The End of Ordinary

by Edward Ashton

They both turned to look at me.

  “What?” I said. “Just because I’m not Engineered doesn’t mean I’m UnAltered. My dad’s a VP at GeneCraft, remember? And anyway, I’m definitely not a mob.”

  Marta shook her head.

  “Unfortunately, there’s not a genetic marker for being a good guy.”

  I stared at her.

  “So you’re saying that your dad would be willing to wipe out ninety percent of the population just to keep the UnAltered from getting uppity again? Do you have any idea how that would actually play out?”

  “No,” she said. “Do you?”

  “Well,” I said. “Not exactly. I’ve watched a lot of disaster vids, though, and if those are accurate . . .”

  “Which I’m sure they are,” Hannah said.

  “. . . then we’re looking at a whole lot of roving mobs, people throwing fire bombs, and possibly a zombie insurrection. Basically, all the stuff your dad is trying to avoid.”

  “Look,” Marta said. “I’m not trying to argue that my dad is right. The whole reason I came to you guys in the first place is because whatever he’s got planned, I don’t want it to happen. If I had to pick sides, I’d be on yours. I think genetic mods are bullshit. If I could turn myself into a standard-issue Homo sap I’d do it. I’m sure Hannah would too, right?”

  Hannah looked up from her stretching.

  “Huh?”

  “I said, you probably wish you were normal.”

  She looked at Marta, then over at me.

  “I am normal,” she said, emphasizing every word.

  Marta shook her head again.

  “You’re not, Hannah, any more than I am. Jordan is normal. You, Micah, me? We’re made things.”

  “Holy crap,” Hannah said. “What are you, some kind of self-hater? Jordan, are you listening to her?”

  “Oh no,” I said. “Don’t drag me into this.”

  Just then, the screen on the wall opposite the window lit up. Micah and Devon were standing on the porch. Micah pressed the doorbell, then looked up into the camera.

  “Open up, Hannah,” he said. “Devon says she can crack your dad’s system.”

  18. In which Drew gets freaky.

  “Holy shit,” Meghan said. “I cannot begin to tell you how horny I am right now.”

  I was sitting on an ottoman in front of her living room wallscreen, paging though diagram after diagram, slowly realizing that I was no longer technically competent. I turned half around to look at Meghan. She didn’t look horny. She looked like a hobo. She was most of the way through the beer she’d originally offered to me. As I watched, she drained the rest of it in one long pull.

  “Meghan,” I said.

  She belched.

  “If you’re trying to seduce me,” I said, “you’re not giving it much of an effort.”

  She brushed a space clear on the couch, dropped into it, and laughed.

  “Don’t take this personally,” she said, “but whatever horniness I am experiencing right now has absolutely zero to do with you. Which is not to say that I wouldn’t bang you right now, right here on this disgusting-ass couch, because I definitely would—but again, it wouldn’t be anything personal.”

  I stared at her.

  “Exactly how drunk are you right now?” I asked finally.

  She laughed again, leaned her head back, and stretched her arms out along the back of the couch.

  “Drew,” she said. “Drew, Drew, Drew. I am not drunk right now. If I were, I’d probably already be humping you.”

  “Okay,” I said. “You’re not drunk. So what are you? Because you’re sure as shit not the person I brought onto my very important genetic-engineering team eighteen months ago. You’re not the person who Nerissa Grimm described as the best synthesis engineer she’d ever worked with. You’re not even the person who used to occasionally show up for our status-update meetings until a few weeks ago. I can’t be positive, obviously, but I’m pretty confident that person never threatened to hump me.”

  She lifted her head, and gave me a long, bleary-eyed look.

  “You’re right,” she said finally. “I should not have threatened to hump you. I sincerely apologize.”

  “Um . . .” I said. “Apology accepted, I guess.” I turned back to the wallscreen. An RNA schematic was rotating there, with the different protein sequences color coded for easy reference. “If you want to make it up to me, maybe you could explain what, exactly, I’m looking at right now.”

