K Gillenwater: The Man in 14C: A Collection of Science Fiction Stories

James, a well-muscled Asian man, taller than most, waited for me near the entrance door we’d passed through earlier. “Mr. Pasquale? Come with me.”

I left the blonde and her mysterious metal plate behind. I processed the words she’d said – Judith Pasquale and her husband . Judith had remarried. My heart sank. I reassessed the facts of the matter. I’d gone missing for twenty years, most likely thought dead. Did I really expect Judith to remain alone for long? Our child had started in high school, only a few years more, and she would’ve been by herself.

I followed James down the concourse. It seemed the spaceport – rumor flew around the waiting area that airports had fallen out of fashion and near-space and space flights were the thing – had been closed for our strange arrival. Once again, they probably did not want us to be frightened by the news, exposed too rapidly to change.

I wanted to ask James a million questions, now that I had him all to myself, but I resisted. My physical condition was weak. I probably looked it. Gaunt, pale of face, clearly ill in some way. Meeting Judith would be enough of a jolt to my deteriorating system. Did I really need to find out everything all at once? Slow and a little bit at a time seemed best.

“Mrs. Pasquale is through this door.” James stopped at a door labeled Medical Testing Station . “She has been briefed on the details of your arrival. We have prepared guidelines to help reintroduce you into society. Please take precautions and welcome to 2037.”

He opened the door, handed me a pamphlet, and I walked through.

“Tony, is it really you?” Judith rose from the chair she’d been sitting in. She came at me in a wave of fruity perfume and well-tailored clothes – a pair of linen trousers and a shiny blouse, like the blonde, but hers in a pale pink. Her face had aged, as was to be expected, but not as much as I would’ve feared. Her figure remained trimmer than one would think for a woman of sixty-one.

“Judith...” I embraced her. “I’m so glad you’re here.” Over her shoulder I saw myself seated in a chair. Twenty pounds heavier, older, but with more hair.

Was my chemo brain giving me hallucinations?

She released me, and then awkwardly glanced from me to the man in the chair. “Maybe I shouldn’t have brought Anthony.”

“Anthony?” I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. “I don’t understand.”

Judith urged me to sit in a chair opposite the two of them on the other side of a small table. Physical distance meant emotional distance. I could sense it.

“Anthony is my husband. A clone. I had him made five years ago.” Her beautiful brown eyes welled up with tears. “I missed you so, Tony.” She reached across the table to grab my hand. “And they said they could make him just like you – but without, well, the problems .”

I knew what she meant – without the cancer.

“Mandy? Was she okay with this?” I thought of my only child. I’d flown to Tokyo the day before my daughter’s thirteenth birthday. Twenty years had passed, and now she probably had a life of her own. Although my heart hurt at the years I’d missed, with my illness I hadn’t expected to experience her arrival to adulthood.

“Of course.” Judith seemed surprised by the question. “She was actually the one who suggested it. I’d been so lonely, Tony. So lonely. Mandy couldn’t stand to see me like that.” She sat back and laid her hand on Anthony’s arm. “Anthony, this is Tony.”

Anthony, who’d wisely only watched the interaction between us, spoke for the first time. “Glad to finally meet you.”

We shook hands.

I shivered at the feel of my own hand. Bizarre and troubling.

“Is this normal? Clones, I mean. Is this what people do now?” I’d had questions before I’d come into the room, but these were not the questions I’d imagined I’d be asking.

“A few.” Anthony answered in a rich voice that wasn’t the one I heard in my own head.

Is this what I sounded like when I talked?

My heart raced. I couldn’t grasp had happened. I was twenty years in the future, my wife had married my clone, and my daughter – well, my daughter had gone along with the plan. I didn’t know where I would fit in to such a family, such a future.

My wife had started over with an older, but better, version of me. “No one has really explained to me what happens now. Am I your responsibility? Am I going home with you? Or am I some ward of the state?”

“The treatment, in Tokyo, I know it didn’t work.” Judith leaned forward, calmly changing the subject. “They didn’t know what happened to the plane, but the doctors were able to tell me that much.”

“No, it didn’t work. We both knew it was a long-shot.”

“Treatments are much more advanced now. Your type of cancer has been long wiped out through gene manipulation and Med-i-Drones.” She touched Anthony’s arm. “They fixed his DNA, Tony, and they can do the same for you, too.”

“Judith was able to order corrections during the clone process.” Anthony spoke as if this were distantly related to him. “I’m sure you noticed there are a few differences between us.” He raked his hand across his thicker, fuller hairline and cracked a smile.

“I noticed.” I guess if I had been given the chance to create a Judith clone, I would’ve tweaked a few things myself.

Judith blushed. “We’ve arranged everything for you. We should be able to get to the clinic in just a few minutes. The authorities have kept the press at bay for the moment. ”

“So they haven’t figured out a way to fix that, eh?” My cancer-weakened body hadn’t affected my sarcasm one bit, nor had time travel, apparently.

Judith sighed. She didn’t view me as her spouse any longer, but more like an irritating kid brother. Although my memories of our marriage were fresh, and my love for her deep and unshifting, I knew it was not the same for her. Anthony was her husband now, and I was, well, a complication.

“There’s a genetic treatment center in San Francisco. Mandy will meet us there.” She set one of the flat metal things the flight attendant had been using on the table between us and swept her fingers over its paper-thin surface. A three-dimensional image appeared of a young couple. It was as if miniaturized people stood on the table in front of me.

“That’s Mandy with her husband, Joe.”

My daughter.

I sucked in a breath of air. My thirteen-year-old daughter was now a woman in her mid 30s. Striking. Tall. Her long brown hair twisted into tendrils and braids. Miniature Mandy picked up a toddler from the ground and settled him on her hip.

“Oh, and that’s Noah. He’s older now. Your grandson. This picture isn’t that recent.”

I was a grandfather at forty-two.

Judith flicked her fingers as if she were turning a Rolodex. The image of Mandy disappeared.

“Oh.” I wanted more time with the miniature version of my daughter. I tried to imagine the years that had passed, what had happened to her? How had she handled the ‘death’ of her father? Did she go to college? What did she do for work? How had she met her husband? So many questions to be answered.

Judith showed me several more ‘pops’ – short for pop-up pictures – of my grandchild. I wished we had more time for a full pictorial review of my daughter from the time I’d disappeared until I’d reappeared in this new modern place.

“We’ll miss our appointment if we don’t leave soon.” Anthony tapped at his wrist.

I didn’t see a watch, but Judith looked at her empty wrist as well. “Oh my. Anthony’s right.”

I noticed a faint red flashing dot of light on her arm, underneath the skin. She tapped it with a finger, and the light went off.