Second Lives

by Scott K. Andrews

  'That's why the explosion was so much more devastating than I expected,' she told him. 'Because the warhead crashed into its older self, waiting patiently beneath the house. The energy released was exponentially higher than I calculated, and the effects much more dramatic.'

  Henry did not entirely grasp her explanation, so she drew him a diagram. This did not help, and he still did not understand it, but he pretended he did so that she would stop explaining.

  As he stepped out of the lift into the cavern, he shivered. To his left stood the cold fusion generators, installed centuries ago and still running perfectly. Ahead, almost lost in the gloom, the softly glowing warhead of the timebomb sat waiting. The glow had faded since the 1640s, as if it were a battery slowly running down. And around the walls, rising up ten rows high and circling the entire circumference of the cavern, were the cocoons.

  'Hank!'

  His wife had seen him and was beckoning him to join her and a group of technicians beyond the reactors, at the cocoon that marked the beginning of the series.

  'We're nearly done,' she said as he walked over to her.

  A series of gas canisters were lined up in a row, a daisy chain of hoses connecting them to the first cocoon. He looked over his shoulder and saw a similar set-up at the cocoon, which marked the last in the series.

  'And this is the last treatment?' he asked.

  Quil nodded eagerly. 'This is the last one. After this, we seal the lift shaft, brick up the entrance and they can sleep undisturbed till their alarm clock goes off at exactly 8:15 a.m. on the seventh of April 2158. Just time to get out of bed before the real wake-up call hits.'

  Henry nodded, happy at her happiness, but apprehensive as the final piece of her plan fell into place.

  'And what will this modification do?' he asked.

  Quil smiled devilishly. 'You'll see,' she said.

  'All set, ma'am,' said one of the technicians.

  Then what are we waiting for?' she replied, indicating that he should proceed.

  The technicians pressed some buttons on the portable console that controlled the outflow of the gas bottles and a light blue haze began to fill the nearest vertical line of cocoons. The figures within, already misshapen and nightmarish seen through the old, mottled glass of their encasements, vanished in the blue fog as it migrated around the room, filling each of the pods before seeping through into the next in sequence.

  The silence was broken suddenly by a loud bang somewhere in the distance, and Henry thought he caught a glimpse of blue gas seeping into the air as he heard the tinkle of glass falling onto rock and a horrible wet slapping sound.

  'Sealing off container twenty-five slash three and re-routing flow,' said a technician as his fingers flew over the console's buttons.

  'What was that?' asked Henry.

  'Some of the subjects might experience a side-effect of the process,' Quil said as another loud bang sounded from even further away and she pulled a comical grimace. 'An explosive side-effect.'

  'Sealing off container thirty-two slash eight and re-routing flow,' intoned the technician.

  Henry jumped nearly out of his skin as a hand slammed up against the glass of a cocoon near to him, and he caught disturbing half glimpses of a figure moving within the smoke.

  Quil walked over to the cocoon and placed her hand upon the glass. 'Shhh,' she whispered. 'It'll all be over soon.'

  Then there was another crack, and another, and one by one the figures within the smoke-filled prisons began to squirm and writhe, fingers scratching helplessly against the glass, tortured faces pressed up against it offering him short, phantasmagoric visions of suffering and insanity.

  His stomach churned and he turned away.

  Til see you back at Io,' he said as he walked towards the lift as quickly as he could.

  If his wife replied, he did not hear her above the rising susurration of whispery groans echoing around the cavern.

  Henry Sweetclover punched the button on the lift, willing the doors to close quickly. As he rose through the earth he could not avoid feeling that he was leaving a place of evil. A place of evil ruled over by his wife.

  As he stepped out of the Hall's front door he was certain that it was the last time he would cross this threshold.

  He had not expected to be so happy about saying goodbye to his home, but he turned his steps towards his car with relief, and drove away without looking back.

  Kaz took Dora's hand and surrendered himself to her control.

  'It's all about numbers,' she said as the red glow built around them. 'See if you can sense the equations as we go.'