  I heard the couch creak, and then her bare feet on the hardwood behind me.

  “Well,” she said. Her hand touched my shoulder. “What you’ve got there is . . .”

  That’s when she licked my ear.

  “Hey!” I yelped, jerked away from her and staggered to my feet. “What the shit, Meghan?”

  She was standing beside the ottoman with a perplexed look on her face, running her tongue back and forth across her teeth.

  “Huh,” she said. “That’s weird.”

  “Weird?” I said. “You licked me, you psychopath!”

  She stepped toward me. I backed away.

  “Hold still,” she said.

  I took another step back.

  “What are you doing, Meghan?”

  She held out her hand.

  “Come here, Drew. I won’t lick you again.”

  I took a wary step forward.

  “I’d like to believe that, Meghan, but the fact that you just did lick me is not inspiring confidence.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Just give me your hand.”

  I hesitated. She closed the gap between us, grabbed my hand, and pulled me close. I tried to yank back, but her grip was like a vise. She didn’t lick me this time, though. Instead, she buried her nose between my neck and my shoulder and breathed in deep.

  I know that sounds like it might have been sexy, but trust me, it was not.

  “That’s really weird,” she said.

  “Yeah,” I said. “You already said that.”

  I pulled back again, and this time she let me go.

  “So,” Meghan said. “What have you been up to lately, Drew?”

  I glared at her.

  “Being sexually harassed by my subordinates, mostly. What about you?”

  She walked over to the couch, and flopped back into the spot she’d cleared.

  “Been sampling the product?”

  “What are you talking about, Meghan?” I touched my finger to my ear. It was wet. “You sound like a drug kingpin in a crime vid. Are you high? Is that what this is about?”

  Meghan sighed.

  “No, Drew,” she said. “I am not high. I am confused, though.”

  “You’re confused?” I took two steps back to the ottoman, touched my ear again to make sure it wasn’t dripping, and sat down. “Seriously, Meghan. What the hell is going on?”

  “That,” she said, “is an excellent question. Have you figured out what’s in the diagrams?”

  I glanced back over my shoulder at the wallscreen. It was just a stream of numbers running by at that point, nothing that was designed to be human-parseable.

  “No,” I said. “I have not. Are you going to explain it to me?”

  She gave me a thoughtful look.

  “No,” she said finally. “I think it’ll be more fun if you figure it out yourself.”

  It took the better part of an hour, but I finally convinced Meghan to take a shower, put on some clean clothes, and come out with me to a diner called Mika’s, which my phone informed me was the best place within a five-block radius to get breakfast.

  “This is a bad idea,” she whispered as I held the door for her.

  “No,” I said. “It’s not. It is, in fact, an excellent idea. You have no food in your apartment other than rotting pizza and beer. It’s no wonder you’re acting like a lunatic. Your body’s probably digesting your brain right now.”

  The hostess was short and thin and dark haired. She wore an expression that was trying to be fr
iendly, but couldn’t quite make it past bored. I held up two fingers, and she led us to a booth in the back of the restaurant, wedged between the salad bar and the restrooms. We sat down. The hostess handed us our menus. As I took mine, our fingertips touched.

  The jolt ran all the way up to my shoulder and back again—and I might have imagined it, but I’d have sworn she jumped too, and gave me a long, searching look before she turned away. I was still staring after her when Meghan burst out laughing.

  “You should see yourself,” she said. “You look like a kid who’s just figured out what his ding-a-ling is for.”

  I turned to look at her. She laughed harder.

  “Seriously,” she said. “Reel in your tongue and close your mouth. You look ridiculous.”

  My jaw snapped shut with an audible click. Meghan leaned across the table to pat my hand.

  “Don’t worry,” she said. “You get used to it eventually.”

  “What?” I said. “What do I get used to?”

  Her grin segued into a leer.

  “The fact that you want to bang literally every single person you run into. Why do you think I’ve been holed up in my apartment for the last week? Being out in public right now is like being half starved and broke in a five-star restaurant.”

