The old man probably couldn’t have lifted a feather, but Joel2 felt as if Shila had hit him with a sledgehammer. He’d heard of the Gehinnomites’ ramblings before, but now that he was there, hearing it for himself from the source, it felt visceral. Real. The Punch Escrow was a lie? People were being copied and destroyed? Even him?
While his thoughts whirled, the old man kept speaking. “We identified all the members of IT’s inner circle who also knew these truths. Among them was your wife. A woman who could prove to the world that teleportation was unnatural, a sin, the technological perversion of God’s gifts. Joanna knew she only needed the proper motivation. One person to suffer so that many others may live.”
He opened his eyes, fixing Joel2 with an intense, sympathetic stare. “Thus my daughter found you, Mr. Byram.”
Shock and anger duked it out in Joel2’s brain. As per usual, anger won. “You’re saying this whole thing was a fucking setup? That I was a target?”
The old man nodded. “However, you were never meant to be killed. Our aim was to disable your foyer in New York so that you wouldn’t be cleared. But my daughter had other plans.” Tears formed in his eyes. “She did not trust that you could become our ayah. That you could stand before the world and proclaim the truth. She wished to make herself an example instead.”
He passed a hand over his eyes. “What she didn’t know, what none of us knew, was that IT had another, more devilish trick up its sleeve. One your wife used to return you from Gehinnom.”
“She told me, and she wouldn’t have done it if weren’t for your daughter,” Joel2 said defiantly. “I mean, if you knew what your daughter was doing, why didn’t you stop her?”
Shila smiled sadly, his eerily perfect teeth gleaming. “You’re not a father yet, my boy. I can’t expect you to understand the implications of your question. However, I will say that most of the Friends held your position. I acted selfishly when I prevented them from imprisoning her then. And for that I am sorry.”
“Enough with the religious psychobabble history lesson. So you’re sorry your daughter fucked up my life. Great. Tell you what: let me and my wife go free and consider us even.”
“Don’t be glib, child. All I want is to set you free. To set your wife free. To set the entire world free from this evil. I want to show everyone that you are not the only Joel Byram! That just as you sit here, another you, the real you, sits in New York.”
The roiling sea of questions in Joel2’s mind went flat. His stomach began to slowly fill with a cold, heavy dread. “What do you mean, ‘another me’?”
“Did your wife not confess the full truth to you?” The Gehinnomite’s eyes were sad. He took no joy in relating this. “The original you, the one from New York, was never destroyed. He is alive at this moment. You, my boy, are but a copy, a replicant hastily cobbled together by your wife in her desire to play God.”
Joel2 shook his head. It was too much to absorb. He was a ship taking on water, the holes and questions too numerous to plug. He had already begun to sink when Shila explained how teleportation worked, but learning there was another version of him, the original version, one who hadn’t died and been resurrected by computer, that sent him straight to the ocean floor. He sagged in the chair.
The wheelchair whirred as it came around the table to him. The old man reached out with a trembling hand, placing it on Joel2’s shoulder. It weighed no more than a few dry twigs. “It may be small comfort, but the fact is, the real Joel Byram died the first time he stepped into that place you call the Punch Escrow.” He patted Joel2 lightly. “That elevator to Gehinnom. An elevator your wife helped build. Isn’t that right, Mrs. Byram?”
Joel2 whipped his head around. In the doorway stood Sylvia, her hands bound and held by Felipe. Her mouth was gagged and there were fresh tears streaking down her cheeks. She had heard everything.
THE BUMMOCK
JOEL2 AND SYLVIA STARED AT EACH OTHER. Though they’d only been apart for half a day, it felt like nearly a year had passed since they were last together.
He shook his head, trying to clear his mind of all the madness Shila had just heaped upon him. He directed his words at the Gehinnomite leader but kept his eyes fixed on his wife. “You want your proof? Well, so do I. Let Sylvia speak for herself. I trust her much more than I trust any of you assholes.”
“Go ahead!” A different cold robotic voice came from the darkness in the back of the room. It had a feminine quality with a heavy Tico accent. “Take off her gag.”
“Danielle—” Roberto turned to the empty spot in the room where the voice had come from. “You are here only to observe. Please—”
The head of a stoic silver-blond-haired woman was suddenly unveiled, floating about two meters off the ground. “Let her speak,” she said.
As she moved, camouflage LEDs rippled up and down her robe, recording and displaying whatever was behind her such that her body was rendered practically invisible. “Or do you fear the bruja might prove me right?” she said to Roberto in a mocking tone.
Joel2 couldn’t grok whether bruja was meant to insult Sylvia by calling her a witch, the literal definition, or a bitch, the Costa Rican slang interpretation. Either way, this woman was not making a great first impression.
The old man sighed. “Mr. Byram, allow me to introduce Danielle Julious. My wife.”
“His better half, he means. The one who knows that this”—Danielle glanced at Sylvia with disgust—“this devil’s engineer knew and was intimately engaged with every facet of Honeycomb. The one who wanted to share this evidence with you from the moment you stepped into Monteverde, but my impotent husband here insisted you be brought down the path of goose feathers. Your bruja is not who you think she is.”
Danielle’s LED robe switched from camouflage to a bright white glow. Everyone squinted as their eyes adjusted. She crossed the room, towering over everyone present, statuesque. Her movements, however, were none too gentle as she nudged Felipe aside and pulled the cloth gag out of Sylvia’s mouth. “Go ahead,” challenged Danielle. “Defend yourself, bruja.”
Sylvia coughed. She shook her head, but then, making eye contact with her husband, she found she could not keep silent. “Joel, I—I wasn’t being completely honest with you. I couldn’t be. But I swear, for me, Honeycomb is just an evolution of the cache we use for the Punch Escrow. I never thought—” She stopped talking and just sort of gazed forward.
Joel2 was in free fall.
There was no denial in her words. And in that moment he knew that everything Shila had told him was true.
The parachute he had been waiting for never opened.
“Never thought what?” Joel2 asked. “That you’d ever have to use it on me? That you would replicate me?”
Sylvia spoke plaintively, like a child who knew she’d done wrong. “I was just researching the science of it! The possibilities.” She shook her head. “I know that’s not an excuse. I know I should have waited. I should have waited to hear from New York. But you…” She looked at her husband again, her eyes shining with tears. “When I knew you were gone, I couldn’t process it. I didn’t think. I’m so sorry.”