“Isn’t it cool?” Reese asks.
But I can’t even respond. It’s beyond cool. It’s the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.
We play again and again. Even Cody comes in and steers the submarine for a while and Ella stands in the back of the craft and plays a holographic piano, matching notes to color-coded keys to give us more fuel and make us go faster.
After a while, I excuse myself and sit on the couch, watching the Carlson family of three moving around an invisible underwater landscape. From this angle, outside of the digital projection, it looks rather ridiculous. Cody maneuvering a steering wheel that doesn’t exist, Ella tapping her fingers rhythmically on invisible air, and Reese dancing with an imperceptible dolphin.
Cody emerges from the underground kingdom a few minutes later. “Take over command of the ship, Captain,” he calls back to Reese, and disappears into the kitchen to refill his wine. I follow him and he asks me how I’m holding up.
“Fine,” I say. I gesture toward the living room. “He reminds me so much of you.”
Cody smiles, sipping his wine. “It’s funny. I see myself in him more and more every day. It’s strange when you have a kid. Because they pick up so many of your personality traits without even trying. It’s buried in their genetic code…” His voice trails off and his gaze darts from me to his wineglass.
I’m suddenly curious. “Are you saying personality gets passed down in your DNA?”
Cody glances anxiously toward his wife and son in the next room. It’s the first time we’ve talked about who I am since I let him watch my memories. “W-w-well…” he stammers, keeping his voice low, “that’s, you know, the common belief. There are many theories. It’s hard to say.”
“It’s okay, Cody. You can tell me.”
He takes a deep breath. “Here’s the strange thing. They’ve found personality genes within the human genome. But you…” Once again, he looks too nervous to continue.
I raise my eyebrows to encourage him.
“Well, because your DNA was manufactured by a computer, without a parental source, I don’t know where your personality came from. You should technically behave like a robot. But you don’t. Which means you must have gotten it from somewhere.”
That’s exactly what Alixter told me. That it was believed I would behave like a machine. That I wouldn’t have much of a personality. But I did. And that’s why Rio had a change of heart about me. Why he agreed to help set me free.
So what went wrong? Where did my identity come from?
Was it possible the scientists were mistaken about where someone’s personality comes from?
“Dad!” Reese calls from the next room. “I can’t steer it on my own!”
“Coming!” Cody flashes me an apologetic look and then returns to the game.
I watch as their normal Wednesday carries on innocently through the night. As though the world is not crumbling to pieces outside the window. As though a dangerous superhuman from the future is not out there somewhere searching the city for me. As though there is nothing more important in life than a five-year-old and his game.
I attempt to soak in their laughter. Let it saturate my skin. Maybe somewhere, deep within me, it will settle and stick and weather the storm that I know is far from over.
I try to capture their happiness and swaddle myself in it, hoping it will help me create my own bubble. Like the one Zen lived in for so long. I use it to try to block out my thoughts, drain my mind, silence my fears.
So that I won’t have to wonder whether or not I’ll ever have this.
Whether or not I’ll ever be part of a real family.
So that I’ll never have to face the answer. The truth.
That, most likely, I won’t.
The harrowing reality of the situation hits me without warning. Collides into me like a planet.
This idyllic, carefree Wednesday night is borrowed. Temporarily on loan. It will never be mine. Because I will never be able to sit in a room and not wonder if someone is waiting on the other side of the door to take me away. I will never be able to listen to a child’s laughter without turning my other ear toward the too-silent night. I will never be able to sleep without dreaming of machines that saw your heart in half and scientists who want to surgically remove your soul.
In the end, no matter what I do, no matter where I go, no matter whether or not I save Zen’s life, I will never be free of them.
Diotech will always be lingering outside my window.
Waiting for me to reveal myself.
While Cody and his family are still distracted by their game, I quietly rise from the couch and steal down the hallway to the guest room. I creak open the door and slip into the darkened room, lit only by the soft white glow of Cody’s computer. I ease the door closed behind me, rest my forehead against it, and shut my eyes, listening to the reassuring sounds of Zen’s breath and the pulse of the machines monitoring his life.