Word Puppets Read online

  “Elise. Do you think they’d let me out of the lab if I weren’t the original?”

  “No.” She shook her head. “No, of course not.”

  She should have been there, should have heard the success declared. The technology to print complete physical copies of people had been around for years, but they’d started TruClone to solve the consciousness problem. Elise had built the engine that transferred minds to bodies so she should have gone into the office today, of all days.

  She had forgotten. Again.

  “I want to hear all about it.” She tugged his hand, pretending with a smile to be excited for him. “Come into the kitchen while I finish dinner.”

  Outside, the first sounds of the market at the end of their block began. Calls for fresh fish and greens blended on the breeze and crept in through the open window of their bedroom, tickling her with sound. Curled around Myung, with one leg thrown over his thigh, Elise traced her hand down his body. The patch of hair on his chest thinned to a line which tickled her palm. He stirred as she followed the line of hair lower.

  “Morning.” Sleep made his voice grumble in his chest, almost purring.

  Elise nuzzled his neck, gently nipping the tender skin between her teeth.

  His alarm went off, with the sound of a stream and chirping birds. Myung groaned and rolled away from her, slapping the control to silence the birds.

  She clung to him. Not that it would do any good. Myung loved being in the office.

  He kissed her on the forehead. “Come on, get up with me. I’ll make you waffles.”

  “Oo. Waffles.” Elise let go of him, smacking his rump gently. “Go on man, cook. Woman hungry.”

  He laughed and pulled her out of bed with him. She followed him to the kitchen, and perched on one of the wicker stools by the counter as he cooked. It almost felt like a weekend back when they were courting at MIT. But the mood broke when Myung laid a pill next to her plate. Her stomach tightened at the sight of the drug. She didn’t want the distancing the medication brought on. “I feel fine today.”

  Myung poured more batter on the waffle iron and cleared his throat. “Maybe you’d like to come in to work?”

  The room closed in around her. Elise lowered her eyes to escape the encroaching walls. “I can’t.” She hadn’t gone in since she came home from the hospital. Every day she thought that tomorrow the effects of the concussion would have faded. That the next day she would be back to normal. And some days she was. Almost.

  Myung put his hand on hers. “Then take your medication.”

  She had walked away from the subway accident, but it had scrambled her brain like eggs in a blender. Head-trauma induced psychosis. On good days, she knew it was happening.

  Elise picked up the pill, hating it. “You’re going to be late.”

  He looked over his shoulder at the clock and shrugged. “I thought I’d take today off.”

  “You? Take a day off?”

  “Why not? My clone.” He paused, relishing the word. “My clone has offered to do my reports today.”

  “Is that—Isn’t that a little premature?” As she said that, she realized that she didn’t know how much time had passed since the board declared success. It felt like yesterday but it had been longer. Hadn’t it?

  “He’s bored, which is not surprising since I would be, too.”

  If she went to the office, maybe she could see the clone. See the thing they had labored toward. Cloned rats and dogs and monkeys weren’t the same as a man. Not just any man, but a clone of her husband. She swallowed against a sudden queasiness. “Who’s overseeing him?”

  “Kathleen. Sort of. I’ll have to look over his report later but we’ve agreed to let him function as if he were me, to see how he does.”

  Which made sense. The ultimate goal was to make full clones of high-level people who needed to be in more than one place at once. “Am I a clone, Myung?”

  “No, honey.” He squeezed her hand, grounding her again. “You’re not.”

  The thing that nagged at her was that she could not tell if she didn’t believe him because he was lying or because the accident had left her with delusions to accompany the hallucinations.

  Elise wiped the kitchen table, gliding the sponge across the teak in perfect parallel lines. The phone rang. Startled, she jumped and lost the pattern on the table. Putting her hand over her mouth to slow her breathing, Elise glanced at the clock to see how much time she had lost to cleaning. It was only 2:30. That wasn’t as bad as it could have been.

  The phone rang again.

