by J. W. Elliot
Willow refused to answer any of his questions until she paused in front of a door, gave Kaiden a meaningful glance, keyed in the entry code, and stepped through. Kaiden strode two steps into the room and stopped.
His gaze roamed the gigantic space. As far as he could see, rows of transparent tanks that glowed green held membrane sacks in which human infants wiggled and kicked. Red, blinking lights overhead cast a ruddy, pulsating glow over the darkened room. Kaiden blinked at the ghostly menace of the lights and shivered.
“It’s called the Genesis Room,” Willow said. “These are motherless womb chambers called ectogenesis.” She paused and turned to watch him. “We all began in a room like this.”
Heat spread in Kaiden’s chest and rose into his face. He had never felt so violated, so betrayed. Not him, surely. He knew the clones he transported to and from the moon were created and raised at TAP, so he wasn’t surprised to find the Genesis Room here. But he had never visited, never seen the cold inhumanity of the motherless womb.
“I…I…” He tried to think of something to say. He wanted to reject the whole idea. He wanted to call her a liar and a lunatic. But the evidence of the hundreds, maybe thousands of wiggling infants that surrounded him could not be wished away.
“I thought the clones were still being studied in a small pilot program,” he said. “How can there be so many?”
Willow grimaced at him and gestured for him to walk with her.
“They use an accelerated growth hormone to hasten our arrival at maturity. That way, they can keep pumping us out like manufactured robots. They get clones in half the time it takes a natural child to develop, so they can test their techniques without having to wait ten to twenty years.”
Kaiden couldn’t tear his gaze away from the babies swimming in the clear fluid. There were blacks, like him, Asians, whites—every variety of human. There must have been thousands of babies in various stages of development, all of them encased in a semi-transparent uterus and fed by tubes that pumped human blood through the membrane. The sight so unnerved Kaiden that he could only gaze wide-eyed at the tanks—row after row of them—awash in eerie green light.
Willow led him through another door and down several corridors that he recognized as they entered the primary ward. He came here when he was ten years old-after being rescued from the overcrowded orphanage where he fought for his food and a place to sleep. How could he have lived so close to the Genesis Room and not even know it was there?
Willow stopped at an observation window, and they gazed out over a crowd of toddlers, all busy with their little hologram screens or sitting on the floor playing with complicated erector sets and diagrams of cells or DNA. They already wore the different colored jackets. Even at this age, TAP had tracked and tested each one. Every child grew up knowing what they would do. A few caregivers dressed in light blue lab coats worked with them. One glanced up at and saw them. She raised her hand in a friendly wave.
“Do you remember this?” Kaiden asked because he didn’t. He remembered the fleas and the cold, hard floor where he was forced to make his bed out of a bunch of rags. He remembered the beatings and the teacher that smelled of alcohol. If he had been born at TAP, how could he remember the orphanage?
“I do,” Willow said. “And I remember my father dropping me off at a real school in Chicago. I remember winning a scholarship to an accelerated high school and getting my doctorate in genetic therapy with a specialty in the field of Cognitive Redesign just after I turned eighteen. And I remember dying with the warmth of my mother’s lips still on my forehead and the moisture of her tears on my cheek.”
Silence settled between them as Willow stared out over the busy, little children and their caregivers. A great emptiness expanded inside Kaiden. He longed to know who he had been. If what Willow had said was true, he had probably had a family like hers.
“Do you think that’s what I’m remembering?” Kaiden asked. “My real life before they cloned me?”
Willow gave him that pitying glance again that confirmed his suspicions.
“But how? They would have to transplant my brain from one body to the next for me to remember things that I experience in a different clone body. That’s how the brain works.”
“No. All they have to do is download your memories as binary code,” Willow said. “The files can be saved and manipulated and then uploaded into a newly cloned brain that is mature enough to handle it. The problem is that the science of modifying memories or completely erasing them isn’t advanced enough to control how much we remember. For example, the manipulation of memories never works on me. I’m always aware, and when they download my memories from one body and upload them again into my new clone, I get everything from the previous clone body plus what I remember from before that.”
“That’s got to be awful,” Kaiden said. “I mean, all I could remember until a few days ago was the brutal life of the orphanage. But now...” He didn’t know what to say.
“Seen enough?” Willow asked.
Kaiden stuffed his hands into his pockets.
Willow started back the way they had come.
“Have you ever eaten grapes at TAP?” she asked as they walked.
The question took Kaiden by surprise. “What? No.”
“Why don’t you like them, then?”
Kaiden pondered, trying to recall that strange memory. “They felt like eyeballs popping in my mouth.”
Willow glanced at him and smiled. She shook her head. “Have you ever had an eyeball pop in your mouth?”
Kaiden shrugged. He guessed not, but how could he be sure now?
Minutes later, they stepped back into the little room of the lab where Willow had first taken him. Kaiden plopped down on a stool and popped his knuckles.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s say I believe you. How does this work?”
