“I know what it’s like to have only one person you love, and lose her.”
“No,” I said. “I loved my mom and Jack. My son and Aunt Louise. Many people.”
Lyle studied the barrel of the gun I held a foot from his head. “Then I guess you don’t know what it’s like. To really have no one. To find yourself in a universe created to hate and punish you for reasons you don’t understand.” He looked me in the eye. “My c-father and I are the only ones who know. I thought you might have understood, the way you grew up. But you don’t.”
My gun hand wavered. I saw the little boy in his face. I should have kept hugging him, telling him he was loved even as he pushed me away. But I hadn’t. And now it was too late.
“You could have had love, too,” I said. “You could have had it with Lily and Aunt Louise and me and Evelyn. If you’d just let us live our lives the way we wanted. If you hadn’t tried to control us and force your love on Lily.”
I expected that to set him off. Then maybe I could bring myself to shoot him. But he was as calm as when he’d walked in.
“Lyle said that all of you would only hurt me. He was right.”
“Self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Lyle paused. “Some days I think you’re right.” My gun wavered again. I almost felt pity. “But nevertheless it’s true, isn’t it? Everyone hates me, but Lily.”
“Lily hates you, too.”
Lyle paused again. “Maybe.”
He stood up. My gun followed his head as he walked out of my house.
Maybe, that night, we were both alone.
*
Cain had forgiven me when Evelyn died, seeing his mother safely preserved for when she could be cured and brought back to him.
I sent Cain a text message. “Please come home.”
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Jack’s son Edmund performed the memorial service. People said it was a moving one, but it barely registered. Many of her friends spoke of their remembrances. I didn’t. I found it difficult to face anyone that day, much less stand in front of them and talk about my love and shame.
In the middle of one of the speeches, I stood up and walked away. The speaker stopped, several heads turned to look, but I kept my eyes on my feet. I didn’t have any conscious plan. I just knew I had to leave.
Hours later, when I noticed I was traveling north on State Route 99 through Bakersfield, I realized I was going to the cabin in the redwoods.
I stepped into the cabin’s living room and waited for something to happen. To find solace. To find it had all been a nightmare. To discover Evelyn waiting for me. But I found none of that. Only disquieting silence, except for the ticking of the grandfather clock.
I shuffled around the cabin in a daze for a while, then went outside and began hiking along my favorite trail. The beauty, grace, and power of the immortal redwoods would comfort me as they always had. But now, as I walked among the towering gods of the forest, they seemed only to shun me. These were austere deities devoid of feeling or concern for the countless humans they had seen pass through short and meaningless lives. I was but a mayfly, unworthy of their attention or comfort.
As I returned to the cabin, I saw Evelyn’s face through the window. I ran to the door and flung it open.
“Evelyn?”
And there she was. I began to run across the living room to her. But with horror I realized it wasn’t the cabin’s living room. I was standing in our Bohemian apartment in New York.
“Come on, turn that off,” Evelyn said, shaking a finger at me.
I saw myself sitting at the dining table where I had started recording a holographic video of Evelyn rehearsing for Dolly – the hologram now filling the cabin’s room. I didn’t remember doing it, but I must have turned the holovideo on before I left. I pulled a chair up to where my hologram was sitting and sat down so it would appear that the holographic Evelyn was looking at the real me.
“Come over here and make me,” my hologram said to her.
She sauntered over and sat in my lap. I could almost feel her. The memory was still so fresh. She kissed my hologram, and I imagined her lips against mine. Both my hologram and I moved the recording cell phone away from her as Evelyn made a grab for it.
“Nice try,” we said.
“Damn you,” she responded, punching my chest. She smiled as she got off my lap. “You’re supposed to be more overcome by my kiss than that!”
I laughed, but warm tears were sliding down my cheeks. She walked back to the other side of the room and began running through her lines again.
“Evelyn?”
She kept rehearsing.
“Evelyn, please. I’m sorry.”
