Your One & Only(3)

She’d never seen a face like this boy’s.

And his eyes. Something was wrong with them. The eyes of the nine models were all brown, though they varied in the range of shades. This boy’s were almost colorless, watery and cold, an odd bluish-gray. How could eyes be gray?

Althea shook herself, shivering at the ghostly translucent color, but at the same time realizing it was not simply what he looked like that was disturbing. She also felt nothing from him. It certainly looked as though he was nervous in front of the class, but the only indications of fear were what she could see—his shuffling feet and shaky hands, the way he blinked nervously. Emotions that strong should have been radiating off him like a fever, infecting the whole class. Instead, he was isolated, a solitary figment as cold as the stone wall that surrounded the town.

Everyone in class was rustling and shifting in their chairs. They felt the bone-chilling detachment from the boy as well.

“What’s wrong with its face?” Carson-315 asked.

Althea had wondered the same thing, but couldn’t imagine asking the question herself. The boy’s ears brightened red, which meant he had heard and understood Carson-315.

“Nothing’s wrong with his face,” Samuel-299 said. “He’s simply different.”

“Different from what?” a Samuel asked, Samuel-317.

“From the nine models.” Samuel-299 nodded to the painting on the wall. “He’s human, like they were.”

“So he’s not Homo factus,” a Carson said, grimacing.

“No. Like I said, he’s human—Homo sapiens.”

“Where are his brothers?” Althea-316 asked.

“He has no brothers—he’s alone.”

Alone. The word struck Althea’s ears, its awful power tightening her chest. She leaned back, trying to put distance between herself and the strangeness of this boy.

“Why would we bother making a human? What good is it?” Carson-317 said.

Samuel-299 rubbed his mouth as if realizing this situation—whatever it was—should be going better. He took a breath. “The Council has been conducting an experiment. Humans were a great people. It’s because of them that life continued through us.”

Althea noticed that the Samuel hadn’t actually answered the question. He hadn’t said what the Council’s experiment was for. He was hiding something.

“They couldn’t have been that great,” Samuel-314 said. “I mean, they’re dead.”

The Carsons cracked up at that. Carson-310 slapped Samuel-310 on the shoulder, and then all the Carsons copied the same action nine more times, right down the row of Samuels. Samuel-299 watched them mimic each other, one by one, a strange look on his face.

“They’re extinct,” Samuel-299 finally said. “Humans reproduced genetic lines that shouldn’t have been allowed to continue. Their mistakes are what caused the Slow Plague.”

It was hard to imagine what it was like when humans covered the planet. Althea pictured a world overrun by an unrestrained population, reproducing like animals, their genes mingling unpredictably and disastrously. The communities now were entirely regulated and controlled. Her people maintained the same three communities with populations that never rose above nine hundred. There were ten generations of each of the nine models, and a new generation born every decade. But before Vispera, every face was unique, and there were millions of them. To Althea, it sounded horrible, like thousands of insects crawling in a thousand directions.

A Carson nodded his chin at the boy. “So is he going to get sick and die like they did?”

The strange boy looked up at Samuel-299 as if waiting for him to say something that would make the others stop looking at him with suspicious glints in their eyes, like they didn’t know whether they should laugh at him or actually be angry that he was contaminating their classroom. The Samuel rested a hand on the boy’s shoulder and said, “He’s healthy so far. His lack of abnormality is one of the reasons we chose his genetic material from the Sample Room.”

The boy’s shoulders turned in, deflating under the Samuel’s hand. Althea thought perhaps he wasn’t happy with the way the Samuel was talking about him.

“All of you,” Samuel-299 said, “come from the Originals who lived here back when the humans called it Costa Rica. Our genetic lines are refined and perfected. Where humans relied on natural selection, we have technology and science. That’s what makes us fundamentally singular from humans. We have no mutations, no genetic outliers, no mistakes or abnormalities. We all work together, communing and cooperating. Jack, on the other hand . . . genetically, his cells were never altered. He’s an exact copy of a human boy who lived in the twenty-first century. And that makes him different. But while he may be different in some ways, in many other ways he’s just like you.”

“Does it talk?” Carson-312 said.

“Yes.” Samuel-299 pierced Carson-312 with a stare. “He talks.” Samuel-299 turned to the boy, hovering over him, his body rigid and impatient. “Go ahead, say hello. Introduce yourself.”

They waited while the boy shuffled his feet.

“My name . . . my name is . . .” He spoke uncertainly, but then stopped as if making a decision. He straightened his shoulders to stand with more assurance. “I’m Jack.”

One of Althea’s sisters giggled. “Jack?” she said. “That’s not a name. There’s not even a number after it. What generation is he supposed to be?”