17

The moon was watery shining through your spotlight ceiling down onto you, its saccharine bright bathing you in pale glow, your arms free from bedside restraints, you disconnected the IV from your arm, life support pads still monitoring your heartbeat stuck to your skin. You sat up for the first time in months. It was a struggle bringing yourself into position, your limbs brittle, you could feel your joints grind together while you worked at your task. You found the bedside remote control. You pressed the button to recline your sleeper up to your back. You heard the stir of Oreo around your bed, you had to pee, no wheel chair in your room, you were helpless, the catheter would take care of it. The curtains moved, ghostly blond curls in mass, your mother stood at the foot of your bed. You were dreaming, she stared at you, her eyes set in shadow, she stood silent, chin up surveying the fruit she had come to bare. You were still asleep, she was sentinel in this.

“What do you say, Barty?” You were awake, the cool bite of her voice broke you from delusion, sharp and direct you couldn’t come up with the words right out. She chuckled. “Thank you mother, for rescuing me from sister? Where am I? Can I have a cigarette? How are you? You haven’t been this quiet since we took you home from the hospital. Where’s that Ashby wit? Your jaw wasn’t broken.”

“I have to pee.” Your first words, she giggled, levity that made you start up too.

“You’re a clone of your father, you know. Can you hold it?” Melody

“I mean I could just piss myself.”

“Don’t be a f*****g brat Barty, that’s what got you here in the first place. You’ll listen next time I tell you stop picking on your sister. She takes after me, you know? She may not be the smartest, but she’s a lion, someone will be very lucky if she’ll settle. But I digress, how do you feel loveie? Do you know what day it is?” She took a seat on the side of your bed.

“Are you f*****g serious?” You weren’t completely sure you weren’t asleep again.

“I don’t ask trick questions you little c**t,” Melody. You were awake.

“I actually don’t feel so bad, I’ve had plenty of time to heal so, you know, my bones feel like bones instead of jelly.”

“That’s good. You’ve been here for five months. We’re in Bristol, a vacation seemed in order. I’m not completely immune to it. You’re wearing it well. You’re a big girl I guess you’re figuring things out. There aren’t any rules to this game, and I know that it may sound like rambling, I’m drifting some but you are definitely a clone of your father. Every time I look in your eyes, I love you kids I just want what’s best for you. Do you understand?”

“Mom you keep saying that like I’m not listening, I know I’m a lot like Jason. It wears on you some time, I love you, this is just something that I have to do. I mean I’m good at it. I apologize, but a lot of things just seem so f*****g trivial. I mean you’ve seen it. I know I’m not immune either, JK wised me up really fast, I can’t just sit on my a*s.”

“Haha, you sound like me, but I think you’re still missing the weight of what I just told you. You are a clone of your father, a genetic replica, actually the 2.0 model, Richard was the first one. I call you a clone because I’m a different generation from you, you probably know a better word for it, I mean you.” She was looking directly at you, a quick pause, her eyes darting over your face, you were still processing. “You want a story? It was right before Jason’s lock up. I mean you had to have asked him about exactly why he was locked up? I guess you’re not the type to ask something like that. You were the wing for the bulk of Blue Lite, I’d say you know the tech just as well as Dickie and Jason. Anyway, while mining your progenitor fell ill and in the process of separating himself from the elements, he learned a lot, addition and subtraction from the gene pool. I met him a little while before that, but I did not want kids, nothing personal, I was vain. No way I was going to rocket one of you little f***s out of me and a c‐section would have been suicide. So I was with him through his prison stay, he was dying, thought he was dying, legacy, blah blah blah. I love your dad very much. The way you felt about that boy is the way I feel about him all the time, Granted I don’t have the capacity for, never mind, but along came baby Richard and babies are just so f*****g cute, I got into it.”

“So I’m,” your mother was slipping, she was surely going to smother you with a pillow soon.

“Don’t interrupt” she thumped you on the head, “Anyway Dickie was growing up wonderfully and Jason got better, the mining sales were panning out and Jay said he always wanted a daughter so he whipped you up. You were a beautiful baby, you’ve seen the pictures. I admit it, you were a different breed, I don’t know if it was the cobalt, turning you into you. He didn’t tell me the formula anyway and if he did I wouldn’t have understood it. You turned out like you did and that’s that.”

“I’m a clone.”

“Pretty much.” Melody “Richard is a clone.”

“Yes.” Melody

“Jenny Kryss?”

“Completely biological. I mean not to say that you aren’t, but we had her the old fashioned way. We weren’t planning on going past you two but it was a good year. She takes after me obviously. I’m pretty sure I’m the only one that could have hurt your father like Kryss got you.” She tweaked your nose, you tried to fight her off but it was useless.

“And Boo is your baby too.” She was still pinching your nose; you gave up trying to shake it off.

“And Boo is your baby too.” Melody “Funny,” she stopped holding your nose. “Boo is complicated.” Melody

“More complicated than clones?”