She listened to my hologram say the butterfly’s lines.
“Did you know you were going to die because of me?” I asked. “That while you were facing Lily’s gun, and while you were fighting for Lily-3, that I’d just stand there. That I’d abandon you?”
“Who am I?” Evelyn asked an imaginary butterfly.
“Someone who cared about my life more than yours.”
Evelyn looked up to see the butterfly flying away.
“And now I care about your life more than mine.” I stood and headed toward the door.
“Come back!” she cried.
I turned, but she was looking up for the butterfly that would have flown off stage.
I went out to my car and drove into the nearest town. There I purchased some wrapping paper, a small wooden box, a box of ammunition, and a 9 mm. semi-automatic pistol similar to the one Lyle-1 had given me many Christmases ago.
The holovideo was replaying itself when I got back. I left it on. I wanted Evelyn to see justice played out.
I printed several copies of Evelyn’s wedding portrait. I crumpled them up into balls and placed them in the wooden box with the gun at the bottom. I wrapped the box in wrapping paper. My gift to the world. To Evelyn. To my mom. To all those who loved me and would have died for that love. No more would have to.
I tore open the wrapping paper, opened the box, and began taking out the crumpled balls of paper one by one. I smoothed out each page, touching the picture of Evelyn. Finally my fingers touched the cold steel of the gun. I slid my fingers back and forth along its barrel. I imagined Lyle-1 standing in front of me, smiling confidently.
“And it’s loaded,” I heard him say.
This time I knew it was true.
I put the barrel to my temple, watching Evelyn’s blurry hologram through my tears. “I love you.”
“Who are ewe?” she asked the caterpillar.
“A mistake.” Gabrielle Burns had been right. I should have never been born.
I closed my eyes. My fingertip slid up and down the smooth trigger. Lily had done it twice. Both my clone-father and his father had killed themselves. For some reason I had thought suicide was easy. Now I began to feel the dark fear that must have choked their minds as the paralysis crept up my c-father’s body, as his father saw the rocky shore rushing towards him, as both Lilys felt the barrel of the gun against their skin. But they had done it. They had done it because their lives were unbearable. Because, even though it was terrifying, it was the easy way out. I could get out too. Escape this life. Maybe be with Evelyn and my mom again. Join them in the coffin.
My finger stopped sliding along the trigger, and cradled it.
“Don’t.”
I opened my eyes to look at Evelyn.
“Dad?”
Cain’s voice had come from behind me.
“Go away.”
I heard him close the door and walk up to me. “No.”
“It’s my fault she’s dead.”
Cain turned off the holovideo, then eased the gun away from my head.
“Dad, you can’t do this.”
“But it’s true.”
He unloaded the gun and placed it on the fireplace mantle. “Jack was right,” he said. “You let your past consume your future.”
&n
bsp; I eyed the empty gun.
“Lily-3 still needs our help,” he continued. “Mom’s clone is going to be born in December. Stop thinking about yourself and be there for them. That’s what you owe to Mom. Not your life.”
“It’s not my life,” I said, still focused on the gun. “I’m going to kill him.”
“You mean Adam-1?” He sat down in a chair opposite me. “Dad, don’t you get it?”
I didn’t answer.
“You’re not just your genes. You know that. You are your genes after having been loved and influenced by Mom, and your mom, and Jack. And me.” He sat down next to me. “There’s more of us in you than your c-father. You want to lose all that?”
My eyes dropped from the gun to the photos of Evelyn scattered around me. I shook my head.
“Neither do I.”
I admired my son. “You don’t hate me?”
He took my arm to pull me up, and he hugged me. And then he said something I hadn’t heard since he was three years old. “I love you.”
Cain stayed at the cabin overnight, and the next morning I followed him back to La Jolla. On the way, I vowed to myself to try to be a good father to both Cain and Evelyn-2. The kind of father I’d never known.
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Evelyn-2 was conceived in the artificial womb on what would have been Evelyn’s forty-third birthday. She was born on December 13, 2077.