  As they slipped away from Kinshasa he was aware of the finesse of her movement through time, the fine detail of her course corrections, the confidence and ability she possessed. He envied her, and looked forward to the day he would have such facility. And yes, he did have a sense, a strange, half- formed inkling of numbers swirling around them. Was this something to do with how they travelled?

  The undercroft of Sweetclover Hall melted into existence around them.

  'Thank God,' said Jana, who was sitting at the conference table beside the spot where they materialised. She burst out of her chair and flung her arms round Kaz, hugging him tight in spite of the sparks. It took all of Kaz's concentration to stop them spiralling off into time.

  'I was so sure you'd been killed,' she breathed into his ear. 'I'm so happy to see you, you've no idea.'

  Kaz returned the hug gladly.

  'What happened to you?' he asked, gently extricating himself from her embrace.

  'I touched myself,' said Jana.

  'Excuse me?' said Dora giving Jana the side-eye.

  Jana slapped her playfully on the arm and pulled her into a hug, though not, Kaz noted, as emphatically as she'd hugged him, and it was far less welcome on Dora's part.

  'What happened to the innocent village girl?' laughed Jana. 'I meant I met me, from when I first jumped through time. I put my hand on my shoulder to calm myself, which I remembered my older self doing. And I was so focused on reassuring myself that I jumped off into time by accident.'

  Kaz squinted with the effort of trying to decipher her meaning.

  'There were far too many reflexive pronouns in that sentence,' said Kairos, rising from the table to greet the new arrivals with smiles and handshakes.

  'Oh my God,' exclaimed Jana, her hand flying to her mouth as she looked down at Dora's shoes. 'I forgot about your feet. How are you standing?'

  'We went back to the clinic in Kinshasa,' said Kaz. 'They grew her new ones.'

  'They what?' said Jana, disbelieving.

  'They can clone whole people,' said Dora. 'Why not feet?'

  Jana nodded. 'I s'pose. How do they feel?'

  'Same as they did before,' said Dora. 'You'd never know they were spare parts.'

  Kairos indicated that they should sit, and they did so, gathering round the table as they had done twice before. Kaz ended up sitting between the two girls.

  'Look at me,' he said, smiling. 'A rose between two thorns.'

  They both jabbed him with their elbows and scowled at him, which made him stupidly content.

  Then they went through the now-routine protocol of checking their relative timelines - Jana had been back for about a day, Dora and Kaz had stayed in Kinshasa for three weeks before returning. Next they recounted their separate stories of their final day on Mars and asked Kairos to fill them in on what had happened after they'd left.

  'As far as I can see,' he said, 'you were unable to change the outcome of events.'

  'And what was that outcome?' asked Kaz, even though he was certain he already knew.

  'Once things went wrong on the surface, the Godless fleet opened fire on the Earth ships,' said Kairos solemnly. 'The Earth flagship, Redoubtable, crashed into Barrettown, completely wiping it out.'

  Kaz nodded sadly. He had shared his suspicion with Dora, so her reaction was similarly muted. But Jana showed no reaction at all. He presumed Kairos must have
told her before he and Dora had arrived, but there was something about the studied way she was showing no emotion on her face that aroused Kaz's suspicions.

  'And Quil?' he asked. 'What happened to her?'

  Kairos glanced at Jana, just for an instant, a micro-expression that confirmed to Kaz that there was something he was not being told. Again.

  He had been planning on making his pitch again, his argument that they should turn their back on all of this and find somewhere safe to build new lives, but that intention crumbled when faced with Jana and her secrets.

  As Kairos opened his mouth to answer, Kaz cut him off, turning to Jana and saying, 'We agreed that after Mars there would be no more secrets. Kairos was going to tell us everything he knew. That was the deal.'

  Jana met his gaze, and he could tell she was nervous about something, though he couldn't say what.

  'Then let him tell us, Kaz,' said Jana in mock exasperation. But Kaz wasn't buying it.

  'Everything Jana,' he said. 'The whole truth. How this bubble got set up. Why. Who by. What the plan is now.'

