“I guess we should try to sleep,” I say.
There’s a sagging couch, a cot, and a chair in one corner. A TV, too. I switch it on, but while someone is paying the electricity bill, no one has paid cable. I fiddle around a bit and get the local broadcast channels. There’s nothing on, but the cold light is comforting, somehow.
“I’ve got the chair,” Aislin says. “And I also have the couch. You two will have to share the cot. Oh, and I’m a very heavy sleeper. You guys could make all kinds of noise and I wouldn’t even notice.”
“Cute,” Eve says. “I’ll take the chair. I’m the smallest.”
I stretch out on the couch. A couple of hours ago I was kissing Eve. I was sure I was madly in love with her.
I am madly in love with her.
But. But something’s changed. I’m here in the studio of the man who killed my parents. Eve’s father. Terra Spiker’s husband.
Terra, who’s done horrible things. To Eve, to me, to a whole lot of others.
There’s too much history. There are way too many complications.
What did I think was going to happen after I revealed the truth? This isn’t exactly a happily-ever-after kind of setup.
“I can’t sleep,” Eve says softly. I’m not sure if she’s talking to Aislin or to me. To anyone. “I keep seeing … the girl.”
No one asks who she means. We know.
“I wish you’d never shown me,” Eve says, and now I’m sure she’s talking to me.
I sit up on my elbows. “So you could live in blissful ignorance?” I ask. “I did you a favor, Eve.”
“A favor?”
“She’s your mother. You have a right to know. An obligation.”
“Just because I’m her daughter doesn’t make me responsible for what she’s done,” Eve says. “Are you responsible for your parents?”
I let it sit, and a moment later I hear her sharp intake of breath. “Oh, God, I’m sorry, Solo. I forgot. I’m so tired, I don’t know what I’m saying anymore.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“It’s just, she’s my mother. You think you know someone, know what someone’s capable of, and then—”
“Yeah, life’s full of surprises,” I say. I lie back, exhale loudly.
Then I rest the crook of my elbow on my eyes and pretend to fall asleep.
– 30 –
I open my eyes.
I see something. It’s a picture. It’s a picture I know. It was already in my brain before I ever saw it. Now the sight of that picture resonates.
It’s a girl.
The picture slowly cross-fades to a different picture. Same girl. This time she’s at poolside with another girl.
This picture in turn cross-fades to the original girl, and her name pops into my head.
Evening. Her name is Evening.
I’m sitting upright in a chair.
I’m staring at a monitor.
Why? When did I move to this chair? How did I get here? Where was I before?
I reach a tentative hand to my head. There’s a tight band, and I can feel wires, dozens of them trailing out and away.
Is this normal? I have thousands of images of people. None of them have a band with wires.
Yet another picture of Evening.
I love Evening.
How do I know that? It’s obvious. It’s true. I have to love her. She made me. I have the pictures in my head, moving and still, of Evening at a console making the decisions that would soon define me.
I see myself through her eyes, unformed, partial, incomplete. I see that she chose my hair and my face. I know that she sculpted my chest. That she had the vision to create perfect, muscular legs.
I am perfect. I’m Adam.
Perfect for Evening.
Mine is the face she will find impossible to resist. Mine is the skin she will long to touch. As I will long for hers.
She designed my body. She wants me to be her mate. Of course she does.
I haven’t been told this, but I know it. I can draw my own conclusions.
In fact, I realize, I haven’t been told anything. No one has spoken to me. I just … arrived … here in this chair. Came here from nowhere and nowhen.
I am wearing clothing, so I can’t see my perfect, Evening-sculpted legs or my artfully symmetrical biceps or my hard abdomen.
“How did I come here?” I ask.
It’s the first time I have spoken. I search my memory. Can it be true? Surely I have spoken before. To someone. But my memory reveals no someone.
I’ve just been born. The realization shocks me. I’ve just been born. But my memory tells me that is not the way it happens. My memory tells me of wombs and mothers and wrinkly, squalling infants.
None of that applies to me. I am full-grown. I am not a weak, dependent baby; I am strong and tall and I love Evening.
“You have always been here,” a voice says.
A woman steps into view. She’s tall, beautiful, glittery.
“There is no always,” I say. “Nothing persists forever.”
“Nothingness persists,” she says. She is testing me.
“No. So long as anything exists, nothingness is impossible. In fact, it’s nothingness that cannot persist. Nothingness gives way to somethingness. The nothingness that preceded the Big Bang was obliterated. Nothing became something.”
The woman nods. “Good. You’ve absorbed data well. Your intelligence is obviously fully functional. You sound like a college freshman taking his first philosophy class way too seriously, but that’s good. Evening will like it.”