  She picked it up, trying to remember who had called her last. “Hello?”

  “Hi, honey. I need to ask you to do something for me.” Myung sounded tense and a little breathless, as if the phone frightened him as much as it had her.

  “What?” She slid a pad of paper across the counter so she could take notes. Clearly, today was not a good day and she didn’t want to make that obvious to Myung.

  “Would you come to the lab?”

  “I . . . ” A reflection in the window caught her eye, flashing like an SOS. “Today isn’t a good day.”

  “The clone misses you.”

  His words stretched out as if they could fill the ten kilometers between the lab and the apartment and then everything snapped. “Misses me? It’s never met me.”

  “He has all of my memories and personality. From his point of view, he hasn’t seen you in months.” There was a tension in his voice, his words a little rushed and tight. “Please. It’s affecting his ability to concentrate. It’s depressing him.”

  “No.” A reflection twitched in the corner of her eye becoming a spider until she looked at it. “I can’t.”

  Myung hummed under his breath, which he always did when he was conflicted. She hadn’t pointed it out to him because it was an easy way to tell when he didn’t want to do something. He exhaled in a rush. “All right. How’s everything at home?”

  “Fine.” She doodled on the pad. There had been something that she’d thought about telling him. “Oh. There are some carbon matte knives I want to get.”

  “Really? What’s wrong with the ones we have?”

  Elise hesitated. “These look nice. All black.”

  “Ah.” She could almost hear his mind click the pieces together. “No reflections. I didn’t realize that was still bothering you. I’ll order them.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Sure I can’t get you to reconsider?” He laughed a little. “I miss having you around the office as much as he does.”

  “Not now.”

  Elise hung up. Back to the office? Her stomach heaved and she barely made it to the sink before vomiting. Gasping, she clung to the stainless steel as the anxiety flung itself out of her. The back of her throat and her nose burned. If she went in, people would know that she was wrong inside.

  In the dark of the bedroom, Elise counted Myung’s heartbeats as she lay with her head on his chest. “I’m sorry.”

  He stroked her hair. “Why?”

  She lifted her head, skin sticky from sweat. “That I won’t come to the office.”

  “It’s all right. I understand.”

  At night, the idea seemed less frightening. She could tell herself as many times as she could count that the office was not dangerous, that nothing bad had ever happened to her there, but her body did not believe. “What’s he like?”

  “Who?” He lifted his head to look at her.

  “Your clone.”

  Myung chuckled. “Just like me. Charming, handsome, devilishly intelligent.”

  “A troublemaker?”

  “Only a little.” He kissed her hand. “You’d like him.”

  “If I didn’t, we’d have problems.” Elise rolled onto her back, looking for answers on the ceiling. “You want to use me as a trial, don’t you,”

  “What? No. Don’t be silly.”

  “Please, Myung. My brain isn’t that scrambled.” She poked him in the soft part of his belly.

&
nbsp; “Hey!”

  “It’s the logical next step, if these clones are going to do what we told our investors they would. You need to see if a loved one can tell the difference. You need to dress identically with your clone and let me talk to both of you.”

  Myung hummed under his breath.

  “You could bring him here.” Elise kissed his shoulder.

  He stopped humming. “Not yet. Too many variables. It has to be at the lab first.”

  “I’ll think about it.” Her pulse raced, just saying the words. But the queasiness was manageable.

  The knives arrived in the afternoon. Elise pulled them out of their shrinkwrap and set them on the counter, forming three matte black voids on the wood. No reflections marred their surfaces. She ran a finger along one edge of the paring knife. Like a thread, a line of crimson opened on her finger. It didn’t even hurt.

  Elise held the cut close to her face, trying to see what would crawl out of her skin. The blood trickled slowly down her finger exploring the contours. Without the reflections, her brain needed some other way to talk to her now. She could help it if she opened the gap more.

  “No. Myung wouldn’t like that.” Elise clenched her fist so the blood was hidden. “Put NuSkin on it, Elise.”

