Undivided

“I told you I should be the one driving,” says Beau.

Risa drops it, sensing something in Co

22 • Co

He steps back and allows Sonia to transfer the biomatter from the stasis container to the printer. He doesn’t want to touch it.

“The stuff of life,” Sonia says as she pours the red, syrupy suspension into the printer reservoir. It’s not exactly the most hygienic of transfers, but then, they’re in the back room of a cluttered antique shop, not a laboratory.

“It looks like the Blob,” Grace comments.

Co

Risa takes Co

It’s just after dark, and it’s the four of them: Co

“Injection for my hip,” Sonia had told him, “so I don’t need a hip replacement from some poor unlucky unwind.”

He had accepted the explanation at face value, partly because it sounded plausible under the circumstances, but mostly because Sonia is an accomplished liar. Probably half of her success as an antiques dealer comes from the lies she tells about her merchandise. Not to mention her success in harboring fugitive kids.

With the magic blob safely in the printer, Sonia turns to them. “So who would like to do the honors?”

Co

“What’s it go

Sonia shrugs. “Whatever Janson last programmed it to make.”

Her eyes seem to lose some of their light for a moment as she struggles with the memory of her husband. He’s been dead for maybe thirty years, but clearly their devotion ran deeper than time.

They watch as the printer head flies back and forth over a petri dish, laying down microscopic layers of cells. In a few minutes the pale ghost of a shape appears. Oblong, about three inches across.

Risa gets it first. “Is that . . . an ear?”

“I do believe it is,” Sonia says.

There’s something wonderful and terrifying about this. Like watching life emerging from the first primordial pool.

“So it works,” Co

Before them in the dish is, as Risa predicted, an ear.

“Can it hear us?” Grace asks, leaning forward. “Hello?” she says into it.

Co

“It’s just a pi

“It doesn’t look too healthy,” Risa points out. She’s right. It looks pale and slightly gray.

“Hmm . . .” Sonia pulls out her reading glasses, slips them on, and leans closer to observe the thing. “It has no blood supply. And we didn’t prepare the cells to properly differentiate into skin and cartilage—but that doesn’t matter. All that matters is that it does exactly what it was designed to do.”

Then she reaches out, picks the ear up between her thumb and forefinger, and drops it into the stasis container, where it sinks into the thick green oxygenated gel. Co

“We’re going to have to get this to a place that can mass-produce it, right?” Co

“Nope,” says Grace. “Big is bad, big is bad.” She furrows her brow and rings her hands as she looks at the stasis box. “Can’t go too small, either. Kinda like Goldilocks, it’s gotta be just right.”

Sonia, who is rarely impressed by anything, is impressed by Grace’s assessment. “A very good point. It needs to be a company that’s hungry, but not so hungry that it carries no clout.”

“And,” adds Risa, “it has to be a company with no ties to Proactive Citizenry.”

“Does such a thing even exist?” asks Co

“Don’t know,” says Sonia. “Wherever we go, it will be a gamble. The best we can do is better the odds.”

The thought gives Co

“Something wrong?” Risa asks.

Co

“Because something always is,” she says, a little miffed. “You’re a streaming meme of things that are wrong.”

“And you’re not?”

Risa sighs. “I am too. Which is why it’s so easy for me to know when something’s bothering you.”

“Well, this time, you’re wrong.” Co

He turns to see Risa holding his letter. THE letter. From the moment Sonia gave it to him, he’s been keeping it in that pocket. He’s taken it out several times, each time determined to tear it up, or burn it up, or otherwise dismiss it from his life, but each time it winds up back in his pocket, and each time he feels a little angrier, and a little weaker for it.

“What’s this?” Risa asks.

Co

“You think I don’t know what’s been going on in your head? Why you almost crashed us when we were leaving Columbus?”

“That has nothing to do with anything!”

“It was your old neighborhood, wasn’t it? And you’re thinking of going back.”

Co