Creature

When it came to talking about it, everything about that night had been molten gold in a way Henry forever struggled to explain. Proud man of science—a medical student—any description of what felt at the time akin to nothing so much as magic evaded the firm grasp of his analytical mind. The light glazing Vivienne’s hair, and the honeyed gleam of her eyes. The malt of beer in the air, and on Vivienne’s breath when she laughed. Arthur, with his golden skin and golden spirit. Even the dull roar of life pouring from the other students cramming the pub, as if Henry could see the spark of primordial fire at the core of each one of them.

A hand gripped his elbow, yanking him from the vision. “—isn’t she?”

“What’s that?”

“The most beautiful creature you ever laid mortal eye upon?”

“Creature?” Vivienne wrinkled her pretty nose at Arthur from her seat on his lap.

“For rhetorical effect, Darling, to signify you stand apart from us monstrous apes.”

Vivienne laughed, raising her glass. Henry watched the flex of her throat as she swallowed. Somehow knew Vivienne watched him in return.

“The Scientist doesn’t care one eyelash for my supposed beauty,” she said. “He only cares for genius, and I have none.”

Arthur made a tragic sound, clutching her to him. “The Scientist's a fool in aesthetics,” he said. “When it comes to beauty, an Artist’s the only genius. I shall paint you!” He downed the rest of his beer, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. “To preserve your beauty, undying! Can the Scientist do that?”

“You’re drunk," Vivienne said, “and in love with me. Hardly unbiased.” She leaned down to kiss him.

“Actually,” Henry said, watching her tongue glide between Arthur’s lips, “the Scientist believes he can do that.”

-----

“—action of mirror neurons, and the quantum entanglement we performed with the clone… Look, do you need to know how an MRI works to get scanned?”

Your Creator’s frustrated, explaining frustrates him.

“Fair,” Vivienne says. “So it… mirrors me?”

Henry kneads the bridge of his nose, “perhaps…think of Echo as a liver donor. Without the inconvenient surgery.”

“So I can’t get drunk?”

“Christ alive… yes, you just won’t get cirrhosis.”

Vivienne tilts her wheat blonde head. You tilt yours to match. Perhaps you’re teasing her, you don’t know. She shivers, as if she’s stepped barefoot on a spider.

Henry watches you together; ever the Scientist.

“Will I… age?” Vivienne asks, and there’s lust in the honey eyes then, staring back into your own honey eyes. Hungry.

“I believe not. Perhaps extremely slowly, it will be fascinating to see.”

Vivienne laughs, flinging herself at Henry. Her lips collide with his and stay there, a warm sound thrumming her chest.

A kiss, you think, as her fingers tangle in his hair. That’s called a kiss.

-----

Arthur’s been drinking, you know by the animal smell of him, and the steep angle as he leans in the doorway. The unseeing stare as he looks around Henry’s lab.

“He’s sleeping with her, you know.”

You close the book you’ve been reading by the blue light of Henry’s computers, and rise from your camp bed. The scrape of hospital scrubs against canvas is obnoxious in the thick quiet of the night.

“Of course,” you say.

“You talk?”

“You’re surprised.”

“I guess—I never thought about it.” He drags a hand over his face, claws at the two-day stubble on his chin, not meeting your eye.

“You came to have sex with me.”

“Would it… feel the same?”

“Yes,” you say. “And no.”

-----

Not long after that, you need your first treatment for gonorrhoea. Then Arthur stops his visits, which is how you know Henry’s given Vivienne up.

You begin to rot.

You gain weight. You dwindle to skin and bone. Your hair falls out, and your mouth ulcerates. There’s blood in your urine and in your bile. The icy eucalyptus of Henry’s favoured disinfectant soothes your breathing, but ultimately cannot mask the rising stink of your gangrenous flesh.

You rot, but you do not die. Because Vivienne lives.

Henry cares for you, his basement lab at the university hospital converting piecemeal into a true hospital room. Treating your infections and tending your blackened teeth. Cooling you through fevers, warming you through chills. Cleaning and dressing your open sores. He bathes you when you can’t stand, feeds you when your arms fail. He brings you books, and when you can’t bear the light, he reads them to you.

But he also takes your blood, your bone marrow. Biopsies your brain. Retrieves your eggs, and taps your spinal fluid. He studies you, obsessively; a man possessed.

Until the day you wake to a stranger’s hands on you, and that’s how you learn Henry has died.

-----

Henry’s great, great granddaughter turns the videotape between her hands, almost laughing.

“The last, truly, unhackable technology,” she says. “Analog.”

Together you watch the video, seeing your own creation. The chamber you were grown in, with its tubes and the soft algal glow of its fluids. Quantum entanglement with Vivienne, which makes the great, great granddaughter cover her mouth and breathe in low, terrified breaths. For a moment she shuts her eyes to it and the blood-coloured light pulses against her eyelids.

You hear your Creator’s voice again.

“Now you know our greatest shame. Every scientific achievement at Narcissus BioTech. The wealth we’ve amassed. It began with Echo. You have the choice each generation has had: you’re free to destroy her. If you’re like me, however—to my enduring disgrace—you will not. There’s simply too much to learn.”

-----

Years pass. You’re moved to a protein bath, where you can be naked and weightless. Where your own movements cannot tear your skin.

Where, at last, Vivienne comes to you.

For all they gleam with their old honeyed beauty, there’s no light behind the golden eyes anymore.

“Look,” she says. Holding a small hand mirror so you can see the withered, putrid thing you’ve become. As if you don’t know. As if you are not the one who lived it.

“How does it feel?” you ask, and she has to lean close to hear the lisping murmur that rises from your ruined mouth.

“How does what feel, Monster?”

“Knowing that I am your reflection? When you look, whose face is it you truly see?” She turns her regal head aside and you spear your way to the truth. “Or can you no longer bear to look at all?”

She screams, flinging the mirror away to smash somewhere behind her.

You’re still laughing when she drives the scalpel through your ear, and deep into your brain.