Popular Clone (3 page)
Authors: M.E. Castle
“Hey, kiddo! Good day at school?”
“My day ⦔ He looked from his mother to his father. Both were blinking at him expectantly: his mom with the mask slung around her neck, his father with the ice pack pressed to his nose. No. His parents wouldn't understand. “Normal day. Y'know. I'm going to get started on my work. Let me know when it's time for dinner.” Fisher headed up the stairs as his parents resumed their discussion of the rogue crustaceans.
Fisher headed straight for his room and, for the first time all day, allowed himself to relax. Fiber-optic cabling and hydraulic tubes snaked along every wall, connecting banks of computers, massive microscopes, and chemical apparatus that would shame most universities.
Here, Fisher truly felt he had a place in the world. He wished more than anything that he felt even half as comfortable in a crowd of other twelve-year-olds as he did when surrounded by test tubes and bubbling solutions. If telling a joke or talking to a girl were as effortless as splicing bacterial DNA, Fisher would be the most popular boy in school.
He turned to his closet door and waved a hand in the air. The door got brighter as its metal surface slowly resolved itself into a mirror. Fisher looked himself up and down. He raised his arms up above his head so his sleeves fell to his elbows, wishing he had big muscles instead of scarecrow arms. Then he tried to pat down his light brown hair, which never could decide on a single direction to go in. The three oblong freckles on his nose completed the picture.
Pathetic. He was doomed forever to be a geek. He waved his arms rapidly in the air, causing the motion-detecting closet door to shift into a crazy carnival mirror. Fisher's image was distorted and warped, bending in all directions. Fisher walked toward it, striking funny poses and making faces. At
least
he didn't have a forehead as large as an eggplant ⦠or a body stretched out like taffy ⦠or squashed up like a bowling ball⦠.
Too late, he felt a cool object under his foot. A moment later he was crashing to the ground as a steel test tube rolled away from him. “Oof,” he grunted. He had landed among a pile of dirty socks, and his flailing legs had made the mirror fade away.
As Fisher stood up, he heard a soft, snuffling sound and light footsteps approaching him. A few seconds later, a pinkish, lightly fuzzy object glided into the room and came to an unsteady landing at Fisher's feet.
“Hiya, boy.” Fisher reached down to scratch his pet pig, FP, under the chin. FP was an unusual pig. In fact, he was a Flying Pig. His parents had once gotten into a debate about adding on additional lab space to their house. Fisher's father had told his mother that he'd agree to expand the property “when pigs fly.” His mother had taken this as a challenge and won her new lab expansion by biologically engineering little FP.
FP looked like any other pig, except he had light bones and weblike tissue stretching between his front hooves and the middle of his back. This allowed him to glide as gracefully as his pig body permittedâin other words, not gracefully at all. But he was adorable nonetheless.
“Miss me?” Fisher asked, patting FP on the head.
FP squealed enthusiastically. Fisher sighed. At least someone cared about him, even if the Vikings were intent on making sure that he graduated from the school system without a single human friend.
Fisher walked over to a tightly sealed, clear plastic cube in which dozens of tiny mosquitoes swarmed, bouncing off the walls like compressed gas molecules. He had been working for months on mosquitoes, trying to modify their genes so that they would bite only certain chosen people. Certain meathead bullies, to be precise. If it worked, Fisher would be able to walk straight through a swarm of them and emerge on the other side without a single mosquito bite. The Vikings, on the other hand ⦠Fisher smiled, picturing them covered in murderously itchy red spots.
“Let's see how this batch came out, FP,” he said. “If I can get these to work, I bet I finally find a place among my own species. No offense, boy.”
He stuck his arm through a mesh-guarded port in the side of the tank, and left it there for thirty seconds. When he removed it, the smile on his face dropped away; his arm was covered in tiny red welts. “On second thought, maybe I should just go back to that dark, sinister tower idea.”
FP made a whining sound, bumping Fisher's leg with his snout. Fisher sat down and set FP on his lap. “What do you think, little guy? Would I make a good villain?” A quick series of snuffles sounded like laughter. “What, not intimidating enough?” FP looked up at Fisher and dragged one hoof across Fisher's stomach, as if petting him. “Oh, I'm too nice, is that it?” FP made a satisfied sounding snort and nuzzled back into Fisher's lap. “Well, you just wait. Middle school is bound to turn me into an angry force of destruction. I'll be an evil mastermind by the time I get to eighth grade. You'll see.”
The soft sound of FP's chuckling soothed him as he got back to work, determined to find a solution to the disaster his life had become.
CHAPTER 3
It is surely a sin for one man to covet another man's wife. But it is a sin of far greater proportions (and fatal possibilities) to covet another man's wife's untested, artificial human growth hormone. Especially if we're talking about my mom.
âFisher Bas, Sientific Principles and Observations of the Natural World (unpublished)
“Down, boy,” Fisher said as he walked into the kitchen a few hours later. FP was doing his best to leap onto the counter, but kept landing with a thump back on the tiled floor.
