TAINTED LOVE
THE PEOPLE-MOVER that Joel2 didn’t hear land outside was capable of carrying nearly two hundred passengers. Yet that particular drone only had one occupant: William Taraval. While Joel2 was hanging out with Kim Carnes in the shower, Taraval huffed and puffed his way up the many flights of stairs until he reached the Suite Principal. After taking a moment to catch his breath, he knocked.
Sylvia answered, folding her arms around herself when she saw her sweating boss. When she didn’t invite him in, he stepped past her anyway.
“Not an easy place to get to,” Taraval grumbled, going to the kitchenette and getting a bottle of water from the refrigerator.
“I suppose you’re here to fire me,” she said morosely. “I was hoping I’d have a little more time to—”
“Explain?” he asked, looking around the room in distaste. “Explain what—why you turned off your comms? Why you fled the scene of a major terrorist attack? Why you illegally restored and printed your husband from a backup in a classified, still-experimental glacier instance?” He spoke coolly, but she could tell he was furious from the way his right eyelid ticked uncontrollably.
“You know why I did that,” she said defiantly. “Once I saw what happened at the TC, I—I did what I had to. I didn’t have a choice.”
“All heart and no brains. How unlike you.” She opened her mouth to defend herself, but Taraval kept going. “Did you think to check with New York first? With us? Perhaps suss out what the situation was before going straight to Honeycomb? We have protocols for a reason.”
“I couldn’t; the comms were down. And he’d already”—her face went pale—“he arrived in San José. He was in the vestibule when the TC exploded.”
Taraval finished his bottle of water and wiped his forehead. “Part of him, yes. Only he was never cleared in New York.”
Now her cheeks turned a chalky yellow. She put her hands on the bed to steady herself, trying to form words but no sound came out.
Taraval continued, “You know the procedures, Sylvia, better than almost anyone. If there’s any kind of error at the vestibule, any at all, the process reverts. But as I said, apparently you’re all heart. And that sentimental blood pump of yours is about to ruin everything we’ve sweated and slaved for. Our careers. The future of humanity, Sylvia.”
She shook her head, trying to get her thoughts in order. She nodded toward the bathroom, in which Joel2 was singing. “So he—and in New York, there’s—?”
“I’m afraid so. You’re quite the scientific groundbreaker today. Resurrecting the dead and releasing the first duplicated human into the wild, all in less than twenty-four hours.”
Sylvia sank to the floor. “Oh my God.”
“Oh, please. What need have we for God anymore? If anyone, you should be praying to me. Once I learned of your foolish blunder with Honeycomb, I managed to get your husband to IT headquarters. The plan was to clear the out-of-sync Joel and—”
“You killed him?” Sylvia said, looking up from the floor, her eyes blazing.
“That was the plan. But somehow legal got wind of his existence and they alerted the executive leadership team. Things needed to be dealt with by the book. Corina and Pema insisted we convince him to go gentle into that good night. We were forced to tell him what occurred, and, for all our good deeds, unfortunately, somehow, he managed to elude us.”
“He’s alive?” said Sylvia, getting back to her feet.
“Alive and running around without comms. Capable at any moment of exposing us. And therein lies your saving grace. We can still make this right.”
“What are you talking about, Bill?”
“It’s simple. You take your little creation in there, drive him back to the San José Hospital TC, teleport to New York, and IT will take care of the rest. You’ll arrive alone, Joel Byram’s comms will reactivate, and all of us shall live happily ever after, provided you both agree to put this matter behind us.”
“Bill,” she said, struggling to stay calm, “you’re asking me to clear my own husband.”
He pointed a fleshy finger toward the bathroom, in which Joel2 was still singing loudly and off-key. “That is not your husband, Sylvia! Your husband is somewhere in New York right now. He can’t have gone far without working comms. What do you think will happen if the Gehinnomites find him first? Imagine for a moment a world in which the public knows the truth of what we’ve been doing. Of what you have been complicit in. Tell me how that story ends, Sylvia. Tell me!”
“I didn’t mean—” she began, but he didn’t let her finish.
“It ends one of two ways, Sylvia. Either you come back to New York with him in tow, or everything we know, perhaps our entire society, unravels. This is the best and least painful solution we have. Clear him. Life will return to normal for all immediately—and for you as well, in time.”
“Normal,” she repeated with a hollow laugh. Then she shook her head, tears springing to her eyes. “You can’t make me do this, Bill. I’ve already been lying to him for a year, I can’t—” She put her face in her hands just as Joel2 entered from the bathroom and exposed himself.