Strange New World

by Rachel Vincent

  Waverly wasn’t raised as an identical and didn’t seem pleased to find out I exist. And her mother’s insistence that no one should see us sends chills up my spine. As if Trigger and I are some dirty little secret that must be kept from the world.

  “I wish I could hear what’s going on in there,” I say as I turn back to the closed door.

  “Um…just a minute.” Trigger gestures at the screen, and another box opens in the top left corner. He clears his throat and raises his voice. “Display rooms occupied by three or more people.”

  “One result,” says the disembodied voice we heard in the foyer, and the box on-screen becomes a grid of four camera feeds, each showing the room across the hall from a different angle.

  “Primary feed,” Trigger orders. The grid becomes a single view, showing Waverly, her mother, and Hennessy seated on couches in the room across the hall.

  “Audio. Enhanced. Filter out background noise and maximize voices.”

  “—is this possible?” Waverly demands on-screen, and I sit back on the couch, fascinated, spreading the bulky skirt of my borrowed dress around my knees. “Does she have a bar code?”

  “I don’t know,” Hennessy says, and I finger the jeweled cuff hiding the code on my wrist. “I didn’t see one, but if she’s a clone…” He shrugs.

  “How could she be?” Waverly turns to her mother. “Are you sure she’s not my twin?”

  The mother huffs. “I think I would remember giving birth to two children.”

  “If she’s a clone, then there are more of her,” Waverly says from the corner of the e-glass while Trigger continues to poke and swipe his way through menus, pausing occasionally to speak an order to the screen. “How did this happen? How many of her are there? How close are they to being put into service?”

  “I don’t know,” the mother says. “I’ll put in a call to the Administrator.”

  “No!” Waverly squeals. “We’re not going to advertise this!”

  “There’s no way to find out how this happened without talking to the Administrator.” The mother sounds exhausted, but her image on-screen sits up straight, as if indignation is the source of the steel in her spine.

  “Besides, she probably already knows,” Hennessy says. “How could she not notice that an entire batch of her clones looks just like her daughter’s best friend?”

  The Administrator’s daughter—Sofia—is Waverly’s best friend?

  “No,” the mother insists. “If she knew, she would have said something. She would have used this for a better rate on DigiCore’s tech, if for nothing else.” The mother’s brows dip into a scowl. “Maybe that is what she’s doing—trying to extort lower prices for Lakeview’s tablets and security systems by threatening to humiliate my daughter.”

  “It’ll work!” Waverly moans. “If we don’t give her what she wants, there’ll be hundreds of mass-produced servants all over the world with my face on them. Maybe thousands! ‘Buy a Waverly Whitmore clone to clean your toilet!’ I’ll be an international joke!”

  I turn to Trigger, frowning. “They think the Administrator cloned Waverly to embarrass them?” That’s all I understand of a conversation filled with terms I’ve never heard. Like extort. And prices.

  “That doesn’t sound very likely,” Hennessy says. “Unless she’s been planning this for more than eighteen years. That’s one hell of a long game.”

  “Well, what else could it be?” Waverly demands. “Why else would she risk prison by cloning me without permission?”

  I turn to Trigger, and surprise echoes in my voice. “They don’t know anything about Wexler 42. And they still think I’m her clone.” Somehow, despite their advanced tech and limitless communication privileges, Waverly, Hennessy, and the mother seem to have no idea how she and I came to be in the world.

  The door slides open to reveal Waverly’s mother standing in the hallway. Trigger and I are seated several inches apart. Not touching. The screen has gone transparent again, showing only the undecorated wall behind it. For all she knows, we understand nothing of her world, its strange, terrifying customs, or its advanced tech.

  “Would you both please join us across the hall?” Her words form a question, yet she’s clearly issuing a command.

  My pulse pounding, Trigger and I follow her into a high-ceilinged room bordered by shelves made of dark stained wood. Lined up on every inch of every shelf are actual books, presumably printed on paper—the kind I’ve seen only in pictures from history lessons. The kind no one in Lakeside has held or used in centuries. I didn’t know such relics still existed.

