Twinmaker

THE CAR SLOWED and shook as they passed through Philadelphia, waking Jesse. He was puffy eyed and sluggish, and Clair felt like he looked. They would be at the end of the line in less than an hour.

It was night outside and the air was bracing. Clair said hello to Q, who had been busy organizing her messages and feeds into a comprehensible form. There were more than she had dared hope, divided between well-wishers and haters. The arguments between both groups were proceeding as well as could be expected, but Clair knew it could be better. Neurological data and insubstantial threats would only fuel the fire so long. She had to give something new to both groups, something that would raise the stakes for everyone.

She spent fifteen minutes recording a speech about what the world might be like if Improvement were real. Suppose you could step into a booth and emerge looking like a supermodel or a famous actor? What if everyone wanted to look the same or like literally the same person? She could see positive uses for such technology—to fix people after grievous injuries, say, or for gender reassignment—but what about the pranks people might play on their friends? What about all the people who just wanted to be freaks for the sake of it? What about athletes like Zep who trained all their lives only to be beaten by someone who’d used Improvement to make themselves stronger overnight? What about parents who wanted their kids to grow up certain ways, whether the children wanted to or not? And what about criminals who might change everything about themselves—fingerprints, face, eye color, even their genes—in order to escape justice?

“Imagine that world,” she told her viewers. “If Improvement isn’t stopped, that’s exactly what’s coming.”

She sent the video to all her followers in the hope that it would be passed on, for good or ill. There were many other interesting things happening in the world, some of them drawing millions, perhaps even billions of viewers. This was small-fry, but it concerned everyone. And every keen glance counted.

Clair asked about the dupes. Q reported that there had been no sign of them. Perhaps, Clair thought, that was because the people behind them were worried about showing their hand. Or maybe they knew about the bodies being held by the farmers: proof, if needed, that some of them had been copied. For that reason, it made sense for the dupes she knew of to go to ground. As Turner had said, though, she didn’t doubt there would be others. The dupes had been around for at least a year. That was long enough to accrue quite a catalog. Fat, thin, short, tall, old, and—she thought of Cashile with a wince—young.

Clair exchanged messages with Ronnie and Tash and her parents, who had been hard at work in their own ways.

“Is there anything else we can do?” Allison asked. “I could meet you at Pleasantville with a change of clothes—even come the rest of the way with you.”

Clair looked down at her overalls and was momentarily tempted.

“Thanks, Mom, but that’s okay.” She didn’t want to put her mother in any danger. “You’re claustrophobic, remember? You can’t even open your eyes in a d-mat booth. How would you cope with a submarine?”

They laughed, albeit a little tearily. Clair found it hard to sign off.

She leaned back against the rattling door of the car, contemplating the wisdom of trying to contact Libby, when a message arrived from an entirely unexpected source.

The message was signed Catherine Lupoi, a name she didn’t recognize, but the address indicated that she worked for VIA.

“Mr. Wallace is eager to meet with you to discuss your concerns,” the message said. “He will expect you tomorrow.”

Clair had to think for a second before she remembered the name, and when she did, she couldn’t believe it.

Ant Wallace was VIA’s head of operations. Q had told her that much about him, and a quick search through the Air uncovered a lot more. He had joined the organization as a volunteer twenty years earlier and risen quickly to the very top. He wasn’t an overt publicity seeker, but he was active in several public arenas, from urban planning to modern orchestral music. In particular, he was an advocate for increased research into the biochemical causes of depression and an occasional speaker at rallies urging the OneEarth administration to do more to inform the public on the issue. “Information, not medication,” he was most often quoted as saying. “Suicide is murder, not euthanasia, and we are all accessories.”

Now he wanted to talk to Clair about Improvement.

Triumphantly, Clair passed on the message to everyone in the car and then posted it to the Air. The response was immediate. Their numbers spiked as word spread: the head of VIA was meeting with a teenaged girl to talk about the possible consequences of Improvement. Perhaps he would take her grievances seriously. Perhaps he just wanted to dress her down in public. Either way, it was new and interesting.

Clair’s number reached ten thousand, and the figure was still rising. She was really popping now.

64

PLEASANTVILLE HAD AN official population of zero. Literally everyone d-matted in and out from all points across the globe, be it to gamble, to serve, to maintain, or to protect. There were plenty of beds, but no one went to Pleasantville to sleep.

Clair guessed the sick feeling in her stomach wasn’t so different from that of someone risking everything on a roulette wheel.

Turner opened the door for the final time as they decelerated into the train station. It was dark outside, two hours before dawn on the sixth day since Clair had heard of Improvement, and a rich ocean smell washed over them like a heavy tide. The engine of their four-wheeler started with a snarl. As soon as the freight car was stationary, Ray maneuvered the vehicle smoothly across the gap between train and station and into the night air outside.

Clair hung on to a roll bar as they accelerated along the gleaming side of the train. She waved to the drones watching them. There were six of them, not including Q’s, capturing the scene from every possible angle. Three peacekeepers stood between the train and a dozen young men, who hooted and jeered as the four-wheeler sped by. Drawn by the controversy, and perhaps hoping to make a “spectacle” of themselves as well, they were obviously drunk, but that didn’t take the sting out of their taunts. One held a placard with an image of Clair’s face that started out normal but changed by stages to that of an old woman with missing teeth and a black eye: Improvement was the slogan. One of them threw a rock, but it missed by a large margin. The last Clair saw of him, he was being reprimanded by one of the PKs. At least, she hoped it was a reprimand.

If I wasn’t me, she asked herself, would I care about this kind of thing? Would I be immune to what people said? Maybe I’d turn around and join them, throwing rocks at the loony Abstainers trying to make trouble for everyone.

She didn’t want to cause trouble. She wanted the exact opposite.

They pulled away from the station and into town. Clair had been to the glittering maelstrom of Las Vegas once, on a high school dare. Pleasantville had many of the same qualities: bright flashing lights; exaggerated extravagance, as though that mattered anymore in a world of plenty; old people dressed up like young people and smiling, always smiling. They couldn’t believe their luck, Clair’s grandfather liked to say. They’d survived the Water Wars, and now they were rich.

On the radiant playground of Fire Road, signs flashed endlessly in every color. The New Showboat, Caesars, the Haven, the King, the Golden Egg. Once every block, she saw the familiar d-mat sign—two circles overlapping, worlds coming together in geometric harmony—an image Clair had never thought would ever make her feel so excluded.

The four-wheeler approached the docklands from the west. They were mainly decorative, with the odd sailing or cruise vessel rocking undisturbed in a public marina. At the end of the marina, a crowd of thirty or more was waiting.

This time the jeers were louder and more personal, delivered not by trolls but by protesters wearing masks that lent them all Clair’s features. It was eerie, and she did her best to ignore them as the four-wheeler pushed through their ranks, physically nudging people aside. They called her a fearmonger and agitator, and much worse.