Unchanged Page 29

  I stop when I reach a pod labeled JOURNALS.

  I open it and find thousands of motion capture files, arranged by date. I locate one imprinted with APRIL 23, 2114—the day of the last failed sequence, S:D/R:Z.

  The next combination will be a success. But not for another three months.

  I lower myself into the chair and activate playback.

  Rio’s weary, larger-than-life face projects onto the wall screen above me. He looks younger than I remember him, but his features are weighed down by fatigue and constant failure.

  He speaks directly into the cam, directly into my awaiting gaze.

  “April 23, 2114. S:D/R:Z has failed.” He stops, wipes his eyes, and sighs. “As you can see, the embryo reached full maturity inside the artificial womb, but like its predecessors, it did not survive the birthing process.”

  The perspective switches. A new cam has been activated. I’m now staring at the giant womb. Its portal has been opened, the fluid drained, and just to the left of the massive orb sits a hovering gurney with a dead, naked girl laid out upon it.

  She doesn’t look like me. She has lighter skin and darker hair. Her face is rounder.

  Before I can study her further, Rio is back on the screen.

  “S:D/R:Z is the thirteenth embryo we’ve been able to gestate to full maturity. As with the previous embryos, the gestation was completed in thirty-seven days, two hours, forty-two minutes, and sixteen seconds. Zero of those thirteen have survived past birth.”

  Thirteenth embryo?

  There are thirteen more dead bodies like that?

  “For reasons we have yet to identify,” Rio goes on, his eyes misting slightly as he talks, “the specimens simply do not want to survive outside of the womb. It’s almost as though they were not meant for this world.”

  His words echo hauntingly through my brain.

  “Not meant for this world.”

  He sounds eerily like Pastor Peder. Did Rio have doubts about this project before it was a success? Was he starting to question the creation of life in a lab? I wonder if he ever voiced those concerns to Dr. A. If he was smart—and if he knew his cofounder as well as I assume he did—he would have kept those hesitations to himself.

  There’s a long silence, during which Rio stares pensively into the cam. Then, without warning, he snaps back to attention and continues talking. “Tomorrow, we will begin work on Sequence: E / Recombination: A. In an attempt to eliminate the issues we experienced with Sequence: D / Recombination: Z, we will be making the following adjustments to the genetic code.” He squints at his screen, just to the left of the cam. “Adjustment one—”

  Rio is interrupted by a faint beep, followed by the soft whimper of a little girl’s voice.

  “Daddy?”

  His body becomes hyperalert. With a swipe of a finger against his desk, three VersaScreens descend from the ceiling behind him and to the sides of him, morphing his enormous lab into a quaint little office and blocking the open womb—and the dead girl—from view with a digital projection of a tropical beach.

  In his haste to conceal everything, he forgets to turn off the cam.

  Another swipe unseals the main door to the office and a young girl comes barging into the room, face flushed, tears streaming down her face, and blood trickling from her left knee.

  This is Sariana.

  The same little girl I saw in the archived Feed footage of the synthetic meat announcement. And the same girl I saw in Dr. Rio’s memory when I returned to the compound last year with Kaelen.

  For some reason, every time I see her, I find myself drawn to her in an unusual, almost familial way. Like I’ve dreamed about her my whole life. Like I see her silhouette out of the corner of my eye every time I turn around.

  And now, I’m struck by how strangely we almost look alike. I didn’t notice it the past two times I saw her. She was younger then. But now that her face is less like a baby’s and more like a young child’s, the resemblance stands out.

  Our hair is almost the same shade of honey brown, our skin almost the same caramel color. And our noses and cheekbones have a similar shape and slope. Her eyes aren’t purple like mine, but they’re such a deep reddish-brown they could almost look purple in a certain light. While my skin is completely smooth and unblemished, hers is covered in tiny freckles, and she has that pink birthmark under her chin—the one shaped like a leaf.