Her resemblance was unnerving – a resemblance that would undoubtedly continue to grow. I had mixed emotions as I held Evelyn-2 the first time. My joy that Evelyn’s DNA would have another chance at creating a remarkable life, and my despair that she wasn’t my Evelyn. My hope that Evelyn-2 would have her own individual life unencumbered by the achievements of her c-mother, and my even deeper desire that she would be exactly like the Evelyn I’d known. The hypocrisy was not lost on me. We don’t always have the feelings that we want to have.
My exact relationship with Evelyn-2 was a bit confusing. We decided that Evelyn-2 would know me as Uncle Adam, which was technically incorrect. As Hannah’s second daughter, Evelyn-2 was my sister-in-law. If we considered her to be Evelyn’s daughter, then she was Hannah’s granddaughter and either my daughter or stepdaughter. The law would have allowed any of those designations. But the “uncle” label sounded best. It also made for an amusing moment when we tried to explain to a young Evelyn-2 how I was her Uncle Adam via being married to her c-mother. She made the connection that if I was her uncle then her c-mother was her aunt, and if she were her aunt’s clone, then she would be her own aunt.
So you can see we really screwed her up by the earliest possible age.
Actually, she was quite sane. For a clone. And although her personality was considerably more introverted than my wife’s, she seemed to share a connection with her clone-mother from the earliest age that I deeply appreciated.
I took Cain and Evelyn to the San Diego Wild Animal Park when she was two. She loved the nursery with its rooms and rooms of rare baby animals, half of them clones. Evelyn adored cats especially, and she had trouble keeping her head, hands, arms, and feet inside the tram as we rode past the lions. I introduced her at a distance to the now geriatric twenty-one-year-old Bengal tigers her c-mother and I had once cuddled. Then we lingered at the cheetah enclosure. The cheetahs were captivated by the young morsel at my side. Evelyn was fascinated with the way the cheetahs paced back and forth, looking hungrily at our little family. We eventually dragged Evelyn onward, to our relief and her dismay. And no doubt the disappointment of the hungry kitties.
That afternoon, I took her and Cain to our spot overlooking the savannah. Evelyn-2 gazed in total silence for several minutes.
“I love it here,” she said.
“You know what?” I knelt in front of her. “This was your c-mom’s favorite place.”
Evelyn lowered her head a tad to shyly look at me from the tops of her eyes, and grinned.
***
Cain was seventeen when Evelyn-2 was born, a loving and protective big brother who spoiled her any chance he had. She took to his doting from her first days on earth. He called her “Evie,” and sometimes playfully called her “Mom.” She’d often marvel at the latter, happy about her special relationship with Cain that she shared with her clone-mother. Cain adored her, and whenever he saw me playing with her, he would grin at us both.
But there was another little girl he had once loved, and he wouldn’t let her go as easily as I had. On October 14, 2078, Lily-3 turned eighteen. Legally an adult, and able to choose to stay with Lyle or leave him.
“Will you go with me?” Cain asked as he got ready to go to Lyle’s house.
It was a Friday, and Cain hoped Lyle wouldn’t be home. At least, that’s what he said. He may have been hoping for a confrontation.
“I’ll drive,” I said, thinking I might at least keep the situation under control.
Lyle was home. In fact, based on the number of cars parked outside the house, there must have been dozens there. We could hear piano music coming from the inside, and there were a few decorations in view. An artificial attendant answered the door.
“May I help you?” he asked.
“We’re here for Lily’s birthday,” I said.
The attendant examined us both. “I’m sorry. Adam and Cain Elwell are not allowed on the premises.”
“May we speak to Lyle?”
“I will ask,” he said. He made no visible movement or audible noise, but must have still alerted Lyle to our presence. Lyle walked up from behind him.
“You weren’t invited to the party,” Lyle said, gesturing for his attendant to stand behind him. “I’ll have to ask you to leave.”