The three freckles on Fisher's nose scrunched closer together as he tensed his face in pain, and scratched his new insect bites. It felt like he'd dipped his arm in a tankful of needles and salt water.
His father didn't even notice the boyâor the leaping pigâas he stood beside the oven and adjusted the controls on a screen with a full thermal map of the chicken roasting inside. His mother, meanwhile, was involved in an argument with the refrigerator over whether the white wine was chilled enough.
“Madam Bas,” said the refrigerator in a high, droning voice, “need I remind you that I can detect temperature variation to a precision of one two-hundredth of a degree kelvin?” If the refrigerator had had arms, it would have been crossing them in front of its chest. Or, rather, its ice drawer.
“I'm well aware of your thermometric abilities,” Fisher's mom said to the fridge, beginning to get annoyed, “since I invented them. Now, can you tell me how the wine
tastes
? Or would you prefer to leave that to someone who has
taste buds
?”
The refrigerator stuttered slightly, relented, and opened its door with a puff of air that sounded a bit like a reluctant sigh.
“Dinner's almost ready, Fisher,” said his dad, turning off the oven. “Could you set the table, please?”
“Sure thing,” said Fisher. He went to the touch screen on the table's side and slid the plates to their proper spots, following up with forks, knives, napkins, and glasses. When he had finished configuring the layout on the screen, he pressed a button and a little hatch popped open on the kitchen countertop. The requested items began surfacing, one by one.
What appeared to be extra legs on the dining room table were, in fact, arms. So with multiple joints bending and sliding smoothly, it reached toward the counter, took hold of each plate, glass, and piece of silverware and placed it softly on its appointed spot as everyone sat down to eat.
Except that without anyone noticing, FP had finally made it onto the counter. So when the table's arm stretched out to grab the third plate, it grabbed the flustered pig instead and placed him down in front of Mr. Bas. He looked startled for just a moment, but then nudged FP onto the floor with a shake of his head, and picked up his own plate.
“So really, Fisher, how was your day?” his mother pressed as she sliced herself a piece of chicken. Fisher shrugged.
“About normal, I guess. Treated like I have a contagious disease and generally shunned.”
She frowned. “Fisher, I hope you know not to buy into what any of those boys say. People your age aren't usually as bright as you are, and sometimes other kids take that as a personal insult.”
“I know,” Fisher said, “but it's less than a month into the school year, and I just feel like everyone else knows where to go and what to say and I'm just wandering around trying not to get knocked over.”
“Everyone has a tough time when they're twelve years old. Bullies are just the people who deal with that frustration by taking it out on those around them. In a few years, they'll look back and realize how childish they were being.”
Fisher sighed and nodded, wondering if he could possibly last a few more years. This was why he didn't like to talk to his parents about school; they just didn't understand. They always told him that things would get better. But time was passing, nothing was getting better, and he was sick of waiting. Desperate to change the subject, he said, “So, what about your day at work, Mom?”
“Oh, we're starting to see some progress with the artificial protein chains. I made a few tweaks to the sequence, and things look much better.”
Helen Bas was a world-renowned microbiologist, biochemist, and genetic engineer, and much of her work involved efforts to increase food production around the world. As she went on about her day, she took a sharp knife and thinly sliced a tomato the size of a basketballâ one of the runts of the patch. The properly grown ones would have had to come in through the garage door. His mother had spent many years genetically developing giant vegetables and was largely responsible for helping significantly close the gap in world hunger.
“One of my biggest problems now is industrial espionage,” she continued, passing a slice of tomato to Fisher that was as big as his dinner plate.
“What, like spies?” Fisher said.
“Exactly,” Mrs. Bas said. Fisher choked on a tomato seed when she mentioned the spies. He coughed and the seed flew out of his mouth, landing in his father's wineglass. His father, absentminded as usual, didn't even notice as he took a sip.
“The formula I'm working on is very powerful,” Mrs. Bas went on, “and it could be very dangerous. We need layers of security to catch agents from other companies trying to sneak into our lab.”
For about a year, Fisher's mom had been working on a delicate and carefully guarded project. The government had approached her team with a revolutionary task: to develop a synthetic version of human growth hormone, the natural chemical that stimulates growth and healing in humans. This artificial version was intended to achieve the same effects as natural HGH, but at a much faster pace. His mother had named it AGH, for Accelerated Growth Hormone.
She'd been more high strung ever since the project had begun, but she was determined to see the project through. If the AGH was perfected, it could start a revolution in medical technology. Some diseases could be wiped out entirely, treatments for others drastically improved. Surgery recovery times and physical therapy could be advanced far beyond anything the medical world had ever seen. Fisher just hoped all of these long days and extra hours would get her the breakthrough she was looking for.
“Why would someone want to steal your work?” asked Fisher, deliberately knocking over his glass. Intentional spills were actually encouraged by his parents to make sure the table was in proper working order. With a snap of plastic joints, the table arm zipped up, caught the glass before it hit, and righted it.
