, ran through an intersection, and left me having to explain things to the city. Now look what you’ve gotten me into.” He gestured at the cops.

  So that was it. A compromise, meant to bring the city’s law-enforcers on an errand with the unpredictable government bigwig.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Do we still have a deal? You and me, working together?”

  “I haven’t gotten the MyLife from Fiona yet.”

  “Working together in spirit. You know what I mean.”

  Why hadn’t the door opened? Why hadn’t Sophie come out?

  “Yes,” Ephraim said, his eyes on the cops.

  Harold asked, “Why is this door locked, sir?”

  “It’s—”

  “Open it,” Wood said to Ephraim. “Make this easy on all of us, if we have an agreement.”

  “She’s in there.” Ephraim pointed toward the door. “She’s proof.”

  “The clone?”

  Ephraim nodded.

  “You locked her in?”

  “The door is locked from the inside. It’s for her protection, in case anyone came in while we were sleeping.”

  “Who was going to sneak in without you hearing?” Wood asked.

  “I don’t know. I was just playing it safe.”

  Paranoid as always, his inner voice chided.

  “Turn her over. If you’re telling the truth, this helps us both. Maybe even better than the MyLife.”

  Ephraim looked toward the door, then held up a finger. “You can use her in my case, but not-” He stopped.

  Hershel’s sharp eyebrows peaked. “Not what?”

  “Not dissect her or something.”

  Hershel opened his mouth, but the cops resumed banging on the door.

  “I’ll make this easy,” Ephraim said, catching increasingly severe glances from the officers, “if you promise not to hurt her.”

  Hershel raised his eyebrows. “Why would we hurt her?”

  “Don’t experiment on her. Or lock her up. She’s a clone, but human.”

  “We’d have to take samples,” Hershel said.

  “Sir?” Officer Harold called, staring at Ephraim, “Open this door right now, sir.”

  “Hang on.”

  “Right now, sir,” Harold repeated — his eyes insisting that asking was only a courtesy.

  “Mr. Todd? Ephraim?” Hershel dragged Ephraim’s attention back in his direction. “Do we have a deal?”

  “SIR!”

  Ephraim’s temper snapped. They all wanted too much, too quickly. Didn’t they know he was fragile? Didn’t they know he was at least half crazy?

  “HANG ON A FUCKING MINUTE!”

  “Break it in,” Harold said to one of the officers.

  “DON’T BREAK IT!”

  Harold whispered to the other man, who backed up and fixed his gaze on the door. Then he turned to Ephraim with his hand out, the other resting on the butt of his gun. “Just settle down, sir.”

  “It’s locked from the inside,” Ephraim said, now stepping forward. Harold watched with hard eyes, his hand never leaving the weapon. “There’s a, there’s someone in there. Just ask her to open it. Tell her to—”

  One of the cops put a hand on Ephraim’s chest, the other on his weapon. “Step back, sir.”

  “She’s—”

  “We’ll handle this, sir,” the cop interrupted.

  Pounding roared from the other side. She’d have trouble with the lock; it had been sticky since he’d moved in. You had to lean into it a little, grab the knob with one hand and pull up while sliding the bolt in or out.

  “The lock is—” Ephraim began.

  But Officer Harold shouted through the door to step back, then kicked hard beside the knob. There was a sharp and terrible cracking. He kicked again, then again. On the third volley, the door opened like a grudge. It slammed into the inside wall, rebounding fully before swinging open again.

  A woman ran out. Black-haired, pretty and full-figured, with abrasions on her fists — as if she’d just woken up contained, then broken her skin slamming against a locked door. Nothing at all like Sophie Norris.

  Sobbing, the girl ran right into the arms of Officer Harold.

  “Thank you,” she blubbered. “Thank you! I’ve been trying to get out for hours!”

  All eyes turned to Ephraim.

  “The clone …” Ephraim said to Wood, losing steam mid-sentence.

  Ephraim’s unintended prisoner was out. The room was empty.

  The clone, if she’d ever existed, was gone.

