1A/N: I FOUND MY PASSWORD. FINALLY.
Anyway so this is late but I don't care. I'll be updating my nanowrimo novel here and something so hold onto your butts.
Keep me accountable, nerds.
Before we destroyed it, Abiola Tower was my family's second home. Dad built it, Mom named it, I was born in it, and my adopted siblings caused a war in it, among other things. I knew its halls like the creases criss-crossing my own palms. They made clones there, test tube kids, dreamchildren, cyborgs, amalgams, and every other alien thing that blurred the lines of natural and artificial intelligence and generally caused the ethicists their worst headaches. Also I used to play basketball in Hall 33-A using a wastebasket.
My dad was a genius and a billionaire at twenty-nine and my mother died before I was born, and I used to take quite a bit of joy from telling people that and watching their faces screw up after a couple seconds. As long as I can remember, I've known what's wrong with me and I'm fine with that because Dad made me to be that way, and as my childhood years were spent in one hundred percent total trust of his intentions, I loved myself just because he loved me. I was a clone because he saw a life beyond what my gene donor, Esther, could have possibly lived; in his own words, he said he felt that there would be a time where only a woman like my mother could fill a place in the universe.
And after all, if someone made a crude remark, I could at least reply, "Your parents didn't get to pick who they got stuck with. My father CHOSE me."
Every weekday until I was ten, me and Dad would take the train from our house in the suburbs into Chicago, stop by someplace for breakfast, and then walk down Forty-Second Avenue to Abiola Tower. One Thursday when I was three we took a detour into a toy store, which wasn't uncommon either. This time though he bought me a purple basketball and, while we were standing in line, he told me that I was going to have siblings. Being three years old I didn't know what this meant but I said okay and used my new rubber ball to slam dunk a wastebasket in 33-A. I told Dad's secretary that I wanted to be in the NBA.
Not long into my practice the main elevator down the hall opened and I saw Stirling Carcina come out. From what I knew of him then, he was Daddy's best friend; he had helped oversee almost everything about Abiola Corp and was even the brother of Birth Mom. (Not Actual Mom. Actual Mom wasn't around to be Birth Mom, even though Dad said she'd wanted to be.) Stirling was very tall and had white hair even though he wasn't old, and the backs of his hands were covered in woven gloves of tattoos that I suspected stretched much further up his white starched sleeves.
"Hi Mr. Stirling," I called to him, but he didn't reply and only kept walking as if he really needed a men's room.
This was not normal. Even though Stirling didn't often smile on his own, he was one of those adults who tried to make it impossible for other adults to dislike him. He kissed babies and walked old ladies across the street and he always said hi to me. Sometimes he even gave me little presents like this one teal yo-yo. I still have it in my dresser somewhere actually. But today he was stressed and there was only one office at the end of Hall 33-A, so naturally, I was curious as to what this was going to lead to.
I hadn't yet gone into Dad's office today because I hadn't needed to, and for whatever reason it made me feel a little weird to see Stirling just swipe his finger and stride in before I did. "Elijah," was all I heard Stirling say before the door clicked shut behind him. Another thing that made me feel weird. I put my ball underneath my arm and turned towards a broom closet.
There were a few ways to get into Dad's office — the front way which everyone knew, and which was guarded by fingerprint scanners and DNA-based security, an elevator used to carry up supplies directly from the storage levels, and a serpentine passageway that for apparently no reason at all connected every broom closet in the building up to Dad's office. At three, I only knew the ones on the top few floors, but when I was seven I scaled the building all the way from Basement 17 entirely with the passageways. It was Mom's idea so it'd only make sense that I'd like them too. This one in particular, the one leading directly from the south end of Hall 33-A to Dad's office on the north end, threw me into the passage behind a stack of boxes and a slab of drywall on hinges.
In I went with my purple ball and my pink glow-in-the-dark sneakers. It was always very dark and smelled like burning hair, and took three lefts and a right.
I emerged through a door behind the third workstation, where later as a homeschooled elementary kid later on I would do all my school. It was mostly storage now though and for good reason too, because Dad's office was huge. He had more stuff than I could ever all look at in one go, with screens all over the high walls, leaning towers of papers, clear pipes full of unknown fluids (and in one case, a clump of something that I later learned was a human brain), and right behind me an entire wall devoted to shelves and shelves of books in a hundred sizes, colors, and languages. Fluorescent lights overhead that were never on if Dad was working by himself, and were not now. The only light was a strong blue-white from the thirty screens. In one word? Chaotic. Something out of a tacky sci-fi film about an evil scientist. It smelled strongly of coffee here and also of an elusive Dad-smell composed of shaving cream and deodorant.
I had some boxes to hide me and I crouched behind them because I doubted Stirling would like me here; he had to have closed that door on me for a reason. When I peeked over the edge I saw that Stirling, a thin slip of a ghost in the uneven light, still stood with his back to that door and his arms folded. That was the first time I'd ever seen him with an angry expression and it was disturbing — his mouth stretched like a melted stick of string cheese across his vaguely-plasticy face, his eyes screwed narrowly and blinked too much.
"You know very well that I CAN do that, Stirling" was all I had heard when I came in, something that seemed to only make Stirling more tense.
It was Dad's voice, but it wasn't the one I knew. I knew it to be as warm and resonant as rolling thunder but now it was no more than a husky whisper. He stood directly across from me, but with his back turned and hands set on the bars of what looked to be a crib. My first thought was that's where it went, because it wasn't long ago that Dad had convinced me to start sleeping in the big-girl bed. I saw him as I saw Stirling, as a luminescent hunched block largely concealed in the deep shadows cast by the screens' pulsing lights. Contrary to Stirling, who shifted his weight often, Dad was unnaturally still.
