So that had been a genuine risk, not just another way to scare me. Funny thing; even knowing that, I was still scared plenty. “What’s going to happen to me?”
“They’re going to keep you as long as you stay useful, and then…” Gregory’s voice trailed off. “I’m sorry.”
I sighed. “Right. That was a bad question. Why are they doing this? Why waste all this time with me if they’re just going to bring her out of her chemical coma and drop me down the incinerator chute? What are they gaining from keeping me around?”
“You’re the display model. Why do you think Dr. Thomas was so upset when you went and got your hair cut? They want you to be as pretty as possible, to show the investors that this process is safe and painless and yields the best possible results.” Gregory touched the control panel. The image of subject 8b’s eyes vanished, replaced by a four-way split-screen of me being… me. Me, sitting on the bed, one leg tucked under my body, the other rhythmically kicking the mattress. Me, pacing around the edges of the room, my fingers snarled in the short hair above my ears. Me, eating. Me, walking down the hall. The views flickered from perspective to perspective, making it clear both that I had been recorded from multiple angles, and that someone had taken the time to edit it all together into a single continuous feed.
“What?” I asked, staring at the screen. My face stared back at me from a dozen different angles, and every angle showed the eyes that didn’t look as much like my own as the eyes on the clone intended to replace me.
“Everyone knows who Georgia Mason is. The girl who broadcast her own death and turned the tide of a political election. The one who told us to rise. You were the perfect candidate to prove that a person—a real, recognizable person—can return from the grave as themselves, rather than as a pretty, mindless toy.” Gregory glanced at me as he spoke. “They made you as accurate as possible, so that you could be the showroom model. You didn’t think the CDC bankrolled you on their own, did you?”
“I didn’t really think about it,” I said. “So what’s… the other one… supposed to be?”
“The street model. They spent a lot of money getting you right, and while you have a certain ‘unwitting celebrity spokesperson’ cachet, there’s no reason to waste good research. Building an accurate Georgia Mason taught them how to make an inaccurate one.”
For a moment, I just froze. It was like everything in me shut down, my brain refusing to cope with the enormity of what it was being asked to process. Then, slowly, I took a breath, nodded, and said, “How inaccurate are we talking? If I’m Georgia Mason, who’s she?”
“Not quite Georgia Mason.” He tapped the control panel again. There was a single muted beep before the servos engaged, followed by the deeply comforting whir of the metal shutter descending. I wouldn’t have to look at her anymore. Thank God.
“But I’m not quite Georgia Mason either, am I?” I looked up at him. “I can’t be. I’m willing to believe that the CDC can clone people. Hell, I’ve known for years that the CDC could clone people. But there was no convenient backup of my—of her—memories. So who am I?”
“You’re Georgia Mason.” Gregory stepped away from the wall, moving back into my field of view. “The point of all this was proving that the CDC can conquer death. I don’t understand all the science. My field is virology and corporate espionage, not human cloning and memory transfer. But I’ve seen your charts, and while you’re not a perfect replica of yourself, you have a ninety-seven percent accuracy rating. You’re as close as science can get to bringing a person back from the dead.”
“But how?”
“Neural snapshotting.”
I had to allow that it made sense, as much as I understood it, which wasn’t all that well. Thought, memory, everything that makes a person who they are, it’s all electricity, little sparks and flashes encoded in the gray matter of our minds. The Kellis-Amberlee virus takes us over, but it also preserves the brain long after the point of what should be death. It turns those electrical impulses back on, over and over again. If the CDC had a way of taking a picture of those electrical patterns, and then somehow imprinting them on a blank mind… it could work.
I shook my head, frowning at Gregory. “How can you be so calm?”
“How can you?” he shot back. “You’re not the first Georgia I’ve brought here, although you’re the most accurate. The highest transfer score before yours was seventy-five. She started screaming as soon as she saw the clone, and she didn’t stop. You’re the only one who hasn’t cried.”
“I’ll cry later, I promise,” I said, and I meant it. This was the sort of thing that needed to be processed before I could really let myself get upset. “How close is she? If I’m the ninety-seven percent girl, what’s she?”
