Indefinite Renewal Read online

“Uh, hi—is Amy there?”

  “Can I say who’s calling?” For a second his heart leapt, before the vivid image of their house mother drilling them on how to deal with harassing callers danced across his mind. So she wasn’t spacing the whole time, after all, a thought crowed, and Nick tightened his grip on the phone, trying desperately to focus on the feel of the hard plastic in his hand.

  “This is her teacher, Nick Gordon.” She’ll probably recognize my voice anyway, he reasoned, so there’s no point in lying about it. Besides, I’ve got nothing to hide—I hope!

  “Oh, Mr. Gordon—I’m sorry, she’s not actually here right now.” Suzie sounded a little strained. “Actually, I’m starting to get pretty worried—she hasn’t been home since Thursday afternoon, and nobody’s seen her.”

  “Well, maybe she went home or something.” But it didn’t sound very convincing, even to him. And Suzie’s response just confirmed it.

  “No, I called there—they haven’t seen her or heard from her, either. And she always calls home every Sunday.” He could hear a catch in Suzie’s voice. “I used to tease her about that.” So what if some of us actually have a good relationship with our parents, the voice in his head snapped with the sound of old habit, but Nick ignored it.

  “Well. . . .” he hesitated, but his concern got the better of his caution. “Have you called the police yet?”

  “The police? Do you think I should?”

  “Well, if it’s not like Amy to disappear like this, she could be in trouble.” An image of the pile of ash leapt unbidden into his head, and he clenched his eyes shut to banish it. “It might be a good idea to call them.”

  “Yeah . . . you’re right. I’ll do it right now.” There was a brief pause. “Did you want to leave a message for her? In case—in case she does show up?” Suzie sounded near tears now.

  “Oh, um, right.” Nick thought quickly. Why would you call on a Sunday, you dunce, when you’ll see her on Tuesday anyway? Think! “I—I just wanted to let her know that I wouldn’t be in my office tomorrow, so she shouldn’t stop by.” That sounded lame, but Suzie didn’t comment beyond saying “I’ll tell her” and then hanging up. Nick stared at the phone in his hand for a long moment before finally returning it to its cradle and trudging down the street to the L stop.

  He got home late to find a message from his friend Brian about shooting some hoops tomorrow after lunch, and another from his mom saying she was sorry she had missed him. He went to sleep early and dreamt about people shriveling into nothingness, screaming his name as they turned to ash. One of them had Amy’s voice.

  The next day he typed up his report, dropping it on Carmichael’s desk his customary two minutes before the noon deadline, and then headed to the gym to meet Brian. They played for about an hour and Nick’s coordination seemed better than usual but his heart wasn’t in the game. He lost badly. Brian offered to buy him dinner to make up for it, but Nick declined, saying he had more work to do. Instead he went by the Psych department and asked to see someone for therapy.

  The woman’s name was Barb, and she explained when they met that night that she was a second-year master’s student in Psych, and was doing this for the experience—the fourteen-dollar charge was just nominal, and went to the department, not to her. She was tall and thin and had an air of competence and sanity about her, with her short brown hair and her simple but nicely made blouse—I wish I could color-match properly, my choices always make me look so washed out, the voice in his head complained—but he thought about the stark furnishings of the room they were in and it went away. After introducing herself Barb gestured to the low black couch and suggested they get started.

  “This is all confidential, right?” Nick asked as he lowered himself onto the cushioning.

  “Absolutely.” Barb flipped open a notepad she’d brought in, clicked a pen, and sat back. “Why don’t you start by telling me a little about yourself?”

  “Well, my name is Nick Gordon—” My name is Amy Feldmar, the voice insisted, although it didn’t seem as loud as it had that first time, in that other room—“and I’m a Ph.D. student in Genetics.” I am a sophomore in . . . oh, I don’t know, probably English, but maybe French, the echo countered. “Oh, and I’m twenty-five.” I am twenty-one—well, okay, I’ll be twenty-one in two weeks, anyway.

  He frowned. “That’s odd.”