  CHAPTER 34

  DATACRATE

  Jonathan watched the Ephraim clone’s MyLife video feed over Neven’s shoulder.

  “What are these blanks in the record?” He gestured as the screen again went black. “Are they times where he was within range of a MyLife jammer?”

  Neven nodded. He looked back, finding Jonathan alone.

  When his brother wasn’t around, Jonathan was tolerable, maybe even reliable, despite their power struggles following Wallace’s death. And right now, with so much fragile for Neven, he had to admit that Jonathan was damn close to a comfort.

  What was happening with the Hopper (not to mention the hologram’s assertion that the intelligence on it could feel emotions) had him rattled. The anticipation of what came next had him rattled, too; not that Jonathan had any idea about that. It was all for the best; and it was, in fact, the only way out of certain difficulties. But that didn’t make the endeavor any less terrifying — or make it weigh any less on Neven’s already overfilled mind.

  Reaching forward, Jonathan tapped an icon on-screen to surface the “More Info” dialogue. He read its contents then said, “This blackout isn’t from one of Mercer’s jammers. Not unless he’s installed new ones without giving us the serial numbers, but even Mercer isn’t that stupid.”

  “I think this is from Wood’s jammer,” Neven said.

  “GEM doesn’t work with jammers. Not after they were accused of witness tampering. The need for transparency, at least with the people they investigate, is practically on the cover of the GEM handbook.”

  “It’s either Wood’s jammer or the cops’,” Neven said.

  That much would be apparent to anyone who’d seen what came before or after the clone’s blackout, but Neven had already decided that Wood was responsible. It was the only answer that fit, considering all the pieces of the puzzle that Jonathan did and didn’t know.

  “Why would Wood bother with a jammer? He thinks the clone is on his side.”

  “I think he suspects the MyLife network is vulnerable. He’s not hiding what happened during this blackout from the Ephraim clone; he’s hiding it from whoever might be watching.” Neven nodded toward Jonathan, indicating them both as the watchers Wood was right to fear. “That first time, in the garden, he either hadn’t figured out that the clone’s MyLife feed had a back door or he didn’t bother to block it because he planned to say things that he wanted its eavesdroppers to know.”

  “You mean the connection between Fiona and Wallace? We already knew that.”

  “Yes, but he made it clear how he feels about Fiona. Watching Wood from the outside, you might think he was her friend. What he said in the garden indicated otherwise.”

  “How do you know he wasn’t just playing for the MyLife? Maybe he is her friend and is looking to mislead us?”

  Neven shrugged.

  “You know,” Jonathan said, “Wood is after my clone’s MyLife. Fiona hasn’t destroyed it, and she won’t until she cracks the last of the encryption. There’s a chance Wood could get it.”

  “Does that worry you?”

  “The clone we made from my DNA saw a lot, Neven.”

  “And does it matter, considering the relaunch? Considering Kilik?”

  “Are you implying GEM won’t care that we’ve cloned half of
Hollywood?”

  “Are you implying they’ll be able to do anything about it even if they do?”

  “‘International waters’ isn’t a true free-for-all, Neven. With a bit of international cooperation, the world can come down on us.”

  “Wood won’t get the MyLife from Fiona. Not when there’s so much of our research that she can steal and pass off as her own. If there’s a chance she can use the Eden tech on that device to cure herself, she won’t give it up. She’ll pull what she can, then destroy it.”

  “And you’re willing to bet all of your father’s work on that?”

  Neven measured Jonathan with a gaze before responding. Jonathan wouldn’t be dismissed as easily as his idiot brother. He was a hundred times smarter. It was one reason, Neven had to admit, that Jonathan would have done well as head of Eden. As he would still do well when the time came.

  The truth was, Wood could get the MyLife from Fiona, or find another source for his proof. It just didn’t bother him the way it bothered Jonathan. And it wasn’t gambling with Wallace’s work at all.

  “Let me worry about my father’s work.”

  Neven thought that there might be an argument, but Jonathan sighed, seeming to let it go. Maybe this would all work out. Maybe fate was on the Connollys’ side.

