Your One & Only

by Adrianne Finlay

  One of Althea’s sisters giggled. “Jack?” she said. “That’s not a name. There’s not even a number after it. What generation is he supposed to be?”

  “Maybe he’s Jack Zero,” a Samuel said, and everyone laughed.

  “Hey, Jack!” one of the boys called. Almost immediately a chorus of calls followed, with the name being shouted by everyone in the classroom. They shouted as if testing the name out, though the more it was said, the more they took delight in jeering at the boy. His name did sound strange, Althea had to admit. Foreign and unfamiliar. Her fingers slid unconsciously to her wrist. She didn’t join in the shouting.

  “Please, everyone,” Samuel-299 said. “That’s enough.”

  Jack’s chest rose and fell, and then rose again.

  “Sam,” the boy said, which was odd, because he was talking to Samuel-299. Nobody called any of the Samuels Sam. It seemed disrespectful, though Althea couldn’t say why exactly.

  Samuel-299 looked at him sharply. “Jack? Are you all right?”

  Jack wiped his nose with the back of his hand. His breath wheezed. Carson-318 snorted laughter, repeating the name Jack, mimicking the concerned way Samuel-299 had said it, though the man was too focused to hear.

  “Is it an attack?”

  The boy nodded. Althea couldn’t figure out what the problem was. He seemed to be having trouble breathing. Sensing something wrong, the class went silent until the only sound in the room was the whistle of air being sucked into the boy’s lungs. As she watched him struggle to breathe, the seconds moved so slowly that Althea imagined for a moment she could see them shimmering the air like heat.

  Jack fumbled in his pocket, producing a plastic tube gripped in his palm. Samuel-299 touched his back.

  “It’s okay,” he said to Jack. “Calm down.”

  Jack put the tube in his mouth, pressed down, and sucked in. It looked like something he’d done many times before. A tension seemed to release from Samuel-299 as Jack’s breathing eased.

  “What was that?” a younger Samuel asked.

  Samuel-299’s eyes closed briefly before he looked up, reluctant to talk about what had just happened. “He uses that device, an inhaler, for a condition called asthma. It makes it hard for him to breathe sometimes, that’s all.”

  “That’s all?” Carson-317 said, distaste showing on his face. “He’s sick. What if we catch it?”

  “You can’t catch it.”

  “You said he wasn’t abnormal. That looked pretty abnormal to me,” Carson-314 said.

  “He’s not abnormal. He’s human, and in humans a certain amount of abnormality is, well . . . normal.”

  The Carsons looked disgusted at the Samuel’s response.

  Samuel-299 braced his hands on the desk and seemed to come to a decision. “You know, let’s continue this after lunch, shall we?”

  “It’s too early for lunch,” someone said.

  “Nevertheless, we’ll have a break,” Samuel-299 said dryly. “Everyone should go outside. Maybe you can all get to know Jack a little better.”

  As Althea stood with the others, her pencil bag fell from her desk, spilling its contents. Her sisters were already at the door, so she quickly bent to gather her things. She found herself at eye level with the top of her desk, and there was Jack right in front of her, holding out one of her pencils. She froze, and then realized it was rude to stare at him. Still he waited, his hand steady and patient. She reached to take the pencil, and her sleeve rode up to reveal the scar.

  One of the Carsons strode past. “Need a hand?” he snickered, as if proud of a joke she’d heard a million times before.

  Althea grabbed the pencil and tugged her sleeve down. Her eyes met Jack’s, and his head tilted questioningly. Up close, his eyes startled her yet again with their pale gray.

  Altheas were an observant model, so even though Jack seemed unable to commune, Althea could see in his face that he was curious, and also lonely. The other eight models relied exclusively on communing to understand the emotions of others. They would never notice the way his eyes dipped down to her hand holding the pencil, or the way he sucked his lip against his teeth.

  He gave her a tentative smile. Two of his bottom teeth overlapped just a tiny bit, a distracting imperfection none of her own people had. A carved bead hung at the base of his neck on a leather string. As with everything else about the boy, this was strange too. None of the four boys in the community wore necklaces.