  Staring at her on the screen, I’m suddenly reminded of the genetic disguise I wore at the beginning of the tour. It dulled some of the gloss and silkiness of my enhanced ExGen features, replacing them with something more Normate.

  Something that looked a lot like her.

  “Sari, what happened?” he coos, and I instantly notice the shift in his voice. He’s still exhausted, still weighted by failure, but this little girl—with her knobby knees, uncombed hair, and radiant brown eyes—will never know. She brightens him up like a tiny sun.

  She points to the small gash on her knee. “I fell out of a tree in the Aggie Sector.” The memory of the wound makes her start to blubber.

  Rio scoops the girl into his lap and examines her wound. “Hmmm. Let’s see. Oh my, that does look bad. Did it hurt?”

  She sniffles and nods.

  He leans in closer, his face turning playfully serious. “That looks really bad. My professional opinion? I’m afraid you’re not going to make it. You don’t have much longer. Maybe a few minutes. Tops. I hope you have all your affairs in order.”

  This makes her giggle.

  “This is not a laughing matter,” he goes on. “I just told you you’re going to die in a matter of minutes and you’re laughing?”

  She giggles harder. “No, Daddy.”

  “No, what?”

  “I’m not going to die,” she reasons. “It’s just a scrape.”

  “Hey, hey,” he argues, mocking offense. “Who’s the doctor here? Who’s the one with the fancy lab?” He motions to the space around him. “Are you really going to argue with my professional assessment?”

  She nods vehemently. She’s loving this.

  He rubs his chin. “I see. A differing of opinion. Interesting. And what are your qualifications, Doctor Sari?”

  She shrugs. “I’m eight.”

  “Eight,” he says, feigning great fascination, his eyes widening. “Well, why didn’t you say so in the first place?” He sets her down on her wobbly, slender legs and proceeds to bow down in front of her. “I yield to your unrivaled genius.”

  When Rio stands up again, they’re both smiling. I feel my own lips involuntarily curl. This is what kept him going through one hundred and four failures.

  “So,” Dr. Rio says to the girl in the capture as he places a nanopatch over her cut. She hisses through her teeth as it fuses to her skin. “What did we learn today about climbing the trees in the Aggie Sector?”

  Petulantly, she stomps her foot. “But they have the best trees for climbing.”

  He challenges her with a look. “Mrs. Gleist says you haven’t been turning your assignments in on time.”

  She sticks out her lower lip but doesn’t answer.

  “Sariana,” he prompts.

  “It’s boring. She’s boring. School is boring. I don’t wanna go anymore.”

  He chuckles. “If you don’t go to school, how will you possibly grow up to be a brilliant scientist like me?”

  “I’m already smarter than you,” she points out.

  He considers. “That’s true, but you need to be a zillion times smarter than me.” He gives her a pat on the back, nudging her toward the door she came in. “Now, I have to go back to work. No more tree climbing, please. Okay?”

  Her shoulders slump as she walks dejectedly toward the door. “Okay.”

  “Go finish your assignments for tomorrow.”

  Her head hangs dramatically low. “Okay.”

  The door seals shut behind her and Rio focuses back on the cam in front of him. It’s only now he realizes it’s been capturing this whole time
. “Oh, flux.”

  He jabs at his desk and the screen above me goes black apart from one line of text.

  End of file

  “Diotech personnel search,” I bark at the computer.

  Anyone living within the Diotech compound has to have a record in the personnel system. It catalogs countless pods of data about every employee, spouse, and child, including name, age, birthday, physical characteristics, security clearance, diet, salary (for employees), grades (for children), daily health vitals, even sleep patterns to measure stress levels.

  I think about the horrific story Dane told me on the tour and tears mist my eyes. But I want to know more. I want to know why this little girl is so achingly familiar. Why looking at her makes my skin tingle.

  A search box appears and I carefully pronounce her name. “Sariana Rio.”

  Immediately, something starts to happen.

