Chapter 2
Why is there a real human woman in his bedroom potentially having a mental breakdown?
That’s right. Because after a brief argument with Lextr about the ethics of recycling her, he decided to bring her to his unit.
His reasoning: keeping her in his lab is out of the question.
His staff would quickly realize that his latest experiment illegally brought back a woman from the past. The rumors about GROW’s mishaps that Tommy found on BLACKOUT are already making the rounds in the scientific community—evidently, he isn’t the only one who heard a rumor and went searching.
Soon NHOS will catch one of these mishaps.
There will be headlines. Public trust regarding the safety of his product will be questioned.
He must secure CHOICElover’s public image—his life’s work, his passion, and his brother’s legacy.
To do that, no one can know about the woman in the bedroom.
Therefore, since it’s his company he’s protecting, she’s his responsibility. So he did what any normal person would do in such a situation. He brought her home, stuck her in the corner of his living room like a floor lamp, and waited for her to wake up.
If he really believed she might have retained her memories, he’d have activated her in the privacy of his unit to begin with.
Disregard that. He wouldn’t have activated her at all.
But doing it in his unit would have saved him and Tommy from the cramped ride in his private sealed air transport, or SAT.
Plus the dozen strange looks as they carried her through the halls to the private elevator reserved for the penthouse units in his tower.
Yet activating her in his unit wouldn’t have saved him from the horrendously uncomfortable conversation he just had and the painful cocktail of panic and dread he’s now experiencing.
What is he going to do with her? It’s not like she can stay in his unit forever.
He wipes the sweat rapidly collecting on his forehead.
He should have made Tommy stay as a buffer.
I can’t imagine the type of greedy pervert that would invent a manupartner, she said. No, better Tommy didn’t stay and accidentally reveal that Res6 is in fact the greedy pervert in question. No wonder she’s hiding from you in your own bedroom.
The rays of sunshine from the particle panes, which illuminate the room in bright cheery light, aren’t helping his disposition.
He thinks the command: Update particle pane.
Play Drizzle. The sunny beach scene morphs into a custom rain aesthetic.
Hidden speakers in the corner of each window mimic the soothing sound of fat raindrops pattering against the glass.
He takes a seat at his desk, inhaling deeply, and allows the scene to soothe him.
Just approach the situation logically. Methodically.
His several mini-meltdowns were entirely unnecessary.
The rain facade is coming down in sheets, beating against the particle panes—or it would if it were real.
He thinks the command: Increase volume. A moment later, the melodic drumming surrounds him.
Water sounds, particularly rainstorms, ease something inside him.
He glances at the door, contemplating the woman on the other side.
She came from the year 2027. A time before acid rain and oceanic dead zones.
A pang of envy strikes him in the gut. What would it be like to feel the sun warm your skin as a wave rushes over your feet?
The simulation chambers are great, but they can’t come close to the real thing.
During her time, they probably had other things that only exist as replicas now.
Her presence in his life might give him an opportunity to hear a firsthand account of those things—but his curiosity will have to remain unsatiated for the time being.
Forever, because he has no intention of discussing her experiences or anything else remotely personal with her.
Not who she was, not what she likes or dislikes.
Nothing that might build a connection. Getting to know her feels like a bad idea.
Dangerous. Look what happened to Jerme because of 3Zeez.
He should get a manupartner as insulation, but the woman thinks they’re horrific, so a manupartner would only add to his problems.
He paces past the closed door, shooting it a glare as if it caused the offense. Wait—when did he stand back up? No matter. Trying to sit still is a fruitless endeavor. His priority is figuring out what to do with her while simultaneously keeping her identity a secret.
That feels only slightly monumental. Fuck me.
The trials that led to her existence seemed reasonable at the time. Prudent even. Clearly, he needs to reframe it as a mistake. A colossal mistake that is his responsibility.
How could he be so stupid? He and Lextr knew this was a possibility—GROW, it seems, proved that.