  “What’s odd?” Barbara asked, looking up. “The fact that you’re twenty-five? Time does tend to catch up with us quickly, doesn’t it?”

  “No, that’s not what I meant,” Nick explained. Should I tell her, he wondered, and then answered his own question—hell, that’s why I came here in the first place! “It’s the voice in my head—it seems to be repeating itself.”

  “Voice in your head?” She leaned forward more attentively now, notepad forgotten. “Tell me about this voice, Nick.”

  “Well . . .” he took a deep breath, then plunged into it. “For the last few days I’ve had this voice in my head—it’s definitely not me, and in fact it sounds decidedly feminine. It’s not always there, but sometimes when I think about something it will say something else, something I wouldn’t have said, or even thought of. Particularly when I tell someone my name.”

  “It has a different name?”

  “Yes, it does. It’s . . . Angie. Angie Foreman.” He had almost voiced Amy’s real name, urged on by the echo in his head, but at the last second had caught himself—confidential or not, there was no sense inviting trouble.

  “Do you know anyone by that name, Nick?”

  “No,” he replied honestly. “I’ve never heard it before.”

  “So you said you’ve heard this voice for several days, but now you think it’s repeating itself—what did you mean by that?”

  “Well, when I told you my name, it countered with its own, and it did the same with age and major—but the wording was exactly the same as the first time this happened. Let’s see . . . I’m a quarter century old.” And the voice in his head responded, I am twenty-one—well, okay, I’ll be twenty-one in two weeks, anyway.

  “Well?” He had forgotten for a moment that Barbara couldn’t hear the voice as well—wouldn’t that make things easier, he thought wryly.

  “It gave the same answer—‘I am twenty-one—well, okay, I’ll be twenty-one in two weeks, anyway.’ Exact same wording each time.”

  “Hm—so it’s several years younger than you,” the therapist mused. “That probably indicates a desire to return to an earlier time, when you had less responsibility and more freedom. The fact that she’s of legal age allows you unrestricted movement and choice, while the difference in gender abdicates you of any responsibility for her thoughts and actions.”

  “Huh?” Nick shook his head. “No no, don’t you see? Conditioned answers rather than spontaneous response, consistent wording—there isn’t a real person there. It’s more like some sort of recording. I thought she was actually talking to me, but that’s not the case—there must be some sort of memory retention or transfer involved, and whenever a thought or image comes up that relates to one of these retained memories, that gets pulled up.” To test it, he tried thinking of Amy’s roommate Suzie answering the phone, and was rewarded with Why does she always answer on the first ring? I hate that! I wish she’d learn to screen calls—there are all those weirdoes who call girls up and harass them, and once she’s answered we can’t exactly pretend we’re not there. . . .

  He stretched and stood up, reaching for his wallet. “Barb, thank you—you’ve been a big help.”

  “What do you mean?” There was a puzzled look on her face, but when Nick offered her the handful of bills he fished out of his wallet she stood up as well, hand automatically reaching for the money at the same time that her mouth protested.

  “But you can’t leave now! We’ve only just scratched the surface—you’re exhibiting all the signs of what’s known as Disassociative Identity Disorder and used to be called multiple personalities! It sounds like you might have a full
secondary personality there, formed from intense stress and an inability to deal fully with the rigors of your current responsibilities! This is a serious matter!”

  “Yes, well, I appreciate your concern,” Nick told her, “but I’ve decided to just muddle along with this ‘secondary personality’ myself for a while.” He paused at the door and turned back to her with a grin. “Who knows—maybe I can work out an arrangement with it. You know, like a time-share—I get one week, it gets one week, that sort of thing. But if we need an outside mediator, I’ll be sure to let you know.” And he let himself out, leaving Barb staring at him in abject disbelief.

  I shouldn’t have taunted her like that, he chided himself as he headed for the stairwell and retraced his route out of the building—but come on! Secondary personality? Inability to cope? Give me a break!

  Although she does raise one good point, he reminded himself. This is a serious matter. Even if Amy isn’t haunting me like I feared, her memories seem to be trapped in my head, and I don’t know how they got there, or how to get rid of them.

