The Book of Adam: Autobiography of the First Human Clone

  “Lily,” Lyle said.

  She flinched, then reached into her coat pocket and withdrew a gun. She wrapped both her small hands around the handle and held it dangling to the floor in front of her, as if even with two hands she couldn’t lift the weight.

  Lyle looked us over. “Good, you guys are ready. We’re going to go for a walk outside.”

  “We’re not going,” I answered. I felt my body begin to tingle, tinnitus buzzing my head. Out of the corner of an eye I saw Cain take Evelyn’s hand.

  “Your choice. If we have to kill you here, you die in pain. What’ll it be?”

  I hesitated.

  Lyle shrugged. “Make your decision,” he said as he pointed the gun at Cain. Pierre leaped at Lyle-2 and locked his jaws around Lyle’s gun hand, pushing him up against the wall. Lily backed away as Lyle struck Pierre’s head with his free hand.

  “Lily!” he shouted, spit flying from his mouth.

  The gun I’d once bought to kill myself was in the back of a kitchen cabinet. I turned to get it, but I stopped cold at the doorway. For I was already standing there. The wood-framed kitchen doorway seemed to have become a mirror. In my mind, it transformed into a mirrored coffin.

  No. He wasn’t my mirror image exactly. He was wearing different clothes, his hair was grayer, and his face looked older, wearier than mine. An android, perhaps. But if they had managed to create such a realistic-looking android, they would have made a better replica than this. Of course I knew who it was, though for a moment I didn’t want to acknowledge it. My nightmares were coming true. I wasn’t staring at a mirrored coffin at all. I was staring at my grandfather.

  He had a gun, too.

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  A shot was fired behind me. That was the only thing that could have torn my gaze away from the man in front of me. I jerked around and reached out to Cain and Evelyn, but they were unhurt. I turned the rest of the way to see that Lyle had managed to fire his weapon. Pierre lay dead on the floor, two of Lyle’s fingers imprisoned in his jaws. Blood from Lyle’s mangled hand dripped on our dog. Blue streaked out the open front door.

  And Adam-1 stepped into the living room. Cain and Evelyn seemed to take it in fairly quickly. The three of us stood still, for the moment in stunned surrender. Over time I had grown accustomed to the ticking of Lyle’s old grandfather clock, and I hadn’t noticed it since the day I nearly took my own life. Now I did again. Perhaps it was the ticking of the clock that brought it to my head, but while looking from Adam to Lily to Lyle, I heard Jacob Marley say, “You will be haunted by three spirits.” It seemed so real that I glanced at the screen to make sure our Scrooge movie wasn’t replaying.

  I may have been losing my mind. There was no movie. And my three ghosts, all from Christmas Past, were three flesh-and-blood bodies.

  Lily found a towel and wrapped it around Lyle’s maimed hand. He cringed as she treated him. I realized, regrettably, that his artificial blood and AIS would stop the bleeding and the pain within a minute or so.

  My attention returned to the figure standing in front of me. Long ago emotions began to seep in through the wall of shock. The man my mother had loved as her father. The father who saved me from the witch, whose holographic lap I had once sat in as he wished me Happy Birthday, who told me he was proud of me. “You’re alive.”

  He surveyed me, his eyes pausing over my face. “Hmm.” Then he turned from me to see how Lyle was doing.

  I shouldn’t have been that surprised. Although his letters and journal had said nothing about putting his body into cryonic freeze, such a development should have been obvious. A man so obsessed with immortality would have grasped at all available options. The possibility of ever being awoken from cryonic freeze in 2033 would have been considered extremely remote, but there was still a semblance of a chance. Surely that was part of the reason he chose a form of suicide that would allow him to be taken to the hospital, where he would die under controlled circumstances. What shook me was that he had kept it from me.

  “Why didn’t you tell me in your journal?” I asked.

  My grandpa ignored me, focused only on Lyle. “Are you okay?”

  Cain put a hand on my shoulder to steady me. My c-father was closer to Lyle after all, not feeling that he could trust his clone to unfreeze him if the opportunity arose. He cared as little about me as I’d convinced myself that I cared about him for so many years. He was not the father who would save me from witches with curled fingernails, or who would join me in creating a life we could both be proud of, or reminisce about Sarah and comfort one another in her loss. He simply saw me as a tool to his immortality. A tool that was no longer needed.

