Yours for the Taking, page 20
Sitting across from July at her desk, Olympia sighed. “I do think you have a right to know,” she said, “but it needs to stay between us.”
July nodded, holding her breath.
“He died,” she said. “I’m so sorry. We didn’t get to him in time.”
July brought her hands to her face, as though she could keep the sadness in. She got up and fled the room before Olympia could say anything else.
In the days that followed, July’s grief traveled from her head to her heart before settling in her stomach, twisting her insides painfully. She found herself forgetting to eat. She tried drinking more water, and she tried going to bed earlier, but the gnawing feeling only worsened. Dark circles appeared under her eyes.
She didn’t want to have to talk about it, so she lied, endlessly, like she always did. At noon, when her tablet pinged to say, How are you feeling right now? she always selected Good.
The only thing that mattered was that Ellery was dead. July would never figure out if her feelings had been jealousy or attraction or some intoxicating combination of both.
July didn’t tell anyone about this storm of feelings happening in her brain and in her body, not just because she’d been sworn to secrecy, but because July never really liked to tell anyone anything real. It didn’t make her feel better to share the secret parts of herself with other people. Nothing anyone ever said to her was smarter or more helpful than what she could say to herself. She learned how to mask her fury with quiet, realizing that people were eager to project whatever was most convenient in the moment on a placid-faced child. They didn’t guess that inside, she was raging. Even Brook didn’t really know her.
Long before Ellery died, July figured that she had a lot to be angry about, and she didn’t understand why more people didn’t seem to feel similarly. She knew the entire basis of their world was bullshit. For a culture that taught consent so intensely, it seemed ridiculous to July that the first generation hadn’t even consented to being here, not under these terms. Because they had learned that you can’t fully consent to something if you don’t have a full picture of what you’re saying yes to.
The more she learned about what the outside world had been like, the angrier she became. It would have been so easy for people to save the planet, to stop the wars, and to curb the influx of disease. Instead they had all been selfish and ignorant. They’d done nothing until it was too late. July and her peers had inherited the damage previous generations had done. And now as a result, the people who remained alive were stuck inside, where they would all die before seeing the earth heal itself. And no one was talking about how miserable that was.
27
“It was heartbreaking,” Olympia said. “He was so young.”
Jacqueline adjusted the angle of her screen, tilting it so that it would show a more flattering view of her neck. Shelby had recently helped her tinker with the lighting around her computer so that the lines on her face seemed softer than they were. “It seems to me that he brought this on himself,” she said.
The connection glitched, freezing on Olympia’s face. She looked horrified, which seemed a little bit dramatic. Jacqueline refreshed the page. While she waited for the connection to come back, she glanced out her window. It was always nighttime in space. Someone should have warned her how sad that would feel. Worse than any seasonal depression. Olympia’s face reappeared.
“Lost you for a moment,” Jacqueline said. “Please continue.”
“This is a disaster,” Olympia said.
“It’s bad,” Jacqueline admitted. “But it’s nothing we can’t handle.”
“Really? It already feels like we can’t handle it.”
“It was one person,” Jacqueline said. “Surely it’s not the end of the world.”
“We should have caught it sooner. This was clearly not the first time he tried something like this. It makes me wonder what other self-destructive behavioral patterns we’re missing. My team tells me he might have been giving the substance to his peers. We need to look into all of them.”
“Maybe,” Jacqueline said. Her staff should have known better, but Jacqueline had compassion for them. There were more important things for her employees to be thinking about.
Olympia said, “You know I’ve been concerned about Gen A overall. This is a worst-case scenario.”
Jacqueline arched an eyebrow. Olympia had made this point several times over the past fifteen or so years. Now, though, with a death on the books, Olympia had evidence to support her claims, which meant Jacqueline needed to steel herself for an argument.
“Well, let’s hear it. Tell me what you want to say.” Jacqueline sat up straighter to brace herself for impact.
“In prioritizing July, we’ve let others fall through the cracks.”
“I really resent the implications of that,” Jacqueline said. “It’s not July’s fault that this boy decided to end his life.”
“I’m not saying it’s July’s fault. I’m saying it’s ours. The team has been caring for her at the expense of everyone else.”
Jacqueline dismissed this quickly. “Anyway,” she said, trying to deflect with a quick pivot, “you do bring up a good point about Gen A’s lack of progress. We might disagree on the reason they are falling behind, but the fact is that they are. We always knew this could happen, that there was a chance July’s progress versus everyone else’s would prove that boys aren’t necessary. At this point I think it’s clear my vision would be better served by a permanently all-female population.”
Olympia made a sound that was part cough, part gasp. “Excuse me?”
“Yes?”
“No,” Olympia said. “We can’t do that. It’s not ethical. There’s no way the residents would agree to this.”
“Why do we have to tell them about it?”
“You don’t want to give them a choice?”
“That’s the beauty of the IVF technique, isn’t it? We could simply fertilize only female zygotes and make it seem like, oh, I don’t know, a fun coincidence that everyone has daughters. We have enough sperm samples saved for a million years. We would quickly evolve past the need for a male species.”
