She pauses, waiting to be sure she has my undivided attention.
“I want you, Evening, to design the perfect boy.”
Luna stops rubbing.
“Am I doing this with crayons? Or will I be working with Play-Doh?”
My mother smiles tolerantly. “Oh, I think we can do a little better than that. You can start tomorrow morning. If you do it, I’ll have your little friend here tomorrow afternoon.”
“I think Aislin has her dance class on—”
“Evening. When I send for people, they come.”
– 10 –
“This is where you’ll be working. Playing.”
My mother hesitates, frowns, realizes she’s frowning and that frowning causes lines, and unfrowns. “Play, work, call it whatever you like.”
“So long as I do it.”
“Exactly.”
Solo is pushing my wheelchair while my mother leads the way. At the last minute, the orderly who was supposed to be assisting us this morning had an attack of stomach pains. His backup couldn’t be located.
It crosses my mind, just for a nanosecond, that Solo might have arranged to be here with me. Maybe he’s as desperate for company as I am.
Solo pushes my wheelchair into a horseshoe-shaped work station. It’s an amazing space with soaring ceilings and low-slung black leather furniture. There’s a huge ficus tree next to the desk. It’s strung with white twinkle lights, probably a remnant of the long-past holiday season. It’s oddly whimsical in the clean, minimalist setting.
I don’t have time to admire the decor, though, because I’m too busy gaping at the twenty-foot-tall, floor-to-ceiling monitor. I’ve never seen a screen so big. Movie theater big.
A strand of DNA is displayed on the monitor. This is not just some run-of-the-mill textbook image. And it’s definitely nothing like the primitive double helix model I made in sixth grade out of Styrofoam balls and toothpicks. (My mother’s assessment: “What are we, Amish?”)
This thing … this thing is pulsating with energy. It’s alive.
“That’s the project,” my mother says. “That’s 88715.”
“It’s real,” I murmur.
“No, just a simulation. You can see the DNA, you can see entire chromosomes, you can pull out further—” She demonstrates by tracing a finger across the touch screen that is set at wheelchair level. The image on the wall zooms out. “Now you see a chromosome. Out further, it’s a cell.”
Solo locks my chair wheel and grabs a chair. He yawns. Clearly, he’s not as mesmerized as I am.
“The best part is that you can use any number of different interfaces.” Tap, tap, drag. “This one’s made of Lego blocks, for younger kids. See how there’s a Lego representation of the DNA?”
My mother’s in the zone, her voice animated. She gets like this when she’s excited about an idea. And this little project—this “fluff”—is nothing compared to her real work, the work she’s overseen on new drug therapies. When she’s laboring on something she’s excited about, she’ll move into Spiker’s lab for days, even weeks, at a time. More than once, she’s come home with her mascara smudged, her nails bitten to the quick, her eyes bleary.
Usually, it’s because her team has failed. But sometimes, and there are just enough of those times, it’s because they’ve succeeded.
“You can add or subtract blocks,” my mother continues. “Hover over and you see what each does. Or”—tap, drag, tap—“you can picture each element as a colored blob or as a tile in a mosaic. But either way you can run forward and see the effect.”
“The effect on what?”
“On your person.”
“My what?”
“Your person.” She enunciates carefully. “Per. Son. The person you’re creating.”
I lean forward and The Leg shifts slightly. “You almost sound like you’re talking about a real human being.”
She blinks and brushes back an errant strand of hair. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course it’s not real. That would be illegal. The fines would be astronomical. The government would probably shut us down. I might even go to jail. Me!”
“I didn’t—”
“No, no, no. This just provides students with an opportunity to learn how to…”
“To play God?” I supply.
She snaps her fingers. “Exactly. Exactly, exactly.” Deep sigh. “Exactly. We want to enable the average person, a person like … like him”—her eyes flit toward Solo—“to understand what makes humans … human.” She waves a dismissive hand and trails Bulgari.
“‘Like him’?” I repeat.
“You know what I mean: Someone who’s not a scientist.”
“A mere mortal,” Solo suggests.
“Stupidity is relative,” my mother says, still addressing me. “And it’s also case-specific. Thomas, the scientist most directly responsible for this project, has an IQ of 169. He also has his entire body covered in ridiculous tattoos. He’s very smart at science. You, Eve, are very smart at school, particularly science, and very stupid at choosing your friends.”
“Oh, snap,” I say.
“What?”
“Sorry. I was flashing back to 2005.”
The corners of Solo’s mouth flirt with a smile.
“The point is, you get to play God.”
“Can I play Portal instead?”
“You play Portal?” Solo asks.
“I have,” I say cautiously. “Is it all right with you if a girl plays Portal?”
“A girl?” He’s puzzled.
“Yes. I am, in fact, a girl.”
“I noticed,” he says.
“No, you did not notice she’s a girl,” my mother snarls. “You noticed she’s my daughter.”
My mother favors Solo with a look that has reduced many a grown man and woman to sniveling terror. She is in full feral mode.
But Solo is not afraid.
Oh, he pretends to be intimidated, but it’s an act. I see it as plain as day. He’s not intimidated at all. In fact, within his play-acting there’s something deeper going on.
“Yes, ma’am,” he says.
Oh my God. He hates her.
This startles me. I can’t quite believe what I’m seeing in those eyes. He actually hates her.
I mean, I hate my mother, too, sometimes. But I’m her daughter. I’m supposed to.
And there are moments, like right now, when I actually kind of love her. At least, I love the way she loves her work.
Whatever’s going on inside Solo’s head, he hides it quickly. He slides his gaze to the side, away from her, and when he looks up his eyes are as distant and unknowable as a starless sky.
He has really nice lashes. Better than mine.
I look for something to do. I reach my hand toward the touch screen. Objects on the wall screen move.
“So I make a human,” I say. “Is this just about how they look?”
“No, no, that would be a paint-by-numbers set.” My mother smiles, but not at me. She’s smiling at the computer-generated image. “No, if you’re playing God, a lot of the fun is in building the brain. The mind.”