  'He was about to tell us about Quil,' said Jana, pantomiming puzzlement.

  'Yes, he was,' said Kaz. 'But why do I think that she's got more to do with Kairos than he's telling us? And why do I think you know about it too?'

  'I don't—' Kairos began to protest, but Kaz interrupted him again.

  'You told us this was a top-secret government black site, yes?' he asked.

  Kairos nodded, apprehensive.

  Kaz pointed out of the room towards the ceiling, where the timebomb hung in a frozen explosion. 'So why,' he asked, 'was that bomb fired at this location by Quil's forces after the Mars disaster?'

  Kairos shrugged, but it was unconvincing. Kaz had had plenty of time in Kinshasa to ponder all the unanswered questions that plagued him, and he was keen to find out whether his suppositions were correct.

  'I'll tell you why, shall I?' said Kaz, managing to be confrontational without aggression, a skill he'd been trying to master for a long time and felt like he was starting to finally get the hang of. 'It's because Quil was being held here, probably tortured, and they wanted to silence her before she could give away their military secrets.'

  It was a guess, but Kairos did not have a poker face. The truth of Kaz's assertion was writ large there.

  'So I think you should—' Kaz began.

  This time it was Kaz who was interrupted, by Dora, who uttered a loud 'Ha!', grabbed Kaz's arm, turned him to face her, then leaned forward until her nose was an inch from his.

  'You know what this place is, don't you?' she said smugly.

  'What?' he said, slightly annoyed at being upstaged.

  'This place. The bubble. Kairos. All of this' She waved her arms around expansively, brimful of excitement. 'This is my Plan B.'

  Dora looked across at Jana. 'Is she here?' she asked. 'Is Quil here somewhere? Because if I'm right, if this is my Plan B, she's got to be here. She's been here all along, hasn't she? This bubble is a rescue attempt, isn't it! She was going to be thrown back in time by the bomb and we intervened to stop it. That's what the bubble is.'

  Jana and Kairos exchanged another glance, then Jana turned to Dora and nodded.

  'Yes,' she said reluctantly. 'We recruited - will recruit - the professor, rescued Quil from interrogation, and created this safe environment for our younger selves to operate from.'

  Dora clapped her hands in glee. 'I knew it. Damn, I'm good,' she said, beaming, as she folded her arms. 'So, bring her out, let's talk to the psycho, get this mess sorted.'

  Kaz was just as concerned by the current, enthusiastic Dora as he had been about the morose one. She seemed to have swung from way too sad to way too happy, way too quickly. He would have to keep an eye on her, because he was worried she'd get herself, or all of them, into trouble.

  Jana pursed her lips and shook her head. 'Sorry Dora, we can't do that quite yet,' she said. 'The prof here insists that before we speak to Quil, we need to travel back and make this place happen.'

  Kairos interrupted. 'Otherwise this bubble would become a logical impossibility, you see, and it might collapse,' he said.

  Dora rolled her eyes and huffed.

  'Really?' said Kaz, still not entirely trusting Jana and Kairos. 'Can't we talk to her now and tidy up loose ends later?'

  'Far too dangerous,' said the professor emphatically. 'You must create the loop before you close it.'

  Kaz studied Kairos, uncertain whether he was being completely truthful. Jana's eyes were pleading with Kaz to just go along with things, but he decided he'd had enough of working in the dark.

  'Listen, all of you,' he said. 'I'm here, OK? I'm in. I'm part of this and I promise you I'll see it through to the end. But I've had enough of lies and half-truths and I can tell there's information you're not sharing with us.'

  'Kaz,' said Jana. 'Please, trust me. We need to do what Kairos says.'

  She looked sincere, desperate for him to agree. He knew she wouldn't withhold anything that could harm him or Dora, he trusted her that much. But that wasn't enough. He was no longer prepared to let anybody else, especially Jana, decide what he could and couldn't know.

  'No,' he said, shaking his head. 'If Quil is here, we all need to talk to her before we do another thing. There's something you're not telling us, and I won't help until I know what it is.'

  'But—' began Kairos.