But instead of just pulling CHOICElover’s pre-2050 line, he approved the trial.
Now there is a real human woman on the other side of his bedroom door grappling with her fate.
He hasn’t even told her the worst part—how she ended up in the DNA pool.
She died. They all did. They weeded out the famous ones, like movie stars and political figures, or vectors with telomeres so aged, the DNA wouldn’t survive the replication process without mutations that would corrupt the integrity of the specimen.
Outside of that, DNA from anyone in the past is fair game. Soon, he’ll have to tell her.
The thought makes his stomach clench. Perhaps he can delegate the task to Tommy. No, she’s your responsibility. Zorgdamn his curiosity. It pushed him to get CHOICElover off the ground—well, his curiosity and the guilt, his constant companion. Not dwelling on that.
Motivations aside, his curiosity has been a benefit more often than not.
It led him to experiment until he developed a nearly flawless product, and when his research direction became public, the competition to get a product on the market exploded.
He won. CHOICElover was the first and the best. When kept in check, curiosity is a good thing, especially for a scientist. So, sure, he was curious.
Restless.
The word pops into his mind, unwelcome. Is he restless? Is that why he allowed the trial? Is running CHOICElover not enough anymore? Did he get bored, or worse, complacent?
He shakes off the concerning thoughts, finding himself hovering outside her door.
Her door . . . Having her in his space, a real woman right on the other side of the door, makes his blood pressure spike.
He keeps pacing. She’s a liability. An existential threat, one he’s terribly physically attracted to—which normally wouldn’t be an issue—who is primed to disrupt the stable life he’s cultivated.
He should have pulled the line and kept on . . . living, or whatever this is that he is doing.
That’s it. He needs something to do, or he’s going to drive himself mad overthinking. Maybe Lextr has pinpointed the biochemical synapse relay stage responsible for triggering memory activation.
The DNA samples GROW inadvertently used, which resulted in solvent NAM expression, probably originated from the brain tissue of the vector.
Though why GROW would have used physical samples instead of the industry standard synthesized DNA was anyone’s guess.
For the experiment, Lextr selected hundreds of DNA samples from vectors with perfectly preserved prefrontal cortex tissue along with samples from various areas of the body as the control group.
As the experiment got underway, the vectors from the control group showed failure markers early in each trial.
On average, the brain matter group made it much deeper in the grow period before failing, until the final successful vector made it all the way to activation.
That brings him full circle to the beautiful, real woman in his bedroom.
He glances at the door for the twelfth time.
What is she recording on the tablet? He can’t even guess, because that woman, Electra Lynch .
. . She’s so alive . . . and those freckles .
. . they’re something else entirely. If he is being honest, a very small—infinitesimally small—part of him finds her utterly—
The point is, he needs to go to the lab and speak with Lextr.
He marches toward the bedroom door and pushes it open. “Hello?” Poking his head inside, he eyes the inconvenient woman. “Is everything okay?”
Electra absently glances up from her tablet. Her eyes widen as they land on him.
“I need to run back to the lab,” he says. “Will you be okay here while I’m gone?”
She gives him a subtle nod.
He narrows his gaze. She looks so small sitting there on his bed, as though whatever bravery she drew upon earlier has run out.
Did her bottom lip just quiver, or is that his imagination?
Where’s the spunky woman who marched into the bedroom with the tablet?
Strike that. It doesn’t matter. Her new reality is shocking, so if she cries, it is perfectly natural. Excellent. He’ll leave her to it, then.
“I’ll bring back food,” he states crisply. “Shouldn’t be long. A few hours.” With that, he spins out and flees his unit.
Res6 studies the dozen 3D DNA models Lextr has pulled up on the center panel of the Spot-Gene Interface.
The enormous set of screens spans the entire wall of the conference room on the R&D floor of CHOICElover’s main operations hub.
“You’re saying a key gene sequence didn’t get spliced correctly, causing her embedded memory expression to be solvent? ”