“What? TAP?”
Kaiden gestured impatiently with his hands. “Yes, TAP. Everything. How could I not remember who I am?”
Willow didn’t smile. Her expression became sad, hopeless. “You’ve heard of a Synaptic Download?” she asked.
Kaiden rubbed a hand over his course, short-cropped hair. “Yeah, it’s theoretical.”
Willow shook her head. “No, it isn’t.”
“That’s what you meant when you said they downloaded our memories? You actually believe that our memories were downloaded before we died and uploaded into a new clone of ourselves when the clone was thirteen?”
“Yep. Well, they execute the upload at age thirteen for girls and age fourteen for boys so that we are each near the end of puberty. With the exception of the frontal lobe, the mind’s patterns are set by then.”
“I don’t believe it,” Kaiden said. “What happens to our memories of growing up inside TAP, then?” Kaiden asked. “Wouldn’t we still have all of those?”
“You do,” Willow said. “But most of those memories were overwritten by new ones, so you would think you came here at a younger age.”
“Why? It doesn’t make any sense. Why not just recruit scientists to work for them?”
Willow took a deep breath and gave Kaiden a sympathetic look. “They do recruit scientists. But you have to understand that we are part of the experiments, Kaiden. We’re just rats in a big lab.”
“But how?” Kaiden was having trouble grasping all of this. “Memories aren’t like computer files. They’re stored in brain matter and scattered all over the place. Even I know that.”
His world perched on the edge of an abyss. If he accepted what she was saying, then he was nothing—just a cluster of cells and a few computer files being run through a series of tests to satisfy some scientist’s curiosity. His identity—his sense of self-worth meant nothing. He had never had a family, just a bunch of other babies reared in test tubes.
Willow picked at a thread on her lab coat. “It’s what use
d to be called whole brain emulation or mind mapping,” she said. “Your brain has about 86 billion neurons connected through electrochemical activity. That activity can be recorded, downloaded, saved, manipulated, and even uploaded into another human brain. It’s a technique called Cognitive Redesign.”
“You mentioned that before,” Kaiden said.
Willow averted her gaze. “Yes. It’s my area of specialty.”
“So you remember growing up in TAP?”
“Yes, because for some reason, the Cognitive Redesign doesn’t work on my brain. I remember both the things that really happened and the memories they uploaded.”
“Could there be others like you?”
Willow smiled. “Most definitely, but usually people only have a few memories that survive from before.”
“Which is what is happening to me?” Kaiden asked.
“Yeah. The explosion or the concussion may have triggered it.”
It made sense, but something about the way she said this made him wonder if there was something more she wasn’t telling him.
“So, what now?” Kaiden asked.
“If you want to know why Quill was killed, and you want to get your memories back, you’re going to have to do something more radical.”
Kaiden studied her. “You mean like sneaking into TAP’s top security files?”
Willow nodded. “But I don’t want to die doing it. They have ways of tracking everything that happens inside TAP. Remember, we are part of their experiments. They’re collecting data on us.”
Kaiden rose. He wasn’t going to take this quietly. “Quill can get us in,” he said.
Willow stared at him. “I thought you said he died.”
The bitter ached filled Kaiden’s chest again. “He did. But he can still get us in.”
Chapter Nine
Ally
“Where have you been?” Birch leaned against the wall of the corridor by Kaiden’s door with her arms folded. Her short, brown hair fell before her eyes. She had a lithe figure and an open, intelligent face.
“I’m on administrative suspension,” Kaiden said. He liked Birch, but right now, he had more important things to do than catch up.
“I noticed,” she said. “So, that means you can just ignore your friends?”
“I’m not sure who my friends are.” Kaiden hadn’t forgotten the discussion in the weapons room on the airship. Birch had sided with him, but Greyson had been surly.
Birch looked as if he had slapped her face. “We have one bad mission, and you decide to freak out on us? Go all haywall.”
Kaiden sniffed. “It’s haywire, Birch. Not haywall. Besides, it was two bad missions. And Quill was murdered by a member of our team.” His voice rose. He had been betrayed, and Quill was dead. He couldn’t forget it or forgive.
Birch pushed herself off the wall and stepped toward him. Her face flushed bright red. “You don’t know that!” she yelled.
“See what I mean?” Kaiden said as he threw up his hands and pushed past her into his room.
Birch followed him to the door. “Look,” she said, “I know how much Quill and the others meant to you, but you can’t just push the rest of us away.”
Kaiden dropped into a chair at the table where he had left the pillowcase full of Quill’s stuff. Birch came in and plopped into the chair opposite him.
“Greyson blames me,” Kaiden said.
Birch folded her hands on the table. “He’s just sad and frustrated,” she said. “They were his friends, too.”
“What do you want?” Kaiden said.