"And in any case," he continued, with a defined edge, "the deed's already done, so it's too late to change even if you COULD talk me out of it. Talwar is bringing Avi tomorrow and I'm picking up the twins Sunday night. Plans made. Flights booked. You couldn't stop me if you had a gun on my head."
"Don't tempt me," replied Stirling evenly. His tongue was like silk but the three words scared me.
My father, on the other hand, only reached down into the crib and pulled out a bundle of mint green blankets. "You wouldn't hurt me while I'm holding a baby, Stirl."
"STOP CALLING ME THAT!" Stirling drove his foot into the ground (a habit that I would pick up), which made me jump and almost drop my basketball. But just after that was a sound that surprised me even more — the small, nearly inaudible whine of a baby. Dad turned to Stirling and I stared. All I could see was its head and every part of me ached to rush forward and grab it, but fear kept me crouching.
"Oh my actual goodness. Amazing job, Stirling Theodore Carcina VI...absolutely amazing." Dad's sarcasm puddled on the floor. "You scared her. Now you'll have to be completely and totally silent until she's asleep again and you'll probably have to stay silent so we can keep her that way. Unless you really want to wrestle me while I'm holding her."
Stirling seemed to have shrunk a couple inches. "She's an S-model; she can fall asleep through anything," he muttered sulkily. "You're making excuses."
"Yeah. But at least I'm being considerate towards other people while I'm doing it." Dad shrugged and began to sway gently with the baby in his arms. I could only see one side of his face, but there was a smirk there. His glasses reflected a momentary spark.
"You know, Stirling, you're really childish, you know that, right? You're — you're worse than Dea's friends. Look, okay, just the other day this kid came over to our house and showed her this one toy he said he got. It was an e-cigarette, by the way. I asked him where he got it and he said it was his, so naturally I took it away and gave it to his parents. The kid's never talked to me again and I'm totally fine with that." Dad tilted his head, sized up the look of disgust on his friend's face, and kept going. "You're like that kid. You took an idea that wasn't yours and you had no right to use. You don't know what it will do. You don't know how dangerous it is. And — what do you do? You give it to the world in the name of making yourself look better, completely unaware that what you're doing is just going to get you in the biggest trouble of your life."
Stirling's clenched fists fell to his sides and he stepped forward a little. "Stop talking about me like I'm less than you! YOU'RE the one who doesn't understand — I know what I'm doing — "
"You don't even know how to talk to me without getting mad. You sound like a twelve-year-old."
"Well, so do you! You're only three months older than I am! You just insulted me without grounds and you're evading the topic and — "
Something told me that Dad was in the perfect mood to throw his hands in the air and groan loudly, despite the fact that he was holding a very small child who would go flying if he did decide to relieve the impulse. Thankfully, he didn't. "Oh my. Oh. Oh my stars and garters. Oh my actual goodness, Stirling. I can't even BELIEVE you sometimes."
"Be aware that the only reason we're having difficulty in this conversation is because of YOU, not because of me," Stirling breathed in stiffly.
Dad was very gradually losing his cool. "It's not even a conversation! It's you bursting in here while I'm nursing a baby and trying to take over the world with something you don't even understand — I mean, not ME trying to take over the world, just — never mind. I can't even believe this. No. I can't even see how a human being could be this frustrating."
"Funny, because I swear that your house had mirrors."
I didn't catch the genius in the comeback at the time, but Dad did because he gave Stirling a scathing glare. "That was low."
"So are you, for picking up defectives."
"Then you're the worse man for causing their defects."
"What could I have done about them? Did I have control over their development?" Stirling lifted his hands out in front of himself and pressed a stretched, burning smile into his cheeks. "No, no, the thing is, Elijah, isn't even what happened because of ME; I was just doing what I was supposed to. You made me your VP and said I could do what I wanted and that's what I did. Yeah, so I sold the synth idea without telling you, so what? It was for the company; we can't keep going off patent money alone! We had to expand the synth business to the domestic market some time — "
"No, we DIDN'T!" For the first time, Dad's voice snapped into the range of a shout, echoing across the tension of the office. The baby in his arms stirred and let out a soft, keening whine; Dad turned his head down to her, murmured something I couldn't make out, and began to rock her again.
"You," he began again, much softer, so that I had to actually strain to make it out, "did nothing for the company. You did everything for yourself. The purpose of Abiola was to study artificial gene synthesis and synthetically conceived human children. We were here to learn about the kids, not to...SELL them! This isn't Build-A-Baby Workshop! It's not some — some twisted department store, and these children aren't products!"
Stirling shifted his weight for the hundredth time. I'd never, ever seen him this angry and I prayed with all I had that I wouldn't have to see it again. Even in the blue-tinted light, his translucent skin was inflamed with rage. "I don't have TIME for this again! It's ALL here, all the evidence — you don't even understand the fact that money doesn't magically fall from the sky! You expect to earn your way to the top by doing research?! You have a company to run and yet you're sitting here burping a baby! You're INCAPABLE and — "
"And you're an insensitive prick."
Dad had turned back towards the crib and the armful of infant disappeared behind the bars. When he stood up he loomed — he was in comparison to Stirling a much less intimidating figure in the physical sense, a couple centimeters shy of 170; but when their eyes locked, Stirling seemed to shrink. Sometimes I like to think that the internal workings of the human brain have an active impact on nearby people even before the owner opens their mouth, like an aura that triggers others' subconsciouses into just knowing that there was something not quite right about that particular person — it'd certainly explain why my father had the effect on people that he did.
(Continued on next day)