  “Thank you,” she murmured, clutching the pencil and allowing herself to smile back.

  A remaining Carson bumped into her, and then a sister returned to grab her arm and hurry her along with the rest of them. When she glanced back, she saw Jack still watching her.

  Outside, the students milled about the schoolyard, unsure of what to do. The brick school was on the edge of town, bordered on one side by the stone wall that surrounded Vispera, safeguarding it from the jungle outside, the wild animals and poisonous plants. Jack leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. Everyone else had clustered as far from him as possible, their feet kicking up dust from the rust-colored gravel of the yard.

  The usual games and sports didn’t feel right. Activities were supposed to happen after lunch, and Jack was making everyone nervous. Althea saw her own worry mirrored in the faces of her sisters. They huddled together, their hands lightly touching hair and arms and backs. The Carsons and Samuels were in their own clusters, and then the Carsons all laughed simultaneously. They passed the Altheas and sauntered toward Jack, who pushed himself away from the wall as they came near.

  Carson-312 smirked. “That’s Samuel-299 who brought you, isn’t it? He’s on the Council.” He looked Jack up and down. “What’d the Council do, make a hairless monkey? Isn’t that all a human is, a bald monkey?”

  “You’re humans, too,” Jack said. “You’re clones of the Originals, and they were human.”

  The Samuels crowded Althea and her sisters as they gathered to watch while keeping a safe distance from Jack.

  Carson-312 smirked, then casually picked up a handful of gravel from the ground, jostling it in his palm as he moved closer to Jack. “He’s not very smart, is he? He just called us clones.”

  Jack licked his lips uncertainly. “Isn’t that what you are?”

  A young Samuel came forward. “Don’t you know anything? We don’t say clone. We’re Homo factus.” He straightened as if proud of the title. “We’re the self-made man.”

  “You,” Carson-317 said, looking Jack up and down, “you’re just some defective experiment of the Council. You’re an accident.”

  The boy couldn’t be an accident. The Council didn’t make mistakes.

  “I’m not an accident,” Jack said, clearly wishing he could offer more of a rationale for his existence.

  “Yeah?” said another Carson. “So you want to tell us what we need a monkey-boy for, then?”

  Althea could tell that Jack was trying. He wanted the other boys, and the Altheas too, to accept him. The Carsons especially were being mean, but Jack looked hopeful, as if somehow things would still be okay. Althea kept quiet. The Altheas weren’t involved in this, and there was something wrong with the boy, something much worse than a replaced hand. Whatever asthma really was, it was obviously a disease her people had spent generations eradicating. Her people didn’t suffer from disease. That Jack had a thing like asthma was terrifying. Despite what the Samuel said, human illness was contagious. It was what had killed them all. It was better to keep her distance, as the rest of her sisters were doing.

  Jack’s eyes flickered between the Carsons. He looked to the Samuels for help, searching for a friendly face. While they wouldn’t join in with the Carsons, not with an elder Samuel right inside, they also wouldn’t try to stop them. A few of Althea’s sisters chewed their nails.

  Carson-312 flicked a pebble at Jack’s shoulder. “Well, monkey-boy?” he said. “If you’re not an accident, what the hell are you?”

  “I . . . I don’t . .
.” Jack struggled, not knowing what answer to give.

  “You’re not one of us,” Carson-311 said.

  Carson-312 flicked another pebble, hitting Jack’s arm. “You don’t belong here.”

  A third pebble immediately followed, this one striking his shoulder again. Jack backed away, his tongue pressing his teeth. The boys sniggered, and now the Samuels joined in. More of the Carsons took up handfuls of gravel.

  Jack closed his eyes and pulled an unsteady breath into his chest. “Stop it,” he said, his voice thin and strained. His fingers reached into his pocket, seeking the inhaler he’d used inside. It was the asthma again. The Samuel had called it an attack, as if the boy’s own body were assaulting him just as much as the Carsons seemed ready to do. Althea shuddered. Jack finally got the inhaler out but then dropped it in the dirt. He fell to his knees, his hands scrambling for it frantically, panic etched on his face.

  All ten Carsons grinned at once.