“Subject 8b has been prepared through a modified conditioning process, which should, if fully successful, result in a forty-four percent accuracy rating when compared to the original, but with some behavioral adjustments,” said Gregory. “She’ll look like you. She’ll act like you…”
“She won’t be me,” I finished. “So what’s she for?”
For the first time since we’d arrived in the lab, Gregory looked at me like I’d said something wrong. “You mean you don’t know?” he asked.
“No. How would I—” I stopped mid-sentence, a sudden horrible certainty flooding over me. “They wouldn’t.”
“Wouldn’t what?”
Somehow, the one word I needed to say was harder to force out than all the others had been. “Shaun?”
Gregory nodded. “That’s the plan. You’ll stay here as long as you’re useful, and she’ll be put where he can find her. Mr. Mason is not particularly stable these days, and they’re reasonably sure he’ll believe whatever he’s told if he thinks it’s going to get you back. He’s not going to ask questions. He’s not going to look for double-crosses. He’s just going to open the doors and let her in.”
My lips thinned into a hard line. Maybe I wasn’t really who I thought I was. Maybe I wasn’t really anyone at all—if I wasn’t Georgia Mason, but I shared her DNA and ninety-seven percent of her personality profile, who else could I be? The one thing I was absolutely sure of was that none of that mattered, because these bastards were not going to use my genetic code to honey-trap the only human being in this world that I had ever been willing to die for.
“Then that’s just not going to happen,” I said. “What do we need to do?”
Gregory glanced at his watch. “Right now, we need to get you back to your room before our window closes. I should be able to get another message to you tomorrow night. You need to keep your eyes open. Keep behaving normally. They’re not going to take you off display unless you do something that makes it look like you’re beginning to destabilize.”
“By ‘take me off display,’ you mean kill me, right?”
He nodded.
“Got it,” I said. “And after that?”
“After that?” said Gregory. He smiled a little, clearly trying to look encouraging. I didn’t have the heart to tell him that all he was really managing to do was look scared. “I think it’s about time that we got you out of here, don’t you?”
“My thoughts exactly,” I said. “Let’s go.”
I don’t know why I bother writing these entries. It feels less like a blog and more like a diary every day, like I should be drawing hearts in the margins and writing stupid shit like “OMG I wonder if he’ll ever get over his stupid dead sister and love me” or “wish I could go shopping, I’ve had to burn half my favorite shirts due to contamination.” But it’s routine, and it’s a form of saying “f**k you” to the people who’ve driven us to this. Fuck you, government conspiracy. Fuck you, CDC. We’ll keep writing, and someday, we’ll be able to post again, and when that happens, you’d better pray we have something better to talk about than you.
But I don’t think we will.
Shaun is starting to crack. He’s covering it well, but I can see the fractures. During the outbreak yesterday, there were points where he just froze. It was like he wasn’t even a part of the situation anymore. I don’t know if he knows he’s doing it, and I’m scared. I’m scared he’s going to get one of us killed, and he’s never going to forgive himself. I’m scared he’s going to get even worse, and we’re going to let him, because we love him, and because we loved Georgia.
And I’m still going to follow him to Florida. God. My mother was right. I really am an idiot.
—From Charming Not Sincere, the blog of Rebecca Atherton, July 25, 2041. Unpublished.
She remained calm and reasonable throughout the encounter. She was able to ask coherent questions and give coherent answers. She remained controlled during the walk back to her room, and was able to return to her bed and feign normal sleep successfully enough to convince the orderly who came to relieve me. Stress fractures are still possible, but I believe we should continue as planned. I think this one is stable.
—Taken from a message sent by Dr. Gregory Lake, July 25, 2041. Recipient unknown.
Ten
The morning dawned bright and clean, with a clear blue sky that afforded absolutely no cloud cover. Any spy satellites that happened to pick up on our anomalous route—not many people take the back roads anymore, and fewer still do it in a way that allows them to skip all security checkpoints—would have a perfect line of sight.
“If we get picked up by the DEA on suspicion of being Canadian marijuana smugglers, I’m going to be pissed,” I muttered.
Becks looked up from her tablet, fingers still tracing an intricate dance across the screen. It was sort of unnerving that she could do that by nothing but the memory of where her apps were installed. I need a keyboard, or I lose my place in seconds. “What’s that?”