“Man,” Birch said, “sometimes you are the biggest baby I know. I just wanted to make sure you were all right. I’ve been worried about you like any good teammate would be.” She stood. “But if you’re determined to be a pig, then I’ll just go find Greyson, and we can argue about how stupid you are.” Birch spun to leave.
“Sorry,” Kaiden said.
“You should be.”
“Things have changed,” Kaiden said.
Birch whirled. “Yeah, they have,” she said, “and we need to move on. We still have work to do.”
Birch glanced at the pillowcase and raised her eyebrows.
“Do you normally store your stuff in a pillowcase?”
Kaiden clicked off his wrist terminal and waited for Birch to turn hers off, too.
Then, he extracted the larger DWJ from the pillowcase and set it on the table. He adjusted the antennae and clicked it on. The quiet hum filled the room.
“It’s Quill’s stuff,” he whispered.
“Are you supposed to have it?” Birch scowled.
“No.”
“Soooo?” Birch waved her hand, encouraging him to continue.
Kaiden considered. He’d spent two weeks trying to decide who ordered Quill’s execution. It could only be Rio or Noah. Rio was the head of all TAP security at Ararat, and he reported directly to Noah, the director of The Ark Project. Either way, Rio must know about it. Maybe Rio had sent Birch to spy on him.
“First,” Kaiden said, “I have to know that you’re on my side.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Birch’s face tightened in anger, and she planted her fists on her hips.
“Give me your word you weren’t sent to spy on me and that you won’t betray me.”
“What? Betray you to whom?”
“Swear it.”
Birch threw up her hands and sank into a chair at the table. “All right, I swear it.”
Kaiden stared at her. He was taking a risk to trust her, but they were old friends. Birch had been the first to befriend him when he had arrived fresh from the orphanage, frightened and uncertain. At least, that is what he thought. He didn’t know what truly happened anymore.
“Do you really want to know?” he asked.
“Are you trying to make me more curious, or what?”
“No,” Kaiden said, “but this is what got Quill killed.”
Birch sat up straight. “What are you talking about?”
Kaiden started pulling things out of the pillowcase. When he had them all lined up in a row, Birch just stared at him.
“Nano-bots?” she said. “You’re kidding.”
“He used them to hack into the highest classified level on the central computer.”
“No.” Birch’s eyes widened. “What an idiot. He was asking for trouble.”
“And I’m going to do it again,” Kaiden continued.
For the first time in his life, Kaiden had rendered Birch speechless. A wry smile twisted Kaiden’s lips at the thought. “Unless you betray me.”
Birch finally found her voice. “You’re serious.”
“TAP isn’t what we were taught it was,” he said. “Something else is going on here.”
Birch smirked at him. “I could have told you that,” she said.
“What?” Kaiden hadn’t expected this. As he gazed at the smirk on Birch’s face, he realized that he probably didn’t know her as well as he thought.
“You know,” Birch said, “if you spent more time talking to folks in TAP rather than listening to classical music and playing video games, you might have figured that out for yourself.”
“Now, what are you talking about?” Kaiden asked.
Birch rolled her eyes and folded her arms. “The Destroying Angels say we’re cloning our own army of super-soldiers. Everyone’s been talking about it.”
“They’re fanatics. And the intel says otherwise.”
“And,” Birch continued, “we have a Genesis Room with thousands of little babies cloned each year.”
“How do you know about that?”
“Because I ask questions.” Birch’s gaze passed over Quill’s equipment.
“I’m in,” she said.
“What?”
“Ja
de will be in, too.”
Kaiden realized that he had just lost control of the conversation. “No,” he said. “I’m doing this alone.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I don’t want anyone else getting hurt. Wait. What did you say?” Kaiden eyed Birch suspiciously.
“You’re not alone.” She raised her eyebrows dramatically. “Willow?”
“Ah,” Kaiden finally understood. “She sent you?”
“No,” Birch said. “She just said you were upset.”
“How do you know her?” Again, Birch had thrown Kaiden into a tailspin. Were all girls like this? How much more did she know that he didn’t?
“Do I have to roll my eyes at you again?” Birch said. She snapped her fingers in his face. “Wake up, Kaiden. It’s time you popped that little bubble world you live in.”
“I haven’t been ignoring the real world,” Kaiden said. “I just haven’t wasted time on information that wasn’t relevant to my missions or to keeping my team alive.”
“Well, it looks like the big picture just became mission-critical information.”
“Yeah,” Kaiden said, “and we have some catching up to do.” He paused. “Wait, who else have you been talking to besides Willow?” Kaiden was suddenly afraid that Birch had already compromised him.
“I don’t know Iris from a giraffe,” Birch said. “Greyson needs time, but he’ll come around.”
“What?” Kaiden asked. Sometimes Birch’s verbal gaffes didn’t make any sense at all. “What does a giraffe have to do with anything?”
Birch gave him an innocent look. “What are you blabbering about?”
Kaiden sighed but chose to keep going rather than get stalled in an argument with Birch over giraffes. She probably meant she didn’t know Iris well.