  But it doesn’t originate from the screen. It comes from somewhere inside of me. A secret buried long ago. A truth concealed by time and technology.

  My brain feels like it’s being carved open. A gnarled, clawed hand reaching deep within, pulling the memory out, like lava being scooped out of a bubbling volcano.

  I press my palms to my temples, shut my eyes, and bite my lips against the scream.

  Somewhere in the blinding white pain, the recognition of what’s happening to me surfaces.

  Time Delayed Recall.

  A memory that’s been sitting dormant and encrypted inside my mind, just waiting for the correct trigger to activate it.

  I’ve experienced the anguish of TDRs before. Dr. Maxxer used them to bury a map in my mind that would lead me to her. But I’ve never felt anything quite like this.

  This is an ache like no other. This memory fights back. It holds on. Bracing against the pull of the claws. Like it doesn’t want to be unwrapped. It doesn’t want to be triggered.

  Finally, I can’t fight it off any longer. The scream erupts from my lips, sliding across the sleek synthotile floors of the lab. Echoing off the walls.

  Meanwhile, the battle continues. My brain versus the technology implanted inside of it. One wants to show me what it’s been programmed to show me, the other wants to protect me from it.

  I have no say in who wins. I have no say in how long they will struggle against each other. All I can do is clench my fists, squeeze my skull harder, and pray that it will be over soon.

  Please, one of you just surrender.

  But neither one is willing to admit defeat. On and on they fight. My body is their battleground. My whimpers are their casualties. My misery is the fuel that drives them.

  Until eventually, after what feels like centuries, a victor emerges.

  Its identity is no surprise to anyone, least of all me. As always, technology wins, bashing in my poor, defenseless brain like the obstinate warrior that it is. With one final blast of sharp, jagged agony, the war is over.

  The memory comes sprinting into focus, eager and desperate, like a released prisoner afraid of being captured again.

  I crumple back against the chair and let it come. Let the victor bask in its hard-earned glory. But as the images start to infiltrate my mind, bombarding my senses, I realize it’s not one of my memories that’s been locked behind a mental fortress all this time.

  This fragmented piece of the past belongs to the man who put it there.

  64

  APPEALS

  He sits in his office. The sun shines high in the sky outside his window. He stares at it with remorseful eyes, apologizing for not being able to give in to its temptation.

  “PLEASE come play with me,” the little girl says again, her precious face reappearing on his screen after he’s already dismissed it twice. “We can play your favorite game,” she negotiates.

  He activates the cam and smiles back at her. “Not today, Sariana. I’m sorry. I have to work.”

  Her lips fall into a pout. “You always have to work.”

  He sighs. She’s right. He does. But it won’t be forever. As soon as this project is a success, he can relax. He can take time off. He can watch his daughter grow up.

  “Why don’t you go play with Ren or Phillina?” he suggests to the girl’s projection.

  This is clearly not a viable option. “Ren is doing schoolwork and Phillina just wants to play virtual games.”

  “You should be doing schoolwork, too,” he reminds her. It’s always been a struggle with Sariana. She’s loved the outdoors since she was a baby. She used to cry when she was taken inside.

  Maybe because inside is where her mother died.

  “Did you finish your math assignment?” he asks when she turns away from the cam and lets her cheek do the protesting.

  “No,” she admits begrudgingly.

  “Well,” he prompts, “maybe you should.”

  “Math is stupid,” she argues. “I can find anything I want to know on the Slate.”

  “What happens if you don’t have a Slate and you want to do complex calculations in your head?”

  Her scowl deepens. “Why would I want to do that?”

  His patience is dwindling. The coffee he downed just a second ago is already wearing off. “Sari,” he says with a huff, “I can’t have this same argument again. Do your assignment and then ping me when you’re done.”

  She does nothing to hide her frustration as she cuts the connection and the small frame where her face once appeared fades to black.

  He turns and looks out the window again. The sun continues to call to him with a warm smile. The cloudless sky sings his name.

