Genosimulation (A Teen & Young Adult Science Fiction): A Young Adult Science Fiction Thriller (18 page)

Hey Mr. Fine,

A few days have passed and I haven’t been in touch - hope
you’ve been able to bear my absence heroically... just kidding. The truth is
that these days life is beautiful. I'm starting to feel that Lia (and I'm sorry
I can’t tell you her real name because inside I scream it all the time) is
starting, really, finally, to come to me. It makes me cry with joy. All this
time, with all these things that have happened, I didn’t really know what's
going on with us.

She doesn’t express emotions, you know? It’s just the way
she is, she keeps it to herself. And I can’t read such a person. I need people
to be open with me, because I find it hard to be open myself. Don’t think I
don’t know it.

All this time she liked me, but didn't really let me get
close. Get it? I would imagine so. And I'm in love with her. I admit it. Head
over heels in love with her. And all this although I have few positive signals
from her. Not that I can see, at least. Maybe someone else would be able to
tell me we’re okay, maybe that's how it should be. But who have I got to tell
me that?

I have no one in the world. You know that. My family is
irrelevant, you already know. Real friends? I never bothered to make any. No
one really understands me, what I am, who I am. Rabbi Eligad understand me, but
he’s not exactly a friend.

I'm alone, Lir. For years I was alone, I just got used to
loneliness. Never had a person who really took me into himself, just wanted to
be with me, really opened to me. Lia hasn’t either.

But now I feel she's doing it. Suddenly there's ...

Intimacy. That's the word.

Suddenly I feel intimacy. Such closeness between people.
This look in her eyes, the way she places my hand on her bump. Her breath on my
neck, her continuous attempts to remove my mask from my face.

Maybe I'll take it off, who knows.

And she whispers to me. Just comes to me, and speaks in a
low voice that, from a few inches away, only I can hear.

You know what that means to me? It's like the sun coming out
in the middle of the night.

Yesterday, after a few minutes with her, I went to the
bathroom. I went in, through the door, and I sat on the toilet and cried. Not
bitterly, not weepy.

It was tears of relief. Like a child who finds his mother, I
should think. Not really - I've never found my mother. I wouldn’t know how it
feels. But if I found ...

So I cried.

And it was fun. It was liberating. I couldn’t believe this
was happening to me, I still don’t believe it. But the sun can shine in the
night, and how someone, and I'm not talking about a super-someone like Lia -
but just a girl, can make you feel such intimacy – is a mystery to me. I am for
her and her alone.

And you’d certainly feel like this for Lia. She is so really,
really hot that men really respond to her. And I know how you’d look at her. I
look at her like that. And she is a super-someone who, if she wanted, could
easily be a model. And about her character ... she’s so complicated. So cool,
aloof, don't-touch-me like that. Especially to men. Doesn't give a fuck about
anyone. There was a rumor she's a lesbian.

And when you're in love you don’t mind of course, but it’s
still nice to know you're in love with someone so beautiful, so perfect, so
hard to get. And you get her. And she gets you. And you fit together and it's
perfect.

It also surrounds you from all directions and injures you,
so you ask yourself how you could live so long without this love, how you could
exist not knowing that someone is thinking of you and wanting you so much. And
why only now, dammit? Why has it happened only now? And you can get angry and
rave and cry for all the years you've lived in the dark, in the cold - but in
the end you don’t mind, because only an idiot would live in the past when she’s
looking at you from a distance of only an inch. Her eyes, you can drown in
them.

And your son is in her womb.

And your hands fold together. And your fingers touch. And
she slips onto you without noticing that her body wants you by itself, naturally,
with no thought at all. And affection is in the air. And intimacy.

Only an idiot would think about the past, when the future is
before him and it is so beautiful.

So I decided I did not want to be an idiot anymore. And I yield
to the future, yes. And let her be with me, and talk to her about what we’ll
do, and what will be, and how we’ll live, and we’ll go out together to the
United States, and what would we miss from here?

And get married. And bring more children into the world.

They’ll climb on my neck and back. And they'll laugh at me
and look at me just as I looked at my father when he wasn’t yet a dead man
walking, with such admiration. Greater love.

Me, a father?

The thought is so strange. I have never been a father. I
never thought I'd lived enough. Or would be old enough. Being a father comes
with responsibility, you know? Sure you do. Me and responsibility? East and
West!

And suddenly I'll be a father, with a father's
responsibility. It's exciting to me, as if I have a seal of confirmation that
says I’m allowed to. I can, too. I can damn well live.

Which is a relief. I didn’t realize how much.

This is what I wanted to share with you today. There’s also
more to say on greater subjects, but that's for another moment.

Sorry for the wait.

Z.

Thank you. 

Well, now for a technical report.

There is a crown. Basically it’s quite right, as computer
software. Its DNA is ready as a program.

Soon we'll finish organizing the biological prototype, make
a few experiments, and it will start to breed. It went pretty easily, despite
Lia being disturbed by the ease with which this corona is generating mutations.
This virus is quite crazy, each time a bit different than the last generation.
She says there's a risk, but it’s also our best chance to succeed, because
it’ll be hard to vaccinate against it.

I have a dilemma. On the one hand there’s no alternative,
and on the other hand this is a step you cannot return from. Sometimes I feel
really irresponsible. On the brink of insanity.

Normally we do experiments for years before we release a
virus into the air, and probably fix a lot of bugs in the process. There are
things in the genome that can pop up in just another 10 generations, but we
don't have enough time to calculate that far ahead.

We have two more weeks, barely enough time to build the
prototype and initiate breeding. Lia and I intend to get married, and so force
the system to keep us together. If it’s in the States or Israel, is up to
Keshny, and how much he wants Lia here. If he leaves us here we will have more
time to experiment. If not, then so be it.

