Your One & Only(9)

Jack had learned a long time ago that the guitar mystified the clones. He played it sometimes in his room during the day as the lab workers outside the door peered into their microscopes. They’d cast him sideways glances, grumbling under their breaths, but the resonant sounds and the strings under his fingers soothed him. Sometimes playing his guitar was the only thing that made him feel sane, the only thing that made him feel like he could keep trying for another day.

In the beginning, watching Sam’s reaction to the sound, it had taken a while before Jack understood. The clones actually couldn’t hear the music. No, that wasn’t right. They could hear it, but they couldn’t hear it. They called it noise and compared it to the drone of insects outside in the forest. Once or twice, as if they felt like they should research the question, the clones in the lab had asked him why he sat on his bed for hours, making that racket on a hollow piece of wood. How could he explain that, from the first time he’d held an instrument and strummed his fingers over it, he’d felt the pulse of the strings like it was his own beating heart?

When Jack realized the clones couldn’t hear music, he’d grasped for the first time how different he was from them. He’d always known they communed with each other and he couldn’t, but somehow, their inability to hear music made him feel even more of an outsider. He’d put the guitar away then. But now, with an apprenticeship, it could be different.

“Don’t you see?” Jack said. “I’ll teach them, really help them understand. I’ll show the Council what I can contribute to the community.”

“No, I’ve already thought about this. You’ll Declare an apprenticeship in the clinic, work with me. You’ll learn medicine, something useful.”

“The clinic?” Jack said.

“Of course.” Sam stood, done with the conversation. “Just be ready. You’ll talk to the Council tomorrow, after the ceremony’s done.”

Jack chewed the inside of his lip, thinking.

“Don’t look so worried. This is a good thing. And I’ll be there to help. It’ll all be fine.”

Sam walked down the hill, back toward town. Jack’s gaze followed the man’s path until he reached the school, where something had happened in the children’s game. They’d clustered together, their hands resting on each other’s shoulders, and seemed to collectively sigh into each other as if they were one body. Then, just like that, they broke apart and ran across the field, as sudden and synchronized as a flight of birds.



The next day, Jack sat in the chairs facing the outdoor stage in the Commons, waiting for the ceremony to end so he could make his presentation to the Council.

The Gen-310s had each Declared already. The Meis would apprentice in the kitchens, working on the menus for the dining hall and telling the Hassans, who had Declared as livestock managers and field planners, what food they would need and what to cook. The Viktors, as always, were order keepers. They’d never Declared anything else. The Carsons would work with the Kates and Nylas in the labs, monitoring the tanks, researching genetics, and preparing for the next Gen to be born in three years. The Samuels, as always, Declared as doctors. The Ingas would be designers, keeping the open spaces in town manicured and beautiful, and the dorms comfortable and clean. The Altheas Declared as record keepers.

They carried on with the ceremony as if everyone didn’t already know what the models would Declare, as if the community hadn’t gone through the exact same motions of the Declaration every ten years. Samuels never worked in the kitchens, as far as Jack knew. But it didn’t matter. Every ten years, they played out the ritual.

With the Declaration over, the Gen was performing the dance now. Jack would speak with the Council when it was done. His guitar lay next to him on the ground, and he tapped his foot nervously. He’d thought about making graphs and charts, but had decided in the end to just play for them, and talk to them about the history of music, about how it was a vestige of human history. For some reason, it had been forgotten, but they could get it back again. Jack would help. He had a skill, an ability, and it wasn’t new or strange. It was old, had been around for millennia. It was simply waiting to be picked up and dusted off.

Sam still thought he was going to Declare to work in the clinic. He wouldn’t be happy about this, but Jack didn’t want to work in the clinic. He had to show them that they didn’t need to be afraid or repulsed, or think he was strange for offering something like music to them. It could make them better. He could make them better by giving them back something they’d lost.

Jack wiped damp hands across his pants. He felt the inhaler tucked in his pocket and took a deep breath in and out, searching for any telltale signs that his lungs were going to betray him. He watched the dance. The Gen-310s traded partners and moved silently across the stage, their performance punctuated only by the sound of their tapping, shuffling feet and the birds in the distant trees.

The clones had many dances. The Pairing dance, for one, and the dances for the Binding Ceremony, or the Yielding Ceremony. The one being performed now wasn’t particular for the Declaration, it was simply a dance of contentment, meant to express a kind of pleasure or happiness that things were as they should be, and as the Original Nine intended. The Carsons grasped the Altheas and moved in quick, sure steps, holding the girls’ hands with a certain confident authority.

Jack pushed down his dislike for the Carsons. He had to learn. He had to get along with them if the Council was finally going to allow him to have a real purpose in the community. He’d made a mistake when he was fifteen, fighting with the Carson-312, and the Carsons had spent the past two years making sure he didn’t forget it. They taunted him, tripped him on his way through town, or acted as if he was invisible, knocking into him as they walked past.