  Jonathan touched the screen again, idly scrolling through the MyLife stream — blackouts and all. Without context, he’d find nothing; there was too much information. But the behavior wasn’t especially practical. Jonathan just needed something for his hands to do.

  “Is Wood after the Sophie clone, do you think?”

  “That’s where this latest blackout began,” Neven said, happy for the change of subject. “He burst into the clone’s place with a bunch of cops.”

  “Police? Not GEM?”

  “Ephraim ran from Wood’s men. Nearly caused a pile-up escaping in a U-Haul.”

  Jonathan’s eyes narrowed, his head cocking. “Is that good? Or bad?”

  “It just shows that he’s increasingly unstable. He has no idea who his friends or enemies are. It’s classic paranoia, and getting stronger as the things we feed him interact with the conditioning we started on Islet 09 when I woke him to the idea that all he’s ever believed might be a lie.”

  “You’re saying it like this is acceptable.”

  “It’s within expectations,” Neven said.

  “You want him totally out of his mind? You aren’t worried that he’ll do something unpredictable?”

  “Like what?”

  “Like come here and kill one of us instead of Fiona.”

  Neven shrugged. The plan was working fine, regardless of Jonathan’s doubts.

  Jonathan shifted in his chair. “Who do you think the clone wants to ‘get’ more? Us, or Fiona?”

  “I have no idea. Depends on how my father left things with them, and on whether Wood believes that he’s dead. It hardly matters. It only matters that he does what he’s supposed to do.”

  “You mean, get us Fiona’s mind-mapping device. Her ‘Quarry.’”

  “Of course,” Neven said.

  That had always been the plan. Let Fiona believe she’d stolen from Evermore so that Evermore could covertly steal from her. The game was one giant Trojan Horse, and Fiona was inches from taking it through her company’s protected gates.

  “What if he can’t get it? How are we supposed to roll out DataCrate without a better process?”

  Neven paused before answering, catching an odd look from Jonathan. There had been the slightest verbal tilt to Jonathan’s last question, almost as if he suspected Neven of having ulterior motives.

  But the look vanished. Maybe it had never even been there.

  “Our way of mapping minds onto new clones takes months unless you want a sloppy copy that can barely hold thoughts together,” Jonathan continued. “Look at how much we had to fill in with conditioning for the Ephraim and Jonathan clones, and even then, Ephraim — a fucking clone himself — saw right through Jonathan’s clone after a few days. It’s not good enough. Not even close to good enough. Maybe it works for the clones we sell, but it’ll never fly for DataCrate. You can’t play fast and loose with that. People will insist on safeguards. They’ll want proof-fucking-positive.”

  “Even using our current process, we can create a full neural map,” Neven told him. “It’s slow, but it works. Maybe it’s not an ideal way to do things, but it’s possible.”

  “‘Possible,’” Jonathan repeated, sitting and crossing his arms. “Is that what you want as the foundation for Wallace’s next great phase — a solution that works in a pinch?”

  Neven exhaled. He wasn’t worried about this, but it was important to appear that he was. He crossed his arms, echoing Jonathan’s at-an-impasse body language. He made his voice thoughtful and said, “It’s ironic. Riverbed has perfected the mental piece but can’t mature its embryos correctly with Precipitous Rise, whereas my father perfected his Precipitous Rise technique but never untangled the mental mapping. If he and Fiona had just kept working together, none of this would be necessary.”

  A shrug. Jonathan was past the point in the conversation where he felt like philosophizing. “Well, it is.”

  “It’s handled,” Neven said.

  Jonathan looked at the black computer screen — either playing a MyLife blackout or gone into sleep mode.

  “I just don’t like having a single point of failure. When you come right down to it, everything rests on the Ephraim clone — not just to bring us Riverbed’s Quarry, but to make sure Fiona is out of the way afterward. If Wood is using jammers, then there’s even more we don’t know. Too many variables and wildcards. That last blackout was a live feed. You don’t know what’s happening between Ephraim and Wood right now. That doesn’t worry you?”