  I pulled my hand back.

  “I don’t want to bang you, Meghan.”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I don’t want to bang you either. Weird, right?”

  Breakfast was . . . difficult. The food was pretty good. My phone was right about that. I had a cup of yogurt and a short stack of blueberry pancakes, with a side of bacon and a huge glass of juice. So, no problem there. The issue was that we were sitting near the bathroom. People kept walking by our booth, and every time one of them did, my stomach knotted and I had to fight back the urge to touch them. The ninth or tenth time it happened, Meghan looked up from her waffles and said, “I know, right?”

  I dragged my eyes back to my food. I’d been staring at the backside of a sixty-year-old woman in baggy pink sweats as she shuffled into the toilet. Meghan laughed.

  “I know what you’re feeling,” she said. “I don’t know why you’re feeling it, but I know what you’re feeling.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Explain this to me. What, exactly, am I feeling?”

  She grinned.

  “You’re feeling like you’d like to give that sea turtle in sweatpants who just waddled past here a tongue bath, Drew.”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it again. That was, in fact, exactly what I was feeling.

  “I don’t understand this,” I said. “What did you do to me? Is this about the ear licking? Are you some kind of perverted vampire or something?”

  Meghan shook her head.

  “I didn’t do anything to you, friend. I mean, I wanted to. I was definitely going to. When I licked your ear, though, you tasted . . . gross.”

  I scowled, stabbed my last hunk of pancake and shoveled it in.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said. “I’d have sprinkled myself with Adobo if I’d realized I was on the menu this morning.”

  “No problem,” she said. “Watching you talk around a mouthful of half-chewed food makes me feel pretty good about the fact that we didn’t wind up getting freaky.”

  I swallowed what was in my mouth, and washed it down with the last of my juice.

  “Better,” Meghan said. “Less disgusting, anyway. Still don’t want to bone you.”

  “Well that’s great,” I said, “because I don’t want to bone you either.”

  I picked up a scrap of bacon, bit into it, and chewed.

  “Hey,” I said. “Why don’t I want to bone you?”

  Meghan leaned back in her seat and tilted her head to one side.

  “That is an excellent question, Drew. I’m extremely charming.”

  “No,” I said. “You’re not. You are, however, young and moderately attractive—which is much more than I can say for our sea-turtle friend. And much though it pains me to say it, I do very much want to bone her. Which leads me back to my original question: What the hell did you do to me, Meghan?”

  She sighed.

  “I told you, Drew. I didn’t do anything to you. You’re asking the wrong question.”

  “Okay,” I said. “So what’s the right question?”

  She smiled.

  “The question you ought to be asking is this: Why didn’t I do anything to you?”

  Looking back, it’s pretty obvious that there was a long list of questions that I should have asked Meghan, but didn’t. Here’s a few of the more obvious examples:

  “Hey, Meghan? Weren’t you white the last time I saw you? What’s up with that?”

  “Quick question, Meghan—you have bony little arms, but when you grabbed my hand it felt like a gorilla was trying to break my wrist. Care to explain?”

  “I don’t mean to pry, Meghan, but why are you suddenly acting like an over-sexed nutjob?”

  In my own defense, I was finding it extremely difficult to focus on obvious questions due to the fact that I was having persistent and disturbing fantasies about pretty much every person who passed within five feet of me, regardless of whether they were fat or thin, old or young, male or female.

  Anyway, I didn’t get the opportunity to ask any more questions, because right about then a twenty-something guy in running shorts and a tech shirt walked past our table, close enough that his fingers brushed against the back of Meghan’s seat. He was tall and lanky, with close-cut dark hair, a light, even, natural-looking tan, and muscles in his legs that looked like pythons flexing and writhing just under his skin. Meghan looked at him, then back at me. She bit her lower lip, scowled, and slid out of the booth.

  “I told you this was a bad idea,” she whispered, and followed him into the men’s room.