  “Cain, I’d like to introduce you to your great-grandfather, Adam-1,” I said.

  Adam-1 looked back at Cain. “He’s not related to me.”

  “That’s your loss,” I told my c-father. “With my life you finally got to marry and have children out of love, not just to push your career and hide from death.”

  I heard Lily-3 gasp. She, of course, knew nothing of the revelations I’d leveled at Lily-2 on that Christmas Eve a quarter century ago, and I immediately regretted my words.

  Adam-1 glanced at Lily-3. “Don’t worry. He’s lying.” He patted her arm. “We’ve been in love for a century.”

  Her eyes met his and the corners of her lips perked up a little. I saw Lyle watching them. He frowned.

  “Why are you doing this?” I asked Adam. But he ignored me again.

  “Why do you think?” Lyle-2 said, responding for him, turning back to me. He now held his gun in his left hand and pressed his injured hand against his leg. “You broke Lily’s heart, stole my business, and turned your back on your clone-father. It’s time to end this, and let Adam have his life back.” He glanced at Cain and Evelyn. “And get rid of the ones who made Lily end her life.”

  “You’re the one who made her kill herself,” I said. “She couldn’t stand to be molested by you.”

  My clone-father looked at Lily. She shrunk from Adam’s questioning expression and Lyle’s rage. Lyle’s head had turned red like I’d seen his c-father’s turn at a Thanksgiving dinner long ago.

  “Lily,” Cain said, reaching out. “Come with us.”

  At first she seemed frozen. But slowly her gun began to lower, her wide eyes fixed on Cain. He took a step toward her.

  “Don’t,” said Lyle.

  I almost told him to stop. To abandon Lily. To be the kind of man I’d always been. But I didn’t.

  Cain took another step, and Lyle fired. My son dropped to the floor.

  “Idiot!” Adam-1 hissed at Lyle. “Do you want to create more evidence?”

  Evelyn fell to the floor by Cain’s head, and I followed. He was dazed, his eyes rolling around. Evelyn propped his head up and held him to her.

  “You’re okay,” she told him. “You’re gonna be okay.”

  I thought she might be right. There was just a small spot of blood between his heart and stomach. But then I saw the exit wound, and the red-black stain that saturated Evelyn’s pants and sweater.

  I didn’t say anything to my son. I didn’t tell him I loved him, how proud I was of him, that he was a better man than I had been. I wanted to, but nothing came out. I enveloped Cain with my body, holding him fast between us.

  Cain’s eyes focused on Evelyn’s. They were hauntingly calm. “I’ll be your son again.”

  She nodded. “Yes,” she whispered. She put her forehead against his. “Yes.”

  He closed his eyes and the side of his head fell against Evelyn’s chest. My son was still.

  She shook him. “Cain?” she said shakily.

  I held them both tighter.

  “Cain,” she sobbed. She buried her face into his hair, and then began to graze her fingernails through the hair around his temples, as if she was trying to soothe him to sleep.

  I stood up. Fear, helplessness, and rage engulfed my mind. Keep them safe. My son was dead. But I heard
his voice. What are you going to do? I took a step. Kill Lyle.

  I stopped. In my youth I’d been too timid. After Lyle’s death I became too rash. Now I had to find the balance like Jack, keeping my head clear and acting less impulsively in the hopes of finding an opportunity to save Evelyn. And at that point, she was the last remaining reason to live.

  “We need to get going,” Lyle said. “Adam,” he pointed his gun at me, “you’re going to have to carry…” His eyes went back to the man he’d just killed. He was rattled, but I didn’t know if it was his injured hand or the killing of my son.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  His eyes were locked on my son’s body. “Just pick him up.”

  “Don’t do this,” I said softly to my clone-father. “You’ve already wasted one life as the puppet of the man who killed your daughter.”

  “What?” Adam-1 blinked. He looked at me as if for the first time, searching my face for signs of deception. “What?”

  “It’s true,” I said. “Lyle knows.”

  Adam faced Lyle, his gun raised a few inches.

