Michael Grant - Eve and Adam

I head for the bathroom. Aislin snores softly.

I grab the scissors Solo used to cut off my leg bandage. Awkwardly, I slit the bandages on my right arm and hand.

I bend my crushed fingers, wave my mangled hand, flex my broken elbow.

It’s as if nothing ever happened.

You’re genetically modified.

Don’t think about it.

I take a hot, hot shower. I can’t believe how good it feels. Standing upright in the stinging spray is a gift. Shampooing my hair with both hands is bliss.

I towel off, change into fresh clothes, actual jeans with two legs. Then I reach—with my right hand, no less—for my sketchbook and pencil.

Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it.

I open to the unfinished sketch I’d been working on for Life Drawing.

The pencil feels smooth and certain between my fingers. The whispered resistance of point on paper is music.

I make a few random lines, just to get the rhythm right.

Don’t think about it.

I study my drawing. It still sucks.

It needs something. Energy, spark, soul.

Life drawing, my ass. This is a still life.

It’s the eyes. The eyes are all wrong. They’re nothing like the eyes I’ve been creating with the aid of my mother’s software.

Adam’s eyes pulse with possibilities.

These eyes… well, they’re granules of graphite on recycled wood product.

Don’t think about it.

I start to erase the left eye, but suddenly I picture the dog-eared poster on the art room wall: “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”

I turn to a new page, tear it out, and write Aislin a quick note.

I put the paper by her pillow. She’s kicked off her blankets, so I tuck them around her chin. Her cheek looks like an overripe plum, purple-black and swollen.

I stash my sketchbook in a drawer.

Then I flee for the safety of Adam.

I settle into my workstation. A shaft of sunlight slices the air. The twinkling ficus tree has dropped a leaf onto my keyboard. A couple of workers glance up when I appear, then quickly return to their monitors.

I enter my password. Click, click, tap, tap.

I can type again. Two hands, ten fingers.

Adam materializes.

He is a good-looking guy, Adam. Very good-looking.

Apparently, the other workers think so, too. They stare, as if hypnotized, at his hovering form.

“I want her job,” someone murmurs.

I glance over, and, in perfect sync, all gazes return to their respective monitors. I am, after all, Terra Spiker’s daughter: Eye contact is not an option.

Terra Spiker, who’s apparently capable of anything.

I wiggle the fingers of my right hand. My perfect, pain-free fingers.

They were trying to save my life. They did save my life.

If they hadn’t cut corners, ignored the FDA, I wouldn’t be here.

Wouldn’t I do the same thing for someone I love? For Aislin?

Yep. In a heartbeat.

But would I have kept it a secret from her, a secret she has to hear from some stranger?

Solo’s not a stranger, some part of my brain protests. But he is, of course. I know virtually nothing about him, except that he hates my mother.

Click, click. I focus on the monitor.

I realize that Adam’s eyes—which, yes, happen to be the color of Solo’s, which, yes, is just a coincidence—aren’t as lifelike as I’d remembered.

Like my sketch, the gaze is blank. There’s an emptiness, a void. Still, there’s a feeling of, I don’t know, possibility with Adam.

This isn’t like art. I know how to fix this problem.

The set of tools for designing the genetic components of the brain are different. They aren’t as simple as the first steps in creation: Plug in this gene and presto, you’ve got blue eyes or dark hair or lungs.

I scan the instructions. They make clear, in a playful, user-friendly way, that genes may lay the table for the brain, but they don’t cook the meal. Brains are about experience, too. And even at the genetic level, the interactions are so subtle and so intertwined that you can never be sure what you’re getting. The brain is a tangle of wires, billions and billions of wires, with some areas relatively sparse and other areas so densely packed that the connections seem to fuse, creating something greater than the mere connection of wires.

I scratch my wrist, where a scrap of surgical tape has been left behind. It itches. My whole body’s on edge, the way I feel when I haven’t been able to run for a few days.

Come to think of it, maybe that’s the problem.

No, I tell myself, that’s not the problem. The problem is that one way or another, you’re going to have to confront your mother and tell her you know the truth.

Don’t think about it. Not yet.

I could give Adam a genius-level IQ. I could drag certain icons together and come up with a massively complex brain. One that’s capable of absorbing incredible detail and synthesizing vast quantities of data.

On the other hand, I might also create a person so smart he can’t relate to anyone but people like himself. I could reduce his potential pool of friends, peers, lovers, to one ten-thousandth of one percent of the human race.

I could make it impossible for him to be happy.

Maybe I should make him average. He would have a wide choice of friends and possible lovers. But he’d have to work harder at school. Things might not come quite as easily to him.

He might be happier. But merely making him average wouldn’t ensure that.

I could tilt him toward the arts. I could prepare him for a life of science. I could code him to be a humanitarian.

I could make him fearful and cautious. He would probably live longer. But he might not find what he was looking for and needed.

I could make him reckless and bold. He might die younger. He might be a criminal. He might be a great creative mind.

This is not the simple, fun art work of making a face and a body. I’m not religious, but I’m starting to have some sympathy for God. Give man a brain smart enough to name the animals, one generally useful and productive, and you have to see the whole forbidden apple thing coming down the pike.

This isn’t as easy as it looks.

I think about brains I’ve known. Aislin. What the hell is going on in her brain? She’s not as book-smart as I am, and maybe that gets her into trouble. But at the same time, if you added up all the sheer pleasure and fun we’ve each had? Aislin’s pile would look like a skyscraper next to my three-story townhouse.

And what about my mother? She’s brilliant. Ambitious. Amoral.

You’re a mod. You’re genetically modified.

I can still hear the way Solo said it: a mod. As if that’s a regular word, an entry in Webster’s.

He sounded like a doctor when he told me. A doctor telling his patient she has an incurable illness.

Which is funny, when you think about it, because what I have amounts to a superpower. I can heal with a speed and completeness that’s unbelievable. I could be a comic book hero.

And yet I never noticed.

How smart can I be if I never even noticed?

“He’s… beautiful.”

I turn to see Aislin, pointing to Adam. She’s a disaster. Bruises all over one half of her face. The bandages covering the sutures are stained with seeping blood, now dried to a rust color.

She is not a mod.

“How are you feeling?” I ask. I don’t get up and hug her, although I think maybe I should. I don’t.

She doesn’t answer. Her mouth is hanging open. “Marry me, Adam. I don’t care if you’re missing some parts. I love you.”

“Yeah, his face turned out pretty well,” I say flatly. “So again: How are you?”