Genesis Alpha

by Rune Michaels

  “Your dad—he said people would think you were just like him. That they were ignorant. Do you think he’s right?”

  I don’t know. Maybe they’re not superstitious at all. Maybe they know that DNA is only a blueprint or a recipe, not all we are. But they may also believe the evil in Max is an end product that will always push through. Like a blueprint for a car can never become a house, and a recipe for bread can never become a salad. “I don’t know,” I say. “Maybe he’s wrong. Maybe they’re right. Maybe you’re right.”

  Rachel holds out her hand and I grab it, pull so she can stand up. She doesn’t let go of my hand, but opens my palm, presses our fingers together. My hand is much bigger than hers. My hands are like Max’s hands.

  She turns my palm up and traces my fingertips. “Your fingerprints are different from his,” she says. “I remember that from biology class. Identical twins have different fingerprints. So do clones.”

  “Yes.”

  “Your mind is different too.”

  It’s what I told her. It’s what I want her to believe. It’s what I want to believe. “I can’t be sure.”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s Max’s genes. I was made from what he is. It’s like . . . It’s like Max is there. Inside me. Looking out through my eyes. Yanking my thoughts around. Like in Genesis Alpha. Like he’s the player, the real person, and I’m just the character. I’ll never get him out of my head. He’s a part of me. But it’s different for you. You can get rid of him. You don’t have to carry him inside your head forever.”

  Rachel releases me. She pushes her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans. “If you fire a gun often enough at a ghost, will it die?”

  I don’t answer.

  “It will never be over. Not for me, either. Even if they kill him, he’ll never die. He’ll be every guy who smiles at me. He’ll be every footstep behind me when I’m walking somewhere alone. He’ll be every knock on the door late at night. He’ll be every person I meet online. He’ll be a ghost at my heels for the rest of my life. And I don’t know if I can exist in that kind of a world.” She looks at me, and rare tears glisten in her eyes. “I see him everywhere, Josh. Everywhere. But I don’t see him in your face. Not in your eyes. Not anymore.”

  I look away, but breathing is slightly easier. Like gravity just let up a bit.

  “I didn’t realize it until I heard you were his clone. I should see him in you now, more than ever. And I looked. I looked at you and I expected to see Rook. But I didn’t. He isn’t there. You’re not him.”

  I’m like a book, Mom once explained to me when she helped with my biology homework. My story, like everybody’s story, is made up of letters. ACGT. The four chemicals making up our DNA. Just four letters standing for everything we are.

  Max’s book and mine are the same. Every letter in the same place. Every letter identical.

  Could we still become two different stories?

  “I’m going home now,” Rachel says.

  “Will you be okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  I kick at the snow, keep my eyes on the ground. “The kittens will be ready for new homes soon.”

  When I look up, Rachel is smiling. It’s an unusually small smile. Doesn’t remind me of a rubber mask this time. “Yes. Prince. Princess. The boy, and the blue girl.”

  “You can have them. In the spring, they’ll be ready.”

  Rachel nods. She pushes away from the tree and grabs my hand, like before, when she dragged me through the snow. I feel one of the scars in her palm push at my skin, but as my hand gets used to holding hers, I stop noticing. Then she lets go, and we just walk, our hands swinging by our sides, almost touching.

  “Will you keep playing Genesis Alpha?” Rachel asks when we’re nearly all the way back. Blue blinking lights smear the air long before we see the house. There are people all over our yard, three men are advancing through the forest toward us.

  “I don’t know.”

  “It’s not the game’s fault. It’s a good game. It’s not its fault what Rook used it for. Maybe someday we could play together.”

  I look cautiously at her face. I don’t trust her. When we get back, she may tell the police lies, show them her bruises and cuts and tell them I inflicted them. “Sure.”

  She smiles as three police officers come running toward us. Two of them have actually drawn their guns and are pointing them at us. At me.

  “Good,” she says, stopping. She nods toward the yelling police officers and puts her hands up, like in the movies. Feeling totally silly, I do the same. “Someday. We’ll play.”