  Yes. That was the right thing. As she put the liquid skin in place, it occurred to her that if she printed herself a new body it would come with nothing inside. “But we solved the consciousness problem. It would come with me inside. With me.”

  She weighed the chef’s knife in her hand and dropped it. The kitchen counter had all the vegetables from the refrigerator set out in neat rows. She had chopped a bell pepper without any memory of returning to the kitchen. Elise cursed. Hands splayed on the counter, she lowered her head in frustration.

  The front door opened. “Honey, I’m home!”

  Elise picked up the knife, then set it down and scooped the closest vegetables into her arms. Before Myung entered the kitchen, she managed to get them into the vegetable drawer in the fridge.

  She let the door close and turned, smiling brightly. “Let me get your martini, dear.”

  Laughing, Myung caught her around the waist and kissed her. “How was your day?”

  Elise shrugged. “Mixed. The usual. Yours?”

  “Also mixed. My clone is . . . Well, let’s say I’m learning how stubborn I can be.”

  She winced. “I could have told you that.”

  “Not.” He kissed her nose. “Helpful.”

  She stuck her tongue out. Moments like this beckoned her to fall into them with their allure of normalcy. “Thank you for the knives.”

  “Sorry?”

  Elise pointed at the carbon black knives laid out on the counter. “The ones you ordered for me came today.”

  “I—” Myung crossed to the counter and picked up the paring knife. “Elise, I didn’t order these.”

  The floor of the room fell away from her. Elise grabbed the handle of the refrigerator to steady herself. “But you said you would. We talked about it.”

  “When?” Myung’s nostrils had flared.

  “It’s not a delusion.” She swallowed and her throat stayed knotted. “You called me. You asked me to come to the office.”

  “Fuck.” He slammed his fist on the counter. “Elise, I’m sorry. It’s the clone.”

  Relief swept her so quickly that her knees gave way. She dropped to the floor, one hand still clinging to the refrigerator. The door cracked open letting a breeze out which chilled the tears running down her face. Thank God. She had not imagined the phone call. She hadn’t ordered the knives herself and forgotten. “The clone did it.”

  Myung crouched by her, wiping the tears from her face. “I’m sorry. He was working on a report and we let him use my office.”

  “You’re letting him contact the outside?”

  “No. I changed the passwords—”

  Elise started laughing. “And he guessed?”

  Myung’s skin deepened in a blush and he shut his eyes. “Should have seen that coming.”

  “Yes, dear.” Elise wiped her eyes. “Oh God. I thought it was another sign of crazy.”

  At that, Myung opened his eyes, pain creasing his brow. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” Elise stood, using her husband’s shoulder to push herself off the floor. “He bought the knives I asked for.”

  “With my money.”

  “Well . . . He’s doing your work.”

  “Point.” Myung got to his feet. “And I would have gotten them for you if you’d mentioned it to me.”

  “I thought I did.” Giggles overtook her for a moment and they both stood in the kitchen laughing. When she caught her breath, Elise said, “Tomorrow, I’ll come to the office with you.”

  The delight that blossomed on Myung’s face almost made Elise withdraw the offer. Not that she resented making Myung happy, but she would disappoint him tomorrow. In the context of the lab, her slips of mind would be more apparent.

  Elise shifted on the hard metal chair in the observation room. To her left, a mirrored window hid the staff watching her. She angled her head so the reflections were not so apparent. No time for hallucinations today. The rest of the walls were pale blue Sheetrock, meant to be soothing,

  but clinically cold. The ballast of one of the florescent lights buzzed just at the edge of her hearing. They would have to get that fixed.

  She put her hands on the linoleum table in front of her and then in her lap again as the door opened.

  Myung came in, dressed in a white T-shirt and jeans. He wore athletic socks but no shoes. Glancing at his feet, his dark hair masked his eyes for a moment, like a K-pop star. “We didn’t have matching shoes, so opted for none.”