  I got half to my feet, hesitated, then slumped back down and dropped my face into my hands. I’d been about to go after her. Why? To drag her back to the booth, obviously. To tell her to get a grip on herself, to act like a goddamned adult.

  No, that’s bullshit. I was going to join the party.

  After ten minutes or so, a query popped up on the table screen, asking if we needed anything else. I shook my head, and tapped my phone against the reader to settle the bill. Another man, maybe my age but with a lot more wear on the tires, shuffled past the booth and into the bathroom. Shortly after, tech shirt guy came out. The look on his face was a fifty-fifty blend of happy and bewildered. Meghan did not reappear. I got to my feet, pulled my phone back out of my pocket, and pinged for a cab.

  You’d think I would have spent the ride back to LAX thinking about how I was going to explain to HR that Meghan Cardiff, Ph.D., was so very, very fired. I mean, if that morning had demonstrated one thing to me with utter clarity, it was that Meghan was not going to be fulfilling her duties in synthesis and testing for Project DragonCorn anytime in the foreseeable future.

  You might also suspect that I would have been pondering what I saw on the wallscreen in Meghan’s apartment. The entity that Meghan was supposed to be testing was a retrovirus designed to proliferate freely in a specific, previously engineered strain of corn. The idea was that it would not be able to reproduce in the absence of a protein that we’d encoded into our last iteration, which had gone under the code name UniCorn. Where it was able to reproduce, however, it would cut into the UniCorn DNA and introduce a whole laundry list of new traits, mostly revolving around resistance to pests, salinity, and drought, but with a few thrown in for the marketing guys as well—DragonCorn kernels would have an attractive red tinge to them, for example. Also, they’d contain a bit more sugar than UniCorn, which itself was a ton sweeter than the prior strains that we’d been pushing out of the market.

  Truth is, though, I wasn’t thinking about any of those things. I was thinking about the electric jolt that ran up my arm when the hostess at Mika’s touched my fingertips. I was thinking that if that’s what touching her fingers did to me, what would have happened i
f I’d held her hand? If I’d kissed her? If I’d . . .

  Best not to go down that road.

  By the time the cab pulled up to the terminal, I wasn’t thinking about any of that stuff either. At that point, I was thinking about the fact that I was shivering even though it was sweltering outside, and that a weird ache had settled into the space between my shoulder blades. As I stepped out onto the curb, a wave of vertigo hit me, and I almost staggered back into the roadway as the taxi pulled away. I steadied myself, leaned over with my hands on my knees and took a deep breath in, then let it back out.

  When I looked up, a woman on her way into the terminal had stopped to stare at me.

  “Hey,” she said. “Are you okay?”

  I straightened, met her eyes and smiled. The pain in my back abruptly vanished.

  “Oh,” I said. “Yeah, I’m fine. I’m good, actually. Really good.”

  She smiled back. A warm tingle spread up from my belly and into my chest.

  “I’m Drew,” I said. “Where are you headed?”

  19. In which Hannah learns the limitations of amateur crackers.

  “Jordan,” Devon said. “Who’s the spider lady?”

  “That,” Micah said, “is the daughter of the richest, and apparently craziest, man in North America.”

  “I’m Marta Longstreth,” Marta said, “and my dad is not crazy.”

  “Sure he is,” I said. “Thanks for coming, Devon.”

  She shrugged.

  “Inchy said it might be fun.”

  “Inchy?” Jordan said.

  “Her bestie,” I said. “Right, Devon?”

  “Yeah, pretty much,” Devon said. “God, how sad is that?”

  “Don’t know,” Jordan said. “Is Inchy a person, or an appliance?”

  Devon laughed.

  “Little from column A, little from column B, I guess.”

  I stood up. The sun was slanting down through the glass wall of the solarium, and it was bordering on uncomfortably warm.

  “Can we please focus?” I said.

  “Actually,” Micah said, “I’m finding this pretty interesting. Devon, what the hell does that mean?”