“The problem with AGH,” she said, and the way she pronounced it made it sound momentarily as if she, too, had a tomato seed lodged in her throat, “is that it's a very powerful substance that can be used in many ways, some of which we can't even predict.”
“You could alter a person physically to make him more powerful, or even grow an army from embryos in a matter of weeks,” said his father. “Like every new technology, it can be used for good or evil purposes.”
The way Fisher's dad said “evil purposes” gave Fisher a quick chill.
Walter Bas, Fisher's dad, divided his attention between particle physics and field biology. Years ago he won the Nobel Prize for his pioneering work on the biology of sea slugs. That particular species of slug was virtually extinct, because they'd become too lazy to choose mates. He had manipulated the slugs' DNA so that a single slug possessed both male and female parts and could reproduce all by itself.
Fisher was proud of his father, although he did wish that his last name had not become synonymous with the Bas-Hermaphrodite-Sea-Slug Hypothesis.
It used to be great being the kid of two genius inventors. When he was little, all the neighborhood kids loved to come over and play tag around the cucumber forest, or try to beat the refrigerator at a game of chess. Then, a few years ago, it was as though a switch flipped in everyone else's head. Suddenly, people who were curious, who wanted to learn new things and explore the world, were nerds.
Fisher could never adjust. He loved discoveries and inventions and knowledge. He didn't understand what had happened to all the other curious, adventurous kids he used to play with.
“Wow,” Fisher said, “that soundsâ”
All of a sudden, he was cut off by the
breep, breep, breep
of the house alarm. Someone was on the perimeter fence!
Fisher's mom leapt from the table. “Intruder location!” she shouted.
A map popped up on the opposite wall showing a top-down view of the house, and a small dot appeared just to the side of the front gate, on the inside of the fence.
“Immobilize!” Mrs. Bas commanded as she darted from the room toward the front of the house, knocking over a chair in the process.
Security systems reared up from hidden spots in the front yard. With an airy
pomf!
they spat out enormous nets of artificial spider silk. Fisher's father had engineered them based on an Amazonian specimen he had collected.
“Target immobilized!” said the house in its perpetually upbeat, booming voice, as if an immobilized target was exactly what it had wanted for its birthday.
Fisher followed his parents to the front door. Outside, they heard hard breathing and what sounded like surprised shouting. They opened the door, walked out into the yard, and realized that it wasn't shouting.
It was squealing.
FP was struggling frantically with his little hooves, superglued to the fence by dozens of adhesive web strands. Fisher ran forward to help, getting his hands just as stuck in the sticky, tacky mess of spider strands. FP looked at him in panic and squeaked repeatedly.
“I'm sorry, boy,” Fisher said, trying to wrench his pet away from the fence. “What were you doing out here, anyway?”
FP squeaked again, moving his forelegs the tiny amount that he could. “Were you trying to fly with the ducks again?” FP snorted guiltily, and Fisher sighed. “Well, at least you have goals.”
Mrs. Bas let out a deep breath, the tension and fear slowly leaving her face as Mr. Bas put his arm around her shoulders.
“De-immobilize,” she said to the house. A smaller apparatus popped out of the side of one of the net-guns, and sprayed pig and boy alike with a solvent that turned the webbing to a thin liquid instantly. FP squeaked in surprise as he dropped the few feet to the ground. He then gathered his bearings, shook off the liquid like a dog would, and trotted back toward the house with as much dignity as he could muster.
“Target de-immobilized!” said the house in the same cheery tone.
Fisher returned with his parents to the dinner table. He held FP on his lap this time, scratching his pet's ears and back as FP napped off the excitement of the evening.
“I'm sorry, Fisher,” his mother said, smiling a bit sadly. “I may have overreacted a bit when I was programming the house's security settings. I'm just worried about what could happen if someone got a hold of my work. In the wrong hands ⦔
“In Dr. X's hands, you mean,” said his father, furrowing his brow.
“He's made no secret of the fact that he wants to secure the formula for himself,” she replied, taking a sip of water. “Our security has already caught three of his agents trying to break into the lab complex. He's a ruthless man, whoever he is, and he's willing to do anything to advance his own purposes.”
Fisher hoped his parents wouldn't notice that he was blushing. His parents made no secret of the fact that they despised Dr. X. Fisher felt ashamed for thinking Dr. X was actually pretty cool.
“He may be secretive and a little odd,” said his dad as FP twitched under Fisher's hand, dreaming about soaring through the sky. “But there are limits to what he can and will do. Remember everything he's done for our city! For our countryâand for science at large! I know he's your fiercest rival, and he wants to beat your team to the discovery of functioning AGH, but I can't see him going so far as to actually rob us to get ahead.”
“I hope you're right,” his mom said, her voice full of doubt. A few seconds of silence followed, broken only by Fisher's chewing and the dreamy snuffling of the pig in his lap.