  After midnight, when chaos has retired for the night—Rachel has gone home, the police have gone without cuffing me, the throng outside has thinned to a couple of desperate reporters, and my parents have settled down to something close to their normal level of confusion and misery—I turn on my computer and log on to Genesis Alpha. I’m not sleepy. I’m not sure I’ll ever be tired again.

  My hand moves slowly over the keyboard. One letter at a time.

  Rook2King.

  MyPAzw3rd.

  Then I take a deep breath and click login.

  “Account closed—Character deleted” appears on my screen. Then small print about contacting user support if there’s a problem.

  Rook is gone. The police have had his account closed. I should have guessed.

  I stare at the words for a while.

  They’re wrong. He’s not gone. Not completely.

  In my pocket, the knife seems almost to pulse. Rook’s there. I made a copy and saved him. He’s still there.

  I plug the knife into the computer. Uploading to the regular game won’t work with the account gone, so instead I upload Rook to the test server. Then I delete the files from the knife, overwrite them with random system files, unplug the knife, and toss it across the room. Gone.

  And Rook’s standing on his mountaintop again, looking out over the world.

  Good and evil is easy in Genesis Alpha. It’s a simple continuum, not a four-dimensional maze like the real world. The game defines which actions are good and which are bad, and it’s all very predictable. You can kill as much as you want, as long as you kill “bad” creatures or “bad” players. Do lots of good things, and you’re good. Do lots of bad things, and you’re bad. Do a mixture of good and bad, and you’re neutral.

  In the real world, everybody knows what’s good or bad—mostly. It gets complicated, of course, but for most things, most of the big things, you just know what’s right and what’s wrong. You don’t have to think about it a lot, you just know. Something inside tells you.

  Max knows. Max knows killing is wrong. He knows, but he doesn’t care.

  I care.

  It’s not possible to fix what Max did. Not in the real world. But in Genesis Alpha, many good things can balance out the evil. Do enough good, and even the most evil player eventually becomes good.

  I move Rook around. Manipulate him at will. I make him run, turn him in circles, look at him from all angles. Make him jump, fall, laugh, cry.

  I could turn Rook good. I could play him for a while, could take him out on missions, make him rescue the weak, kill the bad guys, and in time, he would become good. If I kept making him do only good things, a soft light aura would emerge around his player portrait, until he’s standing in a pool of light.

  I could do that. I could turn Rook good.

  But there is no point. Not really. It doesn’t change what Max did. There is no redemption for that.

  I park the spaceship on a primitive planet and walk Rook into a green alley nestled between tall mountains. He has no sword, no armor. He’s been here before. He has enemies who’ll remember him.

  On my screen, little people come running from all directions. They remember Rook. I override his automatic command to fight back. It isn’t easy. The program kicks in every few seconds, ordering him to fight back, to defend himself. I have to keep ordering him to stand still.

  The
crowd keeps growing. They are little people, gnomes. An easy kill for a strong player like Rook. All he needs to do is pull his sword, and several of them would fall from one slash through the crowd.

  But he doesn’t have a sword. Not even a pocketknife. Nothing. I don’t even allow him to fight back with his fists.

  I watch his hit points indicator. He’s hardly taking any hits at all. And he heals automatically, too. I know he’s just a computer character and that he’s now under my control, but when I look at his face on the screen, I can almost sense his frustration, his anger at what I’m doing to him—and his gloating over how strong and invincible he is, that even alone, unarmored, the dozens of creatures can’t bring him down.

  One by one, the hit points drain away from him, but he keeps healing to make up for it. I watch for a while as his hit points inch downward, then jerk upward again as healing kicks in. I almost hear him laugh at me. He won’t die. He’ll never die. Not like this. It will take something much bigger to kill him.

  I hit the off button. Press it with my thumb, hold it.

  The computer whines in protest.

  The screen goes blank.

  Inside the game, standing there in the middle of the gnome swarm, Rook has turned into a statue. The gnomes will lose interest and leave. He’ll be left there alone, and the statue will grow mossy and moldy. In time it will decay and crumble.

  Rook’s gone. He will never return to Genesis Alpha.

  His game is over.

  Mine’s not.

  Rune Michaels studied psychology at the University of Iceland and at the University of Copenhagen. Genesis Alpha is her first novel. She lives with her husband and two cats in Reykjavik, Iceland.