  Althea’s sisters stood like her, watching. They were feeling what she was—​fear, and also disgust. Carsons were confrontational. They were engineers, but also leaders. They liked being in charge, even in Vispera, where the only hierarchy was age and decisions were made by consensus. Still, the community celebrated the Carsons’ sense of leadership as much as it did the Nylas’ work in the labs or the Ingas’ paintings. The community taught the young people that they should think of the differences in the models as the various organs of the body, each with its own role, but working together for the good of the whole.

  This, however, was the bad side of the Carsons.

  As much as Althea didn’t like what the Carsons and Samuels were doing, it was painfully clear to everyone that Jack wasn’t Homo factus. He did mostly look like all of them, but that only made the blankness they felt from him more terrible. Everyone’s emotions were so strong. In one moment of communing, Althea could most palpably feel her sisters’ sick fear. Under that, she sensed the uneasy, excited tension of the Samuels, and then the current of gleeful anger emanating from the Carsons. Like everyone else, she felt nothing from the boy. As if he were an animal. As if he were dead.

  Jack’s shoulders hunched forward. Another Carson threw a pebble at his forehead. The pebbles weren’t large enough to cause more than a brief sting, but Jack’s eyes darted from face to face as if he feared what might come next.

  Althea peered toward the window of their classroom. Where was the Samuel? And then she saw him. He was watching the students through a window. He was frowning and taking notes. Why didn’t he do something?

  It occurred to her then that this was the test the Council had planned. It wasn’t on history or science, or anything they’d studied for. The test was how they acted today, with this boy the Council had thrust upon them. And perhaps they were watching Jack as well, to see how he would fit in. But surely Samuel-299 wouldn’t let things go too far. Althea didn’t like the sneers growing on the Carsons’ faces.

  “Look at you,” Carson-312 said, taking a step forward. “You think you’re not an accident? You’re so defective you can’t even breathe right.”

  Jack flinched as another pebble hit him. He clutched the retrieved inhaler close to his chest, and the students closed in.

  Althea didn’t know what to do. Her sisters didn’t know what to do. They met each other’s eyes, silently communing with the same feeling. This had to stop.

  Althea-313 said, far too softly, “Quit it, you guys.”

  It was as if she’d said nothing. The boys paid no attention.

  The Carsons continued throwing the pebbles while Carson-318 tore a narrow switch from a nearby patch of brush and handed it to Carson-312, who whipped it back and forth, testing its heft. It hissed as it cut the air. Standing over Jack, Carson-312 snapped it against Jack’s arm, leaving a thin welt. The brothers continued to jeer and gather more pebbles. Carson-312 swung again, striking Jack’s back.

  Althea couldn’t see Jack’s face, but his limbs tightened with each snap of the switch, and she saw his shivering, barely contained control. There was a rigidity in his muscles, like his entire body was a spring straining for release.

  He was using all his will to hold himself back. He was still hoping they’d stop.

  It was too much to watch. Althea broke away from her sisters and grabbed Carson-312’s arm as it rose up again. His elbow hit her eye, and she fell to the ground. Her sisters ran to her, closing her in their protective circle, touching her face.

  Althea cupped her aching eye. Her sisters held their own eyes, feeling the burgeoning pain themselves. Carson-312 hadn’t even paused, had probably hardly noticed her near him. The whip slashed across Jack’s back until specks of red dotted the fabric of his shirt like a string of beads. Carson-312 licked his lips and aimed for those lines of red, a glint in his eye. He’s enjoying it, Althea thought. Seeing Jack recoil at the targeted strikes, Carson-312 quickened his swings. Breathless with exertion, he muttered, “Go back to whatever lab they’ve been keeping you in, human. You don’t belong here.”

  As the switch came down once again, Jack’s hand shot out and caught it. It sliced into the flesh of his palm as he yanked it from Carson-312. He launched himself off the wall, a yell wrenched from his throat, and flew at Carson-312 faster than Althea thought possible. Jack tackled him to the ground and straddled his chest, striking him over and over. The other Carsons didn’t dare touch him, even to protect their own brother. They’d never seen such fury.