“Copy of a copy.” Melody

“Carbon copy?”

“Use that big brain of yours. Albino blondes. I guess it’s somewhere in my tree, but she’s you, so she’s him, but you’re both yourself, you have free will, etcetera, etcetera. You’re not exactly him of course, and she’s not exactly you, but that’s how the breakdown goes. Questions?”

“No, I mean, why does she look like that. You don’t know the formula, right.”

“Actually, this one I know. You know how you have black hair and you’re the only one, and I mean you’re the only one; it’s in the process of the mold itself that, these are his words, residuals echo in the process. I say it’s kind of like a film negative but I’m just scratching for poignancy.” Melody eyed you for comprehension.

“Silver from the sleeve.”

“Profundity.” Melody

“She’s a negative.”

“Spitting image.” Melody

“It’s weird me and Jenny look so similar.”

“It’s like that sometimes,” she massaged the side of your face. “You’re taking this extremely well.” Melody checked your head for any cracks.

“I’m a one off,” you kissed her hand. “I have to pee.”

“I’ll go get a chair.” She disappeared through the curtain and out the door. The rush of what the f**k coming and going, you were even more of a weirdo that you had thought to go down the train on. The nature of your families reproduction, replication, now you knew why you wouldn’t have babies, a failsafe built in. You kind of already had a child, in theory, you’d find out the full scale story when the time came.

“Oreo what do you think about this? I’m not a human being, I’m intelligence put into form, pretty cool huh?” No response. Typical dog talk, no pants, he didn’t even flinch beneath you, boys will be boys. You wondered if Richard knew, he wouldn’t react if he did, and telling you probably wouldn’t cross his mind. He was ready to follow in the footsteps of the original, it didn’t come up till now, the hostile take over and your brother and father on the western front, this was business. Richard was fierce, but the deck was stacked. Jason, the face and brain, but forces spread him thin after time. Wow, you thought the end of an empire. Headless father burying the son in shallow grave. You laughed, he could always make another one if he liked him that much. Your mother returned with the wheel chair and nurse.

“Barty it’s so good to see you up and in touch with the world around us again. Your mother has informed me that you’re ready to get your faculties back about you.” The nurse’s hands were freezing, she leaned you forward and unwrapped the heavy bandage holding your chest together and disconnected the heart rate monitor, your tits cold, you could feel the tiny hairs standing on end in as the goose pimples hit your newly exposed flesh. “We’re going to start your physical therapy on the beginning of the work week. Let’s get that catheter out of you” She lifted you from your bed, she was very strong for someone so slender, you read the name tag, Bisira. You we’re like a baby again, brand new and soft all over. She pushed you out into the hallway. Your eyes were adjusted, a soft blue light through the hallway with frosted white along the ceiling. “It changes with the time of day. This night time blue is pretty calming and doesn’t shock you coming out of the darkness.” There was an even electric hum running along the corridor, she pushed you past closed doors marked with glowing signage, your mother at your side.

“I really do love it. I don’t know why they don’t adopt this design for more western hospitals. C’est ce que ce. The white walls are just so sterile. Providence I guess. You do it one way, white linens, it still breeds the same disease, staff infections, it’s a semblance of something that never existed. I mean if there was such sterility in the world none of us would even be here. You pull a trigger, you get a cloud of smoke, isn’t that right Barty? That smoke breeds people, we need that smoke, it’s our nebula, you can’t smooth over a thing like this, its accretion. If it was it would be inert, perpetuity is something different entirely.” Your stop the restroom.

“Do you think you can handle this on your own?” Bisera. “I can manage.”
“If you’re lying in a puddle of piss in an hour?” Melody

“I’ll make some potassium nitrate,” you wheeled yourself into the restroom slowly; your arms could hardly push the wheels along on the old chair. “You could have given me better bearings.”

“Short notice, Barty,” Bisera. You closed the restroom door; arm rails on the side of the toilet for you haul yourself onto the seat. You made the move to porcelain with maximum effort, your arms almost slipping from the rails and sending you off the edge onto tile floor. You hiked up your gown, your bladder locked, anesthetic, you tried to relax, nothing coming out just pressure. You hummed a little tune trying to distract yourself, something with a fife and drums you heard in a movie, revolutionary tune played in the background, the scenes sounds overlaid with words and pictures. It took a minute but you got yourself finished and wiped and back in the saddle and out the door.

“Trouble?” Melody

“I could have told you it was going to be a little difficult, but you did well.” Bisera holding onto the back of your chair turning you on point back towards your room. She rolled you with more urgency, standing on the back pegs and drifting a bit, your mother jogging behind trying to keep pace. “I’m sure you’re going to be just fine, Barty,” your mother opening the door. You were rolled to your bed, this time you climbed in yourself.

“Don’t stay up too late talking to Oreo, you’ve got to get back on your horse tomorrow.” Melody

“Yes ma’am.”
“Welcome to Saint Anais Greens.”