Olympia shook her head. “First of all, that’s not what evolve means. Second, not everyone will need us to help them get pregnant. What’s your plan for people who want to do it the old-fashioned way? Plenty of Gen A is interested in heterosexuality. Even July seems to be mostly straight, as far as we can tell.”
“Surely this is a question your medical team can answer,” she said. “Can’t you just, I don’t know, go in and alter the organic pregnancies that don’t align with the goal? Swap things out, so to speak.”
“If you’re saying what I think you’re saying, I really, really don’t think we should do that,” Olympia replied. “It’s wildly unethical on every level.”
“It’s extreme, yes, but we always agreed that if introducing men into the population didn’t work, we’d take extreme measures.”
“But that’s the thing. We have no way of knowing whether or not it actually worked,” Olympia said, her voice rising. “The test results have been sabotaged. There’s no real control group. This is really starting to feel like a self-fulfilling prophecy. Who are we to say that the reasons July is doing better aren’t due to the fact that this world is set up for people like her?”
“This is hard to hear, especially from you,” Jacqueline said. “The time to voice these opinions was decades ago.”
“Well, honestly, this is the first time it’s come up in a real way,” Olympia said. “I think I was hoping you had changed your mind about forcing an all-female future. Not just an all-female future—an all-cis-female one.”
“I think you know me better than that,” Jacqueline replied.
“Yes. I know you very well. Enough to know that you underestimate your own bias,” Olympia said. “It’s like you have this plan, and you only see the data in a way that supports what you want to do.”
“Yikes. Are you serious?” Jacqueline said. “Did you really just say that to me?”
“I’m sorry,” Olympia said, but it was clear she wasn’t.
Jacqueline was losing her patience. “Are you making an argument for men’s rights? That’s a little bit shocking.”
“Never!” Olympia said, firmly. “But you know that this is a regressive way to understand gender, right?” Jacqueline stiffened. “We need more diversity than people who are assigned female at birth. AMAB people belong here. We designed this whole system so that they could be born, and then raised under new circumstances, whether they are cis, or trans, or nonbinary, or otherwise have identities outside of the heteropatriarchy governing everywhere else on Earth. Trans women belong here. They’re an important part of the community.” She took a breath. “You would be eliminating all of them. And what about AFAB people who aren’t women? Would they actually be welcome here? Would you also force them to give birth to girls? I never wanted to be part of something that was all cisgender women. It wouldn’t work. It’s not right. It’s not the point of all this.” She threw her hands up in the air. “And where would you draw the line around what a woman can and can’t be? What about gender-nonconforming women—what about women like me?”
“Not to use an antiquated word here, but are you calling me a TERF?” Jacqueline could hardly believe what she was hearing. “I’m not invalidating trans identities.”
“No,” Olympia said, her voice somber and disappointed. “You’re just saying they don’t belong here. That’s not any better.”
Jacqueline was seething. “You know I support trans people. Shelby has been my assistant for decades now.”
Olympia sighed. “Having one trans woman working for you does not negate what you’re trying to do here. If anything, it proves my point. She’s always been a token to you, hasn’t she?”
Jacqueline was quiet. She didn’t have a retort. The truth was, she hadn’t really stopped to think this point through, and she hadn’t realized it until this conversation. She’d need to recalibrate a bit, which was a very unfamiliar process.
Olympia said, “All I’m saying is we need to be thinking about everyone. And … specifically, people who aren’t July.”
“Have I not thought of them?” she cried, defensively.
“I’m not accusing you of anything,” Olympia said, even though it was clear to Jacqueline that she was. “I just think maybe it’s time to rethink a few things. I’d love to be able to have a real, honest discussion with you about these issues.”
Jacqueline did some deep breathing to steady herself.
“And,” Olympia said, with an air of finality, “it’s my medical center. I decide what we do to people’s bodies. And we’re not doing this. This is the hill I’ll die on.”
“Okay,” Jacqueline said, trying hard not to sound as defeated as she felt. Olympia made a good point; there was nothing Jacqueline could do, medically, without Olympia’s buy-in. “I don’t like it, but I hear you.”
“You do?”
“Yes. You can stop yelling at me.”
“I wasn’t aware that I was yelling at you, but I’m sorry,” Olympia said. “So what do we do now?”
“Here’s what I’m thinking,” Jacqueline said, pausing for a bit longer than necessary for dramatic effect. “We’ve had this experiment in the works since the 2050s. You can’t expect me to throw it all away, to give up on my goals, simply because you say so. You have to give me something in return. If you don’t want to move forward with this program as I imagined, surely I can at least continue my dream on a personal level.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means I have plenty of my own frozen female zygotes, and we can find new surrogates.”
“Jesus,” Olympia exclaimed. “Will you ask their permission this time?”
“I don’t see why,” she replied. “The first mother we used never knew the difference. Don’t you think it would just make things unnecessarily complicated?”