  Jack slammed his fist into Carson-312’s face, and blood poured from his nose. Jack’s wild hits landed again and again. The Carson brothers began to collapse on the ground, moaning and clutching their heads, the sound and pain of the blows echoing in their own skulls. One of Althea’s sisters clutched her stomach, and at the same time, Althea felt sick too, all the Altheas did.

  The class looked on in horror as Jack pummeled Carson-312 until his face was swollen and bloody. Only a few moments had passed, but to Althea it felt like an eternity before Samuel-299 finally ran outside. He hauled Jack off Carson-312. Jack fought, heedless and wild, as Samuel-299 dragged him across the yard and through the school doors.

  The class stood silent and motionless, like a held breath, the only sound in the yard Carson-312’s wet, snuffling moans. Althea felt everyone’s anger and alarm slowly recede like a tide. The Carsons gathered around Carson-312, ghosts of his pain stirring in their own bodies.

  A couple of them pressed their white shirts to Carson-312’s face, and the cotton bloomed red. Eventually, the Samuels came and took Carson-312 away to the clinic. By the time the students filed back into the school, Jack was nowhere to be seen, and a Hassan was at the front of the room.

  Once more the faces in the painting of the Original Nine stared down at Althea and the rest of the class, their expressions as placid and confident as ever, as if nothing at all had happened.

  Chapter Two

  Jack

  TWO YEARS LATER

  Jack sat in the grass on the steep side of the hill, knocking a ball against the side of the white-boarded cottage. He heard Sam’s heavy breathing from climbing the steep rise, and he didn’t need to turn around to know he’d find the man standing over him, wearing his white lab coat and disapproving frown.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” Sam finally said.

  “I should be dead,” Jack said. Although if he thought about it, that wasn’t really true. It wasn’t that he should be dead, but that he should never have been born. He should be extinct, like all the other humans.

  High on the slope, Jack could see the entire wall encircling the town, six feet high and broad enough to walk on; a double-winged gate of wrought iron faced Blue River. Within, the school sat on one end, where the Gen-320 children played in the gravel-covered yard, the same one where, two years ago, he’d attacked the Carson; next to that was the cluster of labs where the clones conducted their experiments and grew the new Gens in their tanks. On the other end stood the stout line of nine dorms, one building for every mo
del, a separate room inside for every Gen, each with its own row of ten beds. In the middle of the dorms was the dining hall, a circular, two-story building of limestone quarried from the distant cliffs. All the clones gathered there for meals at wooden banquet tables, at least when they weren’t outside celebrating one of their seemingly incessant rituals. In the center of everything stood Remembrance Hall and the Commons, an expanse of lawn around a large kapok tree where the clones held their ceremonies and parties. Sometimes Jack watched at night from a distance while they danced and lights twinkled in the lanky branches of the huge tree.

  Beyond the wall at the foot of the cottage’s hill, the lawn dipped down to the banks of Blue River, which flowed north until it disappeared, swallowed by dense jungle. On the far side, fields of corn, barley, and wild rice, dotted by the lingering shadow of summer clouds, stretched all the way to the Novomundo Mountains. Novomundo, the New World Mountains. They’d been named by scientists, years before Jack was born, and the world they’d made was no longer new.

  Jack had spent his whole life isolated from the clones his own age, and when he’d finally been allowed to join them, it’d been a disaster. The Council never let him go back to school. Now he spent his days living in the tiny bedroom they’d built for him in the labs, occasionally performing some task in the clinic for Sam, like rolling bandages or folding linens. They would never let him forget what had happened, or that it had all been his fault.

  Jack hadn’t spoken for several moments, so Sam sighed and sat next to him in the grass. He watched Jack throw the ball. Again and again, he caught and threw, and Sam waited.

  If that’s how Sam wanted this to go, that was fine. Jack plucked the ball out of the air once more.

  For some reason, Sam couldn’t catch a ball if his life depended on it. Jack had tried to figure out why Sam had such a hard time. He simply couldn’t get the rhythms down, and he missed every throw. Inga-296 had given Jack the ball when he was little. Jack couldn’t remember exactly when, but he must have been about five years old.