“We’d like to see Lily,” I said.
Cain stepped forward. “We’re not leaving without seeing her.”
Lyle remained calm. “My attendant and security guards are recording this. If either of you forcibly trespass on my property, I’ll see you prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
“You can’t do this!” Cain shouted.
“I can’t decide who enters my house?”
“You can’t keep her here against her will,” Cain said. “She’s eighteen.”
Lyle’s jaw was beginning to work back and forth. “I’d never keep her against her will. Nor am I going to let you take her against her will. So get off my property or I’ll send for the police.”
Cain’s face twisted, not knowing what to do. “Lily!” he shouted, peering over Lyle’s shoulder into the house. “Lily! It’s Cain!”
“The police are on their way,” said the attendant. “You will both be arrested.”
Cain backpedaled so he could see into the windows on the first and second floor. “Lily!” he yelled again, waving his arms.
Lyle’s calm exterior was quickly breaking down as he watched Cain run about on his front yard. Then he turned to me.
“It’s done,” he said.
“What’s done?”
His eyes strayed to Cain, and then back to mine. “If I see your son again, I’ll kill him.”
I sprang towards him, but the artificial attendant was quicker. He held me tightly in check on the porch until I began to ease my struggles. By then Lyle had closed the door and Cain was grabbing the attendant from around the neck. I heard police sirens in the background.
“Are you prepared to leave?” asked the attendant.
“Let him go!” Cain demanded, releasing the attendant’s neck.
The attendant released me. Cain pushed him once more in the back, although the artificial attendant didn’t appear to notice.
“We’ll be back!” he shouted as we slowly walked away, Cain’s eyes searching all the windows one last time.
I knew he wouldn’t see her. She was playing the piano. Right after Cain had started yelling for her, I’d heard the song change to Delta Dawn. Lily knew we were there, and she was trying to let me know she was there, too.
I told Cain that she would have come out
if she’d wanted, and that there was nothing we could have done if she hadn’t wanted to come out. Of course, deep down I knew that wasn’t true. We could have waited for the police, lied to them, and got them to question Lily with us all there, and she would have truly had a chance to escape Lyle’s grip. But I never mentioned that possibility.
When we were served the restraining order, I begged Cain not to get arrested. That it would be futile with Lyle’s security. I promised that I’d find some other way to get to Lily.
Then I told Hannah about the events of the day. Mostly because I knew she’d be on my side, not wanting us to push Lyle any further, and I hoped she would work on Cain to stop him from doing anything more provoking.
She didn’t say what I’d hoped she’d say.
“By trying to save Cain, you might end up losing him.”
“What are you saying?” I asked. “You want me to fight Lyle and get us all killed?”
She covered my hand in hers. “No. I don’t want anyone to get killed.”
“I thought you’d be on my side.”
Hannah frowned. “Because I didn’t want you to marry my daughter?”
I didn’t respond. That was so far behind us, I didn’t want to drag it back out.
“Adam, I was wrong. I’m glad Evelyn married you.”
I shook my head. “How could you be?”
“Because she was happy for forty-two years. Do you think she would have been happy living for centuries as a person she hated? She would have just been unhappy for centuries.”
“I can’t,” I said. “I can’t risk losing more.”
She nodded. “Adam. Millions died risking their lives against the tyrants of the world. But many more millions would have died if they hadn’t. Sometimes more harm is done by doing nothing.”
I stared at our hands. “But I’ll lose.”
“Your mother lost.” She squeezed my hand. “But how proud are you of how hard she fought?”
***
On Monday, I went to the corporate office of Barebots and met with Nikki Menae. I told her why I had resigned from Ingeneuity and about what was happening between Lyle, Lily, and my family. She hired me as the liaison with the far smaller AIS competitor Aisenter, a company that specialized in protecting the central nervous system. And she put an end to the joint project with Ingeneuity. We would develop the ability to sustain a human brain inside a Barebot shell without them. She promised me that. And she would prove to be right.