  'And that's final,' said Kaz.

  Jana looked at the tabletop for a minute, then looked up at Kaz, resigned. 'All right,' she said. 'If you insist.'

  So saying, she rose to her feet and walked out of the room, heading for the stairs.

  Kairos laughed nervously as Kaz scowled at him.

  'I told you we needed a Plan B, didn't I Kaz?' said Dora breathlessly. 'This is a great plan, don't you think?'

  All trace of the reserved facade she had worn ever since she'd rescued him and Jana in New York was gone. It was almost as if, having decided to try to be more like her old self, she was trying too hard and tipping into mania.

  'I'll let you know when this is over,' said Kaz.

  They sat in silence for a few moments more, although Dora paced to and fro restlessly. Eventually the stairwell door opened and Jana walked back to the conference room. Walking beside her was a woman Kaz immediately recognised, by her body language, as Quil. It took a little longer for her face to become visible, her dark skin hiding the detail in the half- light until she was in the doorway of the conference room.

  'Hello, everybody,' said Quil with a hint of timidity. 'Dora.'

  She nodded at Dora, who stood ready to fight.

  'I . . .' Kaz said, mouth agape, unsure what to say. 'What I mean is . . .' He breathed out heavily and shook his head. 'No, I've got nothing.'

  'Kaz, Dora,' said Jana in a measured voice. 'I'd like you to meet my clone. She calls herself Quil.'

  Kaz was glad he was sitting down; he could feel his knees weaken beneath the table. His mind had gone completely blank.

  'Guys,' said Jana, moving to sit down, followed by her older mirror image. 'Quil and I really, really need your help.'

  Kaz sat staring at Quil in amazement. She was Jana, but ten or fifteen years older. Much younger than he had expected Quil to be - he'd imagined a woman in her forties, not her early thirties. There were subtle lines by her eyes and mouth; it was not an old face, but it was definitely older than Jana's, harder in the jaw, more tense around the eyes.

  'Your clone?' said Dora, still standing.

  'I am, yes,' said Quil. 'Jana never returned - will never return, from your perspective - to New York after the day she jumped from the roof. I was custom built, commissioned by our parents as a replacement for the daughter they lost. Force-grown to the same age, given all the memories they had stored from her chip. It was going to be a seamless transition. No one would ever know. Not even me. But things . . .' She took a deep breath and sighed, closing her eyes. 'Things did not go smoothly.'

  Kaz literally
shook his head to help clear away the confusion and return himself to some semblance of sense. He looked up at Dora, who looked down at him, wide-eyed. He couldn't tell whether she was going to kill Quil or burst into tears. Possibly, she was still deciding.

  'OK,' he said after gathering his thoughts. The implications of this revelation raced around his mind like a tangled line of toppling dominoes. 'This changes everything. It explains a lot of things. But it makes other things way too confusing to wrap my head around.'

  'Actually, it is quite . . .' Kairos trailed into silence under the force of Kaz's hard stare.

  Kaz looked into Jana's eyes. His Jana, not the freaky carbon copy sitting beside her, held his gaze. She had never looked so vulnerable, so dependent upon him. He guessed that she had wanted to keep Quil's identity a secret not because it was dangerous to the timeline, or for any of the other reasons Kairos would have offered. He thought it was because it struck too close to home, that it made her the crux of events in a way that she had never wanted. Her eyes sought reassurance from Kaz. Tell me I'm the important one, they seemed to beg him. Tell me I'm not a supporting character in someone else's story.

  'So here's what I need,' said Kaz after smiling at Jana in the most reassuring manner he could, then turning to Quil. 'I need you to tell us everything. Your whole life, from . . .' he was going to say birth but stumbled on the thought of her emerging from a vat in a lab somewhere. 'From start to now. All of it. No secrets, full disclosure. If we're going to save you from becoming the woman we encountered in the past, we need to know who we're helping, and why.'

  'We'd be helping Jana, Kaz,' said Dora. 'She's Jana. That's what a clone is, a copy. Whatever she's done, it's exactly what Jana would have done in the same circumstances.'