  This room is like a slice of history. I want to touch the shelves. I want to open the books. A million questions rattle around in my head about this room and this place, but I don’t even know if I’m allowed to voice them.

  In Lakeview, I was only allowed to speak freely with fellow members of the Workforce Bureau, but Mountainside doesn’t seem to have bureaus. I don’t understand the rules here. Everything seems extravagant, inefficient, and inconsistent. Before I can work up the courage to start asking questions, the mother waves her hand at the door and it closes.

  Waverly sits on an overstuffed sofa in the center of the room. She’s clearly trying not to look at me, as if the sight of her own face on someone else’s body offends her, yet her gaze keeps sliding my way.

  Hennessy stands apart from us both, his brow furrowed, alternately studying Waverly and me. He blinks and rubs his forehead, as if he expects his double vision to clear and our two images to merge back into one. As if that’s the only thing that would make sense to him.

  “Have a seat.” The mother glances at the name embroidered on Trigger’s uniform. “Trigger 17.” Then she turns to me, effectively dismissing him. “I am Lorna Whitmore.” The pause after her proclamation says that her name should mean something to me. And suddenly it does.

  Whitmore. Her second name matches Waverly’s. It’s a family name. A surname, according to my history text. Yet another custom that isn’t quite as obsolete as I was taught.

  But I don’t think that’s the kind of recognition she was expecting.

  “And you are?” Lorna Whitmore continues.

  “I am Dahlia 16.” My voice feels very small in this room full of old things and strange people.

  “It speaks!” Waverly’s sarcasm sounds like Iris 16’s, and my heart aches at the thought of my lost sisters.

  “I told you,” Hennessy says. “She wouldn’t have been able to fool everyone at Seren’s party if she were a normal clone.”

  If I were a normal clone, I wouldn’t have kissed Trigger or been arrested. My anomalous behavior wouldn’t have gotten my 4,999 identicals euthanized.

  “And who is he?” Waverly glances at the name embroidered on Trigger’s uniform. “I mean, who is he to you?”

  I don’t have a word for what Trigger means to me. He is like the dawn, lighting up the world so I can see it clearly after a lifetime of darkness. He’s like an open flame, beautiful to look at but scorching to touch. He’s like a bite of cake, delicious, but so rich I dare not eat my fill.

  He is everything good that has ever happened to me. But surely that’s not what she’s asking.

  Waverly’s gaze narrows on my expression. “Oh my God, the clone has a boyfriend. Aren’t you guys supposed to be, like, sexless?”

  I frown, trying to puzzle through her odd words. At my side, Trigger has become a tightly wound coil of tension held in check by the same self-discipline that keeps his jaw locked when he would clearly like to speak.

  “Wait, sixteen?” Hennessy looks confused.

  “I’ll be promoted to Dahlia 17 next month.” Well, I would have, if I hadn’t been forced to flee the city of Lakeview for my own safety.

  Hennessy frowns at Waverly. “Dahlia’s more than a year younger than you. How can she be your clone?”

>   “She isn’t.” Trigger stares boldly at all three of them, throwing Wexler 42’s confession at them like a bucket of cold water. “Waverly was cloned from Dahlia’s genome.”

  Waverly glares at us both. “Obviously that’s not true. But if anyone heard you say that…” She turns to her mother, suddenly terrified. “What if there’d been a camera crew here tonight?”

  Camera crew?

  “It’s true.” I turn to the mother as another piece of this mental puzzle snaps into place in my head. “You hired Wexler 42, didn’t you? He would have been Wexler 24 or 25 when you met him.”

  Comprehension breaks over Lorna’s expression like a wave crashing over the lakeshore. She stares at me with a fresh blend of horror and fascination as she begins to understand the part she played in this, many years ago.

  My clone stares at us both in utter confusion.