  Elise grinned, beckoning him closer. “Are they good for a sock-hop?”

  He laughed, voice bouncing in a three note pattern. “That is not on the set of questions.”

  “You.” She pointed at him accusingly. “Aren’t supposed to know what they are.”

  “I don’t.” Myung held his hands out in mock surrender. “But I’m guessing that it’s not.”

  “Fine. We’ll stick to the standards.” Elise waved her hand to command him to sit across from her. Her heart beat like she was at a speed dating service. She looked at the list of questions she planned to ask each man. “When we got married, what did you whisper after you kissed me?”

  Myung turned red and glanced at the mirror. He wet his lips, leaning forward across the table. “I think I said, ‘How soon can we get out of here?’ ” His eyes were alive as if he wanted to take her right there on the table.

  A flush of warmth spread out from Elise’s navel to her breasts. At the wedding, his hands had been warm through her dress and she had been intently aware of how long his eyelashes were.

  He looked out from under them now with his pupils a little dilated as if he also found the room too warm. “Next?”

  “What is our most intimate moment?” Watching him, time focused itself in a way it had not done since the accident. Each tick of her internal clock was crisp and in sequence.

  Myung’s eyes hooded for a moment as he thought. “Yellowstone. We might have had the whole park to ourselves but there was also this profound sense that someone would catch us in the act. And that you would . . . ” He hummed under his breath for a moment, sweeping his hand through his hair. “Let’s just say, I knew that you trusted me.”

  Elise looked at the paper again. She had thought he would say that it was their first time after his vasectomy. At the time he had reveled in the freedom.

  “Last question. Pick a number.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Yep.”

  Myung fingered the end of his nose, and Elise could not doubt that she was talking to her husband. He nodded. “Very nice. Confirmed memory, subjective memory, and random.”

  She tapped a finger on the paper. “No opinion please. Number?”

  “Thirty-six.”

  “Why thirty-six
?”

  He picked at the cuticle on his thumb. “Remember the time we went to see that puppet play, ‘Between Two Worlds?’ ” He waited until she nodded. “The guy who thought that he could win his predestined bride through Kaballah had this line, ‘Thirty-six, in that number lies the essence.’ It stuck with me for some reason.”

  Myung came in, dressed in a white T-shirt and jeans. Elise’s breath hung in her throat at the palpable déjà vu. She had seen printed clones dozens of times as parts donors but she had never seen one animated. Had she not been a part of the process to give a clone consciousness, she would have thought that her husband had just walked into the room. Like the other one, this Myung wore white athletic socks but no shoes. Glancing at his feet, his dark hair masked his eyes for a moment, like a K-pop star. “We didn’t have matching shoes, so opted for none.”

  Elise pressed her hand over her mouth, trying to remember what she had said to the first one. No wonder they had wanted her to script her questions.

  “Are you okay?” Myung—she could not think of him as anything else—took a step closer.

  “It’s uncanny is all.” Wrong. She should not have said that out loud. It might skew his responses. “Shall we get started?” Elise beckoned him to sit across from her. She looked at the sheet of questions, trying to center herself. The calm certainty she felt before had stripped away, leaving her flustered. “When we got married, what did you whisper after you kissed me?”

  Myung turned red and glanced at the mirror. He wet his lips, leaning forward across the table. “I think I said, ‘How soon can we get out of here?’ ”

  Sweat coated her skin.

  He looked out from under his long eyelashes. “Next?”

  “What is our most intimate moment?” Watching him, Elise looked for some clue, some hint that he was not her husband. But perhaps he was, and the Myung she had met first was the clone.

  Myung’s eyes hooded for a moment as he thought. “Yellowstone. We might’ve had the whole park to ourselves but there was also this profound sense that someone would catch us in the act. And that you would . . . ” He hummed under his breath before sweeping his hand through his hair. “Let’s just say, I knew you trusted me.”