What has happened? Why don’t you go to chatrooms any more?

I'm not in chats because I’m under some pressure at work.
We’re launching a new organizational plan (such bullshit - hard to believe that
someone’s actually paying for it) that requires a lot of my office hours,
that's why I don't do chats. Unlike you, I have to work hard at pretending to
be important, while actually I don’t make a difference to anyone. Never mind,
with the state of the economy today, at least I have a job. Even though it's
nonsense.

So, things are going well for you? I'm happy for you.

Funny, but somehow I hope you stay in Israel. I feel very
close to you, and also to Lia, as if you were my neighbors. The Internet makes
it feel like you’re distant relatives. That's how historical novels are born,
which is nice. So stay here, okay?

It’d be strange to think of you so far away, in the US.
Although it shouldn’t affect anything – it’s not as if I’d ever bump into you
anyway, is it?

But still, the possibility that by happenstance we might be
in the same place at the same time, makes me feel good. Maybe you'll be the
couple in a cafe next to us? I'll go to cafés in the streets because of
you. I'm sure I'll recognize you: glacial green eyes bossing the oxygen mask.

The man behind the oxygen mask - someone has to write a book
about it. : -)

And maybe you met me without me even knowing? Did you follow
me? Today this thought doesn't threaten me anymore, I even hope it happened.
You know what? I’d be surprised if it did not happen. You are very
straightforward in the things you do, so for sure you've seen me. How about
telling me where it was?

Your turn. 

About a year ago, Café Bialik. After that at your
home, at your fencing class, and in a few other places. A secret for you: we
even talked.

I don’t have an oxygen mask, but I use it when I want to.

Enjoy guessing. 

A café? A year ago?

That was before you contacted me for the first time ...
tricky.

Well, it doesn’t surprise me. You must have followed me for
some time. I hope you made the right move, and I hope for both of us that I
made the right move ... I'm actually going to publish it, you know. I think
it’s great material for a book, and you were right. What else is going on with
the pregnancy? Are you all right? And the crown?

Your turn

*

"You don’t have permission, I'm sorry.”

They were back in Keshny's office. More cordial now,
smiling. But their smiles froze at Keshny’s words, just as their bodies froze
in the air conditioning stream that hit them from above.

"What do you mean, no permission?" Zomy shot back
in a surprised voice.

"You do not have permission to leave together for
America. Lia’s staying here, in the Research Department. We don't have overseas
laboratories, you know. Sorry."

"So... so... I stay here?" Zomy still could not
understand Keshny’s exact words.

"No. You, your role here is done. They’re waiting for
you overseas. Even though we’re late because the project was ... hacked."

"But I can’t go abroad and leave here ..."

Keshny raised an eyebrow, silencing Zomy mid-sentence. Apart
from this slight movement, his face hadn’t moved since the beginning of the
conversation. His eyes remained firmly on the papers on his desk, refusing to
meet with those of Zomy and Lia.

"There's no way I'm staying here alone, Keshny,"
Lia cut. "I'm going with him, and that's it."

"Unfortunately," Keshny almost sighed, "it's
not up to you. As long as you belong to the team here, you have no such choice.
You forget who we are, and where we are."

"I don’t forget anything. And if that’s the case, I
won’t be staying here."

"Where exactly will you go?" Keshny directed his
eyes at her for the first time.

There was something ominous in this movement. Something
threatening in his scornful tone, of his 'Where exactly?' It was not a hint of
a question. It was a confident assessment.

Where would she go?

Lia weighed the options. Seemingly, everything was open to
her. It was a democracy, wasn’t it? But traveling overseas could be
problematic. She could not travel to the US as an independent. She did not have
a green card, and was not sure she'd ever be able to get one. Anyway, she’d
have to marry Zomy, and fast.

Even then, there was no chance of finding work in the US.
She would have to pass exams to get an American medical license. Not a trivial
matter, certainly not during pregnancy and childbirth. In addition, her
expertise was not, to put it mildly, commonplace outside the Institute. So
where would she go, really?

"I'll go where he goes," she said finally.

Keshny raised an eyebrow again.

“It won’t necessarily be a place suitable for a woman and a
baby. Anyway, you're essential – here. And this is your place.
Voluntarily."

Or involuntarily?

He turned his eyes back to the papers on his desk, closing
the discussion, and continued writing the document, whatever business he had
been attending to before the two entered the office. Lia and Zomy exchanged
glances.

"Then I withdraw from the system," Zomy dropped a
bomb.

Keshny looked up. Slowly.

"I don’t think you can do that."

"Why not?"

Keshny cut himself off completely from the documents.
Slowly, by design, without haste. It was so transparent, thought Zomy. This
whole situation was so transparent. Planned in advance. Perhaps even long
before today.

And Keshny’s earlier story, pretending to help them, was all
invented. He tricked them. Both.

"You cannot quit, precisely for the reason Vanunu could
not resign from where he was. You just know too much. You, too," he waved
his hand in the direction of Lia, "if it comes to that."

"I'll take it as high as possible!"

"It came from high as possible. Listen," Keshny
softened his tone a little. "Don’t think that I haven't fought for you on
it. But ultimately it’s not my decision, and I don’t know how to help you.
You’re going abroad within a few days, and you are staying here. It's
final."

"And if we get married?" Lia implored.

"Then marry. That won’t change anything."

"I'll have to give birth sometime."

"Three months, six months ... you'll get your maternity
leave. But this won’t be retirement, and you'll come back to work here. In the
Institute."

"But…" she continued, but Zomy took her hand.

"Forget it, Lia. He can’t help us."

"I'm sorry," Keshny responded.

"It's okay. We'll manage somehow."

And they left the room.