  “Of course not. Wood will get the Sophie clone, which Ephraim just took possession of. And from there, the plan is—”

  “You don’t know he’ll take the Sophie.”

  “Ephraim will hand her over,” Neven insisted. “He’ll have no choice. He’s already destabilized, and I have all his biometrics. He’s falling apart in all the right ways. He believes that you’re his brother, and he has no clue that he’s a clone himself. He thinks you’re dead, and all signs, including things Wood has said and that I’ve whispered through his MyLife as subliminal suggestions, point to Fiona as the responsible party. Hell, Jonathan; we already know he’s a killer. He killed you once. Remember?”

  Jonathan made a face, probably recalling the grisly scene they’d discovered after Ephraim’s clone had cut the MyLife from the Jonathan clone’s head.

  “Don’t worry about it, Jonathan. Just help your brother prepare Eden for its rebirth. The world is already starting to doubt what the eyewitnesses claim they saw. Our leaks have the Dark Web, and even parts of the wider web, whispering about Eden already. Hope is powerful. Everyone wants to believe in the Fountain of Youth. You want to stake our claim ahead of Fiona and Hershel? Then we open our doors and mind fuck the world.”

  “And the Riverbed tech? You’re sure the Ephraim clone will get us what we need?”

  “He’ll do what we need him to do,” Neven said, choosing to answer obliquely.

  “And what about Wood? If he gets too zealous—”

  “Wood will help us without meaning to. If anyone can take the Sophie clone and use her existence in precisely the right way, the way that helps us rather than hurting us, it’s Hershel Wood.”

  “You’re assuming what Wood does will help rather than hurt us. But he could go either way.”

  “We have a failsafe with Wood. Remember?”

  Jonathan seemed unconvinced, but before he could object again a voice came from the lab’s foyer — Ephraim, probably, calling for assistance. He stood, then looked back. “You’re sure it’s handled?”

  Neven nodded. “As long as Wood sees the Sophie clone in Ephraim’s apartment, things will keep moving in the right direction.”

  Jonathan nodded hesitantly, as
if he wanted to believe but couldn’t quite manage, then left Neven to join his brother.

  CHAPTER 35

  THE CHERRY ON TOP

  Ephraim sat alone at a rectangular metal table with two metal chairs. He’d been at GEM headquarters for about three hours, and little had been said directly to him. Enforcers kept poking their heads in the room, usually arriving in pairs.

  It was too cliché. The room, the good and bad cops, the wordless intimidation. Ephraim thought he knew what they were trying to do, but knowing changed nothing. He was terrified. And terror didn’t sit well atop unbalanced shoulders.

  Twice now, the white-haired GEM agent with the dark tan had poked his head in. The first time, he’d said that he was working closely with Wood at the moment and that the Director would be in shortly. That was right after Ephraim’s arrival, over two and a half hours ago. The second time, the same agent asked if Ephraim wanted a glass of water. Ephraim said yes, but the agent hadn’t returned.

  Ephraim’s head perked up at the sound of a lock turning. A face appeared in the tiny mesh-glass window, then the door opened. Wood entered, still wearing the same suit. He held a thick envelope full of paperwork — an odd thing, in an age when most records were electronic.

  He sat without a word, then set a small portable recorder on the table — another oddity, given that the room must be wired.

  He opened the folder. Maybe Wood was playing a part to intimidate him, but Ephraim was afraid — for himself, for his sanity, for the girl inexplicably locked in his bedroom when the cops came to free her. Maybe even for the clone, which Ephraim already doubted had ever existed. His hands had been bound once his prisoner appeared crying, and he’d been cuffed to a chair on arrival at GEM, so Ephraim hadn’t been able to check his MyLife.

  “We have a bit of a problem, Mr. Todd.” Wood moved sheets of paper from one side of the folder to the other — not as if searching for something, but like he was burning time, steeping in the experience. Ephraim couldn’t see what was on them.

  “You asked if we had a deal, before.”