  “You know Wexler?” Lorna pulls a small, impossibly thin sheet of glass from the pocket of her robe. Her thumb brushes it, and icons appear on the side facing her, visible to me in reverse from the other side. It’s a tablet made of e-glass.

  “We met him,” Trigger answers. “Right before he got us captured, as a distraction so he could escape into the wild.”

  Lorna’s frown deepens. “He’s gone?”

  I sit on the sofa opposite them and Trigger stands to my right, alert, like the soldier he was trained to be. Having him close—even in his formal stance—makes me feel a little less like this place is going to swallow me whole.

  “Who’s Wexler?” Waverly’s gaze flickers from her mother to me, to Trigger, then back.

  Lorna stares at me as if she’s still puzzling through my existence. She has my eyes. Or, rather, I have her eyes. The genetic connection between us is obvious, even if I don’t quite understand it.

  Is she my mother too, even though I was created in a lab and incubated in a machine? Until yesterday, did she have five thousand daughters?

  “Dahlia?” Waverly demands. “Who’s Wexler?”

  “He’s a genetic engineer. Your mother hired him to design a genome years ago. At least, that’s what I thought he was saying.” But in a city where people are born rather than incubated, Lorna Whitmore would have had no use for a genome—a genetic blueprint. I turn to her. “You actually wanted a baby, didn’t you?”

  “An embryo,” she says. “He was supposed to send me an embryo, and he did.”

  “Well, before he sent it, he cloned it,” I explain. “The work he did for your secret project left him with too little time to develop an outstanding order for the Workforce Bureau, so he made efficient use of the labor he’d already done.”

  “He cloned me?” Waverly grips the arm of the sofa so tightly that her knuckles turn white. “He put me into production as a common servant?”

  “No. He cloned me,” I repeat. “But then he accidentally sent the wrong embryo to your mother. I was supposed to grow up here.” In this strange building built to house only a few people—a family. “And you were supposed to be trained as a hydroponic gardener, in the Workforce Academy.”

  “That can’t be true.” Waverly springs up from the couch and begins to angrily pace the length of the room. “There is no way—”

  “Waverly…,” Lorna begins.

  My last remaining identical stops pacing and pins me with a furious, incredulous glare. “I can’t be a clone. Clones aren’t…They can’t…”

  I wait for her to finish, but her thoughts fade into a stunned silence. Into some new awareness that seems to leave her lost.

  I know that feeling.

  Then Waverly shakes off confusion and seizes anger, wielding it like a weapon. “This is your fault!” She turns on her mother, rage flashing in the same eyes I’ve seen in the mirror every day of my life. “You sent my DNA to a clone factory! What did you think they were going to do with it?”

  “Sit.” Lorna points at the couch.

  “I have every right to—”

  “Sit.”

  Waverly drops onto the cushion farthest from me, her knees tucked up to her chest, her horrified expression trained on me. “So,” she snaps. “How many of ‘me’ are there in this Workforce Academy?”

  “None.” My voice cracks on the word. “There were five thousand girls who looked just like you until about twelve hours ago. But now there’s only me.”

  “Five thousand!” She turns to her mother, eyes wide and panicked. “This can’t be real! How could we not know there are five thousand girls walking around with my—” Then her gaze finds me again, and the rest of my answer seems to sink in. “Wait. What happened twelve hours ago?”

  “The rest of your genome was recalled,” Trigger tells her, and the word hits me like a physical blow.

  “Recalled?”

  “Euthanized.” He lays a comforting hand on my shoulder as I hold back tears with sheer will. “All 4,999 of Dahlia’s identicals—her sisters—were put to death, because of two abnormalities found in her DNA.”

  “Management thought they were flaws, but Wexler said my genome is perfect,” I explain. “He said the clones were altered from the prototype—me—to fit the requirements of Lakeview’s order for five thousand trade laborers.”

  Waverly’s brow furrows. “What requirements?”