  Right. He got to the front door and grasped the handle but didn’t open it yet. Let’s think this through—you’re a scientist for heaven’s sake, deal with the facts! First, something odd happened to you Thursday night—whatever it was, it seems to have been more than a dream, so we can accept that something happened and deal with the how’s and why’s later. Second, Amy was there. Third, something happened to her then, something that made her go missing, and you were involved in it. Fourth, after whatever happened to Amy, you met a man named Daniel who claimed to know what was going on. Fifth, since then you’ve had what seem to be Amy’s memories in your head. Sixth . . . okay, there isn’t anything else. So what does all that mean?

  Nick thought about it for a moment, and then shook his head. I don’t know. I just don’t know. But maybe I can at least narrow down the possibilities. He pushed open the door and headed down the front steps and to the sidewalk—but once there he turned right and headed back toward the main part of campus instead of going to the left where the L stop was.

  Chapter Five

  The genetics building was locked up tight, but Nick had wrangled a key last semester while doing some research and they’d never taken it back. The door moved silently across the carpet as he let himself in. There were a few lights here and there, mainly from other students working on projects of their own, but the lab he wanted was empty. So far so good.

  Stepping inside and switching on the lights, Nick allowed his eyes a moment to adjust to the glare of the fluorescents, then turned and headed for his desk. The surface was an untidy mass of papers and books, but he ignored that and started opening drawers instead. No, not in that one, nor that one either—hm, so that’s where his gloves had gotten to! He pulled out the items in question and stuck them back in his coat pockets, then tried the next drawer. Aha! The blood samples! Good thing Carmichael made every new grad run a thorough genetic sample of themselves for comparative purposes. The blood itself was long since gone, dried to a dark brown smear on the side of the tube, but his notes on the test were sitting under the rack of tubes and he snatched them out. Now to part two.

  Heading over to the center table, Nick found a sterile needle, opened it, and jabbed himself in the little finger, gritting his teeth against the momentary sting. A drop of blood welled up immediately and he transferred that carefully to a slide, which he then carried over to the electron microscope.

  “Hey, Nick, what’cha doing?” He hadn’t heard the door open and almost dropped the slide in surprise, but managed to hold onto it as he spun around. Tom Dresker, a fellow grad, was standing in the doorway.

  “Hey, Tom—you scared the hell out of me, man! I’m just running a few tests—what are you still doing here?”

  “Oh, I told Carmichael I’d turn my paper in by tomorrow, and I was just trying to finish it up—I saw the light on and figured I’d see who was around.” He had stepped fully into the room now, and let the door slide shut as he wandered over. “What’s on the slide?”

  “You tell me.” Nick slid it under the scope, made sure everything was properly aligned, and hit the power. There was a deep bass hum from the machine, and an instant later the screen cleared, showing the drop in blue-white detail.

  “Hmmm. . . .” Tom stepped over to the controls and flicked a few switches, and the scanner zoomed in a few degrees closer. “Well, it’s obviously an organic liquid of some sort—looks like blood. There’re the cell walls, there, and the antibodies are fully active, so it must be a recent sample. . . .” He grabbed Nick’s hands and examined them, first the right and then the left, and came to a stop on the left pinky, which still throbbed angrily from its earlier ill treatment. “Aha! A clue!” Tom let go and stepped back a pace. “So why are you running a sample on yourself, then?”

  Nick had to laugh—Tom was a nice guy, but despite the fact that he was a scientist (or perhaps because of it) he was a raving paranoid when it came to disease, and the very mention of AIDS absolutely terrified him. “Don’t worry, Tom, I’m not infected!” Not as far as I know, anyway, he amended silently, and the echo in his head surfaced with Damn that Joey—he swore he was clean! Now I’ve got to get a shot of penicillin or something, and how am I going to hide that from Mom and Dad? They’ll kill me! He almost laughed out loud, but managed to repress it in time, since Tom was still eyeing him warily.

  “So why are you doing it, then?”