  “He’s just trying to turn us against each other,” Lyle-2 said. “Let’s get going. We’ve got a long night.”

  “A woman named Gabrielle Burns murdered Sarah,” Adam-1 said finally. “I had a dream you made up that lie.”

  My jaw went slack. I grabbed the sleeve of his jacket. “In a cemetery?”

  He raised his gun toward me, but stopped and met my eyes. He was silent. I’d heard that identical twins sometimes appeared to share thoughts, having some sort of subconscious connection, even when separated. Did we have a similar connection? Had we already met? Was that why he began talking to me in the nightmare last March – because he had been awakened from cryonic freeze? Or were we sharing dreams because we shared the same soul after all?

  “Come on,” Lyle pressed.

  I kept my focus on my clone-father. “Were we in a cemetery?”

  “Let’s go,” he answered after a pause.

  “And if we refuse?”

  Lyle touched his ear as if he was listening to something. “I’ll shoot Evelyn in her knees and stomach, wait until her AIS saves her squirming and screaming body from its agony, and then shoot her in the head. Then we’ll make two trips during which you can drag each of them through the forest. But it’ll be a lot easier on all of us if you pick up your son and drag him with us while she walks.”

  I looked at Evelyn. She was still cradling the lifeless body of Cain. Her tears had ceased, and she was staring off into space. Eventually she sensed I was watching her and turned to face me.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  “Enough talk.” Lyle-2 demanded.

  Evelyn let me take my son from her, and she stood up to go. But instead of walking toward the door, she walked toward the wall where her backpack sat.

  “Stop,” said Lyle.

  Evelyn stopped in mid-stride just a foot from her backpack while Lyle again put his hand to his ear, then nodded to Lily.

  “Let the Jew have her Star of David.”

  Lily walked over to the backpack and carefully pulled out the sketches and art supplies. She handed the empty bag to Evelyn without looking up. Evelyn’s eyes flashed a spark of gratitude as she clutched the heirloom closely to her chest.

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  And so we began our journey into the woods.

  Except for occasional orders from Lyle-2 to move faster and some grunting as Evelyn or I slipped or scratched ourselves through the steeper and more overgrown areas, the journey was a silent one. And it was dark – not the lustrous full moon so often seen in my nightmare. The moon was but a tiny sliver as it neared its new moon stage. The stars, so vivid and alive in the dark, clear skies of Sequoia National Park, provided most of the feeble natural light, while our captors led the way with flashlights. Still, I knew the mountains well, and I could see enough to know where we were. They were taking us to an area far from where typical backpackers were likely to go. Only the native wildlife would ever discover us.

  My load was a weight on my arms and my soul. Most of the time I walked backwards, holding Cain up under his armpits while his feet dragged shallow grooves through the snow. Sometimes on the flatter stretches I would put him over my shoulder or cradle him in my arms like I had when he was born. It was during the latter when the pain was most acute. Then I could see his quiet face dimly lit by the starlight. I wondered if he now knew the answers to the questions that dogged the astrophysicists. Did he now know the true nature of reality and of the multiverse, and humanity’s purpose in it all? Or was there nothing – either because there was nothing there, or because clones truly had no soul with which to see what lies beyond?

  “What did you see?” I asked Adam, who was walking ahead of me.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When you were dead.” I slipped on some snow and fell to my knees.

  He backtracked to help me, holding Cain as I got to my feet.

  “Tell me,” I said as he eased my son back into my arms.

  “It’s cold. It’s dark. Suffocating,” he said, walking beside me, his eyes focused straight ahead and at nothing, as if reliving his death. “You’re naked and vulnerable and feel like a million creatures are watching you, but you’re all alone. You can’t talk or even scream, but you wish you could scream because of the pain, pressure that feels like it’ll crush your skull. The loneliness. Visions that flash insanely in your mind, driving you mad.

  “That’s what the afterlife is – a pained and confused insanity that lasts forever, existing only for the amusement of a merciless God.”

  “What visions?” I asked.

  “Nightmares you never wake from. Some that haunted you in life, some new. The Grim Reaper grabbing me and forcing me into a bus filled with stinking, rotting corpses – one of them my mother. Being buried alive again and again. Holding my daughter as she died frightened and alone, but she couldn’t see me holding her and looking into her eyes.”

