“I’m a woman,” said Tony/Cynthia. “I don’t even know how to wipe myself when I pee. What the hell kind of ‘good’ are you talking about?”
“Not you, obviously,” said Lyle, “but other people—the twin girls, or the cancer patient, or that boy in Hoboken with cystic fibrosis—we made him a twin of his brother. Three more weeks and his body will be totally healthy.”
“That was Guru Kuvam’s project,” said Susan, frowning. “Were you mixed up with him?”
“I’m the one who gave him the lotion.”
Susan threw up her hands. “Come on, Lyle, how many different ways are you trying to end the world, here? Have you done anything worthwhile at any step of this process?”
“We’re giving people life, Susan, we can’t just stop.”
“We can,” said Susan firmly. “This stuff is evil—you don’t know what’s it like to have it used on you.”
“Yes I do,” said Lyle. “Didn’t you know? It’s gotten me, too.”
Susan narrowed her eyes. “You?”
“I’m a clone of myself.” He stared at her a moment, then stood up suddenly and pulled up his T-shirt. “See my stomach? I had my appendix and gallbladder removed a few years ago—I had five little scars from the endoscopic surgery: here, here, here, here, and here. Do you see anything?”
“I see some belly button lint,” said Tony/Cynthia.
Susan scowled. “The scars are gone.” She looked Lyle hard in the eyes. “My elbow scar is gone, too, from when I had my tennis injury. What does it mean?”
“It means that ReBirth is rebuilding us,” said Lyle, “not just once but constantly. You’re probably thirsty all the time, right? And starving?”
Tony/Cynthia looked down at his can of pasta, and tucked it quietly behind him on the counter.
“Your body is being aggressively rewritten,” said Lyle, “over and over and over again, getting rid of everything that doesn’t match the template.”
“Is it supposed to do that?” asked Larry.
“It’s not supposed to do anything!” Lyle said. “It’s a moisturizer, for goodness sake, it’s a hand lotion. Nothing it does makes sense. Do you know why nobody’s knocked it off yet?”
“There’s a black market,” said Susan.
“That’s just somebody repackaging NewYew’s lotion,” said Lyle. “I’m talking about actual knockoffs, where someone else has found the formula or reverse-engineered it or whatever, and started making their own. That’s the first thing everyone does when any new product hits the market, but no has done it with ReBirth because it’s impossible: it won’t work when anyone else makes it. It doesn’t work for anyone but us.”
“This guy’s crazy,” said Tony/Cynthia softly.
“There hasn’t been time for knockoffs yet,” said Susan, staring angrily at Lyle. “It’s only been out a few days.”
“It was stolen months ago,” said Lyle. “Ibis even kidnapped me, and I spent weeks trying to do it, and I still couldn’t. I told them the same thing I’m telling you: it doesn’t follow any rules that make any kind of sense. And it’s far, far more aggressive than we thought.”
Susan stood, walking to the wall. “It doesn’t matter how it works—all we need to do is destroy it.”
“And what?” asked Lyle. “Destroy every bottle in existence? Kill everyone who’s already been infected?”
“We’re not going to kill anybody,” said Susan fiercely. “All you have to do is testify, bring down the company, and—”
“Now you’re the crazy one,” said Lyle. “You can never get rid of this. It’s out there, and it’s everywhere, and it will never go away.”
“So what do you want us to do? Hide in a hole and pretend it isn’t happening?”
Lyle gestured around at his darkened house. “Yeah, I think that’s pretty obviously exactly what I decided to do.”
Tony/Cynthia planted herself in front of him, hands on her hips, and shot Lyle a look that was almost, but not quite, the same fearsome look Cynthia made when she was mad. “Listen, buddy. We came here because NewYew is doing something wrong, and we want to stop them. Your testimony can do that, and we’re not going to let you just sit here doing nothing.”
“You might be able to cut a deal,” said Larry. “Give them the other executives and you walk free.”
“The point is this,” said Susan. “Are you going to turn yourself in willingly, or are we doing it for you?”
Lyle narrowed his eyes, feeling suddenly cold. “What do you mean,” he asked, “‘willingly’?”
Larry’s bulk filled his left-side peripheral vision. “I think you know exactly what we mean.”
Lyle swallowed. “Fine. Let me get dressed, then.” Susan nodded, and Lyle padded down the hall to his room. Is this it? Turn myself in to the police or they’ll do it for me? I don’t want to go to jail—if I even end up in jail. ReBirth is too powerful, and the government’s just going to do the same thing Ibis did: put me in a room somewhere, and force me to make more. But who knows what they’ll use it for?
He turned on the shower, and looked through his grandpa’s old clothes. The only things he had to wear.
But.…
But Susan came to me. She had a problem, she needed help, and she came to me. Even though … He knew that there was no chance between them, there never had been, and yet … She came to me. And she had a very impersonal reason, but … Was she changing?
Did people ever really change?
Lyle looked out the back window, trying to see the little irrigation path Tony/Cynthia had mentioned. He’d never known it was back there, but now that he was looking for it there was an obvious space between his grandma’s fence and the neighbor’s. What else had he been looking at for years, and never really seen?
Jail, he thought. Federal custody. What good would it even do, striking back at NewYew now that ReBirth was already out? If the damage was already done, what good would it do to punish them, and who was he to do it?