  “He escaped into the wild before I could ask anything else. All I know is that the differences between you and me are obvious in a genetic comparison. And they’re enough to get us hunted down by every soldier in Lakeview.”

  “You’re the fugitives,” Hennessy blurts out. “The ones the soldiers were looking for at the party. I thought…” He turns to Waverly. “I thought I was getting you home before your mother realized you’d snuck out, but I was actually aiding and abetting fugitives?”

  “More like stealing Lakeview property.” Waverly shrugs. “The Administrator will probably consider it corporate espionage.”

  “This isn’t funny!” her mother snaps.

  “I know. It’s a social, legal, political nightmare.”

  I stare at her, stunned. “Nearly five thousand people died yesterday.”

  Waverly’s mouth snaps closed. Her focus narrows on me, as if she’s just now considering that her trauma might not be the most tragic aspect of this.

  Lorna clears her throat and turns back to Trigger and me. “So you’re saying there were five thousand of you, but you’re the only one we still have to…deal with?”

  “I don’t think that’s exactly what we were saying.” Nor am I sure I want to know what it means to be dealt with by Lorna Whitmore.

  “Okay, well, it’s late.” She stands, and when she pulls her translucent tablet from the pocket of her robe, her sleeve falls back to reveal a beautiful scrolling pattern tattooed on her forearm in blue ink. In the center of the design, made out of those very swirls, is a six-digit number, divided into three sets of two figures. After a second of staring, I realize it’s a date.

  Lorna taps through a series of menus on her tablet as she speaks. “In the morning, we’ll look at things through fresh eyes.” She pockets the tablet and motions for Trigger and me to follow her as she heads for the door. “I’m having rooms prepared for you, and I’m sure we can find something for you to sleep in—”

  “Wait.” I stand. “We have questions of our own.” Even surrounded by the evidence, it’s difficult to comprehend the scale of the lie Trigger and I have been living, and before we escape, I need to understand. “Lakeview isn’t a city at all, is it? It’s a…a garden, in which to grow…servants?”

  The concept lurks at the back of my mind, out of focus like something seen from far away, because I took the history class that gave me access to this vocabulary word very long ago. “Clones work not on their own behalf, but on yours? Not to glorify the city, but to…what? Why do you need gardeners?” I glance at Trigger. “And soldiers? And stre
et cleaners and bakers and drivers? Are you not capable of cooking and cleaning for yourselves? Why does Lakeview exist? Why do we exist?”

  “Existentialism from a clone.” Waverly huffs with bitter amusement.

  “I…” Hennessy frowns, as if he’s having trouble coming up with an answer. “I guess we don’t need clones. We buy them to make life easier. And Lakeview…you’re right. It’s not a city. It’s a corporation. A business. Clones are a…” His gaze flickers with guilt. “They’re a product.”

  “Like fruits and vegetables?” Those are the products I understand. The products I am trained to produce.

  “Yes. And like shoes, and cars, and houses. Like anything else that can be bought and sold.” Waverly grabs my arm and pushes Margo’s jeweled cuff back to expose the bar code on my wrist. “What did you think this was for?”

  I pull my arm free and frown at the bar code, confused. “For identification and access. You just hold your wrist under the scanner in the cafeteria and your tray comes out of the chute. The scanner by the dormitory door unlocks your room. The scanner in the dorm room wall dispenses clean shoes and clothing.”

  Waverly shakes her head. “Bar codes are on things you buy.” She turns up the hem of her shirt and shows me a square of stiff material sewn into it. “Does this look familiar?”

  She rips the tag free and hands it to me. On one side is printed instructions for laundering the shirt. On the other side…there’s a bar code. It’s virtually identical to the one on my wrist.

  “I…” I glance at Trigger, but his focus is caught on the bar code. “I don’t…”

  “There’s a catalog,” Hennessy says. “Lakeview puts one out every year. It has pictures and specs on every genome that will be available for purchase and what skills the clones are trained for. You can place an order up to nine months in advance. Sometimes there are waiting lists.”