  He shrugged as nonchalantly as he could manage. “I don’t know, really—it just occurred to me today that the first scan I ever ran on this thing was from myself, and I got to wondering what I might have missed. So I figured I’d try it again, and see if I’d actually learned anything in the last two years.”

  “Hmph! Not likely!” The slow study pace for graduates in the department was one of Tom’s favorite soapboxes, and the opportunity to harp on it was enough to make him forget his earlier fears. “You know they’re deliberately not teaching us anything significant while we’re here—it’s to prevent us from ever being serious competition for them!” Nick just shrugged and smiled, and Tom shook his head and turned back to the door.

  “Well, I’ve got to go finish my bibliography—I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Sure thing, Tom—good luck with getting done.” And don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, Nick thought as he watched Tom leave, then let out a sigh and turned back to the scanner display.

  Well, everything looks normal on this level, he thought. Let’s go a little deeper and see what we find. He upped the scan to maximum depth, and waited while it adjusted focus to the genetic level. He wasn’t exactly sure what he was looking for, but if there was even the possibility of some physical cause to all this insanity, he meant to find it. The screen finally cleared again, and he studied the new image carefully.

  All right, there’s the DNA spiral . . . what the hell’s that? He held up the picture from his original test, but already knew that the shape he had just spotted wouldn’t be there—it shouldn’t be on anyone’s DNA, let alone his! At both ends of the double helix there was an ovoid attached, with a complicated spiral pattern of its own—it appeared to form out of the ends of the normal strands, and then loop around somehow, turning the separate cords into one unbroken chain of some sort. But that was impossible!

  He hit the Print button on the microscope, and waited while it printed out a copy of the screen image, then compared the two sheets to each other. In every other respect they were the same (although the current image was clearer, so maybe he had learned something since then), so there was no doubt that they were both from him, but where the hell had that new shape come from? And what did it mean?

  He glanced at the screen again, and noticed now how clean the picture was. The human genome was filled with little bits of unused code, floating around like meat in a stew, but his was almost completely empty. As if those new shapes had somehow formed from those unused fragments, coalescing together into a new, f
ixed form. But that was unprecedented—there were cases of people with fewer genes, and even a few people with more, but once a person’s code was set during the gestation process there was no way for it to alter, except for a few degenerative diseases. There had never been a case of anyone with regenerative genes, or with wholly original generative processes like this. And yet, here he was!

  Nick sank down onto the chair next to him and rubbed his forehead, then toggled to focus back out to the cellular level. Okay, look for abnormalities here—but everything looked perfectly healthy, and the image matched that from his file. A few more antibodies, maybe, but he’d been working out more regularly this last year and had taken to watching his diet, so he was probably healthier, which would account for that. Everything else looked the same, and the cells were functioning normally. He watched a cell multiply, its core expanding and then splitting off into two equal parts, with one remaining at center and the other slowly traveling outward, taking part of the cell wall with it and wrapping the edges around it like some tattered cloak, and admired the beauty and simplicity of such a process before shutting the microscope off and letting the screen fade slowly to black. The slide he took and cleaned thoroughly before setting it to dry with a handful of others on the lip of the sink. The picture he’d printed went with him.

  Well, now I know what’s causing all of this, Nick admitted as he shut the lights and locked the door again behind him. I’ve got some kind of weird genetic mutation in my system, and that must be playing havoc with my nervous system, which is sending out weird signals to my brain. Except that the compositional readout had shown normal, so there weren’t any new chemicals in him, or even any sort of chemical imbalance, although it had registered a drastic increase in a handful of proteins normally only found in minuscule amounts. And how could a change in his DNA even occur, much less affect his thought process?

  Things aren’t exactly getting any clearer, that’s for sure, he conceded as he stepped back outside into the brisk night air. But at least it’s someplace to start—tomorrow I’ll hit the books, and see if there’s any sort of precedent for this kind of thing. He tried to shake the certainty that he wouldn’t find anything there—for the moment it was all he had to go on, and he clung to the possibility, because if it failed he wasn’t sure where to turn to next.