  Agitatedly, he swipes his finger against the desk to activate the glass’s projection program. The bright, colorful window mutes to a dark gray wall.

  He will not be enjoying the day today.

  He will be here.

  He will be with S:E/R:A. The beginnings of a new life.

  Hopefully.

  The last one hundred and four attempts have failed, but he feels good about this one. For the first time in a long time, he feels optimistic.

  He spends the next thirty minutes inputting the last of the modifications into the sequencer. The digital rendering of the girl’s face on his screen doesn’t change. But somewhere deep within her DNA she is being improved. She is being given another chance at life.

  Hopefully.

  He gazes into her luminous eyes, which are still no more than a collection of supreme definition pixels. “This time I’ll get it right,” he promises her, even though he knows it’s a promise he can’t keep. “This time, I’ll finally get to meet you.”

  He turns and looks at the massive, effervescent globe behind him. The sparkling orange liquid is rippling with anticipation, ready to receive the materials from the sequencer. Ready to cocoon the precious, fragile cells deep within its core and harvest them into a living, breathing, surviving sixteen-year-old girl.

  Hopefully.

  His fingertip hovers over the surface of his desk, shaking as it readies itself to send the final command.

  If this works, she will be the most perfect human being in existence.

  If this works, she will be beautiful. She will be infamous. She will be a scientific miracle.

  If this works.

  His finger starts to tremble. The doubt starts to seep in.

  Can he really handle another failure? Can his heart, his resolve, his career really survive another broken, lifeless corpse on his table?

  He pushes the thought from his mind. He wills himself to stay positive. To stay optimistic.

  To stay hopeful.

  S:E/R:A will be the one. The one that survives. He doesn’t know how, but he feels it in his bones.

  Maybe it’ll be the modifications he’s made to the DNA sequence that finally do the trick.

  Maybe it’ll be a miracle.

  He takes a deep breath and prepares to send the initiation command. But just before his finger brushes against the cool surface of the desk, another ping appears on his wall screen.

/>   Without even bothering to look at the metadata, he angrily accepts the incoming request. The reprimand already bursting from his mouth. “Sari! This is not a debate! I’m—”

  He’s halted by the sight in front of him. It’s not the face of his daughter that greets him on the other side of the connection. It’s his business partner.

  “Alixter,” he says with relief. “Sorry, I thought you were my daughter. You’ll be happy to know I’m just about to implant the next sequence in the gestation chamber. I’ve made some significant tweaks to—”

  Once again, Rio is cut off.

  And it is not words that immobilize his tongue, but rather an image. An expression. A burdensome silence.

  “Alixter?” he asks warily. “What is it?”

  The blond man on his screen anxiously wets his dry lips.

  “Havin,” he says, addressing him by his first name, something he rarely does.

  Rio is already out of his chair. “What? What’s wrong?”

  His business partner hesitates. As if time is irrelevant. As if he knows it won’t change anything. “You need to come to the Health Center right away.”

  65

  REARRANGED

  He bypasses the hovercart, opting to run on foot. It’s a little less than a quarter of a mile, on the other side of the Medical Sector. The cart would be decidedly quicker, but there’s something about the running, the sweat, the heavy breathing, that makes him feel as though he’s getting there faster.

  As if effort somehow equals efficiency.

  He always thought this compound was designed poorly. It should have been set up in adjacent rings, spiraling outward with the most important buildings huddled close together in the center. As opposed to these alienated, squared-off sectors.

  He also never understood why the Health Center was housed in the Medical Sector as opposed to the Residential Sector where it could be closer to the people who actually use it. Not that many people get sick on the compound. Illness is a rarity here.

  But the layout of this place was never up to him. That was his partner’s domain. They had agreed early on to split the division of labor by specialty. As Dr. Rio was clearly the more gifted scientist, he would oversee the research projects and experimentation, while Dr. Alixter, who was innately more charismatic and articulate, would handle operations and public relations.