  I searched my clone-father’s face. Had he seen visions of my dreams and my life?

  “I’m never going back to that,” Adam-1 said, but with a slight tremor in his voice. “You’re taking my place.”

  I stopped, and he kept going. Cain’s face looked so serene. Those weren’t the visions my son was seeing. Or that my mom and Evelyn were experiencing. Or that I would soon experience.

  I set Cain down, turned around, and began walking backwards, dragging Cain by the armpits. I wanted to see how Evelyn was doing. Near the beginning of our march she kept her eyes downcast. She stumbled more and more as time wore on, taking longer to get up each time, but she also began looking more intense and determined, sometimes focusing on Cain’s body with a quiet resolve. Or perhaps I was imagining it. In any case, it gave me hope. There was nothing we could do at the moment. If we ran, they would shoot us. But I kept alive a hope that something would present itself when we reached our destination. Whatever that was.

  At least an hour passed. My legs didn’t hurt, but the cold and the ache of my natural muscles consumed my mind, which drifted in and out of awareness as we marched. Evelyn was walking just behind Cain’s feet. She lifted her eyes from Cain to focus on something behind my back in the direction we were heading. I didn’t turn around, but could see the shadows of the trees and the people walking ahead of us begin to sharpen as we went along. There was a light ahead.

  A few minutes later we reached the site. A lantern burned. Lyle-2 had either left it burning, or someone not yet seen had lit it. Someone, like my clone-father, who had once been dead.

  I carefully laid Cain’s body down on the ground and gave my muscles a rest. My legs stood me back up, and I rubbed my arms. Evelyn’s pallid face was fixed at a spot behind me.

  “Mommy!” she cried and ran toward the grave.

  I turned looking for Hannah. One of the taller giant redwoods towering up far beyond the re
ach of the lantern would be our headstone. The dark pit below it had coarse edges and roots jutting from its walls. To the side of the pit, the light of the lantern glinted off four large cans of kerosene and several containers of concentrated hydrofluoric acid. In case our bodies were later found, they wanted to destroy as much of our DNA as possible. They didn’t want us coming back.

  Hannah wasn’t there. Instead I watched Evelyn-2 get the hug of which she’d dreamed. I saw Evelyn-2 hand the backpack to the person. And then her c-mother was looking at me. As Evelyn-1 embraced her c-daughter and eased her down into the pit, I staggered forward, stopping a couple feet away.

  Evelyn was the one to break our long silence. She looked at me, smiled, and said, “It’s good to see you.”

  I couldn’t respond verbally. I felt my head wobbling as an irrepressible grin grew on my lips that must have looked completely out of place.

  “Get in,” Lyle said, motioning to the grave.

  I found a voice. “You’re alive.”

  She raised both her hands out of the grave to me, and I knelt down to grasp them and kiss them, and then her lips and face and hair, breathing her in. Our situation suddenly seemed trivial. A nuisance.

  “Get in the grave,” Lyle repeated.

  I held Evelyn as best I could from the edge of the grave. “You didn’t kill her.”

  Lyle hesitated. “Just get in.”

  I turned to see the barrel of his gun aimed at my forehead, forcing some fear and doubt to begin crawling back into my mind. “You can’t kill us,” I said. “We’d just come back.”

  “No, you won’t,” he responded. “It ends tonight.” He waved his gun at Evelyn, Evelyn-2, and Cain. “All their medical records and DNA backups in La Jolla and Atlanta have been replaced with the DNA of others. They’ll be gone forever.”

  “And me?” I asked.

  “Adam-1 will take over everything you had in life. He’ll marry Lily, join the GC Board, help us undermine Barebots, and together our family will hold the immortality of the human race.”

  It sounded too extraordinary and perverse and grandiose to be real. It must all be a death vision from the day my mother died. Perhaps it was more than a vision. Perhaps I was in my own purgatory, a special one that God invented for the first human clone. Make him lose his mother, and then send him to a private hell where he can lose everyone else, eventually to perish himself at the hands of the one true Adam – the one God had created, not humans.