“No,” Olympia said. “I don’t think that at all.” She was shaking her head vigorously. “You don’t have an ongoing right to other people’s bodies. It was bad enough we did it once.”
“I don’t know,” Jacqueline said, feeling pleased for the first time since the conversation began. “I actually think it might be a good compromise.”
“You’d barely be alive to see your children reach adulthood,” Olympia tried.
“You don’t know that.” Jacqueline smiled. “I’m feeling rather eternal these days.”
Olympia groaned. “That was not what I was trying to accomplish in this conversation.”
“So it’s decided,” Jacqueline said. She was thrilled with this outcome.
“I suppose you’d be happy if we could go right to cloning all the original women,” Olympia said. “Or, rather, if we just clone you. An Inside full of little Jacquelines. How does that sound?”
“I don’t have time for sarcasm,” Jacqueline said. “Let’s start looking into new surrogates immediately. How many embryos should we begin with? Four or five, perhaps?” She grinned, enjoying watching Olympia squirm. “Twenty, maybe? Thirty?”
“I can’t talk to you when you’re like this,” Olympia said. “I can’t tell if you’re serious or just trying to torture me. And we still have to talk about Ellery.”
“I suppose we do,” Jacqueline said, though the truth was she’d been hoping to get out of it.
Olympia said, “His death doesn’t bode well for how we’ve been using drugs for resident control. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt.”
“Don’t exaggerate,” Jacqueline said. “It’s harmless if used correctly. The mixture for the air is mostly rose water and chamomile.”
“And Xanax!” Olympia said, laughing a little bit at the way Jacqueline was downplaying the situation, which struck Jacqueline as very rude. “And a little bit of MDMA. And sometimes psilocybin. You know this. It works on the gen pop because it’s microdoses. Ellery died of an overdose. And we don’t really know how much of it he gave away, or to whom. I’m concerned about the kids becoming little drug traffickers.”
“Is there a reason the team isn’t able to track this?” Jacqueline asked.
“My feeling is that the surveillance isn’t as reliable as it was in the beginning. The original residents knew how to take care of a tablet. But now, the young people are constantly breaking them, or losing them, or flipping them upside-down just when we need to see what’s going on. It gives us a very fractured picture of what they’re up to.”
“The residents just need more structure,” Jacqueline declared with confidence, brushing Olympia off. “We can give that to them.” Jacqueline heard the sound of the ship’s support staff working nearby, clattering and shouting. It was irritating, but also somewhat inspirational. If these morons can get it together, she thought, the residents of Inside can as well.
“No one can know why,” Jacqueline added. “If word were to get out, I don’t know if the population would ever recover.”
“I’m concerned about his parent, Ira,” Olympia said.
“Let me handle that,” Jacqueline said.
“Fine. And other than Ira, the only resident who knows is July,” Olympia said. “I fully expect her to tell Brook any day now, and for Brook to tell her mother. But those three are a pretty closed loop. I believe they mostly just talk to each other.”
“Good,” Jacqueline said. “Let’s make sure it stays that way.”
“I know July didn’t have a personal relationship with him, but she seems truly shaken by what I told her. I’ve watched her cry herself to sleep,” Olympia said.
“I saw that, too,” Jacqueline said. “I do think Brook is a comfort to her.”
“No surprise there,” Olympia said.
The girls, of course, had no idea they were being watched, just like they didn’t know why their bond was so unbreakable. It was interesting to observe, which was easy since the girls didn’t know why anyone would care what they were up to. Jacqueline was counting on it. And anyway, maybe with future daughters, instead of bonding with a peer, they could simply bond with her.
* * *
A few days later, after giving it some thought, Jacqueline called a team meeting with all the Inside administrators.
“We’ll need to implement some structure,” she said, trying to read the dozens of pixelated faces on her screen. Alas, it was impossible to interpret the mood from so far away. “There’s been a tragedy, and I’d like to prevent it from happening again.”
She saw Olympia’s face in a tiny box on her screen. Jacqueline would never admit to Olympia directly that she had been right about a few things, and this was as close to an apology as she’d give her, as close to an admission that maybe some things could stand to change. And though Olympia had said it out of anger, and likely didn’t mean it, she’d had a point: Inside would function better if it contained fifty thousand clones of Jacqueline. Not that Jacqueline would ever utter that thought to a soul. Even she knew how it sounded.
Instead, she tried her best to be reasonable. “Let’s begin twice-weekly individual therapy, and group therapy for the ones who don’t seem to be coping well.” She tapped her fingers on her desk. “Does anyone else have any other ideas?”
Someone from the tablet team came off mute. “We can redesign the digital check-ins,” she said. “We could track their feelings more thoroughly throughout the day. Change up the questions, make them more in-depth than the usual How are you feeling right now?”
“Good,” Jacqueline said. “Do it. Anyone else?”
There was silence. “Fine,” Jacqueline said. “So we’ll start with that. And in the meantime, please hold off on replacing him. I don’t want any of the residents having access to the ventilation system until we get a handle on how they’re all feeling.”
